Hollywood Stupid

We've all seen it — things in movies and TV that are so Stuck-On-Stupid they make you want to throw things at the screen. Ain't no stupid like Hollywood Stupid! Here is a place to vent without risk to your TV.

1. Lights INSIDE space suit helmets

Idiotic! All you would see is a distorted reflection of your own face. The most recent place I've seen this particular bone-headed move is in Doctor Who. They should know better!

Come on, Hollywood! (Actually the Beeb in this case, but it's all the same) There are other ways to light the actors' faces that are NOT stupid! Besides, who would die if the faces are not perfectly lit in a few scenes?

Have the actors never mentioned this? "Hey, I can't see out of that damn helmet with all the lights in my face!"

2. Running through the woods with a lantern

The Creepy Killer is out there somewhere, so one or two of the Dead Meats go running through the woods with a lantern to escape. Dummkopfs! The lantern allows you to see for meters; it allows you to be seen for kilometers!

This applies to any light source used while searching for an enemy in the dark, but a lantern is the most stupidest ever.

3. Sliding along the wall to a blind corner

Our Hero is pursuing the Bad Guy and he creeps up to the corner so the BG can be right in his face when he steps around it.

Approach a corner from the opposite wall, moron! Or as far away as possible, anyway.

4. Holding a gun out at arm's length

Often combined with #3 for Extra Stupid. You're just begging to have the gun knocked or snatched out of your hand.

Keep your gun close, making it hard for the enemy to get to it!

5. Running away from a downed enemy

Congratulations! You managed to surprise and disarm the Bad Guy, so you…run away. Allowing BG to recover, re-arm and try to kill you some more. This takes a really special kind of stupid.

I can accept most of those because of the realities of filmmaking.

What really gets me is that thing where characters will grab a text, drag their finger across it and read it out loud even when they are completely alone.

Can I add one? The walk in the woods where nobody EVER looks up - until the bad guy/alien/whatever drops onto them.

Cheers, John

The E wrote:I can accept most of those because of the realities of filmmaking.

What really gets me is that thing where characters will grab a text, drag their finger across it and read it out loud even when they are completely alone.

And, coming to think of it, this also applies to the 'missing prisoner' escapes, where the warders rush into an apparently empty cell and the prisoner drops from the ceiling behind them to slam the door and lock them in.

Cheers, John

John Prigent wrote:Can I add one? The walk in the woods where nobody EVER looks up - until the bad guy/alien/whatever drops onto them.

Cheers, John

The E wrote:I can accept most of those because of the realities of filmmaking.

What really gets me is that thing where characters will grab a text, drag their finger across it and read it out loud even when they are completely alone.

We've all seen it — things in movies and TV that are so Stuck-On-Stupid they make you want to throw things at the screen. Ain't no stupid like Hollywood Stupid! Here is a place to vent without risk to your TV.

1. Lights INSIDE space suit helmets

Idiotic! All you would see is a distorted reflection of your own face. The most recent place I've seen this particular bone-headed move is in Doctor Who. They should know better!

Come on, Hollywood! (Actually the Beeb in this case, but it's all the same) There are other ways to light the actors' faces that are NOT stupid! Besides, who would die if the faces are not perfectly lit in a few scenes?

Have the actors never mentioned this? "Hey, I can't see out of that damn helmet with all the lights in my face!"

There's actually an amazingly great reason for that...

Parzival wrote:

You'll find hollywood is full of stupid ideas like this.

It's not a stupid idea, except as regards to a real space helmet. In terms of actually making a movie, it's a highly intelligent idea. Cameras require significant light sources to operate; if the spacesuit is to be seen by the audience, the spacesuit must be lit by considerably powerful studio lights. However, these lights will reflect off any glass glass-like surface, turning that glass surface into a mirror (that's how one-way glass works, by the way). The only way to counteract this is to light the other side of the glass; in this case, the interior of the helmet.

So, in making a movie, you can either light the interior of the helmet and see the actor's face and expressions, and have an unrealistic helmet, or you can have a mirror reflecting back the sight of the lights, cameras and production crew filming the scene. You tell me which would look more stupid in a science fiction film.

So, necessary, no matter how unrealistic.

Tenshinai wrote:

It's not a stupid idea, except as regards to a real space helmet. In terms of actually making a movie, it's a highly intelligent idea. Cameras require significant light sources to operate; if the spacesuit is to be seen by the audience, the spacesuit must be lit by considerably powerful studio lights. However, these lights will reflect off any glass glass-like surface, turning that glass surface into a mirror (that's how one-way glass works, by the way). The only way to counteract this is to light the other side of the glass; in this case, the interior of the helmet.

So, in making a movie, you can either light the interior of the helmet and see the actor's face and expressions, and have an unrealistic helmet, or you can have a mirror reflecting back the sight of the lights, cameras and production crew filming the scene. You tell me which would look more stupid in a science fiction film.

So, necessary, no matter how unrealistic.

Well now you could spend the money to post-process the film and replace the reflected film junk with CGI of the surroundings. But that's still a lot of work to avoid showing your actor's face.

(Actually it'd probably be easier in that case to use a green screen material for the face mask (but one the actor can see through sufficiently to hit their marks) and CGI in the whole glass and 'reflections')

Simple one here:

Military uniforms in sci-fi films that make it damn near impossible to use the restroom. A Star Wars Imperial Storm Trooper would shit himself before he climbed out of all that plastic armor.

All cars are made from gasoline and molded explosives except the doors that are made from inches thick titanium and can stop .50 cal bullets.

Slow and shuffling monsters gains a 10x speed bonus when no one are looking at them.

Sound carries in vacuum.

You don't get cut to pieces when jumping through plate-glass.

All ex-military have hidden arsenals of weapons.

"Bionic man" sound make slow things go faster even if it looks slow.

Joat42 wrote:Sound carries in vacuum.

True. Though arguably, scenes shown from inside combat spaceships you could rationalize zooming sounds of other nearby spacecraft as the ship's sensors and computer providing 3D audio cues to the pilot or gunner about nearby craft that aren't in the current line of sight.

Then the sounds we're hearing wouldn't be traveling through space - they'd be artificially created within the spaceship to assist the occupants situational awareness.

(Or its still just lazy Hollywood )

Joat42 wrote:Sound carries in vacuum.

That is a lot more complex than people think.
If one defines sound as kinetic energy (compression waves) propagating through a medium then no, it doesn't. However, things like engines and explosions expel particles which can then impact on things (such as a space station), thus generating sound from the point(s) of impact. This means that while sound doesn't travel through vacuum, there can be sound in space.
However, it wouldn't sound anything like that in the movies/tv shows.