Stupid decisions made by a character in a book or movie

Cafe Society
1

IANAL, but I was thinking the other day about how stupid Tom Cruise’s character in A Few Good Men would have to be to call Colonel Jessup to the stand, betting everything that–at the risk of his entire career and the lives of his clients–he can bluff this hard case into confessing.

I wonder where that character would have ended up in real life?

I’m sure that there are bajillions of other examples, though not so many come readily to my mind just now. Romantic comedies are probably easy–“why didn’t they just clear up the misunderstanding about XXXXX at the outset?” (Meet the Parents, While You Were Sleeping, etc. etc.) I’d be especially interested, though, in examples of dramas or other movies/books that are supposed to be taking themselves seriously.

2

I’ll keep picking on characters Tom Cruise has played and offer up the girl on the beach in The Firm.

3

In Dirty Harry, the titular character chooses a .458 magnum bolt action rifle to use as a counter-sniper weapon while on a rooftop stakeout. Such a weapon is well suited to the close range shooting of dangerous game animals; a counter-sniper weapon it is not.
The choice made sense, sort of, in a dramatic way; Harry choosing a huge, powerful rifle echoes Harry using a huge, powerful handgun. In reality, its insane overpenetration, brutal recoil, and slow rate of fire make it ill-suited to his task. Amusingly, the way things played out in the movie actually were something like how things would have played out in real life. He missed on his first shot, and recoil didn’t permit a quick second shot. Scorpio hosed the cops down with an smg and made an escape. He killed a priest into the bargain IIRC. The only missing element is where the slugs went on Harry’s missed shots. In real life, a .458 magnum loaded with solids will penetrate residential structures with trivial loss of slug mass or velocity. Those slugs would have gone somewhere…

4

Warning: obscure and probably boring, but I just finished reading this and it drove me a little nuts:

The book The Man In The Iron Mask is over 150 years old, so I’m not going to bother putting in spoiler tags.

Basic plot: Aramis is one of three people in the world who knows that King Louis XIV has an identical twin brother, currently languishing in prison. Aramis lays careful plans, taking years to come to fruition. He manages to get the brother out of prison. He persuades his closest ally at court (Fouquet) to invite the king to a fete at his country estate, where the switch takes place. The switch does take place, the king is in prison (where the jailers think he is insane so they won’t pay attention when he claims he is the king) and the brother is in his place. Aramis is set to become the “king’s” closest advisor in order to help him over the rough spots, and also to further his own agendas (he wants to be pope!).

So what does he do, before the night is out? He tells Fouquet of the substitution which has taken place under his (Fouquet’s) roof. He knows Fouquet is an honorable man, and not surprisingly Fouquet refuses to go along with the subterfuge, denounces Aramis and goes to rescue the real king from the Bastille. (By the way, this might be a good spot to mention that, in the book, Louis is not any kind of monster, just a little bit self-indulgent and immature. So Aramis’ justification for replacing him is weak to start with. But I digress.)

Aramis had kept this secret for something like 20 years, while he worked out the various strings of the plot necessary to make this substitution work. Why in heck did he have to blurt out the truth, even to an ally, so soon after the thing took place? There was no reason offered in the book, and this bit of stupidity led either directly or indirectly to the deaths of Porthos and Athos (both innocent of the plot) and Athos’ son Raoul.

Very disappointing ending to the marathon of reading required to get through this enormous 3-volume novel.
Roddy

5

That one horror movie where that group of kids go into the woods without adult supervision and end up getting killed by a weapon-wielding maniac. What was that called again?

Seriously, Marion Crane in Psycho made an incredibly stupid decision in stealing the money. There was little chance that Sam would accept stolen money and there was no way she could possibly have gotten away with it. Barring the unforeseen circumstances that prevented her from returning to Arizona, the real-life consequences would probably have been the loss of her boyfriend, her job and her freedom.

6

Obligatory link to TVTropes.org: the Idiot Ball and Idiot Plot.

7

Since this appears to be open spoilers…

The Harry Potter series is rife with a grotesque number of them, along with gratuitous over-use of deus ex machina and ludicrously implausible plot contrivances. I could have forgiven it had Rowling put even a small bit in with Firenze the Centaur claiming that the fates were pushing some people to conflict or somesuch.

But anyway…

Throughout most of the series, Voldemort would like it if Harry Potter were offed. Thign is, he always and everywhere goes about it in the most ridiculous way possible, usually trying for some dramatic confrontation under the full moon with ample spectators. In fact, his plans are handily derailed by a pack of preteens and adolescents.

Book One: Ok, he doesn’t want to attract attention throughout most of the book. Does he just kill Harry and then figure out the stone thing? Apparently he realized that Harry was lying and probably had it, but no, rather than just snapping his fingers and BAM dead Harry he winds up losing his borrwed body.

Book Two: Yes, lets send the monster after Harry rather than wasting the helpless, unarmed boy when you had the chance. Real bright.

Book Three: (Voldemort doesn’t really appear here, and this is one reason why I like this book best.)

Book Four: It’s not enough to lure Hary off school grounds and then port him. It must be done as Harry wins the tournament so the evil spell of rebirth can take place. Yeah…

Book Five: I don’t mean to criticize the man for his minions, but Good Night, I’d rather have stormtroopers than this lot of dimwits. A larger group of experienced wizards with no compunction about using really nasty magic and with the advantage of invisibility get their butts kicked by Harry and co. And hard. yeah, eventually the kids get backup, but they take out several of these supposedly fiendish and terrifying dark sorcerers and bamboozle the rest.

Book Six: Let’s put the entire plot in the hands of a rebellious teenager. Yeah, you really want to succeed there, eh Voldey…

Book Seven: Ouch. Yeah, this is basically the “let’s blunder around on brute force” approach. Naturally enough, Voldemort has no idea what he’s doing and spends most of the book doing, well, not much at all. He gets to be Minister of Magic, although why he wanted it is never very clear.

The further I read in the books, I got a sickening sensation that Voldemort was a really lousy villain. He obviously knew more about the technological world than most other wizards, and surely knew that he could easily whack Harry by charming or simply bribing some thug with a Saturday Night Special. Heavy magic use may mess with electronics, but it apparently doesn’t screw with combustion of chemical reactions; the gun would work. And Harry could be taken out anywhere. Voldemort could go with a large force, including several snipers or ambush squads, without any large magical attack. The Ministry of Magic seems to have no defenses against this kind of thing. Likewise, Dumbledore could be wasted quite handily in the streets of Hogsmeade.

Now, DUmbledore is a real issue, and I don’t even want to mention his actions.

8

“Hold your fire. There’s no life forms. It must have short-circuited.”

9

The end of Watchmen, when they let Ozymandius live. Now, I understand why they didn’t go public with the truth; but letting him go on with his plans when he’d already killed so many people was foolish. Mind, unlike a lot of these stupid decisions it was the kind of mistake I could see the characters actually making, and not just an idiot plot.

10

Well, people all through Six Feet Under make the most idiotic decisions, particularly about relationship - but it’s completely realistic, so there you go.

11

Airplane! The pilot, co-pilot and navigator ALL had the fish.

12

The entire zombie horror movie genre is based on bad decsion making. The plot invariably requires the protagonists find some kind of safe hideout, so that the characters, and their (and their inter-relationships, back stories, etc) can be developed in peaceful surroundings.

At that point in the real world everyone would STAY PUT, and not go wondering out into the zombie infested outside world. But that would make for a terrible movie, so inevitably someone will have to have the bright idea of making a break for it.

Not mention the fact that people in Zombie movies seem completely unable to grasp the concept that “people who get bitten by zombies become zombies!”, until way after any sane person would have cottoned on. Though I guess thats not really a “decision” per se.

13

Totally agree, and it got worse at the series came to its end. In fact, in the last season, I think in the real world the characters would be considered completely crazy…

14

I don’t know about this. Wasn’t part of the horror they felt at the end that they knew Adrian Veidt was in some ways right - that his plan was working. And that given that they could not stop the horrific part of the plan, the smartest man in the world might be pretty useful to have around afterwards to help in the future?

15

Riker Destroys the Enterprise :wink:

16

I’ve seen this criticism from others before, and while it’s not without merit (how many times did Harry narrowly escape being killed by Voldemort?), I think it somewhat misses the point.

First, Harry’s death was never Voldemort’s chief objective. Like most supervillains he had world domination plans, and he had a lot to take care of. Although he knew he’d need to deal with Harry eventually, he usually had more immediate concerns like getting a body of his own, obtaining the prophecy, and eliminating Dumbledore. He’d also learned the hard way that Harry had a special protection that Voldemort’s other victims had lacked. His second attempt to directly kill Harry at the end of Book One proved that this wasn’t just a fluke. Voldemort needed to figure out how to get around Harry’s defenses, and he didn’t work this out until Book Four.

In the long term Harry was a problem not just because he potentially had the power to defeat Voldemort, but because everyone in the wizarding world knew Harry’d already totally pwned the Dark Lord…while still a BABY! Not good for Voldemort’s PR. To make up for this, Voldemort’s preference was not to kill Harry quietly, but in a way that would demoralize all who opposed him.

Although I don’t think Rowling makes this as clear as she could have, this is the reason for Voldemort’s very complicated scheme in Book Four. He needed Harry alive until he could get some of his blood for the spell, but since Voldemort had a man on the inside he could have managed that without rigging the Triwizard Tournament. But with the tournament scheduled to be held at Hogwarts that year anyway, why not take advantage of it? Voldemort’s plan involved not only his own resurrection and Harry’s death, but a terrorist attack on a major sporting event. Just when everyone was expecting to cheer the Triwizard champion, Voldemort was going to appear with the corpse at his feet. Having this champion be Harry would not only kill two birds with one stone, but would make Voldemort’s repeated defeats at the hands of an underage and not all that powerful wizard seem a little less embarrassing and his own ultimate triumph more impressive.

This is still not the most logical plan ever, but had it worked (and it nearly did) it would have been more effective as a terrorist act and more gratifying for Voldemort’s ego than just dropping a magic anvil on Harry.

Voldemort never would have resorted to Muggle technology or mercenaries to kill Harry. His ego and his hatred of all things Muggle wouldn’t allow it. Even if he could have arranged for an anonymous hit, he would first have had to admit to himself that Muggles were better at something than he was.

17

He was arguably right about his plan working - but look at the cost. There’s no reason to think he’d suddenly stop killing people. And the fact that he’s so smart just makes him that much more dangerous to leave alive.

Another example; from the two parter Star Trek : TNG where Lore took over the individualized faction of the Borg. The scene where Picard sent down most of his crew to search the planet and got them all captured was stupid enough to be winceworthy.

18

The Cruise character’s Navy career was going nowhere and finished anyway. The Demi Moore assistant lawyer tells him he has a rep as a loser. But that doesn’t mean his career as a lawyer is over. There are plenty of lawyer jobs outside the Navy, and a good many locally controlled public defender offices want lawyers who will just lay down.

So the decision to “go all in” on getting Jessup doesn’t have a really big downside. OTOH, the fact that it works is more bizarre than Bond’s drawing to the straight flush in the last Casino Royale. People in Jessup’s position don’t confess. They lie or take the fifth amendment.

19

It’s like the Creator of the Harry Potter universe was inventing an evil antagonist just for the purpose of the protagonist to thwart and amuse pre-teen readers. I’d demand my money back if I were you!!!

20

Warning: Link is SFW, but has some gore. [Correction: NSFW]

http:// community.livejournal. com/ scans_daily/6164218.html"

In the may-yet-be-published comic Genius, a young woman who is supposedly the greatest military genius of our generation declares war on the LAPD. In the first page of the book, she stands in the middle of the street in broad daylight with a weapon in plain view of three cops after having shot a fourth cop dead in front of them. The cops then spend several panels yelling at her to put the gun down before being picked off by sniper fire from her ragtag army. This may be one of the stupidest “provide a distraction” moments I’ve seen in fiction; the central character should have hit the pavement as meat on page two.