# Movies that insult your intelligence. **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [December 29, 2002, 1:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-insult-your-intelligence/145499 "2002-12-29T13:38:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![susan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/susan/32/17537_2.png) [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2003, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-insult-your-intelligence/145499/141 "2003-01-01T22:39:52Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Larry Mudd \* > \*\ ***Shoshana** , I think that influencing the “past” would violate the spirit of the sacred “Prime Directive.” Oh yeah, and create uncomfortable paradoxes… as if that mattered. \*\* Right. Like transparent aluminum. And can somebody explain why Harry Potter’s Moaning Myrtle splashes when she jumps in the toilet? Can throw a book? Is she, in fact, a poltergeist like Peeves rather than a ghost? Or is this like the whoosh of the Enterprise’s engines in space? ---
**Author:** ![jack\_ss](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/c77e96/32.png) [@jack\_ss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jack_ss)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2003, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-insult-your-intelligence/145499/142 "2003-01-01T23:00:43Z")
Jeez, this is so difficult… **The Matrix** was obviously insulting to my intelligence because of its whole premise, as has been hashed to death so far. Ditto **Independence Day** for its computer virus ending. Ditto **Titanic** for the whole cold water treatment. I’m gonna go way back here and suggest **Alien**. This critter goes from the 8 ounce chest-burster to the 300 lb monster, through several skin sloughs without anything to eat? How the hell does it gain so much goddamn weight without eating anything? Let’s go back even further… **King Kong**. The 1930s version. These folks live on an island with a 20-foot tall gorilla. The build a 30-foot stone wall around their village to keep said gorilla out. They don’t have any large delivery vehicles that have to pass through the wall, they could get awat with a door that’s, say, 7 feet tall by 5 feet wide. Double doors, two people could carry stuff through that together. Hell, 2 people could walk through them in opposite directions at the same time and the big ape still couldn’t fit through them. But what do they put in the wall? That’s right… **Big Honking Doors®**. Big enough for, oh, a **20-foot tall gorilla** to walk through! ---
**Author:** ![SolGrundy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bbce88/32.png) [@SolGrundy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SolGrundy)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2003, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-insult-your-intelligence/145499/143 "2003-01-02T00:14:50Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by jack@ss \* > **I’m gonna go way back here and suggest Alien. This critter goes from the 8 ounce chest-burster to the 300 lb monster, through several skin sloughs without anything to eat? How the hell does it gain so much goddamn weight without eating anything?** ??? They’re parasites. They eat the host. It’s definitely implied, if not stated outright, that they feed off their host once they’ve done the chest-bursting. We never see that in the movies because we never see a scene of the “normal” life cycle; it’s always interrupted by some dope with a flamethrower. In the first movie, you never see the alien until the end; I’d think that eating 5 or 6 crewmembers could explain the weight-gain by the climax. ---
**Author:** ![Darwins\_Finch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darwins_finch/32/20304_2.png) [@Darwins\_Finch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darwins_Finch)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2003, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-insult-your-intelligence/145499/144 "2003-01-02T00:25:50Z")
On the other hand, the Space Jockey in the derelict spaceship wasn’t consumed; he just had a hole burst in his chest. ---
**Author:** ![Silentgoldfish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@Silentgoldfish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Silentgoldfish)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2003, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-insult-your-intelligence/145499/145 "2003-01-02T00:34:00Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Gr8Kat \* > \*\*Except that I don’t recall him doing so. Did he turn it off and back on again? That would have been a very simple way to explain it; I just don’t remember them doing that. It’s been awhile since I saw that movie, though. Maybe I’m thinking too hard, but I always imagined the ship had a “smart” force field, _i.e._, it would kick in only in the event of whatever was approaching the ship was perceived to be a threat. Human hand = not much threat to the hull of a spaceship. Fast moving projectile = greater threat. Do I win a Marvel No-Prize[sup]TM[/sup]? \*\* [/QUOTE] No, cause I already hypothesised something similiar way up in the thread. Godammit, that’s the third time that’s happened to me! :mad: ---
**Author:** ![vivalostwages](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/d07c76/32.png) [@vivalostwages](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vivalostwages)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2003, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-insult-your-intelligence/145499/146 "2003-01-02T00:39:59Z")
**High Crimes** ranks right up there (down there?) with **Double Jeopardy** for sheer plot stupidity. And while we’re at it, let’s add **The Sum of All Fears**. I’d give more details but I couldn’t keep either of them in my mind for long, for fear of permanent contamination. The idiocy of **The Deep End** , however, I can remember clearly: An older man wants to hang out with a teen boy, so instead of calling the cops, the teen’s mom tries to pay off the older man to keep him away! Later, when the guy dies accidentally at her house, the mom takes his body away to SHALLOW WATER! Brilliant move, mom. Couldn’t she have thought of weighing it down and sinking it? Then she finds his car and has to go back to retrieve his keys, and there’s more, but…oh, forget it. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Gr8Kat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gr8kat/32/18668_2.png) [@Gr8Kat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gr8Kat)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2003, 12:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-insult-your-intelligence/145499/147 "2003-01-02T00:41:21Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Silentgoldfish \* > \*\*Maybe I’m thinking too hard, but I always imagined the ship had a “smart” force field, _i.e._, it would kick in only in the event of whatever was approaching the ship was perceived to be a threat. Human hand = not much threat to the hull of a spaceship. Fast moving projectile = greater threat. > > Do I win a Marvel No-Prize[sup]TM[/sup]? \*\* No, cause I already hypothesised something similiar way up in the thread. Godammit, that’s the third time that’s happened to me! :mad: \*\* [/QUOTE] I’m sorry. I saw your post, but I misinterpreted it. God help me, I’m not very bright. ---
**Author:** ![OpalCat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/8edcca/32.png) [@OpalCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OpalCat)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2003, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-insult-your-intelligence/145499/148 "2003-01-02T01:08:53Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by LoN \* > \*\*Either you get it or you don’t. I’m a horribly hopeless romantic, and I completly fell for Moulin Rouge… it just appealed to me. I got lost in it-- swept away by the pure glitz and love of it… > But whatever-- some people like it, some people don’t. \*\* The main thing I hated about Moulin Rouge (though I enjoyed the movie for the most part) was that the “big song” was that HORRIBLE and BORING piece of dreck by Elton John… GAHH!!! Couldn’t they have picked a good song?? ---
**Author:** ![occ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/8c91f0/32.png) [@occ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/occ)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2003, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-insult-your-intelligence/145499/149 "2003-01-02T01:10:13Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Stoid \* > \*\* > I’ve always had a problem with a movie I actually like a great deal, except for one aspect of it, and that is \*\* The Green Mile. \*\* The supernatural aspects of it don’t bother me at all, that is something set apart. But on the earthly end… it’s the Depression. It’s the South. It’s a mob. It’s a giant black man with two white female children in his arms, dead and covered in blood. \* And he goes to jail? \* Bwahahahahaha! \*\* Yeah, I always thought the relationships between the guards and the prisoners were somewhat unrealistic in that movie, as well. You’ve got a death-row, in that era, and everyone’s so damn nice to each other (except for the “problem inmate”). ---
**Author:** ![occ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/8c91f0/32.png) [@occ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/occ)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2003, 1:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-insult-your-intelligence/145499/150 "2003-01-02T01:18:35Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Larry Mudd \* > \*\*_Titanic_. > > The Atlantic ocean is nice and warm when it flows into the sinking vessel, and it doesn’t matter how long you’re submerged/wading through it. That whole hypothermia thing only becomes an issue when you’re in the water _outside_ the ship. Of course. > \*\* And also, at the end, why couldn’t whats-her-name just let Leonardo share the door she was floating on and, you know, not die? Oh, yeah, because their love was Too Pure for This World. Gotcha. ---
**Author:** ![occ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/8c91f0/32.png) [@occ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/occ)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2003, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-insult-your-intelligence/145499/151 "2003-01-02T01:24:25Z")
Er, just realized that thats a spoiler, maybe, kinda. So if need be, good Mods, feel free to slap a Spoiler box around it. ---
**Author:** ![RikWriter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/49beb7/32.png) [@RikWriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RikWriter)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2003, 1:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-insult-your-intelligence/145499/152 "2003-01-02T01:26:51Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by CaptMurdock \* > \*\ ***Red Dawn**. You seriously ask me to believe that the Russian Army could mobilize three-four million troops, along with all their support personnel, tanks, planes, etc. and the U.S. government has no clue until the invasion??? Even the CIA, at their most incompetent, could not have missed this buildup. > > Plus the whole “Europe is sitting this one out.” Bullsh\*t! You think France, Spain, Italy, Great Britain, et.al. are going to be fine with the USSR getting rid of the only bullwark to Russian imperialism? Not to mention that there is no way China would sit still after Russion nukes their population down from 1 billion to 600 million. > > This whole movie is a howler. \*\* Not to defend that howler too much, but it said that Europe was sitting it out EXCEPT Great Britain and that “they won’t hold up long by themselves.” Actually, at the time (the movie was probably written in the early 80s) it seemed perfectly plausible that most European countries would “sit it out,” except for Britain and West Germany. ---
**Author:** ![RikWriter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/49beb7/32.png) [@RikWriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RikWriter)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2003, 1:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-insult-your-intelligence/145499/153 "2003-01-02T01:29:10Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by lout \* > \*\*Almost any movie that is based on the premise that the world is unambigously divided into the forces of good v. forces of evil, and dramatizes that struggle on a massive scale so as to elicit cheerleading in the audience in lieu of thought or genuine feeling. > > Ooops, I just described “Lord of the Rings.” (and a zillion other insulting movies) \*\* And of course more than half the books ever written, including the classics. The idea isn’t insulting. It’s simplistic, but not insulting. ---
**Author:** ![OpalCat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/8edcca/32.png) [@OpalCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OpalCat)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2003, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-insult-your-intelligence/145499/154 "2003-01-02T01:30:18Z")
> [@](#): > > \*\* > And I cannot wait until Mystery Science Theatre mocks it! \*\* Too bad MST3k was cancelled years ago. > [@](#): > > \*\* > Now if you want to pick on a logical fallacy, define “after midnight.” \*\* And it gets stupider when you take time zones into account. ---
**Author:** ![Mockingbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c68b51/32.png) [@Mockingbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mockingbird)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2003, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-insult-your-intelligence/145499/155 "2003-01-02T01:31:26Z")
Just about every Hollywood movie. It is the rare one that escapes being turned into crap by the committee of executives who feel they know what we want. ---
**Author:** ![Silentgoldfish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@Silentgoldfish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Silentgoldfish)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2003, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-insult-your-intelligence/145499/156 "2003-01-02T01:47:15Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by OpalCat \* > \*\*Too bad MST3k was cancelled years ago. > > And it gets stupider when you take time zones into account. \*\* I always took it as between midnight and 1AM (IIRC the witching hour). Otherwise you get all the problems already mentioned. ---
**Author:** ![LoN](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/cab0a1/32.png) [@LoN](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LoN)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2003, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-insult-your-intelligence/145499/157 "2003-01-02T02:23:18Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by OpalCat \* > \*\*The main thing I hated about Moulin Rouge (though I enjoyed the movie for the most part) was that the “big song” was that HORRIBLE and BORING piece of dreck by Elton John… GAHH!!! Couldn’t they have picked a good song?? \*\* Actually, I think Bernie Taupin co-wrote it… and yea, its a bit cheesy. But then, the whole movie is corny… and Ewan McGregor can definatly sing (see also **Velvet Goldmine** ). But yes, it definatly wasn’t the best thing about the movie… ---
**Author:** ![Baldwin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baldwin/32/7264_2.png) [@Baldwin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baldwin)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2003, 4:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-insult-your-intelligence/145499/158 "2003-01-02T04:52:00Z")
In reference to _Alien_: > [@](#): > > ??? They’re parasites. They eat the host. It’s definitely implied, if not stated outright, that they feed off their host once they’ve done the chest-bursting. We never see that in the movies because we never see a scene of the “normal” life cycle; it’s always interrupted by some dope with a flamethrower. In the first movie, you never see the alien until the end; I’d think that eating 5 or 6 crewmembers could explain the weight-gain by the climax. But the critter burst out of John Hurt’s chest, skedaddled, and then was far larger the next time it was seen **before it had attacked any other crewmember**. It didn’t get to eat John Hurt’s body, and the extra mass had to come from somewhere. ---
**Author:** ![21Twelve](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/2/3da27b/32.png) [@21Twelve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/21Twelve)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2003, 5:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-insult-your-intelligence/145499/159 "2003-01-02T05:08:01Z")
I can never resist getting in on bad movie threads… The only movie I’ve ever had the thought, “This movie is assuming I’m an idiot and I hate it for that,” was **A Civil Action**. The scene in question was one where John Travolta and whoever played the defendant’s lawyer were facing off in the courtroom and the two lawyers and the judge all had a good laugh over not remembering some really important piece of precedent. Sorry I can’t get any more specific than that…I’ve done my best over the years to drive every image of this movie out of my brain. Anyway, not only was it horribly unlikely that a well-paid lawyer in a huge case would just forget about or simply not know about a critical piece of precedent that could be used to either base a complaint or a defense on, but it directly insulted the viewer by assuming that we would not know the first thing about law or courtrooms and that we would be willing to accept that lawyers think it’s funny when they forget things and lose a case, and also that it doesn’t really matter what the precedent was anyway because we wouldn’t know how to use the information to make any conclusions about the film. That was a long sentence. The point is, the writer and director of that movie were wrong on all counts. I’m perfectly capable and well-informed enough to understand that that was one of the worst movies ever made. ---
**Author:** ![RikWriter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/49beb7/32.png) [@RikWriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RikWriter)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2003, 5:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-insult-your-intelligence/145499/160 "2003-01-02T05:16:01Z")
There are so many movies that insult my intelligence, I have lost count of them. Alien: Ressurrection comes to mind—the idea that this alien-human hybrid is the baddest kid on the block but for some reason it is so structurally weak that it has ITS INSIDES SUCKED OUT by a hole in the hull of the space station??? I mean Christ almightly, didn’t ANYONE think to ask NASA about that scene? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-insult-your-intelligence/145499.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-insult-your-intelligence/145499.md?page=9)