22 January 2008

Battle of the Greatest Movie Weapons

A new survey of 2000 film goers, by 20th Century Fox, has come up with the greatest weapons in the movies has revealed that the lightsaber, described by Obi_wan as "a more elegant weapon from a more civilized era" to be the greatest. The results are a list of icon weapons from movies, the home of violence and killing, often a major critisism of the industry: it's kind of strange Fox would even commision the survey.



1. Star Wars - Jedi Lightsaber
2. Dirty Harry's .44 Magnum
3. Indiana Jones's bullwhip
4. The Hanzo samurai sword used in Kill Bill
5. The chainsaw from Texas Chainsaw Massacre
6. Scaramanga's golden gun (The Man With the Golden Gun)
7. Robin Hood's bow and arrow
8. Scarface's M4A1 rifle with undermounted M203 grenade launcher
9. Star Wars - The Death Star
10. Oddjob's razor-edged bowler hat as used in Goldfinger




Here's a few more personal favourites:




Bugsy Malone - The slurge gun - the moppet gangsters in this kids musical couldn't use bullets so their gattling guns fired marshmallow. Cool!


Toys - toys - scary stuff, Robin Williams spends the film trying to prevent his brother, Joss Ackland from turning their inherited toy factory in to a weapons facility, creating minicule weapons of war remote controlled by computer games. I'm sure the military are looking into similar schemes.


Men in Black - Lil' Cricket - size isn't everything


Existenz - Organic pistol, - Cronenberg takes his body-cinema to extremes with this gun made from flesh and bone and firing teeth: you could easily get it through airport security


Ghostbusters - plasma weapons - don't cross the streams!


Evil Dead trilogy - Ash loses a hand but still has to fight off the monsters, the solution? tie a chainsaw to your stump.


Taxi Driver - Travis Bickle's wrist contraption is more of a snazzy holster than a weapon but completely iconic. Are you talkin' to me?


The Matrix - more a mass of weapons that a single iconic one, but guns, lts of guns. Cool.


Goodfellas - Joe Pesci's pen - improvised and truely nasty, I bet Mr Biro (or was it Mr Bic?) never envisioned this psychotic attack with his "harmless his invention. (also see Gross Point Blank)


ANd for the life of me I can't remember the film where there was a sword that could slice through abosolutely anything so I'll give a special mention to Excalibur instead.




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