Best action movie stupidity of all time

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Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides picture

Stupidity: In the scene when the cook is torched, why didn't he just jump out of the longboat into the water? Why get burned?

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Suggested correction: It would be pointless. If he ran away, Blackbeard would just come after him and make him suffer greatly. At least the fire is quicker than torture or being zombified.

Hogwash. Fire is even more painful than torture.

Not only that but, it's only speculation what would Blackbeard would do to the man if he had survived.

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Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom picture

Stupidity: During the auction, we see the dinosaurs are brought into the room and placed in the middle. Thus blocking half of the bidders from the auctioneer's view. (01:16:40)

Ssiscool

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Suggested correction: He couldn't hear someone calling out?

Maybe so, but an auction house requires you to have a number assigned so that auctioneer can write it on his log so the house knows who won and who has entered into a contract to buy. Thus they need to see the bidder.

Ssiscool

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Breakdown picture

Stupidity: Red and his gang have a barn full of stuff and talk about other couples and people they have kidnapped, robbed and probably killed. This indicates they have been in the "game" for a long time and been successful to avoid capture this long yet when Kurt Russell didn't want to get in the car, instead of cutting their losses, they went along with kidnapping his wife and initiating the whole ruse of her never getting in Reds truck which is what led to their downfall. Someone with the experience of this that Red has should know not to take such a big risk with a complicated story.

The_Iceman

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Armageddon picture

Stupidity: Colonel Sharpe retrieves a gun from a locker on the Freedom shuttle. However, said gun is shown lying flat on the floor of the compartment, with no visible means of securing it, which would hardly be standard NASA procedure given the shuttle undergoes a high-G launch, orbital manoeuvres and various other high acceleration events. A loaded gun bouncing around is the last thing anyone would allow on a shuttle. (01:42:39)

Razvaluha

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Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness picture

Stupidity: Gargantos neutralizes Strange's cape tossing a motorbike at it. Hilariously enough, someone was riding the motorbike and Gargantos knocked him off the bike. The streets were littered with all sorts of wreckage; the biker who made a conscious effort to drive around all sorts of obstacles literally blocking 90% of the roads and ride right at the enormous monster in plain sight must have been in a hell of a rush.

Sammo

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Volcano picture

Stupidity: Mike Roark is supposed to be the director of an agency that is in charge of coordinating all the resources of the city in the event of a natural disaster, but he doesn't know what a "geological event" is, not to mention magma?

jbrbbt

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Spider-Man: No Way Home picture

Stupidity: We know that the two 'special visitors' have been in our universe longer than a day. Despite being capable, smart, heroic figures, they did diddly-squat until the plot says so, since they haven't tracked down the very public (they recognize them) partners of Spiderman, they don't show up for the battle broadcast by JJJ on giant screens, but more importantly, they do not know who the "Avengers" are, showing they didn't look into Peter's history - the name would have popped up in relation to Stark, the blip and much more. Seems that they didn't even try to look for him.

Sammo

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Avatar picture

Stupidity: Having become the leader of the universe's most stealthy fighters, he promptly leads them in a Custer-esque noisy frontal charge into a force with known weapon and technology superiority. Zero effort to utilize ANY of their amazing stealth, just have them slaughtered so badly that the planet has to sacrifice animals to save them from extinction.

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Wonder Woman 1984 picture

Stupidity: Diana and Steve are both characterized as heroes and highly moral individuals, but they both are perfectly fine, without giving any shadow of a second thought, with the fact that Steve is inhabiting the body of a real person, with a real job and friends, completely innocent and whose life has been taken. We don't ask for a movie to cover every possible nuance, but they make reference to his job, use his stuff, endanger the innocent body and use it 'for pleasure' too. They make a big deal of Cheetah losing her humanity, but what the heroes do is arguably worse.

Sammo

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Suggested correction: While this is bad writing that makes them unsympathetic, it is not objectively a mistake. They endanger the man through Steve because the entire world is at stake. They have sex using his body because they, like the writers most likely, do not consider it rape because there's no indication that the man is conscious in Steve's body or that he'll ever find out (So closer to date-rape), and ultimately, Diana wanting Steve to stay in the man's body forever, while arguably out of character, is a character flaw they both realise she needs to overcome by the end of the movie.

Not objectively a mistake? Actually I agree! Stupidity entries are in a tab separate from the proper "mistakes" tab for a reason; all those behaviors that are not full plot holes but happen against logic and character, just because they are being a tool for the plot. The movie does not make them unsympathetic by design; that would be good writing, that wouldn't be stupid, it would be human. But no, their love antics are never characterized as problematic or inherently creepy. The choices they make and that are outlined in your comment are glossed over; the movie hides the face of the guy but they both see it when they 'rape' him and when they risk his wellbeing, When she gives up on him she does it to get her powers back, she is not overcoming a character flaw, since the presence of the "other guy" is not addressed even at that moment, even if they see him. (if Steve were in a new body, the scene would have played exactly the same). Nobody could act this blasè.

Sammo

Everything you've said in the stupidity entry and comment is your opinion (well, probably the opinion of the one YouTube video we've all seen where the guy bashes the film and then others repeat his opinion). Wonder Woman sees Steve, not the man whose body Steve is in. Not to mention we don't hear all their conversations about the situation because it would become clunky dialog. And before she starts losing her powers, the two really had no idea what had happened to the man. But nothing in the film regarding this situation is out of character of the "good guys" because we've never seen them in this situation (nor has anyone actually been in this situation to claim "nobody would act this blasé).

Bishop73

I invite you to rewatch the actual movie and not any youtube video; she sees the guy, they both do; he's never Chris Pine, who is 'canonically' never in the movie as himself. Chris Pine is what we, the audience, see. Look back at the scene of the mirror. They explain it. She says "He's great, but all I see is you." Not meaning that she LITERALLY sees Steve, but that she knows it's Steve and so she thinks of him. He even says, about himself, when he tells her to look for other men, "What about this guy" and she says "I don't want this guy." What's in the movie is out of character for any human being who is not delusional to the point of actually seeing the face of someone else. Which is what the movie needs to turn us viewers into to make the plot work.

Sammo

Nothing in the film suggested to me she sees the other man after Steve comes back. I was basing my comments on watching the film (the YouTube comment was because this mistake is the same rehashed comment found there). When the camera pans around and the audience sees Steve, I took it to mean Diana sees Steve. When she says "all I see is you", I took that to mean she literally sees Steve. The mirror scene was to show the world still sees the man, but not Diana. But I can understand if others' take away was Diana sees the other man but just knows inside her heart it's Steve.

Bishop73

She sees that guy at the party, and only through Steve's words she then realises it's him, which the movie portrays from then on by showing Steve to us. The earlier part of the mirror scene is even more clear. He says; "Look at you. It's like not one day has passed." And she replies jokingly "I can't say the same thing about you." He does not look the same! And he in fact then goes to the mirror saying, "Right, right, right." and comments on the look of "He." So yes, I do firmly believe that it's what the movie says. If I may; the fact that some people on Youtube posted a video saying some things does not mean that anyone else supporting a specific idea - which does have a foundation in what the movie said, as I hope I clarified - did not reach the same conclusion and should be dismissed because they are lazily rehashing hersay. Glad you at least see where I come from, even if you may have not read the movie facts the same way I did.

Sammo

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Maze Runner: The Death Cure picture

Stupidity: They could've used the flying chopper thingy to kill off the armed guys when rescuing the kids off the train carriages. That way they could have made sure they got every single kid rather than rushing to just take the one containing Minho (which they messed up).

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Speed 2: Cruise Control picture

Stupidity: Dafoe does a lot of looking around while flying the plane. He could have pulled up much sooner. Then he screams and puts his hand to his face, and then he sees the tower and crashes into it. (01:53:29)

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Memory picture

Stupidity: Alex, a contract killer, went to the hospital to kill a patient. After parking in the hospital garage, Alex put his car keys under the sun visor, risking the possibility that his car could be stolen. When Alex returned to his vehicle, the keys were not there. A professional or expert assassin should take precautions to assure his getaway car will be there and keep his keys on him. (00:01:45 - 00:04:30)

KeyZOid

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XXX (2002)

XXX picture

Stupidity: Why did the bad guys even go for Xander as he was snowboarding down the mountainside? First of all, it was impossible for them to even get to him as the mountainside had several cliffs. Secondly, why did so many go? Wouldn't it be clever to have as few as possible leave in case his snowboarding was simply to draw attention away from an ambush? They knew he was an agent by now and should know he could have gotten reinforcements. Thirdly, they could just have simply waited for him to get to them.

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Ghostbusters 2 picture

Stupidity: Suspension of disbelief is fine for a movie like this, but even as a child I found unbelievably silly the fact that the Ghostbusters use a Nintendo controller to move the Statue of Liberty. The concept is never set up and never is shown properly; all the movie showed and told us was that items possessed by the slime dance wildly to the beat of music. There's no logical (as in, movie internal logic) passage between that and "so we fire up some beats and it won't start dancing to it, but just calmly move according to our inputs on a joystick."

Sammo

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Saving Private Ryan picture

Stupidity: When they are preparing for a German assault towards the end of the movie, Miller explains to them the concept of the sticky bomb and adds, "If you have a better idea of knocking the treads off a tank I'd like to hear it." Um... The bazooka? They had eight rounds for it, and it could have easily been used to disable the treads. And the men wouldn't blow themselves up with it. While it couldn't destroy a tank by penetrating the armour, it's certainly strong enough to disable the tracks.

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Suggested correction: Allied forces familiar with the Panzer VI "Tiger", a 60-ton Main Battle Tank during the war knew that the armor is very tough and, even with support fire from a friendly tank, the odds of destroying a Tiger tank with a bazooka like Horvath's are pretty small. From the infantry perspective, techniques that were developed and employed in order to combat heavy Tiger tanks focused mainly on disabling the tank rather than destroying it. Anti-tank weapons of the era, such as the bazooka, were ineffective against most areas of the Tiger's armor, so specific weak points in the design were the focus. Hitting the Tiger in the tracks, suspension, engine compartment, observation slits, and in the joint between the main body and turret were some of the common weak points. Tiger tanks could only be destroyed head-on or from the sides by land mines, or direct hits by heavy artillery shells, or bombs dropped from aircraft. In the film, the first Tiger is disabled by taking out the tracks with "sticky bombs" followed by grenades thrown in the turret hatch. When Horvath fires at the second Tiger, both shots are placed on the joint between the body and the turret, the idea most likely being to hinder or incapacitate the turret's ability to swivel left or right. As the war went on, the Allies developed better strategies for disabling Tigers. One example involved British Cromwell or US Sherman tanks trying to "flank" a Tiger by working in squadrons or columns. One or more tanks would act as a diversion to keep the Tiger's crew focused in front of it while another tank would maneuver behind the Tiger and hit it in the rear section where its armor was the weakest.

Joey221995

Excellently put.

Ssiscool

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Rocky IV picture

Stupidity: Considering Rocky keeps hitting Drago after the bell sounds to end the round in their main event fight shouldn't he be disqualified?

Rob245

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Suggested correction: This is up to the discretion of the ref. If he deems the strikes to not be particularly egregious he can let the fight continue. Even if they are deemed illegal strikes, that doesn't mean that Rocky will be automatically disqualified. The ref can dock a point from Rocky instead, which he very well might have done at some point which we never see. Since Rocky wins by knockout having a point docked doesn't matter.

BaconIsMyBFF

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Eternals picture

Stupidity: Arishem's plan with the Deviants hardly makes any sense; he sent out biological beasts that he can't control, to kill off the natural predators of every planet. Forgetting the fact that obviously it didn't work (but the movie does not say that) because Earth has always had predators, that's a terrible plan to begin with, since any ecosystem needs predators or the other animals will grow uncontrollably.

Sammo

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Top Gun picture

Stupidity: When Cougar (and later, Maverick and Goose) report to Stinger's office at the beginning of the film, a photo of an F-5 in flight (or possibly a T-38) appears on the wall beside his desk. However, the F-5s that appear in this movie are standing in as MiGs. Of all the aircraft photos the set designer could have selected for this scene, it seems strange to use one of an "enemy" aircraft.

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The Tomorrow War picture

Stupidity: A major effort is put in the future to develop the time portal, so they can recruit people from the past to help fight the war in the future. Yet they never seem to think to share anything with the past about the creatures and how to kill them or find out where they came from so the can help either prevent it from happening or help save the future before humanity is wiped out. Muri does recruit Dan for this purpose but it seems wasted to only use 1 person for this much more important goal.

lionhead

More The Tomorrow War stupidity

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