Not quite the same, but I thought it was pretty awkward when RoboCop 2 literally introduced a RoboCop 2 character in addition to the original RoboCop.
I thought that was pretty neat , myself . May have been making a dig at the current numbering formula for sequels.:):
Another reverse example: When Doc Brown tells Marty he’s sending him Back to the Future.
Spaceguy: We’re ready to begin operations"
Head Spaceguy: “And what plan will we be using?”
Spaceguy: “Plan 9, Your Excellency”
Head Spaceguy: Ah, yes. Plan 9. That deals with the resurrection of the recently deceased"
Bad dialog from a bad movie.
No. That line summarized the entire film and deserves to be spoken.
It’s similar to “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?,” a line in the movie that’s absolutely essential.
Being essential doesn’t keep it from being awkward.
In Don’t Eat the Daisies they sang the title as a song.
Heck, they did that in The Sound of Music, too, but it was a much better song there.
The most awkward case I can recall wasn’t even spoken, since it was a silent movie. In The Lost World, Lloyd hughes, as Edward Malone, asks Bessie Love (playing Paula White* how she feels “…in this lost world of ours.” The answer , since they’re surrounded by grunting dinosaurs in the night, and are about to be attacked by an Alosaur and an Ape Man, is “scared out of my mind”. But, of course, she doesn’t say that.
I think in many cases it’s the other way around; the title is pulled out of the script.
Great line.
Not awkward, though, right?
Generally that’ll work better. In the case of “The Cat Creeps”, which I mention in my OP, it takes the title from a 1930 movie which is thought to be a lost film. Evidently someone liked the existing title but felt like they needed to shoehorn, “cat” and “creeps” into the dialogue to justify it.
In neither case was it awkward; the use of the term was perfectly reasonable dialog. In the case of “They Shoot Horses,” I’m betting the author of the book decided on that title after he wrote the line.
That is a technique that’s fairly common, and it’s also common that movies get their titles the script is written. As such, the title comes from the dialog, instead of the dialog being written to match the title.* So how is the dialog awkwardly referencing the title if the dialog came before it was the title?
Please Don’t Eat the Daisies definitely doesn’t belong on the list. The line may appear in the movie, but it was taken from an actual line that Jean Kerr (the 50s Erma Bomback, but funnier) used; the book was a collection of humorous essays based upon true incidents of her family. One essay took that title from something she had said to her kids, and the book took its title from that essay. So again, the dialog can’t be referencing the title, since the line came first.
As for the fact that there was a song by that name, hundreds of movies used theme songs that had the title of the film: Ghostbusters, Theme from the Godfather, Tammy, Cat Ballou, Oklahoma!, A Hard Day’s Night, etc. It’s silly to call that awkwardness – the entire point of a theme song is to use the title of the movie.
"Plan 9 From Outer Space, mentioned here, comes to mind: The original title was Grave Robbers from Outer Space. While the dialog is awkward, that’s only because all the dialog in the movie is awkward, not that they tried to put the title of the film into the dialog (though Kreskin did say “Grave Robbers from Outer Space,” but that’s perfectly natural in its context: he’s introducing the story.
And later on:
Police Officer: I don’t appreciate drug addicts in my town. I’m a Family Guy.
Peter: Yes he said it!
TVTropes has a shit-ton of examples:
Title Drop, for when someone says it.
And Justified Title, when a very specific title makes sense in context via something in the story, but is often forced.
Or Epunymous Title, if it’s something corny based on a character’s name, etc. (“John Termin the 8th is… Termin8or”).
It is a good line, but it kind of just hangs out there as a final punctuation on the movie–more of a “line” than dialogue.
Samuel L. Jackson is the one who ensured the title would stay “Snakes on a Plane.” The producers did want to change it (to the ridiculously generic Flight 180), but Jackson put his foot down and basically told them that he signed up for “Snakes on a Plane,” so he was going to star in “Snakes on a Plane.”
Though the “I am sick of these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane” line was added after the Internet went crazy for the film.
Not only isnt this line not awkward, it is classic.
Don’t Eat the Daisies DEFINITELY belongs on the list. Nothing about this thread demands that the line not come first. The problem is that there’s no way to work it into the script. It’s a cathchy book title, but a stupid line, u8nless delivered by a suburban mom to a child (or dog), and for some reason they didn’t want to do that, so they put it in a song.
I included this example in a thread I started a long time ago about movies where the script had diverged so much from the book that they had to “explain” the title. The Color Purple is another 9the book uses purple in several ways, not just that line they throw in at the end about God getting pissed off when people don’t appreciate The Color Purple. But I didn’t think that was particularly clumsy, so I didn’t include it. Another was Stephen King’s Hearts in Atlantis, where they had to cook up a scene with people playing the card game “Hearts” to cover tyhe fact that they didn’t include the parts of the book that made the title make sense. But no one in the film says “Hearts in Atlantis”, so I didn’t include that one hgere, either.
IIRC, there was a time when the Academy required the title be mentioned in a Best Original Song entry. This led to Phil Collins’ “And you coming back to me is Against All Odds,” which I found lyrically awkward and an obvious sop to the Academy and the guys in Marketing.
I recently watched Magnificent Obsession," starring Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson. At one point, Hudson meets up with a man who is spreading a very altruistic philosophy. Hudson decides to follow this philosophy (making up for wrongs he had committed), and the man says to him (I’m paraphrasing) “This will become your obsession . . . a magnificent obsession.” The line sounded very contrived, as if the screenplay writer was coerced into mention the title somewhere in the script.
‘Grit’ was used to describe him in the first movie, but I don’t recall the phrase ‘True Grit’ being used. Definitely in the 2010 version:
I believe in both films she says that she is “looking for a man with true grit.” I believe one time it is to the man she convinces to buy and sell the horses. I also believe she says it to Cogburn himself after his testimony.