The best movies are those which allow us to identify with the characters, if only in a kind of "I feel your pain" kind of way. We side with the heroes because we agree with whatever noble purpose they have in opposing the bad guy, even if the bad guy is pretty badass in his own right. However, sometimes, a main or supporting character has the chance to just do the right thing, at the right moment, and spare the good guys and maybe billions of innocents a world of pain and suffering until the good guy can eventually accomplish his goal.
Here are 5 examples, in ascending loss of life resulting from someone choking at a critical moment in time. Yes, there will be spoilers.
5. The Expendables
This movie features a crew of washed up special forces types (played by equally washed up action hero stars) who come back in for yet another job. Along the way, Dolph Lundgren's character, Gunner Jensen, appears to betray his old comrades in order to broker a better deal with the bad guy (thus fueling his meth habit). He manages to work his way into the bad guy's hacienda, bring brought before the head honcho (and the honcho's chief goon).
While he's bickering with a minor henchman over how much money he is to get for turning on his friends, he demonstrates he still has some of the old mojo and deftly disarms the henchman, bring a sub-machine gun to bear on the two main bad guys in the room. And then he pauses.
The delay allows the chief goon (played by Stone Cold Steve Austin, looking very stone cold indeed) to bring out his own gun and point it right back at a Gunner.
What could have happened:
Gunner disarms the bad guy, momentarily forgetting the awesome luck of getting his hands on a weapon he no doubt knows how to use incredibly well whilst in the same room as the bad guys he's attempting to double cross, and double taps both baddies in a split second. Sure, there are other guards in the room, and they might even react quickly enough after seeing their boss taken out in front of them to draw their own weapons. Gunner might even take one in the arm or leg (he's standing sideways to everyone else in the room). But the baddies are dead and the later (admittedly awesome) huge shoot out doesn't have to happen. Perhaps hundreds of lives could be spared, maybe thousands if the bad guy's overall plans also crumble with him.
4. 300
One would think a movie about a tiny number of soldiers holding a mountain pass against unbelievably massive odds would be forgiven if they faltered here or there while fending off rhino beasts and burka-wearing grenadiers. Naturally, there's going to be some mistakes, but they have to do the best they can, right? And no, I'm not talking about when Leonidas didn't just shove the misshapen little troll who later betrayed him off the cliff when he had the chance (or at least told somebody to watch the little bastard).
No, this is about the moment when, after beating impossible odds, hacking off hundreds of Persian limbs, and fending off the none-too-subtle advances of the 7 foot tall Persian king Xerxes, they have a final play to make. Leonideas lures Xerxes in to accept his ostensible surrender (now that the goddamned troll has shown Xerxes how to get troops behind Leonideas' position).
Leonidas drops to his knees in front of Xerxes' litter, with a Persian general out in front. One of Leonidas' men, Stelios, comes hurtling out of the background, takes a jump of Leonidas' back like a damn gymnast with airbrushed abs, and kills the general, clearing the way for Leonidas' game-changing shot. Leonidas grabs his spear, draws back, and throws directly at Xerxes' head....and fucking misses. Well, he manages to give a still very-much-unimpaled Xerxes a scratch on the cheek.
What could have happened:
He could have put that spear right between Xerxes' mascara-laden eyes. With the loss of their god-king, something as profoundly earth shattering as Jesus Christ appearing to Christians and saying "Yeah, just kidding about all that" the Persian army would have melted right then and there. The Spartans could have taken advantage of the confusion to regroup under their shields, and then mop up any Persians who tried to get past them. Again, since that's all they had been doing all along anyway.
This would have resulted in the Persian threat being demolished outright and any later battles aside from rounding up the stragglers, completely unnecessary. Thousands, possibly tens or hundreds of thousands of civilians and soldiers would have been spared if the Persian advance were stopped right there.
So much for all that vaunted training we hear about Leonidas undergoing in the beginning of the story. He's the guy who choked on the free throw line when his team just needed one more point to win the whole thing.
3. The Ten Commandments
While the movie version starring Charlton Heston is one of many movies based on the same Bible story, this one is the most iconic and easily remembered. It also carries with it the moment when Moses could have been a man and toppled the whole of Egypt.
4. 300
dude throws a spear at bad guy and misses
5. The Expendables
Dolph Lundgran pointed gun at bad guys in hacienda
3. Ten Commandments
Moses doesn't kill the Pharaoh
2. Lord of the Rings
Elrond fails to kill Isildur
1. Terminator (all of them)
John Connor for not programming the Terminator to go after all involved with the Skynet project
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