Plots That Made You Say, "No, Just Stop!"

[Voulan]

Pretty much every time I see the "MANDATORY ROMANTIC SUBPLOT" neon sign above some character's head, especially in a work where it feels shoehorned in.

I don't tend to roll my eyes in disdain and aggravation when a plot gets simply bizarre...I roll them in exasperation, then grin and say "Oh, okay then, I'll just not think too hard about this." But romantic subplots? Those things make me want to claw my eyes out.

This, one thousand times. It reaches the point that I actually get angry watching films and playing games.

I mean, look at what they did to the new Silent Hill movie. "Let's rearrange the plot so that the once strong female character who travels through hell alone gets a boyfriend to help her! It'll be great you guys! Even if the plot now makes no sense and we killed off one of the main characters whose role is pivotal to the plot! Because boyfriends!"

I could've forgiven the final boss fight crap with Pyramid Head, but I cannot fathom why they made such a stupid decision like that.

For a gaming example where it's clearly shoehorned in, let's go with the survival horror game Overblood. Complete with cheesy porn music in the background for no reason. Although it's stupid enough to be funny.

 

[Westaway]

Not actually the plot, but the dialogue/characters from ODST were just terrible. I thought the story would be a bit gritter since it was from the point of view from a normal soldier but the whole thing was extremely juvenile. The conversations between the ODSTs was awful, the audio logs were awful, and the fact that the gameplay is barely changed besides minor recoil and slightly less health is awful.

 

[Vivi22]

The only specific instance I can think of at the moment is The Dark Knight Rises. "We've got this nuclear FUSION reactor beneath the city! Oh no! The villains came in and turned it into a nuclear FISSION bomb in a matter of minutes with no specialized equipment!" One of the many plot holes that riddled the film, but I think this is one of the worst, seeing as though the entire plot is practically driven by the threat of a nuclear explosion from a FISSION bomb that used to be a FUSION reactor. Seriously, have they even taken high school chemistry?

While I'll admit that I'm not a nuclear physicist, I don't recall them ever describing it as a fission bomb, and fusion bombs are most definitely a thing.

 

[V4Viewtiful]

Most recently Man of Steel, it all felt ridiculously draining, the dumb dialogue, the mixed messages the lack of focus the neck snape it was all unconvincing.

But the actual point I KNEW the plot was just going wrong was Pa Kent's death, it was embarrassing especially after emotionally crippling his son to wear he just becomes a wondering bum.

 

[lord canti]

Naruto.
He recently became ninja jesus because he was the chosen whatever and a deus ex machina bullshitted him powers to save the day of someone who wrote themselves into a corner. So much for "hard work vs genius".

This is doubly hilarious because originally Naruto was the hard-working-everyman, gets-stronger-through-training-and-ingenuity shounen hero to Sasuke's naturally-talented-superpowered-genius rival character, and by the end Naruto turns into the specialest snowflake of the whole world while Sasuke required a dozen or so deus ex machina powerups from outside sources (while completely disregarding his "genius") to keep up his status as the rival.

The entire last two years(!) of the manga has been just one long chain of "What were they thinking?!" moments...

What outside sources? He was trained by orochimaru and gained his brothers eye.If anything Naruto had more help getting his powers than Sasuke.

 

[thesilentman]

I think this has already been mentioned, but The Dark Knight Rises. The nuclear bomb subplot was bad enough, but what really got me was Talia.

Oh sure movie, thanks for involving a character that, according to the established material in said movie, wasn't around. If you wanted to involve her, you should've foreshadowed it a lot more than a little visual Easter Egg.

As you can tell, Talia's sudden appearance left a bitter taste in my mouth. Bane worked wonderfully as the villain up till that point, so I kind of was pissed.

 

[Brainpaint]

Most plots about "Prophecies" and "The One" because it's basically spoilers at the beginning of the movie as to how it's going to end.

Old guy in movie: You will lead us to glorious victory against the dark forces of evil!

Me: Well, now we know how it's going to end... Give them back the glasses, I want a refund. Preferably before a better movie starts so I can go see that instead!

 

[xaszatm]

I echo what's been said about the "mandatory romantic subplot" thing, but that's not a killer for me, it's just an annoyance.

On a general level, something that usually loses me is sexual stuff. It can be done well if it has meaning or it's played for laughs. Stuff like Persona 4 and Bayonetta are great examples, and I love them both. But more often than not, it's just crowbarred in there because people think if it has boobs it'll sell more. Frankly I just find it gross, insulting, and usually quite sexist.

For a specific example, anything they've done with Metroid since the end of Prime 3. All of Other M's faults, putting the franchise on ice, not letting Retro work on it, putting Other M Samus in Smash 4, FREAKING FETISH SHINY LEATHER ZERO SUIT WITH BEAUTY MARK AND ROCKET HIGH-HEELS ARE YOU SERIOUS?! To quote Spoony, "I just get a little emotionally invested in the series, and I just want it to stop sucking!" All it would take is for them to ignore one insignificant and awful part of a long and great series, but they keep insisting on pushing it into the limelight, and I seriously do not understand why.

You know what? No, I'm not letting this slide. This isn't a Metroid game. It's a Smash Brothers game. Smash Bros 4 has, with the exception of a few characters, been using the most recent rendition of the characters. So of course they are going to use the Other M suit. Why are you getting so emotionally invested in something that is clearly not part of the Metroid series? Now, if this was to be Samus's new look in a new Metroid game, then yes, I'd have problems. But it isn't part of the franchise. Also, those heels clearly aren't part of the suit. You can still see her feet and can tell that she is wearing the heels outside of the suit. While I find the heels incredible stupid, I'm still baffled on the outrage the stupid footware has caused.

Anyways on topic I personally have a rule with plots. If I'm poking holes in your story while I'm watching your movie, then your movie is horrible. That's not to say that I only watch movies with airtight plots, of course, but if a movie is entertaining, then I'm not counting plotholes. A good example of this is The Dark Knight Rises. I was so bored by the movie that I started counting the multiple ways this plot couldn't have happened.

 

[rcs619]

The only specific instance I can think of at the moment is The Dark Knight Rises. "We've got this nuclear FUSION reactor beneath the city! Oh no! The villains came in and turned it into a nuclear FISSION bomb in a matter of minutes with no specialized equipment!" One of the many plot holes that riddled the film, but I think this is one of the worst, seeing as though the entire plot is practically driven by the threat of a nuclear explosion from a FISSION bomb that used to be a FUSION reactor. Seriously, have they even taken high school chemistry?

While I'll admit that I'm not a nuclear physicist, I don't recall them ever describing it as a fission bomb, and fusion bombs are most definitely a thing.

Yeah, fission bombs were the original generation of nukes (atomic bombs). They pretty much just set off a chunk of fissionable material to make their explosion. Most modern thermonuclear weapons actually use a fission trigger to set off a fusion reaction (although the main purpose of the fusion reaction is to increase the efficiency of the fission reactions that still deliver most of the energy of the bomb).

There's a few theoretical types of nuclear weapons as well. The idea of a purely fusion-powered bomb (it does not use any fissionable materials to create its explosion) has been around for a while, and it's main attractive point is that since it does not disperse fissionable materials in its blast, it should have a much lower amount of nuclear fallout.

The real scary one is a neutron bomb though. They are designed in such a way that they have a fairly small yield and explosion (for a nuke), but they emit a much higher amount of gamma rays and neutron radiation. It would also have less fallout than a standard thermonuclear weapon Basically, the goal is to use the radiation as the main killing weapon, without having to level an entire city with a huge blast, allowing you to keep more of the local infrastructure intact afterwards.

And of course things like high-altitude nukes used as EMP bombs, which can blackout huge swathes of a country and cripple the local infrastructure without directly killing anyone.

Nuclear weapons tend to get portrayed as just big bombs, but there's a whole lot more going on there than people think. And a lot of very scary prospects that don't necessarily end in being vaporized.

 

[HemalJB]

Chosen One narratives are starting to get to me. Initially I was okay with it (I still like Harry Potter despite this) but now every other wannabe franchise has some bland hero who only goes along in the adventure because the plot-I mean Prophecy-said so. A very poor character motivation if you ask me.
Also, any semi-incestual romance(like between cousins or step-siblings) is enough to make me stop watching the plot immediately.

 

[Platypus540]

Valvrave. FUCKIN' Valvrave. An anime with so much potential but such utterly terrible execution.

I am going to spoil some of it, but the show is absolute garbage, so it's ok.

Throughout the first few episodes of the second season every single character turns into a blithering idiot, including the badass military genius guy who was the only reason I kept watching it.

Worse, toward the end of the first season, the main character rapes a girl for a veeeery poorly explained reason (the real reason was that some pervy animator wanted to draw the damn scene), and the show just glosses over it like it's no big deal. Or at least, it glosses over it until the second season, when the girl says she loves the main character and that she wants him to rape her again. And he does.

After that I could no longer pretend that the show was even remotely worth watching anymore.

 

[Lilani]

I got through Eden of the East recently and there was one episode in particular that really got to me.

Spoiler

It's the episode where they think Osaki got kidnapped by the Johnny Killer. Okay, so you think your close friend and business partner has been kidnapped by a serial killer and is posting pictures on the Internet of the hotel they're being held captive in. What would you do in this situation? Why bring it to the attention to the police, of course, and have them stage a rescue operation.

What do these people do? They attempt to personally drive themselves through Tokyo traffic to the hotel to personally confront the serial killer. What the fuck were they thinking? Of course they weren't going to get through the traffic in time, and even if they did what were they going to do? Kick down the door and explain it to the authorities later?

And then that lady's exit from the hotel was just total bullshit. Yes, I get that Juiz has pretty much unlimited access to everything, but there is no amount of trick wire and kabuki costume accessories in the world that could have been acquired and set up in that amount of time to do such a thing. I'll buy 20,000 naked NEETs figuring out how to deflect 60 missiles...

And that's another thing. So at the start of the show, they talk about Careless Monday having zero casualties as though it's a mystery--like they have no idea how two missiles managed to strike completely unpopulated areas. You don't learn til like the last two episodes that there WAS an elaborate evacuation that took place. Even though the reason for the evacuation is unclear, they could have at least said "There were zero casualties because everyone was evacuated for unknown reasons," not just mention nothing of it and make it seem as though it was just dumb luck or very deliberately planned. You could say it's implied that some kind of evacuation took place since there's no other feasible explanation, but you'd think that would naturally come out in the telling.

There were also a few details which just rung as odd. So the older guy who's also heading Eden of the East, when he, his wife, Saki, and that little girl first go to the mall, the older guy and Saki wait out in the car while his wife and the little girl go up to the door of the mall. At this point they are extremely suspicious of Taki and think he's some kind of weirdo or killer. So WHY THE HELL is this guy hiding in the car watching his wife and child(?) knock on the door of a possible murderer through a pair of binoculars? Why does he allow them to go alone on this? And I believe that happened at least one other time, where he just lets someone run off on their own when he has no reason to NOT accompany them.

And Panties should have stayed dead. Seriously, I handled the ending alright until it turned out he lived after all. I liked the character, but in a story like this there has to be some kind of cost. And they gave him such a poetic ending too, but shat on it right as they crossed the finish line.

Long story short, I loved the premise of the show which kept me going to the end, but there were a lot of moments which were just too fudged for me to let slide. I don't care how crazy the rules are that you set in your story, but if you set them then you'd better damn well follow them.

 

[Lilani]

Most recently Man of Steel, it all felt ridiculously draining, the dumb dialogue, the mixed messages the lack of focus the neck snape it was all unconvincing.

It's funny that in their attempt to make Superman a more grounded and believable character, they made him extremely ungrounded and unbelievable. I had a friend who's a big Superman fan rant to me about this recently. He said the writers should never have put Superman in a no-win scenario, because it goes against the most basic thing about Superman's approach to problem solving--he takes no-win situations and WINS. He shouldn't have had to choose between stopping the gravity pulse thing and minimizing damage to the city, he should have found a situation to achieve both because that's Superman and that's what he does. He shouldn't have had to snap Zod's neck to get out of that situation because Superman has the strength to achieve what he must without throwing away who he is. Because he's SUPERMAN. That's what he DOES.

 

[Techno Squidgy]

Anything involving "it was a just a dream". No, if you're going to pull the rug under the viewers after they've emotionally invested in the characters and their struggles, you basically wasted our time with invalidating all of it. A notorious offender; RepoMen.

Unfortunately, I'm too tired to think of a decent argument as to why you're wrong, but I do think you are wrong, regarding RepoMen at least. The ending to that film spoke to a very real fear of mine, and inspired a nightmare or two. At the very least, I don't feel like the 4 or 5 times I've seen that film were ever a waste.

 

[Eddie the head]

I think the Terminator tv show had one or two of these. But mostly that last episode WTF? Just I can see why there was only two seasons.

 

[Sarge034]

The Happening (2008)

It had an interesting set up and then it jumped the shark over the shark that it threw at a shark in the sky. In short, Director: M. Night Shyamalan, Writer: M. Night Shyamalan.

Spoiler: Just see for yourself...

Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (1993)

I watched it as a young child and couldn't follow the story. I then watched it as a teen and couldn't follow the story. I watched it as an adult and couldn't follow the story. The movie was overall very "meah" and quite a bit darker than most Batman stuff of the time.

 

[A.K.B.]

[insert character] , the hero who will save us all ....
every time a story pulls "The messiah's Card" I just face palm and call it a day ....

 

[Sarah Kerrigan]

I think the only time this has ever happened to me was when I read the last Divergent book. Just the whole point of switching between Triss and Four was a good idea when I first heard about it, but when she would switch characters, she would spend three fucking pages on what already happened, just with a different character. So basically, say one character gets arrested in the last chapter, in the next chapter that was told in another point of view, we would spent four fucking pages on the same thing happening. Dammit, just continue on with the story!!!

Sorry, I needed to let that out.

 

[Zac Jovanovic]

Assassin's Creed...

I can't even start to explain why, I just get pissed.

Such a good start and a great opportunity to make something special wasted on milking the franchise with shitty half baked annual sequels...

Oh Ubisoft, how I loathe you.

 

[V4Viewtiful]

Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (1993)

I watched it as a young child and couldn't follow the story. I then watched it as a teen and couldn't follow the story. I watched it as an adult and couldn't follow the story. The movie was overall very "meah" and quite a bit darker than most Batman stuff of the time.

really? I thought it was pretty straight forward and it's hardly as dark as the Burton Film but there you go