10 Important Life Lessons Learned From Every Movie Ever

Hollywood teaches us many things: love is eternal, the good will triumph, and all it takes to survive an alien invasion is a few lame zingers and a spaceship equipped with Windows 95.

Because audiences like to be told nice things, Hollywood movies take place in a world where minimum wage schmucks not only live in aircraft hangar-sized apartments, but they’re able to afford fancy cars and designer clothes. Also, they have no trouble finding a window seat in a busy New York restaurant at lunchtime.

If real people lived like their fictional counterparts, life would be so much simpler, and better. But that’s the rub: Hollywood movies have nothing to do with life as we know it to be. They’re about life as it should be, which is far less intimidating.

It’s apt that Marvel Studios should rule the box office because, regardless of how hard they strain to be realistic, most commercial features are on precisely the same level as a comic book movie. Whether the main character is a superhero or a fry cook, his friends are kooky but wise and capable of offering practical advice at the best possible time, thus saving him from making mistakes in his personal life.

With that in mind, here are 10 things Hollywood taught us that have absolutely nothing to do with reality. 

While driving, a character says, “I wonder what the weather will be like tomorrow?” and switches on the radio at the exact moment that the weather forecast is being broadcast.

Regardless of the time of day, the simple act of switching on a radio or television will provide the information a character requires. A mother says, “I wonder where the girls have gotten to?” moments before a TV news reporter informs her that the haunted asylum her daughters spent the evening investigating was the scene of a multiple homicide.

If radio and the tube seem hackneyed, there’s always Google. No matter how obscure the information you seek, simply entering it into the search engine is enough to receive an answer. Which is of course provided by the first site you click on.