MY COUSIN VINNIE. I love the movie except for the last few minutes, when it’s all wrapped up just too neatly. Mona Lisa happens to be able to tell from those tire tracks exactly what type of antique car made the tracks (just proving there’s no way the two yutes’ car made them isn’t sufficient, and the evidence had to come from Mona Lisa because Vinnie couldn’t cross-examine the prosecution expert [who was already on the stand for cross-examination). Then, not only is that car found, but it just happens to have the murder weapon and two guys matching the defendants’ description in it. It’s a funny scene, but it’s just way too Deus ex Machina. (And I still don’t understand how the murderers passed the two defendants without being noticed.)
[QUOTE=Skald the Rhymer]
This I don’t get. The revelation that Vader was Luke’s father didn’t help the situation; it made things much, much worse. How is that a lazy plot contrivance?
[/QUOTE]
If by “much, much worse” you mean opening the door for that Ewok-filled crapfest which shall not be named and the prequels, then I agree with you. As for how it was a cop-out, it reduced a cosmic struggle to a mere family squabble (aided by the fact that it’s implied in Revenge of the Shits that the Emperor created Anakin).
Michael Crichton is pretty bad with contrived endings, but Sphere and The Andromeda Strain truly stand out.
Sphere
The weird shit was happening because the Sphere gave them godlike powers, so they decide to wish it all away.
The Andromeda Strain
The weird shit was happening because the space microorganism was evolving so fast and taking on different forms. But it’s all good because it ultimately evolved into something harmless and floated away into space
[QUOTE=Wee Bairn]
The worst of all time- Mystic River
The odds of your daughter being killed- one in 50,000 (?)
The odds of your daughter being killed the same night your best friend kills a paedophile, whose body is never found, so now you think your best friend killed your daughter- incalcuable.
[/QUOTE]
In an environment like the one they lived in violence is commonplace. The way Sean Penn solved the problem was a case in point. You can always look at unrelated events in the newspaper and remark about how unusual it is that they happened the same day. What are the chances that 2 ex-presidents would die on the same day, what if there are only 4 living ex-presidents? What if I said they died on July 4th? What are the chances that two automobiles traveling at right angles at about 50 miles an hour at night will crash into each other because one will run a stop sign and the innocent driver will be killed? What are the chances that the dead driver will be the ex-boyfriend of the offending driver? What are the chances that the offending driver’s future husband will become the president of the United States? What are the chances that someone will get a hole-in-one at one of those impossible par-3s after qualifying by being closest to the pin in a pre-lim? What if he isn’t a good golfer? All these things happened.
I saw nothing inherently implausible about the scenario in the movie I just thought they went overboard trying to make sure we would assume that Robbins was guilty. It is just the nature of that type of movie. The director must make you think one thing and then surprise you wth another without making you think you’ve been had. I thought Mystic River did it better than most.
ETA: I forgot, add me to the list of those who think the SFU plot was contrived.
Speaking of Sean Penn The Pledge with it’s ending of “the serial killer was on his way but died in a car crash” is total crap.
[QUOTE=AudreyK]
In The X Files, I didn’t care for Mulder and Scully hooking up and having a baby. I liked it better when there was just the possibility of a romance happening. The near-kiss in the movie was dumb, too, out of freaking nowhere. If the romance had to happen, it could have been handled much better in the show.
[/QUOTE]
I kind of stopped tuning in around the time Scully had her baby. But I did love the near-kiss in the movie. I thought it was a well written, directed, and acted scene. The X-Files has been dissolved, and with it the working relationship of Mulder and Scully. In facing that loss, Scully’s doubts as to her contribution come to light as does Mulder’s appreciation for Scully. They have a tender moment realizing the deepness of their friendship, and then they start to see maybe there is something even more there…
My vote for plot lameness goes to every instance in TV and movies in which character suddenly and without warning (usually as they are about to create a corner out of which no plot can escape) get runs over by a bus.
[QUOTE=Sage Rat]
I think the idea is that they are networked Over the Air, not by wire. This provides a connection to the outside since the network is being broadcasted.
[/QUOTE]
That makes a lot of sense, but I think I recall from the episode that it was explicitly shown to be a wired network. Like, they showed Gaeta plugging in the cables connecting the various terminals.
[QUOTE=ryobserver]
The Last Days of Pompeii, by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
[snip]
He looms over the hero, raises the knife–
and at that exact instant Vesuvius belches.
[/QUOTE]
Lemme guess – the villian had just begun to pee? 
[QUOTE=AuntiePam]
Knead to Know’s post reminded me of a book I’d like to forget – The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. She used amnesia to make one of the characters forget that he had impregnated the heroine’s mother. He totally forgot the mother, not just that he got her pregnant – he forgot she existed!
The amnesia wasn’t brought on by a brain tumor or a bump on the head. Nope. It was Greek liquor caused the amnesia. Of course he remembered everything else.
I was unable to finish the book, but many Amazon reviewers listed other plot contrivances that I didn’t pick up on. Oh! One was that the characters couldn’t find a copy of Dracula, a book that’s been in print for what, a hundred years?
[/QUOTE]
Ah yes, the book that inspired half of my signature.
[QUOTE=Gangster Octopus]
And in Return of the King the whole Army of the Dead is pathetically convenient.
[/QUOTE]
As were the Army of Trees that saved them at Helm’s Deep.
For me, the movie that cops out every 10 mins is Sleepless in Seattle. I worked in a movie theatre when this film was out so I got to see it way too many times.
But every time the plot headed into a discussion of a deeper topic, like talking about the dead mother, it moves into a music video mode. Why write dialogue when you can do a montage to some soulful song? The movie does this at least half a dozen times.
I earned the enmity of my nieces for daring to complain about the ending of LOTR - The Return of the King. I mean, come on! Our intrepid little heroes are rescued from certain death by an old wizard riding the back of a giant talking eagle? This won the Oscar?
The eagle had been previously established in movie one as a possible save your lame ass at the last moment guys.
[QUOTE=Zebra]
As were the Army of Trees that saved them at Helm’s Deep.
[/quote]
I haven’t the book in front of me, but I don’t think the Huorns and Ents saved the Eorlingas at Helm’s Deep, on account of not giving a fuck what happened to Rohan. (That wasn’t unreasonable; the Eorlingas hadn’t exactly raced to their aid, either.) They cut off the Orcs’ retreat, in that they massacred them as they were running away from the reinforcements Gandalf brought – but it was other Rohirrim who broke the siege.
Mary Corleone’s death at the end of The Godfather Part III: :mad: What a fucking abortion! No foreshadowing! No dramatic necessity! Nothing but a malus ex machina! (Unlike the deaths of Carlo in Part I and Fredo in Part II, both of whom, tragically, had to die because they betrayed the Family.) I think Coppola was just groping for some way to get a “tragic” ending without having Michael actually defeated by his enemies.
And my all-time antifavorite (I trust no footnotes are necessary):
The Superflu caused so much pain, oh!
And with Evil a raging volcano
Flagg’s triumph seemed certain
Until King rang the curtain
By pulling a Deus ex ano! :rolleyes:
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
And my all-time antifavorite (I trust no footnotes are necessary):
The Superflu caused so much pain, oh!
And with Evil a raging volcano
Flagg’s triumph seemed certain
Until King rang the curtain
By pulling a Deus ex ano! :rolleyes:
[/QUOTE]
“Do you see it? The hand of God!” :smack: :rolleyes:
SageRat Except that Gaida (sp?) actually had cables running to his desk and he defeated the Cylon hack but yanking out the cords.
[QUOTE=Lobohan]
My turn!
To point 2, the Galactica has point defense guns in addition to fighters. I assume they help. The Cylon base ships have missles, not cannon.
[/quote]
That Cylon Raiders are about as adept as Imperial Storm Troopers can’t hurt either I suppose. I’d think that missiles would be better against space fighters than cannon. I still think it’s rather cheesy. It’s one of those things where the odds are set unrealistically high. In a way it’s like the Palestinians winning again and again against the US government the way the power differential is setup.
I am not up to Season 3 yet. Your point about being decommissioned is valid. Even still, you’d think that the non-decommissioned Cruise ships and freighters would all have medical personnel. I cannot imagine an interstellar voyage with them.
I think some of these posts are mixing up “cop-outs” with plots that are just generally bad.
The most brain-jarring one I’ve ever seen was from “Monster a Go-go”. (Of course I saw it on MST3K.) The monster was an astronaut that had been mutated by cosmic rays. After a long and gruesome killing spree, he had been cornered in the sewers. Apparently the producers then ran out budget, because a voice-over came on and said everyone had been mistaken. There was no monster, and the astronauts had all been found safe on a life raft somewhere … all normal and totally mutation-free. What a comfort! What about all the dead people though? Are they on the life raft too?
Speaking of MST3K, the best lame cop-out was when Joel left the show. To get him off the ship, they suddenly discovered there was a shuttle on board that they hadn’t known about before. The name of the shuttle was Deus Ex Machina.
[QUOTE=Skald the Rhymer]
I haven’t the book in front of me, but I don’t think the Huorns and Ents saved the Eorlingas at Helm’s Deep, on account of not giving a fuck what happened to Rohan. (That wasn’t unreasonable; the Eorlingas hadn’t exactly raced to their aid, either.) They cut off the Orcs’ retreat, in that they massacred them as they were running away from the reinforcements Gandalf brought – but it was other Rohirrim who broke the siege.
[/QUOTE]
Yes, but they completly eliminated that army and Suraman, Suron, Surok, what’s his name, the guy with the name really fucking similar to the head bad guy, is now completly out of the picture. The Orcs still had vastly superior numbers and with a retreat, they would still be threat, except for the trees.