All of my regular readers know that I am a huge movie buff and one part of the moviews that I love are epic movie speeches. From Braveheart to Rocky Balboa here are my top 10 movie speeches. Many of these speeches I know by heart.
If I miss something off of the list, let me know below and we can compare notes.
10 Lord of the Rings – The Return of the King – Vitto Mortensen as the reluctant king, Aragorn marshalling the troops at the gates of Mordor.
9 Tombstone – Kurt Russell as Wyatt Earp throwing down the challenge to the Cowboys.
8 Armageddon – Charlton Heston’s introduction explaining what happened to the dinosaurs in this Bruce Willis starring action role.
8a Armageddon – The President tells the world that troubles a coming
7 Rocky Balboa – Sylvester Stallone to his son about winning and taking responsibility.
6 Braveheart – Mel Gibson marshalling the troops in Medieval Scotland as the Scottish hero, William Wallace.
5 Independence Day – Bull Pullman as the President, firing up his amateur airforce pilots taking on alien invaders led by Will Smith.
4 Scent of a Woman – Al Pacino’s passionate speech to the school board so Chris O’Donnell can return to school.
3 The Dark Knight – Gary Oldman telling his son why they need to chase Batman.
2 Any Given Sunday – Al Pacino prepping his football team in the classic Peace By Inches speech.
1 A Few Good Men – Jack Nicholson going head to head with Tom Cruise in the best court room speech ever.
1a A Few Good Men – Jack McClane doing his version a few years ago. I apologise in advance. Excuse the moustache – it was Movember.
So what do you think? Agree with my list? What would you add to it? What would you take out?
My son would vote for the Herb Brooks speech from Miracle on Ice.
http://tiny.cc/aul7i
Thanks Doug, I’ve seen the movie and enjoyed it but when I was thinking of the greatest movie speeches this didn’t even bring up a memory. Thanks for suggesting it as it is a good speech, not a great one!
Kurt Russell does get a mention though in Tombstone which is one of my all time favourite movies.
Jack
Now now, I thought the moustache looked wonderful! Now as fun and moving as all of those speeches are — my favorite is still Howard Beale’s Mad As Hell speech from the movie Network; it’s almost more meaningful today than it was in 1975:
Thanks for the list!
Brin
‘Greed is Good’ speech by Michael Douglas (as Gordon Gecko) in Wall Street. The man did get a best actor Oscar for the role and this was the pivotal moment. Although the premise ‘Greed is Good’ seems ludicrous, when you hear Gordon Gecko’s rationale it actually makes a lot of sense… he destroys the board of Endacott Steel at the AGM with the speech.
Agreed Heff, it was a good speech but doesn’t make the Top 10. I only watched Wall Street again a few weeks ago. It still stands up very well.