# movies that fail the BS test **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [October 25, 2001, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-fail-the-bs-test/89473 "2001-10-25T04:09:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2001, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-fail-the-bs-test/89473/81 "2001-10-26T21:07:16Z")
“Die Hard 2” had a host of idiotic, annoying errors (like the pay phone, supposedly at Washington DC’s Dulles Airport, that had “Pacific Bell” written on it). But the one that annoyed me most was… The villain takes over the airport control tower, and starts talking to a British Airways plane circling overhead. He starts giving them instructions, to guide them in for a landing. The British pilot says something like, “Thank God you finally gave us clearance to land. We’re completely out of petrol- we’ve been flying on nothing but fumes for an hour.” Okay, got that? No fuel! Completely out of fuel! They’re flying on fumes! So, when the villain causes the plane to crash, what happens? What else? The entire plane explodes into a huge ball of flame! ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2001, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-fail-the-bs-test/89473/82 "2001-10-26T22:40:26Z")
Flashdance. Let’s see, you’re 18, no formal training EVER in ballet, yet you do a five minute sweaty work out and you get into the Pittsburgh Ballet Academy? Da’hell? (I liked Pretty Woman when I was younger-I HATE it now, except for the clothes. Good GOD, that red evening gown Julia Roberts wears to opera I would kill for!) ---
**Author:** ![octothorpe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/b77776/32.png) [@octothorpe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octothorpe)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2001, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-fail-the-bs-test/89473/83 "2001-10-26T23:30:10Z")
OK, a couple of things that are actually annoying me about the thread: 1. **Double Jeopardy** - Maybe i missed it, but she didn’t ‘do time’ for supposedly killing her husband, she was ‘do_ing_’ time. So she was _escaping incarceration_ in order to hunt down her cretinous husband to either; prove that he hadn’t been murdered to begin with, thus earning her a ‘get out of jail free’ card; or to dispatch him with impunity as she had already been convicted of the crime and was serving sentence for that very thing. 2. Yes, downed power lines do occasionally dance around like snakes suffering from St. Vitus’ Dance (or unattended fire hoses per **dookus** ). Yes, downed power lines do cause fires. And, before anybody brings it up, coming in contact with energized power lines, downed or otherwise, may cause fire to shoot out of various parts of your body. 3. As to things exploding even though they are ‘running on fumes’ (per **astorian** ), that is actually very credible. Fuels such as gasoline/petrol, diesel, kerosine, etc. are most volatile in the gaseous state (they are actually vaporized before entering the combustion chamber just for this reason). Ask any certified welder and she will tell you that if you want to weld a gas tank, fill it with gas. Gasoline burns, gasoline vapor burns very fast (i.e. explodes). **But** … I agree that **Double Jeopardy** puts my BS meter right in the red, not all downed power lines start fires and dance around, and not every accident involving a vehicle travelling at more than 5 miles an hour results in equivalent of a 5 kiloton fireball. * * * Dislike him? I wouldn’t piss down his throat if his heart were on fire! # ---
**Author:** ![Eutychus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Eutychus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eutychus)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2001, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-fail-the-bs-test/89473/84 "2001-10-26T23:43:47Z")
I loved the movie, but one thing that has always annoyed me is that at the beginning of the movie, they show Heather packing a book called “How to Stay Alive in the Woods.” But then when they actually get lost in the woods _she never pulls out the book and refers to it once!_ ---
**Author:** ![scampering\_gremlin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e56c9b/32.png) [@scampering\_gremlin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scampering_gremlin)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2001, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-fail-the-bs-test/89473/85 "2001-10-27T00:01:40Z")
Grin. This is a silly thing to say, but you Dopers have made me so happy. After seven months on the boards…finally one of my threads grows into an 800 pound gorilla. King kong? Anyway I’ll be leaving for a Halloween party in an hour with an incredibly un-PC costume (see IMHO) and I’ll be happy and bouncing, all because of this utterly inane thread. Thanks! Stay safe, drive sober. the gremlin ---
**Author:** ![TheeGrumpy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/779978/32.png) [@TheeGrumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheeGrumpy)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2001, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-fail-the-bs-test/89473/86 "2001-10-27T00:15:55Z")
[QUOTE] \*Originally posted by RealityChuck \* \*\* > [@](#): > > I can rant on forever about the stupidity in the first “Alien.” The plot holes were immense and anyone with an IQ of the 3 Stooges could come up with simple ways to kill the alien (blow all the air out the airlocks, pull the trigger when he’s standing in front of your gun, etc.) \*\* Off the top of my head, I can’t think of anything in “ALIEN” that “fails the BS test.” In fact, I don’t know what you’re talking about. They were _trying_ to blow the alien out of the airlock when Dallas got eaten. They were going to continue, too, until a change of plans sent them to the lifeboat. As for guns, they had none except for the flamethrower, and it only works if you find the alien before it finds you. “ALIEN” has a couple of plot holes. So does “ALIENS” and some other of my favorite movies. But that doesn’t mean they fail the BS test like “Double Jeopardy” or “Independence Day.” Other films might have a BS premise, like “Con Air” (why would a man convicted of murder in AL be sent to a federal lockup in CA?), but are still enjoyable in spite of it. ---
**Author:** ![malkavia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/malkavia/32/5621_2.png) [@malkavia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/malkavia)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2001, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-fail-the-bs-test/89473/87 "2001-10-27T00:30:29Z")
\ Ive never seen the entire Star Wars trilogy. And NOW I guess I dont need to. =( Its okay… I’m used to it. All Kevin Smith flicks are just one huge spoiler for me… so its not like I’m bitter or anything. Harumph. =) \ ---
**Author:** ![capacitor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e47774/32.png) [@capacitor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/capacitor)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2001, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-fail-the-bs-test/89473/88 "2001-10-27T01:09:46Z")
In **CTHD** , they jump far distances, and can temporarily glide in the air; they don’t ‘fly’. Funny thing about **Blair Witch** , the actors had a GPS with them during the filming. They had to act as if they don’t have one, because “It is a small forest”. The biggest BS failure is **Independence Day**. You can pass a virus to an alien computer, can call Russia to announce that mission was successful, and yet have no scenes involving the Internet, the communication system designed for world-wide catastrophies such as a massive alien invasion??? We know that they couldn’t have hit all the servers on Earth, just those of the major cities. Many of the biggest Internet hubs are in rural or suburban areas. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Scrivener](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@The\_Scrivener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Scrivener)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2001, 6:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-fail-the-bs-test/89473/89 "2001-10-27T06:08:13Z")
“The Last Dinosaur” [USA/JAPAN, 1977]. Even for its debased genre [sci-fi/fantasy for 8-yr.-olds?], it stands out for its overdetermined, over-the-top plot elements. The WORLD’S RICHEST man, “Masten Thrust” [played by Hollywood’s most washed-up actor, Richard Boone] attempts to hunt down the VERY LAST T-REX LEFT ALIVE [BTW - the film makes no ref. to any actual dino-extinguishing event, like Alvarez’ asteroid], by BURROWING DEEPLY INTO THE EARTH’S MANTLE in a tunnel-digging Archimedes screw (just like the careers of everyone associated with this flick), and which happens to do double-duty as a TIME MACHINE. Boone is of course accompanied by a motley crew – the brilliant Nobel-winning scientist implausably still in his 30’s, the glamorous-if-flaky photographer [Joan Van Ark] who gives the Cro-Mag women makeovers, Wilt Chamberlin [?!?], and a fourth guy who IIRC was only dino-fodder in the end. Even the original soundtrack was hilariously bombastic. In short, highly recommended for a cornball movie night with irony-besotted, MST3K-emulating friends. 🆒 And thanks to Dooku for noting that ubiquitous trend, “Rent control gone mad”. As in “Blink,” [1993] in which Madeline Stowe’s blind violinist-in-an-Irish-pub-band-that-couldn’t-be-making-much-more-than-beer-money manages to live in a spacious apartment in a chic, downtown Ironbound/early Art Deco [some guessing here, but you get the idea] architectural preservation piece. Really; would a blind musician be paying extra for aesthetic touches she can’t even see? :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![saepiroth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5ac83/32.png) [@saepiroth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/saepiroth)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2001, 10:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-fail-the-bs-test/89473/90 "2001-10-27T10:02:59Z")
well, i must take opposition to the two anti-starwars comments earlier on this page two. > [@](#): > > _originally posted by Mighty Maximino_ > **One of my favorite BS alerts is any science fiction moment when a bunch of little laser beams join together in space and form a HUGE laser beam (think Death Star). This happens all the time, and it’s just so ridiculous it’s funny.** well, i don’t know about other movies, but in wars, the “superlaser” isn’t actually a laser at all. it is generaly considred to be some form of exotic matter / plasma cannon. i’m not enough of a warsite to give details, but if you dig up the two recent trek vs. wars threads, they go into deep detail. > [@](#): > > _originally posted by Hubilla_ > **They destroy the Death Star by spending precious minutes going down trenches to reach the target. Why not just go directly for the blast hole, either from above, or with a shorter trench run?** well, here’s one reason, alluded to in the movie. now, to get the shot in, the ships had to draw a lock long enough for the missles to track the route down the pipe’s length to whatever would set off that station-destroying reaction. that means flying a run a straight a posssible, to keep a bead on. if they flew straight down, that entire side of the station could predict where they would be and blast them with cap’ship smashing firepower. down the trench, only a few turrets on the edges of the trench could bring their weapons to bear, and that one covering turret above the exhaust port. ---
**Author:** ![saepiroth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5ac83/32.png) [@saepiroth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/saepiroth)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2001, 10:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-fail-the-bs-test/89473/91 "2001-10-27T10:06:29Z")
oops- that’s “_posted by hub **Z** illa_” sorry. i guess insomnia disrupts my thought processes. who knew? ---
**Author:** ![DarkJudicator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/da6949/32.png) [@DarkJudicator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DarkJudicator)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2001, 12:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-fail-the-bs-test/89473/92 "2001-10-27T12:20:45Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Legomancer \* > **\ > These guys couldn’t find their ass with a map, compass, ass-finding radar, and The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Finding Your Own Ass. > \** Completely irrelevant, but I just wanted to say I’m officially stealing this for my sig, **Legomancer**. Thanks! We now return you to your regularly scheduled thread. [/hijack] ---
**Author:** ![the\_O-man](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/9f8e36/32.png) [@the\_O-man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/the_O-man)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2001, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-fail-the-bs-test/89473/93 "2001-10-27T13:21:58Z")
Maybe it’s just part of the wackiness of the film, but in **“Young Frankenstein,”** why does the blind man need a candle burning in his home? He lives alone and can’t see anything anyway. I saw this scene again on cable last night, and it always strikes me as odd. ---
**Author:** ![TheeGrumpy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/779978/32.png) [@TheeGrumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheeGrumpy)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2001, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-fail-the-bs-test/89473/94 "2001-10-27T17:12:16Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by capacitor \* > **The biggest BS failure is Independence Day. You can pass a virus to an alien computer, can call Russia to announce that mission was successful, and yet have no scenes involving the Internet, the communication system designed for world-wide catastrophies such as a massive alien invasion???** **ID4** was released in 1996. It was written and filmed in 1995 (Emmerich & Devlin say they were inspired by questions they were asked about the aliens in **Stargate** from late 1994). Recall that the [Mosaic / Netscape](http://www.blooberry.com/indexdot/history/netscape.htm) browser that made the World Wide Web accessible to the general public debuted around the same time. In other words, practically _nobody_ knew or cared about the Web until late '95, when the film was already deep into production. This doesn’t excuse ID4’s ignorance of the Internet; even I was using e-mail by 1993, and on bulletin boards more than 5 years before that. But it is an interesting historical snapshot. ---
**Author:** ![Stoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stoid/32/272_2.png) [@Stoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stoid)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2001, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-fail-the-bs-test/89473/95 "2001-10-27T20:28:09Z")
Too many bad movies to name, but one good movie that was founded on a “yeah, right” premise was “The Green Mile”. No, I’m not referring to the magic and mystery, I’m referring to the fact that it’s the 1930’s, it’s the Deep South, and dozens of white men with guns find a giant black man in the woods with two beautiful little girls dead and bloody in his arms, \* and they arrest him?!?! \* Yeah, right… stoid ---
**Author:** ![BiblioCat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ed8c4c/32.png) [@BiblioCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BiblioCat)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2001, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-fail-the-bs-test/89473/96 "2001-10-27T20:37:53Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by astorian \* > \*\*“Die Hard 2” had a host of idiotic, annoying errors (like the pay phone, supposedly at Washington DC’s Dulles Airport, that had “Pacific Bell” written on it). But the one that annoyed me most was… > \ > Okay, got that? No fuel! Completely out of fuel! They’re flying on fumes! > So, when the villain causes the plane to crash, what happens? What else? The entire plane explodes into a huge ball of flame! \*\* In my opinion, the most annoying thing was the entire premise of the movie…that they were at Dulles, and all those planes were stranded with NOWHERE ELSE TO LAND!!! Hey, you stupid pilots, have you ever heard of National Airport (now Reagan) or Baltimore-Washington Airport? Both within a few minutes flying time of Dulles? Even Philly or Pittsburgh are close enough. Bothered me the entire time I watched it. > [@](#): > > **octothorpe said: > Double Jeopardy - Maybe i missed it, but she didn’t ‘do time’ for supposedly killing her husband, she was ‘doing’ time. So she was escaping incarceration in order to hunt down her cretinous husband…** No, she was released from jail; she didn’t escape. Tommy Lee Jones was her probation officer. But it was still a dumb movie. ---
**Author:** ![octothorpe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/b77776/32.png) [@octothorpe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octothorpe)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2001, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-fail-the-bs-test/89473/97 "2001-10-27T21:00:37Z")
> [@](#): > > **Kinsey said:** > No, she was released from jail; she didn’t escape. Tommy Lee Jones was her probation officer. But it was still a dumb movie. _Touché!_ I apologize for my prior rant to all posters and confess that the 15 minutes of **Double Jeopardy** that i actually watched did not specify Tommy Lee’s charactor’s status (i must have had it in my head that he was a U.S. Marshall). > [@](#): > > To quote Colridge: > _And a thousand, thousand slimy things lived on… and so did I._ My most humble apologies, # ---
**Author:** ![faramir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e19adc/32.png) [@faramir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/faramir)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2001, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-fail-the-bs-test/89473/98 "2001-10-27T21:25:55Z")
> [@](#): > > _Originally posted by FriendRob_ > > **Oh, and what about A.I.? Haven’t those aliens ever heard of cloning? Wouldn’t a couple of real cloned humans be better information than a mere robot?** I think it’s debatable as to whether the beings at the end of the movie are aliens at all. That seems to be the most common opinion, but the movie never really tells you. I happen to think that they are an evolved version of the androids in the first part of the film (if robots can actual evolve … kind of strange). It’s a bunk ending anyway, but to me it’s a little more plausible than aliens coming to Earth out of nowhere. As far as BS movies go … there are too many of them to list. faramir ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2001, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-fail-the-bs-test/89473/99 "2001-10-27T21:35:29Z")
I didn’t even see A.I., but what pissed me off was the tagline-“His love is real. But he is not.” UGH!!! ---
**Author:** ![SPOOFE](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c5a1d2/32.png) [@SPOOFE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SPOOFE)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2001, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-fail-the-bs-test/89473/100 "2001-10-27T21:36:03Z")
Thank you, Saepiroth, for pointing out two instances of non-BS. Anyway… _The Relic_, despite having an amazingly cool-looking monster, had one big gaping hole that annoyed me (insert spoiler warning here). The monster was really a human who ate a bunch of funky berries/plants/whatever that transformed him into a massive, hideous beast. Okay, I can buy that… such “magical” aspects of a film are forgiveable. However, after this transformation, the monster could only eat a tiny piece of the human brain, since it contained a certain chemical. Okay. This monster was huge (bigger than a horse). In the course of the movie, it killed a couple dozen people (the crew of the boat, and a few people in the museum). That’d be about, oh, a pound of food for this thing in the course of about a week. Now I don’t know about anyone here, but you’d think that this monster would be starving pretty darn good. Additionally, at the end, the monster is killed in a chemical explosion. I have a hard time believing that a museum carries enough flammable chemicals to make an explosion that puts the destruction of the Death Star to shame… and nevermind the fact that the monster was apparently tough enough to survive being on fire - yes, the monster was _on fire_ - for thirty seconds or so. So it was on fire… and then a little more fire (and a slight concussion wave) blew the thing into itty-bitty pieces? Um… no. Then _Escape from LA_… the surfing scene is like a big fat guy with explosive diarrhea, shitting gallons of feces at us at a rate of fifty gallons per second. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-fail-the-bs-test/89473.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-fail-the-bs-test/89473.md?page=6)