Though we all certainly appreciate the efforts of those movie characters who take it upon themselves to "save the day" for our unbridled entertainment, you have to ask yourself; is it always necessary? Of course, there are a zillion movies out there where it was totally necessary for the heroes to act - that's a given. But there are also a fair few movies out there, too, in which the hero actually made things a whole lot more complicated than they needed to be. Who'd have thought that - in some cases - standing still would have been just as productive an effort? It goes without saying that movies about people not doing anything but lingering in the same spot for two and a quarter hours wouldn't be worth much to anyone, but it's genuinely interesting to approach a film from the "standing still perspective" - what would the outcome have been if the hero had refused to act, either at the very beginning of the movie, or at a critical point in the story? Sometimes you'll find that, often to a surprising degree, getting involved was the absolute worth thing that a movie protagonist could have done when it seemed to matter most. Here are eight examples of such an instance occurring in famous flicks...
