15 Greatest Mindless Movie Explosions

By The Manolith Team on December 16th, 2009

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Movies are great, and movies with explosions in them tend to be even greater — but is it really desirable to have explosions, regardless of whether or not they’re necessary or even realistic? Does it really help the movie? Hollywood seems to have had this cliche set in stone for decades now, and with guys like Michael Bay running around, it seems like nothing in the world could change it. They probably should, though, and these 15 films show that some explosions are probably best left out of the script entirely, if not at least downgraded a few notches.

Stealth

Words cannot describe how absolutely ridiculous this explosion is. Stealth was by no means a good film — in fact it was outright terrible, in every way — but it still may have benefited from just a bit more realism in its explosive dealings. The blast shown in this video, for example, is nothing short of hilarious. The jet is inside the hanger, so the pilot fires what appears to be an extremely potent volley at the hangar door, which somehow causes the outer walls, vehicles, and the ground, to burst into flames and explode simultaneously with the door itself. The explosion is massive, and while twelve-year-olds rejoice upon seeing such a thing, men with sense can’t help but laugh.

The Scorpion King

The Rock surprised everyone when he rather successfully pulled off playing the lead role in his very own action-fantasy movie, The Scorpion King. The movie was fun and exotic, with plenty of action and even a decently thought-out plot, but for some reason the director felt it was necessary to introduce copious amounts of gunpowder to the story so that he could have an outlandishly huge explosion end a large action sequence. I guess nobody told him that his movie was taking place in the 3,000 BCE range, and gunpowder isn’t believed to have been invented until four thousand years later, in China.

Deep Blue Sea

Bad movies are bad enough, but throw in some evilly enhanced sharks and one LL Cool J and you’ve got Deep Blue Sea. This movie is nothing but downright terrible, but it’s entertaining, and this is doubly true when LL, playing a chef/preacher, gets cornered and nearly eaten by one of the offending sharks. Apparently industrial ovens will begin to spew gas if water levels rise above their control dials, which of course happened while LL was inside the oven with an axe. He then proceeded to hack his way out of the steel oven with said axe, jump the shark, and swim across the room. The scene finished with him spinning around with a wisecrack and flinging a Zippo at the shark, which jumped out of the water just in time to be engulfed in massive amounts of flames and explosions that shook the entire facility. This all really happened.

The Cliffhanger

Stallone made big money with this movie, and for good reason — it was well-received at the time it was released. Looking back now, it’s horrible, in every way, but that doesn’t stop it from being at least mildly entertaining. John Lithgow never hurts, either, but when he died in this one, it was in a wrecked, empty helicopter shell that fell down a cliffside to the snow-covered rocks below. When the shell, and Lithgow’s villain, finally hit the ground, it was in a massive fireball explosion that far outdid itself. This sort of over-the-top scripting was par for the course, so it was hardly noticed at the time.

The Punisher (2004)

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This movie had its good and bad points, to the extreme. Overall, it was a great one, but the end left viewers wishing they’d passed into a deep coma before receiving the mental scars associated with watching the last half-hour of this film. What could arguably be called John Travolta’s absolute worst acting job of his career was dwarfed by the way in which his character was finally killed off by the Punisher, Frank Castle. He was dragged behind a slow-moving sedan into a car lot, as row after row of cars exploded in some sort of chain reaction set off by a couple of small charges placed by Castle. When all is said and done, the carnage resembles the skull-symbol of the Punisher armor, which is even more ridiculous.

BlackJack

This wonderfully awful Dolph Lundgren film is a true gem for bad movie-night celebrants everywhere. Not only is this a John Woo film, but it’s got old Dolph playing bodyguard to a little girl, who admires and assists him as he rescues and protects her from marauders raiding her mansion. In a truly amazing scene of epic greatness, Dolph launches himself out a third-story window, after throwing the girl out first, to escape the blast of a grenade. She bounces off a well-placed trampoline directly into a swimming pool, and he spins around mid-air to kill many men while dual-wielding handguns and bouncing on that same trampoline. He gets shot in the leg once while this is happening, and all the while the single grenade is still exploding as though the entire third floor were rigged with firebombs.

From Russia With Love

This classic Connery-Bond was a 1963 masterpiece of intrigue, and ridiculous boat chasing. In a particular escape scene, James and his newest squeeze, Tatiana, are on their way to Venice in a small boat carrying exactly four drums of fuel. Along the way, they’re ambushed and forced to jettison the drums; in doing this, James sees an opportunity to wreak havoc and affect their escape. He launches a flare into one of the four floating drums, and causes no less than 16 separate explosions all along the water, engulfing the boats of the would-be captors. It doesn’t matter in the end, though — this is still one of the best Bond films to date.

The Specialist

Inflicting the ’80s with more bad plot-lines, character cliches, gunfights and explosives than should ever have been thought acceptable, The Specialist was certainly a Stallone movie, through and through. It did win in one area; Sharon Stone was at her absolute hottest when this movie was made, and she’s all over it. The grand escape finale to this one included both Stallone and Stone making their getaway as the absurdly large waterfront house they are in is blown, piece by piece, in what is supposed to be a timed rigging done by Stallone. The house takes a solid five minutes to finish exploding.

No Code of Conduct

Uniting both Father and Son Sheen once again (it doesn’t happen often), No Code of Conduct was more or less your usual cop drama, with an explosive twist for an ending. The twist wasn’t that there was a bomb, or a van, or a building that got leveled — those things happen pretty often in cop dramas — it was that the building was huge, the van was normal, and the explosives were not nearly enough to cause the massive, multi-stage demolition that they do. It’s still a fun scene, regardless.

The Marine

In this Cena-fest of terrible acting, we get to see what happens when a wrestler with less acting chops than The Rock gets himself the leading role a big movie with explosions in it. Kelly Carlson may be enjoyable to look at, but even she can’t account for the sheer scale of the explosions used in this film. In one particular scene, what appears to be a propane tank, in a house, gets grazed by a bullet, leading to the entire house blowing itself into pieces, leaving nothing but a smoldering foundation and John Cena. This was just one of many such instances.

Commando

It would be more than difficult to find a man who doesn’t love Commando, or any old school Arnold films, for that matter. This one’s special not just for its odd (and pervasive) use of that funky Caribbean meets The Little Mermaid soundtrack, or its unreasonably high body-count, but also for the amazing explosion scene. The Governator only planted a couple of Claymore charges before mounting an assault, but when he hit the switch, every building exploded simultaneously with the force of several Arnolds’ worth of TNT. It’s a classic scene, but it’s ridiculous.

Jaws

We all know and love Jaws, but decades of controversy surrounded the timely demise of Jaws himself, to the point that Mythbusters had to contribute considerable resources to setting the record straight. It’s simple; the tanks like the one that Jaws was munching on when Brody shot him in the mouth, thus causing the explosion, don’t explode when shot. It doesn’t matter what you shoot them with, it just doesn’t cause a depth charge-size, shark-obliterating explosion. It was a fun way to end the movie, but it was ridiculous on every level.

Van Helsing

While the studios may have gone to great lengths to ensure that Van Helsing became the blockbuster-level movie it was dreamt to be, they still felt the gravitational pull toward the ridiculous from time to time. The movie wasn’t bad, at all, and it did have a rather busty Kate Beckinsale showing off vintage Romanian bust-wear, along with naked vampire women, but it also had a penchant for going from silly to outlandish in two seconds flat. This all came to a head when the director decided it’d be a good idea to run a horse-drawn carriage off a cliff. When the carriage hit the ground, it exploded like Master Shake threw it. All that was on board the carriage was a small lantern.

New Police Story

This Chan flick is a bit on the darker side of his usual flavor. A group of apparently evil-minded, filthy rich punks sets up a bank robbery as a trap to lure some cops — Chan’s character included — into walking into their doom. Chan plays the hero, as usual, but sustains heavy losses to his cadre of officers, finally rescuing his last comrade from the biggest explosion ever. The rich punks must have had the combined income of a small country to afford the amount of explosives “rigged” throughout the building they demolish. It’s so outlandish that it’s not even close to believable, not to mention the fact that fireworks are clearly visible throughout the many stages of the explosion. It’s still pretty awesome.

Rambo: First Blood – Part II

The tipped arrows he busts out during the film’s pitched battles are varied, but his favorite seems to be the explosive tipped kind. It’s also good to note that no matter how many of these arrows he fires — or how small his quiver may be — that he never, ever exhausts his supply. The best part about this movie is the excessive explosive damage these tiny tips seem to do; Rambo fires them into huts or vehicles, one at a time, only to have the surrounding huts and/or vehicles explode simultaneously with the force of several large incendiary bombs. Then there’s the helicopter that drops a bomb which seems to cause a waterfall to explode and burst into flames. Ridiculous as it may be, this one’s a classic.