Your favorite Idiot Plots (open spoilers)

Cafe Society
41

[QUOTE=Bryan Ekers]
Huh. No mention of Die Hard 2. That was some serious weapons-grade stupid.
[/QUOTE]

Darnit, you took mine. :wink:

Without going into the reasons for it, I will say that the 2000 Michael Bay Pearl Harbor is chock full of weapons-grade stupid, too.

I’m also going to nominate Bringing Up Baby*. First off, I tend to believe that exotic pets are just stupid for most people. But the whole dynamic between Katharine Hepburn’s character, Cary Grant’s character, and the damned cat is so full of weapons-grade stupid I’m surprised that they can show this film without having TVs or movie theatres blowing up.

*And now, I’m running off to my bunker to weather the coming storm

42

[QUOTE=Left Hand of Dorkness]
My response to your previous claim that Gattaca is idiotic. I, to put it mildly, disagree :).

Edit: And another response! I guess we’ve been around on this issue more than once.
Daniel
[/QUOTE]

One more response to add to #6

It’s made clear dozens of times that The Powers That Be consider that database to be the most important thing they have. The fact that they read his blood that quickly in the interview scene implies it’s maintained something something even bigger than Gattaca. My first assumption was “government.”

No matter how much you’re paid, hacking it has to have the biggest risk-reward ratio imaginable. You try, you get caught, they find you’re willing to destabilize society for cash, both the hacker and the hopeful invlaid get executed for Treason. That’s really worth a job/$50K, isn’t it?

43

Okay, if someone can defend Alien, I can defend Mission Impossible. Although the series got dumber as time went by, the earliest ones were pretty good “caper” films. They didn’t require the Bad Guys to do exactly the right things. One of the things that makes the first season so interesting (The Stephen Briggs episodes, before Peter Graves came in as Mr. Phelps) was that something would usually go seriously wrong, requiring them to improvise.

44

[QUOTE=ExTank]
Or, consider The Hulk. Another movie I can’t stand to watch. You have a guy, mostly emotionally dead to begin with, but who turns into this great, big, unstoppable green thing when he gets mad enough. How do you stop him?

Well, once I knew the trigger, I wouldn’t be pissing him off to start with, and then shooting at him when he turns all Hulk-y, making him even madder still. If he did Hulk out, I’d let him go, track him safely at a distance, let him cool off and revert back to normal human form.

Then tranq him to the gills, so that he feels nothing, ever again.

And then keep him like that permanently.

But then I’d do that to begin with as soon as I knew what the trigger was.

One thing I will acknowledge: most of us may have pride in our knowledge and abilities, as well as our individual accomplishments. But I also think most ordinary people would also be humble enough to acknowledge when they are in way over their heads, and either run away, or think super-rationally (as much as we can), and seek higher power (I’m not talking about praying to God here).

Most of the “evil” types in movies (heh, maybe even real-life) are sure in their power and abilities, and cannot concieve of a situation in which they are not in complete control. On this level, The Hulk works.
[/QUOTE]

The first time the military went after Hulk they did trank him when he was human. Once he was in custody General Ross had every intention of keeping him under forever but was ordered by Talbot’s backers to allow the change to happen to get a sample of hulk tissue.
When The Hulk busted free they didn’t think there was time to let him cool off before reaching the city and still believed he could be taken out with conventional weapons.
When that failed Betty told them that backing off and letting him calm down would stop him they took her advice.

45

[QUOTE=ExTank]
Or, consider The Hulk. Another movie I can’t stand to watch. You have a guy, mostly emotionally dead to begin with, but who turns into this great, big, unstoppable green thing when he gets mad enough. How do you stop him?

Well, once I knew the trigger, I wouldn’t be pissing him off to start with, and then shooting at him when he turns all Hulk-y, making him even madder still.
[/QUOTE]

There was a similar situation in a Teen Titans episode, once, where Beast Boy was believed to have lost control of his powers, turned into a giant werewolf-monster thing, and attacked teammate Raven, who was left comatose.

Friend Beast Boy, normally a pleasant lad, had trouble remembering anything about the incident, and was greatly disturbed about what happened to his friend, and was becoming increasingly agitated about the whole situation.

So…what does Robin do to try and find out the truth about what happened? Why jack around Beast Boy like a “bad cop” in a 70s crime drama,* naturally! Yeah, chew out an emotionally disturbed shapeshifter who may be turning into an uncontrollable monster without even handcuffing him to a chair.

Guess what happens. Go ahead…just guess.

Though, to be honest, this might just be a sign of realism…it does seem like something a teenage boy raised by Batman might think it was a good idea to pull.

Can someone remind me why it’s a bad idea to train and regulate these guys, again?
*Actually, I’m have trouble deciding if this is more “Dirty Harry” or “L.A. Confidential.”

46

“Away teams” in the Star Trek universe are just about the stupidest plot device I can think of. Federation ships have a crew compliment of several thousand, but apparently not a single marine. New and possibly hostile lifeform encountered? Don’t send a SEAL team cross trained in xeno-biology. Who needs those? Send the first or second in command (or both, why not), the chief of medicine, half the other ranking officers, and, oh I don’t know, maybe a cook. That’s the way you conquer a galaxy.

But of course those spacefarers were geniuses compared to those in Red Planet. SPOILER ALERT: The Earth is polluted so humans are terraforming Mars by oxygenating with algae. The algae stop growing so Val Kilmer and company are sent to investigate. Along for the ride is a military search and destroy robot to perform “surface navigation”. Apparently it’s not “get a Garmin” to the people at NASA, it’s “get an autonomous killer robot”. A solar flare ensues and the lander crash lands off target. They lose track of their autonomous killer robot mapping thing, and one of the crew is wounded. We’re treated to the predictable “Go on without me! We don’t have enough air in the suits You’ll never make it!” Thankfully, they leave the guy.

After walking a bit they find the algae site, but it’s destroyed! While awaiting their death from lack of air, one of the men does the only sensible thing, and throws another off a cliff. Just before they run out of air, Val rips off his mask and discovers “gasp! There’s air!” Why a crew investigating the lack of oxygen production never bothered to actually, you know, fraking check for Oxygen! is never explained.

The damaged autonomous killer robot mapping thing turns up, Val accidentally sets it to kill while trying to fix it. I knew we should have brought the instructions! They lose a crewman to the killer robot and later find his dead body infested with flesh eating alien insects. Let’s take samples! Turns out, the bugs make oxygen (now they check for oxygen. Later, another crewman is about to be eaten by the bugs so he whips out a flare and a huge explosion ensues. Did I mention the bugs are explosive? Eventually, our heroes are reunited with the chick from The Matrix* who’s been orbiting Mars, they return to Earth and the movie, finally showing pity on the audience, ends.

47

Poltergeist (the first one, before they turned it into a Movie Of The Week franchise). OK, the first 75% of the movie was entertaining enough. Then after they rescue the little girl from the Evil Creatures, they decide they’re going to leave the house. This makes perfect sense and is the intelligent thing to do.

Do they leave the house right away? or even after packing suitcases?

Why no, evidently it’s an EXCELLENT idea to first put the two younger kids to bed… in the same room with the haunted closet. While Mom pops into the bathroom to take a bath and relax and I dunno, paint her toenails or something. Dad and the teenager are off Og-knows-where.

This last bit - the bedtime / bath (when supposedly they’re leaving the house THAT DAY) has never made any sense whatsoever. :confused:

48

Buffy the Vampire Slayer as a series relies on people of their own free will continuing to live in a town where people are picked off by various monsters on a weekly basis. They often made little internal references to this quirk though, like when the football captain says if they can just avoid some of the mysterious deaths, they’ll have a great team. That’s why I was willing to suspend disbelief.

The Usual Suspects on the other hand didn’t make any sense. The criminal mastermind creates a plot of byzantine complexity so that he can personally kill the one guy that identify him by sight, only to leave a new witness, a mug shot, and fingerprints in police custody. Brilliant plan dude!

49

[QUOTE=Ferret Herder]
And of course, the whole plot hinged on the absolute requirement that no one on that plane (who wasn’t in on the plot) would see the 10-year-old at all, ever. Because no one getting on a long plane flight ever pays attention to kids getting on the flight, nope, there’s absolutely no reason why you might care about that.
[/QUOTE]

Umm…even dumber is that everything was done through the Bad Air Marshal. So, they didn’t need to do ANYTHING except have Bad Air Marshal get on the phone and make the demands.

Everything with Jodie Foster was totally unnecessary. If they’d just ignored her and her kid and gone through with their plan it would have worked just fine! Fits the “idiot” definition to me.

-Joe

50

[QUOTE=Greg Charles]
Buffy the Vampire Slayer as a series relies on people of their own free will continuing to live in a town where people are picked off by various monsters on a weekly basis. They often made little internal references to this quirk though, like when the football captain says if they can just avoid some of the mysterious deaths, they’ll have a great team. That’s why I was willing to suspend disbelief.

The Usual Suspects on the other hand didn’t make any sense. The criminal mastermind creates a plot of byzantine complexity so that he can personally kill the one guy that identify him by sight, only to leave a new witness, a mug shot, and fingerprints in police custody. Brilliant plan dude!
[/QUOTE]
I don’t think you got either of those. The entire premise of Buffy was always played with a wink. “Today’s weather: Cloudy, High of 81, low of 60, 70% chance of rain, 67% chance of vampires. So remember to take your umbrellas and crosses on your way to work. Now to Chuck for sports.” Overtly asking for suspension of disbelief is not bad plot.

And you absolutely didn’t get The Usual Suspects. Not many people do. That was a brilliant plot. You have to realize that the entire movie is a lie. Verbal is not Kaiser Sose. There never was a Kaiser Sose. The film was a dramatization of the detective’s interview with Verbal, and Verbal didn’t tell a single truth. Not a one. He made it all up. Kobayashi was a coffee cup! The genius of the movie was that the viewer realizes that nothing he saw actually took place. At the end, the detective and the audience doesn’t even know who killed who or a single thing about that heist. It’s all lies.

51

Oh man I almost forgot about Flightplan. I have to agree it is probably tops on my list. At first I thought you guys were talking about Red Eye with Rachel MacAdams, which is one of those terrorist movies where the terrorist think of the most convoluted way carry out their plan. But it is Shakespearian compared to Flightplan.

My (sure to be unpopular) nomination is going to be the Truman Show. The whole idea thatthey would be allowed to take a child and raisehim in such an environment just struck as about the dumbest premise ever. But then I saw Flightplan.

Comedies don’t make the list for me because many comedies have ridiculous plots.

52

[QUOTE=Gangster Octopus]
My (sure to be unpopular) nomination is going to be the Truman Show. The whole idea thatthey would be allowed to take a child and raisehim in such an environment just struck as about the dumbest premise ever. But then I saw Flightplan.
[/QUOTE]
I’m not a huge fan of The Truman Show, but I just want to reiterate that a far out premise doesn’t make a bad plot. If it did, then every episode of The Twilight Zone could be said to have a bad plot. That’s obviously not true. Premise does not equal plot.

And I agree about Flightplan. That’s a bad plot. How many secret rooms did that plane have?

53

[QUOTE=A Monkey With a Gun]
And you absolutely didn’t get The Usual Suspects. Not many people do.
[/quote]

I dunno that it was that opaque, I have to assume Greg represents a minority.

There are some “real” scenes in the film. A man did shoot Keaton and then blow up the ship. The other four members of the gang were arrested in New York and Edie Finneran was involved in some way. Pretty much everything else is Verbal’s fabrication, or at least, heh, suspect.

54

Obviously the lies had to have based in fact and Verbal had to explain the dead bodies that were found at the scene. How he bullshitted the whole thing is the movie. I said that not many people get The Usual Suspects because most people think Verbal was Kaiser Sose. Kaise Sose never existed.

55

[QUOTE=A Monkey With a Gun]
Obviously the lies had to have based in fact and Verbal had to explain the fact that dead bodies were found at the scene. How he bullshitted that is the movie. I said that not many people get The Usual Suspects because most people think Verbal was Kaiser Sose. Kaise Sose never existed.
[/QUOTE]

I dunno if you can claim that, though. It’s just as likely that Verbal Kint never existed and was just an assumed identity of Soze.

56

[QUOTE=A Monkey With a Gun]
Eventually, our heroes are reunited with the chick from The Matrix* who’s been orbiting Mars
[/QUOTE]

You almost forgot to mention her nipples, which were featured so prominently I still can’t believe they didn’t get their own line in the credits.

57

[QUOTE=Sublight]
From what I remember of teenhood, it wasn’t that being stalked by a killer would make teens horny, it’s that being stalked by a killer was insufficient to make them stop being horny.
[/QUOTE]

I’m reminded of the color quote from the “Nymphomaniac Cheerleader” card in Grave Robbers From Outer Space:

“Oh, no! I don’t want to die a virgin!”
“You’re a virgin?”
“Look, do you want to get some, or not?”

58

[QUOTE=Bryan Ekers]
I dunno if you can claim that, though. It’s just as likely that Verbal Kint never existed and was just an assumed identity of Soze.
[/QUOTE]
That’s the genius of the film, isn’t it? It’s a good plot, and the movie shouldn’t be in this thread. Which brings me back to a bad plotted movie that I mentioned earlier…

I didn’t “almost” forget. I completely forgot. Now that I think about it, she had a gratuitous topless scene in that movie. How the fuck did I forget that? It’s the only reason to watch the movie.

59

[QUOTE=Finagle]
Well, I’ve tried to imagine myself in that scenario, and it usually ends up with me wearing safety goggles, gloves, and a couple of layers of heavy clothing going forth with a tennis racquet and laying down the smackdown on the avian menace.
[/QUOTE]

You’re fun. I like you. I want to make this into a game, with rubber chickens.

At least the short story, while I remember it being bizarre, had the main character actually doing things that made sense like boarding up his house and collecting supplies when it looked like the birds were gonna go apeshit.

My vote goes to Signs. (Almost went to The Village–sure, send the blind girl. No matter how nuts they are about keeping their secret, why would they assume she’d actually make it out alive, find someone to help, and that that someone wouldn’t reveal their secret? She’s blind, in an unfamiliar forest! It’d be dumb even if she could see.)

Anyway. Signs. They half-ass board up their home, work the kids up into a frenzy, eat a last meal, and after all that time spent preparing, still forget the son’s prescription medication and the freaking coal chute that’s been there 100 years. Then they let their guard down after they get out of the basement. Maybe you should supervise your children until you’re sure all the monsters are gone? Gibson’s and Phoenix’s characters, when they weren’t being total weirdos, were total idiots throughout the whole movie.

(In general, I think Shyamalan is trying to do…something with his movies. He’s really trying, I think. I like his movies the first time I watch them, but the second, I always think “Hey! That’s dumb. What’s going on here?” When I’m feeling charitable and remembering my sophomore philosophy of literature class, I wonder if maybe he’s commenting on the nature of cinema, characters, and storytelling and the conventions we hold dear. Sometimes, though…bitch crazy.)

60

[QUOTE=A Monkey With a Gun]
Now that I think about it, she had a gratuitous topless scene in that movie. How the fuck did I forget that? It’s the only reason to watch the movie.
[/QUOTE]

Dude, you need to get out more. There’s thousands of better boobs out there than Carrion Moss’s. :wink: