10 Movies That Wasted Their Best Weapon

The BFG in Doom was a totally let-down.

Vanderohe Army Of The Dead Omari Hardwick
Netflix

A killer weapon can make a great movie awesome. What would Star Wars be without lightsabers? Ghostbusters without the icon proton packs? Kill Bill without the Hattori Hanzō sword? No Country for Old Men without that weird bolt gun?

And that's to name just a few of the incredible, unforgettable movie weapons which lent considerable flavour and personality to the heroes and villains within.

It takes imagination and ingenuity to come up with something truly unique, though sadly filmmakers sometimes don't seem to know the solid gold they're sitting on.

These 10 films, from the generally acclaimed to the largely panned, all offered up a single show-stopping weapon which turned audience's heads and left them clamouring to see how destructively it'd be used later on.

Sadly in each case the pickings were slim, with the teased weapons more-or-less serving as red herrings, being used for just a brief moment or two before going back into the drawer.

Obviously there can be too much of a good thing, but these films didn't even begin to take full advantage of their tantalising, ingeniously designed high-tech weaponry, leaving viewers feeling short-changed by the tease...

10. The BMW Z3 - GoldenEye

Vanderohe Army Of The Dead Omari Hardwick
MGM

One of the most exciting things about any James Bond movie is seeing the new car 007 is kitted out with, and in the Pierce Brosnan era of Bond films, they tended to have a taste for the, well, ridiculous.

Hugely disappointing it was, then, that in Brosnan's debut film GoldenEye, the BMW Z3 appears for all of a glorified cameo.

When Bond is first given possession of the car by Q (Desmond Llewelyn), Q mentions numerous thoroughly badass features - stinger missiles behind the headlights, an emergency parachute braking system, a radar scanner, a passenger ejector seat, and even a self-destruct system.

Despite this very obvious tee-up, not a single one of these features is seen in the movie, and what is clearly the most potent weapon in 007's arsenal ends up sitting on the sidelines.

One can only imagine BMW's disappointment that the car didn't get a more adventurous and memorable innings, especially as GoldenEye marked the start of a three-picture partnership between BMW and the Bond franchise.

Contributor
Contributor

Stay at home dad who spends as much time teaching his kids the merits of Martin Scorsese as possible (against the missus' wishes). General video game, TV and film nut. Occasional sports fan. Full time loon.