"fake" things in movies that piss you off.

[Cerb]

When the good guy is being shot at, and everyone misses. But when he shoots, he gets all his targets in one shot.

Yup. Reality tends to be the reverse.
Here's a nice little bit I found, whilst looking up stuff for recent P&N threads:

Family member Dr. Werner Weissenhofer reports from Vienna. It seems that a felon armed with a 357 revolver robbed a bank. As he left the bank, he was accosted by a policeman whom he murdered with one shot. Great excitement ensued, with the felon taking hostages and racing madly around from one store to another. When the forces of law and order had been mobilized and surrounded the goblin, a policeman volunteered to trade himself to the goblin for two hostages. This offer was accepted, at which time the felon fired at the policeman and seriously wounded him. The forces of law and order opened up with everything they had, which was mostly AUG and Glock fire. Shortly, the goblin killed himself with one round. He had fired three times and achieved three hits. The police, according to their official report, fired 1,261 rounds without drawing blood.

At one time, we used to refer to an event of this sort as a "Chinese Fire Drill." Later we came to call if "Father's Day in Harlem." After the interment of the Ayatollah Khomeini, we began to call it "An Iranian Funeral." Now, I guess we can call it "A Viennese Bank Robbery."

As I have often stated, if someone wants to shoot at me, I sure hope he does it on full-auto.

Sprinting while firing a pistol one handed and actually hitting the target.

I know a guy that can do that...well, except for the squinting part. I don't think it's common, though.

Drop the magazine out of a semi-automatic handgun and it's now empty.

(I will note, however, that I know I've seen this error corrected in more modern action flicks)

Visibly empty, or just won't fire? I can't say that I've seen that one, but not firing is actually not uncommon, these days, and is an intentional safety feature.

On the same note, there's the silly showy actions with guns that don't automatically prepare the next shot, that I think pretty much every movie in recent times, except maybe Saving Private Ryan, has been guilty of.

Bullets throwing people back depends on the movie. FI, it's silly in an otherwise serious Western, but fits just fine in something like Desperado.

MovieOS. Props to whoever made the good compromise for Jurassic Park.

All the people moaning about hacking or computer usage not being realistic can you stop for a minute and consider how much eye bleach you would need after seeing some 20 year old overweight spotty nerd typing endless lines of code then stopping to navigate to redtube on his laptop so he can masturbate while eating cheetos then finishing in a wank sock before getting back to the hacking.

They could make him European, or just abnormal. That'd be OK. The real issue is how silly the interface is, not the person doing it. Better to just make it really quick, and not try to make any kind of suspenseful scene of it.

I'm pretty sure that one was NCIS, which is basically everything wrong with television all at once. Fuck that show.

It depends on the writers. Some episodes are amazingly well-done, in which fakeries only exist for expedient story-telling (fast forensic finds, fake IP addresses, that sort of thing), but many are really bad.

Plain incorrect technology, such as open computers with non-computer parts.

Electrical power gear that looks like signal equipment, or is just PC parts.

Fancy military, paramilitary, or marine gear with plain consumer ports (here's a more realistic example, if you've never seen the sorts of connectors they really use).

Oh, and they never ever have to worry about adapting the correct interfaces. In Movies and TV, balanced v. unbalanced, POTS v. VOIP, etc., always just work, and complex computer networking technologies never even have hiccups, much less fail.

Cars that are supposed to look beat up in movies, but are in unnaturally pristine shape (they don't even spread fake grime on them!). Bonus points when they use multiple cars, with different configurations, and show the differences with close-ups.

CPR works almost 100% of the time. It only fails when it was obviously done in vain.

When they don't edit out the sound of the air ramp. I can suspend my disbelief about both the fact that the characters are now projectiles, and that they were lifted up into the air...but the, "phoom-thunk," of an air-ramp ruins it, even in a silly action movie.

Character pulls fire alarm. All sprinkler heads shoot water everywhere.

I hadn't even thought of that. That is a good WTF, isn't it...

I know how you feel, my wife loves NCIS but cannot watch the real stories because they affect her too much, women!

...and men. I can laugh at movie violence and gore all day long, but the real thing gets me.

 

[Adrenaline]

When something breaks or gets destroyed and is right back in the next scene.

 

[randomrogue]

I used to let these things bother me but now I'm more bothered by friends who sit there and complain about things like this. It's a movie. Suspension of disbelief is part of the experience.

The only thing I don't like is when the effects are god awful and when they have someone speaking a foreign language who obviously can't.

 

[disappoint]

When something breaks or gets destroyed and is right back in the next scene.

Can information be destroyed? When? Where? Why? What? How much have you...

Finish the sentence. Finish him.

 

[SamQuint]

I got a good one,

They are showing a car racing or in a high speed chase and the driver thinks I need to go faster, then boom they cut to him shifting gears. Like there is always a magic super speed gear they are holding back, I won't use the fast gear unless I really need to! Bam shift gears then boom all of sudden their car goes super fast.

Pisses me off the most in racing movies.

 

[SamQuint]

This song is for you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sqz5dbs5zmo

Exactly! They need to retire this cliche as soon as possible.

 

[Kev]

When the 'nerd' is trying to hotwire a door access panel, and the 'jock' loses patience and says "Let's try it my way" and shoots it and it opens.

 

[Zeze]

When the 'nerd' is trying to hotwire a door access panel, and the 'jock' loses patience and says "Let's try it my way" and shoots it and it opens.

And you bet your ass later the jock tries to brute-force something and fails, the nerd solves it with his smarts. And he says the equally groan worthy line like "I told you so."

 

[dbk]

I never see smokers ash or put out their cigs in movies.. Often times it just disappears from their hands

 

[foghorn67]

She's just faking it.

You know how a real man can tell if she's faking it?

A real man won't care.

 

[Red Storm]

I never see smokers ash or put out their cigs in movies.. Often times it just disappears from their hands

They just toss that stuff on the ground.

 

[foghorn67]

Finally the poor guy living in an apartment or home they obviously could never afford in real life. They always live in some huge place. This happens a lot in movies based in New York.

This. I think filmmakers are so far from reality, they don't realize this.
It's starting to get ridiculous.

 

[cronos]

investigate a suspect's house and logging in to his computer by guessing the password after looking around the desk and found a picture of the suspect and his dog. of course, the password is the dog's name.

 

[Paratus]

That's where the terrorists in True Lies did well. Set a nuke, then cover that shit in concrete. Ain't nobody defusin' this bitch. Fortunately they made up for that with incompetence in every other conceivable area (except getting motorcycles to defy gravity, because why bother outrunning a horse on a motorcycle on the ground when you can do it in the sky?).

You know I was just thinking about True Lies. Another area where they did well was in the opening shoot out down the mountain. Sure the bad guys all missed and Ahnold hit them all, but Ahnold actually reloads multiple times.

In fact Cameron seems to pay attention to detail more often than most directors. He tends to show the guns in detail and keeps track of the rounds, (see Aliens, Terminator, T2, etc)

 

[gorcorps]

Why does every single fantasy character regardless of race, origin, or class have an English accent? That applies to games as well. Why would hobbits and elves have the same f'ing accent?

 

[ViperXX]

The Matrix scene in the lobby. Neo is firing a uzi style looking weapon which should fire some sort of pistol round.. 9mm. But the shell casings falling to the ground are clearly rifle casings.. .223, 5.56.

Endless ammo, example the new Resident Evil movie. Her gun never runs out of ammo. She doesn't even carry any magazines to reload with.

 

[CZroe]

Security camera footage with dramatic and often changing "dramatic" angles. Also usually B&W but have sound. I remember passing a soap on TV and saw the security cam switch back and forth between zoomed face shots of whichever person was talking.

 

[Ryun]

Anything that involves enlarging a (usually very small) portion of an image that results in fidelity equal to or greater than the original image.

http://media.moronail.net/images/stories/dg_pictures/0910/2010.jpg

 

[jhansman]

Sex. Really. If I wanted to watch two actors get it on, I'd get porn. Skip to the fade out and get on with the story, if there is one.

 

[AstroManLuca]

Anything that involves enlarging a (usually very small) portion of an image that results in fidelity equal to or greater than the original image.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uoM5kfZIQ0

 

[Kadarin]

Anything that involves enlarging a (usually very small) portion of an image that results in fidelity equal to or greater than the original image.

http://media.moronail.net/images/stories/dg_pictures/0910/2010.jpg

Also note that often security footage is filmed at NASA-level resolutions.

 

[shortylickens]

Sex. Really. If I wanted to watch two actors get it on, I'd get porn. Skip to the fade out and get on with the story, if there is one.

Thats a big one. Theres a general rule in cinema that all scenes must somehow contribute to the plot.
The only time sex does that is in erotic thrillers and even then it isnt always necessary.
Basic Instinct was about a woman using sex to manipulate people, it actually mattered there.
And actually the Douglas/Tripplehorn scene wasnt really necessary if you think about it.

 

[Atomic Playboy]

Basic Instinct was about a woman using sex to manipulate people, it actually mattered there.
And actually the Douglas/Tripplehorn scene wasnt really necessary if you think about it.

The goal was to give everyone a boner thus depriving their brain of oxygen in the hopes that they would overlook some fairly ridiculous plot points. A similar strategy was used by Wild Things. And it totally works, because I seem to recall some of the twists in those movies being silly, but when I attempt to close in on specifics, I suddenly find it very hard to concentrate on anything but shifting my seating position.

 

[Aikouka]

A similar strategy was used by Wild Things.

That's the movie with Denise Richards and that lucky SOB, right? All I can remember from that movie is the hotel scene. :$

 

[BladeVenom]

Anytime they deal with guns, computers, or science they usually get it wrong.