Things you're tired of seeing in movies

[Laspector]

The Big Bang Theory is the one thing I never get tired of. Sometimes I will watch it all day long. I've seen every episode at least 20 times and it never gets old. I still laugh out loud at the jokes. Greatest show ever!!!!!!!

I would kill the Pope to be with Penny!!!:love

 

[bigtrev503]

Yeah, but if you get technical, zombies in general never get explained at all. And why? Because it's a physical impossibility. It's one of the reasons I hate zombie fiction so much, as it starts with a totally impossible premise and never addresses that point.

Dude. Lightsabers.

 

[p51]

A few things:

• Cameras that look like a news camera documenting things in real time. Blood and water splatter on the lens and it stays there. The only way that makes sense is if you're doing a 'guy holding a camera' concept, like Cloverfield...
• Angles like the camera doesn't know somehting is happening, they suddenly shift location and focus. Battlestar Galactica did that and it drove me frakking nuts!
• All helicopters that sound like 'Nam era UH-1 'Huey' choppers. Any helicopter with multiple rotors sounds totally different yet Hollywood has to have that 'Whump whump whump' sound for, say a Blackhawk which sounds nothing like that. Anyone who's ever served in the miliatry totally gets this.
• All airplanes (choppers too) sound like WW2 Stuka dive bombers when they dive or are going to crash. Stukas were the only airplane that ever sounded like that, and that was from a siren mounted to the side of the plane.

 

[dascoyne]

• Angles like the camera doesn't know somehting is happening, they suddenly shift location and focus. Battlestar Galactica did that and it drove me frakking nuts!

• if I'm not mistaken the mock manual focus (in FX shots) and deliberate misframing was first used in Firefly. But I'm that case it was used in moderation and quite effective in that capacity.

• All helicopters that sound like 'Nam era UH-1 'Huey' choppers. Any helicopter with multiple rotors sounds totally different yet Hollywood has to have that 'Whump whump whump' sound for, say a Blackhawk which sounds nothing like that. Anyone who's ever served in the miliatry totally gets this.

• what also gets me is that they also feel compelled to always play some pop rock tune contemporary to the era of the war film. It was great when it was first done in Apocalypse Now, but does every damn director have to put their spin on it for every chopper scene of every war film?

  All airplanes (choppers too) sound like WW2 Stuka dive bombers when they dive or are going to crash. Stukas were the only airplane that ever sounded like that, and that was from a siren mounted to the side of the plane.

  lol. Yeah. It's the Wilhelm scream of airplanes.

 

[Treadwell]

Speaking of news cameras...

- local news breaking into regular programming to cover something happening in the movie. Unless it's a REALLY big story, they're not going to break in, it will wait until the next newscast.
- news cameras getting multiple angles of an unexpected event when there would be no reason for more than one crew to have been sent.
- "security camera footage" from stationary cameras that still somehow follow the action.
- goofs like in Godzilla (1998), where a Maguffin was a news video tape: in various scenes, the tape prop was variously a Betacam, a 3/4" U-matic, and a VHS cassette!
- using actual movie footage that we've already seen in the same (or previous) movie as something recorded by security or news cameras that the characters can watch (Star Trek III).
- Live TV/video tape footage that was actually shot on film.
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[CB2001]

- using actual movie footage that we've already seen in the same (or previous) movie as something recorded by security or news cameras that the characters can watch (Star Trek III).

The only thing that I can think of that goes against this is the photos of the Terminator in Terminator 2: Judgement Day that is shown by the police to Sarah Conner after the Galleria bit, which shows what is meant to be the Terminator at the Metro Police Station from the first film. They actually had Arnold dress up as he did in the original for that scene and took the pictures during the pre-production of the film.

But I will admit, I liked how the above was used in Spaceballs.

 

[robn1]

Speaking of news cameras...

- local news breaking into regular programming to cover something happening in the movie. Unless it's a REALLY big story, they're not going to break in, it will wait until the next newscast...
-

Local news broke into General Hospital a few weeks ago to announce that the Redskins coach was fired. My mom was pissed.

 

[p51]

Speaking of news cameras...
- local news breaking into regular programming to cover something happening in the movie. Unless it's a REALLY big story, they're not going to break in, it will wait until the next newscast.

Actually, it happened quite a bit that they used ot pre-empt something if it was really newsworthy. If it happened in the daytime, housewives would call the TV stations and complain that their soap operas were being stopped for such trivial, little things like Reagan's assasination attempt or the Space Shuttle Challenger coming apart on liftoff. I worked with a guy who handled phones for a TV station in the 80s and he used to tell me how the women would call and complain that their 'stories' were being interupted. He said they also called to complain when it happened due to a tornado being reported coming into that very town!

 

[Treadwell]

My point is, often the activity in the movie is not one of those things. President shot, shuttle blows up, OF COURSE they interrupt "All My Marriages".

- - - Updated - - -

The only thing that I can think of that goes against this is the photos of the Terminator in Terminator 2: Judgement Day that is shown by the police to Sarah Conner after the Galleria bit, which shows what is meant to be the Terminator at the Metro Police Station from the first film.

That was fine. I'm talking about when they use footage from the movie you're watching (not unused footage, but the exact shot(s) you have already seen, but now it's on a TV or whatever and the characters are watching their own movie. Yes, like that hilarious bit in Spaceballs :lol

 

[p51]

I agree on the footage people see. It always drove me nuts when, in a space-related movie, people in a command center are watching video from well outside the area any cameras could possibly be. I remember seeing the movie, "Meteor" in a theater (yeah, I'm that old) and even as a kid, I immediately realized they were watching scenes that didn't have any camera to be filmed from that angle and it made no sense to me even then and I was only ten years old at the time!

 

[drcraig13]

I think things used to get interrupted more often than they do now just because you have so many more outlets to hear news from. To me it's almost more nostalgic that they do the breaking news in movies.

 

[Riceball]

That was fine. I'm talking about when they use footage from the movie you're watching (not unused footage, but the exact shot(s) you have already seen, but now it's on a TV or whatever and the characters are watching their own movie.

That always bugged me too, ST III is probably the worst offender that I can think of but I know that I've seen it many times before and after. I can understand why directors do it, it saves money by re-using existing footage but it's still annoying.

 

[p51]

How about how easy it is to get machine guns in movies? You see it all the time, a group of people just shows up with several M240s or other hard to find weapons. How about zombie stuff? Yes, I'm thinking of 'Walking Dead,' society collapsed and yet most of the weapons people seem to have found were fully automatic? Sure, I get there'd be some military weapons left afterward, but I saw a bunch of H&K and some AKs in the last episode, where the frak would you find something like that, randomly? Automatic weapons constitute a tiny fraction of all firearms in the US, so where'd everyone find one?
Also, everyone has to have the newest weapons. In 'Walking Dead', they'd all be carrying hunting rifles or shotguns. Stuff you find in a good ol' boy's gun rack! The thing that got me on the movie, "Quigley down under" was how all these Australians had the latest American pistols? Those would cost a fortune in such a place and time!

 

[Jeyl]

- using actual movie footage that we've already seen in the same (or previous) movie as something recorded by security or news cameras that the characters can watch (Star Trek III).

I assume you mean Star Trek IV using Star Trek III footage, right? Either way, there's a far, far worse example than anything here. Batman's super convenient video recording device from Batman and Robin. That wasn't even trying.

 

[Riceball]

How about how easy it is to get machine guns in movies? You see it all the time, a group of people just shows up with several M240s or other hard to find weapons. How about zombie stuff? Yes, I'm thinking of 'Walking Dead,' society collapsed and yet most of the weapons people seem to have found were fully automatic? Sure, I get there'd be some military weapons left afterward, but I saw a bunch of H&K and some AKs in the last episode, where the frak would you find something like that, randomly? Automatic weapons constitute a tiny fraction of all firearms in the US, so where'd everyone find one?
Also, everyone has to have the newest weapons. In 'Walking Dead', they'd all be carrying hunting rifles or shotguns. Stuff you find in a good ol' boy's gun rack! The thing that got me on the movie, "Quigley down under" was how all these Australians had the latest American pistols? Those would cost a fortune in such a place and time!

That's the one thing that's always bugged me about The Walking Dead, the sheer, near staggering, amount of automatic weapons in that show, anybody from a foreign country that's not too familiar with the US would think that every other household here owns automatic rifles. I've also wondered where everybody in the shows got all of those rifles from, hell, the Governor even got himself a fully automatic AUG, there can't be all that many of those floating around this country. Then again, it is set in Georgia so it's not quite that unrealistic, it's not like it's set in CA with our 10 round magazines and bullet buttons.

On the subject of machine guns, it really bugs me to hear rotary cannons sounding like regular machine guns, and slow ones at that too. Anyone who has ever heard a rotary canon (aka Gatling) knows that they sound like no other run and sound more like a chainsaw than a gun. This is due to the extremely high rate of fire, so high that you no longer hear the individual rounds firing and it comes out sounding like a ripping sort of sound. Certain conventional machine guns can come close to sounding like that as well, the M240 has a high enough rate of fire that it doesn't make the classic machine gun sound and the MG34 &/or 42s were like that too. The producers of Macross actually got this right since the Valkyries were armed with a 55mm rotary canon but for whatever reason, when Harmony Gold re-mastered they redid all of the sound effects including that of the Vlakyrie's GU-11 and changed it a conventional machine gun sound. Apparently, the idiots over at Harmony Gold have never heard a real rotary cannon fire and must have thought that the original sound effect sounded fake when it wasn't.

 

[p51]

Yep, any motorized gatling sounds like a buzz saw. GIs in WW2 sometimes called the German MG-42, "Hitler's Zipper" due to the sound it made from it's ridiculously high rate of fire.
As for the machine guns in WD, that AUG drove me nuts as well. Yes, Georgia is a Class III-friendly state and I know people in that state today with massive machine gun collections, but they're not THAT common.
Besides, an automatic weapon is, among other things, a demoralizing weapon when you're spitting out that much lead. The very concept is silly against movie zombies as you need controlled, well-aimed fire (the book, "World War Z" well addressed that, describing the newest production US military weapon as being something similar to a semi-auto WW2 M-1 rifle). A SMG would be useful only against other normal humans and even then it's wasteful as it's a given that there are no more assembly lines cranking out ammo for the things.

 

[Solo4114]

How about how easy it is to get machine guns in movies? You see it all the time, a group of people just shows up with several M240s or other hard to find weapons. How about zombie stuff? Yes, I'm thinking of 'Walking Dead,' society collapsed and yet most of the weapons people seem to have found were fully automatic? Sure, I get there'd be some military weapons left afterward, but I saw a bunch of H&K and some AKs in the last episode, where the frak would you find something like that, randomly? Automatic weapons constitute a tiny fraction of all firearms in the US, so where'd everyone find one?
Also, everyone has to have the newest weapons. In 'Walking Dead', they'd all be carrying hunting rifles or shotguns. Stuff you find in a good ol' boy's gun rack! The thing that got me on the movie, "Quigley down under" was how all these Australians had the latest American pistols? Those would cost a fortune in such a place and time!

Yep, any motorized gatling sounds like a buzz saw. GIs in WW2 sometimes called the German MG-42, "Hitler's Zipper" due to the sound it made from it's ridiculously high rate of fire.
As for the machine guns in WD, that AUG drove me nuts as well. Yes, Georgia is a Class III-friendly state and I know people in that state today with massive machine gun collections, but they're not THAT common.
Besides, an automatic weapon is, among other things, a demoralizing weapon when you're spitting out that much lead. The very concept is silly against movie zombies as you need controlled, well-aimed fire (the book, "World War Z" well addressed that, describing the newest production US military weapon as being something similar to a semi-auto WW2 M-1 rifle). A SMG would be useful only against other normal humans and even then it's wasteful as it's a given that there are no more assembly lines cranking out ammo for the things.

First thing I was thinking was "Well, it is the South, after all..." But, in fairness, there are gun shops here in PA where you can rent a full auto weapon for an hour if you want. Now, whether someone could raid one of those effectively, who knows. I don't mind there being a seemingly endless supply of AR-15s, but I'd expect them to more often be semi- rather than full-auto.

On top of that, you're dead-on right that you'd WANT semi-auto weapons when going against walkers. Going full auto for head shots is a total waste of what is likely already precious ammo. It's one of the reasons I like Darrel so much -- the guy uses a weapon with reclaimable and reusable ammo! Very eco-friendly.

 

[Michael Bergeron]

Superheroes.

ENOUGH WITH THIS GOD DAMNED SUPERHERO MOVIES!

 

[p51]

Superheroes

Word. :thumbsup

 

[dascoyne]

I'm ok with superheroes as long as it's of the recent Marvel quality.

No more vampires - especially if they're still in school.