No Sympathy for Stupidity

[Callate]

Well, while on the subject of Prometheus... the characters in that were pretty fucking stupid.

Let us not forget our heroine the scientist, whose father we later find died of Ebola, who takes off her helmet because, hey, "the air is breathable".



God, I wanted to like that movie... I still the Fassbender's performance as David was pretty good... But oh, so dumb.

 

[undeadexistentialist]

My gf is a bit of a Harry Potter fan (why do I feel the need to justify this? Whatever) so when watching the movies over her shoulder I usually pick up more than a few gripes.

1. Apparently truth serum is a real thing, and apparently it's easy enough to put together that the potions teacher at a high school has access to it. And is it used in trials? Including trials trying to determine whether or not people were compelled by evil magic to do the dark lord's bidding, and there's apparently no way to tell who was compelled and who wasn't? Does anybody mention it when they're trying to work out how things went wrong? Does it ever come up in ANY context other than threatening Harry Bloody Potter? Of course not.

2. After Harry uses magic to defend Dudley from the Death Eater and he's put on trial (without the use of truth serum OF COURSE), and Dumbledore suggests justifying his actions with self-defense, the Minister for Magic (the Minister presiding over a CRIMINIAL trial no less) suggests that the law could be removed. In front of the entire frigging court, FILLED with officials he proposes to remove the legal right to self-defense specifically to convict one child. And who mentions it? Nobody. Apparently this is perfectly alright behaviour (yeah, I get that the Ministry is SUPPOSED to be corrupt, but come on, they're not even trying to hide it).

3. In the Goblet of Fire, after not putting his name in the goblet, Harry is apparently expected to compete because he has been joined by a "binding magical contract". A binding contract on a 14 year old -yep, sure (alright, fine, magic, moving on), but more importantly, this is a competition that was originally stopped because too many people frigging DIED. Leaving aside what could possibly possess them to start the bloody thing up again, what could the penalty be for breaking a magical contract (that he never entered into) that it's worse than competing?

4. Order of the Phoenix. How many times have the order individually beaten Voldemort? None. How many times have they, personally, gone up against Him? None. How many times has Harry beaten Him? 6 or 7. How many times has he gone up against Him? When he was 1 year old, plus every single year since he started high school. So what does the Order conclude? Obviously Harry can't be involved, he's too young. Should we tell him what's going on? Of course not! Why, if we keep him totally in the dark, his ignorance is SURE to keep him safe from the arrogant, psychotic snake-person whom he has defeated at LEAST 7 times over the course of his life! He may have made attempts on Harry's life every year for the last 6 or 7 years, but I'm sure that THIS is the year he'll be left alone. Dumbledore is also guilty of this. Harry talks to Sirius about he feels angry all the time. My opinion? That's a completely reasonable reaction considering you're surrounded by MORONS.

*deep breath* Rant over. Peace.

 

[carnex]

Well, while on the subject of Prometheus... the characters in that were pretty fucking stupid.

Let us not forget our heroine the scientist, whose father we later find died of Ebola, who takes off her helmet because, hey, "the air is breathable".



God, I wanted to like that movie... I still the Fassbender's performance as David was pretty good... But oh, so dumb.

That is actually one of examples of faith. He has faith in "engineers", that they predicted humans coming to that moon base and adjusted conditions for future visitors. They are basically gods. Those with scientific inclinations don't see that as "interesting enough" to act that stupidly and are in group so the don't get sidetracked etc...

But I have forgotten another bit of stupidity that throws spanners in cogs of this theory. The surprise when they find life on moon they came to because they were convicted they will find life on it. Does not make any sense.

But I can't stop laughing at "Wile E. Coyote" scene of running from the wheel

 

[Jacques Joseph]

Also, zombie movies in general:

1. That one guy that gets infected and decides it´s best not to tell anyone and go on like nothing happened.

2. The rest of the group when they hesitate to kill that guy, even when he´s begun changing into a zombie. No, we have to wait until the transformation is complete and until the newborn zombie has caused some damage/put the whole group in danger before we shoot him cause that´s how cool we are.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Veritaserum...yeah...

Especially as the book/movie it was introduced was the one in which they point out that there's no way of telling if a Death Eater was Imperiused or not.

Batman, etc, can grab the idiot ball hard, sometimes.
Superheroes, etc, were they would rather leave psychos alive, and let many die, rather than one kill, they save many, are stupid.

Worse, when they are posing an imminent threat to others and the only guaranteed way of stopping them is to kill them. Police are allowed to kill under those circumstances, you have police snipers to do just that.

Secondly, assuming Batman lets them go, the US/others could justify skipping a lot of rules and assassinating people if they were talking about the Joker.

The end of X-Men3, where

Spoiler

Magneto seems to have been released...he's committed attempted murder or actual murder against every non-mutant on the planet at least once. Assuming the US let him go for some reason, literally every nation in the world would want to get him. The only way he could survive is if the special forces of several dozen nations went after him at the same time and got stuck in the traffic jam they'd cause.

 

[LittleWings]

2. After Harry uses magic to defend Dudley from the Death Eater and he's put on trial (without the use of truth serum OF COURSE), and Dumbledore suggests justifying his actions with self-defense, the Minister for Magic (the Minister presiding over a CRIMINIAL trial no less) suggests that the law could be removed. In front of the entire frigging court, FILLED with officials he proposes to remove the legal right to self-defense specifically to convict one child. And who mentions it? Nobody. Apparently this is perfectly alright behaviour (yeah, I get that the Ministry is SUPPOSED to be corrupt, but come on, they're not even trying to hide it).

Isn't that basically why they acquitted him? Because the Minister clearly had a personal agenda against him?

3. In the Goblet of Fire, after not putting his name in the goblet, Harry is apparently expected to compete because he has been joined by a "binding magical contract". A binding contract on a 14 year old -yep, sure (alright, fine, magic, moving on), but more importantly, this is a competition that was originally stopped because too many people frigging DIED. Leaving aside what could possibly possess them to start the bloody thing up again, what could the penalty be for breaking a magical contract (that he never entered into) that it's worse than competing?

Just guessing (I'm not really a huge fan either, tbh), but maybe the penalty was straight up dying. Might as well try to compete...

 

[Pikey Mikey]

to be fair one does not play a tales game for the story but he game play........also I liked the ending it was funny

A lesson I learnt the hard way

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

I feel the same about a lot of characters. When something is searingly obvious and they don't see it, or they do something super stupid (like violate that quarantine you mentioned) over and over and over....UGH.

Actually I kind played with that in the RPG I made. You can CLEARLY see where the story is going to go. It's pretty obvious what's very likely to happen in the end. Main character doesn't see it because he doesn't WANT to see it. He refuses to consider the possibility. And then it happens. His response after recovering from the shock? "I'm a damn fool for thinking this would have turned out any differently".

In the end, the plot worked out pretty damn well. XD

Interesting. Do you have any links to your game and is it open to the public in any way?

Yep, here you go:

Spoiler

http://rpgmaker.net/games/4826/

I only share the link on forums when asked for one, because otherwise I'm afraid of mods frowning on it. XD

 

[Majinash]

I have one to beat all of yours. This one's stupidity goes not with the motives and the actions of the characters, but the physics of the movie itself.

Starship F'ing Troopers.

Where do I begin? The "bugs" are a danger to humanity because a) they live among us and eat our brains, b) they send Doogie Howser to relive his past and start opening people up at random, or c) they fart fire into space to knock asteroids into trajectories that, though the separation is light-years, still conduct tactical strikes against Earth? If you picked "C", you're a cynical bastard, or you've seen the movie, but you're right! ("B" kinda happens, but as an Earth scientist, he at least opens up the bug he's working with.)

The heroes act sci-fi stupid in having high technology and space superiority (except for the fire-farting bugs acting as artillery, I guess), yet they grab guns and make troop landings against an enemy that is mostly dangerous close-up. The only way they could be dumber is if they lodged bayonets instead of shooting. Apparently glassing the planet from orbit wasn't a priority. Now, I will freely admit that I have not seen this movie lately, but I remember shaking my head, picking up my jaw, and just NOT believing how mind-numbingly stupid they portrayed humanity to be. At least that cartoon Roughnecks was a fun watch. Maybe someone can poke holes and provide some justification for a few things in the movie, but on the whole, it's the stupidest movie with the most laughable premise I've seen.

It is because the book was simply too hard to adapt for a mainstream movie. In the book the bugs are smart, like they have guns and explosives and shit smart. They shoot those asteroids because they do have technology on their side. The movie of course couldn't figure out how to make them bugs AND give them guns, because people seem less tolerant to that on the big screen.

Humanity didn't have the technology edge in starship troopers, both sides had some pretty powerful weapons and if I remember it wasn't a 1sided war like Halo.

The problem was the movie writing making them bugs with nothing but claws and jaws and poop lasers, and somehow still make the war pretty even. How do you arm people with guns (that are actually pretty effective at killing the bugs) and not have them completely win every fight? Thus humans had to act pretty stupid to be losing the war.

To justify it in movie? Humanity knew almost NOTHING about the bugs. We didn't know how they would fight, what kind of bugs there were, or how best to kill them. When the humans lost their first major battle they blamed it on a horrible understanding of their enemy and appointed a new commander who's motto was "to kill the bug we must understand the bug".

Then as the movie progressed, we saw mobile infantry who had been fighting the bugs for awhile, who understood how to fight them and did a pretty damn good job. The roughnecks managed to do a pretty good job on Planet K despite being outnumbered World War Z style.

While I agree they WAY overdid how humans reacted to the bugs in the movie, I think it was mostly planned so it could contrast to the end of the movie when people have gotten a lot better... also we don't mention the sequels.

Give the book a read. Completely different, from pacing to tone to everything. They are the "Mobile Infantry" because they have giant fucking exo-suits that let them jump hundreds of feet... making them very mobile. I suggest not watching the movie for awhile before reading the book, you'll get more out of it if the movie isn't fresh in your mind.

 

[ecoho]

to be fair one does not play a tales game for the story but he game play........also I liked the ending it was funny

A lesson I learnt the hard way

may I suggest tales of vesparia then? it has one of the better stories and still great combat.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Gay horse, for zero reason.

Transgender horse, for a cheap gag. Only transgender "character" in his run. Yeah...

It is because the book was simply too hard to adapt for a mainstream movie.

Not as such, they were already making a movie and then got the rights to Starship Troopers afterwards, and then changed it. Sorta what happened with Catwoman.

 

[Darth Rosenberg]

Ned Stark from A Game of Thrones.

To be fair on old Ned, season 1 is basically 'Starks done stoopid'. In fact I'd say on the show they mostly come across as a bit dim in general (although Arya's fairly savvy).

Topic: can't actually think of any examples at the moment, so I'll just throw my hat on Prometheus's hat stand of dumbness.

 

[Majinash]

Not as such, they were already making a movie and then got the rights to Starship Troopers afterwards, and then changed it. Sorta what happened with Catwoman.

It seems as though they got the rights for Starship Troopers while they were still in pre-production. Also it seems the director didn't even bother reading the book, as he admits in the director's commentary that he only read the first few chapters before getting "bored and depressed". This looks to be less of a "we already have the movie filmed lets add some different names to make it Starship Troopers" and more "we have this epic last stand fort battle planned out, lets put that into a Starship Troopers movie"

I still think it is for the better, as I can't imagine them ever being able to adapt the book well. Between bugs armed with guns, giant jetpack exo-suits and the slims (skinnies?) It would have looked awful in the 90s.