Corollary: movie bad guys are always eating apples…
“You had to see it for yourself. You would never have believed me.”
This cracked me up. I’m glad you two share a sense of humor.
Like that coughing guy in Alien. I knew something couldn’t be right, but man I was not expecting that.
ETA: sorry, I responded to the wrong person.
I was leaving the house and my wife asked me what it was like out. “Chilly, but nice.”
If the kid had been home, I could’ve started to close the door, turned and cocked my head: “Almost… too nice.”
If the police is interviewing a possible suspect and the suspect says “And you think I killed him?” in an unbelieving tone of voice, then the person is innocent. Or similar “And you think I…” statements.
The bad guys, even though they greatly outnumber the protagonist, will take turns to attack; spending the downtime between attacks practicing some sort of kung fu dance moves.
Weapons dropped by downed bad guys are useless - just ignore them. The protagonist will just carry on running away or fighting with fists or an improvised club.
Once the lead villain is incapacitated on the ground, it’s a good time for the protagonist and sidekick to stop and have a little chat, maybe just to review lessons learned. There is no need to attempt to tie up or otherwise constrain the unconscious villain.
But if Guy A has a gun, he’ll make sure to bring it within reach of Guy B; that’s the law.
of course - how could the otherwise stab him with the gun?
Ebert’s rules were my first exposure to analyzing tropes in film. He was one of those guys seeing 300+ movies a years and obviously picked up on things.
Gene Siskel added a sure thing once: “If nothing happens by the end of the first reel, nothing is going to happen.”
There exceptions to Gene’s, but I can’t think of anything right now.
Because it’s a test. Wise old sages can’t go around solving everyone’s problems. They give you a clue, and you have to figure it out from there.
If only one of them would actually try to figure it out rather than just dismiss it as a platitude. But that’s another certainty.
The airplane that characters approached on the taxiway, the one that took off, the one that flew, the one that landed in the sunset and the one the passengers exited are all different planes. No one actually knows the difference between a Challenger 600, a Boeing 737, a Lear 35, an Airbus 318 and a Gulfstream 700, right?
Oh and all business jets are big enough for the protagonist to stand up straight in, even if he’s 6’4".
No film editor was ever able to spot the difference between different airplanes in WWII movies either.
Side view of one or two people driving in a car minding their own business, possibly with a peaceful tune on the radio will get surprise T-boned while going through an intersection.
Someone standing in a surprisingly empty street will suddenly get crushed by a bus or truck. The only warning is a beep on the horn as the person is hit, no screeching of brakes or attempt to evade the pedestrian, and the vehicle apparently just keeps going because it’s never seen after the reaction shots or when people run up to the victim.
Whenever a sword is drawn, it will always make a metallic ching! sound, even if it’s being pulled from a leather scabbard.
That’s kind of like a car skidding making the same tires-on-asphalt noise, even if it’s skidding on a dirt road.
Or, one of my favorites, airplanes making a propeller sound, even if they’re turboprops or even jets. You see this in older movies more than recent ones. People just expect that propeller sound from flying things. I once even heard it when a bird was flying. I’m surprised I haven’t encountered a UFO in a movie making propeller noises.
Brought to life in exquisite manner in “Airplane!” but I’ve rarely, if ever, come across anyone who’s ever agreed with me that it’s one of the jokes.
Oh, come on. Everything in Airplane! is a joke.
(exasperation not directed at you but at those who don’t agree it’s a joke)
And then there’s the cinematic sure thing of a space ship making a whooshing sound as it flies and explosives making 'splodey sounds in the vacuum of space. Maybe not a 100 percent sure thing with absolute certainty, because occasionally a movie will get it right, but close to it.
Actually, the thing that annoys me most about space ships is the way they SWOOP through space, making long, graceful curves as if they’re airplanes flying through an atmosphere.
SPACESHIPS DON’T MOVE THAT WAY.
When no propulsion means are active, their centers of gravity move in straight lines. You can turn a spaceship, but they generally pivot about that center of mass (and you don’t have to fire reaction jets to pivot).
2001 got this right. So did 2010, for the most part. And recent films like Gravity and Interstellar. But just about everyone else doesn’t.
And, yeah, if you’re cruising in a ship that warpd space or has FTL capabil;ity or whatever maybe you COULD maneuver as if you were in an atmosphere, wastefully using your magic jets or whatever to make a hyperorbit that looks like a swoop. But why bother? More to the point, unless you’re workinmg at it, your trajectory will not look liker that of an atmospheric craft. Spacecraft fly by different rules, and it would show.
Oh, I absolutely agree!
Firefly got this right; and then fans complained because it wasn’t “realistic”. TvTropes calls this the “Coconut Effect”.
And when two spacecraft encounter each other, they’re both oriented on the same horizontal and vertical axes, just as if the were ships meeting in an ocean.