This week sees Will Smith try to step back into the action genre with Gemini Man, the new flick from director Ang Lee. In it, Smith plays an assassin who is being hunted by someone who seems to know his every move before he makes it. That’s because the killer is a younger clone of himself. That kind of conflict is something we’ve seen in various forms – in the fighting game world, we call it a “mirror match” – and it’s always fun to imagine. Taking out any differences in innate skill makes these conflicts tense and dramatic, with the best man truly winning. Here’s our guide to the best flicks where people fight themselves.
Logan
When you’re a mutant killing machine with adamantium bones and a healing factor that just won’t quit, it’s not surprising that evil scientists will try and copy your style for their own ends. Logan deals not only with a tween girl copycat of the grizzled X-Man but also a more accurate one. X-24 is a clone of Logan in his prime, and when he faces off with the older version he outmatches him in just about every way, especially as the real Logan’s powers are fading. In the end, it takes an adamantium bullet from young Laura to put the imitation Wolverine in the ground.
Us
In the world of Jordan Peele’s Us, every human being on the surface of the planet has a corresponding Tether underneath, an exact duplicate that shares their soul and just wants to break the bond between them by killing their originals. The Wilson family are the first to encounter them during a vacation to Santa Cruz, but that doesn’t last long as Tethered all over the country start pouring up from the underworld to confront and slaughter their doppelgangers. It’s a terrifying spectacle made even weirder as they start linking hands to make a bizarre living chain across the country. Us says a lot for a horror film, and shows us that the worst enemy often lies within.
The One
In James Wong’s 2001 sci-fi actioner, Jet Li stars as Los Angeles policeman Gabe Law, who is noticing some odd boosts in his physical abilities. That’s because an evil version of himself from an alternate universe is hopping realities killing all of the Gabe Laws he can find, which siphons their energies to the surviving ones. Now it’s just Gabe and his double, and the one who survives will have the power to rule all of creation. Lots of fun kung fu, like you’d expect from Jet Li in his prime, make this one of the most compelling personal battles in cinema history.
Looper
In Rian Johnson’s sci-fi hit Looper, losers with nothing to live for sign up to work as “loopers,” assassins who murder masked victims in the past because it’s become impossible to dispose of bodies in the future. It’s a dead-end job, literally, as the last “loop” you close is your own. When Joe, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, meets his older self on the last day of his life he can’t pull the trigger and gets knocked out. The two then engage in a bizarre dance across the decades as Old Joe tries to hunt down the Rainmaker, a powerful psychic who will rule the future. Don’t worry if you don’t get it the first time.
Avengers: Endgame
The introduction of time travel to the Marvel Cinematic Universe is going to get us all into a bunch of trouble soon enough. In Endgame, the post-snap Nebula heads into the past with the rest of the Avengers to gather up the Infinity Stones, only for Thanos in the past to capture her and torture her alongside her still-evil past self. The past Nebula replaces the present one to bring past Thanos to the future, and eventually the two Nebulas face off for the last time in a battle where future Nebula kills her past self but doesn’t blink out of the universe in a paradox effect because of… reasons?
Replicant
Legendary Hong Kong action director Ringo Lam was slumming it with this 2001 Jean-Claude Van Damme vehicle, but it’s got some fun stuff in it nevertheless. The Muscles from Brussels plays serial killer Edward “the Torch” Garrotte, notorious for immolating the bodies of his victims. The detective hunting him down has to team with a memoryless clone of the killer to pick up his trail. This flick has one of the best “fighting yourself” scenes on the list, as the two men are so identical that they mirror each others strikes perfectly, neither able to get an inch of advantage against their foe.
Army of Darkness
Once the Necronomicon gets its hooks into Ashley Williams in Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead series, it creates all sorts of nightmarish terrors to kick his ass. In Army of Darkness, Ash ends up in medieval times and gets shoved into a mirror, which breaks into a ton of miniature versions of himself. One of those versions grows to actual size and battles his progenitor. Real Ash eventually wins and buries his dark clone in a hole in the ground, only for the bastard to re-animated along with a horde of Deadites. The concept of “Evil Ash” shows up a few more times in the franchise, most notably when Ash’s severed hand grows a new body in Ash Vs. Evil Dead.
Ernest Goes To Jail
We will never not stan the iconic 80s Ernest P. Worrell comedies, spun off from Jim Varney’s inexplicably popular TV pitchman. Sure, they’re drastically varying in quality, but even the worst of them has some solid laughs. In Ernest Goes To Jail, our man winds up behind bars due to his resemblance to bank robber Felix Nash (played by Varney with slicked-back hair), but a trip to the electric chair endows him with bizarre electrical powers. Nash takes over his life, Ernest breaks out and the two indulge in a little fisticuffs in the movie’s ridiculous climax.
Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey
The cult classic follow-up to the Keanu Reeves hit didn’t get the love it deserved when it was released – it’s a seriously weird movie that dispensed with a lot of the stoner bonhomie of the original for a trip through the afterlife. When evil Chuck De Nomolos sends two robot duplicates of our heroes back in time to kill them, the lead guitarists of Wyld Stallyns find themselves totally outclassed by their mechanical selves and end up kicking the bucket, only to return with the aid of Death himself and a weird alien named Station to build their own robot copies and settle the score. So they make themselves to fight themselves after they killed themselves. Makes perfect sense.
Star Trek: Nemesis
Jean-Luc Picard went through a lot of stuff during his captaincy of the Enterprise, but one of his biggest tests came in the franchise’s tenth film. In Nemesis, the Federation is threatened by an uprising of the Remans, a slave race bred by the Romulans. The leader of these Remans is Shinzon, a charismatic leader and tactical genius who happens to be a clone of Picard himself. Originally made as part of an espionage plot, Shinzon was considered flawed and deposited on a slave planet, where he grew into a ruthless and cunning leader without any of Picard’s moral standards. To stop him from wiping out all life on Earth, Picard needs to best his own clone in mortal combat.
Sinbad Of The Seven Seas
We have a soft spot for Italian sword & sandals fantasy movies – they’re usually hella cheesy and tons of fun. Enzo G. Castellari’s 1989 Sinbad of the Seven Seas is corny from top to bottom, with Lou Ferrigno as the mythical sailor charged with retrieving five magical gemstones to free a city from the spell of the wizard Jaffar. When the final showdown comes, Jaffar knows he can’t go toe-to-toe with our man Sinbad so he uses his dark wizardry to summon up an exact duplicate of him to fight in his place. Needless to say, the real Sinbad wins the day but it’s a classic clone showdown.
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