# 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:** 12\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![psiekier](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psiekier/32/116_2.png) [@psiekier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psiekier)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2015, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-wasted-their-premise-by-making-the-charecters-into-idiots/737526/61 "2015-11-18T22:16:17Z")
> [@Captain\_C](#): > > Dear writers, don’t portray your characters as reasonable or protagonists for a good chunk of the introduction if really you are just making shit up as you go along. > > I started to watch 28 Weeks Later. There’s a predictable zombie outbreak. But surely the military, having quarantined an entire island with the highest security needed from any virus ever has multiple checkpoints to prevent any sort of contagion from crossing multiple checkpoints. Nope, it’s wide open from day one. Had you already seen _28 Days Later?_ _28 Weeks Later_ was the sequel nobody cared about. > [@Captain\_C](#): > > So I give up on that about halfway through, as my blood pressure can’t take the pure stupidity of the military in it. So I switch to Starship Troopers, which from my reading of the book, informs me it should be great about small squad tactics in a sci-fi war. Nope, we are going to have mobs of infantry invade a resource less planet in a ground war with useless small arms fire and no squad tactics against a melee-heavy enemy in their own territory. Predictably, it goes terribly. After yelling at my TV for awhile, I give up on this one as well. I suppose I’m not spoiling it by telling you that in the movie, Sky Marshall Dienes lives long enough to resign after that first invasion of Klendathu. In the book, if you’ll recall, Dienes and his entire unit are wiped out to a man fighting a delaying action against the bugs while what’s left of Earth’s military scrambles back to a safe enough distance that the Arachnids won’t slaughter them all. Rico even says that after that, the best the MI could do for a long time was make hit-and-run raids and harass the enemy here-and-there because they had lost so many good men on Klendathu. It really _was_ a poorly-thought-out mess just like in the book; it doesn’t matter if you’re an army of automatic-rifle-toting Hollywood pretty boys/girls, or an army of Mobile Infantry in Marauder armour. I’ve read about what Paul Verhoeven says he wanted to do with the movie, and we’ve talked about it so many times before (like [here](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=6915256) and [here](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=6735331)), but you really can’t take _Starship Troopers_ any more seriously than you can, say, _Robocop_, for example. It’s just plain fun to watch. Maybe we’ll get what we came for someday when someone makes John Steakley’s _Armor_ or Joe Haldeman’s _The Forever War_ (or even _Forever Peace_). > [@Captain\_C](#): > > One more shot at an action movie tonight I say. I settle on X-Men Last Stand, a movie I’ve waited several years to see on the premise it as the Juggernaut in it, played by one of my favorite actors from Lock Stock & Two Smoking Barrels. Made it about 3/4 of the way through, until I realized the X-Men are fighting against the fella who is actively trying to stop the government from exterminating them, as proven by them weaponizing a serum that makes mutants stop being mutants. It’s been a while since I’ve bought any Marvel comics, but to my reckoning, Magneto and the X-men have been at odds philosophically since Day One, and the movies repeatedly capitalize on this. Both Professor X and Magneto want Mankind to accept mutants living among them - the former through peace and understanding, but the latter through conquest. Maybe it’s more accurate to say that Magneto desires mutants to live _above_ Mankind, with mere humans groveling at his feet. Please tell me you at least stayed long enough to watch Juggernaut chase after Kitty Pryde! > [@Don\_Draper](#): > > The movie [Alien Nation](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094631/) has to be the poster-child for films with wasted premises… > > But after about five minutes of establishing that premise, the movie becomes a run-of-the-mill, cliché, 80s buddy cop movie, complete with cornball jokes like naming a character “Sam Francisco” and a predictable drug-smuggling plotline. Mandy Patinkin’s character was going to be named “George Jetson”, but Hanna-Barbera nixed the idea. That’s why James Caan declares that he will not go around introducing him to people as “Sam Francisco”, and asks if he can just call him “George” instead. The gag is that the aliens pick human names to be known by amongst the humans, sometimes with unintentional consequences (“we named him after your Earth politician, Richard Nixon”), but sometimes with nods to characters or situations in other works. The comic book featured an alien detective named “Mason Jar”. As to whether the premise is wasted… maybe that’s why they thought there was enough material there to continue with a TV show. I thought the appreciable angle of the drug-smuggling plotline was that _most_ of the aliens really _do_ want to assimilate into Earth society, but as a whole had to hide the fact that their masters had controlled them with narcotics. It was a dirty little secret they wish they could have left behind. There are always a few in every crowd that want to take more than their fair share, and are willing to exploit their own kind, however … > [@Don\_Draper](#): > > I’ve heard the TV series that spun off from it was more interesting, but I’ve never seen it. I liked Gary Graham better in _Robot Jox_. > [@Dale\_Sams](#): > > 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”) _Signs_ I can not excuse, but we probably don’t want to open that can of purple worms again. _Independence Day_ gets a pass because you’re not _supposed_ to take it seriously - it’s a “Humanity! F$#^ YEAH!” movie deliberately wrapped in obvious cliches so you can have fun watching it on a big screen. The first time I saw it was when I lived in Houston, and you better believe we all cheered when President Whitmore authorized nuking the saucer. ---
**Author:** ![YogSothoth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/8edcca/32.png) [@YogSothoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YogSothoth)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2015, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-wasted-their-premise-by-making-the-charecters-into-idiots/737526/62 "2015-11-19T00:14:48Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > The _Alien_ prequel _Prometheus_ springs to mind. We had a [13 page thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=653756) about it back when it was in theaters and I said my part then, but here’s the short version: That was the thread that turned me from liking the film to not being able to stand it. > [@Anaamika](#): > > Instead we got the world’s worst romance scene. I still cringe when I think of it, like an actual physical cringe. Do you find it coarse and irritating? ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2015, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-wasted-their-premise-by-making-the-charecters-into-idiots/737526/63 "2015-11-19T00:31:21Z")
> [@Anaamika](#): > > ETA: Did I miss it, or did no one mention Prometheus? It’s been mentioned a few times, first by me in [post #4](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=18858112&postcount=4). It may be giving _Prometheus_ too much credit even to say that the characters were idiots, as their behavior often doesn’t even make _stupid_ sense. ---
**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 19, 2015, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-wasted-their-premise-by-making-the-charecters-into-idiots/737526/64 "2015-11-19T00:50:44Z")
Any movie or show where the zombies are shamblers…I’d really like to see a movie between Dawn and Night of the Living Dead that portrays a convincing transition. I like that Dawn just shows things have degraded into a Vietnam-like situation with morale insanely low but I need more. ---
**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 19, 2015, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-wasted-their-premise-by-making-the-charecters-into-idiots/737526/65 "2015-11-19T00:57:11Z")
Re: Forever War…Is Michael Ironside too old to get a part? Clancy Brown? Say what you will about Starship Troopers…for what they were trying to do…those two parts and NPH as Nazi Doctor Doogie Howser is brilliant casting ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2015, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-wasted-their-premise-by-making-the-charecters-into-idiots/737526/66 "2015-11-19T01:05:45Z")
> [@Robot\_Arm](#): > > I always thought this was the difference between the first two _Die Hard_ movies. In the first, McClain is the lone wolf hero because he’s trapped in a building with the bad guys. In the second he’s the lone wolf hero because all the other good guys are idiots. To be fair, the other good guys in the first movie are idiots, too, except for Reginald VelJohnson’s character. When he tries to report the problem over the radio, he gets chastised for using an emergency channel. The FBI guys are too busy playing cowboy with their armored car thing and their helicopter to come up with any kind of coherent strategy. No one seems to pay any attention to the guy on the inside. When confronted, they give laughably stupid reasons for this. ---
**Author:** ![psiekier](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psiekier/32/116_2.png) [@psiekier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psiekier)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2015, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-wasted-their-premise-by-making-the-charecters-into-idiots/737526/67 "2015-11-19T15:01:20Z")
> [@Dale\_Sams](#): > > Re: Forever War…Is Michael Ironside too old to get a part? Clancy Brown? As whom? They’re both too old to play Mandela, and neither one of them is big enough to play Sergeant Cortez: > [@The Forever War](#): > > Sergeant Cortez was another story, a horror story. His head was shaved and the wrong shape, flattened out on one side, where a large piece of skull had obviously been taken out. His face was dark and seamed with wrinkles and scars. Half his ear was missing and his eyes were as expressive as buttons on a machine. He had a moustache-and-beard combination that looked like a skinny white caterpillar trying to take a lap around his mouth. He was the meanest-looking creature I had ever seen. Still, if you didn’t look at his head and considered the lower six feet of so, he could have posed as the “after” advertisement for a bodybuilding spa. It might be fun for Betty White to play Mandela’s mother when he returns from his first tour of duty. … and speaking of Clancy Brown, I finally thought of a movie that would fit the OP’s criteria: _Highlander II_. To be fair, though, maybe _I’m_ the stupid one here; I paid full price to see it in the theater. > [@Dale\_Sams](#): > > Say what you will about Starship Troopers…for what they were trying to do…those two parts and NPH as Nazi Doctor Doogie Howser is brilliant casting He is _nothing_ like Ralph Macchio. 😉 ---
**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 19, 2015, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-wasted-their-premise-by-making-the-charecters-into-idiots/737526/68 "2015-11-19T16:59:09Z")
> [@iamthewalrus\_3](#): > > To be fair, the other good guys in the first movie are idiots, too, except for Reginald VelJohnson’s character. > > When he tries to report the problem over the radio, he gets chastised for using an emergency channel. > > The FBI guys are too busy playing cowboy with their armored car thing and their helicopter to come up with any kind of coherent strategy. > > No one seems to pay any attention to the guy on the inside. When confronted, they give laughably stupid reasons for this. All true enough, I suppose, but it doesn’t bring the movie down like it does in the sequel. The police lieutenant and FBI agents are doing stupid things because there’s not really much that they can do. And _Die Hard 2_ has bigger problems than the good guys being idiots, so maybe I’m just more critical of it in general. ---
**Author:** ![Regallag\_The\_Axe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/regallag_the_axe/32/445_2.png) [@Regallag\_The\_Axe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Regallag_The_Axe)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2015, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-wasted-their-premise-by-making-the-charecters-into-idiots/737526/69 "2015-11-19T17:13:16Z")
> [@psiekier](#): > > As whom? They’re both too old to play Mandela, and neither one of them is big enough to play Sergeant Cortez: > > > [@](#): > > > > Sergeant Cortez was another story, a horror story. His head was shaved and the wrong shape, flattened out on one side, where a large piece of skull had obviously been taken out. His face was dark and seamed with wrinkles and scars. Half his ear was missing and his eyes were as expressive as buttons on a machine. He had a moustache-and-beard combination that looked like a skinny white caterpillar trying to take a lap around his mouth. He was the meanest-looking creature I had ever seen. Still, if you didn’t look at his head and considered the lower six feet of so, he could have posed as the “after” advertisement for a bodybuilding spa. I’m unfamiliar with the source material, but from your description [Ron Perlman](http://www.jackguy.com/data/photos/382_1ron_perlman_1.jpg) comes to mind. ---
**Author:** ![Anaamika](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Anaamika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anaamika)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2015, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-wasted-their-premise-by-making-the-charecters-into-idiots/737526/70 "2015-11-19T17:19:52Z")
> [@YogSosoth](#): > > Do you find it coarse and irritating? : chops off **YogSogoth’s** head : ---
**Author:** ![Buck\_Godot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/buck_godot/32/6573_2.png) [@Buck\_Godot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buck_Godot)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2015, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-wasted-their-premise-by-making-the-charecters-into-idiots/737526/71 "2015-11-19T17:45:59Z")
> [@Captain\_C](#): > > I started to watch 28 Weeks Later. There’s a predictable zombie outbreak. But surely the military, having quarantined an entire island with the highest security needed from any virus ever has multiple checkpoints to prevent any sort of contagion from crossing multiple checkpoints. Nope, it’s wide open from day one. I actually liked 28 days later. I see it as an antidote for those movies which pits the sentimental hero against the pitiless general, with the hero winning out by breaking regulations because “We can’t just leave them there to die!” Every step that led to the virus being released was due to someone thinking with their heart rather than their head. Either they needed to see their wife just this one time, or they couldn’t shoot the infected because innocent civilians were in the crossfire, or they rescued the two kids in direct violation of procedure because they didn’t look sick. So, yes they behaved like idiots, but I think that was by design. ---
**Author:** ![Poysyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f4b2a3/32.png) [@Poysyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Poysyn)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2015, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-wasted-their-premise-by-making-the-charecters-into-idiots/737526/72 "2015-11-19T17:54:53Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > It’s been mentioned a few times, first by me in [post #4](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=18858112&postcount=4). > > It may be giving _Prometheus_ too much credit even to say that the characters were idiots, as their behavior often doesn’t even make _stupid_ sense. Oh I hated _Prometheus_. My hubby has tried a few times to justify it, but it’s awful. My contribution is _ **Windtalkers** _. I really wanted to watch a movie about the Navajo code-talkers, instead I got some BS story about a half-Deaf Nicholas Cage. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-that-wasted-their-premise-by-making-the-charecters-into-idiots/737526.md?page=3)