I just changed channels and came upon Trapped in which Dakota Fanning plays a revolting endlessly screaming child. It suddenly occured to me, as I hit the mute button, that the kidnappers killing her would vastly improve War of the Worlds.
She was kidnapped in WOTW, too? I just saw a Denzel Washington flick where she was kidnapped. Is she Hollywood’s kidnapped child of choice in the 2000s?
Sir Rhosis
She was kidnapped in “Man on Fire”? I mean, she was in that movie? I hate her with a passion, but I liked the little girl in that movie. Damnit.
On the subject of “stupid plot points”, I have only five words: Aliens from the planet Zeist.
Along the same lines: aliens who can’t stand water visit a planet that’s 70% covered in it with no visible protection whatsoever.
There’s something I noticed in Dogma that bugged me.
When Jay blasts off Bartlebe’s wings with the Uzi Rufus tells Jay that “You just did him a favor, stupid!” because now the angel is now human and can go through the arch and when he dies will ascend to heaven.
What was bugging me is that they don’t just kill Bart after his wings got clipped. Not just a minute or so earlier Bart kills Loki (whose wings were also clipped) by stabbing him thus proving how fragile humans are compared to angels. Also throughout the whole movie they are talking about how the angels must be stopped by being killed. Surely Jay, Rufus, and the Muse could have tackled Bart when he became human and did him in.
And where it rains from the sky and where the locals are mostly composed of it. As someone said on another forum, it’s a patheric alien that can be defeated by a wino peeing on it.
“Beware the stream of JUSTICE ! !” 
Since I noticed Tomorrow Never Dies is on TV tonight, I present my nomination.
Evil News Guy: I will steal boats, sink other boats, kill people, and start a war between two super powers so that I can…be the first to report it. 
Battlefield Earth.
Everything in it.
Be the first to report it AND create chaos so I can install a puppet leader who’ll give me huge bajillion dollar contracts to do whatever business I want in the most populous nation in the world.
Still a pretty odd way to go about it, but not QUITE as bad as you think it.
I prefer to put it
“We shall invade this planet, which is 70% covered by a substance that is like acid to us… and we shall do so, NAKED!”
Now that you mention it, she looks exactly like the kind of girl who would get a lot of media courage if she were kidnapped.
I remember reading that Dakota Fanning’s film have actually grossed more altogether than Julia Roberts’s. Perhaps films starring Dakota Fanning would be more interesting if she were killed in all of her films. For example, although I do enjoy My Neighbor Totoro (which features Dakota and her sister Elle in the new English translation) as it is, there is no doubt it would be more interesting if Dakota’s character was eaten by a Totoro.
Eek, yes. I got scolded for saying the equivalant. She is a horrible, horrible child actress.
There’s plenty more anime that hasn’t been translated, yet…
Walt Disney Pictures’ Legend of the Overfiend II might be pushing it, though. :eek:
You know, I’m a bit sick of people harping on this point. Do you think if you went up to M. Night Shayamalan and pointed this out to him, he’s slap his forehead and say “my GOD you’re right I never thought of that”?
My interpretation of it is that Signs was trying to take an incredibly cheesy 1950s style Sci-Fi movie plot, with incredibly cheesy 1950s style man-in-rubber-suit special effects, and an incredibly cheesy 1950s style way-for-the-heroes-to-win, and make it with really good cinematography and writing and character development, and see what happened. WHY precisely that’s something he wanted to do is beside the point, but I can’t even remotely believe that a filmmaker who (regardless of what you think of his movies) is obviously making intelligent and deliberate choices would leave a plot hole that big in his movie just by mistake.
Well if he wanted to make a 1950’s movie in modern day he deserves the heckles a 1950’s movie plot would get now a days. A filmmaker is of course free to make whatever he wants. We’re just as free to pick it apart if it comes off as absurd.
What really annoys me is the whole ‘everything happens for a reason that’s why my wife died, my brother was denied the major leagues in spite of his talent, and my son has asthma, just so he could live while tons of other people died during the invasion’ subtext. I think it bothers other people too but since that’s either something you believe in or you don’t so it’s easier to pick apart the stupidity of the aliens.
Clearly someone hasn’t seen The Village.
See, this actually works if you don’t think of it as an invasion so much as an extreme sport for the aliens. Kinda like climbing Mt. Everest in a tuxedo.
Otherwise known as the “This is soooo stupid, it must be intelligent” fallacy.