6 Movie Heroes Who Actually Made Things Worse
WARNING: SPOILERS.
The typical Hollywood blockbuster has a pretty straightforward plot, with the good guy thwarting the bad guy's evil schemes and then kicking him off the Hoover Dam onto an exploding submarine.
But here's a fun little game you can play: watch a movie and ask yourself what would had happened if the hero hadn't showed up at all. You'll be surprised how often things would have actually turned out for the better.
#6.
The Inglourious Basterds
The Plot:
Brad Pitt and his Jewish commandos rampage through World War II Europe, killing the asses off of every Nazi they find.
Honesty in advertising.
They catch wind of an upcoming film screening that Hitler and the rest of the Nazi higher-ups will be attending and concoct a shoddy plan to infiltrate and destroy them.
Wait, are we going to try to complain about a plan to kill Hitler?
Well, maybe this Hitler.
The Problem:
Yep. What they don't realize is that the screening is already a brilliant plan to assassinate the Nazi leaders that would've gone off flawlessly even if--in fact, especially if--they had just stayed out of it.
The lady running the theater, Shoshanna, is actually a French Jew in disguise, seeking revenge for her murdered family at the hands of the S.S. She manages to fool all the higher ups, including Hitler and Goebbels, into gathering together in a single building which she intends to seal up tighter than a pickle jar and burn to the ground.
The only way it could have possibly gone wrong is if some absolute moron showed up at the reception and began acting absurdly suspicious.
When the Basterds show up, trying to fake speaking Italian even though they barely know a word of it, Nazi superman Colonel Landa spots them immediately and hauls them out of the theater. Only the fact that Landa decides at that moment to turn on his superiors (and let the attack happen) prevents him from derailing the whole thing.
He may be a sadistic mass-murderer, but we just can't stay angry at that face!
Meanwhile, two of the basterds remain in the theater with bombs strapped to their legs, which also proves totally unnecessary since the doors are already locked and the fire is already started. Hitler and his cronies had no way out, and the place was about to turn into a blast furnace. The two basterds essentially blow themselves up for no reason.
Brad Pitt's clumsy intervention allows the murderous Landa to escape certain burnery death and make a deal with the American government for his freedom. Brad Pitt gives Landa a forehead scar, true, but this hardly seems adequate punishment for being an instrumental part of mass genocide seeing as how facial reconstructive surgery has been around since WWI and unsightly skin blemishes can be covered up by strategically placed headwear.
"Hope you like dew-rags, mother-fucker."
If They'd Just Stayed Away:
Not only would the Nazi brass have died, but Landa too. And the two basterds, along with their actress friend (who gets strangled by Landa) would have lived to see the end of the war. Everybody's happy.
#5.
Naomi Watts in The Ring
The Plot:
Naomi Watts plays a journalist investigating a string of teenager deaths. She figures out they are connected to a mysterious videotape that unleashes a murderous ghost on all those who watch it.
Pictured: Journalism.
She eventually figures out that the only way to avoid death at the hands of the tape ghost is to make copies and unleash it on strangers. She does just that.
The Problem:
Did we mention that, before Watts intervened, the only copy of the video is in a ridiculously isolated motel in the middle of the goddamn mountains? Where no one was likely to ever watch it again?
Instead, Watts brings the tape with her into the city, which results in both her son and her quasi-boyfriend watching it, effectively dooming them both. In her struggle to find a way around death by phantom, she inadvertently releases the vengeful ghost from her prison and it kills her boyfriend.
But hey, we all make mistakes.
Watts discovers that the only way around psychic drowning at the hands of a dead girl is to make copies of the video and show them to other people, thus spreading the ghost murder like a cancer throughout the rest of the world.
If She'd Just Stayed Away:
Imagine if, instead of buying into the concept of a haunted video tape in the first place, she just chalked the deaths up to the things that normally kill teenagers in these movies (underage drinking and premarital sex).
And disembodied hands.
The tape would've stayed in the aforementioned goddamn mountains and probably wound up in the trash when the motel either went out of business or decided to convert the rooms to DVD.
#4.
Kick-Ass
The Plot:
Aaron Johnson plays Kick-Ass, a geek who decides to become a superhero, despite a lack of gadgets or training or anything else that would aid him in the task.
Jew-fro notwithstanding.
The Problem:
In the movie, we see him stop precisely one crime--the savage beating of some random guy by a gang. This seems noble until you consider that we have no idea what the man is being beaten for. He looks just as shady as his assailants, so for all we know this guy shot somebody's grandmother...
... and Kick-Ass just thwarted some old fashioned street justice. You know, the kind that Kick-Ass himself wants to hand out.
Even worse, he gets in the way of two actual superheroes, Big Daddy and Hit Girl.
Unlike Kick-Ass, these two are highly competent and ruthlessly deadly vigilantes who realize early on that Kick-Ass, while not much of a hero, has his heart in the right place and offer him their assistance should he ever need it. Then the two get back to their intricate plan to take down Frank D'Amico, a major crime boss responsible for the death of Big Daddy's wife (and Hit Girl's mother), something that Hit Girl has literally spent her entire life preparing for.
Kick-Ass proceeds to absolutely wreck this plan by getting fooled by D'Amico's son and leading his thug army to Big Daddy's secret hideout, which immediately results in Hit Girl getting shot out of a window by McLovin.
The acne-dusted face of super-villainy.
They then carry Big Daddy and Kick-Ass to a warehouse and torture them before eventually burning Big Daddy to death with kerosene. Hit Girl shows up in time to rescue Kick-Ass and the two manage to carry out the plan she and her father had started, but none of this would've been necessary if Kick-Ass had just stayed home and played World of Warcraft.
If He'd Just Stayed Away:
Hit Girl and Big Daddy would've had their revenge and then gone to Disneyland or something. McLovin would have never been inspired to become a supervillain, and Kick-Ass would have saved some serious money on hospital bills.
hope you like do-rags mother f****r LMAO
ReplyHere's one thing they never covered in Avatar that I've always wondered: Why aren't there times when its COMPLETELY dark? I'm not talking night; I'm talking, Pandora's a moon to Polyphemus. So there's gonna be times when its behind the planet and its dark for more than just 12 hours. They were on Pandora for a while; I'm sure they completed an entire cycle around the planet. So why wasn't there a period of extended darkness?
ReplyYou know, a good majority of these are meant to be that way. Like, I don't know: Inglorious Basterds, The Ring, Kick-Ass, and Harry Potter.
ReplyInglorious Basterds was set up to show the cluster-fuck of a problem that assassinating Hitler was quickly becoming. Their incompetence is very much intended.
The Ring is supposed to be horrible BECAUSE of how she found it, and how it started killing people. One element of the horror is the element of it breeding off of peoples needs to keep living.
Harry Potter AND Kick Ass are both about stupid kids jumping the gun. It is A HUGE part of the story, and is important to the message. Not only that, but trying to suggest that Big Daddy was doing things absolutely correct disturbs me. He's supposed to be over the top and fanatical. He's a sympathetic character but he brought his daughter into this mess, and it is suggested much earlier that he is going down a path of no return.
Finally, your last two movies, Con Air, and Avatar. Both are just bad movies, but I'm not dismissing them right off:
Con Air: Yeah, okay, but you can't really blame Cage for not getting that memo, and earlier the rather villainous nature of some of the "good guys" wanting to gun down the plane also complicated matters, because they were fully intending not to stop the plane, but to blow it to holy hell as a message to the WORLD! It was written in to help explain Cage's more desperate actions later on.
Avatar: I think, as has been pointed out plenty here, that either way, the Na'vi are pretty fucked when we decide to do whatever we're going to do to them, so yeah. If they had tried to handle things peacefully, their whole way of life would have been torn apart, and the eco-system they are living in would cause many to die from famine, disease, and general douche-baggery by us. The minerals we are getting from under the tree would have raped their world's resources of something they needed, and we have already done this to our home, which although not shown, is mentioned.
The problems with them fighting back are as you stated, but hey, at least they get to fight for it. Also, happily ever after is a stupid thought that NEVER works. Okay, so they aren't done dealing with the humans. Sequel time if it makes money, or imagination time for fans of the property.(Those poor, poor people who think this was good entertainment.)
Well if the Na'vis problems were permanently solved there wouldn't be plans for Avatar 2 & 3... wait, that does suck!
ReplyTo everyone saying that the mercs in Avatar should have just nuked Hometree - the RDA forces were not allowed to bring WMDs. It says so in the Avatar guidebook. Which makes sense, because the RDA was going to Pandora to mine for Unobtainium, not declare war. (At least, not in *this* movie.) In fact, the journey to Pandora was so expensive (something like millions of dollars per POUND of cargo) that they brought only the bare essentials; if they could make it themselves on Pandora, they left it behind. This is why the mercs don't have bitchin' ray guns: it was more cost-effective to build older weapons on Pandora.
Reply Hide All See All 6 RepliesAnd besides, nuking their precious Unobtainium seems a little counterproductive. I know not everyone owns the guidebook and can't be expected to know the thing about the nukes, but really, when is nuking the thing you want ever a good plan?
Examining the movie shows that the humans are actually pretty smart - the Colonel correctly deduces that destroying the Tree of Souls will ruin the Na'vi (and probably the entire ecosystem of the planet) and plans to immediately bomb the s**t out of it. The Na'vi, meanwhile, plan an attack that invites their own annihilation in the future. Really, the only reason we were rooting for the Na'vi was that the humans were just that goddamn evil. I think this was done deliberately. Among the deleted scenes for the movie are shots from Earth, which is a polluted shithole, and a scene in which the Colonel threatens Selfridge for trying to interfere with his attack on the Na'vi. Notice how both of them make the humans appear more sympathetic - the humans aren't butchering the Na'vi for fun, they're trying to improve their quality of life; and Selfridge baulks at the Colonel's "kill 'em all" strategy, which transfers the onus from humanity at large to the Colonel. The writers deliberately removed these scenes to make the humans even more one-dimensional. Which seems like exactly the opposite of what a good writer would do, but if we saw that the humans were just trying to save their polluted Earth, we might've started feeling sorry for them, and that was totally not the point of the movie. We were supposed to side with the Na'vi. Sure, not many people would agree with the wanton slaughter of innocent natives, even if there was a good cause involved, but Cameron just wanted to make a good-looking action movie, not confuse the viewers with a complicated moral lesson.
I think Jake Sully would have realized the humans would retaliate, which is why I have a feeling Avatar 2 is going to be about Sully training the Na'vi in modern warfare (Na'vi with guns) in anticipation of the counterattack, and worrying that they might become like the humans in the process. This flies in the face of the absolute black and white morality of the first movie, but there's really no other way to play it: either the Na'vi smarten up or they get steamrolled when the humans decide to really bring the heat, which they will, since Unobtainium has become so essential on Earth. The guidebook explains that Unobtainium is the one thing that could recover the Earth and *save the entire human race*. Yeah, they're not gonna let that go.
Also, there probably wouldn't be an Avatar 2 at all if the Na'vi had just given up on Hometree and moved. Sully's Big Goddamn Hero moment was necessary to set up the central conflict of the next movie.
Calm down, Nerdling.
I wouldn't have felt bad if we saw just how polluted the Earth had bcome. We did that to ourselves. Hell, id have been rooting for the Na'vi even MORE to prevent their lush world from becoming that.
Wait. They are trying to obtain Unobtainium?? This sounds like something someone would make up for their intentionally bad show that makes fun of nerds in any 80s or 90s sitcom. That is the worst name for anything EVER! UNOBTAINIUM!?
I never watched avatar, because someone compared it to Pocahontas and I really hate that movie, but now I know something even more ridiculous. "They are trying to obtain the unobtainable, so lets call it 'UNOBTAINIUM!!!'" Did anyone, in the writing of this movie, take any time to explore how metal gets it's name? GEE-ZUS!
You know, sorry about the whole "unobtainium is the stupidest name for anything ever" rant, but you whole spiel is also pointless. YOU are the one who brought up nukes. The article brings up smart bombs, cruise missiles, and all the other "TACTICAL" weaponry that will be brought to force. Space Satellite lasers, and chemical weaponry are WAAAAAY more likely than nukes, and hey, ask anyone about "AGENT ORANGE" and see if they want to be exposed to it.
Ignorance more often begets confidence than knowledge. Saying "I didn't watch the movie, but..." only makes you look like an ignorant ass. I think people who didn't like Avatar expect too much from cinema, but at least they watched the movie before criticizing it.
Pocahontas got far less praise in its day than when Avatar came out. It was heavily criticized for being racist and playing fast and loose with history, and while the whole "we can understand each other because THE POWER OF LOVE" thing may fly with kids, every adult in the audience immediately cried bullshit. At least Avatar had a plausible explanation for why the natives could speak English!
Avatar may not have the most original story ever, but any film that can lay claim to being a new benchmark of film technology isn't something to sneeze at. Bottom line: Avatar, a bad movie? No. I've seen bad movies.
About nukes: To be clear, the guidebook said the RDA could not bring weapons of mass destruction. A nuke is just one kind of WMD. Biological weapons and giant space lasers are WMDs. If the RDA had used them, it would have looked VERY bad, like "war crime" bad. They could play off the destruction of Hometree by saying that they used gas first, and thus acted humanely. Believe it or not, there are rules about armed battles.
I'm amused by the allergic hatred some people have for the name "unobtainium", especially when they pretend they know something about science. The word "unobtainium" has been used since the 1950s by scientists describing materials that were costly or precious. If I remember right, some of the elements on the periodic table were given dummy names until the scientific community could decide on a proper one, because sometimes it takes them a while to agree on that shit. So it is entirely plausible that legitimate scientists would call something "unobtainium". If it causes you serious distress, just tell yourself they gave it a better name later.
"Really, the only reason we were rooting for the Na'vi was that the humans were just that goddamn evil."
You were rooting for the Na'vi? I sure wasn't.
well avatar ended stuipidly, but hey, they have said their making Avatar 2 and 3.
ReplyAlso with the tamohawk to the head comment, i almost thought it said arrow to the knee, and i was just like "man would he of regreted that a year later"
A problem with the unglorious Basterds argument. is that if the two basterds had just stay away, most of the nazi brass would have died with exception of hitler and goebbels, they were in a private area with an unlocked door guarded by some random nazi soldiers, he just needed to get out of the room and order his soldiers to break the glass doors that covered the cinema entrance and go back to germany to continue the war
ReplyNope, she had that covered too. Also, the depiction of how smoke works in a fire is pretty accurate. He would have had to survive 2 stories of a movie theater covered in it, AND, his assassins waiting outside(who both die FORCING the plan along THROUGH the basterds ineptitude.) while suffering from having no lungs. He was pretty dead either way.
"Hell, we're pretty sure this thing is arrow-proof." LOL
ReplyIn "Saving Private Ryan" the US army had more men killed than they ended up rescuing. Ironically, If Private Ryan and the others had just surrendered all those men would still be alive and Ryan and his buddies would soon be released when the war ended. The Germans treated US prisoners nicely because they knew the end of the war was near.
ReplyWut? How would they know Ryan had surrendered? Even if they did they are still in a war.. Ryans not the hero of the movie..
Uhm, do you understand what battle Ryan and the others would have been surrendering to at that point? Or did you miss the part where the soldiers, having made it to Ryan, decide to stay and fight that battle after seeing what the f**k was going down?
That was the battle of the f*****g bulge at the end of the movie. The point was, if serendipity didn't bring them Hanks' crew of bad-asses then we may have lost due to a sheer desperation wave of troops coming through that point.
Part of the reason they stay, is there is no way those soldiers COULD surrender that position without severe trouble.
Didn't the Fantastic Four destroy and entire bridge and hundreds of vehicles to save one dude or something?
ReplySteve Buscemi always escapes.*
Reply Hide All See All 3 Replies*Offer not valid in Denver.
Or Fargo.
Or Bowling Alleys.
Or Atlantic City
About number one: Stealth bomber? Cruise missiles? Unless unobtanium is destroyed by radiation (And I doubt that), they should have detonated an atomic bomb on top of the tree. Maybe they are waiting for the second film.
ReplyYes, because soaking an area you immediatly want to work in with radiationis ALWAYS a good idea.
You used Western expansion to show how people would keep fighting after one loss to explain about how Sully was bad, but what about the Native Americans that DID move away? Oh, that's right, they were later attacked anyways because the majority has no reason to keep promises or continuing moving forward. Even if the Navi moved to another tree, the army would eventually come knocking again and steal their s**t again.
ReplyAssuming they moved right on top of another giant pile of resourses that had already been esatblished as the largest in the movie.
I take it the writer of this article only read the one Harry Potter Book, and did so only for the sake of writing this article. The whole point of the Harry Potter series, especially the first book, is that you have this extremely young, inexperienced boy wizard who knows evil is afoot, yet feels he can't tell the proper authorities because 1) He thinks one of them is in on it anyway and 2) think they won't believe him and will end up expelled, and for good reason. HALF of that book/movie was about how one false move and EVERYONE gets expelled!
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesIt wasn't a story of 3 kids doing good detective work to thwart the bad guys, they could've made a movie out of the Cam Jansen, or Encyclopedia Brown Books if they wanted that. No, Harry Potter is about courageous, though inexperienced, yet ultimately successful meddling kids who band together to not only stop the dark lord, but defeat Slytherin......and also magic.
Sure, there was some shenanigans that weren't needed, but you don't expect an 11 year old to do EVERYTHING perfectly.
Face it; the books are exactly as described above: Harry and co do stupid s**t and a random Deux ex Machina is written in to fill in the lull of stupid created.
Time turner.
Also, Harry had kind of a good reason to believe the adults in the story would not trust him: he had been pooh-poohed by the teachers before. In the teachers' defense, he was *eleven*. An eleven-year-old who happened to hate Snape and was convinced that Snape was up to some shit. His credibility was far from rock-solid. Even though Harry was basically right, I'd have called bullshit if the teachers had actually believed him.
I'm sure someone pointed this out already, in response to a similar pointing-out as yours, but I believe the spelling "dew-rag" is supposed to have something to do with the very thick accent that Brad Pitt (the guy on the photo) uses in the movie...
ReplyI'm sure someone has pointed this out already, but it's "Do" rag, not "Dew" rag. It refers to a "hair-do".
ReplyKung Fu Panda. Upon hearing that Ti Lun will escape prison and devastate the peaceful valley of animal foodstuffs Master Shi Foo sends a goose messenger to the prison to ensure this doesn't happen. The Goose loses a feather in the prison and Ti Lun uses the feather to pick the lock on his restraints.
Reply#6 - Shoshana and the Basterds and were unaware of each other, right? I thought that was part of the fun. The audience knows that the theater is just going to get burned down, but we cringe as we watch Pitt and his boys almost ruin everything with their terrible Italian. right?
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesAgreed, and thank you for making here I didn't have to type it out. It's not bad movie directing, it's actually relatively GOOD movie directing. I forget the specific plot device, but I think there's a term for exactly what happened where the audience knows something the characters in the film don't know, which adds to the fun of watching the spectacle.
Dramatic irony
So? they still made things worse.. it does not mater they didnt know, its besides the point.
I knew there would be some of the Avatar nutjobs defending those poor pretty blue creatures. God what a piece of tripe that movie was. And notice many compare it to Dances With Wolves. Notice how things worked out for the Native Americans?
ReplyYes. I hope that in the second film they detonate a Little Boy on them. It's another planet where no one lives permanently and it's the most logical step if a whole planet hates you.
I made this observation about The Ring in another article but keep in mind that Samara's victims were bloated, rotting corpses. Even the laziest hack journalist would want to look into that.
ReplyHell, even if nothing happened to the bodies, like it did in the Japanese version, a group of healthy teenagers dying at the same time would warrant some kind of investigation.