[Discussion] What's your "this has bothered me for way too long" movie moment?
[Discussion] What's your "this has bothered me for way too long" movie moment?
Can be anything, from characters not using objects they have on them, to physics not being realistic, or a very big plot hole.
As an example, one of my friends told me that his pet peeve is that in a lot of sci-fi movies, when spaceships run out of fuel, they stop moving, while inertia and lack of atmosphere should keep them in motion.
The bonk on the head to incapacitate. It always works instantly and has no long term implications.
Thief (The Dark Project) is one of my favorite video games of all time, but the instant KO blackjack weapon causes one of the hardest splits in play style in any genre of games. Using the magic sleeping stick, it's fairly trivial to take out all the guards and have free run of the map. Not using it essentially requires some form of "ghosting" (beating the level without being seen at all) which is a significantly tougher challenge in many cases.
The prevalence of the trope certainly speaks to some deep inner cromagnon urge in us for problems to be solved with a simple "bonk!"
This:
And then the Indonesians become the headrest: https://youtu.be/ErrRhXItBWc?t=1m44s
Characters in dystopian settings with clean faces with makeup, and perfectly coiffed hair. You're telling me that whoever built your doomsday vault decided that a 10 year supply of concealer, mascara, lipstick, etc should be part of a survival kit?
What is even the point of living through the apocalypse if you can't shave your legs!
This one is a bit more specific, but in the new dune movie, literally everyone just starts panting and heavily breathing through their mouth after any exhertion.
The fremen absolutely know better, and I'm almost positive there was a line in the first movie when they were explaining desert survival to Paul where they say you must preserve as much moisture as you possibly can so always breathe through the still suit
They hardly ever wear goggles or even sunglasses either! Their eyes would be ruined instantly.
To generalise it a bit, this could be applied to helmets/masks required but not worn in films, war films and tv for example. In dune the main actors barely had their masks on, but the extras could be bundled up cause we don't need to see their faces
It’s an old trope, but still bugs me: Ordering food and leaving the table long before it could have arrived.
If you wanted to have a 5 second conversation, meet under a lamppost or something, not at a fucking diner!
It always bugs me when someone stands up, unfolds a few bills and drops them on the table. Then they just walk out. How do you know that's enough? Maybe someone ordered some 32 oz margarita with top shelf tequila. Are they just leaving a massive tip? Or are they leaving a shitty tip and don't want to look their server in the eyes?
Characters not saying "bye" before hanging up the phone.
Or not telling where they are, but somehow the other person knows exactly where to drive.
Star Wars Episode 8 is the one that lives in my head ever since it was released.
Play by play of the opening sequence battle:
First Order ambushes the Resistance base as it is evacuating
First Order summons a ship described as a "Fleet Destroyer".
First Order only has enough time to charge one shot, but has 2 targets: The Resistance base full of intel and equipment that can't move or the Escape Fleet with all the escape ships and evacuated people.
So, who do they shoot?
The base full of intel on the ground...
Oh man, the Disney Star Wars Trilogy is full of these.
I get that Star Wars movies are effectively a fantasy adventure series in Sci-Fi clothing, I'm not expecting perfect logical sense out of everything, but internal consistency has absolutely not been Disney Wars's strong suit.
And 8 was the better movie. 7 was janky but hopeful and 9 was a plot faucet.
They're all fanfiction. But they're all distinct kinds of fanfiction.
7 is written like the characters are also fans of the movies: Finn is shocked by hologram technology he'd see every day, people parrot lines that were once clever, the camera lingers on a broken astromech droid, et very cetera. The returning characters are living legends famed for their transformative effect on the whole galaxy but also haven't changed one iota since we last saw them.
8 is an anarchist deconstruction of Star Wars that somehow got turned into an actual Star Wars movie: a rebel soldier becomes disillusioned after her sister died for nothing, the good guy and bad guy agree the current conflict is a pointless sham, and details throughout scream that no mere organization could ever own the magic that belongs to all living beings. And then a surprise fourth act goes "whoops nevermind."
9 is a toddler telling a story: "and then... and then... but no he didn't?... and then..." It's like a child learned about fakeout deaths yesterday and expects it to be equally shocking every single time. Then the big battle needed to involve every toy in the toybox, especially the horses, because spaceships can't look up. At least in the end we got the Rey x Kylo connection it all built toward, and their kids are gonna be the most powerful nevermind.
Nah, 8 is by far the worst of the bunch. 9 is a response to the problems created by 8 and 7 is a relatively good movie outside of reverting the setting.
8 is bad plot mixed with character assassination and intentionally fucks up the flow of a trilogy because Johnson has an ego problem.
Dude literally had them change aspects of 7 so he could make Luke suck in 8, then refused to leave storylines open for J.J to finish the trilogy, even when requested.
Generally speaking: Things that humans would never survive. Like, if someone is thrown so hard against a wall that they go through it, they're not going to live (this happens with non-super characters). Or when someone is falling from a great height and they grab hold of something to catch themselves. Yeah... No.
Or in scenes where fire is present... People having a discussion without coughing their brains out, being able to see, and easily keeping their eyes open, just a few feet from raging flames.
After experiencing any and all of these things the characters will just continue in the story and be able to move and breathe like nothing happened. Sometimes they'll move with a limp or cough occasionally but this is usually right before they make a 100m dash in record time.
My specific example is The Butterfly Effect when he gives himself stigmata in prison; the movie has already established that's not how it works. Looper made a similar mistake, again not following the rules the movie itself set up.
The more general example: sprinkler systems. Basically every single time a sprinkler system goes off in movies and TV it's wrong. They get it wrong so consistently that it's trope at this point and would confuse people if they decided to get it right.
Each sprinkler head is triggered by heat individually, so smoke won't make the place get flooded out, and holding your lighter up to the head will only make that one head go off. The systems would be so poorly designed to work like in the movies, with false-triggers and flooding areas nowhere near the fire all the time causing more damage than fires.
The water in those sprinklers is disgusting too! It's been sitting, stagnant in that pipe for years. It won't be clear water like from the tap and it will stink.
Can we talk about that scene in The Office where Michael proposes to Holly, and sets off the sprinklers and everybody just shrugs it off and it is never spoken about? It's a paper company. Everything would be ruined.
I don’t know about residential sprinklers, but industrial ones will trigger a cascade of sprinklers to flood. The first one drops the pressure on the line, which activates the high volume pump, which will cause all sprinklers heads to open.
POV when using binoculars has two circles, which isn't how it looks when you actually use them. It should be one circle.
Camera footage that's played back in movies as part of the plot always has the recording icon, time code, etc burnt into the footage, which should really only be visible on the camera monitor while recording, not during playback and especially not on another device.
old VHS cam-corders did burn some of that info onto the tape.
Yeah, but it's almost never a VHS camera in the movies, and now often a smartphone video.
Kidnappers always FaceTime the victims family. No one uses Android? They can't take a few minutes to download Google Meet?
Nobody ever says "bye" in phone calls, the conversations just abruptly end and one side closes the call when they've heard enough.
These are more common in tv than film but happen in both:
Any time a shot is given with a syringe, especially by an addict, it's almost always done in a way that would severely damage the person.
And more of a narrative issue that is common, but I hate the trope where a person overhears part of a conversation and jumps to conclusions, but had they listened for a few seconds longer it would have contradicted their conclusions.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OutOfContextEavesdropping
Empty cups
My wife pointed it out and now I see it everywhere. How hard would it be to just put a glob of playdoh in there or something for the weight?
Everything about every time travel movie ever
Even that one from 2250?
No, no, that one will have been good
Any time the villain has the upper hand and then leaves the room with no reason not to just kill the protagonists.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not hoping for the good guys to catch a bullet to the face. It's just that it's lazy writing. Give them a reason to be left alive, or create some distraction that requires attention. Not just "I want you to see this" sort of bullshit, but a legitimate reason.
Alien: Covenant
For all the hate this movies catches, I've never heard a complaint about the opening. The run into a neutrino burst.
"Why do you guys even have sensors for that?! Pretty neat!"
And it wrecks the ship. Because fuck you, that's why.
Is the issue that a neutrino blast wouldn't have any effect or that one that could disable a ship should also sterilize the contents of that ship?
Both, probably. My favorite neutrino fact is that to receive a lethal dose of neutrino rediation from a supernova, you'd have to be standing inside the implosion.
People randomly being able to increase their bandwidth. It's less so now (and happens less) but jfc seeing plot points in the oughts where something like an adsl connection was instantly beefed to 'moar bandwidth' on the fly with no one dealing with any of the infrastructure that physically rate limited (especially at the exchange) makes me graaar
Back in the day we used to hack cable modems to uncap the speed. Most of the time, and even more so now, the limits are artificial and a quick call can upgrade your service.
Noises in space. I know Star Wars is the worst offender, and people have tried to make excuses about how ships have speakers that add explosions and laser noises, but that's crap.
I think shock waves might still make sound. Once they hit you, that is, not when you first see them.
I like it when a movie accounts for the extra time it takes for sound to travel. I'm replaying subnautica and when the ship explodes you hear it right away even though it's about 1km away and it was disappointing.
In The Dark Knight it's bothered me that two-face didn't develop any pronunciation problems after losing a cheak and half a pair of lips. I know, I know, it's a comic book movie, but seeing him pronounce the 'b' sound with his teeth showing takes me out of it every time