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I'm doing a column on jarring mistakes that shock you out of your movie experience, and I could use help to get the best ones. I wrote the column on recent movies, but my editor suggested I go back and replace some of my current examples with the biggest ones from older movies. Excerpt with examples:
"I'm ready to believe in a blind superhero with impossible martial arts abilities, but not in one that can plummet 30 stories and bounce off a fire escape without cramming his boots up between his ears ('Daredevil'). I can deal with a mercenary archeologist who displays Olympic-level talent in anything at all she encounters while still remaining fresh and carefully made-up, but not in one that effortlessly uses a shark as an escape route ('Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life'). I can accept three supremely talented female investigators cracking into a Mongolian military base and dodging bullets, but not that the bleak, remote base has a mechanical bull ('Charlie's Angels 2: Full Throttle'). I'm not talking about disappearing cigarettes, or changing car upholstery, or other minor errors in consistency and accuracy that plague every movie. I don't care about magical makeup that's impervious to everything up to and including hurricanes and mud wrestling. I don't even care that none of the many, many smashed late-model cars in 'Bad Boys II' had working air bags. I mean things like wondering why Michael Keaton's 'Batman,' supposedly the world's greatest martial artist, would step outside his the Batcave wearing a costume that completely prevented his head from turning. Filmmakers, please! Movie magic is one thing, but we're not idiots."
My recent contenders include Neo fighting 100 Smiths with little problem but being stymied by four thugs with pointy things, Wolverine not being able to identify Mystique at very close range in the second X-Men movie when he smelled her from five feet away in the first one, the amazing "yank it off" necklace from 'Pirates of the Caribbean' that magically breaks and hooks again, over and over, and most of 'Charlies Angels 2.'
What are some good bonehead mistakes in movies, ones that, logically reasoned, would undermine significant portions of the plot or even make the climactic ending unnecessary? What have you seen on the big screen that made you go "oh, come on!"
I will, of course, shamelessly steal your ideas and use them myself, but I'll thank you a lot when I win an award for it. I'll use the code words "little people."
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Tom Sawyer flipping a convertible, being trapped underneath it while the building exploded around him, and then walking up one minute later without a scratch or his hair messed up.
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quote:the amazing "yank it off" necklace from 'Pirates of the Caribbean' that magically breaks and hooks again, over and over
Okay, I'll make a post later helping you with your article, but for what it's worth, I've got a necklace like that. It's essentially a breakaway clasp.
Also a popular design in the lanyards many people use to carry around work or school I.D.s
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I don't know if this is what you're looking for, but almost all of Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt (his personal favorite) was entirely unnecessary. A couple minutes into the film, a couple of police detectives stop the antagonist and exchange a few words with him before letting him go on his merry way. Then, towards the end of the film the authorities decide they're going to arrest him without any further evidence ever being obtained. Of course, by that time the lead detective had fallen for the girl who was the antagonist's niece and for her sake decides to let him leave town before arresting him and then the action ensues...
Also, although this is merely along the lines of a "minor error in consistency," I absolutely love Chuck Norris' movie Firewalker. Watching the villan's eyepatch switch back and forth between his right and left eyes is hysterical...
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Remembered one: in Citizen Kane, the movie revolves around his dying word, "Rosebud." He died alone. How does anyone know what he said?
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the Mummy: Mummy sucks the juices out of bad American's to regain its power. As long as he's not at full power he is scared of a cat. Why didn't last bad American superglue a freakin cat to his chest?
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It would take me a while to think of the really ridiculous ones, but here are a few:
Tom cruise and bad guy drive at each other at >40mph on motorcycles and jump into each other yet fall to the ground unscathed (MI2)
A robot probe is sent through the stargate to see where it leads to. There is no communication through the stargate. So how exactly do they track the probe to a distant galaxy? (stargate)
A brilliant scientist finds the cure for cancer but is too damn stupid to realize that the important ingredient is only present when his samples are contaminated with bugs. The whole audience figures this out the second the problem is presented (medicine man).
The Klingons use some trickery to get the shield frequency for the enterprise and proceed to blow the hell out of it. On about 50 Star Trek episodes various people simply suggest they change the shield frequency to prevent such things from happening. (Star Trek Generations, I think)
Posts: 4548 | Registered: May 2001
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I think you're forgetting the Ed Woods movies. I've always loved the way you can see cards in the background of an ancient graveyard, or the way that the monsters would bump into walls and have the wall move.
Also, if you look carefully at the sky in the first episode of Band of Brothers, you'll notice contrails in the sky as the planes are lifting off.
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Yah, but Ed Woods movies are classics for those reasons. Besides, was anyone ever involved in the movie enough before something like that happened?
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How about in Twister when to make sure they aren't sucked into the tornado they tie themselves to plumbing on the inside of a building made out of wood, rusty nails and glass?
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Highlander 2's "let's invent a stupid sci-fi plot device so we can have another movie" technique is at least an honorable mention.
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I've never seen Swordfish, but from what I've read, a guy was able to have a gun pointed to his head and have oral sex being performed on him, was able to break a code that should have taken a very long time.
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What about when the main character shoots the other guy at the begining of the movie but at the end the guy is alive?!(Momento)
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How about when in Commando Arnold hits a telephone pole at over 40 MPH without a seatbelt and gets out of the car without even being sore.
In a Knights Tale he gets stabbed in the arm and can't hold the damn lance but if you strap it to his arm he has enough power to unhorse the other guy?
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So far my list is Batman, Die Another Day, Citizen Cane, Darth Vader in general, Matrix Reloaded, Independence Day, and X2. Still going...
There's a classic Mystery Science Theater episode where they're watching a horrible movie about a post-apocalyptic world. The hero has to get to a castle or something in time. He swiftly disappears behind a rock and viola, he soars out from behind it on a hang glider. The bots' only response is a tortured "What?"
That's the feeling I'm looking for. I've actually got plenty more to choose from, but I don't want to miss any really good ones.
[ July 28, 2003, 03:52 PM: Message edited by: Chris Bridges ]
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When Superman in the original movie caught Lois after falling from the helicopter. He catches her. The film show her instantly changing from falling to moving up. She would have been crushed in his arms of steel.
Posts: 1244 | Registered: Apr 2003
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What he wants are specific instances not when minor mistakes occur, but when human behavior, probability or the laws of physics react beyond our credibility. Not filming mistakes but plot holes.
For example, Huck Finn. Boy tries to free slave friend by rafting into the deep south.
well, that's not a movie problem is it.
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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Well on that score The Matrix ReloadedMinor Spoilers is even worse. Trinity would've been killed if she hit the car but Neo coming in a past super sonic speeds and instantly changing her direction is fine? And then the same thing when he save Morpheus and the key maker.
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In The Mummy (more recent remake, not the original), the Mummy takes the eyeballs out of one of the Americans and puts them in his own eye sockets. Of course the eyes come from the one and only American wearing thick glasses in the movie, but the Mummy can see just fine...
Posts: 2848 | Registered: Feb 2003
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I'll have to watch Superman again, but I thought I remembered him dropping slightly when he caught her.
No, what bugged me in the Superman movies was how he could reverse time and save Lois, presumably letting the town he saved the first time die the second time. Or the end of the second movie, where suddenly Superman displays brand new powers he hasn't had in his 40+ year history at that point, such as the dreaded S frisbee. Much, much worse is the 3rd one, when he reveals his identity to Lois, flies her around the world, and then does the hypnotising kiss again. What, he does this every weekend? Grrr.... The stupidities of the 3rd and 4th Superman movies were many, but that one actually angered me.
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And then there was that part in Air Force One where the strike force rode inside a modified stealth fighter. There's no way you could seat six or eight guys in there (unless, of course, you removed some vital things like the fuel tanks and had them sit on top of the engines, which is apparently what they did).
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My favorite line fom Star Wars is when Obi Wan Kenobi is looking at the burn marks on the Jawa's van: "Only Imperial Stormtroopers are so precise." Funny, the rest of the movie they couldn't hit the ocean from a boat...
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Windtalkers, Nicholas Cage ran, dived and fired off four shots with his pistol, killed four Japanese soldiers, and didn't get shot by them.
Nope. Just can't happen.
Also, the new Tomb Raider was bad.
Laura Croft said, "Finding Pandora's box will be the greatest find since the discovery of the Pyramids." WTF? Who "discovered" the pyramids? Can't you see some 10th century Arab waking up one morning and looking out his window and saying, "Woah...what is that...hey Achmed...you see those before?"
I have plenty of problems with the Tomb Raider movies, but first and foremost is the utter lack of any emotional commitment in the character. I know that's how she acts in the game, but I don't get to control the character in the movie, I've got no interest. Or, as I described the first one, it's like watching someone else play a video game on God mode.
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Speaking of John Woo, what about Face/Off? Of course, there are the requisite parts about ten machine guns being fired at someone and missing, or how a person can do a shoulder roll and take out five extras a hundred feet away, but then unload a clip at the main hero/ villain from ten feet and hit nothing.
But the part I really hated was when the bad John Travolta, masquerading as a head of the FBI (if I remember correctly), sent an army of federal agents to the house of an unconvicted drug dealer with orders to murder everyone inside (including a small child) and he got praised for it, rather than fired and imprisoned. What? Constitution? Never heard of it.
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Ok, all of these were amusing, but this one deserves a special mention.
quote: Can't you see some 10th century Arab waking up one morning and looking out his window and saying, "Woah...what is that...hey Achmed...you see those before?"
ROFLOL!
Sorry I can't add any, but all that is coming to mind are plot holes from TV episodes, not movies. :shrug:
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There is always the classic Ed Wood drama, “Plan 9 from Outer Space.” I understand it include scenes where the characters get in a car to go to a cemetery, and then arrive there in a different model car.
Or where the Air Force General is talking about military plans on a map labeled “Santa Fe Railroad.”
But my personal favorite is an Italian stinker named “War Between the Planets.” A Scifi mish-mash that had the classic stupidities:
- The spaceship stops dead in space. The clamps in front open, and the landing vehicles slips out.
- One character remarks, “The planet is completely frozen. Even the atmosphere is frozen!” Three scenes later they are on the planet, walking around without any spacesuits on.
But looking for scenes like those in stinkers is like shooting fish in a barrel. If you don’t find them, you haven’t been paying attention!
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Well, isn't the all time classic (modernday) the scene in Independence Day where Jeff Goldblum uses an Apple laptop to upload a virus to a completely alien computer system...and it works!!!
Also in Blair Witch Project they run out of every possible resource except batteries for their video camera?
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Pick a movie -- any movie. I can almost guarantee that some sort of problem like that will be mentioned for it.
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How about Raiders of the Lost Arc win Indiana Jones put's a small bag of sand down to copmensate for a really large gold statue. I believe that it was calculated that the thing he picked up would weigh close to 100lbs.
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I couldn't figure out why the guy in Die Another Day didn't have the diamonds removed from his face? They can't have been comfortable or difficult to remove. And why did he keep a necklace of diamonds around his neck if he was going to keep a bunch stashed in his face?
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Already got the Independence Day laptop, as well as the fact that a buncha tourists with a half-hour training could fly fighter jets against the aliens more effectively than the Air Force pros earlier in the movie.
In Pirates, the pirates killed in the town don't die. Remember, the one that Orlando axed showed up again and startled him just before he got clubbed.
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quote: How about Raiders of the Lost Arc win Indiana Jones put's a small bag of sand down to copmensate for a really large gold statue. I believe that it was calculated that the thing he picked up would weigh close to 100lbs.
If you remember, though, after he put the bag of sand down, the traps went off. So it didn't really compensate. It may have shown that Jones wasn't as smart as he thought, but it wasn't a plot hole.
Speaking of Die Another Day , did anyone wonder how a bone marrow transplant can make someone into a completely different human being? It even wiped out the guy's accent. My grandma had a bone marrow transplant when she got cancer. I guess that explains why she came out of the operation as a large burly black man.
And did it seem odd to anyone that the only thing separating North Korea and South Korea in the James Bond universe was a mine field? Oooh, if we could only figure out a way to get past the mines... then we could take over the world! Bwahahahaha!
And don't even get me started on the giant space magnifying glass. Gees, if the plot points in that movie didn't take you out of the film, I have a copy of Wild Wild West I'd be willing to sell you.
Posts: 2804 | Registered: May 2003
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The thing that cracked my suspension of disbelief was the scene in Pirates of the Carribean where Orlando Bloom is stuck in a rapidly sinking boat, and the bad guy shoots a cannon at it.
The boat explodes, everybody cries, and moments later, Orlando Bloom climbs back onto the boat, none the worse for wear.
WHAT THE HECK!? How in the world did he get out of that mess?
Oh well, that was the worst moment from that movie, like a piece of coal in a field of shining gems... ^-^
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There is this silly movie called Custer of the West, made in 1968. Of course, since it is about G. A. Custer, it recreates Custer's Last Stand. This recreation is fairly long, detailed, and involved. And nobody has any blood. Except for one Native American, who has just a little. I saw it at a Saturday matinee (anyone remember those?) when it first came out, and I just thought that was the oddest thing.
Also, I guess this is a pretty minor thing, but it completely jarred me out of the mood of the movie when I saw Jurassic Park the first time and one of the characters makes the statement, in connection with the idea that all theme parks have their little bugs to be worked out when they first open, that Disneyland opened in 1956. Well, it opened in 1955. As I recall, this bothered me so much that I shouted out, in a full theatre (as this was the day after the film came out), something like, "It opened in 1955, idiot." Well, it wasn't my finest hour, I guess but, man, that bugged me.
Oh, and Sopwith...to be fair, at first the mummy seems to have a little bit of trouble focusing the eyes, if I recall correctly.
Posts: 2454 | Registered: Jan 2003
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I hate to say it, and I know I will regret saying it here, but Armageddon was great until the moment that they went into space. Unfortunately for me this was early in the picture. Everything they did in space was wrong. My family just couldn't undertstand how I couldn't suspend my disbelief, but it was wrong everywhere! Gives SF a bad name! Posts: 2506 | Registered: Jul 2003
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Was that the one where it was somehow easier to train drill operators to fly the space shuttle than to teach highly educated astronauts to operate drilling equipment? Or was that the other asteroid movie?
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That's awful. I just wrote this all out, and accidentally closed the window. Grr.
Okay... fast rundown.
ID4 - Using a laptop to interface with alien technology - Crop duster pilots flying fighter jets - An alien space ship that took forever to get to Area 51 after it somehow made it across the Galaxy at ridiculous speeds - Everything else in that movie
I won't even go into Dungeons and Dragons or Matrix Reloaded.
Men in Black - How'd that cockroach thing fit inside the Edgar suit? I mean, really. And, the way it unfolded, its head would have been in the human body's feet.
Raiders of the Lost Ark - - So the best defense against the Ark of the Covenant is to close your eyes? The ostrich method of supernatural defense? Why didn't anyone else ever think of that?
Ghost - - Patrick Swayze can't push a bottle cap cuz he's so incorporeal... yet floors or stairs aren't any problem... nor are moving trains, apparently.
Planet of the Apes - the whole ending.
Blair Witch - throwing the map away? eh?
S'all I can think of right now. I'm sure there are more. I'm constantly finding major fault with screenwriters and directors. It's one of my less endearing qualities.
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Again, I'm going to defend Raiders of the Lost Ark. I think the point was that the contents of the ark were sacred. God would punish those who profaned them by opening it. Since Indy & co. were unwilling participants, if they respected God enough to keep their eyes closed, thus refraining from gazing upon the sacred relics, he would not strike them down.
I only saw Independence Day once, but it was one of the worst experiences of my life. In fact, if I ever say anything stupid on this forum, you can blame the mind-sucking effect of that movie. Two of the things that still stick with me, of the ones that have not been mentioned, are as follows:
I remember two people being stuck in a tunnel. A huge explosion takes place and a wall of fire comes at them, threatening to vaporize them and anything else in its path. As they can't make it out of the tunnel, they step into a shallow recess in the wall and escape unscathed.
I also remember an army of gargantuan ships hovering over every major metropolis in the world. Then Jeff Goldblum and the Virus o' Death disable the ships, and it shows them crashing in mountains and wilderness. Isn't that convenient?
Posts: 2804 | Registered: May 2003
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That's true speed, the "alarm" went off, but Jones still managed to throw a 100lbs idol across a very respectable chasam, and it was caught easily on the other side.
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And then the same thing when he save Morpheus and the key maker.![[Embarrassed]](redface.gif)
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Not that this make up for not meeting me when you came to Denver. ![[Wink]](wink.gif)
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