Things you're tired of seeing in movies
- Thread starter Joosh
- Start date
I believe you can blame Jimmy Stewart for the “talks to imaginary friend” trope…
HMSwolfe
Master Member
Hey, leave American Werewolf outta this…
p51
Sr Member
Yeah, but Harvey was invisible and silent in the stage and movie versions. The whole trope got brought up for when you think a character is really there and later on you realize they never were there at all. There are several examples, but I think Tyler Durden from "Fight Club" is probably the best presented version.
p51
Sr Member
it's probably been said here before, but:
I can't count the number of movies I've seen this in, but "Greenland" was especially eye-rolling-inducing.
- A catastrophe is going on and oops, I need to go back for something but don't worry, I'll be right back.
I can't count the number of movies I've seen this in, but "Greenland" was especially eye-rolling-inducing.
Lightning
Master Member
But they saw them in the Historical Documents!
Star Trek: Enterprise, Season 4 opener.
Riceball
Master Member
This was one of the issues that I always had with The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead, none of these people ever had a bugout plan much less a rendevous location in case they had to bug out of wherever they were staying. It seemed like that in every season they'd find a place to stay, someplace they called home for a while, then, inevitably, some sort of threat comes along forcing them to abandon their home and scatter to the winds. And every time they do that, they spend the rest of the season, if not part of the next season, going around trying to find each other again, all because no one thought that it might be a good idea to pick a spot that they all knew and would fall back on if they had to abandon their home and got separated. I can buy them not doing that the first, but after that you'd think that someone would have come up with the idea of a rendevous spot just in case it happened again.
p51
Sr Member
Exactly. You are clearly aware of the concept of a "Rally point" in the military where you're not all leaving at the same time but you're supposed to meet in a pre-determined spot (sometimes as simple as, "meet at that stand of trees at the edge of the field").
Old school (1963-89) Doctor Who has often been labelled as "characters chasing after each other down hallways," which was a hallmark of that show for the very same reason. But at least there, companions would often go back to the TARDIS as they had no idea where the Doctor was, but would usually get lost (or nabbed) along the way.
Iskelderon
Sr Member
Haven't kept track of the bingo card, but did we already have "bad guys doing good" or "bad guy gets recruited to change his ways"?
Similarly in shows were the characters are separated and there's absolutely no way they would know where each person is, and somehow the other person pulls up in a car and says "Get in!" The Hitman's Bodyguard I'm talking to you...
ScourgiousJinx
Master Member
Someone who is wearing high heels is being chased and they either leave the heels on or they take them off but decide to carry them. If a murderous stalker is pursuing, it might be a good idea to loose the high heels unless you intend to use them as weapons.
There was just a video on Ridiculousness the other night where they were showing people pranking other people where they were dressed like an evil clown in a park. This girl was in a dress and heals and when she saw the clown, she kicked her heels off in a couple seconds and ran!
Okay, here's one that always gets me...
Whenever some movie has a scene on the moon which depicts any one of the original Apollo landing sites, it shows the entire lunar module completely intact.
There are no lunar modules (uh, the top half) on the moon! The ascent stages all went back up to their command modules, and then were jettisoned into space before the Apollo spacecrafts splashed down in the ocean.
I was watching Men in Black 3, and this is noticeably a huge error when Boris The Animal escapes from his lunar prison.
Either Hollywood writers are dumber than rocks, or they actually think there are lunar modules on the moon. (I tend to think it's more the former than the latter).
Whenever some movie has a scene on the moon which depicts any one of the original Apollo landing sites, it shows the entire lunar module completely intact.
There are no lunar modules (uh, the top half) on the moon! The ascent stages all went back up to their command modules, and then were jettisoned into space before the Apollo spacecrafts splashed down in the ocean.
I was watching Men in Black 3, and this is noticeably a huge error when Boris The Animal escapes from his lunar prison.
Either Hollywood writers are dumber than rocks, or they actually think there are lunar modules on the moon. (I tend to think it's more the former than the latter).
Lightning
Master Member
Futurama had a sight gag about that. When Fry and Leela hide in the lunar lander you can see a sign that says something like "assent module returned by the historical stickler society (year).". I would expect nothing less from that writers room.
Well it was obvious those writers actually "got it." Hence the gag with the sign. But I expect better from other Sci-Fi movies. Alas... S*I*G*H
HMSwolfe
Master Member
Literally 90% of this thread is just people complaining about visual shorthand in film. It’s not writers being incompetent, it’s about quickly communicating a message without expending unnecessary time doing so. The same reason that most films that reference France show the Eiffel Tower, or how alien attacks all seem to happen in New York—they’re using simplified images/visuals to get the message across. Most people don’t care about the minutiae of military procedure, the exact date that some historical event happened, or the actual physics of some stunt.
This, and "meta-narratives."
Be confident and stick by your work. Openly acknowledging something silly or breaking the fourth wall isn't always necessary or, by this point, very clever. It's a very flaccid and safe way of being non-committal. It's really lazy and kind of condescending.
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