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.
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.
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).
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?
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.
Yes, so much this, so hard to watch 😬 (And probablysetting a really bad example for the real world.)
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
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
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
avoidable misunderstandings
You didn’t watch a lot of Three’s Company, did you? :-D
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.
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
It doesn’t bother me so much when a character in a show has to take a turn with the idiot ball, but when a video game wants me to hold the idiot ball it really makes me want to stop playing. Recently I was checking out Fallen Leaf and the very first level ends with a character politely but firmly indicating that I can’t go further in this random cave I’m exploring, because there’s something dangerous stored there… while standing under a stalactite that the game clearly wants you to drop on them. No, god damn it, I am not going to commit murder just to unleash the ancient evil that I would clearly spend the rest of the game stopping. I can just quit here and not be a murderer and the world can stay safe.
I did not even humor it by hitting the stalactite to see what happens, I just pressed alt-F4 and went to play something else.
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.
The expert who somehow knows all things science and engineering, like they’re all just basically the same. Just once I’d like to hear, “I’m an astrophysicist, not a cybersecurity expert. I don’t have the first clue where to begin hacking any computer, let alone an alien one that I’ve never seen before.”
Bonus points if the characters have to look for a different solution due to their lack of on-hand expertise in a particular area.
I just saw that in WandaVision. Darcy is an Astrophysicist but was also hacking through various firewalls to get at some secret data.
My friend’s dad somehow seems to know everything about everything. He’s wicked smart though, and basically spends all of his time learning and doing stuff.
I’m a doctor not an astrophysicist!
I despise the “flashback to a thing that literally happened five minutes ago to make sure you connect that with whatever just happened/is about to happen.”
Total fucking turnoff. I’m here watching the show and I’m not an idiot. Flashback to something last season or a number of episodes ago? Fine. Some people need a reminder. Within the same episode? GTFO of here with that shit.
Most movies and TV shows are created these days with the assumption that people are on their phones at the same time. I mean actual studio notes to that effect when the plot becomes too difficult for the average person to follow when they have it on while they’re also watching TikTok.
It actually started decades ago with daytime soaps which were designed to still make sense to someone who was busy with housework. Now it just applies to way more shows.
I get it. But I still hate it.
“you biiig fuckin idiot. You’re such a dummy, you need this flash back from 5 minutes ago because you’re too stupid to connect the moment otherwise”
I think they expect that you we’re yelling at your kids to put down the matches and need to remind you while you’re doom scrolling X
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.
Some romance tropes.
People doing creepy things and it being portrayed as romantic. Like stalking, or not taking no for an answer.
Love triangles. I spend a lot of time with polyamorous people, and would like to see more representation. and not like “a cishet monogamous person’s idea”. But even if you are monogamous, you can date different people for a bit before going all in on someone.
or not taking no for an answer.
I get what you’re saying, but I had to ask my wife for a date around six times over a period of around 3 months before she said yes. We’ve been together almost 20 years now. Sometimes the timing just isn’t right, and it’s okay to ask again if you’re not crazy.
There may be some small amount of nuance. Like if she says a hard no vs a not now, or if time has passed and circumstances changed significantly maybe.
But I’m confident that far more often than not, being repeatedly asked out after having said no is upsetting and may be a sign of danger. Is this person who isn’t accepting no on a date going to not accept no on sex, on me having friends, on other things?
Also, big norm breach, the person who said no could change their mind and reach out on their own.
Yeah, how you ask and how they answer has a lot to do with it. I wasn’t like “do you want to go on a date and be my girlfriend?”. It was more like “hey, want to grab some lunch today?”, or “hey, want to go for sushi Friday?”, or “want to meet for a drink tomorrow?”. They were all pretty open ended questions, asked in person. You definitely have more opportunities when you know someone IRL than when you’re just asking a stranger on the internet. It turns out that she always liked me, but was dealing with some personal tragedy when I started asking her, so the timing was just wrong. Once she was somewhat finished dealing with that, she said yes, plus we had gotten to know each other better during that time.
“The mentor/parent has to die so that the hero can prove they’re self-actualized” or whatever. It’s okay for your hero to have living parents, even if their parents are also heroes. I promise your story won’t be less interesting if your character’s mentor figure survives.
In my tabletop RPG campaigns I always make it a point for my characters to have at least one living parent, and usually two. These games are always so full of haunted orphans whose villages were burned to the ground or whatever.
Well adjusted individuals with a good social/familial network rarely become wandering mercenaries, but it’s so refreshing when everyone else is an orphaned lone-wolf prodigy with secret ancestry in the royal family
I dunno, I can pretty easily come up with reasons why events would force someone to venture out into the world. See The Lord of the Rings and also basically every JRPG from the 1990s.
Frodo was an orphan that never quite fit in at Brandy Hall. Some JRPG protagonists are left as fairly blank slates (Crono, Link), while Cecil of Final Fantasy IV was an orphaned prince, in Fire Emblem Marth loses his father and sister at the start if his adventure, and while not strictly a JRPG, Samus was raised by foster parents and was genetically modified to be a super soldier.
Sure, not every game or plot followed the trope, and there are plenty of great examples that break the trend or flesh the story out to carry it well, there’s a reason “orphaned chosen one” is a trope in the first place.
It’s also just something silly to point out and chuckle over. Sure, there are positive, story compelling reasons for a random commoner to be thrust into extraordinary situations and become a hero of the realm! But there’s also little (normal) reason for Bob the Baker to leave his life as a staple of the community with a loving family and steady work to wander the realm facing dangerous monsters and delve into ancient tombs. When you find a way to make the later work, it’s amazing, though!
Lazy villain characterization. Someone dresses in black or snarls a lot or is albino or has some physical marker that makes them different from others, therefore they are the villain.
I want villains with understandable goals. Evil for evil’s sake has struck me as stupid since adulthood.
Thanos was a great villain by this standard. He had lived through the suffering and collapse of his homeworld due to overpopulation, so his motivations actually made sense.
His plan was childishly idiotic which ruined any good will his motivation had
Funnily enough I watched Avengers yesterday and was reminded of the sheer stupidity of Thanos’ plan.
Kill half the living beings. Great. After a traumatic event, people typically nstart banging like bunnies and you’ll get a great amount of offspring and within 30 years things will be worse than before because of what you did.
Instead, bring the miracle of contraception and improve living standards for everyone and watch a miracle unfold with so much less resources required than maintaining huge armies to cause suffering
He could have just made half the people born ever again sterile
Idiotic, yeah, but at least it’s more thought out than “because fuck you, that’s why” which is all we get a lot of the time.
I would prefer an honest fuck you then an idea that doesn’t actually make sense and is pretty obviously flawed.
That’s not the taking into account hours much effort it took to pull off
Omg the Thanos thing drives me CRAZY and I don’t know why everyone else just gives it a pass.
There was no attempt at diplomacy with Thanos. If they just had a few diplomats talk about their needs, Thanos would have realized pretty quick that killing half of the humans wouldn’t be the best way to obtain his goal.
Here’s the proposition: how about you snap your fingers and make 99% of the population of overpopulated species sterile?
It would be wayyy more effective at meeting Thanos’ goal (of reducing suffering caused by overpopulation) and literally nobody has to die!
Meh, there are plenty of people in the real world who just want power and money for themselves, who will shit on anybody and anything to get it and teach others to hate on people for just being different in order to gain power. I don’t think it’s at all implausible that absurdly nasty and selfish people exist.
That can be tricky, though. Done well and you get a villain like Gul Dukat. Done slightly less well, such as with Killmonger and the villains from both Incredibles movies, and you have to make them at least resort to “for the evulz” methods to prevent the audience from sympathizing with them, and even then you may be left with a broken Aesop at the end.
It is almost impossible for a character in a Hollywood film to speak with a Slavic accent and smoke a cigarette without also being some sort of asshole.
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.
Cliffhangers are getting out of control. It used to be that a movie or season would end by wrapping up the story and maybe throw a little teaser in at the end for next season. That’s fine. But it seems like now they just try to stretch out a story or plot for as long as humanly possible.
It has gotten to the point where I will not watch a show until I either know it doesn’t end in a major cliffhanger or the next season is being filmed. Not confirmed, but actively in production.
A good example is Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. I’m still mad about that ending, even more so with the next movie being delayed.
Not to mention that you really can’t trust the producers to provide a consistently good product. You create a cliffhanger for an otherwise good movie and the sequel just turns out to be garbage. If the show is garbage, at least have the decency to make it garbage from start to finish, Don’t betray long time fans.
Hard to be mad. It was sooo fucking good
Netflix reality competition shows are awful for this. Especially the Korean ones where they cut back to show like every single person’s reaction to the thing before either showing it or ending the episode.
I’m already watching this shit, you don’t have to manipulate me into continuing to watch it and dramatize every mundane thing. Or pad the time out.
Also Dan Brown.
Used right, it can be effective, but some shitty writers lean way to much on them.
Oh man, I was so disappointed with the show Siren: Survive the Island. I thought it had an awesome premise and was hopeful since it was Korean that it won’t be your typical “reality show manufacturer drama”. I was so disappointed.
I agree with you! Also unhappy to say that cliffhangers might get more common. Movie makers learn they get more sales / rentals / subscriptions with cliffhangers: because then you’re invested & curious & HAVE to see the next one :/ hate it, but that’s capitalism
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.
