“It’s a view…to a kill!” gets my vote for most awkward insertion of a title into dialogue.
In the A Fistful of Yen section of Kentucky Fried Movie, there’s one line that should be excised.
Dr. Klahn: These are lost drunken men who don’t know where they are, but do care! And these are men who know where they are and care, but don’t drink. Prisoner #3: I don’t know who I am! Prisoner #4: Yeah. And I don’t drink. Dr. Klahn: Guards!
Since the rest of the exchange all has to do with Prisoner #3, Prisoner #4’s line is totally extraneous (he’s in the right cage, anyway) and has always ruined the poetic flow of the dialogue for me.
And then there’s “Home Alone”, which probably holds the record for the most times the movie uses its title. Catherine O’Hara seems to use it in almost every scene after they finally realize they’ve left their kid … home alone.
Green Mile. When John Coffey grabs Tom Hank’s hand and replays Wild Bill’s memory of the twins’ murders, it should have just been through Wild Bill’s eyes. Should have kept the scene a mystery until he washes up for dinner and looks at himself in the mirror.
I can’t watch the end of Lethal Weapon without focusing on the two cops murdered in their car by Mr Joshua. Initially you are led to believe they are watching Roger’s house to protect his family. We soon find out Riggs and Murtaugh beat Mr Joshua to the house, got the family to safety and had time to leave a quippy note but didn’t have time to warn the two cops. So their lives are sacrificed just so there can be an action shot of the car going through the house. It makes no sense to leave those two guys as bait. Grab him when he shows up. He’s a murderer holding an automatic weapon. Shoot him. The other cops might have a problem with two of their friends being sacrificed for a good action shot.
However Danny Glover saying “I’m too old for this shit” when he was 40 years old at the time is totally relatable. Overall I still think it’s one of the best movies of its kind.
It might work if there were something about Jimmy & Jules’s relationship that Jimmy uses it just to F with him. But the best we have is that Jimmy is married to a Black women so he gets a pass?
Copied from an IMDB user review of The Ladykillers (1955):
Excellent as The Ladykillers is, it is spoiled by an anti-climax in the middle: after the heist has gone wrong and before the Professor decides they must kill Mrs Wilberforce. He should not have been there when the money escapes. Instead he should have been away, tying up various loose ends. The blunder would have been another sign of things going wrong in his absence, like the parrot’s escape. Once again he could have been seen calmly walking back, only to stop short as he spots the disaster.
Once again his terrible shadow could have been seen outside Mrs Wilberforce’s windows as the gang sing those terrible old songs. The dramatic suspense would have been maintained much better.
I would just change the title to that film, full stop. They abbreviated the Fleming title (of a short story) From a View to a Kill, which made sense in the context of that story, and called it something that really made no sense in the context of the completely different film plot. And then as you say, shoehorned it into the dialogue, ridiculously.
I think it’s shorthand to show that Jimmy is part of that world. Outwardly he appears to be a normie. Regular suburban house. Married to a nurse. Nothing out of the ordinary. So how does Jules know to go to his house? How are they connected? I believe Tarantino has said Jimmy used to work for Marcellus. He was Jules partner before Vincent but retired when he got married. His language towards Jules and Jules’ lack of anger towards it shows what kind of relationship they had without outright stating it. Could the same thing be done without using that language? Probably. I’m not a writer so I’m not going to pretend I could do it.
When African Americans repurposed that word it was always about context. I think Tarentino was trying to show his character was ‘cool’ and this is modeled by a serious black man in the room with a gun that allows him to say it without any pushback.
A pinball machine dropping the N bomb even if it was a direct quote from the film is not cool.
I hope Quentin Tarantino and John Mayer never find a group of black dudes that make them feel alright saying it.
The OP poses an interesting question, because I was wondering if ‘changing one little thing’ means that fundamentally the film stays the same, it’s just that we’re amending a little detail, or could we also be talking about amending something small early in the film that has a big knock on effect?
As the OP I can answer that. I was thinking of a little thing that would not have an overall effect. Like telling the girl mommy was sleeping didn’t change the movie. But if someone wants to change a little thing that would have a butterfly effect on plot or tone, that’s okay too.
I think Trump’s cameo in Home Alone 2, as mentioned above, fits the parameters perfectly. Take it out, and the plot is unaffected. As I understand things, it’s only there because Trump wouldn’t allow the film to be shot inside the Plaza unless he got a cameo, so I guess it was necessary in a way. But it added nothing, and I notice that it has been removed in recent TV edits.
Another example might be the scene in The Godfather where somebody is demonstrating how to make pasta sauce. It doesn’t add to nor detract from the film; it just takes up a minute or so of screen time. I don’t know if I’d remove it though, as if you follow the recipe yourself, you’ll end up with a tasty pasta sauce.
Ok cool thanks. I think I agree with Crispin Glover’s point about the end of Back to the Future, where he said that it was rather materialistic that the McFlys appeared to need money to be happy. I would change that end scene so they appeared to have the same financial situation as previously, but were happier in themselves and with each other. Other than that it is the perfect film to be honest.
Demolition Man, released in 1993, shows Los Angeles as a battle zone, overrun by crime and gangs, with visuals that are uncomfortably similar to what we’re seeing now. And the opening act is set in…1996. The filmmakers (and I use the word pretty loosely)(okay, maybe it’s a bit of a guilty pleasure) thought three years was plausibly far enough into the future for not only the complete descent of L.A. into anarchy but also the invention of cryogenic prisons. Change that to thirty+ years. Granted, we’re past that now and we haven’t achieved the cryo-prisons, but it would have seemed vaguely plausible by dopey science fiction standards. I mean, there’s not a frame in that movie that stands up to logical scrutiny, but that always bugged me the most.
