Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Movie Franchise Tagline...

Just saw Terminator 4, and rewatched Terminator 1 on my computer. The first one is a really nice, taut action movie, though one of the new retro-pleasures of watching these old '80s action movies is snickering at the action effects that were so riveting/revolutionary/terrifying in the '80s.

(My favorite this month: Tarman, from the Return of the Living Dead movies. Awful movies, as zombie films go: they seem more based on Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video than anything scary, but Tarman's pretty cool...almost scary, and pretty awesome for '80s effects. The way he moves is occasionally really cool.)

Here's Tarman. Warning: tarman.



But The Terminator films have one thing going for them:

A super-de-duper great movie catchphrase.
"Come with me if you want to live"


(Yes, I know "I'll be back" is in there, too, but that's an Arnold line, not an exclusively Terminator line, so it doesn't count.)

And the question is:

Is there any better movie franchise catchphrase?

Here are the candidates I can think of:

1. "Yippiekiyay, Mother#*@&er!" (Die Hard)
2. either "Use the force" (a bit cheesy) or "I have a bad feeling about this" (Star Wars)
3. "Come with me if you want to live" (Terminator)
4. (are we including comedy here?) "Yeeah, baby!" (Austin Powers)
5. "What're you looking at, butthead?" (Back to the Future)
6. (maybe too short, but...) "Whoa" (Matrix)

Any others I'm missing? Help me out here, readers.

13 comments:

JIW said...

I didn't enjoy seeing Terminator 4. Felt like I was having to sit through getting my teeth pulled. Which I have done...without being knocked out too!

But good luck to you and your affection with the genre. Your thoughts remind me of when I saw the first one as a little girl. And wondered what would happen if a giant metal robot came after us.

JIW said...

oh
hehe
let me add my 2 cents more

"You have chosen wisely." From Indiana Jones...the 3rd one. A great classic in my family. We say it often to each other as a joke, of course.

Anonymous said...

"In the pipe, 5 by 5" from Aliens... family favourite.

pothead said...

i'm too old for this shit - danny glover in lethal weapon.

Jroc said...

and let us not forget the most under-rated catchphrase, "Must go faster, must go faster."

- Jurassic Park/Independence Day

Anonymous said...

"Nobody puts baby in a corner" - It was his finest acting moment.

Roboseyo said...

It's a great line...but to be a franchise tagline, it has to be a movie that had sequels, and the line has to appear in the sequels as well as the original.

Like "Come with me if you want to live"

Darth Babaganoosh said...

Excellent! ... Bogus! (Bill and Ted)

Shwiiiing! (Wayne's World)

Granfalloon said...

You missed an obvious one: "Bond. James Bond."

Also, we got "There can be only one" from the Highlander movies, themselves a study in diminishing returns. "You're one ugly motherf*cker" appeared in the first two Predator movies, maybe others (won't be wasting my time finding out). There's got to lots more that we're not thinking of, right?

John from Daejeon said...

Frankly my dear Roboseyo, I don't give a damn. Well...much of a damn anyway.

But here's a nice video that features many of them like "I am your father, E.T., phone home, They're here, You're going to need a bigger boat, I see dead people, Here's looking at you kid, I'm the king of the world, Stella, Greed...is good, You can't handle the truth, Life is like a box of chocolate, I'm going to make you an offer you can't refuse, Say hello to my little friend, Go ahead...make my day, I hate snakes, Jock," and, my personal favorite, "Rosebud."

www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QUT0tweX1M

John from Daejeon said...

Sorry, didn't read where they had to be franchise lines which is a bummer, but still good for a couple of them.

Plus, "I've been slimed" is going to be back in vogue now that the creative forces behind "Ghostbusters" have announced that a new movie is in the works.

Roboseyo said...

Thanks John from Daejeon: I'm still happy about the erroll flynn links you gave me back a year ago, too, and everyone...

rok: holy crap! I'd blocked the Wayne's World sequel completely out of my mind... yikes.

are there any lines which appear in more than one Indiana Jones? "I hate snakes..." others?

"Bond. James Bond" -- that's good, but I'd take "vodka martini, shaken, not stirred" over that one, for the same reason I'd take "I have a bad feeling about this" over "use the force"

I'd love it if "I've been slimed" came back. The lack of a great tagline might be why The Mummy movies never ran with the big boys.

The Korean said...

니나 가라, 하와이.