Things you're tired of seeing in movies

[p51]

Bad guy gets shot by someone carrying the same type of weapon the bad guy had. Good guy comes by to either check a pulse/ID/radio but they never ever take the bad guy's ammo!
Once in the Army, my unit got attacked by OPFOR and we wiped them out (they didn't realize we had three SAWs) and my people swarmed the OPFOR to take all their (blank) ammo and the range judge actually said in the AAR, "Smart move. Funny how nobody ever does this in the movies!"

 

[harrisonp]

It’s pretty safe to say that guns in general are a big hangup when it comes to movie logic. It’s almost like the proliferation of cell phones, you have to either ignore them/make your characters stupid or write really hard to remove their usefulness from the story.

 

[Cephus]

It’s pretty safe to say that guns in general are a big hangup when it comes to movie logic. It’s almost like the proliferation of cell phones, you have to either ignore them/make your characters stupid or write really hard to remove their usefulness from the story.

Or just make absolutely everything happen in the 80s. That seems a popular solution too.

 

[Sluis Van Shipyards]

I usually just told my parents I was just hanging out with friends after school, instead of telling them I had detention.

I said I was a good kid! Plus I played football, so I would get detention, then because I would be late for football you would get sent to the "Goon squad" and have to do extra conditioning for 15-20mins. So it would be hard to hide when my dad would be picking me up and could clearly see I was still out practicing. Somehow when I did get detentions, they were always during football season!


The thing about not picking up weapons or ammo drives me nuts. I think John Wick has been one of the best shows lately where they show him reloading often and he will pick up new guns once he runs out of ammo. It also bugs me when someone is using a pistol and kill a guy with an assault rifle, but will leave it to continue using the pistol. I would always go for more power/penetration if I was fighting guys with body armor! The Walking Dead was originally really good about this and then at some point the writers made the characters stupid.

BTW, there are some good WW2 stories, especially from paratrooper units on D-Day, where they picked up German MG34s and turned them on the Nazis, only to have other paratroopers open up on them. They mention this in the Band of Brothers book, and the guy said he immediately threw it down and got the heck out of there!

 

[p51]

BTW, there are some good WW2 stories, especially from paratrooper units on D-Day, where they picked up German MG34s and turned them on the Nazis, only to have other paratroopers open up on them. They mention this in the Band of Brothers book, and the guy said he immediately threw it down and got the heck out of there!

The only time you saw a lot of small arms being used by the opposite side was on the eastern front. The Germans especially were big on using PPSh41 submachineguns as they didn't jam nearly as badly as the MP-38s and 40s the German NCOs and officers had.
Oddly, I've since found that a lot of Russians would carry MP-40s if they got them, claiming that they were superior to their issued SMGs.
So all that said, I bet a firefight on the steppes of the bad side of Old Mother Russia sounded pretty odd and you couldn't bet on who was shooting, just from the sound!
The Germans really relied more on horses in WW2 than people today think, so when they'd overrun a nation, they usually converted whatever armored or wheeled vehicles that nation had to German use. They also converted some small arms (mostly medium and heavy machine guns) to their use.
The US Army was big on stopping the use of German small arms due to the fratricide dangers. That said, a couple of units used large numbers of captured German vehicles, artillery and tanks. The 83rd Infantry Division came to be known as "the rag tag circus" for it's use of German wheeled vehicles. They even had a Bf109 fighter flown for observational purposes, all painted in US markings as were the former German vehicles. The story is often told of a German general who was captured by the 83rd ID when his driver swung the staff car into the middle of a convoy of captured German vehicles, too late mistaking them for a German convoy.

 

[CT1138]

BTW, there are some good WW2 stories, especially from paratrooper units on D-Day, where they picked up German MG34s and turned them on the Nazis, only to have other paratroopers open up on them. They mention this in the Band of Brothers book, and the guy said he immediately threw it down and got the heck out of there!

I've also heard that the reason most soldiers don't pick up enemy weapons in battle is because, as a soldier, you become accustomed to the unique sound of your army's battle rifle in comparison to the ones the enemy combatants are using. I believe this is also partially what contributed to the spike of friendly fire incidents in the early years of the Afghanistan War, as many of the Taliban were shooting at US forces with weaponry Reagan gave them to shoot at the Soviets back in the 1980s.

Curiously, I've also heard that the Germans in WWII considered the M1 Carbine to be a significantly superior weapon to their STG 44s, and would readily take them from the battlefield if they could.

 

[BTTUK]

US Paratroopers were generally only picking up German weapons as many of them lost theirs during their jumps. Green light being put on whilst travelling too fast, mixed with equipment failure, ended up with the tethered equipment bags getting torn straight off.

Generally you won't pick up enemy weapons and use them for the simple reasons of that
a) you have no training on them (some allied soldiers in WW2 shot themselves or others by accident with war trophies they had picked up),

b) ammunition calibres may be different so pointless using a weapon that you cannot resupply effectively,

c) You shouldn't really be in a position where that has to be an option.
Having said that, it did occur and does sometimes still occur.

Weapons can make specific sounds that identify them, however it depends on the circumstances as to whether you positively ID it before suppressing it. If the rounds are zipping by you, your first instinct and training is to fire back immediately, which has resulted in blue on blue incidents. Courageous Restraint did a lot to reduce the likelihood that happening.

 

[mattycsi]

 

[Sluis Van Shipyards]

Movies where they start telling you about a female character who is renowned for her beauty, wars are fought over her, men can't think straight around her, etc. Then when they finally show the character, she looks nothing like the build up. For example, I expect Monica Belluci to walk out and out walks Chloe Sevigny.

 

[Lissavi]

People being massacred, screaming the sh1t out of their lives while unrestrained instead of fighting for their lives.

 

[Riceball]

People being massacred, screaming the sh1t out of their lives while unrestrained instead of fighting for their lives.

I don't think that's entirely unrealistic. I imagine that this has happened more time than not throughout history,

 

[Sluis Van Shipyards]

Well I've watched a ton of WW2 documentaries and I've always wondered why Jews who were being forced to dig their graves, or were being led into pits where they knew they were going to die, didn't fight. I think hopelessness, fear, or something else might be a factor in those situations.


I finally watched 300: Rise of an Empire and it really bugged me that several times main characters would run into battle and then throw off their helmets before facing off with another main bad guy. WTH? Why would you remove armor that would protect you?!?! I imagine Hollywood thinks we're stupid and can't figure out who they are with the helmet on, I don't know.

 

[Strikerkc]

I don't think that's entirely unrealistic. I imagine that this has happened more time than not throughout history,

Yea. People do weird counter intuitive stuff when in danger or freaking out.

 

[harrisonp]

I finally watched 300: Rise of an Empire and it really bugged me that several times main characters would run into battle and then throw off their helmets before facing off with another main bad guy. WTH? Why would you remove armor that would protect you?!?! I imagine Hollywood thinks we're stupid and can't figure out who they are with the helmet on, I don't know.

Add every recent Marvel movie to this sin as well. Gotta show off Downey/Pratt/Holland every time they speak

 

[Riceball]

Add every recent Marvel movie to this sin as well. Gotta show off Downey/Pratt/Holland every time they speak

It is the reason why, in historical movies, you often don't see main characters wearing helmets, esp. full faced helmets and why, in military movies like Top Gun, the hero pilots are never seen with their visors down, it's so you can see the expensive actor(s) the production paid for. Is it kind of annoying and unrealistic, yes, but I can appreciate and completely understand why they do it.

 

[Psab keel]

 

[Laspector]

Very rarely do you see a football player wear a mouthpiece. Sometimes yes, but most of the time no.

 

[Riceball]

Very rarely do you see a football player wear a mouthpiece. Sometimes yes, but most of the time no.

True, but then again, how many people in the general public are really know that football players normally wear mouth pieces? Football fans, probably, but the average person who watches little to no football except for maybe the highlights in the evening probably doesn't know that.

 

[Laspector]

True, but then again, how many people in the general public are really know that football players normally wear mouth pieces? Football fans, probably, but the average person who watches little to no football except for maybe the highlights in the evening probably doesn't know that.

True, but you guys always talk about guns and military stuff that is wrong in movies and tv. You think the general public knows any of that?

 

[robn1]

That's pretty much how I envision Jar Jar Abrams.