Would that be Indiana Jones (in “Raiders”) you’re referring to, me hearty?
The Chevy Chase movie Funny Farm does an inversion of this trope. Chevy tries to knock someone unconscious by punching them in the head, but all he manages to do is beat the living tar out of him.
Someone gets a call from a friend saying, “Quick! Turn on Channel Six!” And when the person turns on the TV, it’s always right at the beginning of the news report.
One of the most annoying tropes involves any group of people on the run from the law, they get to a motel or other place of safety and discover there’s a news report about their crime spree on television. Every single time, one of the characters will very dramatically grab the remote and SWITCH THE TELEVISION OFF. Wouldn’t it be smarter for them to watch the report, to discover how much the police know, where the roadblocks are, and so forth?
Wow, missed this the first time around. Sorry about that. Underworld comes to mind. Selene (Kate Beckinsdale) has a pair of automatic pistols with extended clips that can fire scores upon scores of bullets. The scene that really bothered me was her shooting out the floor underneath her in the hospital.
This problem should actually be just about ready for retirement now. These days, you can say to a friend, “Quick! Go to channelsix.com and clink the video link on their front page!” Although it remains to be seen whether TV shows and movies catch on.
Although, BTW, I saw someone (on the internet) point out that we still don’t have a good way of representing the internet in TV and movies (even though people are now figuring out how to show texting in an interesting way). So, fame and fortune to be had for the director who figures that one out.
Hawk the Slayer is a really bad ripoff of J.R.R. Tolkien and Robert E. Howard, filmed on a painfully low budget. That didn’t bother me.
Then I noticed that the elf was wearing penny loafers. That bothered me a lot.
From Peter Jackson’s version of King Kong:
You are on an uncharted island populated by dinosaurs, giant spiders, and giant apes? No problem.
You get caught in a sauropod stampede and don’t get trampled? I don’t believe it.
You get kidnapped by a 40-foot tall ape? No problem.
You run around in New York in December wearing only a flimsy silk dress, and don’t freeze? I don’t believe it.
That film bugged the hell out of me, since we had kate running around in hot skin tight outfits- in 90% darkness. :mad:
I see what you mean…but I loved that bit, as it was a clever and different way to get out of the situation. It wouldn’t have worked without super high-power armor piercing bullets, but it was a cute schtick. Thinking outside the box.
(Thinking outside the box doesn’t work very often. The box is there for a darn good reason.)
Sean Connery’s accent in Hunt for Red October initially seems to be one of those unrealistic details, but later on you realise it was a clue to him not being Russian.
Why I’ll Never Be a Screenwriter, Reason #697:
I would have written the scene so that Selene tries the trick, and quickly realizes she’s out of bullets. She jumps up and down on the floor, but she doesn’t have enough mass to budge it. She must now find another way out, that does not use magic bullet guns.
For whatever reason, that bothered me far more than…say…Van Helsing’s pneumatic automagic crossbow.
That would be doubly funny the second time, just like when Indiana Jones smirks and reaches for his gun…and it isn’t in his holster.
Gandalf had promised all the residents of the Shire*, that this Fireworks display would be unforgettable.
*Now better known as ‘The Crater’
None of that bothered me. What did bother me, and pulled me out of the movie, was: How did they get Kong off the island? He’s as big as the freakin boat, so even if they could somehow muster the manpower to lift him (maybe with the villagers help?) the boat would immediately sink like a rock. It annoyed me to no end that the movie glossed over this problem.
No, the unrealistic part is that we have a gigantic anti-zombie concrete wall that surrounds Israel. OK, that’s actually fine. Perfectly plausible to build hundreds of miles of 100 foot concrete walls around an entire country in a few days, just on the off-chance the rumors about zombies turn out to be true. No problem, that’s the can-do spirit Israelis are known for.
But that there are no army guys patrolling the top of the wall? No towers with heavy weapons? No snipers on the wall taking out zaks one headshot after another? Seriously?
Spot on.
If a predator roars, he’s telling you “Get the hell out of my territory.”
If he wants to kill you, he doesn’t roar- he just attacks. Why give your prey a heads up?
A few people have mentioned being annoyed by animals on tv not behaving naturally. I work with mice and rats on a daily basis, so I get annoyed that whenever a rodent is featured onscreen, it’s always squeaking.
Mice (and rats) rarely squeak- at least not in the range of human hearing. The only time they usually make any vocalizations is if you’re injecting them and even then, not always.
On tv the mice and rats are constantly making sounds like squeaky toys.
I’m ok with this one because I tell myself “well, maybe only eukaryotes can be teleported…” That would work unless Brundle has intestinal parasites or something. Oh wait- he most certainly must have some fungal cultures on his skin, we all do. He’d be a creepshow giant mushroom fly-man- like a Mario enemy.
::shrug::- I guess it only works with organisms of kingdom animalia.
This bothers me a lot lately. Sometimes in comedies people get conked on the head three or four times!
And she would never have run outside in just her slip in those days! She would have been appalled to be in her underwear.
Kate Beckinsale’s scene with the guns and the floor may have been cool but real guns don’t have unlimited ammo, and that is what bothers me about that scene. She used an awful lot of bullets!
Unlimited ammo in general bothers me.
Also another thing that has been bothering me is when a whole lot of people somehow manage to sneak up on the hero. Like, he turns around, and the villain has brought his noisy ass army up. It was in Hobbit:Battle of the Five armies when the elves showed up at the door without anyone noticing. Um, elves might be quiet. 200+ elves showing up in full battle armor are not quiet. But, then, there was an awful lot that bothered me about that movie.
One thing that bothers me oddly is when the “non-player characters” (i.e. everybody who is not actually in the script) are assumed to be desperately uninterested in what’s going on. For example, in “Smallville” Lois Lane publicly dates Oliver Queen, the famous billionaire playboy, but even after Oliver’s secret identity as Green Arrow is revealed, Lois can wander around in public without be swarmed by the press (or the simply curious).
Horses do the same thing. Always whinnying.
And let’s not forget that horrible diner with Irish-American owner and dotty waitress cliché.