Things you're tired of seeing in movies

Every British ex special forces type character having to have been SAS. I mean come on, mix it up a bit with some SBS or even maybe SRR if you want to make a spy movie.
To be fair, I think that it's because Hollywood script writers only know about SAS. Sort of like if they're going to write a US ex-special ops they're always either former Army Special Forces or Navy SEAL. They're very seldom, if ever, former Marine (Force) Recon, Raider, the USN equivalent of the SBS, or the various Air Force special ops groups. Unless the writer is former military, has ties to the military, or is a military buff, all they are know are the high profile, well known spec-ops groups.
 
To be fair, I think that it's because Hollywood script writers only know about SAS. Sort of like if they're going to write a US ex-special ops they're always either former Army Special Forces or Navy SEAL. They're very seldom, if ever, former Marine (Force) Recon, Raider, the USN equivalent of the SBS, or the various Air Force special ops groups. Unless the writer is former military, has ties to the military, or is a military buff, all they are know are the high profile, well known spec-ops groups.

To be fair the USMC spec ops are so new most people don't know about them. I think they were renamed USMC Raiders now. I've only seen one documentary about Afghanistan or Iraq where they were even mentioned. They seem to be more secretive than SEALs or Army special forces. The only recent movies/shows where I've seen USAF special operations shown were the Transformers movies! Tyrese Gibson's character is supposed to be a forward air controller. I think they don't use USAF specops often because some in the public and some military don't consider them real special operations. I remember reading some book and the SEAL guys were mentioning that they had USAF PJs embedded with them and that they didn't consider them equal because, according to them, it was the easiest way to get into the community.

I forgot to add another one, vehicles keeping up with more maneuverable cars that the good guy is in. I just watch a show last night where the good guy was in a small sports car and SUVs were keeping pace and maneuvering right with him. Yeah some SUVs drive like cars, but they have a higher center of gravity so they are going to corner or drift (as these did...) like a sports car. I know it's so they can make it entertaining, but c'mon.

Another one from that same show, is a character firing a 40mm grenade launcher at a vehicle that was about 15-20ft away. I thought I heard that 40mm grenades, US versions anyway, have to travel 30ft before they arm and will explode? You obviously don't want to fire one and have the lift charge be a dud and it fall at your feet and explode.
 
To be fair the USMC spec ops are so new most people don't know about them. I think they were renamed USMC Raiders now. I've only seen one documentary about Afghanistan or Iraq where they were even mentioned. They seem to be more secretive than SEALs or Army special forces. The only recent movies/shows where I've seen USAF special operations shown were the Transformers movies! Tyrese Gibson's character is supposed to be a forward air controller. I think they don't use USAF specops often because some in the public and some military don't consider them real special operations. I remember reading some book and the SEAL guys were mentioning that they had USAF PJs embedded with them and that they didn't consider them equal because, according to them, it was the easiest way to get into the community.
Yeah, MARSOC (Marine Special Operations Command), now Raiders, is relatively new and I'm not entirely certain what their primary missions is supposed to be. Last I saw, they were doing the FID (Foreign Internal Defense) mission in Afghanistan and essentially duplicating what Army Special Forces' primary mission. But maybe this is because Army Special Forces, from what I can tell, has been doing more of the direct actions missions that people normally associate with the Green Berets even when it's not their primary mission. But setting aside Marine Raiders, there's still Marine (Force) Recon which have been around for forever and were, effectively, special operations Marines even if they never considered that by the Corps nor were they ever a part of SOCOM when that was stood up. The only time that I can remember Recon being in a movie was in Hearbreak Ridge and even then, they weren't exactly portrayed in the same manner that you regularly see characters that are supposed to be SEALs or Army Special Forces portrayed.

As for Air Force Special Operations, yeah, they are kind of a joke. Most of them don't really do anything all that special, not when compared to even Marine (Force) Recon which is actually really difficult to get into. I've also heard that PJs are considered essentially entry level Spec Ops and is considered to be the easiest way to get into the community. It's also a group that has, in my opinion, a dubious mission and one that's overstated by the Air Force brass. Do they seriously expect a PJ to infiltrating deep behind enemy lines (on foot) to reach and bring back a downed pilot? If Vietnam was any example, they fly in, get lowered down or dropped in right above the pilot's hidey hole, and get them back up the rescue helo. That's not to denigrate the PJs, it's certainly something that takes serious cojones to do but at the same time, it's hardly something that requires any kind of spec-ops level training. Hell, in Bosnia it was shown that a Marine mortar platoon, with just a bit of extra training, could do the same thing as the PJs.
 
Can guarantee that attitudes to PJs has changed a lot over the past couple of decades, to the point where they and our own MERT were the ones we wanted to be there when a CASEVAC was required.

You can find blokes like Jocko Willink, Andy Stumpf etc, sing the praises of PJs and their work. They may not be all singing and dancing door kickers, but by God if you've stepped on an IED, you'd want one there working on you
 
I learned early on not to denigrate any job in the military. I think I was playing withe GI JOEs (so maybe 10 years old) and I had told my dad that the soldiers fighting were more important. He was a Marine in Vietnam and he told me if the guys aren't hauling cargo there's no bullets, if the cooks don't make food the soldiers are hungry and can't fight, if the mechanics aren't fixing things, the tanks/planes don't work, etc.

There was a NatGeo show years ago that showed the PJs in Afghanistan that was really good. So yeah I don't know how capable they would be to infiltrate behind the lines to retrieve a pilot, but they proved themselves evacuating people there.

My dad always would say the Navy didn't need the SEALs because they already had special forces, the Marines. I pointed out that he could barely swim (he was a sinker and had to do extra swim training in boot). :lol:
 
I apologize if any of what I say has already been discussed, but I didn't want to search through 236 pages of this thread to find out.

I'm finding it harder to watch the "one man army" type roles, where one person takes on multiple foes and comes out on top. It's made me think about why you don't really see any vigilantes in the world, because it's just not realistic. Seeing one person beat up a whole gang, or shoot everyone without getting seriously wounded - it's gotten harder to maintain my suspension of disbelief.

Also, the idea of injuries not being realistic bothers me more now. Gunshot wounds that are just shrugged off as long as they're not delivered to the head or chest, diving through glass windows, falling from heights, all without significant harm are overused tropes. A real person going through a glass window is devastating and often lethal. And gunshot to the leg or shoulder is also often a lethal injury.

Even superhero stories, which are more based in fantasy, miss the mark for me now. Daredevil and Batman refuse to use guns out of a moral objection to lethal violence, but will smash people in the face and head, inflicting injuries that I don't see how they wouldn't cause death in a least a few of their victims. The Netflix Daredevil series had him crushing criminals heads in with a metal pipe, yet he tells the Punisher, "no guns!" Maybe the idea is that anyone warped enough to try to administer vigilante justice by themselves is also deluded enough to think that they can break bones, crack skulls, and crush windpipes without anyone dying, but it just doesn't ring true.
 
On lighter note than my previous post, I hate the old "feedback on the microphone," anytime someone uses one. Especially when it's used to indicate that the person is saying things people don't want to hear - like it's an auditory manifestation of their awkwardness or unlikability.
 
Also, the idea of injuries not being realistic bothers me more now. Gunshot wounds that are just shrugged off as long as they're not delivered to the head or chest, diving through glass windows, falling from heights, all without significant harm are overused tropes. A real person going through a glass window is devastating and often lethal. And gunshot to the leg or shoulder is also often a lethal injury.

Even superhero stories, which are more based in fantasy, miss the mark for me now. Daredevil and Batman refuse to use guns out of a moral objection to lethal violence, but will smash people in the face and head, inflicting injuries that I don't see how they wouldn't cause death in a least a few of their victims. The Netflix Daredevil series had him crushing criminals heads in with a metal pipe, yet he tells the Punisher, "no guns!" Maybe the idea is that anyone warped enough to try to administer vigilante justice by themselves is also deluded enough to think that they can break bones, crack skulls, and crush windpipes without anyone dying, but it just doesn't ring true.
I'd say that it's the opposite, at least in terms of heroes. Hollywood would have you believe that any gunshot wound is lethal, no matter where you hit a person and that's typically the case with unnamed bad guys/goons. But you are right that the heroes or main villains get non-lethal gunshot wounds more often than not. However, there are a lot of parts of the human body that you can hit and deliver a non-lethal wound, at least non-lethal if treated quickly enough. You only have to look at the numbers of wounded vs. killed in a battle in the past 50 or so years to see that not all gunshot wounds are immediately lethal.

I think that it's the Hollywood/pop culture perception of all gunshot wounds being automatically lethal that we get heroes like Batman and Daredevil who don't like to use guns. In the mind of these writers, gun = automatic kill, fists/melee weapons = wounding only. Of course, this ignores the fact that hitting someone over the head with a heavy object can easily lead to serious brain injury or even death, while shooting someone in the leg (as long you don't hit the femoral artery) will wound a person and likely put them out of action for months while they recover. But yeah, it's odd that beating the ever living snot out of a person, up to and often including breaking bones is so much more preferable to non-lethal gunshot wound. Especially given that both would require hospitalization and months of physical therapy to recover.
 
It doesn't happen often anymore, but sometimes you'll see TV shows or movies showing a WW2 bomb being dug up. When it happens, you can always see the paint and the metal fins on the back.
In real life, the fins would have been ripped off when it hit the ground and the paint would have eroded very soon afterward. It'd look somewhat like an egg with the end sawed off, covered in rust.
Heck, on a TV show episode I saw about a year ago, it even showed the fuse fins stuck in the back, meaning the darned thing didn't even arm itself when it hit the ground (that'd mean it struck the earth with the fuse pin not removed or crashing with the plane carrying it).
At Aberdeen Proving Ground, one of my instructors was the EOD officer who responded to the 1994 airplane crash of Frank Eugene Corder onto the grounds of the White House. We had lots of discussions on EOD activities and he said movies drove him nuts because they so rarely ever got things right. We discussed WW2 munitions and he showed me a lot of the stuff they'd had dumped at the gates by people who'd found ordnance in the ground from the 1800s to the Vietnam era.
The PBS did an excellent series in the 70s, called "Danger UXB" about Brit EOD units during WW2.
 
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Here's an oldie but a goodie. When you have people encountering a strange alien goo or phenomenon and they just stick their hand in it or stick a finger in the goo. Lady agent on Debris I'm talking to you! I think they even did this a few times on X-Files. That drives me nuts! I watched it with my nephew and he was cheering for her death because it was so dumb! :lol:
 
Here's an oldie but a goodie. When you have people encountering a strange alien goo or phenomenon and they just stick their hand in it or stick a finger in the goo. Lady agent on Debris I'm talking to you! I think they even did this a few times on X-Files. That drives me nuts! I watched it with my nephew and he was cheering for her death because it was so dumb! :lol:
Sort like how cops in movies and TV shows are always seen taste testing unknown powders to see if or confirm that it's some sort of narcotic.
 

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