They certainly did love blowin’ shit up. But the Discovery Channel’s insurance underwriters probably drew the line at nuclear explosives.
I’m pulled right out of shows that are supposed to be real life when I know what they’ve done is impossible. For example, in NCIS, they drove from DC to Norfolk in a ridiculously short time. Yeah, technically it’s possible given the distance and speed limits along the route, but I know the traffic along I-95 and I-64. Ain’t no way they make that drive on a work day and back again before midnight.
Similarly, the one and only episode of the X-Files that I saw had a character waking in Baltimore around 8 in the morning and arriving in Rhode Island around noon. OK, maybe if he had a super-fast helicopter in his back yard and didn’t have to shower, dress, and grab a cup of coffee, but they showed him driving. Nope. Impossible.
Lots of stuff in sci-fi makes me crazy, but I’ve learned not to comment because my husband loves that crap, and he’s willing/able to overlook the stupid if he’s into the story.
Reminds me of the Mel Gibson - Goldie Hawn movie ‘Bird on a Wire’ in which they took a ferry from Detroit to Racine, Wisconsin. That’s quite a boat ride-- up the Detroit River, through Lake St. Clair, continuing up the St. Clair River, then all the way up Lake Huron, through the Mackinac straits, then finally down and across Lake Michigan.
It’s about 3x larger than the actual Mona Lisa. The same thing happened in Equilibrium. They used a poster size representation of the painting.
And, like *tavaritz says, it was painted on something solid.
I find the later Star Wars films almost unwatchable, almost like bad copies of the first three. The fact that there have been other films exploring intergalactic happenings also weakens the later Star Wars offerings. They try very hard to be different and spectacular, but so does everyone else.
People talk about the heart-ripping a lot, but this bothered me more. It bothered me so much I almost walked out. Have never seen the movie more than that first time.
The whole thing seemed like the movie basis for the Indy Jones and the Temple of Doom ride, coming soon to Universal Studios/Disney theme parks!
That, and the aforementioned life raft scene, which I recognized from Starlog articles as being a scene rejected from Raiders because it was too STUPID. It, along with the gong-escape, were both conceived for Raiders but rejected,
Brian K. Fuller’s Trysmoon saga quartet upends prophecy beautifully.
Impossible distances covered in too short a time and a general lack of respect for geography and where things are pulls me out if it’s bad enough. For sure magic, fast cars and no LA traffic can he accepted, but when geography stretches around like a rubber sheet it gets distracting.
Battle of the five armies was just awful for this, too many egrarious moments to cover. An unexpected journey also had a few but could be glossed over and desolation of smaug was pretty bad as well.
My daughter got me to watch The OA and we are in season 2 and an FBI agent appearing on the other side of the country a few hours after a phone call had me ’ wait what!’ Although I guess that was quickly explained.
And there’s no excuse. Hollywood writers may be clueless of anything east of the 605 or north of the Valley, but they have access to maps!
A worse example from Capricorn One: the booby-trapping of Elliot Gould’s car. He’s out of the car for 5, 10 minutes tops, and the Evil Secret Government Henchman manage to sabotage his brakes, steering, transmission, doorlocks, etc. all to make him go out of control and crash, in that brief period. I’m no auto mechanic and even I know that amount of mechanical tomfoolery would take a hour and a lot of equipment to pull off. Especially in broad daylight on a city street.
Strangely Scott Lang proves he can do both in the Fantastic Four comic series. Not only that, but he defeats Dr. Doom by becoming Giant Man and increasing his mass/ power. You would think they’d include that in the movie.
I’d forgotten that part.
And with the cars and tech of the time, it’s downright impossible to do that. Unlike today’s computer controlled fly-by-wire cars, ars of the day were all mechanical. unless the evil henchmen replaced everything, (as you noted - impossible in the time available), you can always shift out of drive, and doorlocks are straight linkages. Steering, too,
And again, all that tomfoolery didn’t even faze him. He still managed to thwart the evil cabal.
" Why don’t you kill him now? I mean, come on, we can shoot 'em together it’ll be fun. Bang! I have a gun, in my room, you give me five seconds, I’ll get it, I’ll come back down here, BOOM, I’ll blow their brains out!"
Reminds me of the Friends episode in which Rachel takes Ross for a drive in the Porsche, then Monica surprises Chandler with tickets to Las Vegas. After the commercial break, Monica and Chandler are in Las Vegas while Ross and Rachel are still on their drive! That’s either a really long drive or a really fast plane.
Not much of a TV viewer these days; I mostly watch shows like the various CSIs and Law & Order, things like that.
There comes a point in many police dramas where the writers suddenly begin to make all of the regular actors either victims, suspects, or actual perpetrators in various crimes.
When that happens, my suspension of disbelief flags.
No, I don’t believe that in a single shift of officers at a police station that one person is suspected of murder, another had his daughter kidnapped (after being suspected of abusing her in a show last season), a third has a dark past with a shady event involving the Mafia, a fourth has a Bond-villain nemesis who crops up in their life once or twice a season to taunt them and show their brilliance. This stuff is lazy writing IMHO.
Though it’s not relevant to the suspension of disbelief, I don’t care for the shows where everyone is sleeping with everyone else. Again, let’s stick to the basic premise of the show.
As such, I make it only a few seasons in most shows before they become 60% dreck to me and I bail.
My wife kids me about my “You had ONE job!” attitude when watching movies. It’s usually the prop crew or stage dressers who bring me to say it.
For example, the characters drive to a cemetery to put down some supernatural nasties…and the sign at the gate says “Longwood Cemetary.” Headlines in newspapers are also often misspelled. Come on! You’re spending $3M on a movie and NOBODY knows how to spell a common word?
Or, the slides on semiautomatic pistols lock back after the actor fires his three (carefully prepared) shots, but the action continues immediately with no reload or clearing of a jam. The armorer couldn’t be bothered to put one additional (inert) cartridge in the magazine to prevent this? We won’t even mention the 7 and 8 shots from a 6-chamber revolver.
Overall, I can handle the magic, the coincidences, the lack of physical damage from a 40-foot fall, as necessary to the plot or action sequences. But rank stupidity and carelessness on the part of the filmmaker or crew is a showstopper.
One of the more over the top Bond-style villiians was on the show ‘Bones’. A super smart computer hacker turned serial killer was making the gang at the lab run around in circles in a multi-episode arc, and taunting Bones and her FBI guy partner Booth.
At one point the lab computer catches fire-- turns out malware caused the computer’s fans to shut off-- some kind of pattern etched onto the bones of a murder victim introduced the malware from… scanning in images of the bones…? I’m no l33t hacker but I don’t think computer malware works that way. That show made the various CSIs seem like serious documentaries by comparison.
I dream in third-person mode fairly often (a lot of times, a dream switches back and forth between modes, which makes perfect sense to me at the time - because the most ridiculous nonsense makes sense in a dream). Doesn’t appear to be that uncommon, based on a cursory googling.
That part that got me was how useless their weapons were. They know the creatures are essentially bulletproof, so why bother having the vast majority of your soldiers armed with rifles that mostly don’t work? We saw several examples of the creatures shrugging off sustained automatic fire from multiple shooters. How have they not realized what a waste of time, resources and people that is?
It’s made even worse in that we see at least a few people using weapons that do seem to have an effect! Why not give everyone one of those guns?
I can live with the “Our guns are useless!” trope in a typical horror movie setting, where they’re just learning what the creatures are capable of, but in this movie? They’re literally at the end of years-long war, mobilizing the entire military might of the entire world to fight for them, and no one even bothered to suggest they spend a few months stockpiling the only weapons that actually work?
Ok, looks like you’re right, after just doing my own cursory googling. I still hate the trope-- based on how often it’s used in bad horror movies you’d think dreaming in third person mode was the default, instead of ‘not that uncommon’.
Understood. I’m not that fond of the dream sequence trope either.