One thing that irks me about movies is their depiction of scientists / scientific knowledge. In the ‘old days,’ scientists knew everything; no matter what their particular field of study, they knew everything about everything (rather like the Professor from Gilligan’s Island).
Nowadays, scientists are at least acknowledged as being more specialized, but they don’t seem to ever know anything outside of their particular fields; witness the poor, dumb paleontologists in Jurassic Park, who are so utterly clueless about Chaos Theory (and, who, until metting up with Mr. Malcolm, had never even heard of it!).
Perhaps even worse is the poor layperson, who is assumed to be completely ignorant about anything scientific (and thank goodness there just happens to be a scientist around to explain what’s going on!) - witness Tommy Lee Jones’ character in Volcano, who doesn’t even know what ‘magma’ is!! Witness also the crowd of ‘students’ working with Grant at the beginning of Jurassic Park, who laugh when he explains the whole dinosaur-bird relationship. In the real world, any students on such a dig would be well aware of such ‘fantastic’ ideas (and would probably have been exiled into the desert if they found such an idea ‘new’ or ‘unheard of!’).
Both! I forgot about the armadillos! That’s even worse!
The opossums, I’m guessing, were supposed to pass for rats, since they look similar.
I’m not sure what Transylvanian critters the armadillos were supposed to be. :rolleyes:
I hate the clueless computer mistakes. For instance:
-
The secret password guessed in 3 tries
-
The program that is completely rewritten with about 10 keystrokes.
-
The way you can fit ANY file or program on a single floppy.
I hate watching the women turn to mush during critical scenes. Sometimes they have the decency to get knocked unconcious (instead of cowering in a corner until the action is over). Still, they always get knocked out with one blow while the hero takes enough of a beating to cause brain damage. I watch these women huddle in terror, and think “geez, couldn’t you at least throw a lamp at the bad guy???”.
The one exception I can think of off of the top of my head was that movie with Nancy Travis, Keifer Sutherland and Jeff Bridges. Nancy Travis fights back and never stops fighting, instead of just lying back and waiting for some big man to come and rescue her.
Maybe they are refocusing their lens? 
I know that some websites display maps in such a fashion. When you zoom in, it pixelizes, then slowly becomes less blocky as a new image is transferred.
Also, Xaos fractal generator does that. You zoom in, and it recalculates another level of the fractal, becoming unpixely.
Anyway, what really really bugged me, so much that I ranted about it on length on the Matrix movie forum, was the fact that the plot centered around a complete ignorance of thermodynamics. Sorry, I’m willing to do suspension of disbelief on the “mind getting trapped on the net” thing, but not on basic laws of physics.
I hate the change reel dot. You’ve seen it. It appears in the upper right corner about 10 seconds before a “hard” scene break and a noticible snap noise. You’d figure after how many years and how many gillions of dollars theyd’ve figured something out. Hell, even video cassettes and various remasters/ director’s cut have 'em. Jeesh!! 
I’m with lolagranola.
Hollywomen bug the heck out of me. I mean, before True Lies and The Long Kiss Goodnight.
Our Hero™ and The Villian™ are rolling around on the floor trying to strangle each other and all Our Heroine™ can do is stand there and scream!?!? WTF is up with that? I’d be standing over the pair of them with a 2x4 waiting for the wrong one to be on top!
Fortunately, this seems to be changing. Not half fast enough, but we’ll get there.
Tisiphone
oooooh. I totally forgot the obligatory “heroine running away from bad guy trips/breaks her heel” etc., the also obligatory “plain woman with glasses removes same and lets her hair down and is goddess”…
How about the old musicals? Somebody walking down the street bursts into song, accompanied by a 40+ piece orchestra, and suddenly EVERYONE on the street is singing and dancing (in perfectly choreagraphed steps and close harmony.) Sure, it’s fun to watch, but for “willing suspension of disbelief” it’s a killer!
I’ve always wanted to do a sociology experiment along those lines – have a number of accomplices in a public area, then do a similar “number”, just to watch the reaction from those who aren’t in the know.
I hate the focus on characters, then circle around and around. It makes me motion sick.
How about the obligatory scene in every deep space or underwater sci-fi film, in which the protagonist ventures outside of the underwater lab 3000 feet beneath the surface or spaceship in deep space, and isn’t crushed by the pressure or decompressed by the vacuum of space.
BTW CairCair,
Count me in if you try to do this expeiment in the Seattle area. Sounds like a riot!
Even cheesier than the “magical focus” is the magical close-up. A character is watching someone through binoculars or a telescope. Cut to: the the view through the binoculars of two people standing next to each other. “Who’s he talking to?” Sudden close-up to person’s face. “My God! It’s Doctor Scheisskopf! What’s that he’s handing him?” Another sudden close-up. “It’s a check for a million dollars! I need that check’s serial number!” Another sudden close-up!
Cheap-looking binoculars that snap instantly from 10x to 100x to 1000x and give you a perfectly steady image while being held in one hand while riding in a car, boat or helicopter. I want those binoculars!
–sublight.
In movies or in TV, there are a few cliches that I can’t stand:
- Every time a man and woman yell at each other, they will immediately kiss, or at the very least, will do so by the end of the film. Apparently, this passes for “sexual tension.” He: “You make me sick!”
She: “Oh Yeah?! You are a pig!”
He: “Oh yeah?!”
She: “Yeah!” (smooch smooch smooch) - Every time someone angrily leaves a room, either slamming the door or otherwise storming out, he or she will either a.) come back in sheepishly two seconds later, saying something like “I forgot my coat” or b.) comically realize that it is actually his or her own apartment that he or she has left. Hilarity ensues.
- When talking on the phone, the person whose side of the conversation we can see will always repeat what he has just heard. [On phone]: “Dr. Smith? Yes? You say you’ll be here at 7:00? You say that we should cook chicken?” etc.
- If one character speaks a foreign language, another character, who speaks “a bit” of said language, will always reply comically when asked, “what did Jose [or Pierre or Ivan] just say?” – "Either he just said that [logical answer] or else he said that [ridiculous comic answer with no logical meaning.] Ex. “Well, Dr. Warshawski either said that he needs to use the phone…or that his pants are full of live eels.” Hilarity ensues.
Well, that’s all I can think of for now.
I really hate when they use exessivly graphic computer displays for programs that would never, ever, be displayed like that. Programmers have better things to do than think about amazeing graphics for their hardcore program. My example is the whole 3D menu setup in Jurrasic Park. Or in Face/Off where they show the face morphing over and over again on a computer screen for no apparent reason. Why would a surgical program need to show that? They KNOW what they started with and what the result would be, they don’t need the computer sitting there showing that.
Scientific screw ups.
-
Spaceships banking. That damn spaceship is applying force on what? Vacuum?? Yeah, right.
-
Figure this scene: View from space, Earth in foreground, Sun is hidden behind it. Sun comes up over the Earth’s “shoulder”. We are not dazzled by looking straight at the Sun without any kind of protection. Better yet, we see lots of stars in the background. Huh?
3)Lasers. Lasers are coherent beams of light, and travel at 300000 km/s. You can’t see them, and can’t hear them either.(think Star Wars for the perfect antipode)
If you mant more of this, pay a little visit to http://www.badastronomy.com, excellent site.
Disney films.
1)Primary characters and secondary(especially women) always start to sing for no apparent reason whatsoever. Even music comes out of nowhere.
2)Animals talk? (I think of it as fantasy and is kinda cute, but still)
Fighting.
-
Characters (especially primary characters) Can take an unreal amount of physical punishment if the plot requires it. If not, one hit and they’re down for the count.
-
Totally silly stuff, in the likes of clasping a sword between both palms while it being swung at you(!!).
There are hundreds more that I seem to be forgetting…
Batman - Batman has a CD of the Joker’s voice, which he then is able to “scratch” as if it was a record. Hilarity ensues. Not.
Back in the days of floppy disks that were actually floppy, it would always bug me out when people in movies and on TV would HOLD the darn things by the little hole - you know, the part that you weren’t supposed to touch and would always get messed up from the tiniest fingerprint. But of course, it was always compatible with whatever computer it was stuck in, even when covered with grape jelly.
**Me!! Joe!!!**Charlie’s Angels is a bunch of fun. Everything that happens is ridiculous, but I don’t get the impression it’s supposed to be, like real or anything. And I’m sorry, even though I’m gay, Cameron Diaz is SOOO CUTE I just can’t stand it.
[slight off-topic]The musical “Rent” - the guy is supposed to be a filmmaker, and has a film camera during the whole thing which he is constantly using, despite the fact they’re all poor and color film costs a ton of money. But then, at some point his camera is referred to as if it’s a video camera when it “runs out of juice” despite the fact that I could see it’s a wind up film camera. End of the musical (not a spoiler) he shows…a color film. How’d he do that? They couldn’t afford Cap’n Crunch, much less developing costs and editing equipment.
No matter how well a foreigner speaks English, he will never master the word “yes” and will always use its foreign equivalent. Sí, da, ja, hai, whatever.
Good guys: Could shoot the fleas off a dog from fifty yards away; the dog would then run away, unharmed.
Bad guys: Could not hit their targets if the tips of their gun barrels were superglued to them.
“Wash day tomorrow-- nothing clean!”
I especially hate the stupid computer fallicies.
Some have already been mentioned. I’m sorry if I repeat some.
- EVERY program has a complex GUI.
- Text is often 74 point font, so that the audience can read it.
- Characters read aloud what they are typing. I don’t know anyone who does that in real life.
- With a half-dozen keystrokes, the Pentagon is hacked, or a million dollars has been transfered to an offshore account, or someone’s credit has been screwed with. Or all of the above.
- As Smitty mentioned, any password can be guessed in only a few tries.
- NOBODY, even poor college kids, has anything like a 486; everyone seems to have top-of-the-line systems. I laugh when I see someone on TV (who is not ludicrously wealthy) using a flatscreen monitor. Even a 13-inch one of those costs more than my entire system!
Also, I once saw a made-for-TV-movie where a computer was shot with several bullets. It was then taken for granted that all the information on it was lost. Nobody even attempted to see if the harddrive itself was hit. Heck, even if it was, I’m sure at least some of the information could be retrieved (given the proper tools and knowhow) unless the thing was totally shot all to hell.
…And don’t forget those cool projection monitors. You know, the ones where everything onscreen projects onto the actor’s face (or another convenient object). This was used to great effect (:gag:) in Jurassic Park, when the (:choke:) Velociraptor was in the computer room and had the (:urmph:) DNA sequences from the computer monitors projected onto it, for some sort of dramatic (:spew:) juxtaposition. (:hurl:)
Or something.
Man, I think I need an antacid…