Bone Sword

The Movie: Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001)

The Weapon: A broadsword carved from bone, which has a length of chain running down the centre, allowing the blade to detach and extend the reach of the user.

Why It’s Awesomely Stupid: Didn’t you read the description? WTF? The bone broadsword is also a chain whip, which is like attack dogs with mouths full of killer bees, or fists full of dynamite – i.e. fully awesomely deadly.

Also, this is fairly stupid. First of all, against a decent steel blade, bone isn’t going to be much use. Ever seen what a Katana or a Machete does to bone? It ain’t fun. Even if the thing was lacquered up real pretty, steel wins.

Then the fact that they took a carefully made, well balanced weapon and added a chain so you can flail the thing like some kind of flail, makes the notion of messing up your own arms with your own weapon pretty damn likely.

We tried the nunchukas once, and got concussion. Imagine if there was a ridiculously large and very sharp piece of bone on the end of that. It might just about ruin your day.

On the positive, if you whipped out that bad boy, chances are you wouldn’t have to actually use it before someone shit and ran in the opposite direction, so it might be worth carrying around.

Nano Bots

The Movie: GI Joe (2009)

The Weapon: Tiny swarm of robots programmed to do all kinds of funky shit, from eating metal to reconstructing facial tissue and mind control, these nifty bots can cover just about any plot hole with a little reprogramming.

Why It’s Awesomely Stupid: As far as writer’s devices go, the Nano Bots in GI Joe are second only to the laptop that the script was written on (or the post-it notes, if you want to keep this realistic).

Used in just about every area of the plot, the writers fall back on these little guys time and time again, mostly for purposes of nefarious evil. Apparently making a movie about things exploding requires unnecessarily complex plot devices.

As far as GI Joe would have you believe, Nano Bots can be used as weapons, as surgeons, as mind control and as a great way to kill screen time between explosions.

What might have been an interesting idea is relied upon so completely to move this sinking barge forward that they begin to lose all plausibility and become rather a bore after 5 minutes.

Awesome? Kinda. Stupid? Excessively. 

Next: UV Arc, Lawgiver