A superhero movie wouldn't be a superhero movie without a good fight or a really nasty
villain, but sometimes things can get a little out of hand. From gross-out violence to the
scariest bad guys in the universe, these are the superhero movie moments that went too
far.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe is a franchise meant for all ages, so there haven't been
a whole lot of disturbing moments during the series' long run, but this just means that,
when things do get gross, those scenes really stick out. Take Ant-Man, for example. In Scott
Lang's first movie outing, the villainous businessman Darren Cross turns an unsuspecting
colleague into a pulsating purée of organic jelly. It's especially upsetting since poor
old Frank is portrayed as a relatively level-headed guy. He's a high-ranking executive at Pym
Technologies, and when Cross starts talking about his Yellowjacket program, Frank says
they should hit the brakes on the whole microscopic murder-suit thing.
But Cross isn't the kind of guy who takes no for an answer, so the supervillain corners
Frank in the company restroom and zaps the poor dude with a shrink ray. He's subsequently
reduced to a bubbling blob of goo, and promptly wiped up and flushed down the toilet for good
measure.
This scene could have been a lot worse, too. In one unused take, Stoll actually tastes
the slime before flushing it down the drain. Oh, and then there's this.
Come on, man.
Thanos might just be the worst dad in the MCU, which, let's be honest, is really saying
something.
"You really need to grow up!"
The Mad Titan is incredibly abusive towards his adopted children, especially poor Nebula,
who he's been torturing for decades. In Infinity War, he goes one further, practically tearing
her into pieces when he gets his hands on her.
But things grow even grimmer when Thanos captures his favorite wayward daughter, Gamora. After
kidnapping her, Thanos takes Gamora to Vormir, in search of the Soul Stone. When they arrive,
Thanos learns that if you want to acquire the gem, you've got to sacrifice the thing
you love most. At first, Gamora thinks this is hilarious because, obviously, Thanos doesn't
love anybody. You probably remember what happens next.
Just remember that, only a few minutes ago, Spider-Man was fighting Star-Lord and Thor
was cracking jokes with a talking raccoon. Now, you've got Gamora's broken body haloed
by blood. It's a heck of a shift in tone.
With his grotesque flipper hands and terrifying jagged teeth, there's no villain more disturbing
than the Penguin. This ball of blubber spends his days living in the sewers of Gotham City
and oozes black sludge from practically every orifice.
In Batman Returns, the Penguin's got big plans. With the help of evil businessman Max Shreck,
he intends to become Gotham's new mayor. But if he's going to win over voters, he'll need
a total makeover. After all, when he first waddles into his campaign headquarters, he's
chowing down on raw fish and wearing the world's dirtiest pajamas. Fortunately, however, he's
also got a team of image consultants who cheerfully offer him tips. And that's when one poor sap
makes a crack about his new boss.
"Not a lot of reflective surfaces down in the sewer, huh?"
Penguin reacts...about as well as you could hope. Honestly, it's pretty horrifying. But
hey, as far as political campaigns go, probably not the worst start in history.
The Joker has always had a flair for the dramatic, and he puts his showmanship on full display
in The Dark Knight. In Christopher Nolan's classic superhero movie, the Clown Prince
of Crime is a chaos-loving terrorist with a very, very complicated plan to get rid of
Batman. And, like he says himself, if you're good at something, why do it for free?
Instead of straight-up killing the Caped Crusader, the Joker offers his murderous services to
the city's criminals for a hefty fee. He makes his pitch at a mob boss meeting, but these
gangsters aren't wild about working with the Joker, since he's been robbing their banks.
One particular gangster, an angry fellow named Gambol, wants the Joker dead, and orders a
crony to pull the clown's head off. But that's when the Joker decides it's time for a magic
trick, and one of cinema's most notorious killings ensues.
"I'm gonna make this pencil disappear. Ta-dah! It's, it's gone."
Pretty terrible, right? But that's the Joker for you. For this guy, killing dudes with
writing utensils is just one great big joke, and that's what makes him such a messed-up
monster.
While the MCU is mostly a squeaky clean series of movies, things do get a little bit edgy
in the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise. There's that infamous crack about Jackson
Pollock paintings, of course, as well as that one scene when the movie's heroes gleefully
wipe out an entire ship full of space pirates. But it's all in good fun...until Taserface
leads his mutiny, anyway.
In Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, the monstrous Ravager Taserface is tired of the way his
boss, Yondu, does business. So he turns the Ravager crew against their captain, and that's
when things get dark. Some of the Ravagers are still loyal to Yondu, but they're quickly
dragged kicking and screaming to the ship's airlock. They're then tossed into the void
of space, where they suffocate and freeze to death. Worse still, the mutinous Ravagers
are enjoying this a little too much, laughing and cheering as their victims die.
It's all incredibly ghoulish, and things get even nastier a little later when they turn
their attention to poor Baby Groot. The mutinous pirates laugh at him, pour beer on his head,
and physically abuse this adorable sapling. All in all, this sequence is genuinely upsetting,
and while the MCU is filled with villainous monsters, they don't get much more sadistic
than Taserface and his crew.
Logan is a bloodsoaked neo-Western that ups the gore on the previous X-Men movies, all
the while dealing with the emotional impact of taking a human life.
"Joey, there's no living with a killing. There's no going back from one. Right or wrong, it's
a brand. A brand sticks."
And that's something that Wolverine has to deal with every day. He's killed a whole lot
of people over the years, and even if they deserved it, the movie makes it clear that
killing still takes a piece of your soul.
Never is that clearer in Logan than in the movie's hotel sequence. On the run from the
deadly Reavers, Logan, Laura, and Charles Xavier hole up in a casino, where the dementia-addled
Professor X has a massive seizure. As Xavier convulses, he sends out telepathic waves across
the casino, paralyzing almost everyone, including a band of Reavers who've burst into his room.
The only ones strong enough to move are Logan and Laura, and as Wolverine drags himself
down a hallway, he decides it's time to whip out the adamantium claws.
Because everything appears so slowed down, the audience sees the Reavers react at a snail's
pace as the claws come crashing towards their skulls, but there's nothing they can do about
it. You can't blame Logan for feeling a little haunted.
Considering director David F. Sandberg cut his teeth in the world of horror, it's not
much of a surprise that Shazam! features some of the freakiest cinematic supervillains to
date: the Seven Deadly Sins. These guys are monstrous demons, complete with horns, fangs,
and wickedly long tongues. They were encased in stone by an ancient wizard, but when Dr.
Thaddeus Sivana shows up, he unleashes the demons and plays host to their satanic party.
Possessed by the Sins, Sivana has all sorts of crazy powers, so what's the first thing
he does with his newfound gifts? Well, get revenge on his family, of course. His father
and brother, both influential businessmen, have been emotionally abusing him for decades.
Quite literally filled with wrath, Sivana heads over to their company office, strolls
into a boardroom meeting, and unleashes his seven new friends. The hungry demons gobble
up everybody in the room, and while the terrified executives desperately try to escape, there's
no getting away from Sivana and the Sins.
The promotional material for Shazam! promised a goofy good time, but nobody was expecting
a bunch of demons to devour a room full of people. But this shocking scene does a fantastic
job of setting the stakes, proving that Sivana isn't here to play, and that Billy Batson
had better get his act together real fast.
Sam Raimi is the king of slapstick horror. And while Spider-Man 2 isn't exactly a horror
movie, it does contain one terrifying scene that holds its own with the director's most
messed-up moments.
It all starts after a science experiment gone wrong. Dr. Otto Octavius is ready to unveil
a fusion reactor that will finally create renewable energy, but he can't handle the
fuel with his bare hands. So he constructs four mechanical arms and straps those bad
boys onto his back. Luckily, the experiment is a total success, Octavius is hailed as
a hero, and the world becomes a happier place.
Alright, not really. Everything goes wrong pretty much immediately, the chip that controls
the arms is shattered, and Octavius' arms take over his mind. The explosive experiment
also knocks Octavius out cold and fuses the tentacles to his spine, so, after everything
calms down, his unconscious body is wheeled into an operating room. A team of surgeons
prepare to hack the arms off, and that's when things go wrong. Again.
Like a squid possessed by Satan, the arms whiz around the room, slashing and grabbing
and dragging doctors to their deaths. And the entire time, Doc Oc is totally unconscious,
unaware the tentacles on his back have turned the operating room into a massacre.
Before joining the MCU, James Gunn dabbled in the superhero genre with Super, a 2010
flick that's both hilarious and nauseating. The story follows a short-order cook named
Frank, who feels like a complete loser, especially after his wife runs off with a depraved drug
dealer. Devastated, Frank decides to become the superhero Crimson Bolt, and along with
his homicidal sidekick Bolty, he unleashes hell on all the local crooks he can find.
Super is not for the faint of heart, and things get even worse in the final fight scene, when
Dwight Schrute goes full-on Travis Bickle. Determined to get his wife back, Crimson Bolt
attacks Kevin Bacon's lair, and the ensuing scene is, well, it's actually incredibly upsetting.
Ellen Page gets her face shot off. Michael Rooker gets his head introduced to a brick
fireplace. And to cap it all off, Frank stabs his arch-nemesis to death...slowly, one stab
at a time. It's not exactly Captain America.
Based on the landmark graphic novel, Watchmen makes a point of analyzing the deviants and
the losers who wear flowing capes and skin-tight suits, and the craziest of the bunch is Rorschach,
an unbending vigilante who lives by a very violent code. Working outside the law, Rorschach
is investigating the death of several super-colleagues when he's arrested and tossed in jail. Obviously,
this isn't the best place for a crimefighter to be, especially since Rorschach put a lot
of these guys behind bars.
And sure enough, during a nasty prison riot, some of his old friends come to pay him a
visit. Big Figure is a diminutive gangster with some seriously oversized goons, and they're
all in prison thanks to the fedora-wearing watchman. Big Figure wants revenge, of course,
and orders one of his thugs to saw open Rorschach's cell and cut the dude to pieces. However,
when Henchman #1 reaches through the bars, Rorschach breaks his thumbs and ties his arms
together, preventing Big Figure from sawing through the lock.
But Big Figure isn't really loyal to his lackeys, and he orders Henchman #2 to cut off the guy's
arms so they can reach the lock. The guy tied to the cell begs and pleads for his life,
but Henchman #2 takes a buzzsaw and slices through his buddy's arms, leaving him with
two gory stumps. Naturally, Rorschach isn't fazed by any of this, but you probably can't
say the same for the audience.
Check out one of our newest videos right here! Plus, even more Looper videos about your favorite
movies are coming soon. Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss
a single one.