Great Beams of Film!

“Do you expect me to talk?”
No, Mr. Bond, we expect you to get sliced in half by an exquisitely simple laser, starting at your Thunderballs and working up from there.

and

The space aliens in Independence Day may have had computer systems with lousier security countermeasures than Paris Hilton’s porn-packed Sidekick, but they sure knew how to wreck shit up with beams.