I’ve read the thread, but not sure if mine have been covered…
Groups of bad guys armed with semiautomatic weapons who must close to within arms reach of the hero before pulling the trigger. Of course this gives the hero the chance to display their awesome martial arts skills and disarm/disable the entire group.
Bad guy minions catch the hero but before one of them can dispatch him another says, “The boss wants him/her alive.”
Me… :-/
Bolding mine.
I did that for him!
I cried like a baby during this scene. All the tension that had built up through the course of the movie, and finally a release.
Fantastic movie, but I felt that Tom Hanks should have been awarded the Oscar based on this scene alone.
BTW, around the time Captain Phillips was released, I saw a story about the movie, perhaps on CBS Sunday Morning. The medic in that scene was a real US Navy hospital corpsman.
Many may, but most, based on my observations, don’t (there usually isn’t paneling – you can see through to the metal). That said, I’m surprised to learn that here in Boston they actually rescued a guy from a stuck elevator using an overhead hatch. The guy was lucky in more ways than one, but one of those ways was having an elevator with a hatch.
I do appreciate that! 
My categories are wholly subjective, of course (and others may want to put forward lists that they put together differently). But I do think there is some basic difference between a contrivance like “solar ping sound in all submarine scenes” and, say, the classic “interruption after Character A says to Character B 'there’s something I have to tell you.…” In other words, some contrivances are there to make the plot work, and others are just ‘window dressing’ that filmmakers believe we expect.
I’m curious: do you sincerely believe that a succinct list (mine or anyone else’s) is less useful than a site with thousands of pages and millions (billions?) of words? If so, what are your reasons for believing that there is less value in a succinct list?
I quote these posts (with which I agree wholeheartedly) to show–if it needs to be shown–that the “Lucy” ad campaign is, indeed, leaning very heavily on the “10%” myth to market the movie.
Though the full trailer begins with backstory (which is not uncommon in longer-form trailers), the television commercials cut to the chase immediately by highlighting what the makers most want us to associate with this movie: the ‘10% of the brain’ aspect.
Not even remotely. (Though I sincerely salute you for taking up the challenge to explain what you believe–wrongly, as it turns out–that I was saying.)
You believe that my claim was that the character Lucy “become[s] special through her own hard work and determination.” You are mistaken in this belief: of course I made no such claim.
What I was claiming follows this chain of reasoning. I’m going to lay it out in detail, in the hope of preventing further miscomprehension:
People are most likely to open their wallets to see movies they think they’ll enjoy.
Marketers, therefore, craft television and Internet commercials to highlight aspects of the movie they believe are likely to provide such enjoyment. Another way of putting this: ads are not created at random; what’s mentioned/shown first and often is the “hook” that marketers believe will intrigue people into buying tickets.
People enjoy movies featuring humans with powers superior to those found in real life.
The movies featuring superior-power humans that have done particularly well at the box office (and with ancillary sales of merchandise, games, etc.) have been those with ‘more identifiable’ superiority. Specifically: in recent years Batman and Iron Man have both sold exceptionally well. The common element of those characters: they use their brains and will (and money) to demonstrate their superiority. This is more “relatable,” to at least some extent, than “powers conferred by a green-clad alien” or “powers conferred by dosing with gamma rays” and the like.
Perhaps in response to the financial success of the “brains and will” superior-human stories, the makers of “Lucy” made the choice NOT to make ads that said “Lucy has been exposed to a mysterious drug and now has powers”…but instead to begin every television commercial (and probably every ad other than the long-form trailer viewable on YouTube) with the voice of Morgan Freeman talking about the “10%” myth (presented as Science in the movie, regrettably).
The reason that the marketers chose NOT to highlight the “exposed to a mysterious drug and now has powers” angle–which is an actual plot element, and so could have been highlighted–is that they believe the 10% myth is more intriguing/more likely to sell tickets.
Why do they believe that “Lucy is using more than 10% of her brain” is more intriguing and more likely to sell tickets than would be “Lucy was exposed to an unknown drug” (even though both are actually part of the movie’s premise)? The answer to this is the basic claim that I was making:
People get enjoyment from believing that they have the potential to be smarter and more powerful than they are. Because we enjoy believing this, we enjoy works of fiction (or nonfiction, for that matter) that tell us: *Yes–you can be powerful. You have it in you! *
This is not a claim about “hard work,” but rather a claim that “the potential is inside you.”
Citations abound in support of this claim I’m making. Look, for example, at the massively-lucrative ‘human potential movement’–it encompasses a huge variety of motivational speakers, book sellers, fire-walkers, seminar-givers, performers (such as Criss Angel), DVD-marketers, and on and on. Bottom line: people like to believe they can be more than they are now…and telling them it’s possible will intrigue them into handing over that ticket money.
Some references:
These discuss, at least briefly, the reasons that people enjoy believing the 10% myth:
(There’s a lively discussion of movies featuring the myth in that last one.)
Oh really? I quote…
Lucy’s powers are the result of a “laboratory breakthrough” and (from the trailers) her powers do not come from “[trying] a bit harder.” We can keep doing this, or you can just admit that you previously misunderstood the plot of the movie. It happens, it’s cool.
Somehow you are continuing to fail to understand that what you quoted from me is about the ‘potential inside each of us,’ which is what the “ten percent” myth refers to (and promises). That’s what the movie’s hook is.
How might you be brought to this understanding? That is quite a conundrum. My best advice is that you re-read my last post, in which the reasoning is laid out in what should be easy-to-follow steps.
Beyond that, I throw up my hands. If you still can’t understand, and still want to try, then I believe this discussion must move to the Pit. But if you are content to remain ignorant, then we’ll bring this discussion to a close, here.
I never saw the show, though I’m familiar with its premise; you’re right, although I never thought about it before. Even if he wanted to go into private practice, he’d never get malpractice insurance. Was he an emancipated minor? in the real world, he’d need to be to sign contracts in order to be in the employ of a hospital, or to buy insurance-- that is, to sign the insurance contract.
Bolding mine. Nope, Doogie lived at home with Mom & Dad. Even if he had been able to get insurance and secure a hospital job, what patient would allow him to work on them?
Not me.
The cynic in me is also sure House would never work in a hospital. Or anywhere else. Status Quo is the norm all over and I can’t imagine anyone putting up with his crap no matter how talented he may be.
Excuse the de-rail into TV land.
Actually, most people on earth use only three percent of their brain; three to five percent, to be precise.
Here is one that I have not seen mentioned:
Bad Guy has gotten the drop on Good Guy with a gun. Good Guy says, “You can’t shoot me! At least, not until you take the safety off first!” Bad Guy looks at the gun and, while distracted, Good Guy socks Bad Guy in the jaw and wrestles the gun away.
Or: Bad Guy continues to cover Good Guy with the gun and says, “If that were the case, you’d have already socked me in the jaw and wrestled the gun away.” Bang!
They were stalking my house when they invented those ones…
Sherrerd, just so you know, about 15 years ago Roger Ebert put together a list of about thirty common and absurd film contrivances, rather like yours – it’s reprinted in several of his books. Some overlap with your list, but not a lot. Roger included a few that are really just in one movie, like “how did Rambo place the last bit of mud on his body before emerging from that muddy riverbank to kill that dude?”
As you alluded to, the nice thing about your list is how you came up with distinct categories.
This is one of the reasons good shooters learn to thumb the safety on or off by feel, without having to look at it.
Of course, sure, this might work against dumb-as-a-puppy chubby middle-aged homeowner who is holding a gun on someone for the first time in his life. Member of SEAL-Team Lambda? Ha ha!
Cool! I’ll look for Roger’s list. He was always good at seeing behind the surface–he and Gene Siskel made a deserved splash with their highlighting of the “camera IS the stalker” element of slasher movies. That sort of thing hadn’t been much commented on in the mass culture, before their choice to focus on it.
I do need to get past page four of our thread…people posting here have come up with a huge number of contrivances.
…If we’re doing television, too (as seems to be the case from recent posts)—how about the way that police procedurals awkwardly and mechanically get rid of witnesses, in scenes in which the detectives have come to question them?
It’s often something like this; the detectives are at Mr. Doe’s place of business, and Mr. Doe has just spilled his guts about the suspect (or whatever):
DETECTIVE A: Thanks for that information, Mr. Doe.
MR. DOE: You’re welcome. Oops, there’s the phone–I’d better go answer that. [He walks away from Detectives A and B.]
DETECTIVE B: So our suspect is still in play–since he gets his Brazilian wax at Salon Suspiciando. I hadn’t been sure about him before.
DETECTIVE A: You’re right: this makes him look really good for it. So our next stop has to be the salon.
All this is because it would be unnatural for the detectives to talk their shop talk right in front of the witness—but to have them discuss their next move in a different setting, without the witness present, would mean an expensive additional scene to set up.
So Mr. Doe has to be given some excuse to walk away. And the number of plausible excuses the writers of these procedurals can come up with, for the witness to conveniently exit the scene, is necessarily limited–leading to an annoying number of witnesses who ‘have to go over and take that phone call’ (etc.).
At least they try. I still see shows where they don’t even take that step, and the cops freely discuss shop right in front of witnesses.
Yeah, that’s definitely a contrivance that can take a viewer right out of the story (as in ‘that would never happen in real life’).
Of course a police-detectives show that truly reflected real life would include a lot more dull sitting-at-the-desk-scrolling-through-search-results, and the like. So we just have to accept a certain level of unreality, to get a watchable story.
Sure you can if you have the right software.
And why do you blame Morgan Freeman for speaking the lines in the movie he is being paid for speaking? Do you think he should have insisted they rewrite the entire movie so he wouldn’t have to speak things he didn’t agree with?
Most realistic police show ever on TV. Barney Miller.