Things you're tired of seeing in movies

[Riceball]

Still catching up with Supergirl, but here's an old trope that showed up in Ep2:

You don't know how to fight so here...attack me. I'm going to spend about 20 seconds kicking your ass around this room. Then, next time you fight the bad guy who has been training for years, you'll win because you'll remember the moves I used against you in here!


I wont pretend to know anything about combat training, but in real life there's more to it than that right? Is the sentence "I got my ass kicked by a guy who used this one move so...I'm totally an expert on how to do it myself now." a sentence that really gets used that often?

Unless you're some kind of super quick study and are a natural at martial arts/hand to hand combat you're not going to be able to beat an experienced fighter with just a little bit of training. There is a certain amount of unpredictability that comes with fighting someone with little to no experience but that will only get you so far and against a much more experienced opponent you'd need to be lucky and score a knockout blow right off the bat in order to win the fight.

 

[Zombie_61]

...You don't know how to fight so here...attack me. I'm going to spend about 20 seconds kicking your ass around this room. Then, next time you fight the bad guy who has been training for years, you'll win because you'll remember the moves I used against you in here!

I wont pretend to know anything about combat training, but in real life there's more to it than that right? Is the sentence "I got my ass kicked by a guy who used this one move so...I'm totally an expert on how to do it myself now." a sentence that really gets used that often?

"How did he break my nose? Here, let me show you. I'll stand here, and you stand there. Okay, now, as hard as you can, punch me in the face."

 

[LrdSatyr8]

Oh yeah... and I'm getting tired of the whole scrawny kid who is scared and alone meets up with hero who is suppose to save him, then something happens, the kid kicks the bad guys butt with all these moves a trained professional would have taken years to learn, and the hero looks at him quizzically thinking "There's something really special about this kid". Really?? Are we suppose to believe that it's some kind of super power? Or that he just hasn't reached puberity yet and when he does he developes all these skills automatically? Saw this premise used again the other night on Into the Badlands!

 

[dascoyne]

Speaking of which, (and this is a little OT because it's about shows instead of movies), names of shows that describe the situation during the first five minutes of the pilot and then is irrelevant. Kotter was "back" to his old high school, now as a teacher. That was no longer a story point by what, the first commercial? (See also: "Empty Nest", about a man whose adult daughters move in with him. What's so empty about it?)

Let's not forget about "Bosom Buddies" where the cross-dressing schtick effectively went out the window in favor of the basic comedy talent of two funny guys.

 

[p51]

2-dimensional Nazis. You don't have to make them cardboard cutout villains as they're already evil by definition. Movies have truly missed out on the opportunity to show them as real people, capable of empathy and love, yet able to shut both off to others, caused by nationalism. The movie, "Boy in the striped pyjamas" missed the chance to show the one kid's Dad as being a loving father and husband, yet being able to detach and take part in such horrors. This is where people fail to grasp how the 3rd Reich happened, because they can't grasp these were people who did love their kids, and hated so many others, at the same time. So instead, society has collectively decided the Nazis were all monsters from birth and not otherwise honorable people who wouldn't have automatically been evil had they lived under a different government. To dismiss them all as evil incarnate means you're ignoring the possibility that this could happen again somewhere else in the future, because generally, people are people and you get this stuff from external influences. Entire nations are simply NOT populated with only evil people. The Germans of the 30s weren't all collectively evil, that's silly to think yet it's how most people see the Germans in that timeframe.
The only movies now that even try to depict WW2 Germans as real people are ironically being made in Germany.
I have no love for the Nazis, but we deserve better developed bad guys and the era of comic book Germans should have passed years ago.

 

[mattycsi]

Gun shot ricochets, why is that when a bullet bounces off a surface the corresponding sound effect is always like another gun shot?

Two way radios, they are always completely silent when not in use, then the user picks it up and it crackles with static as he hits the PTT and again when he releases it. Unless you have radio traffic coming your way, like an open channel with multiple users that thing will stay silent. And it doesn't crackle when you go to talk into it.
This annoyed me in the last episode of The Walking Dead, every time Darryl touched his radio, static.
Also, we know whats happening with Darryl is concurrent with events with Abe and Rick, and we see them talking in to the radio, but no traffic on Darryl's handset.

 

[LrdSatyr8]

Gun shot ricochets, why is that when a bullet bounces off a surface the corresponding sound effect is always like another gun shot?

Two way radios, they are always completely silent when not in use, then the user picks it up and it crackles with static as he hits the PTT and again when he releases it. Unless you have radio traffic coming your way, like an open channel with multiple users that thing will stay silent. And it doesn't crackle when you go to talk into it.
This annoyed me in the last episode of The Walking Dead, every time Darryl touched his radio, static.
Also, we know whats happening with Darryl is concurrent with events with Abe and Rick, and we see them talking in to the radio, but no traffic on Darryl's handset.

The old ones did... I remember having a walkie talkie set with my friend and if there was no communication, you had it on, there was a very low static sound until they spoke. They were the higher end of the toy line. Loved those days!

 

[p51]

Yeah, early radios did have a static sound when not getting transmissions. Early military radios did this too.
As for ricochets, if you shoot on beach sand, you will hear the classic Hollywood sound. I'd been shooting since I was a little kid but only ever heard it the first time in the military. Came as a shock to me that I'd gone that long, never having heard one, only to hear plenty in that environment.

 

[mattycsi]

Radios in modern movies shouldn't be "early" models though. I've been using them for 16 years and can't ever recall hearing static.

 

[Riceball]

As late as the '90s military radios would hiss when inactive and the quickest way to tell that you have an incoming transmission was when you didn't hear the hissing. Of course these were the larger units like PRC-77s and the like and not handheld radios though. It's been a while but IIRC the old Motorola FRS radios that I had had a pretty good squelch on them and were silent when on standby.

 

[p51]

Yep, I recall the hiss of the old 77s well, as we used them in Army ROTC as late as 1998.

 

[dascoyne]

When a character receives a text message and they show the shot of the phone with the message ... if they linger on the screen for more than one second longer than necessary ... it just makes me very aware of the editor doing that for very slow readers.

 

[TNPETW]

Hmmm, let me see. Things I am tired of seeing in movies.

Jeremy Piven

:devil

Now the comedy is taken care of, how about grenades producing plumes of flame.

Ross

 

[p51]

The "ultimate warrior" character that has skin like a model's, with no scars, bruises, blemishes of any type. What, they never had any boo-boos learning to fight anyone with a sword?
Yes, I'm directing that to anyone involved in the show, "Into the Badlands" but it's almost everywhere in the genre...

 

[dascoyne]

The "ultimate warrior" character that has skin like a model's, with no scars, bruises, blemishes of any type. What, they never had any boo-boos learning to fight anyone with a sword?
Yes, I'm directing that to anyone involved in the show, "Into the Badlands" but it's almost everywhere in the genre...

On that same note seeing a "warrior" with a bodybuilder's proportions - as well as the perfect spray on tan.

 

[p51]

On that same note seeing a "warrior" with a bodybuilder's proportions - as well as the perfect spray on tan.

Yep, exactly. Bulk slows a person down, some ninja type would be pretty thin in comparison but have almost zero body fat.
Go look at, say, soldiers in a Special Forces unit (I have served near them when I was in the Army). Most of those guys are lean, but look way older than their years. That's what I'd expect from a "ultimate warrior' type person in real life...

 

[Riceball]

I think that the big warrior stereotype comes from the common misconception that swords and armor were heavy so you'd need to be big to properly wield a sword and wear armor when in fact neither were particularly heavy. A typical European sword only weighed a few pounds or so, lighter than some modern military rifles and a mail shirt were no heavier than modern body armor. The biggest misconception is that plate armor was extremely heavy, which it wasn't, it was heavier than a mail shirt for certain but it wasn't so heavy that if you fell you were turtled. Plate armor was individually fitted to its wearer and offered minimal encumberance, Henry VIII was reputed to be able to cartwheels in his armor, and as far as weight goes, all of the weight was distributed all across the body so the perceived weight is probably less than modern military body armor.

 

[Axlotl]

...Henry VIII was reputed to be able to cartwheels in his armor...

I find this hard to believe.
Not that a person could do cartwheels in armor - that Henry VIII could do cartwheels at all.

 

[p51]

Henry VIII was a pretty agile man before he was injured. Remember, he wasn't 18 yet when he became king. He was badly injured in a jousting incident in his late 20s which many historians feel led to the later medical problems and obesity he suffered from in his 30s and 40s...

 

[batguy]

Yep, exactly. Bulk slows a person down, some ninja type would be pretty thin in comparison but have almost zero body fat.
Go look at, say, soldiers in a Special Forces unit (I have served near them when I was in the Army). Most of those guys are lean, but look way older than their years. That's what I'd expect from a "ultimate warrior' type person in real life...

The ancient Roman gladiators actually preferred to have a decent layer of fat on them. It helped shield the important stuff better, particularly from glancing surface hits with blades. (We're talking about the ancient world's idea of a decent fat layer, not 21st century America's. It probably means an extra 15 lbs to avoid being really lean & ripped.)

I imagine that a topic like this would depend greatly on the style/conditions of the fighting.


The old gladiators were also were allowed to have more protection on their arms & legs than their torsos. It made for a better fight (and a longer career for the good fighters) when the limbs didn't get injured as much.