Things that almost always ruin a movie

Cafe Society
61

I have a theory about Spider-Man. The period of a pendulum is dependent on its length. I’ve seen Foucault pendula in museums; maybe 40 feet up to the ceiling and it takes a few seconds to swing back-and-forth. When Spidey is swinging through the canyons of Manhattan buildings, how long is the web? It looks like he’s shooting for the fifteenth floor, or so. From the start of one swing to the end, that’s going to be about 6.5 seconds. I think the filmmakers wanted the pace to be a little faster than that. This is an action movie, the bad guy is on the run; you can’t have the good guy doing nothing for almost 7 whole seconds. They sacrifice what is real for what they can fool the audience into thinking looks real.

I haven’t actually watched Spider-Man with a stopwatch, but that’s the impression I got. It looked too fast to be real. I’d love to see a sequence like that animated with strict adherence to correct physics. I wonder if it would look more real, and/or more ponderous.

62

I have tons of them, and will probably be back to add more as I think of them.

  1. Fake snow. Good god, 99% of movies just can’t find a good substitute. There’s nothing that pulls me out of a movie any easier than snow that behaves like plastic confetti. Which brings me to…

  2. Faking cold weather. In some movies, it’s like no one’s experienced cold weather before. I can understand how it might be difficult to fake chilled breathing, but sometimes they set characters in sub-zero weather, dressed like they’re going out for a fall weather hike. Their skin is peachy and warm, and either not shivering at all, or doing a bad job of it. Cold weather even effects the way you talk, let alone how you move your body, so I can usually tell when all the actors invoved have lived their entire lives in Southern California.

  3. Absurdly long breath-holding for underwater dives. This will yank me right out of my experience, and actually become uncomfortable. I’ve actually developed a habit of holding my breath as soon as the character does. The scene will usually go on for another minute (or maybe a lot more) than I can, and they’re swimming/struggling/saving someone else, and I’m just sitting there, relaxed.

  4. Not getting 3rd grade-level knowledge right about science, other planets and their environments. For a more recent example, let’s point out The Watchmen:

[spoiler]When Doc Manhattan takes whats-her-name to Mars, the pressure drop would have given her the bends. The gravity matched earth’s. Again, Mars is fucking cold. And, while Mars doesn’t have an oxygen atmosphere, it is mostly CO2, but she was acting like she couldn’t draw a breath. She would’ve been able to take in air (had the transportation not instantly killed her), but it just wouldn’t have given her body any O2.

And, as an aside, glowing blue shlongs.[/spoiler]

  1. Running away from an explosion or bullets. Must we keep inserting this stupidity into movies?

  2. Phone conversations that end abruptly, or without saying a simple “goodbye.”

  3. 555-XXXX phone numbers. I’d rather they just use some other kind of work around where we don’t see or hear it.

  4. I agree with old-age makeup (again, The Watchmen, I’m looking at you), but also bad wigs and glued-on facial hair.

  5. Exterior/Outdoor scenes shot in obvious sound stages. Whew, those look so bad. Unfortunately, LOTR has quite a few of those.

  6. Impossibly long physical activities, like running/chase scenes that consists of 10 minutes of sprinting, jumping, climbing, what-have-you, without pause, and they’re barely out of breath by the end of it.

  7. When one character is relaying complicated, critical, life or death information to another character (like a hard to pronounce name and address), in one pass, talking as fast as possible, without the other guy putting on the brakes to tell him to hang on so he can write it down or something.

  8. When falling from a great height, mere mortals catching an outcropping or flagpole with their hands to save themselves. It is to laugh.

  9. Waiting for the timer to get to 00:00:00:00:01 before they pull the blue wire (or is it green?) and diffuse the bomb.

  10. Someone getting slugged in the head/face, repeatedly, with an implement, with only a superficial cut, bruise or bloody lip and superhuman recover time. C’mon, we’re talking multiple fractures, broken jaw, if not death.

  11. Computers that make booping and bleeping noises as they type or display information on the screen.

  12. Painfully obvious, made up GUIs and OSs, contrived to make it look more “advanced”.

  13. Absurd visual enhancing technology that starts with a blurred smudge only 4 pixels wide of someone’s face, then after some stupid digital “processing” noises, they end up with a perfectly sharp and detailed image. The FBI has magic?

  14. Mostly in comedies, but situations at work that would have dire consequences if they actually happened in any professional setting. Can’t think of any good examples right now, but I cringe anytime something crazy happens in those scenarios, and they aren’t dragged out by security.

  15. Giving dogs or other animals human-type personalities, or that are cognizant of any circumstances or social faux pas that might happen around them.

  16. Inane technobabble. Usually delivered by the super-geeky yet chic hacker guy, who’s a smooth talking, condescending ass, with a smart mouth, and surrounded by 47 displays, all showing scrolling code for no apparent reason.

63

I know someone else mentioned this in another thread, but when someone is holding a cup that obviously has no liquid in it. Especially true if it is a papercup and the holder is hoisting it as if it is essentially weightless (which it is).

64

I have often tried (less than successfully) to put into words what it is about the persistent failure of CGI to look as realistic as advertised.

I have a dark suspicion that the fundamental problem is that what is being depicted is, by definition, impossible. The Hulk throwing a tank around, leaping about with enormous pace-length, etc.

The impossibility means making compromises that can never result in perfect agreement between the various facets of the action. The fact that humans can’t scale up to enormous size because of the square-cube rule means that our expectations of how a real world huge muscular human would move based on our expectations of how other huge animals like elephants move does not gel with the perfectly scalar CGI movement depicted.

Similarly, when the Hulk tosses a tank, the real world actions and reactions which would be set up in the Hulk’s body (and which make the action in truth impossible) have to be ignored, or else the show can’t progress. But the net effect of the necessary compromises is to make the tank look far too light. And so on.

The same (with necessary adaptation) is true of the Spiderman problem identified up-thread. Spiderman has some invisible and unrevealed form of propulsion akin to Superman’s to make him move so fast suspended from the threads.

It is the fundamental impossibility of what is being depicted that requires depictional compromises that clash, and that no phycisist could therefore fix.

The problem is, I suspect, not one with CGI, at least in the sense that further developments in CGI due Any Day Now can fix it. The problem is embedded in the fact that the universe bloody-mindedly refuses to allow the impossible.

In cartoons, we are willing to suspend disbelief. As depictions come closer to reality, the compromises grate.

65

I thought the physics for spider-man mostly worked. There were some parts that didn’t, but they got a whole lot of it right.

66

The same reason why a person in a sweater doesn’t look like they’re made of wool.

Fat is under the skin, it’s bulky but it’s also fluid and flexible, to some extent. (Think of breasts.) It doesn’t stay in one place – a fat person’s cheeks don’t retain the same shape regardless of if they puff up their cheeks with air, or when they’re speaking or eating or playing an instrument. Fat isn’t stationery. When a fat person raises their arms above their head, the rolls on their sides smooth out. Fat suits just stay where they are, which doesn’t happen with real fat, unless it’s crammed into very tight foundation garments (think girdles).

But the biggest issue is that thin actors in fat suits don’t move like fat people, who know how to walk and distribute their weight, whose strides and arm movements are natural because they live in their bodies all the time. People in fat suits move like people who’ve been rolled in a carpet. The biggest giveaway is resting their hands and forearms on their bellies in the manner of pregnant women. People in fat suits never seem to let their arms hang normally at their sides. Fat people, on the other hand, rarely walk around cradling their girth.

I knew the words to all the greatest hits of the Temps, the Tops, the Miracles and the Supremes by the time I was in kindergarten. It was the soundtrack of my childhood, courtesy of my parents who were young in the 60s. (Similarly, the kids of my 80s-baby friends are well versed in their Depeche Mode, Cure and Duran Duran.)

67

About CGI, action movies and ‘realism’… I know the guy who was the lead character animator on Spider-man, and I know a few other people who have done lead character animation on ‘big’ movies.

By and large, the problems referred to in this thread do not arise because of the limitations of either the animators or the tools. Good animators can depict characters walking, running and jumping in a way that is 99% realistic and credible. And the wonderful tools available these days can produce images that are 99% photo-realistic. The proof of this is that there are so many scenes where you assume you are looking at Tobey Maguire in the suit, but in fact you’re looking at the animated character. You don’t notice, because the illusion is just about perfect.

The basic problem is that it’s very hard to define what is meant by ‘realistic’ movement in something like a super-hero action flick. By definition, we want to see the hero doing things that no normal person can do, but we also want to get the sense that the normal laws of physics still apply. There is no perfectly satisfactory way to reconcile these two instincts.

Someone said it was as if the studios didn’t want to hire anyone who could advise them on physics. At least in the case of the first Sam Raimi Spider-man film, I can promise you that the makers did hire such people, and in fact used every conceivable resource to try and get Spidey’s movements and motions as ‘correct’ as they could possibly be. They had gymnasts in, and got them to perform ‘Spidey’ movements as close as they could (with harnesses and rigs helping) to film hours of reference material. They filmed real spiders every which way. They had input from physicists, dance coaches, gymnastic coaches, physical fitness instructors and many other people besides. The animators themselves went out and climbed things like steel fences and craggy walls to get a 'feel for it, and filmed their own efforts. I’ve seen lots of the reference material that was shot… it goes on and on and on like you wouldn’t believe.

At the end of the day, even for the greatest animator in the world, if you have a character who does things that no human being has ever done or ever could do, the physics aren’t going to look right ‘mentally’.

Of course, this is a coin with two sides. Think back to the Chris Reeve Superman movies. Think of the scenes towards the end of a flying sequence, after all the rear-screen stuff, where they did actually have the actor on some sort of ‘flying’ harness or rig to land him back on the sound stage. The physics always looked perfect, because there was nothing ‘trick’ about it. But on the other hand, it never really looked like a super-powerd guy flying. It always looked like an actor on some sort of flying rig.

(Apologies to anyone if this seems like a hijack, which it’s not meant to be).

68

I am not sure this is something that almost always ruins a movie. It drives me insane as well though. Why do they do this? Is there some sort of status thing in Hollywood that the biggest star has to have his/her name in a certain position or what?

69

Since the words – ***Things that almost always ruin a movie *** – ought to allow at least one exception, which I consider Sunset Boulevard to be, too, I’ll gladly retract that criterion if another exception can be cited. If there is such a movie, I guess I haven’t seen it. I have seen many that use this gimmick/device and all of them were weak to poor as a result. Of course, bad acting, bad plot, bad dialogue and bad concept also contributed, but when we find out either in the beginning or (worse) at the very end, that our narrator has been dead the whole time, it ruins the whole thing – for me.

70

Yes, and it’s a huge deal. It’s written into their contracts. Sometimes it’s negotiated up to make way for a drop in pay.

Sometimes if they have two leads of roughly equivalent status in the industry, they will have one’s name first on the poster, while the other’s gets to be first on the opening or closing credits of the film. Sometimes two posters are made with names in different places to cover all options.

I can’t imagine how they figure out star studded movies like Ocean’s Thirteen or Love Actually.

71

Guano Lad is correct. While it may seem strange or even pathetic, these details are often subject to intense wrangling between rival agents. The simplest example is the two movie stars on the movie poster. In our culture we read from left to right and from top to bottom, so ‘left’ and ‘top’ take priority. Each guy’s agent wants their guy to get priority. They can’t both come first. So a compromise is reached: the names at the top read A then B, but in the picture underneath B is on the left and A is on the right. And so it goes on.

Similar wrangling goes on over TV show credits. In weekly drama shows, we’ve all seen those credits about guest actors who are in the show for just one week. They get listed as ‘guest star’ and ‘special guest star’ even though no-one has ever heard of them. This is a result of agent wrangling. It’s good for the actor’s career, and gives more leverage for the next deal. It’s also the reason why some names get preceded by things like ‘And featuring…’ while others don’t. It’s all about the illusion of status.

72

Israel Kamakawiwo’ole did a version of “Over the Rainbow” that’s become very popular.

73

I’ll agree, but I’d make one rather big exception to the rule: Citizen Kane.

74

I buy the exception, as I did with twickster’s Sunset Boulevard. One more exception and I’ll withdraw my entry.

75

Another way they do it is to have both names on the screen at once, with the one at the left lower than the one at the right. Reading left to right name A comes first; reading top to bottom, name B comes first. Win-win!

76

A blurb from “Women’s Wear Daily”.

Yes, I actually saw this in a movie ad once. (Although, truthfully, I can’t remember which movie it was, and it may very well have been a good movie, but if that’s the best blurb you can dredge up, it probably doesn’t bode well…)

77

Another exception to old-people-makeup: Saleri in Amadeus.

It always ruins a movie for me when someone goes on-line to get some obscure little bit of information and finds it with one search. I wish I had their search engines.

78

I thought those were mostly – if not all – magpies. They live all over the place.

My complaint is about “newborn” babies that are clearly at least a few months old, or are dolls. I have yet to see an actual living newborn in a movie. I know why this would be logistically difficult, but it takes me out of the scene every time.

79

Another major ‘ruiner’ has to be ‘the contrived plan that only works because the enemy just happens to do exactly what the plan requires’.

An old but classic example occurs in many action movies. The bad guy is stealthily wandering out the jungle/forest trying to trap the good guy. As he momentarily passes under a tree, the good guy - surprise surprise! - leaps down on to him from high in the tree. Makes for a neat enough scene, but how did the good guy know the bad guy would pass under that exact tree?

80

Silly question. The Good Guy is hiding in EVERY tree.