8 More Moments That Literally Stopped Movies

4. Margot Robbie's PSA (The Big Short)

Margot Robbie The Big Short
Paramount Pictures

It generally doesn't bode well for a movie's success if the vast majority of people have no chance in hell of understanding its plot, so 2015's The Big Short attempted to rectify this issue by repeatedly pausing the action to explain, well, everything.

These pauses grind the movie to a halt for minutes at a time, while various celebrities explain all the complex financial concepts that are relevant to the plot. In one scene, Selena Gomez pops up and starts talking about synthetic CDOs, but the most memorable interlude is one involving Margot Robbie, who informs us about mortgage bonds while relaxing in a bubbly hot tub.

The movie first acknowledges that most people will find all the financial jargon incomprehensible and dull, before introducing Robbie to liven the subject matter up. To be honest though, it still doesn't make a lot of sense to your average Joe, but props to writer-director Adam McKay for at least trying to explain things in a fun way.

Hell, maybe Christopher Nolan should've done something similar with Tenet! Just get Christian Bale to explain all that timey-wimey stuff in his iconic, growly voice, while hanging upside-down like a bat. That's a billion-dollar movie right there.

Contributor
Contributor

Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!