# Movies that wasted their premise by making the charecters into idiots **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 14, 2015, 4:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-wasted-their-premise-by-making-the-charecters-into-idiots/737526 "2015-11-14T04:06:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2015, 1:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-wasted-their-premise-by-making-the-charecters-into-idiots/737526/41 "2015-11-17T01:15:08Z")
I read _The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo_ a while ago, so I certainly don’t remember the character names, but as I recall, things are kicked off because Nice Old Uncle is getting a flower mailed to him every year, and thinks that he is being taunted by his niece’s killer, when in fact it turns out it’s his niece sending the flower every year. But his niece is still in contact with another relative of her generation (maybe her sister?) who is a flight attendant, and has been doing the actual mailing. So really, the whole thing would have been resolved by that person saying to the niece “hey, you know how you’re sending packages to our nice uncle every year out of love on your birthday? well, he thinks that you’re dead and the killer is taunting him and it’s driving him miserably insane. Want me to let him know you’re still alive?” ---
**Author:** ![ExTank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/35a633/32.png) [@ExTank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ExTank)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2015, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-wasted-their-premise-by-making-the-charecters-into-idiots/737526/42 "2015-11-17T01:16:13Z")
**Reality Chuck** is _probably_ ranting about _Alien_. Again. In spite of everyone telling him for two+ decades that he’s wrong, he still refuses to “get it.” ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2015, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-wasted-their-premise-by-making-the-charecters-into-idiots/737526/43 "2015-11-17T01:19:21Z")
I thought he was the guy who hates GATTACA. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2015, 1:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-wasted-their-premise-by-making-the-charecters-into-idiots/737526/44 "2015-11-17T01:28:10Z")
> [@Robot\_Arm](#): > > I remember that training scene, but I’m not sure how it applies to being in a pitch-black room with a gun already pointed at her head. You’ve heard the phrase “a shot in the dark?” She took one and got lucky. Binaural hearing can give you a good idea where a sound came from, too. ---
**Author:** ![Dale\_Sams](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/779978/32.png) [@Dale\_Sams](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dale_Sams)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2015, 2:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-wasted-their-premise-by-making-the-charecters-into-idiots/737526/45 "2015-11-17T14:05:39Z")
> [@ExTank](#): > > **Reality Chuck** is _probably_ ranting about _Alien_. > Again. > In spite of everyone telling him for two+ decades that he’s wrong, he still refuses to “get it.” S’ok. I’ll spend decades telling people the virus in ID4 is an homage and the water in Signs is also an homage AND the water has impurities in it (“It tastes funny”) ---
**Author:** ![RikWriter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/49beb7/32.png) [@RikWriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RikWriter)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2015, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-wasted-their-premise-by-making-the-charecters-into-idiots/737526/46 "2015-11-17T14:47:08Z")
> [@Anaamika](#): > > “This is your father’s lightsabre. Your father had promise of being a good man, a great man, but he had many heartbreaks in his life and it broke him, too, making him fall to the Dark Side. This is at least partly my fault and the Jedi’s fault, but I believe you have good in you and I have faith in you. I will try to help you in any way I can.” > > It is exactly like not telling teenagers sex education and hoping that they will never, ever engage in sex, rather than giving them any tools or prep to deal with what is almost inevitable. Of course, that would require a good director… ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2015, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-wasted-their-premise-by-making-the-charecters-into-idiots/737526/47 "2015-11-17T15:15:51Z")
> [@Robot\_Arm](#): > > Use the phone in the house. If Buffalo Bill shoots her then she’s dead, Catherine Martin is dead, and Bill gets away scot-free. “Hello, you have reached F.B.I. headquarters. If this is a life-threatening emergency, hang up and dial 9-1-1. If you know the extension of the party to whom you wish to speak, you may dial that number at any time. To report oddly-acting people with Arabic surnames, dial 1. To report suspicious-looking individuals of other ethnic backgrounds, dial 2. To report sightings of Ten Most Wanted suspects, dial 3, leave a message and an agent will get back to you…” ---
**Author:** ![AlsoNamedBort](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alsonamedbort/32/3213_2.png) [@AlsoNamedBort](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AlsoNamedBort)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2015, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-wasted-their-premise-by-making-the-charecters-into-idiots/737526/48 "2015-11-17T16:16:34Z")
> [@Dale\_Sams](#): > > Not a movie but “Lost”…how long did it take for you guys to decide to walk around the island? You’re ignorant of all the ‘supernatural’ trappings so there quite easily could be a resort on the other side. Sayid starts to walk around the island a little over a week after the crash and immediately gets captured. And pretty much anytime they head into the jungle some gets attacked by the monster or the Others, so it’s pretty understandable why they stuck to their camp. ---
**Author:** ![GreasyJack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/df705f/32.png) [@GreasyJack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreasyJack)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2015, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-wasted-their-premise-by-making-the-charecters-into-idiots/737526/49 "2015-11-17T17:40:30Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > When I initially brought up _The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo_ I was trying to avoid unnecessary spoilers, but since people seem to be confused on this point the assumption was not “She hasn’t been seen or heard from in many years, so whatever happened to her she’s probably dead by now.” It was specifically “She must have been murdered on the day she disappeared.” That’s a pretty big leap of logic considering that there was no body and (IIRC) not even any evidence of foul play. It’s not that someone going missing without a trace is “probably dead by now” it’s that in the real world people don’t successfully make themselves disappear, at least not for very long. So them not having heard a peep from someone over the decades pretty strongly suggests they died sometime around when they disappeared. Another aspect of it (which I’m just now remembering) is that Dreamy Investigative Journalist also isn’t trying that hard to solve the mystery at first, but is rather just viewing the assignment as a free vacation to get him out of Dødge while the scandal at the beginning blows over. ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2015, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-wasted-their-premise-by-making-the-charecters-into-idiots/737526/50 "2015-11-17T17:52:10Z")
> [@dropzone](#): > > You’ve heard the phrase “a shot in the dark?” She took one and got lucky. Binaural hearing can give you a good idea where a sound came from, too. Yeah, I don’t doubt that she could hear the click of a hammer being pulled back, and could tell which direction the sound came from. But Buffalo Bill’s gun was just a few inches from her head; either she is supercop and can spin around and get off a shot in the blink of an eye, or Bill is an idiot for hesitating (and therefore eligible for this thread). And I thought of another good candidate for this thread, though I’ll be a little surprised if anyone remembers it, _Juggernaut_ (1974). Someone has planted seven bombs, concealed in large drums, on a cruise ship in the North Atlantic. He now tries to extort money from the cruise ship line in return for information on how to disarm the bombs. The government sends a bomb disposal team to the ship, having them parachute into stormy waters and climb ladders to get on board. The bomb crews have a rather ingenious system whereby they are each working on a different bomb, and are all wearing headsets and can talk to one another. The head bomb guy describes each step he is about to take, and if it doesn’t blow up the others can do the same to their bombs. Of course it comes down to the classic “cut the blue wire or cut the red wire” scenario (in this case, I think literally). The guy announces that he’s going to cut the blue wire, and for complicated reasons cuts the red wire instead. It’s subtle, I suppose, but that’s the stupid part. The system is designed so that one person’s mistake won’t be repeated by the others; the way he did it guaranteed that if he fucked up then everybody would be dead. If I was one of the guys working with him I’d go over and beat the crap out of him. Bonus trivia question: What do these two movies have in common? ---
**Author:** ![burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/burpo_the_wonder_mutt/32/365_2.png) [@burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/burpo_the_wonder_mutt)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2015, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-wasted-their-premise-by-making-the-charecters-into-idiots/737526/51 "2015-11-17T18:04:02Z")
^ Anthony Hopkins. ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2015, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-wasted-their-premise-by-making-the-charecters-into-idiots/737526/52 "2015-11-17T18:05:57Z")
> [@burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](#): > > ^ Anthony Hopkins. That didn’t take long. Did you know, or have to look it up? ---
**Author:** ![burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/burpo_the_wonder_mutt/32/365_2.png) [@burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/burpo_the_wonder_mutt)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2015, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-wasted-their-premise-by-making-the-charecters-into-idiots/737526/53 "2015-11-17T18:13:13Z")
I remembered Hopkins name from Juggernaut, but looked it up to be sure. ---
**Author:** ![Morbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/morbo/32/389_2.png) [@Morbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morbo)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2015, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-wasted-their-premise-by-making-the-charecters-into-idiots/737526/54 "2015-11-17T19:02:47Z")
It’s worse for me if I’m really enjoying the movie, and then the character does something stupid. A great example is **Pan’s Labyrinth** , which I loved. But oh man was I screaming at Ophelia during this scene: The faun tells her that whatever she does, **do not** eat from the banquet table of the Pale Man. She goes into his world, sees this gruesome terrifying creature sleeping. Sees a bunch of clearly devoured kid’s shoes, paintings of him eating kids, etc. Sneaks around and gets what she came for, and is about to leave. Time is critical here. Then she stops to eat a grape. The little fairies are trying desperately to prevent this, but she shoos them off and eats one anyway. Aaargh! ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2015, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-wasted-their-premise-by-making-the-charecters-into-idiots/737526/55 "2015-11-17T20:14:23Z")
Dude, it’s a fairy tale. If little girls told not to do things didn’t do them anyway all fairy tales would be very short. (also, if it’s all in her head, this is all a hunger dream.) ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2015, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-wasted-their-premise-by-making-the-charecters-into-idiots/737526/56 "2015-11-17T23:08:50Z")
> [@GreasyJack](#): > > It’s not that someone going missing without a trace is “probably dead by now” it’s that in the real world people don’t successfully make themselves disappear, at least not for very long. So them not having heard a peep from someone over the decades pretty strongly suggests they died sometime around when they disappeared. The lack of a corpse pretty strongly suggests she didn’t die around the time she disappeared (there was an organized search for her), and she had in fact been heard from – the old man just didn’t get that the flowers were from her. Beyond that, the central assumption was not “She probably died sometime around when she disappeared.” It was “She was murdered on the day she disappeared.” This would be fine as one potential explanation to be considered, but there was nothing in the novel to support the characters’ eagerness to accept this as the only _possible_ explanation. It was idiotic, and you are wasting your time trying to defend it to me. ---
**Author:** ![Typo\_Negative](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/typo_negative/32/484_2.png) [@Typo\_Negative](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Typo_Negative)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2015, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-wasted-their-premise-by-making-the-charecters-into-idiots/737526/57 "2015-11-18T19:36:42Z")
I will repost my criticism of Rise of the Planet of the Apes, as it is appropriate. My pet peeve in movies is scientists not behaving like scientists. > [@](#): > > Have the producers, director, writers ever heard of science??? It goes into sci-fi stereotype BS right away. > > Science guy’s father has terrible disease. Science guy works tirelessly to cure that disease. > > Science guy gets remarkable results with ONE test subject and declares victory and wants to start with human trials. > > That ONE test subject freaks out and based on that ONE example, the higher ups shelve the project. > > Nobody watched that ONE test subject closely enough to notice that is was pregnant, and had in fact just given birth to live young. I guess checking the subject’s vital signs regulary during a drug trial was too much trouble. > > Science guy gives experimental drug to father, who has remarkable results. He tells no one for 5 years, untl after ‘cure’ has started to fail. This causes him panic, as if alzheimer’s sufferers and their families wouldn’t give every dime they could beg, borrow or inheret for 5 more good years. > > Later, they have another remarkable advance with ONE subject and want to make this the focus of all their efforts. ONE GODDAAMNED SUBJECT. > > Ceasar is wearing pants throughout most of the film. Even after he in custody and placed in an animal shelter with other chimps. He is still wearing pants. > OK, I can go along with him being ‘house-broken’, but he is an animal in a single pair of pants for months on end in a room with no ‘toilet’ long after an intelligent creature would have realized that wearing pants was not nessasary. > > Why did science guy not get concerned that chimp handler is sneezing blood after being exposed to experimental drug??? ---
**Author:** ![Anaamika](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Anaamika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anaamika)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2015, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-wasted-their-premise-by-making-the-charecters-into-idiots/737526/58 "2015-11-18T19:58:03Z")
> [@RikWriter](#): > > Of course, that would require a good director… Instead we got the world’s worst romance scene. I still cringe when I think of it, like an actual physical cringe. **RealityChuck** is not 100% wrong in his comments about _Alien_. He makes a lot of good points about how dumb the crew is, and dumb they are, breaking quarantine and just being general jacknuggets. Except Ripley. Where I, and many people disagree with him, is that just because a movie’s _characters_ are dumb, doesn’t necessarily mean the _movie_ is dumb, too. I have a much bigger problem with the end of _Alien_, where Ripley runs to destroy the ship (4 minutes) then runs to the escape pod (4 minutes) then runs back to disarm the self destruct (4 minutes) then runs back to the fucking escape pod again (4 minutes). It reminds me of the old Final Fantasy games when I could see the fucking exit, RIGHT THERE, but I had to follow this stupid weaving path just to get there. Ahem. Got sidetracked. But _Alien_ is still a scary movie. I just like _Aliens_ better. _Rise of the Planet of the Apes_ is a great one, especially since it had promise. All of \*\*Typo Negative’s \*\*complaints stand, but no one knew she was pregnant? Ptooey! I know everyone excuses Ophelia from _Pan’s Labryinth_ but I don’t. I think she was a dumb bitch for eating the food. The one thing she was forbidden to do! And don’t tell me it’s a fairy tale or that she was a little girl! She should have listened! It would have been better if they had established some reason for her to be so freakin dumb but a girl that seemed fairly bright up until now just lost all her common sense. Eat it! I never got past the opening of _Lost_. So they all crash on this stupid island. And the white guy runs around fixing everyone’s problems. Meanwhile the women are all screaming hysterically, totally useless decorative props. I have no idea if it got better, but I just can’t stand that characterization of women. Women have been through some amazing shit. Do not attempt to tell me that while everyone is screaming ONE white dude manages to get their shit together and take charge. Fuck that noise! Horror movies do this a lot: make all of their characters into complete freakin idiots. It’s actually why I love _American: Horror Story_ so; sometimes the characters are stupid, but mostly they are just people, complicated and messed up. But in lots of horror movies, by the time the killing comes, you are rooting for the monster to remove these assholes from the gene pool! ETA: Did I miss it, or did no one mention Prometheus? ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2015, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-wasted-their-premise-by-making-the-charecters-into-idiots/737526/59 "2015-11-18T20:10:50Z")
> [@Anaamika](#): > > **RealityChuck** is not 100% wrong in his comments about _Alien_. He makes a lot of good points about how dumb the crew is, and dumb they are, **breaking quarantine** and just being general jacknuggets. Except Ripley. Bolding mine. RC is still wrong on this point. Does everyone forget that Ash’s one and only job was to bring back an alien - “all other priorities rescinded”? He wasn’t really part of the crew - his bosses had a different agenda than bringing in cargo. He was a spy, a double-naught, as it were. If Ripley held firm and wouldn’t let them in, I suspect he would have killed\* her where she stood. And everyone else on the ship, as necessary. \*Well, at least tried. He wasn’t the greatest at killing. A magazine?? Srsly? ---
**Author:** ![Anaamika](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Anaamika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anaamika)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2015, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-wasted-their-premise-by-making-the-charecters-into-idiots/737526/60 "2015-11-18T20:28:55Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > Bolding mine. > > RC is still wrong on this point. Does everyone forget that Ash’s one and only job was to bring back an alien - “all other priorities rescinded”? He wasn’t really part of the crew - his bosses had a different agenda than bringing in cargo. He was a spy, a double-naught, as it were. > > If Ripley held firm and wouldn’t let them in, I suspect he would have killed\* her where she stood. And everyone else on the ship, as necessary. > > \*Well, at least tried. He wasn’t the greatest at killing. A magazine?? Srsly? Wait, stop. Ash’s priorities are one thing, but the captain doesn’t know anything about it. The Captain was the one most pushing to break quarantine. And you know what? Maybe if Ripley had stood firm we might have avoided the entire plot. We’d have a different plot, for sure, but the captain was an asshole. And yes, the magazine was stupid. I know it’s supposed to be rape symbolism, but dammit, you’re an android, punch her in the freakin head! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-wasted-their-premise-by-making-the-charecters-into-idiots/737526.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-wasted-their-premise-by-making-the-charecters-into-idiots/737526.md?page=4)