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?
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!
??? 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.
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]? **
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No, cause I already hypothesised something similiar way up in the thread. Godammit, that’s the third time that’s happened to me! :mad:
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.
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??
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”).
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.
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.
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…
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.
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.
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?