Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Things in movies that don't work in real life

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

    #26
    Originally posted by WOM View Post
    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?
    You sew special drawstring pouches inside your trousers and scatter it into nearby flower beds. Have films taught you nothing?

    Comment


      #27
      Originally posted by Hot Pepsi View Post

      Can't drones do a lot of that now?
      Yes and no. You still have to get them in the right place, which still takes a ton of time. And you obviously can't backtrace imagery from when you weren't there. If you want to see what someone in DC is doing in about 45 minutes, you can probably get a drone up there. If you want to see what someone near a possible chemical weapons plant in the deserted steppe parts of Kazakhstan is doing in 3 hours you probably don't have a drone sitting about so you have to wait until one of your low earth orbit hi-res EO satellites has Kazakhstan in its swath and hope that nobody else is using that satellite so you can take control to look at your Kazakh. If you want to see what someone is doing right now, you're almost certainly fucked unless you're very lucky. If you want to see what someone was doing 45 minutes ago, you're totally fucked unless you'd already targeted a satellite at that spot.

      Comment


        #28
        Well, presumably, the military or whomever plan these things out a bit.

        Comment


          #29
          Not in films when somebody shows up in a situation room and says "We hear evidence that there's someone in house in Hargeisa who is plotting an attack. Can we see who's been in and out of that house in the last 2 hours?"

          Comment


            #30
            Perhaps. But Homeland and the Tom Clancy films tried a little harder than that.

            Comment


              #31
              This gap between films and reality is why Biden was forced to murder Seal Team Six

              Comment


                #32
                Originally posted by WOM View Post
                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?
                [Fletcher] You just dig another hole and put it in there. [/Fletcher]

                Comment


                  #33
                  Originally posted by Stumpy Pepys View Post
                  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.
                  Horizontal finger under the nose doesn't work, but you can stop yourself sneezing (or at least keep it in for a minute or two) by pressing your tongue against the roof of your mouth. Should you ever find yourself hiding from a nearby adversary during hay fever season.

                  Comment


                    #34
                    Pushing on the tip of your nose sometimes helps.

                    Comment


                      #35
                      Originally posted by WOM View Post
                      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?
                      I think about this sometimes. If you were really evil and wanted a massive secret HQ built, who do you get in touch with? Are their evil employment agencies? Or do Hays and Reed have evil subdivisions?

                      Comment


                        #36
                        You call Eric Prince or Dick Cheney

                        Comment


                          #37
                          Originally posted by Stumpy Pepys View Post

                          I think about this sometimes. If you were really evil and wanted a massive secret HQ built, who do you get in touch with? Are their evil employment agencies? Or do Hays and Reed have evil subdivisions?
                          Well, similarly, who built the Batcave?

                          Comment


                            #38
                            Elaborately planned heists

                            Comment


                              #39
                              Spaceships that somehow have gravity on them

                              Comment


                                #40
                                You can solve crimes in movies by staring intently at a giant board with loads of photos of people on, connected by string

                                Comment


                                  #41
                                  Originally posted by Patrick Thistle View Post

                                  Well, similarly, who built the Batcave?
                                  The cave is natural. It’s unclear how he got all the gear installed. Lucius Fox helped.

                                  Comment


                                    #42
                                    Originally posted by Patrick Thistle View Post
                                    Spaceships that somehow have gravity on them
                                    Star Trek shows the artificial gravity in one of the films. Star Wars addresses it in the animated shows a few times. But, in general, that’s not handled well in either franchise or most sci-fi. Until recently, the effects required to show zero gravity were too expensive/complicated.

                                    That’s why The Expanse is so good. The gravity issue affects everything as does the lag time in interplanetary communications.

                                    Now any time I see a film showing instantaneous communications across millions of miles, I can’t get into it at all. Star Wars explains that away with hyperspace relays, but some things that are supposed to be about the real near future show people having a norma phone conversation between Earth and Mars. In reality, it would actually take at least a few minutes for each signal to get from one end to the other.

                                    Comment


                                      #43
                                      Originally posted by WOM View Post
                                      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?
                                      That can't be done, but a massive underground ballistic factory including a railway, beneath a mountain with some tunnels in it, can be built in three months with sufficient slave labour from concentration camps.

                                      Edit - just seen the other posts about how this can be done - the Nazis showed that the answer is 'at massive human cost'.
                                      ​​
                                      "It was during October, November, and December of 1943 that the most physically punishing work was done by the Dora prisoners, who struggled under terrible, inhuman conditions to enlarge and fit out the Mittelwerk tunnels. Prisoners drilled and blasted away thousands of tons of rock. They built rickety, temporary narrow gauge tracks to support the multi-ton loads of rock that were extracted from the caves. If the skips or small rail cars, full of rock fell off these tracks (and this happened frequently), prisoners were kicked, whipped, and beaten until they could re-rail and reload the cars.

                                      The prisoners were made to eat and sleep within the tunnels they were digging. Thousands of workers were crammed into stinking, lice infested bunks stacked four-high in the first few south side cross tunnels at the mouth of Tunnel A, in an atmosphere thick with gypsum dust and fumes from the blasting work, which continued 24 hours a day. Prisoners had no running water or sanitary facilities. Dysentery, typhus, tuberculosis, and starvation were constant causes of suffering and death for these unfortunate people. The Detainees worked atop 30 foot scaffolds using picks to enlarge the tunnels. From time to time, a prisoner would become too weak to continue, fall to his death from the scaffolding, and be replaced by another. Trucks bearing piles of prisoner corpses left every other day for the crematorium ovens at Buchenwald. All of the manufacturing equipment from Peenem?nde had to be installed in the tunnels. This was done by hand by prisoner workers using hand-carts, block and tackle, huge skids pulled by teams of prisoners, and the temporary narrow gauge rail lines."
                                      Last edited by Kevin S; 22-10-2020, 21:14.

                                      Comment


                                        #44
                                        They built a big tunnel in Better Call Saul by just paying the guys a lot (and murdering anyone who talked about it.)

                                        Comment


                                          #45
                                          Originally posted by Kevin S View Post

                                          That can't be done, but a massive underground ballistic factory including a railway, beneath a mountain with some tunnels in it, can be built in three months with sufficient slave labour from concentration camps.
                                          That's all good, but if Jeff Bezos, say, wanted to build a Dr No-style facility, where's he going to get slave labour from?

                                          Comment


                                            #46
                                            Originally posted by Stumpy Pepys View Post

                                            That's all good, but if Jeff Bezos, say, wanted to build a Dr No-style facility, where's he going to get slave labour from?
                                            Where he gets all the rest of his slave labour from

                                            Comment


                                              #47
                                              Originally posted by ad hoc View Post

                                              Where he gets all the rest of his slave labour from
                                              The secret Amazon warehouses no one knows about?

                                              Comment


                                                #48
                                                Of course no one knows about them - they're all built under volcanos, innit?

                                                Comment


                                                  #49
                                                  Along with the base, where do these villains get all their expendable goons from?

                                                  The only film to ever approach this in a remotely sensible way was Austin Powers.

                                                  Comment


                                                    #50
                                                    Elevators in movies can be stopped between floors for people to have conversations.

                                                    Comment

                                                    Working...
                                                    X