Things you think movies get wrong everytime when it comes to______

[OneCatch]

And a majority of 'epic' films are made by US companies, which means you're less likely to use a conflict which the US wasn't involved with (For example the Crimean War was just as horrible as WW1 except for the scale).

Thanks for clarifying, I guess in my study I had a very bias view of WW1. One thing however, is that the US did participate in WW1 as much as WWII. Don't want to be a dick, just clarifying it.

I wouldn't think of your post as being even slightly dickish!
But yeah, I certainly didn't want to give the impression the US was uninvolved in WWI, just that they weren't involved in the Crimea.

I think that the main reason WWI isn't used is because it was an utterly pointless war. The leadership on all sides was equally culpable and heartless - with the exception of the US, who had a chance to observe the carnage and adopt marginally less bloody strategies on entering the war 1917.

 

[AidoZonkey]

Computer hacking, its just shameful in some movies. Typing on the keyboard quickly does not= hacking the computer

 

[OneCatch]

You *do not* have your finger on the trigger until you are ready to fire. Period. NCIS normally does it right, in that you'll see their fingers off the trigger when not actively shooting. Most other movies, though? Constant inappropriate usage. It can be a bit grating.[/img]

NCIS gets a lot of other things wrong. Like... say... two people typing on the same keyboard to make the computer go faster.

Abby and McGee should know better.

Heheh, and the good old "Can you clean up that CCTV image a bit?".
Tech wizard then dutifully zooms in and gets a name off a receipt on the other side of the room. The best one was in CSI, where someone was out of the camera's frame, so they got a facial match from a reflection in someone's eyeball.

Vehicle explosions: even when it from above with rockets the explosion always comes out the bottom, not the point of impact. I mean I know why but it's always so obvious. Especially when Batman flips that truck in The Dark Knight.

In fairness, at least that wasn't CGI, they did it with a gigantic hydraulic ram. But yeah, it's kind of daft.

 

[gibbles545]

As a history student pretty much all the medieval historical films are travesties at accurately representing the medieval period.

It also irritates me even more when they say they 'need' to take artistic license with the material to make it interesting, which is evidently why you have films like Braveheart having William Walace being a commoner which he wasnt, and the Scots not wearing armour in a battle and winning. If they were accurate in the films it would have still been entertaining and informative.

 

[Nigh Invulnerable]

Nail guns.

They do not fire unless placed against a surface.

Stop using them as projectile weapons!

That's easily solved with a piece of duct tape though. I know, movies never show a character taping the safety down, but still. I've done it before.

 

[senordesol]

Aliens. Look, I know we have 'real' frame of reference for how aliens are supposed to look/behave, but why are they invading our planet naked? Why do they act like beasts and enter combat like wolves instead of relying on the awesome weapons they would have developed? Why do the invasion forces seem to spend most of their time doing nothing?

 

[EvilRoy]

Structural Collapse. Practical effects are usually ok, if clearly staged in a very specific way, but CG structural collapse takes so many liberties with real life that it makes a person wonder how they haven't knocked a building over by leaning on it.

Whole concrete buildings that have no rebar and blow apart like granite, bridges that fail because a single member was disrupted despite having plainly visible redundancy and on an on. Sometimes I swear the reason some people think the twin towers collapse was some sort of staged demolition is because they just have no idea what it looks like when a building actually collapses.

 

[Guffe]

Well since people seem to have gone on movies (at least first page) I'll jump to games.
I'm a big fan of JRPGs but the main character is starting to go on my nerves, can't they ever make one of the good sidekicks the main character -.-

 

[beastro]

War films mostly.

I also loath the injecting of modern themes and concepts into historical/war films where they have no place.

Someone near the OP mentioned Spartacus, that's one that really gets my back up turning a rebelling into a soap box for the film makers to whine about subjects that no slave army of the time would give a damn about. For war films, turning one war into another to whine on about it, see The Thin Red Line and MASH turning WWII and Korea into Vietnam.

OT: Most medieval battles are unrealistic, to my knowledge it was mostly two formations trying to break each other, not everyone breaking off to fight individually.

Battles would devolve into a melee, even ones heavily using pikemen. The main issue I have with the medias portrayal of medieval battles is that it wasn't actually one on one combat and those fighting, especially dismounted knights would break off into pairs with each covering the others back as they tried to find and attack those who were vulnerable (like those lost and confused in the fighting, especially those who lost their companion).

Along with that is the portrayal of the High Middle Ages and it's glamorous plate armour without the use of the weaponry used at the time because swords = cool. Not every bloody knight used one and those that did were using greatswords by that time for their greater weight and shock value, not for their cutting or piercing ability.

They mixed in plenty of short, fat hacking swords, maces, warhammers, militarized picks and axes which were more damaging and easier to handle in combat.

I'd rather have a flanged mace or shortened lucerne or bec de corbin hammer with their flexibility and speed if I encountered someone in armour.

 

[mokes310]

As an aircraft technician almost every film i watch that has a plane they get something wrong

Except Top Gun and the Iron Eagle series, right? I mean, how could those two movies get anything wrong?

Growing up playing ice hockey, I'd have to say that ever movie about hockey, with the exception of a certain few parts of Goon, are rather incorrect.

 

[Lilani]

A lot of movies still haven't quite nailed the "nerd" just yet. You can't just have a regular kid who happens to play an MMO or read comic books, or plays sports but also happens like like anime. No, they have to be TOTALLY OBSESSED and COMPLETELY socially inept.

Also, I rather don't like this idea that audiences are allergic to protagonists not being white. It's as though Hollywood producers aren't aware of the fact that white people are steadily becoming a minority, and that the ones that are around pretty much got over not being able to handle a hero or protagonist being of color like back in the 90s.

Oh, and I watched a few episodes of the Tintin cartoon from the 90s, and I thought it was hilarious how many times Tintin and other characters got rendered unconscious by getting hit over the head. I mean really, it was to the point of absurdity. I think it happened to Tintin like three times in one episode, and they always happen at least once. Sometimes they use something a little more reliable like chloroform, but more often than not it's just a swift whack on the head. Seriously, I don't think it works like that, at least not so reliably. And even if it were that reliable, Tintin should have died from a brain bleed or suffered massive brain damage by that point in his career.

 

[Jenvas1306]

explosions
most movies get them wrong. thy are allways nicely flamey and stuff even real explosions look nothing like that.
only once id love to see a movie that obeys the laws of physics and doesnt use any tricks.

and then we got the display of people of any kind of minority. its getting better but its usually farm from alright...

 

[Thaluikhain]

The leadership on all sides was equally culpable and heartless - with the exception of the US, who had a chance to observe the carnage and adopt marginally less bloody strategies on entering the war 1917.

Which they neglected to do. The other power had learned many hard lessons since the beginning of the war, but the US, IIRC, started off like they did back in 1914.

 

[TKretts3]

One hundred enemy gunmen against the one protagonist. Naturally, the protagonist wins without even a scratch. Enemies with guns in a lot of film and television are so completely incompetent, it's a complete wonder when we have to believe that they were the forced that conquered or defeated the thing that the hero is trying to save. An enemy can fire sixty bullets at the hero and none will hit. The hero fires one at the enemy and they die.

Aliens have super advanced spaceships and have conquered whole planets... Yet always suck at combat. Rather than fighting smartly they all just seem to rush in at the humans and hope that they win. Also, aliens are always presented as having no distinctive features, or clothes... ALSO, aliens are also SO obsessed with the United States. Futurama made a joke about alien invasions, "We now take you to the white house lawn, where such things always happen."

Queer men and women are always presented as super-oppressed, to the point where it is impossible for them to do anything anywhere without the world condemning them. They're also always the loud and obnoxious, "I'M HERE, I'M QUEER, GET USED TO IT!!!!!" types. The way movies portray it makes it seem like starving children in Africa have it better than queers in North America.

 

[BiscuitTrouser]

Its called a SUPPRESSOR and it REDUCES noise, there is no such thing as a silencer for guns.

THANK YOU.

Its AMAZING how many people think you can have a totally silent gun. Having been rifle shooting many times its pretty blatant that youre going to be detected when shooting if anyone is in the same building as you. Most people dont even know what a gun sounds like when discharged over a great distance. Pistols aside its worse when people pull this with sniper rifles.

Audio stages of a rifle round:

1. The bang from the discharge in the chamber causing the rapid movement of hot air from the barrel. A suppressor makes THIS less loud and ONLY this.

2. The crack of the bullet breaking the sound barrier on its way to the target (NOT suppressed).

3. The crack from the impact of the bullet either INTO its target or more commonly the material behind the target thats usually quite solid and thus makes a fairly decent noise. If you were in a totally quiet house the noise of a bullet striking wood or stone is VERY noticeable (NOT suppressed).

When i marked targets for a rifle competition i was standing in a trench under the targets. I could still hear the crack from the sound barrier and the thump from the impact into sand bags even though the shooter was about 600 meters away. There was a mix of suppressed and non suppressed and frankly you would need to be EXTREMELY slow to not know if the suppressed round had been fired yet.

You still have two pretty damn noticeable sounds even IF 1 was totally silent which its not. Do people REALLY think you can rapidly accelerate something to mach 2 ish and slam it into another object in TOTAL SILENCE?! It sounds INSANE to even imagine thats possible.

 

[1066]

Explosions.

I'm not talking about the fire vs. smoke thing. I understand the added drama and effect part of the situation. MY issue is with hearing an explosion and seeing it at the same time, even if it's miles away on screen. If you've ever actually seen one, been in a lightning storm or, better, been anywhere near artillery, you'll understand how off it feels to have it be immediate.

 

[Zeren]

Hardly any get trigger discipline correct. I pisses me right off.

Do this.

Not this.

 

[1066]

Nail guns.

They do not fire unless placed against a surface.

Stop using them as projectile weapons!

This one wouldn't bug me if they'd pull back whatever the gun uses as a catch. I tested it once on a nailgun that had a sleeve on the end of the barrel that would slide back when pressed onto something. Worked pretty well.

 

[teebeeohh]

Most of the ones written can be explained away with the fact that this is a film, not real life, and they don't have to be completely realistic if it is more entertaining to watch otherwise.
One thing I don't understand, however, is why World War 2 is used so much. It's not that it's a bad setting, but compared to World War 1 it was nothing. WWII had more deaths, but WWI was completely unlike anything before. It was the first 'modern' war using guns and trenches, and everyone signed up thinking it would be some great cavalry charge and over before Christmas. By WWII, everyone was already expecting it. So when films portray WWII as so much worse, it's completely inaccurate. The thing that bugs me however is that there is no reason to use WWII instead of WWI, save that everyone just assume it was so much worse.

America
Since war movies apparently can't happen without Americans being the heroes (just think about how few films there are about the eastern front or Europe before 44) WWI is not really a good scenario since all stuff that would make for good stories was done when the us joined the war. It also would fuck up the american interpretation of the French as "surrender monkeys".

 

[Nexxis]

The Future.
I know the future can be very hard or impossible to predict, but Hollywood never seems to get it right. We're suppose to have flying cars by now. I want my flying car! It seems like they can't predict a future that isn't pos-apocolyptic or so heavily computerized that nothing runs without some form of computer chip in it. Also, there appears to be no middle class, the entire world is run by America, and there are very few "brown" people.