What’s that one scene where you say “you had to be there” to someone who never experienced it in theaters?
Wednesday, 12 Mar 2025
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When the T-Rex roars at Alan Grant in Jurassic Park
Gandalf vs the balrog
Matrix, lobby fight. Eargasm.
Ending of “The Sixth Sense”, which I just showed to my daughter. Hard to describe everyone in the theater suddenly realizing the twist at the same time.
Ride of the Rohirrim was some of the greatest shit I’ve ever seen on the big screen.
Before that, probably D-Day landing in Saving Private Ryan. Absolutely visceral the machine gun fire from the surround sound.
LOTR battle of helms deep
The Blair Witch Project – the marketing campaign had everyone thinking it was all real and it was one of the first successful found footage films of its kind. Had to be there.
Opening scene from Star Wars 1977! No one had seen anything like that back then. Mind blown!!!
Saving Private Ryan – D-Day scene
Jurassic Park
When Dr. Sattler and Dr. Grant first sees the Brachiosaurus.
That amazing John Williams music swells and the Brachiosaurus goes up on its hind legs and just as the main theme ends it slams down and shook the whole theater.
Goosebumps in the entire theater for sure.
Just because it’s not here, Ripley and the alien on the ship. Honorable mentions, the aliens in the room, the first attack, and the invasion. So freaking tense. So much payoff and collective gasps. Even the alien in the jar freaked the audience out.
“Arise, arise, Riders of Théoden! Spears shall be shaken, shields shall be splintered, a sword-day, a red day, ere the sun rises!
Ride now, ride now, ride! Ride for ruin and the world’s ending!
Death! Death! Death! Forth Eorlingas!”
Fists went up in the air all around the room.
The Matrix is hands down the best cinema experience I’ve ever had, went in blind and it totally blew me away
Darth Vader corridor scene in Rogue One. Just when you think this movie couldn’t get any better!
Ewan McGregor’s first note in Moulin Rouge.
Any time “the voice” is used in the dune movies. I saw part 1 in IMAX and it shook the whole theater, I’ve never heard bass like that in my life
Borat – I’ve never seen an audience laugh as much
The ending of The Departed
Funnily enough I WAS there when they were filming Neo being bundled into a car while Trinity watched sitting on a motorbike. I’d just arrived in Sydney (November ’97) and was wandering around the CBD when I came across a whole block closed off for filming. They even had Telstra phone booths disguised as Bell phones, and cars with false steering wheels (Aussie cars had the wheel on the wrong side). I watched from a fair way back as they shot and reshot the scene. Of course I had no idea what was being filmed until I saw the Matrix on the big screen.
😎
Generic answer, but Captain America lifting Mjölnir in *Endgame.*
*Avatar*. It’s not the same movie on the small screen. I saw it in 3-D IMAX. I’m not sure if it would be the same on any other screen. All of the magic was in those effects.
Bit of an odd one – Paranormal Activity.
The climax – every time the clock slowed down to normal speed for each scene there were gasps and people were definitely getting more and more uncomfortable. By no means the best film or anything, but a unique feeling in a cinema for sure.
Tropic thunder having in-universe movie trailers and candy/refreshment advertisements at the start of the movie.
Yoda’s fight scene in Attack of the Clones, saw it at the midnight showing and it felt like we’d had 20 years of build up to that exact moment, suddenly for the first time we saw why Yoda was so highly revered. Audience went wild.
Every car chase scene in Mad Max: Fury Road.
blackhole in interstellar
The first few weeks of The Blair Witch Project. Watching that movie with that marketing campaign, before we knew any better… good lord that was something else.
The Ring- at the end where it’s almost over and you see Samara crawl out of the TV. There was so much gasping and screaming. Grown men had crawled up on their chairs.
Terminator 2.
All the scenes with the liquid alloy T1000
Jack Sparrow’s entry scenes when I was 11 was just captivating. The score was a huge part of it. I walked out of the theater teetering around like a drunk Keith Richards because I wanted so badly to be a pirate.
ET flying over cops
My 7 year old brain didnt know what was happening but when you thought all hope was lost, then the John Williams score hit and they are flying..
🤌🏾
From Dusk till Dawn, when it changes from just some kind of crime story to something else entirely. I saw this in the cinema before you could look everything up on the Internet and was just expecting reservoir dogs 2 or something
“No. I am your father.”
“On your left…”
#STAR WARS A NEW HOPE
OPENING SCENE
changed Cinema Forever
The phantom menace: Darth Maul fight scene. 6 yrs old me will never forget it, still have goose bumps when I think about it, lvl 30 now.
Every single Nolan film in IMAX
(You just didn’t see them otherwise)
“I have had it with these motherfucking snakes, on this motherfucking plane.”
Spock’s final scene in Star Trek II – The Wrath of Kahn.
The opening sing with Circle of Life in the Lion King. It was awesome, in every sense of the word
Avengers Endgame – The last assemble
My thought was when the Balrog shows up and Gandalf just flexes on it
Borat, hotel chase scene. There were like 5 couples in the theater (I was with a friend) and all guys were crying laughing, great time.
Close second would be Team America sex scene (vomit one too)
Had a blast with Rambo 4 too, when he took that heavy machine gun at the end and started mowing down birmanese soldiers whole crowd went wild
Endgame when they all finally came back
Endgame assemble scene. And infinity war Thor wakanda entry scene.
Saving Private Ryan, Omaha beach.
Left my heart pumping hard.
The ending of die hard, the cinema erupted.