There have been threads about unrealistic plot points and tropes in Hollywood. What are some common unrealistic tropes that don’t bother you so much? I’ll give two off the top of my head.
Doctors performing tests on patients. I’m watching a show to see the cast. House would have bee 5 minutes of House and crew and the rest would have been multiple different technicians doing their job undramatically. I want to see House not Bob the on call MRI tech.
Compressed timelines in courtroom dramas. Law and Order makes it seem that trials happen a week after arrest. I don’t mind that they squeeze it into an hour. Having the police part happen in season one and the court portion happen in season 3 would make for a boring and confusing show.
I’m a guy that watches Ancient Aliens. I don’t believe a word of it. I only watch because I enjoy the stories. Most of which is better than a lot of sci-fi that’s out there these days. (My opinion).
I did however hate all the characters of my favorite shows wearing face mask during the pandemic.
It’s like guys, it’s a show! There’s no need to acknowledge covid if it’s not going to advance the storyline.
I mean, Chicago Fire had their protagonist drinking in an outside bar in the middle of winter so the characters wouldn’t catch covid apparently.
Ain’t nobody going to be drinking outside in Chicago in the middle of winter. That’s just beyond ridiculous!
There’s not a lot that bothers me either. As long as something is well-acted and entertaining I’ll cut a lot of slack.
Being self-aware of any ridiculousness counts for a lot as well and smooths over any number of cracks although that is often more internally felt than externally expressed.
However the one big thing that takes me out of a story or situation is a great big clonking telegraphed, earnest “message” or perhaps a joke that can be seen from a mile away and is lazily delivered.
No thanks, you have a lot of entertaining to do before you’ve earned the right to do any of that.
Perfect example of that is “Blackadder goes forth”. A lot of wonderfully entertaining nonsense before delivering a gut-punch serious message on the futility of war.
In science fiction movies, I think it’s funny when a spaceship (or whatever) blows up in space and there’s a loud, audible “BOOM!” I also like it; it adds excitement to the film.
I’m thinking anyone who lives in LA or Vancouver or Toronto or Atlanta is going to have to learn to be really forgiving of seeing familiar locations masquerading as being in other cities. And a lot of “They made a left turn and now they are on the other side of town.”
Yeah that doesn’t bother me at all. The characters in St Elmo’s Fire are supposed to be recent Georgetown graduates. Georgetown wouldn’t let them film there. I went to University of Maryland. Several shots are obviously done at UMD which looks nothing like Georgetown. I didn’t care about that. What mattered it was a horrible movie.
I agree with this in principle, but Broadchurch split the police part and the court part into separate seasons and it worked really well. As for the thread topic, I can’t say it any better than snfaulkner did:
My girlfriend introduced me to The Magicians last year. There were a few times when I mentioned that something on the show should have bothered me because it violated the rules the show had set up for itself, or because it was so illogical, but I just didn’t care because I liked the characters and the storylines so much.
I can suspend a lot of disbelief. As long as the internal rules of the fictional universe are followed, I’m usually good. So I can enjoy the softest soft sci-fi with loud space 'sposions and spaceships facing each other on the same plane, as if space has an up and down.
I only draw the line at full-on fantasy and magic. Can’t wrap my head around that. Unfortunately that often extends to many superhero movies these days.
Compressed timelines, per the OP, I don’t have a problem with. I was a CSI apologist for years when people would say ‘there’s no way they would have lab results that quickly’. The original CSI was kind of revolutionary-- they adopted the technique, first shown in the movie ‘Three Kings’ of showing what gunshots and other internal trauma does to the body. Their CSI field and lab techniques were mostly real, other than the speedy results. Then, unfortunately, the various CSI shows degenerated into dumb stuff like “enhance video!” where they could enlarge and depixelate a security video until they got the bad guy’s face reflected on a chrome car bumper.
A lot of this is fine with me as I’d say it falls into “compressed timeline for plot convenience”. You don’t want to watch a half hour of someone driving across town. But lazy geographical errors can get ridiculous-- as in say, the movie “Bird on a Wire” in which Mel Gibson and Goldie Hawn took the “Detroit to Racine, WI” ferry.
I’m not bothered by any in fantasy, science fiction, or action movies because just watching a movie like that requires a suspension disbelief. I’m always amazed when someone watching a Star Wars movie gets ruffled because something “isn’t right”.
I don’t mine compressed timelines in courtroom shows - especially not the Law and Order type that have self-contained episodes. The only thing that actually tells you about the timeline is that title card that gives the date and location - and I don’t think they include the year. Really isn’t any reason the trial in April couldn’t be taking place a year or two after the arrest in March. I don’t mind that everyone always finds a parking space right in from of their destination, even in Manhattan or that I the geography isn’t right.
What does bother me is when there is something that just is completely implausible and either no effort is made to explain it or minor changes would have made it plausible. I can’t watch that Rob Lowe show about the fire station because there were just too many layers of disbelief.
Loosely speaking, if it’s the premise, no problem. I’m not gonna cross my arms on the first pages of Harry Potter because magic isn’t real. Or if it’s part of the story’s world, like the Enterprise being able to do Warp Whatever in violation of the universe’s speed limit c.
The ones I don’t like: people behaving in ways that don’t seem at all like how people in such a situation would behave, whether as individuals or in the aggregate.
A lot of action movies, and especially westerns, are extremely unrealistic when it comes to wound ballistics: when someone gets shot, the person is instantly “down & dead.” But I don’t mind it, because it helps maintain a fast pace.
My wife and I often joke about when we’ll be watching some totally unreal show - like Star Trek - and there will be some small thing that we’ll say, “I don’t believe THAT!”
I vaguely recall a discussion on htese threads some time back where folk discussed the limits on suspending belief. Sort of rules for fiction/scifi/fantasy, almost presented as an equation. You can expect the audience to accept x big things, or 7 little things, but no more. But one of my personal problems w/ how I perceive superhero movies is that there seem to be no real “rules” other than what the makers want to move it along - or allow the next explosion. “Oh - now this guy can fly? And she is impervious to fire? …”
This is my biggest issue. I don’t care if the person has blue skin or 3 arms, but if you have been showing them as primarily exhibiting human characteristics, don’t suddenly make the smart person do something really stupid. Or the sensitive person being insensitive. Just recently, I disliked when Ted Lasso had a character - Rebecca - acting in a way I thought incredibly stupid and out of character - being oblivious to a clearly marked and busy bike path.
Compressed timelines don’t bother me. I can even handle things like the first episode of Boston Public (2000 - 2004). Everything that happened in that episode actually happened in a school in the US. Just not in 1 school on the same day! No problem. I roll with it.
I do have problems suspending belief when the makers of the entertainment get the most basic things wrong. Sloppiness is unforgivable.
I just watched Fall, about the two women stuck on top of a 2000 ft radio tower. If you know anything at all about drones, cell phones, or radio towers, the movie’s basic premise is stupid. But I didn’t care. I liked it because it was a story about two women who reached down deep inside and survived on guts and determination.
On the other hand
I will always be bugged by Hollywood writers that just can’t be bothered to read a map!
My wife and I are pretty much sticklers when reading fiction set in some prior time, if someone refers to using a product of technology before that came about. Or uses modern terminology. And - yeah - just basic errors. Such as when the full moon rises, or something about animal/plant behavior.
At the end of “Guardians of the Galaxy Part 2” the Ravagers had a funeral for Yonu. It’s actually a touching scene but it has dozens of space craft orbiting and firing weapons that look like fireworks. The booms and bangs reach the observers instantly as the distant explosions occur.