6 Movie Plots Made Possible by Bafflingly Bad Decisions
When it comes to making wise decisions, characters in a movie have a huge disadvantage: they don't know they're in a movie. The good guys wouldn't have been surprised by Darth Vader winning if they'd known from the outset they were in a movie called "The Empire Strikes Back."
But even then, you can't watch certain movies without realizing that these guys really should have seen it coming. Like...
#6.
King Kong
The Plan:
"Don't worry, Mr. Denham, we'll get you on your way in a jiffy. Let's just have a look at that shipping manifest. Let's see... 12,000-pounds of bananas... 250-pounds of animal tranquilizers... 300-pounds of raging gorilla... What's that you say? Oh, yes, it looks like you're right. Thirty thousand pounds of gorilla. My mistake. Well, everything seems to be in order. Sign here."
Why They Had It Coming:
We understand that Denham was supposed to be eccentric and ambitious to the point of insanity. But he didn't sneak Kong back into the U.S. by hiding him in his suitcase. A whole lot of people apparently signed off on the deal.
Do you know why they don't let you just take tropical monkeys home with you whenever you feel like it? It's because that would be a REALLY FUCKING BAD IDEA. And we're talking regular-sized monkeys here. Seriously, go on vacation and try passing through customs with a screeching live monkey clinging to your back.
Sure, the guys in the customs office in 1933 New York weren't dealing with the same restrictions we have today, but a little bit of basic common sense should have told them that a motherfucking three-story ape is not an acceptable import. Really, taking any kind of giant monster through customs shouldn't be this easy, or even possible.
He was royalty, though.
But not in the King Kong universe. Just stop and think about all the people who had to go along with his plan to display a giant, rampaging monkey in front of a Broadway audience. The trucking company should have refused to transport anything that could conceivably beat one of their trucks in a fist fight. The police should have stopped him for transporting unsafe materials. The theater owner should have taken one look at Denham's plan, a plan to stuff hundreds of people into a room with a giant gorilla and then wait for something interesting to happen, and he should have told the man to go directly to Hell and take his monkey with him.
This is apparently a world where not only did dinosaurs not go extinct, but somehow lawyers and insurance companies did.
#5.
Demolition Man
The Plan:
"Things are going well. I've released cryogenically frozen criminal, Simon Phoenix, to murderdeathkill my only enemy in all the world, and I've made sure to insert a program into this dangerous criminal's mind that makes it impossible for him to turn around and kill me, which he very much wants to do since I've been messing with his brain and treating him like the hired help, and also because he's a psychopath who pretty much wants to kill everybody."
Stallone threatening the least valuable part of Cocteau's body.
Why They Had It Coming:
"Oh, also he says that all he needs to complete his mission is for me to unfreeze a team of five fellow criminals from his old gang. Makes sense. What's that you say? The other murderers haven't been programmed with the 'don't murder me' safeguard? Eh, I'm sure it'll be fine."
There are all kinds of problems with Dr. Raymond Cocteau's plan to rid his utopian future society of the menace of graffiti, not the least of which is the issue of overkill, but his failure to protect himself from anything that isn't played by Wesley Snipes definitely tops the list. If the man who wants you dead asks you for the necessary supplies to make you dead, perhaps you should put a little extra thought into your answer. "No," for instance, might not be a bad choice.
Oh, come on. How can you say "no" to a face like this?
And even if you assume that giving an unfrozen crime lord from the past his own posse is a necessary risk, Cocteau already knows that people's brains can be fixed to make them not murder you. He already tried it, and it worked out just fine. What, did he fucking forget? Did he prematurely cross it off his "To Do" list by mistake?
Come to think of it, maybe Dr. Cocteau should have made the "don't kill Dr. Cocteau" programming mandatory for all the inmates in his cryogenic prison. You know, just in case of the incredibly unlikely event that something should ever go wrong with your warehouse of frozen psychopaths.
"I'll be the judge of that!"
#4.
Deep Blue Sea
The Plan:
"As it turns out, sharks have a protein in their brains which could lead us to a cure for Alzheimer's. Our scientists are already hard at work developing sharks with freakishly large brains. Oh, also their bodies are freakishly large. And their teeth and jaws. So! All we need now is someplace where we can house these deadly creatures and periodically poke at their heads with giant needles!"
Why They Had It Coming:
"Well, let's see, there's this abandoned submarine base in the middle of the ocean, totally isolated from civilization, with most of the structure underwater where it could easily be flooded. And there's a huge hole in the floor. Dear God, it's perfect!"
You know what might have been a better place for this lab? How about a nice little facility in the middle of Arizona, with a couple of big saltwater fish tanks? They didn't make these sharks so they could study giant super-shark behavior in a natural environment. The swimming death machines don't really need to be out in the actual ocean for this experiment to work. Being eaten alive does not need to be a common workplace accident.
Workplace safety aside, you have the bonus concern of what could happen if one of these monsters escapes, which actually happens in the opening minutes of the film. Here's an idea that might help you keep your killer fish from escaping: Don't put them out in the fucking ocean! We don't care how strong your fence is, it's still not as much of a deterrent as miles and miles of dry, shark-smothering land.
"Hey, good idea! And that would also be a perfect place to test our new air-breathing sharks and our prototype shark jetpacks!"
#6 is um... dumb. Customs officers cant just decide "well theres no law against it but i dont like the idea so no". Because.. we live in a country of laws and whatnot (i dont expect comedy writers to be big on the intellect but cmon this is cracked you guys are usually awesome on .. u know the thinky stuff)
Replythe machines used humans because in the Animatrix it showed how humans enslaved and at one point even tried to commit a robot genocide. So, pay back is a bitch?
ReplyAlso, since you could program humans to do stuff like kung-fu and tae-kwon-do, couldnt the machines just program them to be slaves? (Although, i'm probably wrong, because that same concept is shut down in the second movie).
ReplyYou know, Outer Space seems to have plenty of solar energy floating around up there, i wonder if...?
ReplyNa, that could never work. Human beings could barely get up to space in the first place in 2000, and its only 50 years in the future, so its not like technology could have advanced that far...
EVEN THOUGH THEY MADE A SELF AWARE A.I.!!!!!
Really, anyone involved in any sort of cyborg/super soldier project neads to have "do not use psychopaths as test subjects" tattooed on their corneas.
ReplyAlso, how about "The Mummy"
Ancient Egyptian #1: "How should we punish this guy?"
Ancient Egyptian #2: "Lets put a curse on him that turns him into an godlike immortal, lock him in a box with flesheating beetles to torture him for millenia, and hope no-one ever lets him out!"
I agree with the part of cow fart being more powerful than human fart. I know because I grew up on a farm.
Replythey werent cannibals, if they were they wouldnt have died out of hunger
Reply"This is apparently a world where not only did dinosaurs not go extinct, but somehow lawyers and insurance companies did."
ReplyNow THAT is a world I would like to live in!
Re: 28 Weeks Later. You should have added another Why Should... Section. Why Should Europe Had It Coming? At the end we see zombies doing their thing in Paris. Now for those of you who are geographically-challenged, Britain is an island, and while there is the Channel Tunnel, we have to presume that since the zombies did not attack mainland Europe, the French must have sensibly caved in the Chunnel once news broke out that zombies are going batsh*t crazy on the other side off the English Channel.
ReplyFor those of you who have not watched the movie, our heroes take a helicopter and cross the English Channel into mainland Europe with one of the passengers infected. First, if memory serves, the kids knew that their dad had been infected before they make it to the helicopter. I don't care how much you love your father, but after having gone through this whole experience his behnd is staying in Merry Ole' England.
More importantly Why Europe Had it Coming? You're telling me that the United States did not have at least three carrier groups off the coast of England, a massive air armada and enough radar waves pointed at the UK to cook anything several times over? Better yet, France (which happens to share a very long and exposed coast on the other side of the ENGLISH CHANNEL!!!!!) did not have every available ship including its own carrier and all its airplanes keeping a close eye on England? For added measure, If I were the French, I would have also kept basically every unit of in the army concentrated in Northern France in case, those "dumb Americans" drop the ball and let something through INTO MY FREAKING COUNTRY!!!!! I mean this is the country that pulled out of NATO in the 60s arguing IT WANTED ITS OWN INDEPENDENT MILITARY FREAKING POLICY!!!
As much as we love to make French in this website, no freaking French President would let the defense of his country in the face of an apocalyptic crisis just across the Channel wholly to another country. For that matter every Navy in Northern Europe and perhaps even the Canadians would have sent ships that you could probably walk around the British coast from the deck of one to the other to make sure that until the ciris is over, nothing, and I mean absolutely NOTHING comes out of England that is is not supposed to leave.
The moment that helicopter left the pad in London and it didn't answer the challenge, it gets shot down. The distance to the British coast is less than 70 miles away, which means that you only have about 30 minuts to determine and dispose of the threat. Let's see 5 lives versus 55 million? Nope, the helo gets shot down, international incident or not.
How about Con-Air?
Reply"Ok here's the plan - we're going to put a group of like 30 of the galaxy's biggest assholes, which include a rapist, serial killer, arsonist, escape artist, and Nicholas Cage, on a plane together, supervised by hilariously under-armed guards. Objections? no? SWEET LET'S DO THIS!!"
actually that is exactly how they transport prisoners from state to state. and by the way the guards are not armed they have guns in a lock box just sincase
According to an episode of Modern Marvels, they also don't have parachutes, and are cuffed where they sit with enoch security to give Houdini a challenge. Basically, if anything goes wrong, everyone dies.
On the Matrix, what I still don't get is how no one saw this coming. I mean not one single person. I mean, war does not start because of a random act of violence. Usually there's conflict from way back and now they want an excuse to nuke the place. But robots? Really? How could humans even allow for any tolerance when things weren't turning so good? Did humans do this on purpose allowing robots to be "self-aware" and decide to pull the plug? It does not make sense. Window's Vista got so many negative reviews that it was actually recalled in some new computers. So Microsoft began to sell their Windows XP again until something better was made. So like no one, NOT ONE PERSON complained something was going wrong? All of a sudden robots hated becoming the servants and wanted to nuke man-kind? Not a single recall?
Reply Hide All See All 4 RepliesAll this could have been avoided if this happened:
"Hey Cris, this robot is not listening to my orders anymore"
"Ok, here (hands him better software). Install and reboot. Problem solved"
"Thanks"
Somehow 6 billion humans let this tension heat up to a point where humans lost to their own creation. SAD
My theory: the assholes who wanted robotic servants weren't satisfied until the robots were sentient enough to feel pain and shame.
Another thing I never got in the third Matrix was the whole, "One Sentinel for every human in Zion" was apparently, "cold machine logic".
Actually, cold machone logic would have been having the drillbot double as a nuke, wipe out Zion and come up with better software so no human in the Matrix would ever question their existence again.
windamearle
the problem with that is that they already explained that the matrix went tthrough many changes and at one time it was perfect utopia but eventually humans didnt believe it and they had to change they basically said humans can not live in peace and must always fight
Anyone watch the Animatrix? It ha the whole history there in its cool animatedness. So the way it when was after humans created the AI, everything was dandy until one of then snapped and killed his owner and his family. Then the robot brought up ethical issues to the public about rights and stuff. You can imagine the majority of people were like: "Heck no kill all the robots!" So there was massive robot destruction and the one that got away ran somewhere in the desert and made their own country where they discovered how to make AI's without humans. Then after the country was created they wanted to join the UN but the UN said "No" AND THEN, they killed UN....That started the war. Then the humans were like: "No sun!" So the robots went: "human battery!"
Animatrix.....cool series
In Jurassic Park, there's plenty more staff, they all just go home on a boat for the night, right before the storm kicks in. In fact, Nedry's not even a regular staff member, he's just there to fix more of the bugs that keep cropping up (151 is the day's count).
ReplyIn the book. The movie doesn't go over any of that.
(My son LOVES that movie...)
Erm yes it does
I've always liked the assertion that the machines in The Matrix chose to give humans a virtual reality out of sympathy. Because, even if they chose humans as their energy source, there's no reason the humans' brains would have to be stimulated for that to work out. But they gave humans a way to live their lives anyway. This theory is not only supported by the film (Smith's comment that the first version of the Matrix was a failed utopia, and that the current version is at the "peak of human civilization"), but also by the Animatrix prequels, which show that the machines wanted - and tried repeatedly - to peacefully coexist with humans. Instead of wiping humans out when they won the war, they took pity on them and gave them the world they wanted. While using them as a power source. Symbiotic!
Reply Hide All See All 3 Replieshuh Thank you, never thought about it that way..
Nicely put. I think there is an article on Cracked (forget which one) where the the columnist talks about how the robots are the good guys or at the very least the lesser of evils. Not to say they didn't have their extremists though.
I love the 'haunted' house/garden episode of Animatrix. What I like at the end is the agents. They seem less scary than in the film and more like cops.
Originally the humans were in fact the machine. Their brains served as biocomputer components of the machine they were fighting against. But for some bizarre reason they changed them into batteries. they thought viewers who could understand an incredibly complex multilayered scifi story couldnt understand biocomputers (which btw we can create right this minute)
That's a legitimate criticism of The Matrix. Yet whenever I watch it, Morpheus's lecture about "25,000 BTUs of body-heat" and "more more bio-electricity than 120-volt battery" just seems so authoritative and scientific.
ReplyFor the Matrix, why not do both? Harvest energy from the core and also from humans. As long as humans are an energy source and appeased in their own virtual world, there is no threat of war/rebellion/revolution.
ReplyAlso the reason the Matrix wasn't a perfect world was because humans did not like it, and in effect a perfect world created an imperfect Matrix... meaning lots of people would wake up (which defeats the purpose of putting them in the first place).
The architect balanced the Matrix while the Oracle created the chaos - it was a system of checks and balances to create a "Good enough" world for us. >_
"There is no threat of war/rebellion/revolution"
... Wait, when did that happen? I thought the three movies were about people being pissed about being used as an energy source, and you didn't seem to change that.
here's a cinematosophical thought: what if the actual program of the matrix was that every single person in it was Neo, everything else (including the cake, and bad knee armor) was a lie, and that by getting each person to achieve resurrection was kind of like overclocking a processor?
ReplyI couldn't read this because of the sarcastic tone. It angried up my blood and made me punch a hole in my wall.
ReplyAnother thing that baffles me about The Matrix, is why did the machines program the Matrix to be so damn boring? If i had the choice between battling an apocalyptic horde of robots or working in a damn cubicle i'd choose the robots fighting every time, and i know i'm not alone in that viewpoint.
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesInstead of "over-worked, under-payed cubicle worker simulator 3000" why not put all humans in something like "millionaire, playboy, heavy-metal super-star/espionage agent simulator 3000"?
The movie specifically addresses your question, stating that the human mind rejected perfect realities- so the robots simulated the "height of human civilization"- the 1990's.
Ah, nice catch dahboigh. I completely forgot about the existence of Paradise Syndrome. It's also been a while since i watched The Matrix.
For the love of God, you would rather actually be risking your life every day against evil robots than live a normal life and play video games in which you fight evil robots? You know those times in the game that you die and have to reload? Yeah, in real life, that's called death, and there's no reload.
why did the machines even need to give the humans a simulated world? why not just sedate them?
Replyhow about Terminator 2? why did the T-1000 not just get out of the truck, form himself into a large, sharp wheel, and just roll over john like the annoying little roadkill he is?
And why have the matrix world be 1999? That way they are raising a civilization with hackers and phone phreaks. Set it in 1899 and they be trying to hack into the matrix with telegraph keys. make it 1799 and they'd be using butter churns.
Maybe the machines got all machine-logic on the situation and analyzed life expectancy rates in 1799... Or maybe the machines wanted to build a world with an actual digital record of it to make it legit...? Or maybe it's just social commentary on how in the late 90's everything is so pre-packaged and boring that it could seem like a form of social control.
what i never understood about the matrix was why they even needed the matrix. they say it's a prison for your mind, but if they were siphoning off our natural electricity then, since the brain is basically electricity, there is basically no mind to imprison. you've given them a electrical lobotomy
ReplyBecause Since the machines won the war they still had no "guts"( Yes i know they are machines but bear with me here ) to Kill off Human brains completely, all they actually wanted is to coexist with the humans which enslaved them in the first place and now to my point about them being machines, The way I see it is that humans somehow managed to simulate emotions into the original AI's which started the revolution, which kind explains why it started in the first place since a Computer without feelings wouldn't care if you enslaved it or not..