Living in New York there was one thing that always bothered me when I saw it in the movies. The existence of the High Speed Chase Taxi Company. Headquartered in Manhattan with offices in every major city across the globe, this company has cabs on every corner just waiting for you to jump in and yell “Follow that car!” All the drivers willing to speed and weave through city traffic at your behest. Not that there aren’t real life cab drivers willing to speed and weave through traffic. They just ain’t doing it on your behest.
As dumb as I find those taxis, there is one contrivance that tops all in annoyance. I was reminded of it just now as I watched a trailer for That Awkward Moment that’s On Demand now. An overhead shot of a couple post-humping. They are pillow talking, laying straight as boards, side-by-side, looking at the ceiling covered with a Z-shaped sheet. Really movies? You can’t be a little more natural? Maybe spooning? Facing each other? Legs entwined? Sheets covering both at the same level?
It’s a one-off, but although Avatar was spectacular viewing, I am appalled at the valuable substance being called ‘unobtainium’.
They really couldn’t think of a better name? :smack:
For me, it’s the no-hit fire fight. Dozens of people, supposedly decent gun users, firing round after round at each other with very few, if any, casualties.
How about the twelve-on-one combat, in which twelve (or so) villains attack our hero, usually using karate or some other form of martial art, but do so one at a time, so that he can pick them off individually? Wouldn’t they be more effective attacking from all sides at once?
Honestly, this would be one of the most realistic portrayals of violence in movies. In real combat, dozens of rounds are fired for every hit. There’s also that infamous convenience-store security footage in which a shop owner misses a thief from point blank range (across the sales counter) not just once, but six times.
If the evil bad guy is prophesied to arise at midnight, not only is midnight always in local time, but every clock or watch in the movie is synchronized down to the second. The freaking bad guys even respect daylight savings time!
Bombs are the same way. If a bomb is going off at noon, then everyone in town can tell the exact second of detonation by looking at the most convenient clock.
Oh, and diseases and poisons too. If you have “twelve hours to get an antidote,” the doctor doesn’t mean somewhere between six and eighteen hours. No, he means exactly 43,200 seconds (at the beep; synchronize all watches in town - now).
I was just noticing (and being annoyed by) the “Follow that cab!” thing yesterday, so thanks for this thread.
I also hate when a character is walking/running/stomping away and the other character calls repeatedly after him: “Bob! Bob! Bob!” The guy never comes back and is never gonna come back so knock it off.
One thing that bugs me is when movies use local sites and just jump from one popular site to the next.
"National Treasure’’ had the female lead running out of Independence hall and hiding in the Reading Terminal Farmer’s market. Never mind that is like 12 blocks away,
'Rocky" covered hundreds of miles in his famous jog that ended on the Art Museum steps. At least there you could argue it was a montage.
I have been told by San Jose citizens that the 80’s bike movie 'Quicksilver is famous for having Kevin Bacon jumping up one hill and landing in another part of the city.
Computer “hacking,” simply b/c in this day and age there can’t be anyone left alive who is so unfamiliar with computers that it can seem at all plausible that a character can shit out 200 wpm for 10 seconds and then say “I’m in!”
Or that the computers beep every time they do anything.
I nominate every fight scene- it must appear that the hero is just about to lose before he heroically defies the odds and vanquishes his near-oppressor. How about the hero kicks the villain’s ass in 10 seconds, tops? Or the other way around?
Or for that matter every sporting event has to be decided in the bottom of the 9th inning or in the last 0.1 seconds of time on the clock, preferably by a foul being called or penalty shot awarded or such. The big game is never a blowout.
Then there’s the cows must moo/horses must whinny/cats must yowl when they first appear on screen.
Yes, the hacker probably actually typed 20 chars 16 hours ago, and sent the script on its way. Automation is the one thing computers do really well. But really, just about anything involving computers in movies bothers the hell out of an IT worker that can’t suspend disbelief to Hackers levels at the drop of a hat.
Seriously. It’s especially bad in older Chinese or Japanese movies. If you really want a laugh, watch one of those, and look at the guys in the background. Often they’re just sort of waving a sword around at nothing, looking busy. Personal note: way back when I took aikido, we did an exercise involving three attackers and one defender. As the defender, I thought it was great fun maneuvering the first attacker between me and the other two so that they’d have to go around him to get to me. Gives you a second to breathe, too.
I get annoyed at the Hero’s Death Exemption. It always takes ten times longer for the villain to kill the hero than it takes him to kill anyone else. Gunshots are mere flesh wounds, laser fire just sort of damages their craft instead of destroying it, they get into a wrestling match instead of the villain just ripping the hero’s arms off like everyone else’s, etc.