Yes and no. In the book, there’s not a whole lot of warning about what’s happening, but the big-ole army of the dead don’t show up for the final battle. Aragorn takes them, off-page, to attack Sauron’s second army n the south, freeing up lots of Gondorian soldiers to attack the force arrayed about Minas Tirith from behind. This pins the orcs between two armies and the city. You never see the dead in action; its only implied that their rampage was horrifically destructive.
If he was using telekinesis to fly, that I’d think was okay, but the whole dropping a bazillion stories, landing on a speeding vehicle and then struggling to hang on, was ridiculous. I don’t care if fantasy films break with reality as long as they do so consistently so you can say “Er… yeah, okay, in that universe you can hear explosions in outer space.” Fine.
But Brat Boy was never established as “Superman”. No flying, no superhuman strength, no invulnerability. Hanging on to a speeding vehicle with just your fingertips as it careens around the sky? It was stupid. Dropping what must of been at least 40 storeys (if not 80) and belly-flopping onto the hood of a speeding vehicle? Utterly ridiculous.
I loved Luke Skywalker as a kid because he seemed to be human, but with extraordinary abilities and a lightsabre (think Aragorn with telekinesis). Anakin was feakin’ Wile E. Coyote with a stupid ponytail-thing!
This movie marks the only time I’ve ever said anything aloud MSTie-style in a theater. When the Air Force fighters are shooting missiles at the city-ships and they get absorbed by the ship’s deflectors, I said, “Well, somebody’s been watching Star Trek.”
It got a big laugh.
In Horsefeathers, when the bad guys Mullen and McHardie trap Harpo and Chico in a building so they can’t get to the football game, they take Harpo and Chico’s clothes but conveniently leave two saws the Marxes can use to saw a hole into the floor in order to make their escape. And, amazingly, neither Harpo nor Chico–in their skivvies–is injured from falling eight feet or so to the next floor down.
What’s worse still is that they do this twice. That’s some apartment building with hand saws on every floor! :rolleyes:
I remember the exact second that I denounced “Hollywood”. It was on a Christmas vacation, when my brother and I went to see “Temple of Doom” during the mine car sequence. Even as a kid, I knew that “they” had no respect for the audience and were going out of “thier” way to insult our intelligence and rob us of our money, laughing all the way to the bank.
I didn’t go back to the theater for years.
I reluctantly started going to very few movies in the last couple of years, and typically only if I “had to” (wife or mother didn’t want to go alone, they paid, someone else paid).
The wife dragged me to “Blair Witch Project” and I swear I will never go to the theater again. I’m still pissed about that. Goddammit! I want my money back! :mad:
Overheard in the public restroom: “That’ll leave a skidmark all the way to the treatment plant!”
I had the (regretable) remake of “Helter Skelter” on in the background as I was cleaning the house and cooking dinner. I looked up at the screen just as the 3 killers were walking out the gate after the Tate/LaBianca killing.
They had blood spots on thier clothes that looked like someone took a sponge and put symetric blotchs on thier thighs, knees and shins. The worst attempt at costuming/makeup whatever I have ever seen! It was laughably bad! I’ve seen higher production values at 4th grade Columbus Day pagents.
I turned it off immediatly.
Mel Gibson’s movie The Patriot where we’re expected to believe that all the blacks working on the plantation are in fact free men and not slaves.
Marc
Highlander 2
Nuff said.
:rolleyes: :smack:
HERETIC!!!
They were running MAC OS8!
Give some goddamn credit where credit is due! Sheesh!
(And that goes DOUBLE for the poster who thought the Powerbook was a THINKPAD! My freakin’ God, has Microsoft brainwashing gotten so endemic that it CHANGES MEMORIES TOO?)
(Oh, and in case the satirical bent of the previous post wasn’t clear, I’m making it clear now. Though I am a tad annoyed by this obvious marginalization of Apple products, my bombast was deliberately exploded, much like the alien mother ship. :D)
Ah, come one people, the Indiana Jones series is designed to be about ridiculous, unbelievable Saturday-afternoon-matinee adventure movie stunts. That’s the point!
Never said I didn’t like them. Just rolled my eyes at that point. If I remember correctly Indy is shown clinging to the subs mast as it surfaces at one point. I guess he hung on to the periscope or something. The movie Ronin, while I really enjoyed it, was full of :rolleyes: moments. I somehow doubt that even the best driver can drive that long against traffic without crashing. Anyway the French police never noticed anything in that movie.
I rolled my eyes more during this exchange from The Patriot:
Mel: “Mind if I sit here?”
Mel’s sister-in-law: “It’s a free country.”
I’ll never forget how they figure out where the killer will strike next in January Man. In the hopes that you won’t see it, I’ll spoil it for you. A serial killer has been killing people in their apartments in a seemingly random fashion. That is until Kevin Kline, (do I need to say that he is considered a suspect, is suspended from the force, and is trying to clear his name?), figures out that if the windows of the victims’ apartments are viewed from a specific side, they correspond to the notes on a musical scale playing the song “Calendar Girl.” Yep. I leaned my head back so far on that one that I was staring upside down at the guy in the row behind me.
I think that’s both incredibly unbelievable AND hugely cool at the same time. My synapses are exploding trying to reconcile them.
With all the mentions of Wile E Coyote here I’m beginning to wish I had used my usual alter ego name here, but as you can tell by my chosen user name I was hungry when I signed up and I thought it was more feminine.
Anyway, as for the Temple of Doom I just refuse to deny it’s existence.
For me I tend to have roll my eyes moments at anything veterinary related in the movies since they always seem to get it wrong, to the point of ridiculous. For examples, Eddie Murphy’s Dr. Dolittle, any veterinarian attempting to examine animals the way that vet did would have had his face scratched up and his fingers chewed off. Terminator 3 had flea control products locked up in the controlled drugs cabinet.
I saw Temple of Doom with some relatives. At the point where Jones is riding a mining car, which jumps a gap in the tracks and then lands precisely on the tracks on the other side, continuing on as if there had been no interruption:
My aunt: “I don’t believe it!”
My cousin: “That’s the first thing you don’t believe?”
You had to be there.
Some scenes make me roll my eyes, not because they’re particularly implausible but just because they’re so effing dumb. I remember near the end of Attack of the Clones, I was thinking, “Oh, no, not an arena!”
Bad Boys 2. Particularly the high speed chase on the highway where the bad guys were releasing the cars on that roll back. None of the vehicles were in park or had parking brakes on. And one of them fell off the roll back and a little 3/8" proof coil chain was strong enough to hold it back.
It’s less cool in execution. No explanation for why they decided on treble clef, how they managed to guess the correct tempo, how they managed to correctly assume where the windows fell onto the scale, how they managed to correctly zero in on a Neil Sedaka song from 1961, etc.
Another rolleyes moment was when they revealed the real killer. I was waiting for it to be one of a dozen or so minor characters in the movie, then they brought him out in handcuffs…and it was nobody. I said “who’s that?” Seconds later another character echoed my sentiments, and Kevin Kline answered “It’s nobody.” They may as well have had him say it straight to the camera, follow it with a Nelson “HA-ha!” laugh, then roll the credits.
The Goonies has a lot of those moments, but for me the one that takes the cake is when the kids find the bag of dynamite with a stick clearly labeled “DYNAMITE” and think they’re candles.
Rumor has it they’re making a sequel, with the original cast members. Words fail me.
I’m a big fan of the old “Hawaii Five-O” series. In the last season, two eps come to mind:
In one, McGarrett (now 58-60 years old) and a crook are battling hand-to-hand on the arm of a construction crane several hundred feet in the air.
In the series finale, McGarrett is given some fake whiskers to wear so that he can get close to Wo Fat and trap him. Wo Fat has known him for many, many years. Ya think he wouldn’t recognize him??? McGarrett was wearing the fake whiskers because he had an uncanny resemblance to a scientist that Wo Fat was interested in meeting, and the scientist had long whiskers.
Also, in the series finale, it ends up with 60-year old Jack Lord and 70-year old Kenneth Dickerson (Wo Fat, who acted under the name Khigh Dhiegh) in hand-to-hand combat.