Mission Impossible, the first remake with Tom Cruise. The final scene ruined the whole thing for me. He’s hanging on the outside of a helicopter flying through a train tunnel chasing a train - which apparently wasn’t improbable enough because he then blows up the helicopter and the explosion sends him flying safely onto the train.
I’m sorry, but that helicopter was made of metal and glass. Anything that blew it up is going to turn him into a fine mist. In another, cheesier action movie, fine! But the movie took itself so seriously otherwise that I just couldn’t anymore.
I can relate to this. A movie asks for suspension of disbelief, and I am happy to grant that. But then it has to present a coherent world for which I suspended my disbelief. If it doesn’t then I wasted my suspended disbelief and that’s annoying.
The TV show 24 killed me with how he was able to do much in an hour when it could easily have taken 30-1.5 hr just in travel time around cities like LA.
For anyone who doesn’t know the show premise was each episode was 1 hr in a 24hr period where the main guy has to stop some kind of terrorist or otherwise crazy attack with dozens of sub plots and things he has to do per hour too. But somehow he travels across major cities in minutes.
Yeah, but you still remember what it sounds like when the phones ring and the sound the clock makes.
What kills me. The smart person, call them a leader in molecular biology. That can suddenly fly a space ship. Operate everything in said space ship. Write a computer program, in excel, to translate an alien species. Like come on dawg. I get it. You’re smart and make a fun movie. But the whole 1 person that is a fucking the expert in literally everything that happens is just getting old.
Whenever evil antagonist broadcasts his evil message on every major advertisement screen and TV in the world (and PC/mobile device), with full audio.
stupid rant
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Ad screens don’t have speakers you dolt
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No one in times square looks at the ad acreens except the tourists when taking a picture
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Not all ad screens can handle a live stream connection and you’d need to hack into each one to play your message.
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It is literally impossible for everyone to be conveniently watching the TV at the same time as everyone else across the globe
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Overriding every TV broadcast channel with your message requires an RF array an order of magnitude more powerful than Russia’s massive Murmansk-BN electronic warfare system.
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No one watches broadcast TV anymore in most developed countries
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The internet cannot handle a simultaneous stream of video to every digital device in the world without the use of multicast or broadcast, which means evil antangonist is either rolling in with hacking the entire internet backbone to enable multicast traffic or magically broadcasting a signal to devices that don’t support receiving a broadcast signal.
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Evil antagonist has to use multiple zero day CVEs just to force stream his evil message on PC/mobile devices for a whopping 30 seconds.
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I’mma about to ruin medical shows/scenes for y’all. And once you see this, you cannot unsee it. the source for all this is the 15 years I spent riding in the back of the bus as a medic.
When you see a scene in the ER and a critical patient arrives, all the doctors go rushing into the exam room and start doing things and arguing about what to do. If we put this stupidity aside for a moment and roll back the scene to the beginning we will see the mistakes the show makes every time.
First, doctors don’t rush into the exam room the moment the patient arrives. The doctor, just one and not a whole squad of them, will wait for a moment or two to let the medics and nurses get the patient on to a bed and the triage nurse gets the medic’s report.
When the Medics and the cot leaves the room, the doctor will walk to the doorway and stop. Most of them will actually lean against the door jam and just look for a minute or so. They are making their first assessment of the patient from that distance and begin to formulate a treatment plan. Doctors are ACTUALLY TAUGHT to do this medical school. And they practice it because it’s hard to remember in an oh shit moment and hard to do. Even us medics are taught the same thing. If the TV doctor does NOT do this, this is your first warning that this a bullshit medical show no matter what the producers and actors claim about realism. This is basic and fundamental to ER medicine and would be soooo easy to do. This is the point where I’m out and ne’er to be seen again.
The second mistake that gets made is that the doctors themselves do very little of the actual treatment of the patient. They stand off to the side and tell the nurses what they want them to do. The nurses do most of the work. The doctor observes and directs. Only if a procedure that requires a doctors skill and knowledge to do, do they get hands on. So that’s the second bullshit thing in these shows.
And finally, doctors do not consult in the patient’s room unless it absolutely can’t be avoided. Which is very rare. They have a room, generally behind the nurses station where they go for that. I have been in there with doctors on occasions when I asked for a teaching moment to further my skills as a medic from one of them. And no matter what hospital, that’s where we would go.
Speaking of medical dramas:
I was amazed how Stargate Atlantis got one medical procedure right over so many medical dramas I’ve seen.
Patient is in defib, so they get the defibrillator. Doesn’t work, patient’s heart stops. They take away the defibrillator and start doing chest compressions.
I was just… Woaw. This series plays so fast and loose with science. Didn’t expect that.
And isn’t CPR deliberately depicted wrongly in movies and shows because the proper IRL CPR procedure risks breaking a person’s ribs?
Oh, you break ribs when done right.
But they will share all the details with any random supporter waiting for the procedure to be finished in the otherwise empty waiting room, right?
Oh yeah, that is so totally true. HIPPA doesn’t apply to strangers in the hallway.
Is he going to make it, doc?
cries
I don’t know. Damn it Jim! I’m a piano player, not a Doctor!
It didn’t stop me from finishing Prometheus, but what grinds my gears is when the supposedly biologist was trying to pet the alien and it attacked him. Any trained biologist would know not to try to pet animals which you don’t know if it’s timid or not.
I find it unrealistic for any movie involving contact with aliens to not even consider how our and their microbial life would interact with each other. There should be a default rule of “oh you touched the alien? Ok, you will be the quarantine subject that we will monitor to make sure you haven’t caught some slow developing disease that will inevitably kill any earth life in your vicinity because we haven’t developed any kind of resistance to it”.
Except instead of “touched the alien” it would really have to be “entered their atmosphere with your ship” because the ship itself could bring back contaminants that would eventually destroy all life on our planet. And maybe even entering the atmosphere isn’t needed if microbial life occasionally gets swept into space by extreme weather, meteor interactions with the atmosphere, maybe solar ones also. Including this because it’s plausible that earth life originated elsewhere and was just seeded here by some event that allowed life to escape some other location and survive to come here. We’ve also had ships return to earth with life detectable on their outside–because someone on earth sneezed on it before it was launched and the microbial life wasn’t destroyed by being in space.
Similar line of thought when they go on the alien planet and just breathe the atmosphere because they detect oxygen.
I don’t know why people forget even the first moon missions had a quarentine trailer/chamber used by the astronauts for this exact reason.
They were pretty sure they weren’t gonna find microbial life on the moon but they sure as hell weren’t gonna take the risk in case there actually was.
Ironically it’s canon in even Alien (1979) and even a truck driver / pilot knows it. “Oh you got in contact with an alien organism? Sorry can’t let you on the ship.”
For some reason the cowboy style of the Prometheus. The sad thing is they could have written around these bad tropes but chose not to.
The one that gets me is people flying backwards when hit by a bullet / shotgun blast.
I can accept it in movies that aren’t going for realism, even though it annoys me. But, I’ve seen it in movies that are trying for a gritty realism aesthetic, and after that I just can’t enjoy the movie. Add to that movies where silencers go “pfft”, or someone uses a pillow as a silencer, or people shoot guns without ear protection or hearing damage.
If you’re wearing plate armor, you sure do. Especially if it’s got cheaper plates.
I stopped watching Stranger Things because in a show about demons from a parallel universe invading a small town, I couldn’t get over a soccer mom breaking her friend out of a Russian prison camp.
That broke the realism for me.
Season 1 is goat level of good. Goes off the rails from there. The whole 11 going wild thing and then the Russian thing were just not needed.
Not to mention the 76 years or whatever it took them to film it all. Those kids in the last season all looked like mid 20 year olds with a shit corpo job. Not high school age kids.
I stopped before that, I think around the time the guy in the cool car banged some soccer mom. It was just a sign that we weren’t exploring the human condition wither otherworldly tropes, but just throwing shit at the plot wall.
I mean, he doesn’t actually bang her. But those scenes always grossed me out. I don’t want to see adults even almost fucking high school kids in my kids-on-bikes sci-fi show. Maybe the Duffer brothers would say they were lampshading an older sexist trope by gender-flipping it, but that doesn’t make it less repulsive.
Taking a perfectly good true story or novel and ruining it and/or changing it in unnecessary ways
I’m very forgiving in this regard, as long as the movie is entertaining, I’ll go along for the ride.
I did have a related weird thing happen once, though. I don’t remember what movie I was watching, but about halfway through I suddenly realized everyone in the movie was acting and I couldn’t watch anymore. It was a weird feeling, like they were all just lying to me, which of course they always are, but I was suddenly offended--“WTF? This is all bullshit!”
Maybe it was terrible chemistry. Maybe I subconsciously noticed all the subtle clues that the actors hated each other, but were pretending to be friends.
I suppose the one thing I can’t forgive is a complete lack of chemistry between the actors, and that killing their performances.
What I enjoy is watching poorly directed/acted shows or movies and stopping right after a cut. Pay attention, if they’re not the best actors, you can see them starting their lines or getting the gears going. This is especially apparent when there’s no sound. It’s ruined syndicated shows for me.
The snakes were not even dangerous in any way, they were mostly ball pythons if I remember correctly, those are neither venomous, nor eager to bite, their usual reaction is to curl into a ball. Oooh so dangerous! The common theme is to use non-venomous species (for obvious reasons) and people do not notice, since they usually know jackshit about reptiles, and ooh aaah snakes! Scary!
I also laugh, when there is some “super dangerous spider” or something, and then it is always of one of the slowest moving, least venomous, most docile tarantula species. The worst thing with those species is, they might kick itchy hairs on you, and the fangs make a small wound, if you manage to somehow make them bite. But aaah! Spiders! Scary!
Also hilarious when they use goddamn show bred huskies for wolves. Oh come on.
I lost it during Raiders of the Lost Ark when Indy stowed away on the outside of a U-boat and then rode it like a thousand miles across the Mediterranean or wherever they were. I guess they thought submarines just buttoned up when they left port and nobody ever went outside on the conning tower. And they never dove or anything.
It’s been way too long since I watched Raiders, but I remember it being great so I’ll have to watch it again.
That definitely sounds stupid. The only saving grace might be that U-boats, unlike modern submarines, very rarely went underwater. They had diesel engines that ran the engines on the surface and also charged batteries. They could use the batteries underwater, but they didn’t last long. When they attacked they’d go underwater so they could ambush the ships they were attacking. But, to set up for that attack they’d race ahead of the ship while staying above the water, then go under for the ambush. Even a lot of the attacking happened above the water. Yes, they had torpedoes, but they also had deck guns. Since their targets were mostly commercial ships, they didn’t have to worry about the ships shooting back.
On the other hand, the fact they were used on the surface meant that there was almost always a crew on the conning tower. Technically you could do everything without using the conning tower bridge. But, they almost never did. Even during storms they were up on the conning tower, not sheltering inside. It was awful being exposed to the elements like that, but the visibility through a periscope was awful compared to standing outside.
It is a fun pulp adventure action movie, but if you expect realism you gotta stop there. As far as I know it was all inspired by old serial shows and pulp stories from magazines. Ya gotta just let certain stories be fun. Though as a geek it is fun to rag on their issues I know, have done that lots.
But yes seemed silly he hung on the uboat that long, I wondered about it growing up since was a regular watched movie, that was a long freaking trip to be hanging regardless of food service and comfort.
U-boats, unlike modern submarines, very rarely went underwater
I’ve read a lot of memoirs from WWII submariners (German, American and British - not sure if there are any Japanese memoirs in existence) and they always made test dives at the start of a trip, just to make sure everything was shipshape. Even if they somehow hadn’t noticed Indy clinging desperately to the conning tower, he would have been left behind pretty early on. Unless he had gills like Kevin Costner in Waterworld.
Even a lot of the attacking happened above the water. Yes, they had torpedoes, but they also had deck guns.
Fun fact: the British experimented with subs that mounted a (fixed) 12" gun taken from a decommissioned battleship. The idea was that they would surface just enough to expose the gun and then blast enemy merchant ships. This actually sort of worked, except that the remote-firing mechanism tended to get water in it and the gun would shoot its own barrel off. And since the barrel was wire-wrapped (a technique the Brits loved) the blown-off part would stay attached and act as an anchor.
I just want a movie where somebody “says turn on the TV”, and the main character does, and it’s just halfway through an episode of The Big Bang Theory or something because who’s tuned to the news channel.
Big Bang Theory is witty and funny. It’s my favorite show now. Am I old now?
TBBT is bottom of the barrel humour. It’s meh at best.
Shaun of the Dead does a nice bit using this classic trope of turning the TV on exactly at the right moment.
And Community, as mentioned in another comment.
who’s tuned to the news channel
I agree this is rare, but my TV happened to be tuned to CNN on 9/11 when I turned it on around 10:30. I was playing hooky from work and getting high while playing bridge on my computer and nobody had called me. The screen showed a pillar of smoke and the caption said “second World Trade Center tower collapses” and I was like “what fucking movie is this?” Took a while for me to process what was happening.
There’s a scene in Community about this, where Abed is narrating a story, and when a story character turns on the radio, and its just playing conventional chill music instead of anything notable. Abed then points out that it’s unlikely the radio would have anything notable right as they turned it on.
They are not only on the news channel, but they always switch on the TV just in time to get the exact information they needed to hear at that specific moment. All while not tuning in in the middle of a sentence, just perfect timing from start to finish.
Not just that, but always the anchor says “For those of you just joining us…” Then does a exposition dump
I mean, it’s a movie. They have license to cut out the boring parts seamlessly.
To be fair, if it was a zombie apocalypse scenario in the states, the national network news would have cut in on the local broadcast and the talking heads would be yapping 24/7 for the ratings. Every channel. There’s be a good chance that you’d turn on your TV right to a newscast about the zombies.
Now something like an insane killer escaped from a mental institution would be at most a ticker across the bottom of the local broadcast after a brief local cut in when the story broke.
Who uses a TV anymore?
If they want to make it realistic, they’re texting a link.
This is hilarious because it would also resolve that part where the person saying to turn on the TV basically needs to be psychic because they almost always tune in at the start of the presentation where it isn’t even clear yet what the presentation is about.
If you click a link, then the video starts from the beginning but it also makes sense that the person that sent the link already knows what it’s talking about.
Though this wouldn’t really help when that same “needs to see the future to be able to point something interesting out because it hasn’t started happening yet and thus wouldn’t yet be worth pointing out” gets applied to events about to happen nearby.
I wish shows would have some people just confused and not really understanding what’s happening, and not just for “the helpless civilians that need to be saved” but incorporating the whole “it can take time for individuals involved in something unexpected to even understand what is going on or what they are responding to”. It’s kinda funny how much some fiction ignores things like the fog of war, especially ones where they have a sniper that can somehow just see everything and always has a shot (often also sitting way out in the open where they’d get counter sniped pretty quickly, like hanging from a crane, which also begs some more questions).
I rarely do that, but i did once with 28 Weeks Later where the army when they found out someone is infected inside the colony, just made everyone come out of their own room that is safe and isolated, and wait inside a huge room, which inevitably caused everyone to just get nibbled and infected. They also ordered personel to station at the place where they’re unprotected from sprinter, and inevitably got nibbled and turned. I just give up. The series never recovered after that from what i’ve heard.
I have not seen that one, but people taking a bad situation an making it much worse for the dumbest reasons possible actually sounds painfully realistic.
28 Days Later was fantastic. 28 Weeks Later was shit sandwich. I’ve not yet seen 28 Years Later.
28 Years Later isn’t nearly as good as 28 Days Later, but it’s way better than 28 Weeks Later. IMO
Honestly 28 Years a very different movie than the others, but it’s good.
28 Years Later felt like it was mostly a setup for The Bone Temple, which was a trip.
The ending broke me with how ridiculous it was. I should see bone Temple i suppose
So I still need to watch bone temple if I watched 28 years later?
Glad to hear it was better than 28 Weeks Later, but honestly it wouldn’t take that much.
I saw 28 Years Later on a plane. I could have just slept instead. It wasn’t terrible, but it was certainly more artistic than I expected. Soooooo close to morbidly charming, but ended up just short of the line.
That’s a better review than I would have given 28 weeks later.
I still haven’t watch 28 days later, currently not in the mood for horror. But definitely in my watchlist.
Keep in mind that I saw it when it came out and it was my introduction to fast zombies. They were not popular before that movie, although DDG says a movie in 1980 had fast undead. Also it was artistic in a time when all movies were leaning toward “independent film” asthetics, despite being big budget films. And the opening with the Godspeed You Black Emperor song playing was freaking great.
I don’t know how the movie will come across having decades of films in between. Will it still seem fantastic to an early 20s kid? No clue. But I thought it was fantastic back then.
It’s honestly still pretty good, they were the first fast zombies I remember as well. Good tone throughout, good pacing, good sound I don’t know much more you could ask for in a zombie movie.
It was shot on an old Motorola phone, but there are some shots that are really awesome and it works well. It’s been pretty emulated, so it may not have that novelty anymore. It’s still one of my favorites.
For sure. A great film.
I can’t find anything about the Motorola Phone stuff. Do you have a source?
Here’s what Wikipedia says, “The majority of the film (except for the final sequence when the military plane finds Jim, Selena, and Hannah, which was shot on 35mm film) was shot on Canon XL1 digital video (DV) cameras,[24][9] which were smaller and more manoeuvrable than traditional film cameras, which would have been impractical on such brief shoots. Boyle said the early London sequences avoided “litter[ing] the world with corpses”, instead emphasising a more symbolic emptiness and atmosphere.[25] The scenes of the empty M1 motorway were also filmed within limited periods; Boyle said police created a “rolling block” in both directions to produce a temporary corridor of empty road, giving the crew seven or eight minutes to shoot using multiple cameras.[26]”
Those opening scenes in an empty London were amazing. It’s a zombie movie, and if I try I can remember scenes with zombies. But, I mostly remember the opening, the buckets on the roof, travelling in the cab, etc.
Like all good zombie movies, it’s really about how people cope with the changes to the world.
That’s not “stupidly unrealistic though”. Because the unrealistic part (everybody waiting together in the waiting room) actually plays a huge part in the plot moving forward. That’s just bad writing.
Going the the post office on a sunday is something that can be easily tweaked without changing the rest of the plot.
Exactly right. If the plot depends on people making bad decisions that no one would ever make, its bad plot!
A shit plot is not better…?
I’m saying that OP’s post is about unrealistic movie details that don’t really affect the plot. Whereas root comment’s example does significantly affect the plot.
But it’s still stupidly unbelievable though, whether or not the plot hinge on this shouldn’t matter imo. But i guess it’s not minute enough in this case.
