10 Things That Happen In Movies That Piss You Off
Hollywood grossly misrepresents the success rate of CPR.
Cinema is the great dream factory where skilled filmmakers can bring their most ambitious ideas to life and entertain millions of people at the same time.
And as much as we all love movies, there's no denying that sometimes directors don't take enough care to preserve the illusion of authenticity. This can happen any number of ways, and often occurs in its simplest form by simply not obeying the basic rules of the world around us.
Perhaps characters commonly behave in ways that an actual human being never would, or the production cut corners and in turn stripped a character of something that drew immediate attention to itself.
Whatever the reason, these 10 commonplace movie happenings drive audiences up the wall, leaving them to question why anyone thought viewers were dumb enough to accept it, and why a mega-budget production felt it could skimp on the fundamentals.
Most of these things are so cliche and commonplace these days that they immediately elicit either groans or laughs (or both), and filmmakers are firmly advised to avoid committing these egregious sins - unless they're parodying them, of course.
Credit to the fine folk at /r/Movies for inspiring this article with their recent discussion on the subject...
10. Driving While Not Looking At The Road
Even basic driving scenes are much more complicated to film than you might think - at least in a way that's even remotely convincing.
While technically it boils down to simply placing the actors inside a car and either rear-projecting the view outside the car or compositing it with a green screen, so much of the driver's behaviour will dictate how believable the scene actually is.
Literally countless movies will have the character driving the car turn away from the road for seconds at a time to talk to their passenger(s), as would of course present a massive safety risk in real life.
This was hilariously parodied in Dumb and Dumber, where during a limo run Lloyd (Jim Carrey) turns around and tells his passenger, Mary (Lauren Holly), she's more statistically likely to be killed on her way to the airport, all while cars collide and explode in front of him.
But in serious movies, it can quickly annihilate the audience's immersion, as they're reminded in neon-signposted fashion that these characters are not in fact driving along an actual road, but parked in a hermetically sealed studio.
This is without even getting into characters who continually fiddle with the steering wheel while clearly driving in a straight line. Oof.