Your most pointless TV/movie/book nitpicks

[Gammadoodler]

Due South was great fun. Particularly the episodes where they go full-on surreal.

Feel like I remember this being a regular part of the TNT morning lineup along with Wings, Boston Common and Working.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Movie nitpick:

How come the Gremlins can drink beer, which clearly contains water, without multiplying? Or run through the snow? How come they can watch a movie in a pitch black theater, without reacting to the bright light? I know Gremlins 2 pokes fun at plenty of other silly things, so I probably shouldn't think too hard about these things.

I have wondered this myself. Snow I can accept, but beer is harder. Maybe it’s just about their pores getting covered in water that is the problem. I can enjoy thinking through the logic holes but I think it’s not really meant to be super air tight, and as you mention part 2 lampooned many of these issues (I have really grown to like the sequel with time)

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Okay I got two more for Reacher S2 - spoilerblocked in case you care about the plot of Reacher which you probably don't because we're watching it because Big Man do Big Man Things, but anyway.

1) So they're discussing the main McGuffin, which turns out to be this special guidance system for missiles, which is too smart for countermeasures, and also does a top-attack thing where it intentionally appears to miss the target before veering down on it (IRL this latter has been tried and doesn't work very well, because it's a great opportunity to lose the target), and shock, horror, they're worried this might be sold to terrorists in order to attack civilian airliners. This is an insane plotline firstly because why do you need anti-countermeasure systems to deal with a civilian airliner? I guess certain Israeli airliners and US government airliner-airframe planes have them but come on. Secondly because this isn't being integrated into air-to-air missiles or proper SAMs, only MANPADS - i.e. shoulder-launched SAMs - the place where it would be least likely to be useful! Thirdly, they're insanely cheap! They're getting them - possibly only the warheads/guidance systems at least, though what we saw appeared to be an artillery shell so whatever - for $100k each! That's absolute chump change! Less than a Stinger MANPADS, an ancient 1980s ass piece of kit! This is supposed to be super-cutting edge US-specific tech - if that's true, China alone would pay a 1000x that for it just to reverse engineer it on the offchance it was good! I guess maybe this is a very old book being adapted or something? But wow. I was thinking maybe they were just getting a chip or something but apparently not.

2) A normal, non-armoured car gets shot up and none of the bullets go through to the interior at all (except via windows). The people shooting are using a 9mm, a 5.56mm carbine, and a 4.7mm H&K PDW. I could buy the former maybe, but the latter two? They'd go in one side and out the other, or deflect around crazily inside.

This is obviously the tip of the Reacher iceberg but it's stuff that made me go "Oh come on..." - I preferred the previous series where there was a lot less of this and a lot more Big Man is Big and this Solves Problem or implausible-but-fun combat.

 

[Vael]

They mock the "rules" of the Gremlins even in the OG movie ... "what about if they get food stuck in their teeth?", so I think it's just a big DWAI.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Or if you were approaching from somewhere perpendicular to Ceti Alpha's plane of the ecliptic? It's be silly to go around all that way just to come in from the edge of the plane as a courtesy.

Yeah whilst I agree with Paul that you'd only go to the ecliptic if up to something if that orbital plane was the natural approach - and it would be from many places - there are other places from where it just be the natural shortest path, and it'd be weird to go around. Though I admit 100x less weird if it was the Federation doing it, as they're extremely scrupulous and thoughtful in general.

 

[Deset Gled]

for $100k each! That's absolute chump change!

This was one of the nitpicks I had with Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. When they were doing the illegal dino auction scene, the prices were stupidity cheap. I don't remember the exact numbers, but they were in the low millions. I understand that's a lot of money for normal people, but in terms of the corporate investors or super-rich it's nothing. Some of the people bidding probably owned boats that cost more than the entire menagerie.

Of course, there was a lot more wrong with that entry to the JP series. But it was one that stood out to me.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

This was one of the nitpicks I had with Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. When they were doing the illegal dino auction scene, the prices were stupidity cheap. I don't remember the exact numbers, but they were in the low millions.

YES! That was demented! It was absolutely nothing! Truly wealthy people pay vastly more for an unremarkable house or a non-super yacht or whatever. The ROI was nowhere near the level of effort involved. Just hiring and arming the PMC mercs, transporting the dinosaurs, keeping them alive and healthy and so on might have cost more than what they were charging! Certainly they weren't making a particularly impressive margin! You could have charged 10-100x what they did.

The top "Oh come on..." moment in a JP film remains in the first JW when one dinosaur talked to dinosaurs of another species and explained a plan to them... even if they're sentient, there's absolutely no mechanism by which they could have mutually intelligible speech! They've never even met before!

 

[payn]

Okay I got two more for Reacher S2 - spoilerblocked in case you care about the plot of Reacher which you probably don't because we're watching it because Big Man do Big Man Things, but anyway.

1) So they're discussing the main McGuffin, which turns out to be this special guidance system for missiles, which is too smart for countermeasures, and also does a top-attack thing where it intentionally appears to miss the target before veering down on it (IRL this latter has been tried and doesn't work very well, because it's a great opportunity to lose the target), and shock, horror, they're worried this might be sold to terrorists in order to attack civilian airliners. This is an insane plotline firstly because why do you need anti-countermeasure systems to deal with a civilian airliner? I guess certain Israeli airliners and US government airliner-airframe planes have them but come on. Secondly because this isn't being integrated into air-to-air missiles or proper SAMs, only MANPADS - i.e. shoulder-launched SAMs - the place where it would be least likely to be useful! Thirdly, they're insanely cheap! They're getting them - possibly only the warheads/guidance systems at least, though what we saw appeared to be an artillery shell so whatever - for $100k each! That's absolute chump change! Less than a Stinger MANPADS, an ancient 1980s ass piece of kit! This is supposed to be super-cutting edge US-specific tech - if that's true, China alone would pay a 1000x that for it just to reverse engineer it on the offchance it was good! I guess maybe this is a very old book being adapted or something? But wow. I was thinking maybe they were just getting a chip or something but apparently not.

2) A normal, non-armoured car gets shot up and none of the bullets go through to the interior at all (except via windows). The people shooting are using a 9mm, a 5.56mm carbine, and a 4.7mm H&K PDW. I could buy the former maybe, but the latter two? They'd go in one side and out the other, or deflect around crazily inside.

This is obviously the tip of the Reacher iceberg but it's stuff that made me go "Oh come on..." - I preferred the previous series where there was a lot less of this and a lot more Big Man is Big and this Solves Problem or implausible-but-fun combat.

Im still laughing about how the NYC detective takes an over abundance of abuse from Reacher.

 

[Yora]

Dragon Age: Origins
Dragon Age 2
Dragon Age: Inquisition

Make up your minds how you want to title your games!

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Yeah whilst I agree with Paul that you'd only go to the ecliptic if up to something if that orbital plane was the natural approach - and it would be from many places - there are other places from where it just be the natural shortest path, and it'd be weird to go around. Though I admit 100x less weird if it was the Federation doing it, as they're extremely scrupulous and thoughtful in general.

Whenever a Federation ship travels to or from Earth, they always pass Jupiter. Warping to the edge of a system then travelling in along the plane of the ecliptic appears to be standard Federation practice. It is less likely to be taken for an attack, and presents more opportunities to gather data.