11 memorable lines from forgettable movies

Our cultural lexicon is sometimes more forgiving than Rotten Tomatoes

By Jacob Oller | July 17, 2024 | 10:00pm

Film Features Cecil Parker

11 memorable lines from forgettable movies

Taken Image: 20th Century Fox

Sometimes a single quote can carry an entire movie. More often, good films are built from sharp screenplays with writing that acquires even more meaning thanks to the emotions evoked by the narrative. A classic line becomes a classic line because of its context. Both the curators at the American Film Institute (stocking their Best Quotes list) and the non-curators at places like Brainy Quote (slapping random phrases onto nature stock photos) agree that the film lines most worthy of preservation come from films worth watching. But what about when a quote abandons its film of origin completely, taking on a life of its own?

That’s when you get a floating pop cultural anomaly, something Snopes needs to track down and source before people forget their history entirely. Some of these quotes took on second lives organically from incredulous memes. Some were repurposed towards more sinister ends. And some were simply damn good lines hiding out in movies that didn’t deserve them. We gathered up 11 memorable lines from forgettable movies, and dug into what happened with these disconnected phrases.

“Go ahead, make my day.” - Sudden Impact

Sudden Impact - Go ahead, make my day - Clint Eastwood as Harry Callahan

Sure, you might’ve known that the tough guy catchphrase was originally said by Clint Eastwood’s violent cop “Dirty” Harry Callahan, but you might not realize that it was first said in the fourth entry in the franchise. Sudden Impact hit theaters in 1983, over a decade after Eastwood teamed up with his mentor Don Siegel to make a cynical, scuzzy San Francisco action movie. That original Dirty Harry is where the rhetorical “Do I feel lucky?” question was first posed, but even that gets misquoted so that the person citing it doesn’t have to jump through all of its grammatical hoops. It’s just cleaner to quote Sudden Impact, even though the movie was reverse-engineered into a Dirty Harry entry from an unrelated Charles B. Pierce and Earl E. Smith script. The rape-revenge narrative and Sondra Locke’s co-starring performance were both overshadowed by a single line, though its exact author is disputed (with both screenwriters and uncredited writer John Milius claiming the murderous quote as their own). When Ronald Reagan used it in a political speech, as he would with another line on this list, all context was forsaken and the quote became a silly piece of right-wing bravado distanced even from the silly right-wing bravado of its source movie.

“I have had it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane!” - Snakes On A Plane

Snakes on a Plane- THE line

Enough is enough is right. The ridiculous title and concept of Snakes On A Plane (which are one and the same) only stuck so much in our cultural memory. The actual content of the movie? Well, one has to imagine that it delivered on its promise, though that’s not quite as compelling as the idea that this movie was ever made in the first place. Nobody remembers, for instance, why the snakes are on the plane, or who even co-stars alongside Samuel L. Jackson. (Bobby Cannavale and Kenan Thompson??) When Jackson finally delivers this line, he is fulfilling the movie’s entire purpose. As a bonus, though, even the TV edit of the movie is overshadowed by this line, its version of course being, “I have had it with these monkey-fighting snakes on this Monday-to-Friday plane.”

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“I live my life a quarter-mile at a time.” - The Fast And The Furious

I Live My Life a Quarter Mile at a Time

While it’s hard to keep the order of the eclectically titled F&F franchise straight, especially because the names of the movies seem to come back around and devour themselves about halfway through like an ouroboros (or a racetrack), let’s make a couple things clear up top. The Fast And The Furious is the first movie in the series, it’s one of the least memorable thanks to its tenuous but soon-to-be-erased adherence to things like “reality” and “gravity,” and it offered up a hilariously earnest quote. Spoken by Vin Diesel’s Dominic Toretto, king of the quarter mile, in the middle of a heartfelt speech with his bromantic foil Brian (Paul Walker), the line is supposed to reflect Toretto’s “one day at a time” mentality after reckoning with the violence and loss of his past. But even in the soapy spectacle of Fast & Furious, where friends are family, damn it, this idea has taken on a life of its own—especially after being reprised in Diesel’s in-universe farewell to the late Walker in Furious 7. But it all started in a cheesy crime caper soon to be outpaced by its over-the-top sequels.

“But for me...it was Tuesday.” - Street Fighter

Street Fighter (1994) - But for me, it was Tuesday.

After a long speech by Ming-Na Wen’s Chun-Li, Raúl Juliá reminds everyone why his performance as General M. Bison is the only thing worth remembering about the 1994 Street Fighter adaptation. Bison killed Chun-Li’s father after a failed raid of their village, and, as we find out, doesn’t remember it at all. Failure or not, this event just wasn’t special enough to deserve a place in Bison’s memory. Just another day being the Big Bad of a fighting game universe. This was Juliá’s final film (he died two months after the film’s release), and the lauded actor of stage and screen gives his all to this ambivalent villain. Street Fighter isn’t the worst live-action video game adaptation ever made. Far from it, in fact. But it’s completely forgettable, with its half-hearted acting and sub-DTV action. That Bison’s response lives on beyond the film, beyond even the speech it’s dismissing, is a testament to sneaking some quippy writing into your schlock and giving it to a stone-cold pro.

“Do you think God stays in heaven because he, too, lives in fear of what he’s created?” - Spy Kids 2: The Island Of Lost Dreams

Do you think God stays in heaven because he too lives in fear of what he’s created?

Similar to the Street Fighter quote, this line from Spy Kids 2 goes infinitely harder than the movie around it. And, similar to Street Fighter, it comes about from giving tasty, scene-chomping writing to a performer all too happy to give his all: Steve Buscemi. Buscemi’s mad scientist doesn’t live in a bad movie; Robert Rodriguez’s hyper-stylized filmmaking actually fits his preteen action franchise perfectly, and the combo doesn’t truly get stale until Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over. But this line, because of its ridiculous faux-profundity, looms larger over its movie, perhaps especially because it took on a viral life of its own back when Buscemi’s internet presence was giving Nicolas Cage a run for his meme money.

“...I will find you, and I will kill you.” - Taken

Taken Phone Speech [HD]

Honestly, nothing in the middling action movie Taken is anywhere close to as memorable as what Liam Neeson says on the phone, which then spiraled into endless memes and laid the foundation for a trend of old man action movies (which would then devolve into geezer teasers that barely even offered any old man action). This “particular set of skills” with which he will “find” and “kill” whoever took his daughter was enough to revitalize Neeson’s career, provide endless parody fodder, and finance two sequels and a TV series. After watching Run All Night, Non-Stop, Cold Pursuit, Blacklight, or any of the other Taken knock-offs Neeson made in the following decade and change, any goodwill that Pierre Morel’s gritty little film may have still had disappears like so many Liam Neesons .

“Where we go one, we go all.” - White Squall

White Squall 1996 Movie Trailer (Jeff Bridges, Scott Wolf)

QAnon isn’t exactly known for its commitment to logic and reliance on evidence, but one of the conspiracist group’s more confounding causes is its love of the crappy Ridley Scott sailing film White Squall. A bunch of boys take to the sea under the command of Jeff Bridges and face disaster. But the real disaster (aside from the emotional overload of the film’s sappiest moments) is that the trailer unfortunately happens to include lots of keywords that QAnon folks love. (And love to misattribute; some in the org their catchphrase “Where we go one, we go all,” which they shorten to WWG1WGA, was said by JFK.) Add in a clean-cut white boy saying “anonymous” and, well, you’ve accidentally stumbled into a terrible void of crazies. After his response to folks’ quibbles with Napoleon, one has to imagine Ridley Scott telling all of them to fuck off and get a life.

“Get it? Got it. Good.” - The Court Jester

The Court Jester (3/9) Movie CLIP - Get It? Got It. Good. (1956) HD

A comedy full of tongue-twisters, The Court Jester isn’t a film most know unless they’re movie buffs or British wordplay connoisseurs. But you’ve probably heard its running dialogue exchange of “Get it? Got it. Good.” It became the title of a kids’ game show in the U.K., was featured in , and was subject to many comedic references (like in the David Spade stinker Lost & Found) and parodies (including in the heinous Master of Disguise). But honestly, The Court Jester is one of the movies on this list least deserving of its half-remembered status. Its bright Technicolor, stacked cast (Danny Kaye, Basil Rathbone, Angela Lansbury, and Cecil Parker), and devotion to quick patter makes it much more than its catchy exchange.

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” - The Dungeonmaster

I Reject Your Reality and Substitute My Own

A quote made famous by Mythbusters’ Adam Savage, seemingly played in every commercial and promotional segment for that long-running series, “I reject your reality and substitute my own!” is a direct quote from the oddball ‘80s anthology film The Dungeonmaster. Some internet sleuths have tried to claim that it truly originated from an episode of Doctor Who, but the line never appears in series, leaving this wonky seven-part B-movie as the sole source. And what a B-movie it is. Trying to capitalize both on Dungeons & Dragons and Tron, The Dungeonmaster attempts to be both a swords-and-sorcery movie and a movie where the hero might be in love with his semi-sentient computer. Is it any wonder that one of the Mythbusters geeks loved this thing enough to quote it off the dome?

“...Win one for the Gipper” - Knute Rockne, All American

Win One For The Gipper | Knute Rockne: All American | Warner Archive

A rare instance where the movie in question was actually (allegedly) referencing a real-life speech, Knute Rockne, All American would’ve faded into relative obscurity if it wasn’t for the fact that star Ronald Reagan played ill-fated halfback George Gipp. The future president got to jerk manly tears from his teammates and viewing audience as he implored them to go out there and win one for him. The quote itself was cut from TV screenings of the film for many years thanks to a between United Artists and those who held the rights to the original radio dramatization of the story, which means that it owes even more of its relevance to Reagan’s later use of the phrase as a political slogan. That the actor-Gipper loved to repurpose his time on the big screen for Republican gain makes this perhaps the most cruelly weaponized quote on this list, and the one that had the most adverse effect on America at large.

“It’s a list of things to do before I kick the bucket.” - The Bucket List

The Bucket List Official Trailer #1 - (2007) HD

This one is a bonus, because I also couldn’t believe that the concept of a “bucket list” originated in the 2007 old fogy comedy The Bucket List. It just seems impossible that screenwriter Justin Zackham came up with this phrase, but many people before me were similarly incredulous and did the : Somehow, Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson were party to linguistic innovation in one of the least worthy movies in either of their careers. It’s a good thing the trailer explained it all (and was pushed like crazy by Warner Bros.) or else we would have no idea what to call all the stuff we wanted to do before we died.