Scenes in films that are so illogical it really grates.

[Yetmorebeanstocount]

Eat Pray Love.
The two women have just discussed eating, muffin-tops, body image, etc, and Julia Roberts says to enjoy the pizza and just buy bigger jeans.

So in the next scene they are buying jeans, but doing that stereotypical-joke thing of lying on the changing room floor trying to pull up the zip on too-tight jeans.
Why? - that totally defeats the object.

I guess the male writer/director thought it would be a fun scene, that is how he imagines women always shop for jeans.
It just makes no sense in the context of the film.

What scenes really annoy you?

@Itslegitimatesalvage that is literally the point of this whole thread. Of course people understand that different locations are used in films. OP asked what annoyed posters.

I mentioned upthread characters marooned on desert islands (such as Lost) not losing weight or changing hairstyles. Obviously I don't really expect the actors to diet for the sake of a TV series!

They are literally walking along Hadrian’s wall. That’s what it is. Different parts have their own wee nicknames, but it’s Hadrian’s wall. Not sure what you were trying to achieve with your post?

Except it’s a bloody filming location. In the movie. Robin and Azeem are not walking along Hadrian’s wall. They are walking along a wall on Robin’s land. He says “this is my
land.” It’s just a nice location with nice scenery. They didn’t walk from Dover to Hadrian’s wall:

No, they didn't need to be noticed - that made things far more complicated.

Without being chased they would simply have 'developed a radiation leak', chucked the crew off somewhere random (perhaps near a fishing trawler or cruise ship), 'sunk', and sailed undetected into the US port of their choice.

Perhaps the locations appearing as somewhere entirely different should be in the credits. Something like

Kevin Costner - Robin Hood
Robin's accent - diverse
Sycamore Gap - Robin's back garden

It could catch on. They could award an Oscar and everything.

I think if a film is set in a fictional
universe eg Hogwarts we can excuse turning a corner and moving from Gloucester to Oxford.

But if the location is integral to the film eg Notting Hill, it’s quite jarring!

The random conversation about how women 'need' sex. Appears in many, many films, like a strange attempt by male writers to beat the Bechdel test but with no idea what women talk about. Characters usually required to suspend all sense for this conversation too.

Prime example is in 'It's Complicated', where Meryl Streep's character is told by her middle aged female friends that she needs to have sex to sort out her life problems (eh?) and then one of her friends chimes in with how she read about a woman whose vagina grew over because she didn't have enough sex.

These are supposedly intelligent, middle aged women, but it makes me cringe every time.

I always assumed Morgan Freeman's character did a caesarian, because he said he'd seen it done on horses.

But isn't the point that you can't walk from Dover to Nottingham (at least not in anything vaguely resembling a straight line) via any landscapes that look like that at all? The only way to rationalise it is to say the geography of England is completely different in the film's universe, which is a step too far for some people.

I used to love Look and Learn @borntobequiet

I wish they'd republish it. It was brilliant!

Pedants' Corner is over there. ➡

Was it too much to expect that his memory should have been treated with care, rather than traducing him?

Absolutely!

If they thought the film needed this bit of "drama" (you mean there isn't enough in the sinking of the Titanic?), they could have created a character.

Jesus. It isn’t Hadrian’s wall in the film universe. They aren’t walking along Hadrian’s wall. They are walking along a random wall on Robin’s land near to his castle. In the film world, it isn’t Hadrian’s wall. It’s just a filming location which looks good, gave them the terrain they wanted for the scene and the tree they needed for the boy running from the guards etc.

I cannot believe the number of people who cannot understand this and keep repeating it.

Jesus. Of course everyone understands it's a filming location. The point is that it's jarring to everyone with the vaguest idea of English topography and history. If it's supposed to just be a bit of Robin's wall somewhere between Kent and the midlands, there must be loads of places which would have been a less bizarre choice than an iconic view at the wrong end of the country with the wrong sort of landscape and the wrong sort of wall!

A PP mentioned about how annoying it is when different actors play the same character at different ages and they look nothing like each other. The German series ‘Dark’ on Netflix cuts back and forth in time and has a huge cast of characters but manages to do this brilliantly. With some of the characters you would swear they are the same person. The plot was a bit too bonkers for my liking but the acting was excellent!

I’m with Itslegitimatesalvage on this one! Seeing as the film was not marketed exclusively to Brits, and far more Americans and Australians (and loads more English speaking nations)
watched it than those with knowledge of English topography, the actual geographical location isn’t really relevant surely? People need to cultivate a bit of imagination imho.

I thought the teenage Princess Elizabeth in The Crown WAS Claire Foy in really good make up, the resemblance was so good. And Karen Gillan's cousin as Young Amy Pond was inspired (though I assume we can't expect all actors to conveniently have actor relatives!)

Me too @SheilaFentiman !

Something that really annoyed me, actually made me quite angry at the time. I think it's was Skyfall(?), the female character had just told Bond how she was trafficked as a child and had been a sex slave since,. Five minutes later she was naked in the shower when he perves in on her for a quick shag.

I know it's Bond, who was a rapey bastard, but....Jesus Christ!

I sincerely hope I missed something that makes this okay.

I've got plenty of imagination, thanks.

But using an iconic scene as somewhere incongruous can tend to jolt you back to reality.

Agree with both @ErrolTheDragon and @IcakethereforeIam

Just to reiterate what another poster said, the Titanic officer portrayed as committing murder & then dying by suicide in the 1998 film wasn't Lieutenant Lightoller, but First Officer Murdoch.

Lightoller actually had a long & distinguished career, dying in the 50s.

How likely it is that William Murdoch did these things is a matter of conjecture. There isn't any evidence that he did, but there were rumours in the aftermath & it seems that Lightoller tried to protect Murdoch's posthumous reputation (at least according to Wikipedia!)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_McMaster_Murdoch

We had this at my aunt's funeral. She had been ill for a long time and weighed next to nothing but the pall bearers had to negotiate a high kerb and half a dozen steps to get through the front door of the church,
When tackled about making a meal of it, it was pointed out that she may only have been six stone but the mahogany wardrobe she was wearing wasn't.

Can you imagine those pallbearers for the queen with the lead lined coffin

It is indeed! People would think you're pure ignorant if you just hung up on them like they do in films and tv!

But using prominent national landmarks or well known attractions as supposedly benign backdrops for a scene is a distraction from the film universe you have been asked to buy into. Prince of Thieves was never supposed to be anything more then a bit of entertaining hokum so audiences are going to be a lot more forgiving with historical or geographic inaccuracies but now and again they push it too far. Even if you ignore the Hadrian's Wall scene the line uttered on the beach 'By nightfall we will celebrate your honour when we dine with my father' draws amusement as anyone with half a brain knows that such a journey is impossible in half a day.

This is nonsense.

It's nothing to do with having half a brain or not.

1. Prince of Thieves was made for, firstly, an American and then a global audience. You don't have to be stupid to not know the relative UK geography of Sherwood/Dover if you live in Colorado or South Korea.

2. It's a movie. Suspend your disbelief. No-one can fire an arrow that well, either.