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Things in movies that don't work in real life

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    Things in movies that don't work in real life

    1. Chloroform
    Although it takes several minutes to anaesthetise someone with chloroform, in movie-land you just pour some on a handkerchief and your victim will be unconscious within about ten seconds

    2. Stopping someone sneezing
    Our protagonists (usually a man and a woman) are hiding from a nearby adversary. The woman is about to sneeze and give them away, but the man prevents it by putting his finger horizontally under her nose.

    3. Exploding cars
    Although the only way to make a car explode is probably to detonate a bomb underneath it, in films, you just drive it off a cliff. Or even just into a valley. Ka-boom!

    #2
    4: 1 v Many
    Our hero is up against a dozen or more baddies. Not to worry, they can’t shoot for shit, but our protagonist can pick them all off one by one.

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      #3
      5: The ability to outrun any mode of transport on foot
      Being chased by a dude in a high powered, top of the rangeMercedes? Don’t worry keep running in a straight line for 30 seconds then dive headfirst into that handy alcove.

      Also works in reverse if you goal is to catch that Mercedes. Your ability to go from nought to sixty is way better than his 4.2 seconds.

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        #4
        6. Holding your gun sideways
        I once read a quote from a chief of police, who said the fashion in films for holding pistols sideways had reduced the homicide rate in his jurisdiction, as this method made you much less likely to hit your target.

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          #5
          7. Parking immediately wherever you want
          Even in London or Manhattan.

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            #6
            In real life, if someone called you and said " turn on the news " if you're lucky you'd catch the tail end of the story. In the movies, the newsreader helpfully waits for you, and you get the entire news item.

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              #7
              8. Computer hacking
              That all important information that’ll solve the case and ensure your bad guy will get a million years in a US penitentiary? So important they using some form of prime number theory to keep it secure. Nah, the dolt’s probably using ‘password’ for his password or just mash the keys for a few seconds. You’ll get in there and download it to your usb with seconds to spare.

              See also the ability to get that usb stick into the correct slot, the right way up first time. A skill in itself.

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                #8
                Being able to keep on sprinting when you're running away from someone. Wouldn't you sprint as fast as you can at the beginning of your attempted escape, but then by the time you'd made it about 100 yards you'd be utterly fucked because you didn't pace yourself. Every footchase should be over in under half a minute, either because the pursuer or pursuee was exhausted.

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                  #9
                  Following on from Greenlander's hacking point - when in court someone comes bursting through the door with an old case and the lawyer always, without exception, finds the exact portion of that previous case to help their position and completely disregard all previous evidence.

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                    #10
                    9. Holding your breath under water
                    I challenge anyone to try and hold their breath as long as our submersed hero in any film ever. And you’ll be sat on your sofa having barely moved for the last hour. Our man has done most of the previous skills and still needs to scrap while he’s down there.

                    Well I can’t do it (and I can do a good minute or more with a bit of prep) and neither can he outside film world.

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                      #11
                      10. Getting the girl
                      Just because you’ve done something dead courageous. Really.

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                        #12
                        11 - Zooming in and enhancing.

                        AI upscaling programs have negated this to some degree but they're still far from perfect - they don't deal with certain things very well at all. From my experience using it, text gets garbled and eyes turn into hellish pools of grey.

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                          #13
                          12. Car chases where one car sets off at speed and at least with a 30 second head start, often because the hero has wasted time comforting/reassuring an injured colleague/child/spouse, but no more than three seconds later, despite the head start, the cars are suddenly neck-and-neck. Despite them both weaving through heavy traffic.

                          13. Impossibly young yet well respected and massively responsible scientific advisers. Who the hell are Witty and Van-Tam? In real life they would be thirty year old French women in tight tops, with a title like 'UN Chief Advisor/ Head Professor at the Institute of The Thing Going Wrong'.

                          14. Rooms full of podgy middle aged male military advisors whose only role is to listen with barely disguised disdain to any scientific advice before insisting that all that needs to happen is for them to go and blow something up.
                          Last edited by Rogin the Armchair fan; 22-10-2020, 14:20.

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                            #14
                            And following on from 3CR's 11:

                            14 - Satellite Imagery. No, there aren't super high resolution satellites hanging around that can look at anything at all at any time. And there really aren't ones where you can run the clock backwards to see what's been happening for the past 2 hours, not unless you managed to get your satellite locked on to that location 2 hours ago, and it's geostationary, which it absolutely isn't because hi-res imaging satellites are in low-earth orbits for the obvious reason of being closer which means they are not in fixed positions. Which also means that no, unless you're very lucky, your satellite can't suddenly tell you what the headlines are in the newspaper that your target is reading.

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                              #15
                              15 - Hailing an empty cab, which appears at precisely the moment you need one

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                                #16
                                Originally posted by Stumpy Pepys View Post
                                1. Chloroform
                                Although it takes several minutes to anaesthetise someone with chloroform, in movie-land you just pour some on a handkerchief and your victim will be unconscious within about ten seconds
                                And

                                16 - Slipping something into someone's drink and being able to pinpoint the timing of its effects so accurately that you can point out to them that you've done it, allowing them to stare at the drink, and then attempt to lunge at you just before they collapse.

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                                  #17
                                  Originally posted by 3 Colours Red View Post
                                  11 - Zooming in and enhancing.

                                  AI upscaling programs have negated this to some degree but they're still far from perfect - they don't deal with certain things very well at all. From my experience using it, text gets garbled and eyes turn into hellish pools of grey.
                                  AI upscaling is ridiculous these days. Zoom and enhance is basically a real thing now.



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                                    #18
                                    Originally posted by Greenlander View Post
                                    9. Holding your breath under water
                                    I challenge anyone to try and hold their breath as long as our submersed hero in any film ever. And you’ll be sat on your sofa having barely moved for the last hour. Our man has done most of the previous skills and still needs to scrap while he’s down there.

                                    Well I can’t do it (and I can do a good minute or more with a bit of prep) and neither can he outside film world.
                                    I saw a programme about the bloke who owns the tank where almost all of these Pinewood scenes are filmed. It's in Berkshire somewhere, and looks like a disused school swimming pool block, until this week's lighting/backdrop scenery/effects/Tom Cruise and heroine turn up. They employ a professional underwater escape artiste to body double the heroine (it's always the heroine) whose arse swimming to the surface from cages, cars etc has now appeared in dozens of films.

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                                      #19
                                      17.
                                      Endings where Scrooge confronted with lovable hungry children and forced to face his own greed, wickedness and isolation repents and decides to feed the poor.

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                                        #20
                                        Not just chloroform. Any sort of rendering an opponent unconscious. Just a light bonk to the back of the head and your enemy is out like a light. No accidentally killing someone or even not knocking them out.

                                        AI upscaling is probabilistic rather than getting anything from the image. It's a sketch of what it might look like.

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                                          #21
                                          Oh, sure, it's not like it could be used for evidential purposes or anything. It's still bloody impressive.

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                                            #22
                                            Doctors spending ungodly amounts of money to do every test and scan imaginable to find out what is really wrong with somebody and solving it about 45 minutes in. In reality, at best, they rule out the most serious problems and send you on your way. And if you don't have a lot or money or very expensive insurance, you may never figure it out.

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                                              #23
                                              Originally posted by San Bernardhinault View Post
                                              And following on from 3CR's 11:

                                              14 - Satellite Imagery. No, there aren't super high resolution satellites hanging around that can look at anything at all at any time. And there really aren't ones where you can run the clock backwards to see what's been happening for the past 2 hours, not unless you managed to get your satellite locked on to that location 2 hours ago, and it's geostationary, which it absolutely isn't because hi-res imaging satellites are in low-earth orbits for the obvious reason of being closer which means they are not in fixed positions. Which also means that no, unless you're very lucky, your satellite can't suddenly tell you what the headlines are in the newspaper that your target is reading.
                                              Can't drones do a lot of that now?

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                                                #24
                                                Building a massive underground lair beneath a extinct volcano. Do you know how hard it is to dispose of 10 million cubic meters of lava and dirt?

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                                                  #25
                                                  Slipping a tail by jumping off a tube train just before it leaves has to be considerably more hit and miss than films suggest, given the number of false starts due to someone further along sticking their shoulder between the doors so that their slow friend can catch up with them.

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