crowning moments of awesome
A Crowning Moment of Awesome is defined by TVTropes as a “moment when a fictional character does something for which they will be remembered forever, winning for them the eternal loyalty of fans.” It’s a punch the air moment, and here are some of my favourite CMOAs:
“Popcorn!”
Grosse Point Blank
Out of ammo, existentially-torn hitman Martin Blank (John Cusack) is cornered in the kitchen of his girlfriend’s father’s house. On the other side of the kitchen unit, proselytizing rival hitman Grocer (Dan Ackroyd) offers to sell him a pistol. Blank, who earlier killed a man with a pen to the neck, agrees, but as Grocer beetles out to shoot him, Blank manhandles a television off the counter. Which he then deposits on Grocer’s head with his rival’s own catchphrase.
Dredd stabs his own hand
Judge Dredd: Raptaur
There’s a fair case for Dredd’s CMOA being the moment supernatural Dark Judge Fear, who kills by showing people their greatest fear, discovers that Dredd fears nothing and is invited to “Gaze into the fist of Dredd!” But I wasn’t around for that, and my earliest defining memory of how hard Dredd is comes from the lushly-painted Aliens rip-off Raptaur by Alan Grant and Dean Ormston. Dangling from a pole, half-dead, Dredd stops himself from falling by sticking his boot knife into his own hand before passing out. Nails hard, that is.
“I was out of bullets…”
Die Hard 4.0/Live Free or Die Hard
Cornered in a traffic tunnel, an injured and pissed-off John McClane (Bruce Willis) climbs back into his damaged car and heads at full speed towards the helicopter in which Euro-mercenaries are waiting for him. At the last second, he bails out, and the car is launched through the air… Hacker Matt Farrell (Justin Long) is gobsmacked: “You just killed a helicopter with a car!”
“It’s way past time you learned– what it means– to be a man”
The Dark Knight Returns
Man of steel-turned-government stooge Clark Kent is ordered by the US government to bring in Batman, whose return to vigilantism is attracting the wrong kind of attention. Batman softens up his former friend with hunter missiles, a shot from the Batmobile, kryptonite arrows, a sonic gun and a blast of electricity direct from the city grid. In an armoured suit, he delivers a stunning punch. For a glorious moment, Frank Miller shows us Superman beaten.
“Not even in the face of armageddon. Never compromise.”
Watchmen
Ozymandias, the smartest man in the world, has ended war by the simple expedient of murdering millions in New York. As other costumed adventurers stand by, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ implacable and psychopathic vigilante Rorschach shows his resolve, simply turning his back and walking out into the Antarctic snow, determined to expose the horrific crime. It’s his defining moment, and his last: when Doc Manhattan follows to kill him, Rorschach removes his mask, tears streaking down his face, showing emotion for the first time as he exhorts Manhattan to “do it!”
“Not enough gun.”
Preacher: War in the Sun
The Saint of Killers, a vengeful gunslinger now deputised as the angel of death, meets Jesse Custer in Death Valley. There he faces a US Army tank squadron, ordered to fire on the lone gunman by the evil Herr Starr. A grinning tanker admits “he’s always wanted to try this”, but as the smoke clears the Saint is not only still standing, he’s shooting it out with the tanks. Realising his miscalculation, Starr calls in a favour from the White House and the Saint is hit by a nuclear bloody missile. The mushroom cloud spreads over Death Valley, but in the white-hot epicentre the Saint shows why he’s clearly Garth Enis and Steve Dillon’s favourite character — and mine — as he simply spits and keeps a-walking. Now that’s awesome.
