Unbelieveable Movie Scenes : what were they thinking?

[Michael Bergeron]

See, I hear that all the time and I don't think it was that Superman was spinning the Earth backwards. Only that he was flying so fast he was going back in time, and from the viewer's perspective time rolling backwards could only be perceived by seeing the Earth slowing, stopping and going in the opposite direction.

Which direction do you have to fly to go back in time? :lol

The one that gets me from Superman is when he's flying with Lois and she's just holding his hand gliding. She'd be hanging on for dear life.

 

[CessnaDriver]

Which direction do you have to fly to go back in time? :lol

The one that gets me from Superman is when he's flying with Lois and she's just holding his hand gliding. She'd be hanging on for dear life.

I've sort of come to this weird little theory of mine that Superman's unique atomic structure can temporarily change properties of things he touches, so doing things like flying Lois around by just holding her hand or lifting New Krypton or grabbing hold of an aircraft that would probably come apart from bearing a load where he grabs them can occur. Anyhow, works for me.

 

[Rupert_Angier]

Temple of Doom.
A life raft keeping three people from going splat? more then once!
I still cringe at the idiocy of that. Maybe if they started on an almost vertical very sloping
surface and gradually slide down to horizontal.

Pretty much all of Armegeddon.

Wasn't this in Mythbusters?

 

[CessnaDriver]

Wasn't this in Mythbusters?

Yeah if memory serves.. ended up using a massive airline life raft nearly parachute in size.

 

[TheDoctor]

The end sequence of ID4 always got to me, from the "We'll upload a virus" notion (particularly since, at that point, Macs and PCs couldn't even talk to each other, and they're from the same planet)

I posted about this before, so I won't spend too much time on this, but it ticks me off when people dismiss this scene due to their own lack of understanding.

The short hand of it is that you obviously don't understand what they were doing (and I will concede that it's the fault of the movie for not explaining it well). The 'virus' was a feedback of the signal the aliens were hiding in our satellites - not a virus in the sense of what you get when you use file sharing networks to download music. The program Goldblum wrote on his PowerBook changed the satellite signal to issue different commands to the ships on Earth. That's what Goldblum was explaining on the whiteboard. Unfortunately, all people took away is that Goldblum was writing a "computer virus" to infect the alien ship - the dumbed down explanation was TOO dumbed down.

Also, only total n00bs couldn't exchange data between a Mac and a PC. Macs could not only exhchamge files, but also communicate over networks just fine.

 

[pengbuzz]

Superman 2 when he throws his symbol at the villains.

It killed that movie for me

family guy - the cleveland - loretta quagmire Video - Pinkbike

Go to 8:37; I think Non had the same complaint.

 

[Rotwang]

AI had a major string of things that didn't quite compute.

He eats and shorts out. The heli should have been crushed by all that ice and the incredibly contrived and arbitrary single day resurrection of his "mother".

I've had screaming fights with people who claim it's a fairy tale, but even fairy tales have internal logic, the internal logic of AI lies dead under a bridge with signs of having been badly abused ...

 

[Solo4114]

I posted about this before, so I won't spend too much time on this, but it ticks me off when people dismiss this scene due to their own lack of understanding.

The short hand of it is that you obviously don't understand what they were doing (and I will concede that it's the fault of the movie for not explaining it well). The 'virus' was a feedback of the signal the aliens were hiding in our satellites - not a virus in the sense of what you get when you use file sharing networks to download music. The program Goldblum wrote on his PowerBook changed the satellite signal to issue different commands to the ships on Earth. That's what Goldblum was explaining on the whiteboard. Unfortunately, all people took away is that Goldblum was writing a "computer virus" to infect the alien ship - the dumbed down explanation was TOO dumbed down.

Also, only total n00bs couldn't exchange data between a Mac and a PC. Macs could not only exhchamge files, but also communicate over networks just fine.

I saw the movie once, in a theater in 1996 on my college's campus. I don't remember any of that being the case, and I so disliked the movie that I'm not really inclined to go back and see if you're right. So, I'll just take your word for it and chalk it up to bad writing not really effectively explaining what was going on. ID4 was, for me, the point at which my enjoyment of summer blockbuster films went from about a 70/30 good/bad split, to a 30/70 split. I dunno what happened, but it was like ID4 ushered in this era of craptastic blockbusters. That or my tastes just changed.

And I know you could exchange data between Macs and PCs. It was more just hyperbole.

 

[Jeyl]

The opening minutes of ALIEN3.

Let's take one of the biggest and most exciting movie climaxes in motion picture history and make it all for nothing. Let's change one woman's choice to mount a daring rescue into hell all by herself and turn that into the mistake that kills them all. This will all work out great because now we can have an attempted gang rape of one of cinemas greatest heroines!

And btw, Merry Christmas!

 

[Argonaut]

the bourne identity when jason falls like five stories, uses a body to break his fall, and walks away unharmed. its pretty ridiculous: The Bourne Identity (10/10) Movie CLIP - Stairwell Plunge (2002) HD - YouTube

 

[Nwerke]

I do understand what your saying however this isn't a "name your worse films" thread. If you happen to know a particular film SCENE, I would love to hear about it.

Understood, which is why I disclaimered my post. I'm still digesting the movie and it's really hard to pick a moment. I absolutely am not calling it 'my worst film'; I'm saying it's such a smorgasbord of individual WTF moments that it's just plain hard to choose a front runner.

But here's a really minor example: when Sam decides he needs to go to NEST to tell them about the plot he inexplicably takes Carly with him. So when the guards sass him and deny him entry and jack his car off the ground, his sudden burst of hysterical screaming is kinda unexpected. He's an annoying character but you expect that by now. You still DON'T expect him to throw a tantrum like a tiny child in front of a supermodel girlfriend. He just screams and screams and screams. Jarring.

and Randy Quaid's perfectly vertical flight up the alien beam, in spite of the fact that he would've stalled pretty soon after going vertical like that.

Ain't necessarily so! I watched an RAAF F/A-18 go perfectly vertical from sea level straight up at least a KM or two.

 

[NormanF]

I posted about this before, so I won't spend too much time on this, but it ticks me off when people dismiss this scene due to their own lack of understanding.

The short hand of it is that you obviously don't understand what they were doing (and I will concede that it's the fault of the movie for not explaining it well). The 'virus' was a feedback of the signal the aliens were hiding in our satellites - not a virus in the sense of what you get when you use file sharing networks to download music. The program Goldblum wrote on his PowerBook changed the satellite signal to issue different commands to the ships on Earth. That's what Goldblum was explaining on the whiteboard. Unfortunately, all people took away is that Goldblum was writing a "computer virus" to infect the alien ship - the dumbed down explanation was TOO dumbed down.

Also, only total n00bs couldn't exchange data between a Mac and a PC. Macs could not only exhchamge files, but also communicate over networks just fine.

His character also calls it a virus.

Sent from my Etch-A-Sketch

 

[TheDoctor]

His character also calls it a virus.

Sent from my Etch-A-Sketch

That's because he's trying to explain a difficult concept to people who don't know what he's talking about (Military Brass, the president, the audience...).

 

[Too Much Garlic]

Explosives breaking up the ice and sending chunks of it hurtling down towards the submerged underwater base in that G.I.Joe movie.

The fact that wasn't stopped by the writer, director, any of the crew or actors for being so utterly stupid even a 3-year-old could have told it, you begin to question the people who actually worked on that movie.

 

[SSgt Burton]

The Black Hole (Disney '79)...

Okay dismissing that the entire premise of the film is about a spacecraft that can hover close to "the largest black hole ever on record"...

At the end of the film, the Cygnus is breaking up after being bombarded by a meteor shower. The structure of the ship is falling apart and being drawn into the Black Hole.

Our heroes have to escape by getting into the Cygnus' Probe Ship (which they plan to use as an escape pod)...

However our heroes have to go outside the Cygnus (I believe actually through a hole in the side of the ship) to get to the Probe ship.

They do this entirely without spacesuits! They're not even wearing oxygen masks! AND there is a "mist" swirling around them as they try to climb the frame of the Probe ship to enter it (I guess this mist is what is allowing them to breathe in outer space :rolleyes). At one point one of the characters (Pizer) loses his footing and beings floating off into space toward the black hole screaming (yes screaming) HELLLPPP!!

I know this is a kid's movie by Disney... but the stretch of how the universe works goes completely into WTF land here. :lol

 

[crabra comander]

the bourne identity when jason falls like five stories, uses a body to break his fall, and walks away unharmed. its pretty ridiculous: The Bourne Identity (10/10) Movie CLIP - Stairwell Plunge (2002) HD - YouTube

Maybe he viraled out...

You know, Bourne Legacy styles. :confused

 

[Timmythekid]

Prometheus
Shaw: But it's what I choose to believe.

This is what happens when you let a writer who doesn't know how science works write a scientist. There is a big difference between knowing and believing. When you're in the field of science, your work draws on conclusions that are tangible and/or provable. Despite Shaw being the scientist who convinced Weyland to spend a trillion dollars on this expidition, she barely has any scientific traits. If character is so closed minded about their beliefs that they'll brush off anyone's questions about their conclusions, they are NOT SCIENTISTS. What makes this film worse is that it paints her as the real thinker amongst the cast. :facepalm

Not a problem - scientists are in no way above holding personal biases, prejudices, and unfounded beliefs. See any number of scientists who defend creationism, maintain religious beliefs, etc. Being a 'scientist' doesn't automatically turn someone into a robot.

And the ID4 thing? So let's accept that interpretation - instead of writing a virus you're arguing that he took the signal the alien ship sent, fed it back into the system, and reverse engineered brand new commands (because, you know, from say any given small program you can deduce the entire programming language it was written in) - in essence figured out the programming language to the extent that he could write a version of the signal that did something it wasn't intended to do, get the computer to load that altered program and run it with unintended results. How is this not a virus again?

 

[TymerDC]

I just recalled a particular scene while reading all these posts regarding Superman. In Superman 2, the scene when General Zod and company invade the small town and he points his finger and shoots a levitating beam at one of the townsfolk then levitates a shotgun and puls it to himself like a magnate. Don't all Kryptonians obtain the same powers under a yellow sun? So whats up with this pointing finger levitating crap?

 

[0neiros]

Escape from LA, Not just the surfing scene, which the makers of Die Another Day decided was a good thing to rip off, But the whole basketball challenge. Yeah, a one-eyed guy under pressure can nail that many shots.

 

[firesprite]

Which direction do you have to fly to go back in time? :lol

The one that gets me from Superman is when he's flying with Lois and she's just holding his hand gliding. She'd be hanging on for dear life.

I've sort of come to this weird little theory of mine that Superman's unique atomic structure can temporarily change properties of things he touches, so doing things like flying Lois around by just holding her hand or lifting New Krypton or grabbing hold of an aircraft that would probably come apart from bearing a load where he grabs them can occur. Anyhow, works for me.

*pushes nerd glasses up*

In the comics, one of the means they showed for how Superman's super strength, invulnerability, and flight work is that he actually has a tactile-based telekinetic shield that encompasses his body at skin level. Therefor when Superman is flying with Lois (or anyone else for that matter), it extends to her and supports her as well.

*end nerd info-dump*