I mentioned the Bobby Ewing reset button incident in the series Dallas, but
perhaps TNG has been the worst offender in a chronic sort of way, like when Data
fires at that evil smuggler while in the transporter beam, but then his action is
handwaved away afterwards…
“The Year of Hell” from Star Trek Voyager.
“These Are The Voyages,” the Enterprise series finale.
The movie where the hero is about to kill the villian, but decides not to. Then the villian gets up, attacks, and is accidentally killed.
In the TV series WitchBlade, the main character discovers a super-secret, you-can-only-use-this-once reset button that rewinds time back to the beginning of the season.
Oh, I saw that one. Good flick.
Wizard of Oz -
- she could have gone home any time using the slippers
- It was all a dream anyway
War of the Roses - Kathleen Turner has just revealed to Michael Douglas that he’s eaten pate made out of his dog, only to cut to a shot of the dog unharmed.
Takes the most brilliantly evil plot-twist ever and reduces it to a bad joke.
From Star Crash. The Emperor of hte Galaxy and the heroes are trapped in the bowels of a planet that will explode in ten seconds. There’s no way out! So the emperor cries, 'Imperial battleship, stop the flow of time!" And it does. And they walk out. Nifty feature for a battleship, eh?
The first Superman movie, where Supes flies backward around the world to rewind time before Lois buys it. Truly pitiful.
I recall reading that originally Turner actually did kill and turn Douglas’ dog into pate` but it upset test audiences so much the filmmakers hastily inserted a shot of the dog so her evil deed turned out to be just a bluff.
There was that movie where all that really terrible dramatic stuff happened to that one guy, only it turned out to all be a dream.
I think there was a TV show like that too.
Friggin Vanilla Sky. Is there any way to get those two hours back?
Raiders Of The Lost Ark - At the end, the Nazis capture the Ark and open it. Monsters come out and kill them. Indy could have stayed at home and the result would be the same.
WRONG! Because if Indy hadn’t done all that stuff, then . . . then . . . he and Marion wouldn’t have gotten back together! And . . . and probably several bad guys wouldn’t have gotten killed, like the ones at Marion’s bar . . . cuz they were bad and deserved to die, and . . .
Anyway, WRONG! 
If lots of time spent in a movie on a plot which turns out to be pointless because of other events is included, in going with my comments in this thread.
In Return of the Jedi, Luke and Vader go through all their machinations to bring each other to their sides of the force. They end up fighting it out with Luke winning. Problem is, it all meant nothing. No matter the outcome, the Death Star was going to be blown up. Why? Because of the Ewoks. The emperor might have been evil, able to forsee the future and come up with a grand plan to wipe out the alliance but he got his ass kicked by a bunch of Ewoks.
This is what bugged me about Silent Hill. She would get menace by monster variety 1, run around scared and then it would go away. Here comes monster variety 2, same deal. Rinse and repeat. I understand it was based on a video game, but most video games don’t allow you to move to the next level without actually having vanquished anything??
Ah, the *Goldfinger * effect. Bond is a spectator throughout the whole movie; he just gets Pussy Galore and the CIA to do all the heavy lifting.
That’s because the thrust of the movie isn’t “Will they blow up the Death Star …again!” its the story of Luke and Vader.
And the Emperor gets beaten not by Ewoks (who are completely ineffectual after the initial ambush) but by Chewbacca in an AT-ST. Seriously. Watch the battle, the good guys are losing BADLY until Chewie commandeers that thing.
The ol’ “didn’t really die in that explosion” trick.
Casino. Oh wait - he didn’t actually die in the car explosion, because that model Cadillac had an extra metal plate under the driver’s seat and they planted the explosive under the… :rolleyes: