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A thread for nitpicking about movies/tv shows


Larry Rydell

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This is a thread for the little things that eat at you as you try to watch a show:

 

- Watching the 30th anniversary version of Ghostbusters this afternoon, I finally noticed that Louis Tully first invites Dana to his party in their first scene together, right before Dana's refrigerator goes crazy and she meets the Ghostbusters right as they're going into business.

 

- Winston is hired after the music video montage, implying (along with other dialogue) that several months have gone by since Dana first met the Ghostbusters.

 

- On the same day that Winston is hired, Peter meets with Dana at the concert hall and gets her to go on a date with her for that Thursday.

 

- Dana and Louis are posessed on the night of the date (Thursday) and Walter Peck shuts down the containment grid the next day.

 

- Winston tells the mayor that he's only worked with the Ghostbusters for "a few weeks" even though he was hired on the same day that Peter and Dana agreed to go on a date later that week.

 

-------------

 

So did Louis invite Dana to a party he was planning to throw several months later?  Did Peter get Dana to go out with him and then have to delay the date several times over several weeks?

 

- It's obvious when watching the movie that the scene at the concert hall (when Peter is wearing the orange jacket) was supposed to take place later in the film and was moved forward.  Peter is in the office when Winston is hired and then has the meeting with Walter Peck.  The concert hall scene was inserted into the middle of that so we're supposed to think that Peter met Winston, went to talk to Dana, and then went back to the firehouse where he met Peck for the first time.

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Sidney not carrying a gun by the time Scream 4 rolled around always sort of bugged me.

 

I'm not even a big gun person or anything but come on, you've been through this THREE times before, know you're always going to be a target for crazy people...so why the hell aren't you packing?

 

I mean, yeah, you could argue it would ruin the movie if she just shot the guy, but she could have it taken off of her or the killers could remove the bullets beforehand without her knowing. You can get around something like that. But just the idea she wasn't even taking basic precautions tainted the idea of her as a "smart" horror heroine. 

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The sci-fi trope of outer space being treated as if it were 2-D really bothers me.

 

Case in point:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zDexduEqeQ

 

Why does Kirk engage Khan's ship from the rear flank in a maneuver to simply disable the Reliant?. 

 

If targeting sensors are hosed and the Enterprise is forced to eyeball its target, wouldn't attacking from above perpendicular to the Reliant give you direct line of sight with the saucer section of the Reliant WHICH IS A MUCH LARGER THING TO SHOOT AT~!? 

 

Fuck the warp engines.  BLOW UP THE WHOLE SHIP BEFORE KHAN CAN ARM THE GENESIS DEVICE~!

 

Star Wars is equally infuriating.

 

 

WHY ARE SHOWING THE IMPERIALS YOUR AFT AND GIVING THEM A BIG TARGET TO FIRE ON, CAPTAIN DUMBASS~!? 

 

YOUR SHIP IS SMALLER AND MORE MANEUVERABLE THAN A STAR DESTROYER~!! 

 

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, FLY STRAIGHT DOWN~!!!!

 

We will not even go into why large starships need to have visual contact on an enemy starship before they open fire as if they were sailing vessels on open water.

 

I think the only entertainment I have seen that even remotely attempts to somewhat realistically address interstellar combat are the Syfy redux of Battlestar Galactica and maybe Firefly.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I LOVE all of the Fast and Furious movies, but there's a moment in Fast and Furious 6. Yeah. You know what I'm talking about. It's that shit on the bridge where Dominic launches himself off his car, catches Letty and is moving at such a velocity that he stops Letty dead in her tracks. Not only that, he continues moving forward to the other bridge.

 

Now, I'm no physics major, but if Dominic is moving at that rate of speed, I would think that Letty's body would just explode into gibs, as opposed to whatever the fuck it was that actually happened. The fact that no one stopped to say that this stunt is batshit insane and makes no sense, even for us, is incredible.

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I LOVE all of the Fast and Furious movies, but there's a moment in Fast and Furious 6. Yeah. You know what I'm talking about. It's that shit on the bridge where Dominic launches himself off his car, catches Letty and is moving at such a velocity that he stops Letty dead in her tracks. Not only that, he continues moving forward to the other bridge.

 

Now, I'm no physics major, but if Dominic is moving at that rate of speed, I would think that Letty's body would just explode into gibs, as opposed to whatever the fuck it was that actually happened. The fact that no one stopped to say that this stunt is batshit insane and makes no sense, even for us, is incredible.

 

I believe Sheldon made a similar argument regarding Superman catching a falling Lois Lane in an episode of the Big Bang Theory. While Leonard argued that Superman could match his speed to the rate of speed of Lois' fall to compensate. However in your case, I do believe you are correct, well played Sir, well played.

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It's weird, the stuff that I pick nits over, while in other movies I just let it slide. Maybe if the movie isn't actually any fun, I start to let shit bother me.

 

Like horses that can keep up with space ships in COWBOYS & ALIENS. I mean, the movie is called Cowboys & Aliens. It shouldn't even matter to me. But it was so boring it did, I guess.

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I LOVE all of the Fast and Furious movies, but there's a moment in Fast and Furious 6. Yeah. You know what I'm talking about. It's that shit on the bridge where Dominic launches himself off his car, catches Letty and is moving at such a velocity that he stops Letty dead in her tracks. Not only that, he continues moving forward to the other bridge.

 

Now, I'm no physics major, but if Dominic is moving at that rate of speed, I would think that Letty's body would just explode into gibs, as opposed to whatever the fuck it was that actually happened. The fact that no one stopped to say that this stunt is batshit insane and makes no sense, even for us, is incredible.

 

I believe Sheldon made a similar argument regarding Superman catching a falling Lois Lane in an episode of the Big Bang Theory. While Leonard argued that Superman could match his speed to the rate of speed of Lois' fall to compensate. However in your case, I do believe you are correct, well played Sir, well played.

 

 

IIRC, Lester counters with the fact that Superman is not catching Lois in a void with zero atmosphere.  

 

If you have an air shroud and gravity, there is going to be a violent transfer of inertia when two rapidly moving objects strike each other.  Dom would at the bare minimum cracked Letty's ribs catching her like that.

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That's a good illustrator of my earlier point. I don't even give a fuck about all the stupidity Hiroshima x 1000 baloney in that movie.

 

Another great one is Independence Day

aka

ID4

aka 

The Greatest Movie of All Time.

 

How you gonna upload a virus to the motherhip? Can you code in alien, Jeff Goldblum? 

 

But I don't care because that movie is tremendous. 

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That's a good illustrator of my earlier point. I don't even give a fuck about all the stupidity Hiroshima x 1000 baloney in that movie.

 

Another great one is Independence Day

aka

ID4

aka 

The Greatest Movie of All Time.

 

How you gonna upload a virus to the motherhip? Can you code in alien, Jeff Goldblum? 

 

But I don't care because that movie is tremendous. 

I don't think that qualifies as a nitpick.  It's more like a major gaping flaw.  Pretty much everybody I knew who saw the movie at the time ripped on it for that exact plot point.  

 

And I/they didn't care either.

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I've always felt like 'The Departed' has a major flaw in it.

 

Okay, in 'Infernal Affairs' when the undercover cop's boss is killed, it's a big deal because NO ONE ELSE knows he's undercover, the undercover bad guy deletes his info, so he has to have the showdown with his counter-part to try to clear his name.  1+2=3.

 

In 'The Departed', Scorsese adds the Mark Wahlberg character who also knows about DiCaprio being undercover, along with Martin Sheen.  So the bad guys kill Sheen, Wahlberg gets suspended, so when DiCaprio wants to come back, undercover baddie Matt Damon deletes all his info, so DiCaprio has to have his showdown with Damon to prove his innocence...only he doesn't HAVE to.  Wahlberg's not dead, just suspended.  All he has to do is wait for Wahlberg to come back from suspension and vouch for him, and he's in the clear.  Instead, he gets killed, then Wahlberg shows up at the end to kill Damon.  To me, the addition of Wahlberg's character adds a massive gaping plot hole that has prevented me from really enjoying the film all that much.  Unless there's something I'm missing.

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