Detective Howie in the original **The Wicker Man **[1973; dir. Robin Hardy]. Sometimes, when you receive an unsigned postcard telling you that a 13-year-old girl has gone mysteriously missing, the standard police response (that of a solitary, unarmed detective investigating) is sadly inadequate. You should instead show up armed with a whole department’s worth of police and a special-forces unit (along with the tech experts and equipment necessary to set up a remote sat/comm link to the mainland) armed to the teeth, and bring that community of homicidal neo-pagans down!
Terrible, terrible decision you made there, sir. Can't see how you could've done any better, though.
How about Indiana Jones’ quest to get the Ark away from the Germans? If he’d stayed home, Belloq would’ve opened it in front of Hitler and all the high ranking officers of the Third Reich, and they would have all been toast.
Not quite:
Belloq: Men will kill for it, men like you and me.
Jones: What about your boss? Der Führer? I thought he was waiting to take possession.
Belloq: All in good time. When I am finished with it.
and
Belloq: Would you be more comfortable opening the Ark in Berlin - for your Führer - finding out only then if the sacred pieces of the Covenant are inside? Knowing only then, whether you have accomplished your mission and obtained the one, true Ark?
Belloq had no intention of waiting to open the Ark in front of Hitler, and if the Ark had been recovered from the midst of the piles of dead Nazis after the face-melty incident, it’s unlikely that Hitler would have gone anywhere near it until someone had survived opening it. At best, it would have been left alone, at worst, the Nazis would have managed to come up with a way to turn it to their advantage.
<Johnny Carson>
I did not know that!
</Johnny Carson>
<Ed MacMahon>
Annnd nooooow you do, sir!
</Ed MacMahon>
O’Henry’s short story “The Gift of the Magi”. The loving wife’s most precious possession is her long, lustrous hair. The faithful husband’s most precious possession is the silver watch his father left him. They are stone broke and don’t mind it, mostly, except Christmas is coming up.
She cuts off her hair and sells it to buy a chain for his watch. He sells the watch to buy a set of expensive tortoiseshell combs for her hair.
WWL out of New Orleans for years had Editor Phil Johnson read that story on the 10:00 PM Christmas Eve broadcast. He’s dead now, I think…but they still show a tape of one of his readings every year. I will hear that story in his voice until the end of my days.
What always bothered me about that story:
Her hair will grow back, but his watch won’t. Her present is merely delayed.
Basically every choice made by either Eddard Stark or his son Robb in GRRM’s* Ice and Fire* books was honorable, logical and disasterous.
YES! That’s why the story sucks.
How about the ending to the movie The Mist? The Hero is in a tough spot: five people in a truck that’s run out of gas and monsters everywhere.
The gun has only four bullets, so the hero kills his friends and son out of mercy. He exits the vehicle only to find that the Army has come to save the day. They would have survived if he’d waited another 10 or 15 minutes.
He did what seemed to be the right thing at the time.
The film The Canyon.
Newlyweds are stranded in the Grand Canyon due to poor planning; husband is horribly injured and gangrenous due to idiocy. Wolves stalk them for days, then are finally about to go in for the kill. Wife asphyxiates husband, only for helicopter to arrive minutes later.
I disagree - even based solely on what this character knew, it would have been more sensible to wait until there was some indication the truck was about to be attacked. Remember, these characters had successfully hid in a supermarket for some time before fleeing in the (enclosed) truck - they could have reasonably expected some time to pass before any passing nasties would even notice them. Further, these characters knew that they had managed to flee in a truck - if they’d done it, so could someone else. Another truck might pass, and offer a lift or other aid.
Absent imminent attack or death from other means (starvations, dehydration, etc), the hero was acting in far too much haste. He panicked. Understandably, perhaps - but he could easily have made a better choice, had he only kept his head.
How about Night of the Living Dead?
Hero fights and survives against all odds, the cavalry arrives and he thinks he’s saved. He comes out into the open and they shoot him.
Wyatt quarters the acid and distributes it during Mardi Gras.
You realize that not everyone has read every book and seen every movie, tv show, and play you have seen, yes?
Whoever that English general was who thought his troops were gonna whoop the Scottish in "Braveheart."
Given a second chance, I’m sure he would have crossed the field, presented himself before that army, stuck his head between his legs and kissed his own arse.
The Shining. Man takes a job that provides food and housing for his family that should give him plenty of time to write that novel he’d been working on only to find that the hotel being haunted makes him something-something.
I think nearly every episode of Battlestar Galactica almost but not quite qualify for the OP. Generally in BSG, every choice was disastrous in some way, while being a situation where the character couldn’t be blamed too much for making it, but it was usually obvious at the time that it wasn’t a “wise, unselfish, well-thought out choice.” It’s just that all options were unwise, selfish and poorly-thought out.
Go crazy? :dubious: