I was watching Antitrust yesterday and there was this one scene where Ryan Phillipe's character was supposed to sit in a room and do nothing while a security guard ran to investigate an explosion. However when the guard left Phillipe decided to hack into the computer. Then they decided to show his race to ack the computer before the guard got back. Now I knew that he was going to get the hacking done before the officer got back even though they showed him still hacking as the guard turned the last corner. However I wanted him to almost get done and then the guard come in and smack im upside the head for messing with the computer. That wuld have been great and very unexpected.
So I guess the point of this thread is to list something that you would love to see backfire in a movie where it would normally work. IE put some actual surprises in suspensful parts of movies or in any part in general.
An example was in the old attack of the kiler tomatos cartoon when Doctor Gangrene actually won. He spent the end of the show gloating and saying "The bad guys have won, the bad guys have won. And the goodguys will not save the day because the show is over." MAn that was great....
The most ultimate hack job that I can think of where the good guy gets away with it is in "Mission Impossible" when Tom Cruise hangs suspended from the ceiling by wires.
I don't know if it was really a hack...more like tapping into the CIA computer without security systems going off.
Well there was that guy they made sick by shooting liquid from a pen into his coffee. He did walk back into the room right as they pulled Cruise up towards the ceiling but then left again to run to the bathroom to vomit.
That was a very intense p.c. infiltration scene
Post Edited (11-12-03 23:13)
Ahhh... Hollywood and computers... I would specially like to see a scene when the infiltrators have to download data from a computer and they have to wait the whole 4-10 minutes necessary to burn a CD in real life. If the burning process crashed, it would be the cherry on top. I mean, real life office computers are usually poorly maintained.
About good guys getting backfired, I specially hate when the good guy and the bad guy have to fight for the gun. I would really like to see the bad guy getting it just for once and start firing, even if the hero managed to escape. Otherwise, I always end with the annoying feeling that only good guys have luck on their side.
One of the things I like from "John Carpenter's The Thing" (spoilers alert) is that the good guys manage to take control of the situation when they do the blood test, but a series of bad decisions and bad luck manage to invert the situation towards the end.
Some General thoughts...from no particular movie:
1. I hate bomb diffusing scenes where its either 'always the blue wire...bad guys always use the blue wire,' they cut it and bomb's okay...OR... they guess with 1 second to go and their guess is ALWAYS correct, diffusing the bomb.
2. I cannot stand explosion scenes where the bomb goes off while the 'good guys' run away, just feet from the blast. Then they go flying through the air like it is possible to 'ride' a blast pressure front. Sorry, but a shock wave is VERY fast, and VERY high pressure, so the result a few feet from the explosion would be quite devastating. As they say in EOD units, the only advantage in wearing a bomb suit is open casket vs. closed (bomb suits protect against missiles, not the shock wave due to the blast itself).
3. Don't like it either when the good guys are in a cave (a la "First Blood," "Broken Arrow" and many others) and magically discover a way out the back....either via a stream or some such. Errrggh. I'd like to see some good guys actually TRAPPED in a cave or mineshaft or whatever.
4. I cannot stand stupid plot devices like the above mentioned cave or mineshaft when one of the good guys just happens to remember at the crucial moment that it is there, they can hide there. These are too numerous to mention....this can be a weapons cache, a secret laboratory (like in "Independence Day" where they were airborne, thought all was lost, then by a flukey ranting of an old man, they just HAPPEN to learn about the Area 51 .... ), etc.
In short, I think the common theme is when I am asked to suspend belief just too far....when the plot or action just gets too contrived - its a distraction. Like the hacking scene in the parent post, you are thinking 'if that happened to ME, I'd get caught,' and that he didn't is a distraction to the story. Or, if that information is so important, WHY did we not know about it earlier, or at least in a more natural way.
I am not talking about fantasy or sci fi having to be REAL at every second, but to me, things must 'flow.' I'll use "Star Gate" for my example here...I really, really liked this movie when I first saw it - interesting story. The only contrived stuff here I guess, but it DID have an explanation germaine to the plot itself, was Daniel coming back from the dead.
Sorry so long....
>Ahhh... Hollywood and computers... I would specially like to see a scene when
>the infiltrators have to download data from a computer and they have to wait the
>whole 4-10 minutes necessary to burn a CD in real life. If the burning process
>crashed, it would be the cherry on top. I mean, real life office computers are
>usually poorly maintained.
I'd like to see a scene where the good guys have to access a computer system and they spend several hours trying unsuccessfully to guess the password.
Yeah, or how about a computer system that only allows three failed login attempts before locking out the userid?? That'd be a novel idea in a movie....
i'd love to see characters go through all the meticulous planning of doing a hiest, such as entrapment or ronin or something, and when it comes down to the actual day something out of the ordinary happens and they have to cancel the plan straight away.
either that or watching someone go through all these really cool moves in a fight just to get wrecked straight off the bat, kinda like raiders of the lost ark: some situations like that in other movies drag on because you expect a fight
I'd like to see a fantasy film in which the older, far more experiened villain, for whom killing is a way of life, easily defeats the young pretty boy "Chosen One".
Ralph Bakshi's "Fire and Ice" is an example of that, sort of. The doofus we've been watching for the entire movie challenges the bad guy and loses, then a much cooler, experienced warrior steps up and beats the villain. Pretty neat twist, coming from Bakshi.
Also, I'd really love to see a movie where the Tough Cop Who Lives on the Edge and Doesn't Play by the Rules gets arrested for his numerous violations of the law. Also -- and maybe this could even be another movie altogether -- a by-the-book cop takes down the bad guy with investigation, evidence-gathering, and stuff. You know, police work.