I’m currently rewatching The Abyss (great movie btw!) and one plot thread has Michael Biehns character, the leader of the Navy SEAL team crack up due to some sort of disorder caused by the unusual conditions of the facility (referred to as HPNS - High Pressure Nervous Syndrome, I have no idea if this is a real thing or not).
Anyway, I always thought that was a kind of unneccessary plot element, it would be just as effective to have the character crack up due to the unfamilar environment and situation, sure he’s supposed to be a highly trained military officer but he’s still only human and he finds himself in a situation way out of his experience or training. I think most viewers would except that he could simply lose it.
A second example is in the very silly but surprisingly fun and watchable movie Stealth. In this one a highly advanced pilotless combat aircraft with an AI intelligence controlling it is sent out for assessment with flight of human pilots. The leader of which is a bit of a ‘Maverick’ type loose cannon given to disobeying orders if he feels it necessary, in a completely unneccessary plot element (which I’m not entirely sure I understood correctly) a chance lightning strike between the two aircraft causes the AI’s personality and ‘code’ to become mixed up with the ‘Maverick’ pilot, at which point the AI, called Edi, begins to go off the rails.
Personally I thought it would be a lot easier if they just had a throw-away line where the commander tells the AI to watch and learn from the human pilots, it does so and gets the bright idea from ‘Maverick’ that it isn’t really necessary to follow orders if it doesn’t want to and goes off the rails because of that. It would also add the element that everything that goes wrong is pretty much the fault of the loose-cannon pilot because he taught the AI a bad lesson!
HPNS is real, and although intense paranoia isn’t listed as one of the symptoms, “decreased mental performance” is.
I would have had a much more difficult time accepting that a SEAL commando, who has been extensively trained to handle difficult and novel situations with sound judgment, would conclude that the best solution would be to lob a nuke off the edge of the underwater cliff; a mental condition akin to schizophrenia is a much more reasonable explanation for his behavior.
Nonsense. SEALs are highly trained and put through extensive and intense training to weed out people who would go loopy over an unfamiliar environment and situation. That’s precisely why you make SEALs. Whereas HPNS is real. And the point was that anyone can be susceptible to HPNS, you can be fine on 100 dives and then the 101st you get it. Plus, that plot element ties it in with the incredible depth they are supposed to be at.
Coen Brothers movies are full of these. In my opinion, as long as it does not make the story overlong and is entertaining by itself, unnecessary plot elements usually do not detract from a story but rather add to its authenticity since the world itself is often quirky and unnecessary.
I always thought that Hancock would have been an excellent movie if they had gotten rid of the Charlize Theron love triangle. It was stupid and did not make any sense at all. They couldn’t be together because— why? She watched him suffer and break down because. . . huh? She’s married to Jason Bateman because— wtf?
It should have been a movie about not being a very heroic superhero.
Having recently rewatched Dances With Wolves, there’s an early scene where John Dunbar is granted whatever assignment he wants due to an act of foolishness they mistake for bravery.
The officer that grants his request to go to the frontier, for no real reason, is completely insane. He scribbles his signature while acting like a little child, then gives him some bizarre salute, then says that he’s pissed his pants, and no one can do anything about it. Then he blows his brains out as John Dunbar is riding away. Was there really no other way to show how he was granted his orders to go to that deserted post?
I think the point is that by virtue of the crazy general blowing his brains out immediately after giving those orders, nobody knows that Dunbar is out there (remember, his ride out gets killed, too). That’s why he never gets any supplies or reinforcements.
It was the interesting way to make it plausible that he’d A. be sent to an abandoned post and B. that no one would come looking for him. Nobody knew he was there.
I haven’t seen it, but from what I undertand in “Looper” humans from the future have telekinesis…just cuz.
The whole first part of Casino Royale with the airplane and stuff explaining why Le Chiffre needs the money isn’t needed. It’s like a paragraph in the book that explains off-screen why he needs the money
I guess we disagree on the interesting part. I can think of dozens of more plausible ways for the script to place him there that don’t involve a Deus Ex Mania.
Girl With the Dragon Tattoo would’ve been much more enjoyable with out all that stuff about the girl getting raped and stuff by her social worker and the gratuitous sex and nudity throughout.
I know in the thread for the movie people defended that stuff rabidly as necessary for sequels that may or may not happen, but that’s not my problem. All I know is what was there on screen, and a lot of it really wasn’t needed for this story.
Indiana Jones 4, something something Crystal Skull. Ray Winstone’s character - does he serve any purpose to the story at all? IIRC, if you cut him out of the film, the film would be tidier/better/less awful.
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. Captain Aubrey mentions early on that he had exceeded his orders long ago, and keeps chasing the Acheron into the Pacific. In 1805, before Trafalgar, IIRC. This is a huge problem that arose from making the film out of several different books - the “exceeding orders” plot point is supposed to show Aubrey’s determination, but:
Ordering the Surprise to chase a frigate of a heavier class would be an insane (probably illegal) order, as it’s a suicide mission;
Exceeding his orders should get Aubrey court-martialed, possibly hanged;
In 1805, every British frigate that could be spared was needed to find the French and Spanish fleets so a battle like Trafalgar could happen - chasing down a single frigate, especially a single privateer, is nuts.
I love the film and the books upon which it is based, but the setup is absurd.
Well, it’s a little more than a paragraph. There’s an extensive expository section that describes Le Chiffre as the treasurer of the French Communist Party and who has invested party funds in a chain of brothels (nominally not a bad investment, with the side benefit of getting him as much tail as he wants) but gets wiped out when France passes a tough anti-pimping law.
I daresay that would have made a more interesting motivation than the movie’s generic “he funds terrorists”, but it doesn’t lend itself to a mid-movie car-chase-and-fight-scene at an airport.
In the The Stand, it was totally unnecessary for Stu and the other guys to have traveled to Vegas, only to have gotten blown up with all the rest of Flagg’s people. Their presence did nothing to faciliate Ronald Flagg’s demise because the Trashman was destined to detonate that bomb regardless. If they had stayed their butts in Boulder, the outcome would have been exactly the same.
Wow, I couldn’t agree more. That movie was so much more interesting as “jackass superhero” than “star-crossed lovers”. I’d still like to see a superhero anti-hero.
