A friend, having read my last post, asked if The Queen really objects to botanical inaccuracies in movies. Oh yes, yes indeed. And not just in motion pictures, either. If I’d known, in advance, that the TV show LOST would feature a bunch of people on a tropical island populated with temperate foliage, I never would have put it in my Netflix queue.
Of course, I’m just as bad when something I’m passionate about is misrepresented on film. Like games, for instance. I still break into hives whenever I think of the scene in Freaks and Geeks where the parents play the card game Pit, just the two of them.
But my all-time least favorite scene–one that appears in about every third film, seemingly–has to be this one:
The hero and the antagonist are playing chess, a game in which both are virtual grandmasters. It's a close fought match, and they banter while they play. Slowly, their moves--and their conversation--become more aggressive. Eventually they are openly hostile to one another, both on the board and off.
Then, victory. Smirking, the villain says something irrefutable to the hero, moves a bishop, and announces check.
For a long moment the two men lock eyes. Suddenly, the hero utters a devastating riposte, breaks eye contact just long enough to capture the bishop with his queen, and, with the slightest hint of a smile, declares checkmate. He rises from his chair and walks briskly away, leaving the loser to gawps at the board in amazement.
Yes, I understand that one grandmaster saying “I’m going to checkmate you in seven moves” followed by 23 straight minutes of the opponent staring at the board before replying, “ah, you are right–good game” lacks some of the “pizzazz” of the Hollywood version. But I still would rather sit through both episodes of Viva Laughlin, back-to-back, than endure this scene again.
What’s the scene you hate?
Over the years it began to bother me that “Stargate” characters, despite their instant transport from a mile-high location (which may be 36 stories below Colorado Springs, but is nonetheless quite high) to their ground-level destination never complained of the massive ear, nose and sinus pain that probably would cause.
This is to say nothing of the constant recycling of various bits of Vancouver to represent hundreds of alien planets, because the incredible Ancient Race could only plant their stargates in one of several sorts of climates: desert and evergreen forest, with the occasional matte painting or urban fringe thrown in for good measure.
Also, in 10 years, it occurred to just two of their enemies to come up with a way to counter Earth’s small-unit tactics, and the first attempt was abandoned while the second attempt was really just a plot to entrap some main characters. As the MMO computer game set in the SG universe gets closer, I just wonder how they’ll manage to balance the two forces, when the enemy army could be outwitted with civil-war tactics, to say nothing of modern warfare tactics.
I’ve loved Hugh Laurie since the mid-80s, but! House! Considering how many bureaucratic migraines have been visited upon American hospitals by various HMOs [and even up here in Canada the bureaucracy can be a nightmare], I have trouble watching a show where all the residents can go anywhere in the hospital and use any equipment, at any time. I’d like to see a satire show, “House HMO” to see how soon House would blow a blood vessel with all the regulations.
Let’s not even mention how House can go into an OR without a mask.
Jane
Scene: the bridge on any spaceship
Engineer: Captain — we’ve lost all power. We can’t even maintain life support.
Captain: But gravity? We’ve still got that under control, right?
Oh, wait — that never happens.
Also, the interconnectivity of alien technology. Do Klingons use ASCII?
Realistic(ish) hacking scenes: Wargames “Wardialing” (perhaps the most broad sort of hacking, analogous to trying thousands of doors to find one that’s unlocked, or perhaps one that opens to someone who speaks your language)
Real Genius: Lazlo manually(!!) attacks a password using an alphabetic brute-force method. Would a computer back then be programmed to alert anyone that one user is trying many different passwords? Probably, but maybe not.
And, I can only repeat what I’ve read on this, but The Matrix: Reloaded, in which Trinity is attacking the power-station’s computer. Sez IMDB: “[Trinity] uses Nmap version 2.54BETA25 (an actual port scanning tool) to find a vulnerable SSH server, and then proceeds to exploit it using the SSH1 CRC32 exploit from 2001.”
And of course the many thousands of examples of “social engineering” in which some sucker is induced to give up personal info, a password, or access to finances because they were manipulated by a conman.
“I know this system!” is maybe one of my favorite stupidly funny movie lines of all time.
Isn’t that the point?
“I know this system!” is maybe one of my favorite stupidly funny movie lines of all time.
Isn’t that the point?
the movie, “Outbreak”…
It starts off in Africa where cute little monkeys with ebola are shown hanging from trees and using their prehensile tails…
WFT???
MONKEYS FROM AFRICA DONT HAVE PREHENSILE TAILS!
Only new-world monkeys do.
As someone with an anthropolgy background this really chaps my hide.
If the producers had enough cash to get Dustin Hoffman in this piece of drek – you think they would have spend a quarter to call an anthropologist or a zoologist…
That Sir, is my big movie pet peeve…
The giant-explosion-throws-our-hero-out-of-range-of-itself scene. You know the one. Picture a tunnel or corridor, a big ass fireball, and a little silhouetted figure. The little figure can’t outrun the explosion, but luckily the shockwave picks him (occasionally her) up and throws him to safety.
The “I know! If we reverse the polarity we can avert catastrophe!” scene. As the son of an elelectrical engineer, I learned early on that this just means A)putting the battery in backwards or B)swapping the leads. This will either make your circuit not work, or go backwards. It was a staple in Star Trek TNG, which added the annoyance of watching some idiot in a jumpsuit “invent” the same solution to every problem every other week (One week technical problems, next week Ferengi trouble; repeat) to the disappointment of not seeing the Enterprise leap into reverse gear.
And one last one on behalf of dear ol’ Dad:
The scene in which some guy gets interrupted whilst shaving, wipes off the shaving cream, and is stubble free. Drives him nuts.
I guess there’s some truth to the saying that ignorance is bliss… I had to stop reading everyone’s entries for fear of never being able to enjoy watching another movie again.
An “elelectrical engineer” is just like an electrical engineer, only more resourceful. You can tell, because they found more letters to stick in their title.
Any show where someone is walking around with a cup of coffee and they hoist that sucker around so you can tell there isn’t any liquid inside, yet they drink from it.
Agony!
I hate any scene where they’re giving CPR and it just takes a couple seconds and the person sputters back to life. If you actually have to give a person CPR because their heart has stopped, they won’t come back to life until an ambulance comes and shocks their heart, which can take awhile and is extremely hard work for the person giving CPR!
I really hate how big the Incredible Hulk’s shorts get in the Incredible Hulk movie. The whole movie, my husband got punched in the arm every time that guy hulked out with me yelling “SERIOUSLY. How do the SHORTS get SO BIG!?” Although I am loathe to ponder the alternative.
Thank you for allowing me to share this concern.
The spy/counterspy shows where Government employees track people’s whereabouts using satellite imagery, quickly zooming and enhancing the images to show tiny details like documents, license plates, etc.
Ugh!
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2005/06/06
Regarding the Star Trek trope.
Just about any boxing movie grates on me, but the Rocky ones are particularly bad. They never block anything! They just take turns hitting each other in the head and body.
Oh wow, I do love this thread. I’m with Dan Someone– in both pet peeve and profession. Last night I was watching the episode of Veronica Mars (not recommended for you sticklers reading this, though if you can suspend disbelief it’s a lot of fun) where she is on a jury. Everyone has reasonable doubt about the defendants and vote to acquit, 11-1. Veronica then spends the rest of the episode throwing around suggestions about how the defendants probably really did the crime, and of course in the end they convict them (just like 12 angry men, but the reverse!).
In one especially egregious moment I actually started convulsively rolling around in bed, moaning “no, no, no, MISTRIAL! MISTRIAL!! REASONABLE DOUBT!!!”
Any movie where the hero/villain/damsel in distress/breakfast pastry is falling from a great height and:
A: is caught (for example, by Spiderman) mere moments before impact and suffers no deceleration injuries
B: grabs onto a flagpole/ledge/whatever and doesn’t dislocate both shoulders or break all of their fingers
C: grabs a passing rope and slows/stops their fall without immediately ripping all the skin off their palms
I really hate it when people speak the wrong language. When the setting is (for example) France and everyone speaks English that’s actually ok, I don’t mind, I get that I’m watching an American production with American actors. But when they go through the trouble of getting people to speak a different language, then it’s the wrong one I HATE THAT!
Like in Alias, when Sydney went to Taiwan and EVERYONE SPOKE CANTONESE! Not Taiwanese, not Mandarin Chinese (both of which are spoken in Taiwan), but Cantonese (which isn’t)! Since they had Cantonese actors they could’ve just changed the script to set everything in Hong Kong, what’s the difference anyways?
Oh and Serenity, when the written Chinese was like upside down and backwards. I know they said that they figure the language would evolve, explaining away the accents, ok I’ll buy that I even like that they’re trying, but c’mon, the written word wouldn’t have evolved to be upside down and mirrored. Makes no sense.
AS for the aforementioned Batman gripe….even if he did hurt some of the policemen, don’t forget that they were probably corrupt cops anyway, right? It is Gotham, after all. So it’s fine. I was unhappy at first (I’m in law enforcement) until I remembered that…
What bugs me more than people no reloading guns is when they do too much fancy stuff with it, and when the gun makes clicking-metal-noises any time you touch it. Unless the gun has some loose parts, it won’t make a noise unless you deliberately move the action or something. I remember watching…Bad Boys? And watched Will Smith put a magazine into his semi auto, worked the slide (ch-chick!) to put a bullet in the chamber, went outside and did some stuff….and then when they were like, “Lete’s do this!” they all worked the slides again (ch-chick!) which in reality would have ejected an unused bullet. I think Will probably ch-chicked his gun another time too before shooting. Gar.
Most anything computer reference related. In particular, in the Jodie Foster flick “Flightplan” when they show the enormous and cavernously unoccupied ‘supercomputer’ room in the nose of the plane. Riiiight. Like any airline would buy a plane that wasted that much space and was a huge waste of fuel. That and all the blinkenlights and superfluous patch panels make me squirm.
The scenes that drive me crazy are the ones where multiple millions of dollars are put in a regulation size briefcase. One brick of 100’s, worth $1.6 million fresh from the Bureau of Engraving and Printing is approximately 19″ x 28″. No way is $10 million going to fit in that briefcase!
Okay, I hate the scene where commenters like SHANNON give away IMPORTANT THINGS ABOUT TV SHOWS that I haven’t WATCHED YET on DVD.
Ahem.
As others have said, anything computer-related is going to be unbearable. Though it can be entertaining to play “spot the OS or chip code.”
CSI episodes (possibly all of them) in which the lab folks interrogate suspects and make spot decisions about innocence (or lack of a case to take to trial) and tell the suspects, personally, that they’re off the hook.
Most of my personal worsts involve language: sf shows/movies where everyone speaks the same language, or better yet, there’s some kinda “universal translator thingie” that makes everyone *hear* the same language… but with racially stereotypical accents and funky word order, like always the verb at the end of their sentence, putting are. Except when the magic translator suddenly “doesn’t work,” because the people only speak in metaphors related to their folk history (and this has never come up before) or the written language predates the founding of Galifrey or something stupid like that.
I’ve tried very hard to be tolerant of the “Chinese” in Firefly. Usually I just pretend it’s some minority language, not putonghua (Mandarin).
But my all-time favorite is when there’s a radiation leak or some other life-support failure and the count-down to the point of no return, everyone dies failure is in its final seconds, the problem is miraculously fixed… and everyone on board is perfectly healthy.
That one’s even ahead of interplanetary halfbreeds. (Ew.)
In at least 2 Ridley Scott movies (Blade Runner and Black Rain), the hero is drinking heavily, and then does something that requires clear thinking and fast reflexes (chasing down a suspect on foot, for instance). This bothers me.
The comments about using English no matter the time or place reminds me of this: “We are so poor we can’t even afford a language, just these cheap accents.” (History of the World Part I.)
As an ex Marine I find most military movies and tv shows almost unbearable. There’s all the regular stuff like automatic weapons that that don’t need to be re-loaded and never overheat; when was the last time you saw a movie where the A-gunner changed the barrel on a machine gun? Hell when was the last time you saw a movie that showed the A-gunner? They’re not called “crew served weapons” for nothing.
Then there’s the whole uniform thing. Wearing the wrong uniform or wearing the uniform incorrectly, or having a non-regulation haircut.
But the biggest thing about military movies is the actors. They never act like anyone I ever knew in the military. And that’s what kills it for me. I’m always sitting there thinking “who would do that? or who would say that?” “who are these idiots? Did they even have a military advisor for this film?”
While there are many scenarios I find unsettling – the elite computer people for any of the CSI’s for example – there is truly only one scene I would go so far as to loathe. Any scene with a nude Bea Arthur.
Well, except for that one video, but she made is special for my birthday.
Oh, another one that drives me nuts and makes me forget the plot is when a supposedly newborn baby is crying but any parent worth their sleepless nights knows it is really a child at least 6 months old or, worse yet, an adult doing a truly awful fake newborn cry. Please, please just get the generic newborn audio tape and quit being so cheap with the sound track!
For those complaining about Firefly’s Chinese, did you ever hear the Chinese girl who appeared in the last few episodes of Buffy? I think she was a mandarin speaker who was cast as a Cantonese speaker, or she may not have actually spoken Chinese. Her way of speaking is amazingly toneless and flat most of the time. My wife (who’s a native cantonese speaker) said I speak poorly, but at least I sound alive.
I hate the entire genre of idealistic teacher movies. I work in a school for people with severe emotional problems in Chicago’s inner city. We have the drugs and gangs. The idea that our students would do better if someone came in and challenged them to read poetry and believe in themselves instead of giving up on them like all the other teachers have is more than a little insulting to those of us who do this sort of thing day in and day out.
With the exception of a few movies (and at the moment I can think of only one), movie industries portray giving birth as a quick, relatively painless procedure. Sure, you might hear screams coming from another room, but they don’t last long. I would appreciate some sort of time-lapse signals, or someone informing us, “She’s been in labor for the past 24 hours.”
Claire had it really easy in LOST when she gave birth to Aaron: he was all clean, the umbilical cord was snipped, and as far as I could tell, Claire didn’t have to deliver a placenta afterward–not that I would have wanted to see any of it, course. I want my visual media to be escapist fantasy!
Whenever movies and TV show scenes with books or libraries, they often use law books. These look great — all uniform and official. In real life, these texts come in sets of hundreds. On screen, they show only a few here and there. So you might see one shelf of F2ds, a couple of ALRs, and a few Federal Digests scattered about. Or, worse still, a stack that includes just one book from a variety of sets, which is even weirder. I keep wondering how they got those books out of the library (you usually can’t check them out) and when they plan to return them (especially those in How I Met Your Mother).
Also: Cavalier HIPPA violations. Really annoying. See: most episodes of Grey’s Anatomy.
Volleyball scene in Top Gun. I guess you can include all sports scenes using the actual actors. Those short, aborted scenes that show the actor beginning a play/stroke/swing/whatever but never actually completing it – that really bothers me.
What about when someone is trying to hide/escape so they pop open a manhole lid and jump in the sewer?
Have you ever tried to lift a manhole cover?? You will need a crowbar or special tool and at least one other person helping you.
Explosions! Explosions! Explosions! I’ve always wanted to film a bicycle chase scene, and have a bicycle go off a cliff, the rider is thrown but uninjured (!!!) and then the bicycle explodes into a fireball! COOOOL!!!
THE SCENE IN THE PROFESSOR’S OFFICE
(Yet another installment in the series of ‘guess my profession’ posts.)
Somebody mentioned how every class ends with some pithy remark, an announcement of an assignment and everyone shuffling out quietly. What I always find infuriating is the scene where we go back to some low-to-mid-level humanities professor’s office (as opposed to a science prof’s beaker-laden lab) and it’s some gigantic hardwood floored Edwardian drawing room with leather-bound volumes on inset wood shelves that go to the ceiling and a gigantic window that has an unobstructed view of the city/Elysian fields of the college.
Even top of the heap professors at top of the heap schools don’t have those sorts of accommodations. Even most of them have what I have – narrow linoleum-tiled rooms with walls of painted cinder blocks and particle board furniture.
I remember seeing Stranger Than Fiction, where Will Ferrell visits Dustin Hoffman in his office, which is the size of a boardroom, has a separate seating area with leather couches and a clear view of downtown Chicago. I leaned over to my wife in the theater and said, “Why are they in the University Chancellor’s office?”
I have problems with the medical scenes in movies/medical shows like ER, Grey’s Anatomy, House, etc. These shows always show doctors sitting by a patient’s bedside constantly while taking vital signs and drawing blood. Doctors never do any of that, it’s always the nurses! It is frustrating for me as a nurse because it gives a skewed image of what really occurs in the hospital. Most of the work is done by nurses, but they aren’t ever acknowledged at all.
That bit in The Core, just after the starting credits. I think it lasted 2 hours.
Any movie where an American does an “English accent”.
Curse you Dick Van-dyke ! Curse you !!!
Pirates of the Carribean: Johnny Depp sails into harbour in a sinking ship with tattered sails and still manages a good rate of knots.
Back to the Future: Kitchen appliances of the future rated at 1.21 GW. The people of the future must like their steaks well-done.
Granted these are minor nit-picks in movies that are otherwise paragons of realism.
My favorite movie cliche is any scene where a woman in the middle of some personal crisis goes into the bathroom and buzzes off her own hair. She emerges with a totally cute pixie cut that could have been done by Frederick Fekkai himself. I guarantee if I did that (and I have), I’d look like a three-year-old went after me with a pair of pinking shears.
My favorite movie cliche is any scene where a woman in the middle of some personal crisis goes into the bathroom and buzzes off her own hair. She emerges with a totally cute pixie cut that could have been done by Frederick Fekkai himself. I guarantee if I did that (and I have), I’d look like a three-year-old went after me with a pair of pinking shears.
I can’t believe no one has mentioned this yet : *sound* in outer space ! Hello ? Near-vacuum ?
In criminal/drama shows where a crime/abduction is being investigated, and EVERY time their phone rings it relates to the task at hand. There’s never an “Oh, that was my waife, I need to pick up drycleaning,” or “Damnit! I have to go pick my son up from school – he threw up all over the classroom.”
Grrr.
The TV show Bones irritates the hell out of me. Sure, it was based on a real person who was a Forensic Anthropologist. Not a real person who had a PhD in Forensic Anthropology, Physical Anthropology, Cultural Anthropology, Linguistic Anthropology, AND Social Anthropology. Not! Possible! You cannot be describing someone’s precranial ridge one moment and then site an obscure cultural study by Mary Leakey in the next! As a Cultural Anthropologist this reallllly bugs me. And! The stupid 3-D computer image machine they have that shows you exactly what someone looks like. Again: Not! Possible!
The entire Live Free or Die Hard movie (I can’t vouch for the 20 minutes near the end when I fell asleep – that part may have been completely realistic).
The TV show Bones irritates the hell out of me. Sure, it was based on a real person who was a Forensic Anthropologist. Not a real person who had a PhD in Forensic Anthropology, Physical Anthropology, Cultural Anthropology, Linguistic Anthropology, AND Social Anthropology. Not! Possible! You cannot be describing someone’s precranial ridge one moment and then site an obscure cultural study by Mary Leakey in the next! As a Cultural Anthropologist this reallllly bugs me. And! The stupid 3-D computer image machine they have that shows you exactly what someone looks like. Again: Not! Possible!
To add to Daniel’s comment, my husband hates any military movie where the person cannot give a proper salute. Also, apparently when groups of soldiers go into a room, look around and say “Clear” isn’t actually how you would clear a room if you are in the armed forces.
I am so sick of movies with sensationalized images of bloggers- dressed to the nines, effortlessly tapping out some post full of subtle wit and insight. Just as they push “POST”, their gorgeous girlfriend glides into the room, bearing with cocktails.
Pleeeeze. When is hollywood going to stop glamorizing the blogosphere? It isn’t all sexy glory and top-shelf liquor!
On the show Friends, an average coffee/barista waitress and a chef can live in a larger than average apartment in New York City.
Since I was asked I’ll explain why you cannot crawl through ductwork in a building.
1. The ductwork is usually too small. The size varies throughout the building starting out large and reducing down as the air is distributed to each room. At the room level duct is commonly no larger than six or eight inches in the smallest dimension. Where the duct is actually big enough to fit a person it usually leads directly to a fast moving fan and not to some convenient plot progressing location.
2. People weigh too much. Duct is mostly air and the hangers used to hold it up are not designed for the 150+ pound weight of a person. It would simply fall down if someone tried to enter a duct.
3. There are any number of nails and sharp edges inside of a duct. That’s what holds it together. If a person were to try to crawl through this metal minefield they would be cut to shreds.
So if you are ever locked in a room by terrorists you might want to rethink the escape via duct plan.
Pretty much any scene that involves Nuclear: bombs, waste, fuel, anything. Having worked on a waste retrieval and cleanup project ruined me forever.