White House Down has one of the stupidest scenes in all of cinema which is saying something.
Basically if you don’t know the premise of the movie, terrorists invade the White House and try to take the President hostage but he escapes due to a single secret service agent. A 1/3rd of the way in the President and the Agent attempt to escape the White House in the Presidential Limo but are being pursued by the terrorists and wind up driving up and down the White House lawn while two SUV’s pursue them as terrorists shoot guns out the SUV’s windows.
Now, during this entire scene basically the entire US Army is waiting outside the gates of the White House and are quite literally just dozens of yards away watching this all go down. Quite obviously the terrorists are trying to murder somebody in the limo, and the Army is all just standing there with tanks, Humvee’s, and hundreds of soldiers all lined up against the gate in front of the White House just watching. You may think “Well maybe they’re under orders to hold fire” but actually no, at one point a single tank does burst through the fence but is somehow disabled by a single terrorist who shot an RPG at it from the White House roof and the Army manages to shoot and wound the guy with the RPG. While this is all going on the Presidential Limo is still under fire by the terrorists. At no point do ANY of the Army guys attempt to shoot at the terrorists despite the fact that not only are they trying to kill somebody who may or may not be the President and they have an incredibly easy shot to kill or at least stop the terrorists, there’s also the fact clearly there aren’t that many terrorists if they only fired a single rocket at the breaching tank. If the Army had all just moved in the movie would be over and not drag on for another hour and a half. Instead the Army just watches the Presidential Limo get shot to pieces and it crashes somewhere where they can’t see it and the President and SS Agent are forced to flee it before it explodes.
A video game example but it’s in-continuity with an actual movie series.
The video game Aliens: Colonial Marines is the official sequel to Aliens and takes place on LV-426 where Weyland-Yutani attempts to harvest and study the remaining xenomorphs near the base. At one point you come across an audiolog in one of the facilities where they hold and store live Xenomorphs for research purposes. Apparently previously each part of the facility could be sealed off and the air circulation would pump in nerve gas that could successful kill off any xenomorph to prevent an outbreak or escape, with gas masks provided for any research staff to use to prevent their own deaths from the gas.
However the Weyland-Yutani corporation obviously values the lives of xenomorphs over disposable humans so they announce that they’ve already taken steps to circumvent this so as to not destroy their property. Instead of simply preventing the gas from being pumped in however, they still pump in the gas but dilute it so it’s not fatal to xenomorphs but fatal to humans. How this helps anyone isn’t explained but it does create a series of set-pieces in-game where you have to quickly rush to the gas mark station before the gas activates whenever a xenomorph breaches the area.
Ben being wrong about the cellar was of course, deliberate. That’s what makes the movie great: the hero was wrong and the asshole was right. Subversive!
(Actually they should have went upstairs and either knocked down or blocked the staircase.)
I’ll give Ben a pass on the kids getting killed. Remember that Judy wasn’t needed for the gas run and imposed herself on Ben and Tom. Plus they had no way of knowing for sure that the pumps were locked. Tom himself screwed up by not listening to Ben. So yeah, the kids got themselves killed.
I haven’t seen the movie, but this hilarious review of the movie Supernova indicates that the characters where phenomenally stupid: http://www.jokeindex.com/joke.asp?Joke=2199
Yeah…when it comes to providing treatment for a mentally ill person, OR containing (an at least would-be) supervillain…compared to Arkham, a better treatment might really have been a frontal lobotomy.
In general (regarding Coen Brothers movies), I agree, but basically every character in Fargo, except for the pregnant cop played by Frances McDormand, is an absurdly incompetent flat out idiot.
I’ve heard that claim before and I don’t see it. The kidnappers and Jerry are very stupid - and Jerry, really, is much more “in over his head” than “idiot” - but who else is dumb? Are you being fooled by the accents?
Jerry was an incompetent car salesman failing at some sort of insurance fraud before the movie even starts. And the kidnappers and Jerry are really the only other main characters, right?
But the kidnapped wife, the grumpy rich father-in-law/grandpa, the fisherman husband and the desperate guy from high school all seem to be played up as kind of simple-minded rubes, though not to the level of “absurdly incompetent”. And there were the “just funny looking, you know” prostitutes. And the cop who puts out an APB for a license plate that starts with “DLR”.
But the whole plot is one of incompetent criminals absurdly failing at what should be a non-violent and fairly straightforward scam on the rich father in law.
I was never sure why the cops were blaming McClane when Gruber shot the one hostage doofus. Like what, he was supposed to surrender, and then be shot? How could any cops think that’s sound tactics? Just more stupidity from the stupid police. And the Feds were beyond stupid.
Like the 911 operator: “This channel is for emergencies only.” WTF does she think a report of armed terrorists IS, if not an emergency. I hope she lost her job over that. And I’ve seen that in other movies/TV shows. It’s like they think 911 is a limited commodity, like cupcakes, that can be used up, so they’re saving it for real emergencies. More real that death and destruction, I guess.
My complaint about that movie is not character stupid (though the radio bit is incredibly stupid, plus the fact no one has alternate airports to go to), but writer stupidity. If the big unexpected twist is that the guys we all thought were the good guys, were in fact not, then their actions make no sense. There are places in the movie where the not-good guys wouldn’t have acted the way they did, if they were in fact the bad guys. I can’t remember the scene, because I refused to ever watch that movie again, but their plan would have succeeded if they had done or not done something at one point, but the script required that they not reveal themselves as the bad guys yet, so they had to act stupid.
For some reason my biggest complaint about Die Hard 2 is the fact they send in US Army Special Forces (Green Berets) to deal with the airport threat when that’s not their specialty, they really should have sent in the FBI Hostage Rescue Team (Based in nearby Quantico), FBI SWAT (Same deal), SEAL Team Six (Also based in Virginia) or anybody else except some Green Berets with obvious connections to the terrorists.
Actually, that part is covered, somewhat. One of the controllers mentions that they’ve managed to communicate with some of the planes by airphones (Holly calls John on one earlier in the movie) and those planes have diverted to alternate airports. It’s not said exactly how they did that; it didn’t work with Holly’s plane, and not all planes would have had those passenger airphones at the time. But the basic point is that the remaining planes didn’t divert because they didn’t know there was any reason to divert. Which makes the whole bit about looking for a transmitter that much more important, and that much more stupid.
And one of my favorite character stupidities is later in the movie. John has found out that the Army unit is working with Col. Stuart and goes to tell the chief of the airport police. The chief does not believe him, so McClane fires an assault rifle at him to demonstrate that it was loaded with blanks. Yeah, in a room full of armed police officers on high alert you aim a gun at their captain and open fire. How does McClane not get shot about a hundred times before the smoke clears?
This also happens in the movie Shooter, where the main character demonstrates that his rifle couldn’t have been used by pointing it at Danny Glover, violating all of the rules of gun safety. His character should know better, you could make the argument that McClane is “just a cop.” He doesn’t appear to know much about guns either, making at least 5 errors in one statement:
“That punk pulled a Glock 7* on me. You know what that is? It’s a porcelain** gun made in Germany***. It doesn’t show up on your airport X-ray machines here**** and it costs more than what you make in a month!*****”
*Glock 17
**Polymer, partially
***Austria
****They certainly do, being mostly metal
*****That’s below minimum wage, even in 1990
Well, in the universe of Die Hard*, the Glock 7 was sold alongside the more popular Glock 17, and it was everything he says. It’s a “porcelain”/composite (I head the quotes), including the barrel and mechanism, and costs $11K each. They were withdrawn from sales because they tended to crack in use and blow off the user’s hands after about 500 rounds.
But, he was still wrong on one count - it was made in Austria.
*The universe of Die Hard also has pay phones in DC being serviced by Pac Bell, and doesn’t require barrel plugs to fire blanks in a semi-automatic weapon.
And jet fuel has some interesting properties, like being able to ignite with a Zippo, and travel through the air like a fuse, faster than the take-off velocity of a 747, without being adversely affected by the thrust of the engines
The movie “The Marine 3” (Yes they made a third one, unfortunately no John Cena this time) has some of the worst police tactics I’ve seen in a movie that’s suppose to be taken seriously. Basically the plot has domestic terrorists with bomb-making material and hostages take refuge in a very large boat at an abandoned dockyard. The FBI know they’re there and have a plan on storming the boat and rescuing the hostages but the Commanding Officer is the typical incompetent buffoon who both the main character and even his subordinates openly question his tactics.
The boat is moored at the dockyard and the only way aboard is via a small walk-way leading from the dock to the boat, knowing this the terrorists have guards watching this walkway at all times. For some reason the FBI CO orders his SWAT team to directly assault this only walk-way to get aboard and the SWAT have to basically cover 30 yards of open-ground before they reach the boat. Knowing this once the first SWAT team members are detected all the terrorists get to the top of the boat and take-up positions along the the various structures and railings facing the walk-way. Once the SWAT begin to make their move to get across the open-ground they’re immediately opened fired on by the terrorists rifles and their one machine gun. Predictably the 20 or so SWAT officers are all killed trying to cross the open-ground into the boat.
Now, anyone with even the most basic knowledge of tactics knows a single entrance with only open ground in cover of it is just a killing field waiting to happen. Everyone except the FBI CO seems to understand this. What he should have done was either send two teams, one who could infiltrate the boat from the rear using either SCUBA or small boats, which seems fairly workable considering it really was a huge boat with maybe only 12 terrorists guarding it and since all the terrorists took-up positions at the walk-way the minute the assault happened, a diversionary frontal attack followed by boat infiltration’s all around the ship seemed like it could have easily worked.
Alternatively, FBI sharp-shooters all up and down the dockyard (there was plenty of cover and it faced a large forest) could have easily taken out most of the terrorists the moment they started shooting, or at the very least given them some cover. Hell even smoke grenades for the open-part would have done something besides blindly rushing in.
Holy crap, I hate this movie so very, very much for this very reason. I like or love three of the other 4 Alien franchise movies, but that one stunk on ice.
Way too many movies and TV shows, books and even comics rely on stupidity to drive the plot. Heck, Superman HAS to be stupid for most stories to last more than a few seconds. The guy is a Swiss army knife of super, and he conveniently forgets his abilities any time the plot requires it.
Hell, an entire airport and dozens of aircraft had been taken hostage - they should have sent everyone. Army, Marines, National Guard, police, FBI, ambulances, Coast Guard: anyone with a uniform and/or a badge within 500 miles of D.C. should have been on their way to the airport the moment the crisis was declared. Every road to and from the airport should have been blocked and a flight of F-18s should have been sent from Norfolk to patrol the skies*. There should have been a war room in the control tower. When it comes to a mass event like this, there’s no such thing as sending too many guys.
But no… “One crisis, one team.” Blech.
And radio the planes to tell them to land in Atlanta… but never mind that.
