I have been compiling a list (it =is= getting long) of things in movies that =really= pissed me off. I mean ... what were they thinking???

Here is a list of general WTFs to get things started. Beyond this, I have a lot of specifics that I will add ... once a week or so (don't hesitate to gimme a nudge if I forget <g>) And I encourage you all to add to the list!!! <g>

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* What is up with having everything 'short out' with sparks whenever =anything= happens on any sort of ocean going vessel, space ship or the like <sigh> (I would list an example or 27 but that would barely scratch the surface <sigh>) Hell, in one movie, there were sparks when the guy does nothing more than flip the circuit breaker in an appartment building. =MY= circuit breakers don't do that <sigh>

* Who in their right mind would design a 'key pad' security system that 'fails' when someone 'breaks' it?

* Why does everyone with a gun think that they should get 'right next' to whomever they want to threaten … so that the 'threatenee' can 'react' and get the gun from the holder?

* Why do the 'heros' go in … guns blazing, slaying right and left and then leave all the additional fire power laying on the ground … so they can run out of ammo later on <sigh>

* What is it with 'Thumb Drives'? The first thing I would do with one that I got that had 'incriminating evidence' on it would be to make a dozen copies. Then give up the original in heart beat.

* Why do we need to see 'vapors' anytime something does what it is supposed to do (i.e. Armagedon)

* Why would any right thinking person design a 'gas mask' that has lights on the inside of the mask ... shining into the wearer's eyes so they couldn't see crap ... even in the light of day?!?!?

* What is up with 'car chases'? If the 'good guys' are 'giving chase', why don't they just follow the bad guys, keeping their superiors informed as to where they are?? Why do they have to ruin perfectly good cars ... at great expense to their 'organization' ... trying to 'crash' the MoFos?

* why the hell do 'they' only shoot at the car and <sigh> =seldom= at the tires of the car that is trying to escape <sigh>

Have fun!!! <g>

Partners. If you're in any kind of law enforcement, never have a partner you like.

If you like your partner, one of two things are going to happen.

1., They'll get killed and it will seem like your fault, leaving behind their beloved family and a guilt mountain.

2., In a 'surprise twist', they will turn out to be bad guy, betraying your trust, and by their own douchebaggery, forcing you to kill them.

If you don't like your partner, you're fine, you'll gradually develop a begrudging respect for one another.

Injuries.

Bottles usually don't break unless they are made of sugar and they hurt a lot when you get hit by one, usually resulting in a concussion and if they did break they'd cut you pretty bad and head wounds bleed like crazy.

Glass injuries can result in severe damage to skin and underlying nerves and vessels, as well as tendons, and result in significant long term disability.

Glass wounds can result in death due to exsanguination, air embolism or complications of injuries to vital structures including the brain and spinal cord.

People who are actually knocked unconscious and not merely stunned, usually have a concussion and need medical assistance.

Nothing vital in your shoulder, no major arteries or veins going to and from the brain there, right? Probably not going to bleed much either.

Okay, you're probably dead but you still have your head except for that irritating hole.

Irritating, sure, probably going to slow you down in a fight but it isn't going to affect your breathing or puncture a lung or do any real serious damage.

I don't know which is more annoying - the myths surrounding armor or the fact that most folks use a single satirical novel by a bloke by the name Sam Clemens as a historical source than the actual use of it. Sure, some of the very late tourney armor, which was designed for single use, like jousting, did get heavy and bulky, but that's kind of like saying all cars are bulldozers (designed for a specific earthmoving task).

So yes, you could run, somersault, get on your horse without help, move fairly freely and get back up if you fell in it. It was a battle-proven piece of technology - who would be stupid enough to wear a death trap in an actual melee?

- Space craft that maneuver like fighter jets using aerodynamic moves
- Our hero getting shot in the leg and applying a tourniquet and then moving about like it is nothing, maybe with a slight limp. In reality tourniquets are quite painful and stopping the flow of blood to your leg will very shortly make you unable to use it (imagine how it feels when your limb falls asleep) and unable to walk. After about 2 hours you will have permanent nerve and tissue damage and amputation becomes likely.

For Z:> Chainmail flapping in the breeze.

In fact, just medieval/fantasy armour as a whole. Does nothing. Doesn't demonstrably protect against swords, arrows, staffs, punches, or owt else. Also see Stormtrooper armour!

Here - a rare example from the other side to illustrate another frustration:

It is from a classic anime. The Crusher Joe Movie - your crew of space-faring troubleshooters, hired to solve interstellar problems. It is a good solid movie, great Saturday afternoon fare and probably more famous in the anime world not for being a decent movie but being the first cameo appearance of those OTHER two science fiction troubleshooters, Kei and Yuri.

Well, they had finally made it to the Villian's ship stealing space station lair and had to disable the station's computer system. Which they did! And the result? Well, uhm, ah, uhm, ah, the monitors just went black and the sparkly lights stopped sparkling.

Kind of anti-climatic

When they created the now famous opening titles for TOS they did it without the woosh sound effect because there is no sound in space. Roddenberry looked at the results and said, "Like the music but the ship doesn't look like it is moving very fast," so they added the well known woosh.

When I was in college I had a friend who was into acting and a phase I learned hanging out with him was...

The actor's job is to get the audience to willing suspend their disbelief.

Would you really want to sit through a Star Wars battle if the ships vectored in perfectly straight lines and there were no booms?

Speaking of which without an atmosphere or gravity there wouldn't be fireballs either, everything would just sort of expand outward in the direction it was originally propelled.

Totally agree with you, Don. TIE Fighter sfx ftw!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_OSeRxhGOY

But there's room for hard sci-fi versions too. What annoys me is when a film goes hard sci-fi, does it really well, then drops a complete clanger. Like that scene in Gravity, when Sandra has George on the end of a line and he tells her she has to let him go. It's space, they're all weightless, she could've just pulled him to her with a tug of her wrist. Makes no sense.

You are, of course Neil, clearly forgetting the artificial gravity that ... apparently ... almost =every= space ship seems have! Yeah, that's it <weg>

Hah, true! Though I think artificial-g on a space ship is the one thing I can forgive almost any sci-fi for. Trying to emulate weightlessness is difficult and expensive, and I don't mind if they spend that money elsewhere. Like on the aliens, for example. Never cheap out on design and development of your aliens.

But that is the point ... if ya got something on the ship that is 'generatin' the field' ... why would you expect it to ... 'miraculously' cease to exist at the ship's exterior?? <chuckle>

While these have all been 'fun' laments, I am ... used to them because they have been 'happening' since the beginning. What bothers me are the =glaring= inconsistencies. I will start posting them ... by movie ... starting tomorrow (Mon here)

Aye, if an internally consistent logic for the fiction is established, then I'm generally happy.

Pacific Rim wound me up, for example.

Firstly, they cough and handwave the fact that conventional military technology can't tackle the Kaiju. Instead they develop giant robots and a very flimsy giant wall along the entire Pacific Rim, that literally collapses when the first normal-size Kaiju attacks it.

I can believe that the warheads and targeting systems on most missiles would have to be modified to have optimal effect against a Kaiju, but I still think that would be massively easier to develop and deploy across a defence network than giant robots. You could have land and ship based anti-Kaiju cruise missiles, and high speed attack aircraft with anti-Kaiju weaponary. You could even have bombers loaded with anti-Kaiju smart bombs, for the really big boys.

Either way, missiles and bombs would be more effective than a punch in the face from a slow-moving giant robot.

OK, secondly, they make giant Jaeger ('hunter' in German) robots, but don't give their giant hunters giants spears? Instead the Jaegers have to wrestlemania the kaiju into submission. That makes no sense, even by the film's own rules.

i.e., When Gipsy Danger gets into severe difficulty against a really nasty Kaiju, over halfway through the film, the pilots suddenly remember they have a retractable sword! That procedes to slice up the Kaiju with little effort. Hint: Give every Jaeger this weapon and always use it, you imbeciles! Even better, put it on the end of a long pole.

Finally, the dimensional portal is in one fixed location at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. The Kaiju always emerge from this one 'Breach', and it's constantly monitored. Yet the Authorities station their Jaegers thousands of miles away in coastal bases, making it impossible to respond in time to any Kaiju threat before it can attack a population centre. Hint: Use the Navy, blockade the portal, job done.

Phew!! I feel better now.

Historical Inaccuracies in Period Pieces

I love Braveheart. It has to be the ultimate date movie with appeal to guys (great battles and macho behavior) and their gals (tragic love story) both but it is wildly inaccurate historically.

William Wallace was not called Braveheart. It was, in fact, the name given to Robert the Bruce, a Scottish hero who is portrayed as a traitor in the film. The movie gets almost nothing about The Bruce correct.

Robert de Brus, 5th Lord of Annandale, The Bruce's father did not have leprosy. At least no mention of it is made in Scottish records.

The Bruce did not betray William Wallace. He was betrayed by John Menteith, a Scottish nobleman who was the commander of Dumbarton Castle, which was held by the English. Afterward The Bruce and his army took Dumbarton Castle and captured John Menteith.

The pivotal battle in the story is called the Battle of Sterling Bridge because the Scots defeated the English heavy cavalry by ambushing them while on a bridge not because William Wallace invented pikes.

Edward II (25 April 1284 – 21 September 1327) did indeed marry Isabella of France, with whom he had four children (probably not gay BTW) but not until Edward Longshanks and William Wallace were both dead. At the time of the film Isabella is 13 years old.

William Wallace was no commoner. He spoke Latin and French and was the younger son of a Scottish knight and minor landowner. His name, Wallace or le Waleis, means the Welshman, and he was probably descended from Richard Wallace who had followed the Stewart family to Scotland in the 12th century.

There were no kilts in Wallace's day. The small kilt (also known as the walking kilt), similar to the modern kilt was invented by an English Quaker from Lancashire named Thomas Rawlinson some time in the 1720s.

The Highlanders would not have worn blue face paint or hair adornments. The blue face makeup worn by William Wallace and his compatriots in Braveheart is from the 4th and 5th centuries and was worn intro battle by the Picts; it is unlikely that Gaelic Highlanders would have followed suit.

York was never sacked by the Scots.

And the list just goes on and on...

Don, there are lots of movies that 're-write history' to tell the story they want to tell. That doesn't bother me all that much. It is the stupidity and inconsistencies like those that Neil pointed out in Pac Rim that get me going <g>

How about Indigenous? Anyone else watch this one? If so, you have my sympathies.

So some … allegedly … intelligent '20-somethings' go to Panama for a vacation. OK so far. Of course once they hear the 'stories' about not going to the rain forest to see a waterfall because the area is 'inhabited' by 'chupacabra', they stupidly decide they have to go because the 'rumors' were to keep them away. Still OK … sort of. I mean I know people like that. Then the bad stuff starts happening so … what do they do? Do they stick together? Why no. Every chance they get they all 'wander off' in different directions so they can get eaten more easily <shrug>

I also found it … 'unlikely' that in a minute or two they managed to get so far apart that they couldn't hear each other calling out :-/

Next, why didn't any of these … supposedly ... smart people pick up a big EFFing stick to smack the monsters with??

The last guy, carrying the injured girl is running to get to the copter when they hear something behind them so he =STOPS=???

Least they won't be diluting the gene pool with any offspring! <g>

I have resisted until now but let me have a pop against one of the worst movies ever.. Blair Witch. There is so much wrong with this film that I would be listing forever. Instead let me pick my two favourites.

Relating the legend about the Blair Witch who always kills pairs of people. Later the question is asked, how many have been killed. Answer 7!!! I know it is a long time since I was at scholl but even I know that 7 does not divide by two

And then.. the kids are trying to find a way out of the area fumbling with their only map. A gust of wind rips it from their hands and deposits it in the river where it floats away. 'How can we find our way now?' they asked forlornly. Follow the f***** river!!!!

Another one cropped up today in a conversation about Avengers: Infinity War. What that film does so well is make the villain interesting, and his goal nuanced. He specifically wants to cull half of life in the universe, to prevent over-population and ensure the continuing health of those populations. We get to spend lots of time with Thanos, but it's not so important that we learn his back story, more that he has a rounded personality. He becomes believable, thus his threat becomes believable.

Compare that to Justice League and Steppenwolf, who's just another outer space villain who quite inexplicably wants to destroy the planet.

What is it with villains wanting to destroy stuff? It's not a very believable motivation. Even irl, if you take fanatical terrorism, it's not destruction of the West they want so much as to conquer/supplant it with their own culture.

Does Steppenwolf present a complex set of beliefs that are some how at odds with the entire Planet Earth's?

Nope, he just wants to destroy the planet. However he's pedantic enough that he wants to do it in person, using the 'Mother Boxes' (again unexplained), rather than simply lob an asteroid at us.

Obtuse, nonsensical and ridiculous.

I have a simple solution for 'don't go in the basement' horror movies. I just don't watch them. Not a fan of horror or slasher films in general so it is easy for me.

But I love history and films that purport themselves as history or biography and then get it all wrong are what bug me. This might not be the best example because it it probably isn't history at all but King Arthur wouldn't be that bad, as those sorts of movies go, if it hadn't marketed itself as the 'real' unrevealed until now King Arthur.

Anything that claims to be the 'true story' or 'real life' and then isn't gets to me going. Santa Fe Trail shows all the generals of the Civil War (on both sides) graduating from the same class at West Point but it never claims to be history. Problem is there are plenty of folks <talking behind my hand> millennials and post millennials out there that think Braveheart, and again I really like this movie, is history. Of course they also think Lincoln was president during WWII.

I have notice that they have a new catch phrase in Hollywood these days 'based on actual events' like when they used to say a film was based on a novel when all they kept was the title.

Neil:> I haven't seen that superman/batman abortion, don't even know the actual title and don't care or Justice League and I won't, not even for free on TV. The DC movies totally mystify me, not only does Warner Brothers own DC comics but the TV shows are all pretty much watchable, there are two I actually like. <shaking head>

Neil,

you said

I am thinking not just 'villains'!.

I was just watching the live action Bleach movie. The 'Soul Society' is a secret group that kills 'hollows' (basically 'deamons') that show up to reek destruction (for no apparent reason <g>) on the population. The =implication= is that these 'Soul Reapers' are doing this to 'protect humanity' (as was demonstrated by Rukia throughout the movie) ... as opposed to 'out of boredom' or some such <g>

So I found it quite 'illogical' that the two 'boss' class representatives of the Soul Society (Kenpachi & Renji) that show up at the end treat 'our hero' as nothing more than 'vermin' to be 'exterminated' for little or no reason :-/

I watched that recently too, MikeD. Totally agree. I mean, according to the so-called plot, the hero was condemned to death by the villains because they didn't tell him he could be the hero. Which is like saying "I am the villain in this story because in this story I am the villain."

On the topic of the Avengers villain being more believable, I had a big problem with his motivation. He wants to eliminate half the universe because resources are being consumed too quickly. Why? In approximately 50 years the population of the universe would be back to exactly where it was (granted this presumes all sentient species reproduce at roughly the same rate as humans).

So he goes to all of the trouble, and afterwards "retires" in self-satisfaction, for not really achieving what he wanted to for any significant period of time?

If he really wanted to make sure the universe's resources were safe for some time then he should have wiped out 99% of the sentient beings, not 50%. At least then it would take several thousand years before the universe was back in the same boat.

Zeim ... not the whole 'universe' ... just the part where 'humans' live <weg> And if all the other species were as 'overly reproductive' as 'humans', there wouldn't be much left in the way of 'sentient populations' <chuckle> As to the 'answer' ... you say 99, he said 50. There are valid reasons for either. At 99, all the civilizations would collapse. At 50, civilization would continue ... but =IF= 'we' didn't 'get the message' ... we would be in the same position sooner rather than later <wink>

<heh heh heh> Watching Battle Drone. So much 'ripe fruit' there <weg> But, does anyone know where all the bullets that the 'drones' keep firing come from?? <snicker>

Oh aye, I agree with you, Zeim, Thanos's reasoning was a bit dodgy unless he planned to periodically cull the population. It looked like the Infinity Gauntlet was burnt out at the end, and I'm not sure why that was, or if Thanos knew it would happen. Still, he definitely had personality.

Maybe Hella in Ragnarok is a better example. She just wants to subjugate the universe, it seems. Not clear why that is, but it is understandable why she's pissed off at Asgard. Ultimately, she has a big personality, very similar to Thor's, that shines through in the performance, so she's entertainingly villainous/an entertaining villain.

The same cannot be said for the villains in most superhero movies, Marvel or otherwise, or a goodly number of Hollywood movies, especially the current crop of action thrillers.

Do you work for the CIA? Yes. Are you Jack Ryan? No. OK, your boss is the villain, he did it because he's grown jaded and cynical about misdeeds done in service to his country.

Actually I'm going to speak up for Pacific Rim ... and a few other films, such as another non-sensical favorite of mine - Streets of Fire.

I don't look at films like these as being part of their supposed genre, even so far as to say Pacific Rim isn't an action-adventure-science-fiction film or Streets of Fire an action-romance. Both these films are very personal films for their directors. Hill wanted to do a rock and roll fable that had all the hallmarks of his favorite movies - rock and roll music, bar fights, motorcycle gangs, the dark horse heroes, kissing in the rain ... and it's so obvious that Pacific Rim is del Toro's celebration of one of his favorite genres - his love of the big robot-giant monster films. Of course they don't have rockets or sensible defenses - come on, its a Giant Robot film! It's GOT to have Giant Robots, complete with swords get pulled out of nowhere in a climatic battle! We all knew Godzilla was a guy in a rubber suit trashing cardboard Tokyos, but that was part of the fun! The novel Ready Player One was really silly - willy wonka of the virtual age - but boy did it feel good remembering those old video games.

Who cares if a ship's keel would crack in half if used as a club? It's just cool.

Films like these don't run on a high level of verisimilitude. They actually do run on the Rule of Cool. Streets of Fire, sit back, relax, settle deep into a couch and share Walter Hill's dream of what a fifty's rock and roll romance should be like ... share Del Toro's joy of big dumb but oh my god spectacular robots ... alien invasion in Julie Brown's LA? So its silly, but it's also lot of laughs.

So yes, if you go into a film like this looking for a high level of verisimilitude, of course you are going to walk away disgruntled. But then I might also say that it's your own fault

Just so ya know, Wolf, I don't disagree. In fact, I only watched those films ... well, to be fair, just Pac Rim <shrug> ... as what it was: a movie. No baggage <g>

The issue is the 'holes' ... 'gaps' ... 'inconsistencies' in the movie. For example, since there was no 'mention' of an 'upgrade' or the like ... the robots had the swords from their inception. So =why= didn't the 'pilots' have a clue about their existence in the beginning?

Time for the next installment ...

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea:

Lets ignore the whole 'sky catches fire' part. It is a 'fantasy' movie after all. Instead, lets look at the more mundane.

1.) Apparently no one bothered to tell the writers that ice doesn't sink, it floats ... even when the sky is on fire.

2.) Oh no! They are caught in a mine field! But it is too deep for scuba divers … they will have to use the 'mini sub' … that is open to the sea and the operators use scuba gear?

3.) And why is it that when ever a ship … be it space ship or submarine … rolls back and forth … all the electronics decide to 'spit sparks' <sigh>