6 Movie 'Jobs' That Serve Zero Purpose

6 The Super Hacker From Furious 7 Has To Locate A Guy Who's Perpetually Five Feet Away

The seventh time Dom Toretto and his team of Fast drivers decide to get Furious, they go up against super criminal Deckard Shaw. Shaw is the brother of the dude whom Dom's team exploded into a coma in the previous film, and he goes on a rampage which results in the death of fan-favorite character Han. The crew obviously has to track him down, but Shaw is one shifty dude, so they enlist the help of super hacker Ramsay, who has a program called "God's Eye," which can find Shaw anywhere on the planet. Getting her help draws the ire of a crazy mercenary group, but the constant threat of death is a small price to pay for the power to catch Shaw.

Another way they could catch Shaw? Stand still for, like, 30 seconds.

Everywhere the team goes, Shaw is there. He crashes Han's funeral, but before Dom can grab him and go Pitch Black on his ass, Kurt Russell shows up and offers help. If Dom helps him free Ramsey from the mercenaries, she can help him find Shaw -- the dude right fucking there, whom Dom was ten seconds away from killing. Ramsey's "help" allows Shaw to escape. That's like offering to help someone catch their dog by throwing firecrackers at it, then suggesting they break the world's greatest dogcatcher out of prison. It might be easier to just do it yourself, fellas.

Later, the team travels to Abu Dhabi to retrieve the God's Eye program and put the female characters in bikinis. They secure the drive, but guess who the hell shows up as they're making their escape?

Shaw, baby! They once again choose to escape with the tracking program instead of going after the guy they're hoping to find -- who, we can't stress this enough, is right there. Shaw has been tracking them across the planet the entire movie, but the team inexplicably claims they can't find him without help. Even if Ramsey managed to get God's Eye to work, it was only ever going to show them that Shaw was, like, hiding in the closet or waiting behind a plant in the living room.

5 What Is The Purpose Of Training Jurassic World's Velociraptors For Anything BUT War?

The primary villain in Jurassic World is InGen Security Chief Vic Hoskins. We know he's evil because he wants velociraptor trainer Owen Grady to turn his plucky reptiles into beasts of war. Grady opposes this, because that's not what he's put all these hours into training them for. But this brings up a question: What the hell is he training them for? Companionship?

It's cool that Grady's pet dinosaurs see him as the "alpha," but it's hard to discern any practical benefit to hiring a full-time employee who trains raptors to not kill him and him alone. He doesn't even claim any real control over the raptors, explaining, "It's a relationship. It's based on mutual respect."

So he's a hired ... friend?

InGen grows these monsters in a lab. The company's gotten so good at it that they built a dinosaur the world has never seen before, the Indominus Rex. They've got complete control over these beasts' genetic makeup, yet they still allow them to be vicious killers. It seems like Grady's whole job contradicts whatever the scientists intended. If they wanted chill dinosaurs, they could have simply bred scaly Pomeranians.

4 The Avatars In Avatar Are The Worst Possible Diplomats

Say you're a white American going to visit China for the first time. You want to make a good impression with the locals, so you decide to study up a little on their customs and culture. But instead of practicing holding chopsticks or learning which Transformers movie is their favorite, you throw on a kimono and Scotch-tape your eyes into slants. That's what the humans do in Avatar.

For some reason, the humans believe that the Na'vi would be more comfortable talking to a brain-jacked Na'vi than a regular human representative. So instead of putting on a gas mask and going out to say "Hi," they send what appear to be the reanimated Frankensteined corpses of Na'vi warriors. The Na'vi aren't fooled for a second.

They immediately know this is a creepy robot man whom they should not trust. The expedition's head guy, Parker Selfridge, berates his employees for failing to achieve this weirdly specific purpose of the avatar program. He tells the team, "You're supposed to be winning the hearts and minds of the natives. Isn't that the whole point of your little puppet show? If you walk like them, you talk like them, they'll trust you."

That's like if aliens from another galaxy attempted first contact by building a synthetic human-like creature with dead shark eyes and the comparative hand-eye coordination of a monkey that got into a bottle of Xanax. That's a goddamn horror movie. That makes the whole plan Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, but with somewhat more polite impostors.

Anyway, enjoy the four sequels.

3 What's The Point Of Hiring A Tracker For The Biggest Damn Ape Of All Time?

What comes to mind when you hear the words "King Kong"? Either a massive angry monkey or John Cheese's penis, right? How difficult do you think it would be to track either of those things down? You can see Cheese's dong from low orbit, and Kong is 104 feet tall. But John Goodman's character in Skull Island is worried he won't be able to find Kong without the help of expert tracker James Conrad, who asks, "Who or what am I tracking?"

The answer is a giant fucking monkey on a tiny, remote island.

After detailing a previous encounter with a massive monster, Goodman's character explains, "This planet doesn't belong to us. Ancient species owned this Earth long before mankind. I spent 30 years trying to prove the truth: Monsters exist. We specialize in the hunting of Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms." He's dedicated his whole life to finding massive monsters, but now he's worried he won't be able to track one without help from an expert -- as if anyone is more qualified than him.

When they arrive on Skull Island, Goodman bombs everything to shit with seismic charges to flush any huge creatures out of hiding. In that, he is successful.

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"Found one!"

Was Conrad somebody's unemployable nephew? Why did they hire this guy? They have a full military escort, including helicopters, explosives, and Samuel L. Jackson. Jackson's crew is probably as good, if not better, at traversing jungle terrain than some animal trapper. Plus, they brought machine guns. It's difficult to see what bonus skills they think they're getting out of Conrad, or how they justify the insane amount of money they would need to acquire his services.

And again, Kong is just ... so big, guys. He's the John Cheese's penis of apes. You literally can't miss him.

2 Apocalypse Assembles A Team Of Extraordinary Mutants ... Who Are All Collectively Useless Compared To Him

Apocalypse's team of "Horsemen" in X-Men: Apocalypse is hard to beat. He has Magneto, who can control all metal, Storm, who can control all weather, and Archangel and Psylocke, who are also there. But when you look at what powers Apocalypse himself possesses, his henchmen start to look pretty pointless.

Apocalypse tempts Magneto by amplifying his power. Now he's not merely manipulating some metal; he can pull whole buildings apart. That would be very useful if Apocalypse didn't already have the power to level cities himself. He instructs Magneto to destroy the rest of the world, because ... what? He wanted Magneto to do the dirty work while he napped?

It's even more of a joke for the rest of the Horsemen. Storm can summon lightning bolts to attack her enemies; Apocalypse can look at them funny and they all drown in rock. Archangel can fly and fling sharp metal feathers; Apocalypse can teleport. Psylocke can swing a sword real good; Apocalypse can cut your goddamn head off with a hyper-sandstorm.

Apocalypse has a healing factor that makes Deadpool look like a guy with a nut allergy giving a rimjob to Mr. Peanut. As far as he knows, there is nothing on Earth that can harm him. It's not until he meets Jean Grey and experiences her full Phoenix powers that he realizes he can be harmed at all. And there is no possible way that any of his followers could have protected him from the goddamned Phoenix -- including Storm, even though she's the coolest X-Person and there will be no debate about this.

1 The Caretaker From Harry Potter Is So Pointless It's Cruel

Hogwarts is a big castle, and they need somebody to keep the place clean and safe. In the past, a wizard has always done the job, but at the time The Boy Who Lived shows up, Argus Filch holds the position. Filch is a "squib," which means he was born to magic-wielding parents, but is unable to perform any magic himself. Which is weird, because most first-year students could take over Filch's responsibilities in between classes. If someone spills some dragon semen on the floor during Potions, Filch has to show up with some sawdust and a broom. Hermione could pop off a quick Tergeo spell to siphon it up, and everybody would be on their way. And that's even before you get to that army of sort-of-slave creatures Hogwarts employs to cook and clean.

But Filch has other duties, right? He's also a disciplinarian, in charge of making sure the kids aren't out of their dorms at night. If he isn't patrolling the halls, they might wander into a room with a dangerous creature in it. Except wizards have maps that can detect the location of anyone in the castle at any time. Hogwarts's surveillance state issues aside, why on Earth is this guy necessary?

The popular theory is that Dumbledore felt sorry for FIlch, so he gave him a job and a purpose. But what a frustrating job to give someone with what's basically a disability. That's the real-world equivalent of making a handicapped person the janitor of an entire shopping mall, but only letting them clean the floors with an angry cat dipped in Ajax.

Abraham survived Mexico City's latest earthquake, but you can help those that still need help here. You can say hi to him on Twitter here, or visit his DeviantArt here. Jordan Breeding also writes for Paste Magazine, the twitter, himself, and this article is perfect evidence that he has a pointless job.

Another job that's been rendered pointless is you doing the vacuuming -- that is, if you spring for a Roomba.

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