Names that make zero cultural sense. Mind you, this requires me to recognize that the name makes zero cultural sense, but Baby Jesus on an electric scooter: if you cast a Spaniard to play a character who’s a Spaniard, or an Italian to play an Italian, would it be so difficult to ask them if the name makes sense? From what I know of how movies are made, it’s quite likely that an actor with a small role won’t know the role’s name at all: they may get only the parts of the script where the character appears, and the character’s name is never mentioned with the character present.
Situations where a bunch of people are supposed to have lived in the same place their whole life, but they all have radically different accents.
For Spanish media, situations where a character would have a strong regional accent given their brackground, yet speaks in accents that would make the Dictionary of the Academies of the Spanish Language swooooooon. Yes, with extra o’s. I haven’t encountered it in Englis, but I can’t promise nobody ever did it.
Actors being given musical instruments they clearly don’t know how to play, or even hold. Like Steve McQueen and his fife in The Great Escape. Or the trombone player in a marching band who swings his horn back-and-forth and up-and-down while pumping the slide in-and out, in-and-out, in-and-out.
Sir, I know the trombone. I used to play the trombone.* And you, sir, are no trombonist.
As for Napoleonic-era soldiers marching to brass bands, I saw this once in a German (Nazi-era) movie set during the reign of Frederick the Great. Most of the instruments they were playing hadn’t even been invented yet. And yes, the Prussian army would charge headlong across the battlefield with fixed bayonets, as would the ones they were facing.
Talk about disappointment! Of all people, you’d expect the Nazis at least to know how to make good war movies!
*I used to play the fife, too. And the bagpipe, which actors also don’t know how to hold, much less play.
Character A comes upon Character B, who is staring in the distance with a look of utter horror or surprise on his face.
Does A turn to see what B finds so horrifying? No, not at first. A stares at B’s horrified face until B slowly raises a pointed finger instructing A where to look.
Only then does A avert his gaze to see what is troubling B so.
mmm
Tough Hero Guy doesn’t flinch, doesn’t react, doesn’t look back when something explodes right behind him, but just keeps striding purposefully towards the camera. C’mon. Nobody is that focused.
And, in fact, the horse probably found the water in the first place. They require upwards of ten gallons a day and can smell a water hole a lot further off than Cowboy Bob can.
For me it’s the Hollywood Disease, the one where someone is in their last hours dying from some dread disease and still looks great.
Just saw the new film Hobbs and Shaw last night and for a movie that was completely over the top ridiculous and implausible (a motorcycle that can break down into multiple sections for the sole purpose to limbo under things) you’d think you’d be able to roll with it and nothing they could put on the screen would take you out of the moment.
Except… before one of the final battle scenes the good guys are in formation in a large field in Hawaii in the middle of the night. Bad guys arrive in the dark and trigger a bunch of fireworks to launch into the night sky. Still the dead of night they face off and exchange monologues before a good guy ignites a firewall ala Game of Thrones to surround the baddies. Good guys holler and charge and as they clash…
it suddenly becomes the middle of the afternoon? Suns out, blue skies, etc.
It was so jarring I totally lost focus of the action and was just watching the background light change.
In a previous scene, Hobbs & Shaw are discussing how to prepare for the Bad Guy attack, and one of them mentions that it’s most likely to come just before dawn. The impression I got was that they Bad Guys indeed show up just before dawn, and the sun rises during the fight, so that by the end they are in bright daylight. But even given that…yeah, I was also taken out of the movie by just how abrupt and extreme the lighting change was. IIRC, it was totally dark for quite a while - then one shot lasting a couple of seconds of somewhat subdued ambient light - then bright, full daylight.
Something that drives me crazy is a non-speaking bit part that should be a speaking part, but they’re too cheap to pay the actor or actress more to speak one or two short lines. This happens a lot with characters like a waiter in a restaurant who will walk up to a table, one of the speaking actors will say something to him, and then he just silently nods and walks away.
Actually, there were experiments in lighter, mass-produced armor much earlier in Europe and elsewhere (e.g., China and ancient Greece). These employed leather, bone, quilted or laminated fabric, and even laminated paper. Not all metal armor was plate or mail, either. Scale armor was widely used, and could be produced much more easily and quickly. (Scales could be made of materials other than metal, too.)
If you can find a copy, I highly recommend a booklet titled Arms and Armour in England, published by HM stationers, IIRC. It’s a brilliant little work by a true expert on the subject.
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