“If I was to sink my teeth into your eye right now, would you be able to stop me before I blinded you?” – Shutter Island
The bathtub scene from Training Day. Every. Single. Time.
‘Is nice’ - Borat
Not a movie, but the series Cosmos.
“We are a way for the universe to know itself.” -Carl Sagan
One of the very few times I’ve gotten goosebumps was from the last bit of dialog in the first Terminator movie. Sarah Connor is sitting in her jeep at a gas station with her German Shepherd. Sarah: What did he just say? Gas Station Attendant: He said there’s a storm coming. Sarah (looking off into the distance): I know.
Kaneda… What do you see?
– Searle, Sunshine (2007)
spoiler
The movie is about a crew flying a starship to our Sun, which is rapidly dying because of a Q-Ball – some thing that I’m sure was proven to exist but that strips away protons from atoms. They’re on a mission to detonate an essentially experimental bomb there hoping it would be enough to get rid of the Q-Ball and essentially restart the nuclear fusion process, saving humanity.
As the mission is getting closer to the star, we see Searle in the observation room, toning down the filter to see the sun like he would never be able to on Earth. The safeguard protocols only allow him to see 3.1% of its true power given the distance, and not for long. His experience is almost ecstatic, spiritual. Next scene is him talking to his crewmates about the experience, recommending it.
The quote is what he asks his captain during an emergency repair, his skin showing signs of too much exposure to the sun, even through the filter.
He asks his captain, who had to stay behind during an EVA emergency repair, what does he see, as the ship is slowly turning to face the sun again, about to burn the captain to death.
This such a “call of the void” moment, although about something so clearly opposite of a void. A man slowly getting more and more obsessed with something so incomprehensible, getting so close to it, so far away from anything familiar. So obsessed that it’s what he’s pulled to ask from another man about to get properly obliterated.
“How are you doing this Vincent? How have you done any of this?”
“You wanna know how I did it? This is how I did it Anton. I never saved anything for the swim back.”
-Gattaca
“Blow up the damn ship, Picard!”
- First Contact
But really, Viola Davis’ entire performance carries the whole film and makes every important moment land.
“All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.” — Roy Batty, Blade Runner (1982)
“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.”
-Blade Runner (1982)
I am a leaf on the wind…
…watch how I soar.came to find a firefly quote. man watching the series so many lines get me.
Right from the start, even:
Take my love, take my land,
Take me where I cannot stand.
I don’t care, I’m still free,
You can’t take the sky from me.
You stop that I cannot cry here
"Sons of Gondor, of Rohan. My brothers.
I see it in your eyes, the same fear that would take the heart of me.
A day may come, when the courage of men fails. Where we forsake our friends, and abandon all bonds of fellowship.
But it is not this day.
An hour of wolves and shattered shields, when the age of men comes crashing down, but it is not this day. This day we fight!
By all that you hold dear on this good earth, I bid you stand! Men of the West!"
Arise, arise, Riders of Théoden! spear shall be shaken, shield shall be splintered, a sword-day, a red day, ere the sun rises! Ride now, ride now, ride! Ride for ruin and the world’s ending!
Death! Death! Death!
Another banger, though admittedly a bit more bleak than Aragon’s hype speech.
Not a movie, but Andor had so many good ones. And I mean a lot, too many for a single post. My favorite though is Namek’s Manifesto:
"There will be times when the struggle seems impossible. I know this already. Alone, unsure, dwarfed by the scale of the enemy.
Remember this. Freedom is a pure idea. It occurs spontaneously and without instruction. Random acts of insurrection are occurring constantly throughout the galaxy. There are whole armies, battalions that have no idea that they’ve already enlisted in the cause.
Remember that the frontier of the Rebellion is everywhere. And even the smallest act of insurrection pushes our lines forward.
And then remember this: the Imperial need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural. Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear.
Remember that. And know this, the day will come when all these skirmishes and battles, these moments of defiance, will have flooded the banks of the Empire’s authority and then there will be one too many. One single thing will break the siege.
Remember this. Try."
I was absolutely flabbergasted when I saw this in Andor.
Obvious one, “I’m not locked in here with you. You’re locked in here with ME!”
Maybe not a quote but when Arnold lights the torch and lets out his war cry in the Predator.
omg. yes. yes. Im getting orgasic thinking of that scene both in the movie and the comic. When I read the comic I had to put it down several times just to a great scene.
Do you think God stays in heaven because he too lives in fear of what he’s created?
- Spy Kids 2
I am the walrus
Donny, The Big Lebowski
Is this the Steve Buscemi quotes part of the thread? Because if it’s not it should be.
I mean, that time when God did come down from Heaven we nailed Him to a cross and crucified Him in a horrendous manner…
The president’s Independence Day (1996) speech gets me almost every time.
Especially when he crescendos, “…the day when the world declared in one voice, we will not go quietly into the night. We will not vanish without a fight.”
The idea of every nation on Earth actually rallying behind a cause is such a romantic one.
The idea of every nation on Earth actually rallying behind a cause is such a romantic one.
I recently watched Arrival (2016) and teared up thinking about this. Probably because these days it seems to be the most fictious and implausible part of any plotline that has to deal with anything truly global.
District 9 is the most plausible exploration of how humans would deal with aliens visiting Earth.
Fun fact: that speech was a first draft. The writer made himself a note to revise it, but got busy enough with other stuff that he forgot. He remembered last minute when they were prepping to shoot the scene, but it was too late as Bill Pullman had already memorized it and had also spent time listening to unedited recordings of presidents giving big speeches throughout history to make sure it had the correct tone (this is also why he has the kind of awkward start).
I like the awkward start. It makes it feel more improvised, building confidence as he gets going. It’s portrayed in the movie as him speaking from the heart, and him struggling to find the words in the beginning helps sell it imo.
I get a little weepy on that one.
Dont worry, I’m sure after the movie they all started fighting about who has to foot the repair bills and who contributed the most.
Pullman was on Saturday Night Live after the movie came out and one of the skits was Bob Dole (Norm MacDonald) dreaming that he was debating Pullman’s character from the movie in a presidential debate.
Pullman is proud to have united America and defeated the alien invasion while Dole keeps trying to blame him for the state of the nation after the invasion.
Here are the only quotes I could find
President Thomas J. Whitmore: My fellow Americans, when I look back on my first term as President, there are many things that stand out. The passage of the new clean water act, the historic tax cut… but, I would have to say that my proudest moment was when I led the charge to repel the invasion of the space monsters. …
Bob Dole: Under his administration, over seventy million Americans were incinerated by aliens from outer space!
President Thomas J. Whitmore: Well, at seems as though the Senator has finally decided to go negative. I guess he hopes to distract voters from the real issues, the ones that matter to the average American.
Bob Dole: The average American’s dead!
Bob Dole: The average American’s dead!
Savage, and true, in the case of that film.
But Jeff Goldblum is still alive, so you’ve got that going for you, in that universe.
Yeah, that’s what I mean by romantic. It’s an exciting thing to imagine, even if it did take an immediate, existential calamity to make it happen. Shared trauma can quickly form very powerful bonds in humans (veterans often attest to this).
However, in reality, humans still find the most petty shit to disagree on, even at their own expense. A real post-Independence Day would immediately start an arms race to savage and assimilate all that alien tech before other nations do; tyrants would use the weakness of the fallout to grab power and wealth; people would begin endlessly arguing about how to rebuild and/or prepare for another invasion, etc.
After a few generations of humans, people would form conspiracy theories straight up denying it even happened despite entire cities being reduced to rubble. With 8.2 billion people, complete consensus on literally anything, even reality, might just be impossible.
But it’s nice to imagine what we could accomplish if we did…
