The Hostage Dilemma

[senordesol]

So I saw "Olympus Has Fallen". Now it while it was kind of maudlin in its starry-eyed patriotism, I will say that it was a decent action movie if nothing else. However, I did have one big problem with it: the bad guy's plan was to threaten hostages until he got everything he wanted. I won't spoil what he was after (on the off chance that any one here wants to see it) but I think its sufficient to say that he was not after the President's chili recipe.

So one high-order government official after another gives up their...ahem...'chili recipe' and the bad guys come within a hair's breadth of completing their plan because of it. So I walk out of the theater wondering 'what was their plan if no one gave in? If they just said "Yeah, go ahead and kill him, we'll just elect another one. He's not our King".'

I see the hostage dilemma thrown around a lot in media these days and I can't help but feel that it should the bad guy's last-ditch desperation move, rather than the action the entire plan hinges on. I remember in Black Ops 2; Menedez' is painted as this mastermind with an unbeatable plan, but he relies on this gambit to succeed in multiple instances...against Navy SEALs...the same guys who snipe pirates in the middle of rough seas. How is that a plan?

For me, it shatters my SoD, but I wonder if anyone finds this compelling? Would the notion of an unrelated/innocent party being threatened motivate you to give up your...um...chili recipe? I remember in an ME1 DLC, a bunch of Batarians were going to drop an asteroid on a planet. After narrowly stopping their plan and catching up with the perpetrators, the moral dilemma that was presented was either confront them or let two civilians die. These assholes had just proved capable of threatening HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS and I, as a military officer, am supposed to think just two aren't acceptable collateral damage? Puh-lease.

So why is this trope being used so often? Am I just a sociopath for thinking that when all has been weighed it would actually be better to go so far as to even shoot through the hostage to protect the...uh...chili recipe? (The recipe in this case being a McGuffin that dictates whether the bad guys' plan gets a chance to succeed or not)

 

[Vegosiux]

For me, it shatters my SoD, but I wonder if anyone finds this compelling? Would the notion of an unrelated/innocent party being threatened motivate you to give up your...um...chili recipe? I remember in an ME1 DLC, a bunch of Batarians were going to drop an asteroid on a planet. After narrowly stopping their plan and catching up with the perpetrators, the moral dilemma that was presented was either confront them or let two civilians die. These assholes had just proved capable of threatening HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS and I, as a military officer, am supposed to think just two aren't acceptable collateral damage? Puh-lease.

So why is this trope being used so often? Am I just a sociopath for thinking that when all has been weighed it would actually be better to go so far as to even shoot through the hostage to protect the...uh...chili recipe? (The recipe in this case being a McGuffin that dictates whether the bad guys' plan gets a chance to succeed or not)

If the situation is made in a vacuum, yeah, just let the chili chef get offed, not like you only have one of those. But I'd say even realistically, there'd be complications, and I suppose that's the card this one plays. Note that I completely agree with you here, and this kind of a situation is a WSoD killer for me as well, but this is where the fictional aspect tries to diverge from reality.

It's like "Oh, let's just give him the chili reicpe, we can still raid his kitchen later, when he's in the middle of cooking," and it's a foregone conclusion that that's exactly what's going to happen. The bad guy, in an overwhelming majority of cases, will be brought down before he cooks up the chili, or at least before manages to dump a ton of it in the city's water supply.

Oh I also agree with how completely retarded making a plan that hinges on taking hostages is in the first place. I mean, if you kill them you're definitely not getting the recipe, and if you don't and manage to get the recipe you'd be an idiot to think you got away scot free even if you demanded safe passage too...

 

[krazykidd]

I'm going to spoiler this because , i suck at talking in metaphore .

Spoiler

So i am assuming , you are talking about the cerberus codes? Well if you remember correctly , they were cracking the codes ( of which there were three ) so the hostages giving up their codes just sped up the process . Also , i think you are being too hard on the SoD part . Think of it in the point of view of the actual characters , we got the president , vice president and secretary who each have codes . These are people that see each other every day , know each other and their families , it's hard to watch them get tortured for their codes , hence why the president kept telling them to give up their codes because the won't get his ( he at no point was facing the computer to know they were cracking the codes anyways ). These are not soldiers, they have no combat experience , they are not trained to withstand torture or watch other be tortured and die . They are average people ( yes the president is an average person ) , so i can fully well believe that under such circumstances , the terrorists can squeese out information from these people . Now had they been milatary people i'm not sure it would have been as easy , but still not impossible.

 

[Albino Boo]

So why is this trope being used so often? Am I just a sociopath for thinking that when all has been weighed it would actually be better to go so far as to even shoot through the hostage to protect the...uh...chili recipe? (The recipe in this case being a McGuffin that dictates whether the bad guys' plan gets a chance to succeed or not)

Its not a trope unfortunately, it's something that happens in the real world and it works. It was standard trick of the Nazis and the Stalinist era NKVD. The Romanian secret police used it until the fall of Chauchesku and Saddam Hussein's son Uday was fond of using an electric drill to torture random people when trying extract information out of someone else. Its probably being used in North Korea and Syria as we speak.

 

[VoidWanderer]

So I saw "Olympus Has Fallen". Now it while it was kind of maudlin in its starry-eyed patriotism, I will say that it was a decent action movie if nothing else. However, I did have one big problem with it: the bad guy's plan was to threaten hostages until he got everything he wanted. I won't spoil what he was after (on the off chance that any one here wants to see it) but I think its sufficient to say that he was not after the President's chili recipe.

So one high-order government official after another gives up their...ahem...'chili recipe' and the bad guys come within a hair's breadth of completing their plan because of it. So I walk out of the theater wondering 'what was their plan if no one gave in? If they just said "Yeah, go ahead and kill him, we'll just elect another one. He's not our King".'

I see the hostage dilemma thrown around a lot in media these days and I can't help but feel that it should the bad guy's last-ditch desperation move, rather than the action the entire plan hinges on. I remember in Black Ops 2; Menedez' is painted as this mastermind with an unbeatable plan, but he relies on this gambit to succeed in multiple instances...against Navy SEALs...the same guys who snipe pirates in the middle of rough seas. How is that a plan?

For me, it shatters my SoD, but I wonder if anyone finds this compelling? Would the notion of an unrelated/innocent party being threatened motivate you to give up your...um...chili recipe? I remember in an ME1 DLC, a bunch of Batarians were going to drop an asteroid on a planet. After narrowly stopping their plan and catching up with the perpetrators, the moral dilemma that was presented was either confront them or let two civilians die. These assholes had just proved capable of threatening HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS and I, as a military officer, am supposed to think just two aren't acceptable collateral damage? Puh-lease.

So why is this trope being used so often? Am I just a sociopath for thinking that when all has been weighed it would actually be better to go so far as to even shoot through the hostage to protect the...uh...chili recipe? (The recipe in this case being a McGuffin that dictates whether the bad guys' plan gets a chance to succeed or not)

From what I can tell 'Olympus has Fallen', is Die Hard except in the White House... with a 'better badass'...

This trope is just the male version of the 'Damsel in Distress'... It is incredibly easy to write a story. Bad guy kidnaps someone important. Good Guy kicks the ass of the entire army the bad guy has, injuries to hero are optional and likely. Bad Guy loses, Good guy saves day.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

I'm not entirely sure. I've wondered the same myself, most of the time taking a hostage is not a very compelling way to achieve something. I think unless you have a hostage of personal importance and you keep it discreet, and maybe you're willing to torture the hostage live, you don't have much to bargain with.

 

[piinyouri]

I don't know why it's abused so much either.

Spoiler: Keanu?

Nope, guess he doesnt know either.

 

[senordesol]

I'm going to spoiler this because , i suck at talking in metaphore .

Spoiler

So i am assuming , you are talking about the cerberus codes? Well if you remember correctly , they were cracking the codes ( of which there were three ) so the hostages giving up their codes just sped up the process . Also , i think you are being too hard on the SoD part . Think of it in the point of view of the actual characters , we got the president , vice president and secretary who each have codes . These are people that see each other every day , know each other and their families , it's hard to watch them get tortured for their codes , hence why the president kept telling them to give up their codes because the won't get his ( he at no point was facing the computer to know they were cracking the codes anyways ). These are not soldiers, they have no combat experience , they are not trained to withstand torture or watch other be tortured and die . They are average people ( yes the president is an average person ) , so i can fully well believe that under such circumstances , the terrorists can squeese out information from these people . Now had they been milatary people i'm not sure it would have been as easy , but still not impossible.

In response:

Spoiler

Yeah, the cerebus codes. During the film they say it would have taken days for them to hack if no-one revealed the information (meaning that if no one talked, the bad guys would have never even gotten close -- they had the night and that's it!). One of the people threatened, however, WAS an Admiral. When it comes to nuclear secrets, someone THAT high up would have definitely appreciated the amount of crap that could fall on all our heads if those secrets were ever exposed.

Again, OHF was a decent action movie, it was just incredibly apparent that the bad guys' plans hinged on every one of their victims being too utterly weak to think that protecting Cerebus was a better idea than saving a handful of lives.