It's Going Down: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

{{quote|'''Natalya Simonova:''' Do you destroy every vehicle you get into?

 

{{quote|'''Drew:''' Things you can say to describe your boat, but not your girlfriend.

 

Used to describe structures that will be destroyed by the end of the movie, usually in [[Stuff Blowing Up|a massive explosion]], even if for no other reason than the [[Rule of Cool]]. Your town has a large windmill in the middle of a field? It's toast. It's likely to explode because of loose flour, or to get burned down by an [[Angry Mob]]. Same rule applies to bridges over chasms.

 

Then there's [[Falling Chandelier of Doom|chandeliers]], which like rules, are made to be broken.

 

== [[Film]] ==

* The windmill in ''[[Van Helsing]]''. Unusually, this windmill exploded spectacularly in the film's opening scene.

* ''The Seeker: [[The Dark Is Rising]]'', when a bunch of windmills fall victim to Will's hissy-fit.

* Pretty much any windmill in any action movie (an alternative name suggested for this trope was "Burn Windmill Burn"). Oddly enough, the more techy modern windmills that make up wind farms tend not to get burned down, although they're so new there probably isn't a trope for them yet.

** These tend to undergo [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3FZtmlHwcA catastrophic failure].

*** As also seen in an episode of ''[[House (TV series)|House]]''.

* Any really expensive car that suddenly turns up in the middle of a chase scene, e.g., the yellow Ferrari Nick Cage's character commandeers in the chase scene in "The Rock" or the Lamborghini creamed in the hovercraft chase scene in "Rumble in the Bronx." Soon as you see that car, you know it's doomed; that's why it's in the movie: to get creamed.

* In-film example - ''[[The Party]]'' begins with a location shoot where actor Hrundi Bakshi ([[Peter Sellers]]) is inadvertently, and repeatedly, messing up shots. A large fortress set has been rigged to explode, but before they can set up to shoot it, Bakshi goes to lace up a sandal, and rests his foot on the detonator.

 

== [[Literature]] ==

* Barad-dûr in ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]''. It's a mile high and powered by pure liquid evil, so its eventual epic collapse was pretty much a foregone conclusion.

** And the Tower of Tol-in-Gaurhoth in ''[[The Silmarillion]]'', which crumbles after Sauron is forced to flee it, though [[Magic Music|Luthien]] was the one who actually triggered the collapse.

*** Define "plausible". And then look up the history of Tokyo back when it was named Edo.

*** ...more smother than flood, really. The contents of the Ankh have only a casual relationship with water (don't even ask about the ''fish'').

*** Okay, if this exchange wasn't written by Pratchett, it should have been!

* The [[Falling Chandelier of Doom|chandelier]] in ''[[The Phantom of the Opera]]'' is a classic example of this, enough to be a trope on its own.

* The titular structure in The Fall of the House of Usher by [[Edgar Allan Poe|Poe]] {{spoiler|collapses into the surrounding lake/swamp}} as the narrator flees, having learned that {{spoiler|Madeline was buried alive, and Rodrick knew she was alive at the time.}} It's a metaphor for Rodrick's mental state as well as the {{spoiler|end of the Usher family, hence the title.}}

* It's a castle that falls off its precarious perch instead of exploding, and it's when the [[Load-Bearing Boss|Red Bull]] is defeated instead of the king, but the crumbling is foreshadowed during the characters' visit to the nearby town in the book of ''[[The Last Unicorn (novel)|The Last Unicorn]]''. And since it's at the end of the story, it does its thing very dramatically.

* In ''[[Otherland]]'', the mile-high tower of J Corp, located conveniently in the Louisiana swamps. It goes out most spectacularly when {{spoiler|[[Death From Above|a satellite deorbits and crashes into it]]}}.

 

* In the fifth season of ''[[24]]'', a plot was hatched involving the natural gas... factory. Thing. The [[Genre Savvy]] audience members immediately knew that this building was doomed to a swift and fiery death.

* The entire town of Sunnydale California on ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]''.

* On ''[[Top Gear]]'', any caravan or Morris Marina. Guaranteed.

** Subverted hard with the now memetic [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnWKz7Cthkk Toyota Hilux.] That truck makes Rasputin look like a pansy for dying so easy.

 

* The floating windmill island appearing in the [[Gorillaz]] videos for "Feel Good Inc" and "El Manana".

 

== [[Video Games]] ==

* Planets visited by Samus in the side-scrolling ''[[Metroid]]'' series have a tendency to explode. By the end of the fourth game, ''all'' of the places she'd gone to had been taken out (discounting those from the 3D ''Prime'' series).

* Anything and everything that resembles a tower in ''[[Split Second]]''. That airport control tower? BOOM! That [[wikipedia:Space Needle|Space Needle]] rip-off? BOOM! That crane? BOOM! ... And so on. They'll almost always end up on top of several cars.

* [[Ratchet and Clank|Ratchet]] has a problem with destroying spaceships for no discernible reason. He's [[Ace Pilot|capable of handling them just fine in a dogfight]], and they don't seem to have mechanical malfunctions, but even [[Word of God|Insomniac themselves]] have admitted that ''they don't know'' why he crashed that first one. And considering half of the game's fun comes from [[Stuff Blowing Up]], it's not surprising he and his [[Robot Buddy]] Clank have left more than a few places in worse shape than they found them.

* ''[[Prototype (video game)|Prototype]]'' is full of this. Even if the troops or Infected don't trash Alex's ride, it's not like he's going to use it again, and he can survive any impact, so might as well park it the hard way.

* Practically every single Pelican dropship in the ''Halo'' series.

** In fact, there's only one level in the first game in which an aircraft does not crash. Of course, said level doesn't feature any aircraft.

 

== [[Western Animation]] ==

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Spectacle]]