Movies are a window to another world, 90 minutes for us viewers to switch off our brains and be entertained. However, when you take a closer look at some movies, the actions of the characters seems downright stupid, especially when there are obvious, much better options available to them. For example.
10. Jurassic Park: Why Clone Any Dangerous Dinosaurs At All?
Jurassic Park is easily one of the greatest films of the films of all time. Its CGI, despite being 20 years old, is still some of the best ever seen. The basic premise of the film is that John Hammond wants to create a live-dinosaur-themed amusement park, and things go real bad real fast when all of the dangerous dinosaurs escape.
But here’s the thing: why were any dangerous dinosaurs cloned at all? They’d figured out how to clone freaking dinosaurs! They’d figured out how to slap God square in the mouth, and bring life to things that haven’t walked the face of our planet for 65 million years. Hammond could have filled the park with triceratops, stegosauri, or any other number of gentle, plant-eating dinosaurs, and people would have still visited his park in droves. Why? Because he cloned dinosaurs! And the second someone complained about the lack of velociraptors or T-Rexes (T-Rexi?), Hammond could have just laughed them off and told them to go make their own live-dinosaur-themed amusement park if they didn’t like his. Which clearly, no one could do but him. But he had to make the cool-ass T-Rex anyway, and paid dearly for his mistake.
9. Demolition Man: Why Not Revive John Spartan Instead?
Demolition Man is set in a universe where virtually all crime has been eliminated. The head honcho of this new utopia is one Dr. Raymond Cocteau who, in his infinite wisdom, revives Wesley Snipes (a sociopathic maniac,) and brainwashes him into doing his bidding.
Sure, it turns out that Cocteau is a douche who wants to control the entire world, but he’s also shown to be a genius. Why did he choose to revive Wesley Snipes, when Sylvester Stallone (a highly decorated police officer) was housed in the same prison and was presumably just as easy to brainwash? Instead of waking up Stallone and giving him his job back, he revives the most dangerous criminal of all time, and trains him how to stab a man in the kidneys with a fountain pen. This causes the police of the time to revive Stallone anyway, so all Cocteau did was leave the most delicious piece of cake on the counter for someone else to eat, while he feasted on the part with the cake knife still stuck inside.
8. Star Wars II: Why Doesn’t Yoda Use The Force Push?
The 900-year-old diminutive green dispenser of wisdom, AKA Master Yoda, spends most of the latter half of the trilogy telling people to chill. In Star Wars Episode 2 however, he tries to eviscerate Saruman using approximately all of the backflips. Because Yoda is a deep, complex character, who likes to backflip.
However, just as Yoda gets the upper hand, Count Dooku knocks over a pillar which threatens to kill Obi-Wan Kenobi. This forces Yoda to abandon the fight to stop the pillar from crushing Obi-Wan, which he does by slowly levitating it out of the way. By doing this, he completely neglects to use either Force Push or Pull, AKA the most basic Force abilities around. As Yoda himself says, the “size and weight of an object is only relevant in the mind of the practitioner.” Yoda is one of the most powerful Force users ever. Why does he choose to slowly float the pillar away, instead of forcefully knocking it back with a blast of his mind magic so he could, you know, stop one of the most evil men in the universe from getting away?
7. Equilibrium: Why Do They Not Search The Man Who Knows Kung-Fu For Guns Before Interrogating Him?
In Equilibrium, Christian Bale plays the role of a “cleric,” a future peacekeeper trained in the ancient art of “gun kata.” Which, according to the movie, means that “Through analysis of thousands of recorded gunfights, the Cleric has determined that the geometric distribution of antagonists in any gun battle is a statistically-predictable element.” Basically, if Christian Bale has a gun, the odds of your testicles being shot is increased by about 80%.
So why the Hell did no one check him for a gun when they decided to interrogate him. Because they don’t. Bale, using his years of experience and those guns he just happened to be hiding, is able to easily kill, well, everyone.
6. Hancock: Why Did The Woman, Who Knows Hancock Is Weaker When She’s Nearby, Visit Him When He Was Dying?
Hancock is an awesome film, providing you stop watching it at around the halfway mark. In the latter half of the film it’s revealed that, when the titular superhero of the film is near Charlize Theron’s character, he gets gradually weaker and more human. This culminates in Hancock being shot and almost killed. When Mary (Theron’s character) hears about this, instead of climbing in a car and driving as far away as possible from Hancock, she visits the hospital and stands right next to him. This slowly saps him of what was left of his superpowers and almost kills him, herself, and her boyfriend in the process. Smooth, Mary, smooth.
5. The Matrix: Why Did Trinity Warn The Agent That She Was Going To Shoot?
In the first Matrix film, it’s noted that the Agents are essentially unkillable beings of death. Fighting one is like trying to stop a metal fan with your testicles; even if you manage to stop it, you’re going to come out much worse off.
So when Trinity manages to sneak up on one, a feat that is, up to that point, deemed virtually impossible, she calmly and slowly says the words “dodge this,” before pulling the trigger. This is so unbelievably stupid, Carrie Ann Moss presumably had to re-take her SATs after filming the scene. The agents are shown to be able to move faster than bullets, and the one that Trinity shoots has a full 2 seconds to react and doesn’t. How one forgets that they can move 300 MPH at the drop of a hat is beyond us; if we had that power, we’d never forget about it, because we’d never stop using it.
4. Source Code: Why Doesn’t Jake Gyllenhaal Realize The Bomber Got Off The Train?
Source Code is a film in which Jake Gyllenhaal has to try and stop a bombing, by re-living the last 8 minutes of another person’s life. Basically, the train has a bomb on it and the person who planted it also planted another. It’s Gyllenhaal’s mission to find this man, so he can report it to the people sending him back in time.
It doesn’t occur to Gyllenhaal until around halfway through the film that, for the bomber to have warned people about another bomb, he would have gotten off of the train. It isn’t until around his 17th try that Gyllenhaal actually decided to follow somebody off of the train, and hence discovers the bombers identity. Essentially wasting precious minutes that could have been spent preparing for, and reducing the threat of, collateral damage. Smooth Gyllenhaal, smooth. Wait, we used that line already. These stupid movie decisions must be making us stupider by association.
3. In Time: Why Didn’t Justin Timberlake Use Any Of The Time He Stole?
In Time is a high-concept film in which all money is replaced by time. Everyone stops aging at 25 and, from that moment on, you can live forever, providing you can earn the time to do so. In the film, Justin Timberlake brings sexy back by stealing a million years worth of time from those corporate fat cats, to re-distribute it among the poor.
However, for reasons that are never explained, he neglects to take any of this time for himself. You could say that he ways being honorable by not using it, much like how Robin Hood never kept any of the Prince’s money for himself. However, a lot of the film’s drama comes from the fact that Timberlake is always running low on time. There’s no reason he couldn’t have taken a couple of days for himself so he didn’t, well, die before he was able to share the rest with all the starving poor people.
2. Karate Kid: Why Did Daniel-San Use The Crane Kick?
The Karate Kid is the underdog story of a young man who is taught karate by an elderly handyman, in an age before such people were put on lists and reported to the police. Mr. Miyagi teaches the film’s protagonist, Daniel, the crane kick, which he claims is able to stop any opponent if done correctly.
That’s all well and excellent, except the crane kick relies on the user kicking their opponent square in the face, something that is explicitly banned in the tournament that Daniel takes part in at the end of the film. The fact that Daniel is stupid enough to even thinks of using it, is only matched by the stupidity of the referee who doesn’t immediately disqualify him, and just lets it slide instead. Apparently, you’re allowed to openly break the rules in the Karate Kid universe as long as you do so awesomely.
1. Pulp Fiction: Why Does Marcellus Wallace Buy His Own Groceries?
Pulp Fiction is arguably one of Tarantino’s best films. One scene in particular involves one of the film’s main antagonists, Marcellus Wallace, being hit by a car driven by Bruce Willis, while he’s carrying a large box of donuts. Why Hollywood felt the need to keep making films after a moment this perfect is a mystery.
After being hit by the car, Wallace and Willis fight, and end up being prisoners of a perverted pawn shop owner. All of which would have been avoided if Marcellus Wallace sent one of the many men he has at his disposal to fetch his donuts for him. Come on Wallace, how do you expect to convince people you’re a powerful crime kingpin when you still have to go out and buy your own snacks?
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31 Comments
In Demolition Man’s case (why did Cocteau not revived Spartan ?), it’s simply – because Spartan is the hero, a strong cop with immense spine pride, and sense of morality and righteousness and eventually it wouldn’t have worked at all this way…Cocteau was that afraid of doing this…Cocteau was afraid of John Spartan and he would have never thought of any comeback of the man…this was the nightmare he never thought he would live, he knew very well who Spartan was and all his history in the police force. But on the other hand Phoenix should have been the perfect method….it just seems that the Doctor underestimated THAT MUCH the level of sociopathy the he had and this also demonstrates his stupidity after all…he could have very well think carefully about Phoenix too but he didn’t… it’s that simple !
“Dodge this” was way cooler than just shooting him after the action before Trinity shoots him. Come one man, get a grip!
i won’t spend words trying to correct the author…i’ll just assume that he (or she) is an attention whore who didn’t see any of the movies listed above.
To the author of this article, the fact you’ve compiled this list suggests that you either didn’t watch or didn’t understand these movies because if you had watched them and understood them then you’d know exactly why all these things happened.
I came to the very same opinion after just reading the author first movie pick.Why did they bring back dangerous dinasours.?The answer is a no brainer,because they knew the public would want to see them and that they thought they could control them.
Also, in real life we put animals just as dangerous as T-rex( if not as big) in zoo’s and open parks today and sometimes they get loose and people get hurt or killed.We take people on safari into lion infested africa for the thrill of it and sometimes those folk get maimed and killed and we still do it, so killer dinosaurs isn’t that stupid at all.Also,if the author had taken the time to see the movie,the question of safety measures was raised and explained but just as in real life it doesn’t always work out the way you want it to.
In all this was not that good an example of the art of how to write an article.
Yeah and can you imagine the character of John Hammond being able to actually stop and be content with only going so far as bringing back the vegetarian dinosaurs to life? Of course not, his ego and ambition are way too big for that. That’s exactly why the film works. His character is written perfectly.
As for the Yoda argument I really don’t want to get into the nitty gritty here but every time someone uses the force to push/pull/manipulate a large object it requires intense concentration and takes a couple of seconds before anything happens. There’s no way he could suddenly just push the falling pillar out of the way in a split second when it was dropping so fast. It might move a little but it would still turn obi wan and anakin into jam.
Why did Marcellus buy his own donuts? Really? That’s the burning question from Pulp Fiction?
Ok, I’ll play along.
Because he didn’t have any cash and only had a credit/debit card, and he knew that in the 90’s people would check his ID, so he couldn’t have sent Vincent to get the donuts. Plus, why would you pay a professional killer to go get donuts when you both are waiting to actually KILL someone? You leave the ‘professional killer’ you are paying good money to sit and wait for the mark and you buck up and walk to the donut shop.
Wealthy people actually DO pump their own gas, go to the grocery store and go to the ATM. It wasn’t like Marcellus was Donald Trump. He was a small time boxing promoter who was dabbling with some shady criminal stuff on the side. Look at his other associates. Four college students, a family that owns a junk yard, a couple of low level assassins, some washed up boxers, a guy who’s wife is the breadwinner in the household and some lone wolf who can’t get out of a boring cocktail party unless work calls.
You’re right
LOL @ Awsomely. I’ll have to add that word to my vocabulary.
The reason that Marcellus got his own donuts is because only he and Vincent were in Butch’s apartment waiting for Butch’s return. We surmise this because when Butch is in the apt and sees the gun on the counter, that is most likely Marcellus’ gun that he left there to get donuts while Vincent used the bathroom. Since the assumed that he would be coming to the house, it was reasonable to think that one of them in the house would be able to shoot Vincent while the other got post murder donut. Plus, would you want to be the guy who came back with a kruller when Marcellus clearly wanted chocolate sprinkles! 🙂
Right.
Yoda didn’t use the Force Push because not all Jedi know how to use it. How many times did Palpatine use it? Vader? Not everybody uses it. It’s like a martial art.
But that’s like saying not anyone who knows Karate knows how to punch, isn’t it?
Yeah. It’s like riding a bike, you never forget how to punch or kick once you’ve learned it. You may get a bit rusty if you don’t actively train your skills, but you don’t forget. You never forget.
No, not everybody who rides a bike learns how to do wheelies, or bunny hops, or more elaborate tricks like 720s. A mountain biker may be able to traverse rough terrain but be terrible at doing half pipe tricks. A Tour De France winner may have no clue of how to ride down a mountain path safely. Even tandem bikes require different techniques that not every bicyclist knows about.
And there are different martial arts. You may learn Karate but not Kung Fu, arguably two different skills with certain similarities.
Luke never used the force push in any of the movies. He DID use the force PULL though. Similar in that each moves an object (telekinesis) but different in the direction the object is moved.
That doesn’t make one bit of sense. Force push is a basic technique. Why would all the most powerful Sith and Jedi somehow not know how to to do a basic move
Yoda never used it. Luke trained under Yoda, directly under Yoda. Yoda never taught him the push.
Luke spent most of his training under Obi Wan just learning how to sense the force. On his own he only learned how to pull things towards him.
Not every Jedi learns every skill.
Dude, this is so stupid. You jack a Yoda dolls balls off every night, we know.
First, it’s ridiculous that the best Jedis wouldn’t be able to preform such a basic move like pushing, because they only learnt pulling. In the background, all of these techniques are summarized as Telekinesis. Second, a quick search showed that Yoda used Force Push in the fight against Darth Sidious, Luke in his duel with Darth Caedus (something out of the later books, which are canon, I think, but I don’t know). So I don’t know where you got that idea from, but it’s not from the official background.
I just rewatched the fight between Darth Sidious and Yoda. Both use the push. Literally the first thing Yoda does in the scene, is pushing two guards against the wall, knocking them out.
Vader used the push in his fights against Luke several times. Did you watch the movies at all?
do they? Sorry, I keep falling asleep when I watch the prequels.
How do you do that? The obnoxious noises tend to keep me awake. But if you make any claims about Yoda using the Force, you have to include them, because in the original movies he doesn’t do very much at all – especially if you’re that specific about in which direction he can move an object. And there’s still Darth Vaders and Luke’s first fight, where it is used. In the second fight it might be objectonable.
Vader may use the push in ESB, but it makes sense. He’s a Sith Lord and they would do something so aggressive and violent.
Making Yoda into a backflip-spinning-whirling Dervish Force pusher totally violates his character. He’s always about the calm.
In Time was an awful movie, but I don’t think T-Lake just gave all the time away. Pretty sure it was confiscated or used as currency as needed. In other words, I don’t think he had a choice in the matter. Still, just an awful movie. Could’ve been so good.
Well, nobody wants to see a Stegosaurus, which had a brain the size of a walnut. Or that boring vegetarian one. Who`s name means “Good Mother Lizard.” you want to see T-Rex. The baddest thing that ever lived on the planet. When I was a kid, I loved T-Rex. Hell, I still do. I laughed like Hell when T-Rex ate that guy in Jurassic Park hiding in the toilet. To make things even better, the guy was a lawyer! So, who doesn`t want a T-Rex?
Agreeeeed
Yoda is 900 years old, not 100.
Oh, and Marcellus Wallace gets his own donuts because he can.
Yeah, but Yoda only looks 100. We corrected this.
About #2: although the crane kick seems like something that was developed just for the Karate Kid movie, it has in fact been used successfully by the mixed martial artist Lyoto Machida. Check this out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVSGQ_FRs3k
The Barney Stinson character from HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER said the same thing about the “illegal head kick” in a recent episode that featured Ralph Macchio. I thought he was jokingly saying that Daniel-san illegally used his head to “punch” Johnny’s foot, but I guess he was referring to this illegal move instead. Good catch HIMYM
There is one in the film ‘Futurama: Benders Big Score’ where I have noticed that the alien scammers are the most easy targets in the movie. Not really anyone attempted to kill them till the end. Even especially as everyone is banished from Earth, at the spaceport, no one (Out of over 7 billion people) are not eager enough to go after them. For the Plot, I’m not sure if its good or not.