# Incredibly stupid but really serious movies. **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [October 17, 2010, 2:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-stupid-but-really-serious-movies/557441 "2010-10-17T14:09:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Ranchoth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranchoth/32/1066_2.png) [@Ranchoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranchoth)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2010, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-stupid-but-really-serious-movies/557441/101 "2010-10-22T14:01:23Z")
> [@GargoyleWB](#): > > I viewed it differently. Someone made reference to an obsessed Captain Ahab, and I felt that was closer to the mark. Hawke was an obsessed character whose personal victory over the system was purely personal and wouldn’t ripple anywhere externally. Also somewhat reminiscent of classic samurai-revenge flicks. It’s only “yay!” for those who find self-destructive obsession to be heroic, otherwise it’s very bittersweet. Maybe, in this light, you could view it as a _cautionary_ tale: “Look what a heavy-handed system, justified or not, _drove this guy_ to do. / The human spirit can be indomitable, even when it’s not following a good idea.” (Note: I haven’t even seen the movie. 😛 ) Say, almost getting off the subject, what would the opposite of this thread subject be? Like, a really well-thought out and executed story based on a fundamentally stupid premise? A few monster movies would seem to work, there. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2010, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-stupid-but-really-serious-movies/557441/102 "2010-10-22T14:26:33Z")
> [@Ranchoth](#): > > Say, almost getting off the subject, what would the opposite of this thread subject be? Like, a really well-thought out and executed story based on a fundamentally stupid premise? A few monster movies would seem to work, there. I understand _Weekend at Bernie’s_ is based on a treatment by Jessica Mitford. ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2010, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-stupid-but-really-serious-movies/557441/103 "2010-10-22T16:58:30Z")
> [@Ranchoth](#): > > Maybe, in this light, you could view it as a _cautionary_ tale: “Look what a heavy-handed system, justified or not, _drove this guy_ to do. / The human spirit can be indomitable, even when it’s not following a good idea.” (Note: I haven’t even seen the movie. 😛 ) That would be an interesting movie, but I don’t think that’s what it was. It felt way too much like “hero vs evil system, hero triumphs” for me to think that we’re supposed to ignore that and treat it as something else. ---
**Author:** ![Hampshire](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hampshire/32/4887_2.png) [@Hampshire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hampshire)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2010, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-stupid-but-really-serious-movies/557441/104 "2010-10-22T18:29:20Z")
> [@Ranchoth](#): > > Say, almost getting off the subject, what would the opposite of this thread subject be? Like, a really well-thought out and executed story based on a fundamentally stupid premise? A few monster movies would seem to work, there. _Tremors_ would fall into this category for me. On the surface it looked like a bad b-type monster movie. But it was well thought out and smartly executed. ---
**Author:** ![Grumman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/43a26b/32.png) [@Grumman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grumman)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2010, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-stupid-but-really-serious-movies/557441/105 "2010-10-22T18:52:30Z")
> [@Ranchoth](#): > > Say, almost getting off the subject, what would the opposite of this thread subject be? Like, a really well-thought out and executed story based on a fundamentally stupid premise? A few monster movies would seem to work, there. _Primer_: a movie about two guys who accidentally invent a time machine. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2010, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-stupid-but-really-serious-movies/557441/106 "2010-10-22T19:21:43Z")
> [@Boyo\_Jim](#): > > I have no idea at all what you’re trying to get at here. It’s sounds like saying the punishment is no good as a deterrent because these people don’t think clearly enough to consider that, and you may be right. But so what? Should there be no punishment for less thoughtful criminals, or less punishment? Is it totally unreasonable to have a policy that the harsher the crime, the harsher the punishment, irrespective of the deterrent value to others? But what is the point of punishment? Why do we punish in the first place? Because we don’t want the crime to be repeated, and if people know they’ll experience negative consequences for their crime, they’ll refrain from committing the crime. Except, if we have some other method of preventing crime–like, say, I don’t know, psychics who can see the future and we send a SWAT team over and they stop the crime before it occurs–then what’s the point of punishment? If we’re dealing with a serial killer psychopath who just enjoys killing and won’t stop no matter what, then we can lock that person up. But what about someone like the pre-murderer from the movie, who walks in on his wife having sex with another man, and snaps? He wanted to commit murder, but he was stopped before he could. Is this guy likely to go on a killing spree tomorrow? No. And so what’s the point of freezing him? In today’s penal system, we don’t give people who commit this sort of crime (voluntary manslaughter) life imprisonment. So why do we do it in the future? When he hasn’t actually killed anyone, because we’ve prevented it, and if he plans on killing his wife again, we’ll prevent it again. Not that he shouldn’t get therapy and an ankle bracelet or something. The purpose of the consequences should be to keep the rest of us safe from murderous criminals. If we aren’t in any danger from this guy, then why do we need to punish him? The point of my problem is that the movie postulates two big changes in criminal justice. The first is pre-crime, where murders can be stopped before they happen. The second is that criminals are summarily frozen without a trial or a hearing, and they never get a chance to defend themselves or rehabilitiate themselves. But the second part is just stuck into the movie to ramp up the stakes for Tom Cruise. If the future people had a reasonable justice system then Tom could explain things, and the complicated frame-job that drives the story wouldn’t work. And so the movie is an example of a second-order [idiot plot](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiot_plot). That is, one “in which not merely the principals, but everybody in the whole society has to be a grade-A idiot, or the story couldn’t happen.” If the point of a story is about how people are idiots and therefore society is made up of idiots, then this is acceptable. But that wasn’t supposed to be the point of “Minority Report”. ---
**Author:** ![lalenin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/3da27b/32.png) [@lalenin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lalenin)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2010, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-stupid-but-really-serious-movies/557441/107 "2010-10-22T19:33:19Z")
> [@Apocalypso](#): > > There were changes made from the short story to the movie which made it a lot stupider. For instance, in the movie, it’s clearly stated that there are only 3 pre-cogs in the entire world, and the entire existence of pre-crime is dependent solely on those 3 pre-cogs. :smack: Um, you are basing this entire setup on THREE PEOPLE?!?! What happens when they grow old and die? If they go crazy? What happens to the entire pre-crime facility then? Eh? :dubious: And how did they get this set up in the first place? Any large city would have more than enough crime to keep 3 people in visions and hallucinations 24/7. > > In the story, which was a lot different, it was clear that there were a lot more than 3 pre-cogs. I’d have to go back and re-read it, but I seem to remember pre-cogs in multiple cities all over the country, dozens at the very least. > > The plot was also much different, but I’d have to go back and watch the movie and re-read the story to get more into the details. But yeah, the movie took itself way to seriously, and falls apart on closer examination. If they’d stuck to the original story, it would hold up a lot better, although it might not have made as dramatic of a movie. Like you I’d have to re-read the story, but I’m pretty sure there were only three precogs in the story too (Mike, Donna, and Jerry?). ---
**Author:** ![Grumman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/43a26b/32.png) [@Grumman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grumman)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2010, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-stupid-but-really-serious-movies/557441/108 "2010-10-22T19:44:51Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > The point of my problem is that the movie postulates two big changes in criminal justice. The first is pre-crime, where murders can be stopped before they happen. The second is that criminals are summarily frozen without a trial or a hearing, and they never get a chance to defend themselves or rehabilitiate themselves. Not quite. That pre-murderer was incarcerated because the mitigating circumstances were not considered to be relevant, not because of the lack of a trial. They already knew the circumstances that caused him to attempt to kill his intended victim, they simply didn’t modify the sentence because of that knowledge. ---
**Author:** ![Raygun99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6f9a4e/32.png) [@Raygun99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raygun99)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2010, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-stupid-but-really-serious-movies/557441/109 "2010-10-22T19:52:12Z")
I nominate [Deterrence](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0158583/), a movie in which the President of the United States tricks Iraq into launching a dud nuclear attack on the US, allowing him to retaliate and nuke Baghdad. From a Colorado diner in a snow storm in the middle of his re-election campaign. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2010, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-stupid-but-really-serious-movies/557441/110 "2010-10-22T20:27:39Z")
> [@Grumman](#): > > Not quite. That pre-murderer was incarcerated because the mitigating circumstances were not considered to be relevant, not because of the lack of a trial. They already knew the circumstances that caused him to attempt to kill his intended victim, they simply didn’t modify the sentence because of that knowledge. Yeah, and that’s dumbness on the level of Season 1 ST:TNG, with the planet of Aerobics Instructors who want to execute Wesley for stepping on the flowers. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2010, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-stupid-but-really-serious-movies/557441/111 "2010-10-22T20:59:55Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > Yeah, and that’s dumbness on the level of Season 1 ST:TNG, with the planet of Aerobics Instructors who want to execute Wesley for stepping on the flowers. But they were hot, slutty Aryans! It is wrong of us to judge them. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2010, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-stupid-but-really-serious-movies/557441/112 "2010-10-22T22:06:48Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > But what is the point of punishment? Why do we punish in the first place? > > Because we don’t want the crime to be repeated, and if people know they’ll experience negative consequences for their crime, they’ll refrain from committing the crime… Well, one reason we punish people is in theory to deter them or others from repeating the crime. I think there is plenty of evidence that this just plain doesn’t work, or works at best in a very erratic manner. But this is not the only reason we punish. We punish for punishment’s sake. We punish to exact a cost for the act whether or not we expect the perp to repeat the behavior. We punish to give some degree of satisfaction (or revenge) to the victims or the families of the victims. You seem to have the idea that if we can stop someone for committing a crime, there is no point to punishing them for trying. I would remind you that it is and has always been a crime to attempt to commit a crime. And no, I don’t agree that this was all put in as some kind of artificial obstacle for Tom Cruise to triumph against – 'cause he lost. His wife got him out. It wouldn’t really matter whether he was frozen or just put into a jail cell, IMO. This is an interesting enough question for it’s own thread. ---
**Author:** ![MonkeyMensch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/82dd89/32.png) [@MonkeyMensch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MonkeyMensch)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2010, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-stupid-but-really-serious-movies/557441/113 "2010-10-23T01:56:36Z")
> [@vivalostwages](#): > > **Babel, House of Sand and Fog, Crash** —all so, so serious, trying so very hard to make a point and pound us over the head with a message, and accomplishing little beyond being irritating and pretentious. Uh-oh. I have \*Crash \*and \*Babel \*in my NetFlix Queue… ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2010, 8:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-stupid-but-really-serious-movies/557441/114 "2010-10-23T08:48:13Z")
> [@Ranchoth](#): > > Say, almost getting off the subject, what would the opposite of this thread subject be? Like, a really well-thought out and executed story based on a fundamentally stupid premise? A few monster movies would seem to work, there. Whatever you call it, I’d put \*Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey \*somewhere on that list: a broad, silly comedy about a pair of morons that also happens to be one of the most finely-tuned time travel stories ever written ---
**Author:** ![pope\_hentai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ee59a6/32.png) [@pope\_hentai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pope_hentai)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2010, 9:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-stupid-but-really-serious-movies/557441/115 "2010-10-23T09:23:03Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > Whatever you call it, I’d put \*Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey \*somewhere on that list: a broad, silly comedy about a pair of morons that also happens to be one of the most finely-tuned time travel stories ever written hopefully you mean bill and teds excellent adventure… Bogus journey was the one where they died and had alien robot bodys from alien heaven. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2010, 1:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-stupid-but-really-serious-movies/557441/116 "2010-10-23T13:02:13Z")
> [@Boyo\_Jim](#): > > Well, one reason we punish people is in theory to deter them or others from repeating the crime. I think there is plenty of evidence that this just plain doesn’t work, or works at best in a very erratic manner. > > But this is not the only reason we punish. We punish for punishment’s sake. We punish to exact a cost for the act whether or not we expect the perp to repeat the behavior. We punish to give some degree of satisfaction (or revenge) to the victims or the families of the victims. In the “example” murder depicted, though, it looks like an otherwise normal guy is about to kill his wife and her lover in a moment of anger. That situation calls for intense family counseling, a trial separation, one spouse leaves town for a week or so as a cooling off period. Just packing the husband off for what appears to be a life sentence without trial is ridiculous. I can understand _why_ the movie does this - it allows Cruise’s eventual “jailor” to be one nerdy tech guy who can be sweet-talked into letting him go, whereas if he was in a conventional lockup, there’d be at least a dozen prison officials who’d have to play along - but it’s kind of offensive from a civil-liberties view. Well, that and the idea of taking Pre-Crime “national”, as is hinted several times, is problematic if your primary mechanism is just three people who can’t easily be replaced and who have limited lifespans. Do they have the psychic “range” to cover the entire country? And sooner or later, one of them is going to die of natural causes. What then? And it also occurs to me that Washington D.C. metro should vastly increase the number of street signs it has, putting them every two hundred yards or so, or mandating unobtrusive address information be posted inside apartments and hotel rooms. That way, the precrime cops wouldn’t waste time with “What neighborhood is this? It’s, uh, got a swing! And a park! And somebody who owns a brown dog!” Instead that could just look for the now-ubiquitous street/address markers and narrow it down instantly. For hotel rooms, have a bar-code mixed in with the wallpaper pattern, instantly giving the location and room number. Anyway, it was a dumb movie with some mildly interesting moments. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2010, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-stupid-but-really-serious-movies/557441/117 "2010-10-23T14:08:43Z")
> [@pope\_hentai](#): > > hopefully you mean bill and teds excellent adventure… Bogus journey was the one where they died and had alien robot bodys from alien heaven. Right. ---
**Author:** ![StGermain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stgermain/32/2868_2.png) [@StGermain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StGermain)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2010, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-stupid-but-really-serious-movies/557441/118 "2010-10-23T15:32:07Z")
**Little Buddha** - Keanu Reeves plays Siddhartha. Tibetan Buddhist monks come to Seattle looking for the reincarnation of one of their important lama. They find a young boy and somehow convince his parents to go to Bhutan to have this child tested, even though the parents aren’t Buddhist, apparently aren’t any religion. Directed by Bernardo Bertulucci. StG ---
**Author:** ![calgreg](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f0a364/32.png) [@calgreg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/calgreg)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2010, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-stupid-but-really-serious-movies/557441/119 "2010-10-23T16:18:52Z")
I nominate **Paranormal Activity**. The ads were far better than the movie. I thoroughly enjoyed **Artificial Intelligence**. ---
**Author:** ![Isamu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/7c8e57/32.png) [@Isamu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isamu)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2010, 5:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-stupid-but-really-serious-movies/557441/120 "2010-10-24T05:45:08Z")
> [@Zebra](#): > > When he was born, they ran a genetic test and and they list the probabilities of certain diseases, including heart disease and they give him an expected life span of 30 years. The trouble with that is that if the film makers actually knew anything about DNA, they’d know what a crock that premise is. Knowing the statistical probabilities doesn’t tell you how an individual will develop. Now, if he had something like Huntingtons disease they could diagnose that and I would have been satisfied. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-stupid-but-really-serious-movies/557441.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-stupid-but-really-serious-movies/557441.md?page=7)