Things you're tired of seeing in movies

[dascoyne]

Something that's bothered me for a while now are lights in helmets, it's become a staple of sci-fi that if you have a fully enclosed space suit or a hazmat suit your helmet has to have lights in it. I can understand the need to light the face of the actors but show me an actual space suit or even a hazmat suit in real life that actually has little lights in them plus I've seen enough real life footage of astronauts in real space suits and I can see their faces in their helmets just fine without the use of interior helmet lights.

To a lesser degree and on a related note are scenes of people in a car at night and you can tell that they're very obviously being lit by a light hidden somewhere low in the car. I realize that at night you'd probably be hard pressed to see the actor's faces inside the car without some sort of extra lighting but do they need to be so obvious about it? I'm sure they could easily figure out a way to light them so that it's so obvious that you're shining a light in their faces. Worse comes to worse, just put a smaller light that only makes them a little more visible and brighten a bit more in post.

Amen to both.

I will add the missing rear view mirror in car scenes. When I first noticed I saw it everywhere.

 

[reb1138]

No one ever finishes their breakfast.

 

[p51]

The lights in helmets have driven me nuts for years. The worst offender of this (ironically one my favorite shows of all time) was the 1990s Fox show, "Space Above and Beyond" where the helmets had lights in them. And these were suits used in ground combat. :facepalm
I was a Army officer once and the idea is downright insane that you'd want any lights on you in a moment like that!

 

[Solo4114]

For a low-budget sci-fi show from the mid-90s, I can accept that. Babylon 5 did something similar with their fighter pilots' helmets.

But it's almost 20 freaking years since these shows were on the air. Maybe it's time to find another approach.

I think Iron Man did a pretty good job of this, by giving you the "face + HUD" to make it clear that this is the view inside the helmet.

 

[Probe Droid]

Enough with space aliens looking like nothing more than oversized Earth bugs. I suppose it could be a tip of the hat to Harryhausen's First Men in the Moon critters, but Hollywood needs a new concept. This is where CGI could really aid a picture.

 

[Laspector]

Well, if we are talking about being tired of aliens, how about Star Trek: the Next Generation? How many 'bumps on the forehead' aliens can you possibly have?! Really got tired of that!


reb1138 said people never finish their breakfast...How about where people never eat their food at all? They just move it around with their fork while waiting on their next line. The Big Bang Theory is majorly guilty of this....

 

[p51]

For a low-budget sci-fi show from the mid-90s, I can accept that. Babylon 5 did something similar with their fighter pilots' helmets.

But it's almost 20 freaking years since these shows were on the air. Maybe it's time to find another approach.

I think Iron Man did a pretty good job of this, by giving you the "face + HUD" to make it clear that this is the view inside the helmet.

Fair enough.
Another similar concept is in many aviation movies, you have a jet jockey with an oxygen mask and it's unclipped and open until they need to dogfight.
I've flown in a few airplanes that need O2 masks on. YOU KEEP THAT MASK ON ALL THE TIME, as you never know when you need to turn and burn and you won't have time to clip that sucker in place when that happens.

 

[jayutmb]

How about people who flatline get shocked ... Seems like every movie has that and it is almost obligatory .... Quick someone fall down and flatline! Also you don't shock a flatline from an accuracy standpoint


Who is John Galt...

 

[Riceball]

Fair enough.
Another similar concept is in many aviation movies, you have a jet jockey with an oxygen mask and it's unclipped and open until they need to dogfight.
I've flown in a few airplanes that need O2 masks on. YOU KEEP THAT MASK ON ALL THE TIME, as you never know when you need to turn and burn and you won't have time to clip that sucker in place when that happens.

Or for that matter never having their visors down or wearing flight gloves on, something that Top Gun was guilty of on all accounts. I'm not even sure that they had their visors down in that flat spin ejection scene, a time when you most definitely want your visor down.

Sent from my KFTT using Tapatalk 2

 

[NormanF]

Well, if we are talking about being tired of aliens, how about Star Trek: the Next Generation? How many 'bumps on the forehead' aliens can you possibly have?! Really got tired of that!

Babylon 5 had some lumpy heads for aliens, but they also had a few true aliens.

 

[Treadwell]

Adjusting for a lot of these complaints would result in worse movies. Yes, pilots should be masked, yes, car interiors are dark...do you really want it to be hard to distinguish which pilot you're looking at, or not to be able to see the characters in a car? There are reasons for stuff like this.

 

[Riceball]

Adjusting for a lot of these complaints would result in worse movies. Yes, pilots should be masked, yes, car interiors are dark...do you really want it to be hard to distinguish which pilot you're looking at, or not to be able to see the characters in a car? There are reasons for stuff like this.

The masking could be done without anyone having a hard time telling who's who, esp.in Top Gun where all of the US pilots had distinctive helmets and the few scenes where we saw someone masked I could still tell who it was. For car interiors, yes they're dark and they need light but do they really need to light it in such a way that it's painfully obvious that it's being lit?

 

[Treadwell]

Apart from identifying characters, seeing the performances of the actors is also important.

 

[Zombie_61]

...It also bugs me when it's obviously a sunny day, but it's raining cats and dogs in the scene.

Equally annoying for me is seeing any "rain" scene where you can see the "raindrops" falling in perfectly straight lines on the ground.

...reb1138 said people never finish their breakfast...How about where people never eat their food at all? They just move it around with their fork while waiting on their next line. The Big Bang Theory is majorly guilty of this....

This is quite common for a couple of reasons.

First, because the actors never really know how many "takes" they'll have to perform before the director feels they've gotten the footage they need. For example, while filming a specific scene in Bonnie and Clyde (1967) Michael J. Pollard didn't know they weren't supposed to actually eat the food that was being distributed in the scene. By the 12th take Pollard was quite ill because he had eaten 12 whole hamburgers.

Second, because they often use substitutes for food on movie and television sets. Example: Ice cream melts quickly under the hot stage lights, so they use mashed potatoes instead because they don't melt. Would you want to eat an "ice cream" sundae if it was made with three scoops of mashed potatoes covered in chocolate sauce, and then have to eat more with each subsequent take?

Movies and television shows are the illusion of reality, and sometimes you're not seeing what you think you're seeing on the screen.

 

[Solo4114]

How about people who flatline get shocked ... Seems like every movie has that and it is almost obligatory .... Quick someone fall down and flatline! Also you don't shock a flatline from an accuracy standpoint

My girlfriend is just going into her residency year and is constantly irritated by this. Nobody considers CPR or epinephrine. It's right to the paddles, regardless of what's actually happening to the heart. She also gets irritated at how people draw heartbeats.

Babylon 5 had some lumpy heads for aliens, but they also had a few true aliens.
View attachment 302828

View attachment 302831

B5 was a terrific show for design purposes. Even the human-looking aliens still had pretty wacky physical features, like Londo's...ah....additional appendages.

 

[p51]

B5 was a terrific show for design purposes. Even the human-looking aliens still had pretty wacky physical features, like Londo's...ah....additional appendages.

I never got into B5, but the few times I tried watching the show, one thing I picked up on right away was they clearly tried to make the aliens... alien looking, more so that Next Generation for certain!

 

[Jon Kelley]

Yea I really wanted to like Elysium, but with the "In you face" political subtext I could not get into it at all... I kept thinking about 1. why cant I just get a cool movie and leave out the politics 2. WTF do they think will happen after they make the whole earth " Death free?!" fast forward 10 years everyone is overcrowded and begging for people to die?

Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison - later adapted to Soylent Green, starring Charleton Heston (loosely germinated from A Modest Proposal, by Jonathan Swift...)

 

[mattycsi]

For me its bad crime scene stuff. It drives me mental when you see a finger mark lifted from a scene get put in the computer and not only does it spit out a result in seconds it spits out the SAME, EXACT mark.Not a lovely rolled inked impression or scan, the ones that gets taken from every that gets taken into custody. Coupled with impossible fantasy forensic work and serious contamination issues its just all wrong. Can't actually think of a film/show where its done right, or done right consistently.

Except Batman's laser fingerprint through a brick thing in Dark Knight, coz, **** you its Batman.

 

[The Terminator]

She also gets irritated at how people draw heartbeats.

:unsure what's that??

For me its bad crime scene stuff. It drives me mental when you see a finger mark lifted from a scene get put in the computer and not only does it spit out a result in seconds it spits out the SAME, EXACT mark.Not a lovely rolled inked impression or scan, the ones that gets taken from every that gets taken into custody. Coupled with impossible fantasy forensic work and serious contamination issues its just all wrong. Can't actually think of a film/show where its done right, or done right consistently.

Except Batman's laser fingerprint through a brick thing in Dark Knight, coz, **** you its Batman.

or where they take CRAPPY surveillance footage and manage to zoom into the reflection of someone's eye to ID a perp :lol

 

[Krull]

One other thing I thought of....

Isn't it always fun how quiet it is on an airplane? how people can have whisper level conversations?

When in reality you have to SHOUT YOUR LUNGS OUT to even try and be a heard :lol