I’ll go first. Mine is the instant knockout drug. Like Dexter’s intramuscular injection that causes someone to immediately lose consciousness. Or in the movie Split where there’s the aerosol spray in your face that makes you instantly unconscious. Or pretty much any time someone uses chloroform.
Star Trek is awful for this, but this conversation:
Subject Matter Expert: Oh no, the defences are down
Captain: How long do you need to fix them?
SME: Two hours
Captain: You have one
No, motherfucker, the person that you fucking PAY for their expertise on this very subject said it would take two hours!
Management is full of these cunts that think they can just dictate a timeline and have people that actually know their shit dance to their tune.
Hate to be that guy, but the federation exists in a post-money society. No one gets paid, they do what they do for prestige, pride, adventure, and the good of humanity. Maybe the management believe they can inspire their minions to do better, or maybe the SME’s are so used to that shit that they under promise and over deliver.
SME: “oh no, our defences are down” Captain: “How long do you need to fix them?” SME: (hmm, captain will cut the time in half, it takes about 15 minutes…fuck it…) “Two hours” Captain: “You have one” SME: (Like candy from a baby)
Scotty literally talks about under promising intentionally so he comes across as a miracle worker.
Software devs already do this IRL
Cue Scotty, Mr “miracle worker”, quadrupling his estimates:
And later, Torres explicitely not doing that.
But also if you know anything about engineering, it’s double your expected timeline just in case Shit Happens™️. I can fairly safely predict delivery in two hours. I might be able to deliver in one. Under-promise and over-deliver, or risk vice versa.
I always 7x. Especially if I’m dependent on others
“Okay so the installer says it’s got nine minutes left, so this step should take about three or four minutes”
Honestly this happens a lot. Generally people give estimates reflecting other responsibilities when cutting time is possible
Knights getting stabbed with swords through plate armor.
We’re re-watching GoT and were at the Brienne/Jaime fight on the bridge, and I was just yelling at the screen. He’s in rags and she’s in plate, both wielding swords, he doesn’t have a snowballs’ chance in hell if she protects her head and just tackles him. That’s what the fucking armor is for! Coincidentally that also would be way more likely to achieve her goal to subdue but not hurt him.
In the opening sequence of Final Fantasy XII, two separate characters get stabbed through the “stylish” gaps in their armor… and somehow this doesn’t prompt anyone else to reconsider their armor choices.
IIRC, neither was wearing armor in the book, but it’s been a while so I may be wrong.
And the book at least talks about aiming for the gaps in the armor.
The worst is when a show or movie establishes that X can’t be done, because Y. Then in a later scene X is done without addressing anything about Y. It’s actually pretty common, especially when run time needs to be padded with a side quest.
Ever try holding your breath for as long as a TV or movie character is getting smothered to death? It’s not even uncomfortable.
YES, another one of mine. To be fair though, most TV shows and movies don’t have the time to dedicate to an actual strangling or suffocation. Those things take a while.
Funny story. I took my dad to Saving Private Ryan. After the movie was over and we’re walking away he turned to me and said…
“You know the actual D-Day took a lot longer than that.”
Movies that need to exposition dump to tell the audience what’s going on. This isn’t radio. If you need to explain everything to me so I can understand what’s going on in the plot, it’s bad story telling. Show, don’t tell.
Writers just toss in some jarringly unrealistic dialogue that people never say IRL to establish characters are siblings.
I heard Outlander is great, but I can’t get past the second episode because the narration pissed me off.
Okay, I get it, it’s based off a novel, but if you’re inserting a monologue to explain what just happened, or foreshadowing what is about to happen, you can just fuck off.
“Little did I know, this blunder would cost me everything” fuck off
Watch Mad Max Fury Road “theatrical” release then watch the original or director’s cut. I watched the original in theaters the day the movie came out and loved it! But I rewatched it on streaming and thought I was going crazy with the Tom Hardy narration they added in the begin and end. I was like, was that added between the time I watched in theater and now? Looked it up and the production company forced them to add the narration a couple weeks into the release. Apparently an executive couldn’t follow the story without Max telling him. Shows that the people in charge don’t always know what’s best.
The what the what now? Never even heard of this and I’ve watched Fury Road a lot.
So there are three versions. Original, directors cut, and theatrical (has the narrations)
When the driver of a car is looking more at the passenger they’re talking to than the road. Probably a dead giveaway that the scene is shot with green screen or the car being towed on the back of a truck.
I used to hate it when people kept wobbling the steering wheel around when driving in a clearly straight road but then Top Gear had an episode featuring some American cars from the 1980s and constantly correcting the steering was necessary because there was so much loose play in the system!
Leaf spring suspension probably doesn’t help either…
My friend’s mom when I was a kid used to look at us in the back seat for minutes at a time while driving. She said she used the lines behind the car to stay in the lane. It scared the shit out of us, but somehow she never got into an accident. Granted, these were long, straight, country roads, not NYC streets.
What the hell 😳
For realz.
I’m glad there wasn’t any casualties. Right?
Nope. No accidents… somehow.
I mean with the complexity of shooting in a moving car I have to wonder if it’s ever done now (in all but the most extreme necessity).
On any union tv show or movie in the United States, all driving sequences are either in a studio shot with a green screen or a virtual stage, or they are shot with a “process trailer” where somebody else pulls the car.
It is very much illegal to have an actor “act” while driving, though in the low budget indie world you might find productions or cast willing to risk it in some way.
All they need to do to solve the problem is make sure to focus on the road. They don’t need to actually be driving, just act like they are driving by looking at the road more than their passenger.
Well that’s to solve the appearance, but I’m commenting with an actual physical car, on a closed road, being towed or not, etc. Don’t need the bother when you can green screen it.
Filmed in a real setting always looks less distracting than a green screen.
I agree, I’m just saying that I doubt many will go through the trouble unless it’s really necessary.
Indie movies and small budget movies, perhaps?
Yes, so much this, so hard to watch 😬 (And probablysetting a really bad example for the real world.)
When the protagonist isn’t actually doing anything or making any decisions, but mostly reacting to events that happen.
So it goes.
Hearing the exact wrong part of the conversation, and then making a horrific assumption and spinning off into zany misunderstandings instead of, just, “Hey, what did I just hear?”
“Wait! I can explain. Just hear me out!”
“Never!”
*runs out of the room and then actively hides from the character until it’s convenient for the plot that they finally listen
Such stupid writing
Whenever the plot entirely revolves on avoidable misunderstandings from character that nothing in the story prevents from having a clarifying chat. It’s weak storytelling.
Also whenever the characters don’t react to enormous thing A because advancing the story requires them to immediately ask about thing B.
Lastly whenever you end up screaming at the tv “you have enough clues to call for backup” or “enough reason to worry to call 911” yet they proceed alone. Bad writing.
“We don’t have time (to explain why were doing this)”
Proceeds to have time to do dozens of other useless things
I feel like there’s a lot of script writers that want the emotional wrenchingness of “this character’s personality and history means that they will never see the simple solution” but have no idea how to actually pull it off.
Breaking Bad pulls this off wonderfully multiple times, where the “right” decision is right there but for the character to be able to do it, they couldn’t be who we’ve learned them to be so far.
But most directors amd scriptwriters are nowhere near that level.
avoidable misunderstandings
You didn’t watch a lot of Three’s Company, did you? :-D
Explosive decompression in space. It seems to always last forever, suck EVERYTHING out, even if it’s a tiny hole through which a giant xenomorph is liquified. The delta P is like one atmosphere, pathetic really.
Then there’s noise in space.
Idiot balling. If your plot hinges on everyone suddenly being incompetent af, having the emotional maturity of a hamster or leaving out key details without reason, you fucking suck at writing
Honestly this is far more believable ever since Donald Trump became a viable politician. It sure does seem like there is no bottom to the well of human stupidity these days
I’m a lot more understanding of the dumb characters in zombie movies since covid
Having idiotic characters is one thing. Having otherwise-competent characters suddenly become idiotic because the plot doesn’t work otherwise is what’s bad.
People getting shot with a shitty handgun and they’re dead as soon as they hit the ground. Even if its a fatal shot, chances are quite high you’re going to die minutes or hours or days later if you make it to a hospital.
People hiding behind cars from bullets. Bullets being shot at the car and somehow not hitting them. Only the engine block could stop most bullets.
Guns in general are a lost cause at this point. Even shooting a 22 outside is doing hearing damage, but plots rely on people shooting 9s and 45s indoors and having normal conversations immediately afterwards.
A 22 can penetrate all the way through a car and still be dangerous
Anything but a direct hit on the head or heart is going to take at least a minute for someone to die. Conversely, the chance of dying from a non-lethal shot (or having lifelong complications), even to an appendage, is nonzero.
At the same time, getting hit by most calibers isn’t gonna knock someone down or blast them back like they got hit by a car. Human skin is soft, very little energy is transferred into the body’s mass as the bullet travels through.
People shooting guns in a car and then continuing their conversation…
You would be deaf.
The bad guy that is omniscient and omnipresent. Everywhere you go, oops! There’s the bad guy and he totally kicks your ass and ruins your plans.
We call it Neganing. He’s the reason I eventually stopped watching the Walking Dead.
Or like Sylar (from Heroes), where the writers find a baddie they just love too much to kill so the whole show becomes about them.
I’m pretty tired of the sanctity of life trope. Especially when the hero kills a thousand henchmen to get to the villain, and then all of the sudden decides it would be wrong to kill a guy who is trying to destroy the world or whatever.
Also the hostage trope where they point a gun at someone and say “drop your gun” and the hero does so. How fucking stupid are you? Just shoot the guy in the face.
Also major injuries that take a year to recover from, but somehow Mr. Average guy is running around and fighting 2 minutes later.
Die off-screen? Definitely alive and will show up the next act.
The problem with this one is that, as a reader/watcher/whatever, it affects your experience even when it doesn’t happen. I was so convinced that Dumbledore was alive at the end of book six. Fell off a balcony? Point of view character gets dragged to the infirmary so we can’t see what happens after that? There’s a phoenix, a bird associated with healing and rebirth, conspicuously singing? That guy is pulling a Gandalf in the next book for sure.
So I spent the whole next book waiting for the dramatic reveal that never came…
