Friday, November 5, 2010

Things about TV/Movies that are inaccurate/stupid

Ok so before I get started I just want to point out that I do know that movie and television effects and writing techniques are made for entertainment purposes and are not meant to represent reality, however with the increasing awareness of the general public these gimmicks are increasingly annoying. 


The entertainment industry puts in effects and scenarios into movies and tv shows that are simply..inaccurate. I'll list off a few that bug me particularly.


1. Guns: Anyone who has shot a firearm in real life knows that guns are much louder, powerful, harder to aim, and have limited ammo capacity. Often in the entertainment business they need to play this down in order to suit their needs. We see people who are not of the body type or strength that it would take to maneuver the weapon that they are holding, for example; Mila jovavich in the Resident Evil series often has twin .45 caliber pistols or a .357 magnum revolver, the kickback of each of these weapons is enough to throwback her wrist and hand with each shot, however you see her fire in rapid succession entire magazines with each shot having pin point accuracy. This is not impossible but very difficult and a feat that some of the most proficient and well trained professional shooters are capable of. But all of that being said, for the sake of the character and the story it wouldn't make much sense for Alice' character to be a bad shot would it, it would make her less badass and weaken the intensity of the movie. The second problem with guns in movies/tv is ammo, often times a character will fire more bullets than the specific gun they are holding is capable of firing in one clip. This might not bother some people because they can assume "ok well they reloaded at some point when the camera wasn't on them", ok for some, sure. But when a character has a weapon such as a .38 revolver that has a max capacity of 5 rounds and they fire 12 rounds without reloading, thats annoying. Or in movies like Underworld where Selene has twin Beretta 92FS's and seems to have infinite bullets (and fully automatic) when the max capacity is 15 round magazines unless extended clips are used which they weren't in the movie. Perhaps not everyone notices these things but I certainly do, I count how many rounds fired from each persons gun and evaluate the accuracy of it. I do like it when a movie can properly execute how many bullets are fired and when a character needs to reload in real time.


2. Blood: A lot of times blood is just thrown around and the audience is just supposed to accept whatever consistency, direction, spatter pattern etc that is used. The horror genre is the biggest offender here, particularly with stab victims. The blood used in horror movies is of a consistency that is closer that of already coagulated blood (from an already dead body used for a fresh victim) and it just pours out like jelly from a jar, thats annoying. I like shows like Dexter that are pretty dead on (pun intended) to the real deal, being that he is a blood spatter analyst it would receive a lot of negative feed back from the fans if they didn't 


3. Cars: This one is less of an inaccuracy and more just a personal irritation. Old school muscle cars are used in a lot of action movies and rightfully so, they possess the stance and presence needed for movies like that. The problem I have is that a lot of times these cars get destroyed, I'm a car lover and particularly of the 60's-70's muscle car variety so seeing one of these bad boys get blown up or crashed or dropped off a cliff is much more heart wrenching than if the main character dies to me. This is because that is a real and tangible car, whether it is a kit car or not you don't really know but an example is in Iron Man when Tony Stark falls through the floor of his multimillion dollar villa and smashes a 1967 Shelby Cobra, which I cringed at, I would have much rather seen him hit the the Saleen S7, which is a beautiful car but worth far less in my opinion. Oh another amazing car that was destroyed in the name of film was Eleanor the 1967 Ford Mustang GT 500 from Gone in 60 Seconds that was ultimately crushed, sad face. 


4. To be Continued...

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