Things that film makers and writers do that piss you off.

[Eddie the head]

I ***** about this almost every time but. You take off your helmet in space, your head freezes solid. I hate that. I just hate it.

What actually happens? My only knowledge of space-death stems from movies so I'm totally ignorant on that subject, but it does intrigue me.

Well you would likely suffocate before anything else. We don't know for sure, no one has ever been dumb enough to go out, but we know you wouldn't freeze. In space there is no place for the heat in your body to go. There is no air so it doesn't matter that it's cold there is nothing to take the heat away form you.

Heat is the kinetic energy of atoms, so atoms have to bump up against each other to gain and lose that energy. In space there is nothing to bump up against, so heat will not be lost in that way. You can still lose heat form Thermal radiation but that's a slow process.

Am I making any sense? If not Google "Heat transfer" get a basic understanding of that and you will understand I think.

 

[Nihlus2]

Deus ex Machina. If you cannot make your story connect in a feasible way. And you have to add a master conduit to tie things together. You did it wrong. Whenever you add this thing, regardless of situation or circumstance, it means you somehow managed to unravel your own creation to force a certain scenario into it, that you cannot resolve properly because your very fiction fights against this added idea of yours.

Like your body fights off a virus, so too does a good story fight a Deus ex Machina with all its vigor, although it very rarely wins in this case with fiction - and the story turns out much worse.
There is a reason for this, yet I keep seeing plotdevice x, y and z comming out of nowhere to resolve/explain/progress things, for no reasons and without warning. To this day I see any Deus ex Machina as the prime symptome of a movie/game/novel suffering from a lethal dissease.

 

[AnarchistFish]

When a character is killed off and then revived

 

[Lectori Salutem]

liffhangers. It was cliffhangers. They bug me so much in almost every instance. (not to be confused with open-ended conclusions)

Wait, your post was actually popular enough to warrant a sequel? I didn't see that one coming.

 

[Asuka Soryu]

My complaint is exactly the same as yours. I hate that every movie seems to need some dumb ass romance tossed in.

 

[Arklyte]

hmmm... Do huge amounts of pro-US propaganda count? I know that they most likely won't be given money to make movie/game without it, but I'm really tired of it:\ + I wonder how many people actually believe in it?

 

[Sonic Doctor]

I believe I've said this before in other similar threads:

Popular new/relatively new books into movies, I can't stand how film makers don't seem to get how to make them right. They don't seem to understand what the most important parts are and how to trim out relatively unneeded parts to get the whole story in a shorter form.

The worst is when they use a book that has never got a movie adaption yet, and then go entirely out into left field and chop important parts out change characters and what they do and basically make a movie with the name of the book, but it certainly doesn't quite resemble what was in the book.

I think one of the best examples, because the anger has been seared into my mind, is the Eragon movie. That head and director was nut case for all the stupid decisions he made.

Heck, he switched the outcome of one of the fights from the book so that the winner was opposite from the book, which effectively made it impossible to move on to make the sequel if they wanted to, because the losers(The Raz'ac) which died in the fight in the movie, were a major part of the book series, like half the main story.

There are other things I could mention but I just realized I don't have the time to elaborate now.

 

[burningdragoon]

liffhangers. It was cliffhangers. They bug me so much in almost every instance. (not to be confused with open-ended conclusions)

Wait, your post was actually popular enough to warrant a sequel? I didn't see that one coming.

You shouldn't underestimate what kind of crap people will like.

 

[WhiteFangofWhoa]

Lugbzurg pretty much has it- the romantic plot tumour being shoehorned into everything regardless of validity, which as Yahtzee has pointed out is not limited to film and makes about as much sense as a tradition of having a line dance crowbarred into everything from film to games. I remember the last film I saw that had a guy and girl main character that didn't engage in anything of the sort was the original Judge Dredd. Far from a stellar example I know, but I thought it was funny that they lampshade it in the final scene, and Hershey acts really surprised that they didn't have a romance.

For the sake of originality I will also mention when prequels do too much to link themselves to the 'previous' material by having characters make offhand references about things that don't matter to them now, but will in the future.

 

[Arqus_Zed]

Saying someone's name and only someone's name and expecting it to have a meaning, any meaning.
This is mainly found in Japanese media, from manga to anime, from films to whatever.
And it annoys THE FUCK out of me!

I mean, there's this whole exposition dump going on and then "the other guy" says something like:

"Johnny..."

Johnny what? Why is there an ellipsis? Is something supposed to follow? I think not, 'cause now you're just standing there with either shaking or teary eyes, waiting for whatever! What is the fucking point?! Why are you always doing this?!!!

It just irritates me to no end, you see this happen all the time and it serves absolutely no purpose - it's just stupid, plain and simple. If you want a quick reaction shot of another character and you don't have anything useful to say, just use plain old silence! Preferably with an appropriate expression or gentle gesture to enforce it. But don't just fucking stand there with your blank face and hollow eyes, saying someone's name and sticking an ellipsis behind it for no other reason than fuck if I know!

 

[King Billi]

I hate when characters in period films are given modern political or ethical views that they really have no realistic basis to hold in this particular archaic point in history, just to affirm an audience's positive perception of their hero by having them be steadfastly opposed to slavery or other examples of oppression or something like that...

To be clear this isn't a bad thing in and of itself but just whenever it is blatantly shoved to the forefront or if it contradicts actual facts.

An example, The Patriot. In that film they made a point of saying that all slaves who fought on the side of the revolutionaries would be granted freedom when the war ended... Now is that actually true?


Also turning all villians in all action films into the Joker just because The Dark Knight was cool.
I have to roll my eyes whenever I hear these words now or some variation of them, "Oh my god! It was all part of his plan, he wanted us to catch him..."

 

[Casual Shinji]

The obvious stunt jump.

Someone is supposed to fall/jump off a building either to his death or just to escape danger, and the stuntman performs the obvious roll jump to land on his back. This sorta takes away the threat of falling to one's death.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Huh? I am very sure Egypt had very low instances of sexism. Ancient cultures weren't all barbaric.

You'll forgive me, I don't really think of Rome and Egypt as contemporaries. The latter had been in decline for a long time before the former began ascending. But no, I don't believe ancient cultures were all barbaric, nor do I believe I intimated that.

 

[Johnny Impact]

1. Forced Romance, whether On-Screen or Implied For Later. IF: plot involves man and woman THEN: man and woman will get together for sexytimes, or at least it is obvious they will do so before the credits finish rolling.

Stop this. Seriously, stop it. Relationships begun in the heat of the moment aren't likely to last. The type of sweaty alpha male character you get in many movies isn't automatically the ideal mate for any woman. Also, the situations encountered by movie characters are often awkward, deeply uncomfortable, or even downright dangerous.

Take The Running Man for example. Amber enters the story by being taken hostage....not by the bad guys, but by Ben Richards! She is his victim, not his girlfriend. She seems to have a happy, successful life, until Ben drags her away from it at gunpoint. He steals her money and her travel pass. When the two of them are apprehended, she is thrown into the Zone along with him for the crime of aiding and abetting, which she did not commit. She nearly dies any number of times, suffering great pain and terror.

In the end, the Zone is escaped, Ben's innocence is revealed, the evil mastermind is executed. Ben and Amber are left to enjoy their just rewards, walking out together into the sunset and......

Wait a minute. This total stranger kidnapped you, held you at gunpoint, got you thrown into the Zone, murdered several people right in front of you -- and your reaction is to smile and happily walk out with him? What about your jangled nerves and PTSD? Your need for medical attention after all the abuse you suffered? Heck, what about your shattered reputation and shiny new criminal record? Don't worry, Ben Richards is The Hero. Sex with him will cure all that.

2. Disregard For Physics, usually exemplified by the axioms Explosions Are Slower Than You and He Who Jumps Last Falls Fastest.

3. Forced/Unrealistic Happy Endings. Avatar is a great example. It's been proven again and again that spears and ferocity fare poorly against military hardware and tactics. If guns and helicopters were inferior, nobody would use them. I don't see it being a whole lot different just because the aliens are blue and ride space tigers.

4. Endings That Fall Apart As Soon As You Think About Them. The two movies I already mentioned are great examples.

Are we supposed to believe Ben's criminal record will magically disappear? He murdered a guy on camera. Even if Amber is too stupid to realize it right away, she'll figure out in a day or two that Ben ruined her life. Not on purpose, perhaps, but ruined is ruined. They are NOT going to have a happy, peaceful life together -- or at all.

Are we supposed to believe humans won't come back to Pandora with even more firepower? I certainly would, had I the resources the company seems to. A mineral worth $3M a pound justifies escalation to any level of violence. The blue people have maybe a year to make peace with their planet-deity. After that, they are going down.

 

[Reyold]

hollywood moralising YOUR FAMILIY AND CHILDREN HAVE ABSOLUTE PRIORY REGARDLESS OF THE COST

...?

Well, I would HOPE you would at least have significant concern for your own family. Or, more likely, I'm in need of some elaboration.

 

[Cheeseless]

I hate it when characters don't act as would be at least common sense. When the actions make sense in hindsight i forgive it, but that only happens for 'genius' characters who are expected to do that.

 

[Legion]

This isn't just in films but all fiction:

- Two characters who are obviously in love, to the audience, and to every other character in the fictional world. Hell, they even probably know the other persons feelings about them. But they won't admit it. They normally repeatedly deny it, have a rivalry going, try and make each other jealous and generally act in a way that you can't help but wonder why the other one is in love with them in the first place.

There are so many examples of this that I am sure everybody can think of at least one.

- The antagonist (usually much larger and stronger than the hero) throwing them around when they quite easily have the power to stab/crush/eat/shoot them. It's so stupid it completely makes me lose all interest in the scene.

This one I am also sure everybody knows what I mean due to how common it is.

- Films based upon books that take away vital character building moments. Not only because it's bad enough in itself, but because it is often sacrificed for some unnecessary action/sex scene that wasn't in the book at all.

Harry Potter for example removes pretty much all of the fascinating back story of Snape, but still has twenty minute scenes of people failing to use magic to kill each other.

 

[SuperSuperSuperGuy]

Attempting to appeal to a "broader audience". Any good work is created with a vision in mind, regardless of the intended demographic. Attempting to change that in order to appeal to the lowest common denominator usually bastardizes the work, and ruins it for everyone but the lowest of the lowest common denominator.

It really pisses me off when people can't enjoy a book/movie/whatever as it was intended because of some stupid bureaucrat wants to make more money.