Yeah if I've paid £3+ for a shot of something I'm not slugging it back and having another. Thats just no fun at all. It will be sipped. The only exception is if once every 10 years I'm having a couple of slammers on someone elses tab.
In every action movie, somebody says:"Move! Move! Move!" or "Go! Go! Go!" during a big chase scene. I think it's always 3, they never say move or go once or twice.
What about how they never say "Bye" when ending a phone conversation? It's always "See you at 8". Click
For me, it seems like they have given themselves a quota for hiring black actors in their films. I don't think it's fair to the actor who gets a role for that reason. There are a lot of people who won't give a good actor any credit for a strong performance, if they feel like the only got the part because of the color of their skin. Just watch a silent movie with a white actor in blackface playing a black character. That is far worse than using a black actor to play Johnny Storm. The way black people were portrayed in a lot of silent films should be offensive to every body, regardless of race.
Along the same lines. In North By Northwest, Cary Grant is writing Eva Marie Saint a note. He's in a dangerous situation, time is of the essence, yet he takes the time to punctuate his sentences.
Physics, Hollywood gets pure physics wrong much of the time. If the story includes a plausible reason to ignore physics then I am in and watch without scrutiny. I affectionately call this acceptance the "Super Man Effect". Super Man is from another planet and can do super things. Because of this it is plausible to ignore some of the mistakes they make during the story in order to make the story more fun. They made it part of the set up so I can watch while suspending reality for the sake of fun. When the Super Man Effect has NOT been written into the story physics are in full effect and should be referenced to make a better story. Here are a few of the things I see that get to me when physics are ignored. 1) A character shoots a big gun and flies backwards. A character is shot by a gun and flies through the air due to the gunshot inflicted. Physics dictates an equal and opposite reaction. This means if the person being shot flies through the air due to huge impacts the person shooting the gun would feel the same impact from recoil. Nope, just the person being shot is effected. Never mind the power of such a shot would simply pass through, or explode, the human body as the bullet impacted. 2) Special effects where the person being shot at does all manner of gymnastics to avoid being shot, especially the sideways cartwheel. As a shooter I would think, neat spin but your center of mass stayed exactly where it was before you started moving, so here are six shots to the chest even as you spin in a fantastic manner. 3) The massive punch that sends a man flying through the air and crashing literally INTO the wall 10 feet away...even concrete walls. To impact a body with that much force would simply crush the skeleton. In movies the punched simply get up, shake it off, and keep fighting...No Effing way! 4) The 110 lb female bad ass who is able to take on anything simply because she has been trained to fight. Skill is a big player in a fight. If you happen to be small but highly skilled you do stand a chance against a big, untrained, attacker if you can surprise them with a well executed attack from the get go. When the tough small fighter is confronted by a huge, trained, skilled, aware opponent the little fighter is in big trouble. I especially dislike it when the five, bad guy hit men take on the big tough main character. The main character is beaten badly by the bad guys...suddenly the little lady steps in and beats ass on each and every one of the huge bad guys without even so much as a bump or bruise...again, no way. 5) The always perfect shot, regardless of how the shooter is positioned while shooting. 6) The gunfight with one hero and thirty seven bad guys. The hero has a pistol and the bad guys are armed with any manner of firearm, shotgun, pistol, machine gun, rocket launcher and so on. Somehow the bad guys just can seem to hit the hero. Even if the bad guys level the surrounding areas with bullets fired, the hero is unscathed. Maybe the bad guys took the Imperial Storm Trooper shooting course and really are just terrible shots. Good thing the hero practiced #5 above and hits each bad guy exactly where he needs to hit them with a single shot. Good thing his pistol has a never ending supply of ammo too. 7) Car stunts that crush a vehicle but somehow the vehicle is still perfect and the passenger is unharmed. "Fast and Furious" is a perfect example of this. The story has no Super Man Effect built into it but the cars and riders somehow escape physics at every turn. 8) Outrunning explosions, especially fiery explosions. The shock wave from a large explosion is what does the most damage, not the fire. 9) Continuity issues. There are many times things are just wrong. Simple mistakes, like the swapped two wheel side the Mustang is riding on in "Diamonds are Forever" is a mistake but the car was still the same. When they completely swap vehicles I roll my eyes and throw in the towel. When they show a time frame, say 1965, but then clearly drive away in a 1970 car the people in charge blew it. The tiny background details are important and do matter but I am not really talking about those here. I am talking about really big errors. I'm sure money is the deciding factor in fixing most of these but we, the viewers, do notice. 10) The bumbling man who is tolerated and only kept alive by the strong, tolerant, forgiving woman. While this is a reality at some level, just like the truly helpless damsel, the bumbling man character has been trampled to death...and trampled once more just to be sure. Don't make characters so linearly useless. Okay, that last one is not physics related but come on already...enough.
There was an interesting documentary on the Discovery Channel(or the Learning Channel) years ago. They were trying to determine if the David/Goliath fight from the Bible was realistic. Scientists said that when a person reaches a certain size, they start to have less peripheral vision. They said that because David went without the armor, he was able to move around faster and Goliath would have lost sight of him, thereby giving David an advantage. If the smaller fighter keeps moving and the huge fighter is big enough, this theory would support Hollywood in a small way, at least.
Another is how when there is a bar fight etc, it could be 10 on 1, but those 10 guys each attack one at a time, rather than just jumping on the guy.
Yup, and in that story the small fighter does not directly confront the big fighter. He uses weapons to take him down from a relatively safe distance. This means the big fighter can not get his hands on the small fighter and the small fighter can win. The movies I am talking about have the small fighter directly fighting, hand to hand with no weapons, and this would give the advantage to the bigger fighter. I say advantage because anything can happen in a fight. A fight is a dynamic, unique occurrence. All bets are off when it comes to saying, with certainty, which fighter will win. The movies take it too far and make it hard to believe.
Super competent females is becoming another cliche. Again, an antidote to past under-estimating. Fight scenes are a laugh anyway. I seem to remember asking somewhere on the Forum if all the (faked) head-butting in movies wasn't the cause of real life concussion.
Wait a minute: I see that in real life all the time! How about younger men and older women, or shorter men with taller women? You never see that in movies. Also you rarely see fairly attractive, homely, or overweight people in movies. You never see a home where a dog viciously barks at a stranger at the door. You never see people how they really eat a meal. (Ever watch the second season of The Partridge Family? Ever notice how Danny eats? That's realism!) No one ever has a TV playing loud? No one ever goes to the bathroom, and you never hear a toilet flush. And, even when the story is set in a racially-diverse area, how come just about all the actors are white? You might see one or two Blacks, a couple of Asians, but hardly any Mexicans. I want to see movies reflect real life.
One thing that often bugs me but I just have to accept: when the actors are far too old to be playing their characters -- especially athletes, soldiers and policemen -- often by a factor of two decades.
Every time someone goes to put a record on a turntable, they always seem to grab the exact record they want, and cue up the exact music for the mood.
Haven't read the entire thread, but my favorite candidate is the constant racking of shotguns and pistols. Even after firing a round, the character racks the gun for effect, yet the previously chambered round never gets ejected.
See, I don't know about that. I see a lot of older people who are active soldiers and cops in uniform. Most police departments don't have much of a restriction on age. What gets me is that there are a lot of very young-looking people who are soldiers, nurses, and cops, but you hardly ever see them on TV or in movies. Young-looking people always have to be bumbling college students.
I think the most realistic man to man fight in any movie is the fight between Colin Firth and Hugh Grant in the second Bridget Jones movie. I thought it was spot on how two people would actually fight.
Nine times out of ten, when two people in a movie sit down at a restaurant to have a meal, you can almost guarantee that neither of them will ever eat anything. Something will always occur to send one of them away from the dinner scene before anything is served. Whenever someone goes into a bar to have a drink, the liquid is poured, but mostly no-one ever drinks anything. They are interrupted just like the two diners.
Good one! In movies and TV, having money is never, ever an issue, unless one is living on the street. The characters can buy anything they want at any time. Laptop? Sure! Buy a house in three minutes? You bet! Police commonly commandeer citizens vehicles to catch the bad guy when needed, and no one puts up a fight. All the cop has to do is flash a badge, and the owner is cool with it.
I have something to say about that. But, it's against forum rules. EDIT: I see Sarah S. decided to comment on it.
