Actors not sweeping correctly when somebody broke a glass or somebody’s ashes were spilled on the floor or something like that is infuriating hahha.
They’re always having some serious conversation with heavy relationship complications, but whoever has the broom is literally tapping at the mess on the floor because they know that the production crew is going to clean it up for them after the shoot, so they, the ac-tors, don’t have to actually sweep the mess into the dustbin.
I f****** hate that.
Drinking from empty cups. The way you hold, drink and move with a cup with hot liquid in it is very different from an empty cup. Whenever I see it it is all I can think about.
I think this one is pretty common, but whenever there’s a disagreement, argument or debate that could be resolved in less than 10 seconds by one of the characters explaining themself in a single sentence, but instead they say nothing and or get interrupted right when they’re getting to the important bit. I know I know, it keeps the tension going, but the tension is so artificial and convoluted that I can’t help but scream at the TV “just fucking say it!!!”
I especially dislike the “There’s no time to explain!” when there clearly is time to explain.
Like, you can spit out “Vampires are real and the head vampire wants to eat my sister” pretty quickly to get key information across. Don’t need to provide the whole context.
Not a movie, but one time in a tabletop RPG one of the players was trying to say “There’s no time to explain!” and the other just wasn’t having it. After two back-and-forths he was just like “If you had explained instead of saying there’s no time, there would’ve been time!” Was really funny to watch that play out live.
Generic Hollywood bad guy actors everywhere hurting the heroes and almost killing them only to be killed themselves (or at least punished) by the heroes instead whatever and however so.
Cute and funny protagonists everywhere.
Forced humor into every film or show.
Teases and sequel hooks ala Marvel Studios.
Plot-twist elements being spammed by a film.
Recycling plot points from other movies or writing by the seats of their pants in movies.
Wasting source material in adapted works, especially in supposedly comic book movies.
Copying from Marvel Studios in general.
Taking shots at other original works in general.
Wasting potential materials of any kind.
Altering the work itself to sell more tickets.
Constant bait-and-switch gags everywhere.
Villainous side-characters ala Illumination, even if they especially get away with their own actions.
Juvenile or depraved humor in any work.
Characters overanalyzing their own mediums while spamming all of the above that I described.
Plot points that are constantly switching.
Controversial and immoral topics in any work.
Covering up all of the above with cute humor.
Overwhelming sensory abuse as an autistic.
Characters too evil to belong in a particular work.
Trying to get away with anything and everything in a work, particularly in a children’s work.
Catering to the general population to make money instead of art.
When people who clearly have never cooked a meal for themselves prepare one on film. The whole process.
We recently watched a movie where a woman was preparing dinner but she’s chopping whatever the hell she was chopping like it was the first time in her life that she had ever held a knife. Sometimes they even use the completely wrong knife for whatever the task is that they’re trying to do. Other times, they’re constantly stirring something like boiling noodles or sauces that don’t need to be stirred. All kinds of dumb things that are obviously done just to give the actor something to do with the props around them but that make the character look incompetent instead.
Even worse is when whatever they’re doing doesn’t even make sense within the context presented in the film, e.g. dicing a lime for drinks instead of cutting slices or wedges, using a pepper grinder on fruit, making another character taste something that would be scalding hot, etc.
Close runner-up is when characters go to a bar and order “a beer” or some other generic version of something. Just make up a god damn brand name, fer chrissakes.
Ha, cooking is a good one.
Whenever somebody cooks and nothing smokes or no extra sauce gets anywhere it shouldn’t or no ingredients are on the counter or floor?
Julienned vegetables are a big one for me too.
I love the bear TV show, but very often they zoom in on one of the actors slicing a vegetable and the slices are wildly inconsistent, like at least twice as thick and thin each slice, even after they’re supposed to have gone to culinary school or practiced for 10,000 or whatever.
Small thing, but this is a peeve thread, and I love the show otherwise or I wouldn’t even complain about it, but those thick and thin slices are such a glaring incongruence with the rest of the show.
Syringes getting stabbed into the necks of unwilling people is my niche pet peeve.
I’m a critical care nurse lol. There’s no anatomy in a neck to receive an injection. There’s not enough muscle mass, and you’re not hitting a jugular vein without a person’s full cooperation and a helluva lot of skill with IV injections. There’s a nontrivial chance that you’re just going to inject the medication into a person’s trachea or esophagus, or worst case scenario directly into their spine.
Arms, people. Arms are where we inject people who don’t want to be injected. Right through the clothes, if need be.
Peripherally related: Why are all needles used in movies like 2-3 inches long? No one uses needles that large for anything in the real world.
CPR. The way they do it with bent arms affects how people think they should do it in real life. Your arms should be straight to get the most power for the least effort. And you’ll need to conserve your energy because you could be doing it for an hour. No show has ever portrayed the length of time it takes.
Or when they shock asystole, or when someone wakes up from like 5 shitty compressions and some mouth to mouth. Or 99% of any show ever. Even the few that do it OK are still so very bad.
I always remember the abyss because the
spoiler
resuscitation
was absurdly long for cinematic time.
I know there was another one that did it, but obviously nothing for an hour.
So sometimes CPR takes an hour and that means that you are circulating oxygenated blood through the body to keep it and the brain alive for 1 hour straight until emergency medicine can be applied?
So CPR is deflating and inflating the lungs so that blood is oxygenated and simultaneously pumping the heart to provide blood circulation?
Is that what you mean? If not, can you explain it in more detail? That’s f****** fascinating.
No, CPR is only meant to compress the heart in order to circulate blood. You can get a little in and out movement from the lungs (ventilation), but to do that correctly, you really need the bag mask thingy (which you do see One Night using on Lindsay in The Abyss.)
The length of time they spend doing CPR in The Abyss is actually pretty realistic. There are a number of things that you try in addition to compressions and you have to give those things a chance to work before you “call it” (stop compressions).
CPR is several rounds of compressions and shocks with various medications like epinephrine being given depending on what you’re seeing on the heart shock monitor. Length of CPR is usually inversely proportional to the age of the patient. (The younger the patient, the longer a medical team will fight to get them back. This is because losing a kid is obviously devastating for everyone, but also because kids have this amazing tendency to be able to survive things that would 100% take an adult out.)
My bitchy complaint about the CPR scene in The Abyss is that they spend so much of that time not doing compressions. They keep stopping to do other things or to sit around and cry dramatically. Every single second that they’re not doing compressions is a second that no blood is circulating. It’s crazy. In real CPR, compressions only stop when a shock is actually being administered. There is zero downtime on compressions other than that.
(And no, people don’t just gasp and wake up. Typically we just get a pulse and the person remains unconscious, often for days afterward. They usually need a ton of ICU level medical care, if they have any hope of recovering.)
It is called CCR (Cardiocerebral resuscitation, or continuous compression resuscitation, or hands only cpr). It is Cpr without pausing to breath. Of the 30 compressions you are suposed to do during normal CPR before you stop for breaths, like 25 of those compressions are just getting the BP high enough to perfuse the brain, then you stop for breaths and start all over. CCR not only keeps that BP up, but you provide supplemental oxygen and a simple airway device, like an opa. It moves enough air to fill the lungs enough to oxygenate what little blood is being circulated.
It is becoming standard protocol for paramedics to do the first 3 rounds (6 minutes) of CPR as CCR as long as the arrest wasn’t airway related (drowning, choking, etc). Not only is it associated with better outcomes clinically, but in the field with limited providers on scene it frees up hands to allow for medication administration and rhythm analysis/treatment.
Mine is kind of petty too, but it just seems to pop up so much. I hate when superheroes have to deal with a villain that uses the same source of power. Hulk fighting another Hulk, Ant-man fighting another shrinking guy, Iron Man fighting another dude in an Iron Man suit, Superman fighting other kryptonians, Captain America fighting another super soldier, Black Panther fighting another Black Panther dude… Once you notice that you realize it sort of the default for this genre
That’s what made me stop watching the Flash TV show. After like the fourth or fifth person became a speedster it just got boring.
The problem with the flash is that if you power him up to full, there’s basically nothing that’s a threat beyond other speedsters. Between phasing through matter, lightning, and infinite mass punches, and time travel are pretty broken.
I hate when production companies dupe people into doing work on a movie “on spec”. For those who don’t know, on spec means that the work is done at a reduced upfront cost with the expectation of a share of profits after release. What the poor schmucks who fall for this don’t know is that no movie has made a profit for production companies in over 50 years. At least not as far as paper is concerned. After a movie is made, production companies have to get it out there. The companies who do this are known as distributors, and they charge the production company to do the distribution. Now for the movie magic, the same company that owns the production company also owns the distributor, so they are essentially charging themselves more money than the movie can ever make to do the job. The legal loophole that they fuck people with is that, even though they are owned by the same company, they are separate legal entities, so contracts with one do not bind the other. The on spec contract is with the production company, but the distributor is the one who collects the money from the theaters, which it then funnels into the parent company. The production company shows a loss on the books, so the on spec clauses never trigger. Look into Life of Pi and Rhythm and Hues if you can find the right articles about what happened.
Oh, and remember how I said that theaters pay the distributors? Those contracts are almost as straightforward as the on spec ones. The standard layout is that the theater pays some percentage of the box office to the distributor for opening week, then each week after it reduces by some fixed percent until reaching 0. The initial percentages vary, as do the reduction, but standard is 80/10 from what I understand. The most abusive I have ever specifically learned the details for was a Disney production, I belive it was the first of the new Star Wars movies, but it was a 99% opening week, decreasing by 1% per week for 4 weeks, then 5% thereafter. Oh, and they also tried to strongarm the theaters into having to fork over 50% of concessions as well, which was the first time I had ever heard of that. Luckily the concessions thing was fought and won by the theaters, but it is atrocious that they even tried. Anyway, that is why concessions are so expensive, because theaters make virtually 0 money off box office sales since the bulk of a movie’s gross revenue comes from opening week box office. Do your local theater a favor if you genuinely enjoy them existing, buy a fountain drink or a popcorn. Those are the highest profit margin items on the menu and they do actually need the money.
Holy crap I had no idea how much theaters were getting f***** over, thanks for posting this. Fascinating!.
Number 3, and the first article linked in it are good for deeper dives and the linked article may have more updated or detailed info than I am recalling from my reports I had to write for my MA in VFX. There is a LOT of fuckery that really should be quite illegal.
Understood, thanks. I’ll read it.
Finally makes sense why so many theaters die when the overhead is so relatively low.
Damn, this sounds like mafia work. We need some laws in place
Yeah, I have studied all aspects of production, from writing all the way through to the audience watching it. There are strong laws on the production side because SAG and WGA exist and have pushed hard for legal protections against the studios and production companies prioritizing money over safety. Unfortunately on the distribution side the theaters actually have some very good anti-corporate laws working against them. What needs to happen is essentially a unionization of theaters so they can collectively bargain against the distributors and be able to say “good luck with getting your movie our there, because it won’t be on a single silver screen with those terms.” Unfortunately that behavior falls under the collusion and price fixing laws, which are spectacular and need to be there, but probably should be amended for situations like this.
This is the kind of thing I came in to talk about too. Here in New Zealand we don’t have guilds that can stand against Hollywood industry and a right-wing government actually changed our labour law in favour of Warners and Peter Jackson so that they could call production crew and cast “independent contractors” (with no security or benefits) instead of employees.
The Actors guild protested but someone working at Weta at the time told me animators were “encouraged” to counter protest in support of the law change “if you want to keep your jobs”.
That is appalling. I knew some of that, but not the full extent. It is disgusting. The on-set unions in the states are extremely strong, and I am so thankful for that. The whole post production industry needs a global set of unions. I would like to see the same for on-set. Someone needs to keep these jackasses in check.
Yeah, they really do.
I really lost respect for Peter Jackson over that whole fiasco. New Zealand was already giving Hollywood production companies massive tax breaks so there was no need for it, but he actively helped them stiff the local crew.
Weta’s a bit toxic anyway but it’s a widespread problem.
Same. I was really disheartened when I heard all of the negative stuff for living in NZ from a past coworker. It had been on my short list of “gtfo my dystipian nightmare” countries, but it sounds to me like it is nearly as bad, just in different ways.
This current woke trend in movies and television.
