wow! Gotta watch it again!
I always wondered why Roy Schieder kept repeating, "Bruce, it's not your fault. It's not your fault..."
Things you're tired of seeing in movies
- Thread starter Joosh
- Start date
I always wondered why Roy Schieder kept repeating, "Bruce, it's not your fault. It's not your fault..."
p51
Sr Member
Funny, I thought I heard him say, "MOMMY, WHY'D YOU LEAVE ME???"
madmikeee
Sr Member
OR half the music from the movie ISN'T IN THERE!!.. IE Pitch Perfect, the lead girls mixes sounded fantastic yet NONE of them are in the soundtrack, why? because the morons who made the movie also made those mixes and refused to release them for the sound track.
torsoboy
Sr Member
It's mostly a studio thing. Whoever is printing the CDs or otherwise releasing the soundtrack has a certain price point to meet, and track count vs. cost of production factor into how many sales they can safely estimate given each general price tier. Lower the track count by eliminating some of the seemingly nonsense background music and you can lower your price, subsequently selling more albums.
But I get that; that's generally expected, albeit disappointing when it happens. The really frustrating part is when they release different versions of the soundtrack with different track assortments in different countries. On some very rare occasions, the artists can have some impact on what gets released and where, but more often than not, it's just the studio shooting for the cash grab with their country-specific exclusives. Disney absolutely tore up the Tron Legacy soundtrack, for example. There are a good 6-8 tracks missing from the US release. There were UK exclusives, Japan exclusives, and even one song released exclusively on some audio file sharing app that's only used in some South American country. And even then, I believe there is still one song that hasn't been released anywhere at any time. They sure did make it hard to track down all the songs. T_T
Jon Kelley
Active Member
Don't get me started on this one. Or picking locks using two picks and no tension wrench. Or using just one pick (not a "pick gun" or a "spring pick" - just a single, flat pick. What? It don't work that way, I've been picking locks for 25 years!)
Been a mechanic far too long to not see the hole in this one...
Spent a few years as a doorkicker. Can you kick in a residential exterior door in one shot, just your foot? Yeah - if you hit it right. Ditto commercial interior solid doors. NB: Kicking the door in the centre of the panel is NOT the correct place to do so! And a good solid-core door won't look like you hit it with a 105mm beehive round from foot impact...
Possible. Only just. Not something that's going to happen routinely.
Possible, but you're just as likely to kill him. The definition of a "knockout punch" is "a punch almost strong enough to kill outright."
These last two. Please - a .22 is NEVER going to sound like an unsuppressed .44 Automag, no matter how much you want it to! (Just as a Honda that displaces less than my bladder with a 'fart can' exhaust will NEVER sound like a real engine. Period.)
And, I've been in firearms for 30-odd years. There's always a little counter in the back of my head whenever you see single-spot gunplay, or the "good guy" is going through, and the counter always seems to end up on "BULLS***" before the scene's over. Seriously - if I can keep track of my ammo level during an actual hot firefight, why can't Sp:FX do it in a movie?
- The Dutch Angle. Sometimes, it's useful. Most times, it feels like either the cameraman has vertigo, or wants to give me vertigo.
- "Wire-Fu." In The Matrix, it made sense. In the "real world," it's pointless. STOP IT.
- "Primitive tribes" where everyone has perfect hair and straight, white teeth.
- Misinterpretations of established characters. Ever watch "Jack Reacher"? There's a car chase in there! In several novels, Reacher himself (as the character) has admitted - either in "internal monologue" or to other characters - that he's not that good as a driver, and high-speed or advanced driving maneuvers are beyond him. (Let's just leave aside that Tom Cruise was horribly miscast as Jack Reacher - my "reader's image" of Reacher has always been a slightly bulked-up Hugh Laurie. Hell, I would make a better Jack Reacher than Cruise could ever hope to, and at least I'm tall enough to be believable! The main reasons I watched that movie when offered? Rosamund Pike and Robert Duvall.)
- Cars exploding for no good reason. Nothing you can even tangentially derive thinking about the overarching plot. Is there just a huge surplus of naptha bombs out there?
- Sub-caliber firearms with a muzzle flash like a howitzer.
- Suppressed firearms that are actually silent - don't really happen. (You can get close - but you're looking at bolt-action, single-shot, or locked-breech autoloaders, like the H&K Mk23 Mod2, or the Ruger MkIII, CIA Mod.)
I'm sure I could go on...
p51
Sr Member
One thing that drives me out of my freaking mind when this comes up:
A movie takes place in 1941, just before Christmas, in the US. A group is doing whatever they're doing and someone busts in yelling, "The Japs just bombed Pearl Harbor!" And nobody stops to ask two questions EVERYONE asked when that happened in real life:
1: What the heck does this mean for me?
2: Where the #@*^ is Pearl Harbor? (seriously, nobody in the US would have known where that was unless they'd served in the Navy or knew someone who had!)
Heck, I tried that with a stethoscope out of curiosity on a safe I had the combination for in the Army once, and knowing I was passing over the right numbers I still couldn't hear a thing!
A movie takes place in 1941, just before Christmas, in the US. A group is doing whatever they're doing and someone busts in yelling, "The Japs just bombed Pearl Harbor!" And nobody stops to ask two questions EVERYONE asked when that happened in real life:
1: What the heck does this mean for me?
2: Where the #@*^ is Pearl Harbor? (seriously, nobody in the US would have known where that was unless they'd served in the Navy or knew someone who had!)
Or how about a combination lock on a safe? Just put your ear close to the door (but not even touching it) and anyone'll hear all the clicks, right? Never mind that you won't know which way to start spinning the tumbler unless you know every type of safe there is.
Heck, I tried that with a stethoscope out of curiosity on a safe I had the combination for in the Army once, and knowing I was passing over the right numbers I still couldn't hear a thing!
Jon Kelley
Active Member
I haven't finished going through this yet, but one from an old soldier:
UNIFORM ERRORS.
When it's a historical period, and there are established regulations for the wear of the uniform and accessories (that's WHY it's called "uniform,") is it too much to ask to have the costumer take an extra 5-10 minutes to make sure it's all done properly when the uniform is first set up, and a 30-second check to make sure it's still set up the next day?
Examples are rife:
- Female characters in dress uniform, modern era, not wearing an undershirt are so common as to not be worth specific mention.
- Ribbons in the wrong order (no, the RVN Campaign does not go above a Purple Heart - but I remember seeing it done that way...)
- Skill badges for the wrong service (Naval paratrooper wings on an Army uniform, for instance. They are markedly different.)
And so on.
Also, take a minute to make sure your actors follow proper cover protocol - Hat ON outdoors, hat OFF indoors, not the other way about. The exception? You just cam in with your hands full, or you're "under arms" (sentry/guard duty or other watch.)
Probably just because I've worn a uniform myself, and I'm sure this isn't something that most civilians would catch (they glide right past my wife, until I explain them - now SHE catches that sort of gaffe...) but it's not so much work to make sure it's right, is it?
UNIFORM ERRORS.
When it's a historical period, and there are established regulations for the wear of the uniform and accessories (that's WHY it's called "uniform,") is it too much to ask to have the costumer take an extra 5-10 minutes to make sure it's all done properly when the uniform is first set up, and a 30-second check to make sure it's still set up the next day?
Examples are rife:
- Female characters in dress uniform, modern era, not wearing an undershirt are so common as to not be worth specific mention.
- Ribbons in the wrong order (no, the RVN Campaign does not go above a Purple Heart - but I remember seeing it done that way...)
- Skill badges for the wrong service (Naval paratrooper wings on an Army uniform, for instance. They are markedly different.)
And so on.
Also, take a minute to make sure your actors follow proper cover protocol - Hat ON outdoors, hat OFF indoors, not the other way about. The exception? You just cam in with your hands full, or you're "under arms" (sentry/guard duty or other watch.)
Probably just because I've worn a uniform myself, and I'm sure this isn't something that most civilians would catch (they glide right past my wife, until I explain them - now SHE catches that sort of gaffe...) but it's not so much work to make sure it's right, is it?
Jon Kelley
Active Member
In fairness:
- The first time was because Kent had smeared oil on the optics. Yes, they're better now, but high-powered LASER efforts of that era were subject to feedback from dirty lenses
- The second was because it had been sabotaged - the electronic (PROM replacement) and software (coordinate realignment) was done on-screen, but how hard do you think it would be for the two guys who invented the LASER itself to sabotage it in the space of a couple of minutes? Or less? They didn't know the support system, but they designed the LASER...
(I was doing an internship in the high-energy LASER lab at Purdue right after that movie came out, so we discussed it endlessly...)
- - - Updated - - -
No. Not unless they have steel jackets.
(But, a .22 hollowpoint with a Zippo flint stuffed in it, fired against a rock or something steel. Beautiful.)
reminds me of The Breakfast Club where Ally Sheedy was the "basket case" that gets the makeover. I thought her original look was a lot more interesting and attractive. I can't be alone on this one.
if you want to how professional safecracking is really done I recommend Thief with James Caan. Great movie!
Solo4114
Master Member
I find this to be most common with SMGs and ARs, actually. Lately I've been seeing films and TV shows where people actually reload fairly frequently. Although I also think that some of the errors come from the fact that films end up using weapons chambered for 9mm blanks, rather than their actual load, meaning they can fit in a couple more rounds before running dry. Or at least, I thought I heard that prop houses tend to use 9mm blank guns where possible.
I actually don't see this one all that often outside of actual kung fu films where it's more a stylistic thing (implied superpowers) than a blatant disregard for the laws of physics.
Yeah, I kinda gave up on this one a while ago. Most of the time people just aren't gonna put in false teeth just to make themselves look primitive. That's taking it pretty far for what I suspect is relatively little gain amongst the vast majority of moviegoers.
Again, I think that's due to the prop houses using suped-up blanks. I find this to be somewhat less common nowadays, but man it was ALL OVER during the 80s.
My favorite on this is the "chrrp!" sound that silenced weapons make in movies. Unless they're using subsonic rounds, you'll still get the boom of the round itself breaking the sound barrier. Oddly, video games have been really good about this where you get more of a hiss-and-click sound where the bolt is working and the gas is venting. Haven't seen it as much in films, though. It's still far too common to see someone with, like, a WA-2000 or a PSG-1 firing ammo that just goes "chrrp" from the top of a 12 story high-rise to ground level like it ain't no thing.
With you there. A girl looking like that who smiles and is into the stuff I'm into will draw my eye. This is one of the thngs I thought "Not Another Teen Movie" spoofed pretty well, actually.
I can see ONE use for this. That being where the sniper is on orders to frighten someone rather than just kill them outright. E.G. we want to make a point "YOU ARE TARGETED." Outside of that, though, there's no point.
Laspector
Master Member
How about Christmas? I see this in TV episodes about Westerns more than movies. It's mid or even late 1800s and someone is in a modern day Santa suit. Or they are singing carols that weren't even written until the 20th century. Bonanza, Little House on the Prairie, Dr. Quinn Medicine woman, etc--all guilty of this.
Oh, and lets not forget those Christmas episodes where it is supposed to be middle of the winter yet all the trees still have all their GREEN leaves!
Oh, and lets not forget those Christmas episodes where it is supposed to be middle of the winter yet all the trees still have all their GREEN leaves!
Solo4114
Master Member
The obverse of this takes the form of Christmas episodes where there is ALWAYS snow. I can count on one hand the number of times I've had snow on Christmas, living on the east coast in the mid-atlantic region. If your show is set anywhere south of the 42nd parallel, it seems to me that it's unlikely you'll have snow EVERY Christmas.
AdamNightmare
Well-Known Member
I live in the snow-belt of upstate New York, and even here it's not a given that we have a white Christmas every year. But without fail, unless the location is in the Southwest states, you're guaranteed to have snow on Christmas.
And, for those of us familiar with the white stuff, it's always the perfect kind of snow. Not too heavy, never a white-out, just those soft flakes that give you the ambiance without any of the effort.
(I may be bitter, because it's snowing and I have to shovel my driveway after work.)
Probe Droid
Master Member
Agreed. The sow takes off her glasses and lets her hair out of the bun and she's Miss July.
Ok, so how many of us when they're watching a film and see one of these awful cliches coming sits there begging their TV screen to "please don't do this again"?
It makes you wonder if the writers, directors, or whoever is responsible have any shame.
Well I've heard of lasers being used to intimidate a subject in which case it would be employed by an operator engaged with the subject(s) - not a sniper.
The purpose of a sniper is to remain disengaged from the action as overwatch/support. Concealment and distance are therefore essential. A red laser would defeat this by flagging a position. Not cool.
Contrary to popular belief, lasers have no utility in precision shooting (except as a rangefinder, perhaps). The trajectory of a bullet is more like an eccentric parabola than a straight line.
It's also wrong how they're often portrayed as shooting from a standing and unsupported positions unnecessarily. A sniper is going to find the most stable platform which is often prone.
As a gun-guy I'm going to be more critical than most about these things but it really does irk me when I see this stuff.
p51
Sr Member
How about people who give full ranks when addressing someone? All 1st and 2nd LTs are just "Lieutenant" and nothing else. All SGTs are just "Sergeant" unless they're the First SGT or the SGT Major.
Or how about NCIS? They always bust in yelling, "NCIS" like anyone would have clue what that means. Seriously, how many of you would know what that meant were it not for the show? In real life there's always be the response, "NCI - what? What the heck does that mean? Who are you people?"
People think that movies have to have errors to avoid laws about people wearing uniforms when they're not in. That's total BS.
"A Few Good Men" got it all correct and nobody arrest Jack Nicholson, did they? It's often the production doesn't want to pay a good advisor or will go against them because some costume person thinks a CIB looks great on a F-16 pilot's flight suit...
Or how about NCIS? They always bust in yelling, "NCIS" like anyone would have clue what that means. Seriously, how many of you would know what that meant were it not for the show? In real life there's always be the response, "NCI - what? What the heck does that mean? Who are you people?"
Or the flipside, the white people start hanging with the black people, and the dumb, racist white people do a 180 and mebrace black culture. Look, the first part of the premise isn't bad, but I take issue with the idea that only one culture benefits from such a meeting!
Oh, don't even get me started on that. I'm a former US Army Captain and have done re-enacting for the majority of my life. I can hardly handle watching military shows and movies anymore...
People think that movies have to have errors to avoid laws about people wearing uniforms when they're not in. That's total BS.
"A Few Good Men" got it all correct and nobody arrest Jack Nicholson, did they? It's often the production doesn't want to pay a good advisor or will go against them because some costume person thinks a CIB looks great on a F-16 pilot's flight suit...
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