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How do?

This thread is brought to you by Blade.

For the most part, particularly barring the blood effects, it's a solid movie and paved the way for the MCU.

But what really, really gets my goat here is that ritual.

See, the villain Deacon Frost has clearly spent a while doing his ritual research. He's found out all he needs to know to successfully summon La Magra, the Vampire God. He's even tracked down, or had built, the right sort of temple to conduct the ritual.

And then? And then his girlfriend goes and offs one of the 15 required Ancients before the ritual had properly begun.

So what the heck did he actually summon? It can't have been La Magra. That's not how summoning rituals work. One can't swap out The Blood Of A Virgin for a Black Pudding just because both are haemoglobin based comestibles. And yet the film doesn't even touch on that. He doesn't even berate his squeeze for her stupidity. He simply carries on, before being asploded by Blade a few minutes later (look, the film is 19 years old. That's not a spoiler at this stage).

Why? Why do something so patently stupid after having the patience to arrange the whole shebang?? I mean they're Vampire families. Which suggests there's some kind of successor out there to replace the one that was just needlessly and foolishly wasted. Why not just take a few days to go and grab whomever that might be?

Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!!

I don't try to over-analyse or deconstruct movies based on comic books.

That way madness lies.

Just remember it as one of the few movies that Tracy Lords acted in that are still around.

My movie irritation is when a talented actor is under used.

Most recently, the guilty party for me is Shot Caller, prison/crime drama starring Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jamie Lannister in that one show that's a bloodier, rape-ier verson of Downton Abbey). Nkolaj does fine in it, conveying anger, rage and loss when its called for. But my man Jon Bernthal(Walking Dead, The Punisher) is a minor character who is barely used. As far as I'm concerned, he's a pretty good actor and the movie could've benefitted from him having a larger role.

Granted the movie sat on the shelf for almost a year and both actors probably weren't at their current status in popular culture, but the trailer made it seem like Bernthal had a more prominent role. Was a decent flick that seemed a bit rushed and didn't really do much to explain things, other than let us watch a dude get institutionalized into the US prison system. Had it been 15 minutes longer, the movie could've been great.

And writing this made me think of my other movie irritation, movie trailers that mislead what the film is supposed to be or spoils the film in the short, max 2 minutes that most trailers are.

In general I think the entire Blade film franchise can be summed up in the phrase "mediocre ending."

But you sir, you are immotal;




And that's just act one of Ryan's heroic journey, followed by the hey he's really doing it, the all is lost moment, and then the triumphant return!

And yet we still don't know the answer to the real question... is there or is there not a Hello Kitty tattoo on Ryan Reynold's butt?

My three irritations with movies

1: Not enough solid roles for the national treasure that is Kurt Russel. There isn't a film he's in that I dislike, maybe the fast and the furious series but that's due to them being overly tired and boring and despite that I still like his character.

2: Hollywood riding the corpse of Tom Cruise, ok maybe he's not dead yet but you couldn't tell by his acting. He's entirely too damn old for his roles and isn't a draw anymore, he should have stopped & retired after the first mission impossible.

3: My inability to stick with a concise opinion of Keanu Reeves, it seems like every other film he does swings my interest 180 and then back. Bill and Ted, Point Break cheesy but fun, 1st Matrix awesome later Matrix movies & 47 Ronin make me want to vomit blood, John Wick 1 & 2? I still haven't lost my boner.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
How do?

This thread is brought to you by Blade.

For the most part, particularly barring the blood effects, it's a solid movie and paved the way for the MCU.

But what really, really gets my goat here is that ritual.

See, the villain Deacon Frost has clearly spent a while doing his ritual research. He's found out all he needs to know to successfully summon La Magra, the Vampire God. He's even tracked down, or had built, the right sort of temple to conduct the ritual.

And then? And then his girlfriend goes and offs one of the 15 required Ancients before the ritual had properly begun.

So what the heck did he actually summon? It can't have been La Magra. That's not how summoning rituals work. One can't swap out The Blood Of A Virgin for a Black Pudding just because both are haemoglobin based comestibles. And yet the film doesn't even touch on that. He doesn't even berate his squeeze for her stupidity. He simply carries on, before being asploded by Blade a few minutes later (look, the film is 19 years old. That's not a spoiler at this stage).

Why? Why do something so patently stupid after having the patience to arrange the whole shebang?? I mean they're Vampire families. Which suggests there's some kind of successor out there to replace the one that was just needlessly and foolishly wasted. Why not just take a few days to go and grab whomever that might be?

Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!!

You could replace the blood with ketchup and the result would be pretty awesome.

Have you seen the original versions of the ending? CGI cloud vampire would have been much worse. Check out the GoodBadFlicks on Blade.

My pet peeve in movies is hapless extras and minor characters. I get that movies are generally wish fulfillment fantasies where the audience is supposed to dream like they're the heroic main character who is awesome at everything and will solve everyone's problems. Unfortunately this is mostly done by making everyone who isn't the main character absolutely, utterly useless in every way. This isn't just goofy and lame, it also makes films completely predictable.

Any film where the heroes spend the first act trying to contact police or the military there's no suspense because you know when the police turn up the villains are gonna slaughter those cops in a one sided, 30 second slaughter, leaving it to the heroes to go about killing the bad guys. Any film where the the good guys gather in the war room to watch as a team of elite specialists are sent to recon/capture the baddie, then its almost certain that team of specialists is about to get slaughtered, either by ambushing villains, or by a bomb. The only hope those poor extras have is that just maybe the villain isn't there, rendering their time in the spotlight pointless, rather than lethal.

It takes all suspense out of a movie. As an example, and with a spoiler alert (not that it needs one), in The Hurt Locker;

My main peeve in movies these days is simply CGI. The hobbit movies being the most egregious example I can think of off the top of my head (I don't bother with movies anymore for the most part, mainly for this reason*) The CGI seems to just substitute for plot or characters. Its a cue to go to the bathroom or go to sleep. It will add nothing and be nothing, just stretch on and on like the budget is infinite. And yet the characters and plot will go completely unaddressed for these interminable wastes of time.

*also explosions. My main break with movies came with Tristan and Isolde. Because there were randomly explosions, in an early medieval love story.

 sebster wrote:
*snip*

I agree with this but I can top it.

Romantic sub-plots.

I. fething. Hate. Romantic sub-plots.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm all for a good romance story line. Unfortunately inserting a love story into a movie that otherwise is in another genre is generally a waste of my time as a viewer. I hate it, not just because it's a distraction from what the movie should really be spending time on, but it's almost invariably going to be a cliched copy of the romantic sub-plot I saw in another movie last week which was just a cliched copy of a romantic sub-plot I saw in dozens of other movies. Almost from the get go you can usually guess how these things will go in their entirety based solely on how old the main character is and how cynical/idealistic the tone of the world around them happens to be, and it's always this extremely shallow pedantic display where women are sluts who will put out for any guy no matter how "strong and independent" they are, and any guy will fall for a girl after accepting how "strong and independent" she is (even though she's really just a slut, if it happens to be a woman main character in a movie marketed to men).

While the constant ferrying of the idiot ball from side character to side character to justify the hero as the only living being worth a damn gets annoying, I think I find the way love is marketed to the masses as the most mechanical of emotions to be annoying and downright inhumane.

I especially hate it in films directed at teenagers and college kids, because that gak not only manages to be cliche but heinously insulting in how it tries to pander to the age group. Popular girls aren't mean, they just hang out with mean people (for some reason...). The hot cheerleader will totally go out with out when she realizes how great you are (if you're a nerd). The hot smart girl will totally go out when she realizes how great you are (if you're a jock). The cute guy will totally date you no matter how plain and "uncool" you are, even though we've chosen to represent insecure young women feeling the pressures of body image with extremely attractive women who could easily be millionaire models if they weren't millionaire actresses.

And the worst part of it all, is that most movies lose nothing completely cutting them out. Would Jurassic World have been worse for lack of the the completely forced and chemistry-less sexual tension between Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard? Hey I know. How about I remake John Wick but I throw in a hot Star Bucks employee who serves John his coffee and he goes back to the Star Bucks every twenty minutes, completely forgets about dog inspired vengeance and just eye bangs her while stuttering over himself and shooting off pathetic pick up lines for five minutes? EDIT: Oh and of course she has to be kidnapped before the movie is over. Yeah that would make it so much better as a film. Clearly

The only movies where this is acceptable to me are Bond movies, because we all know the bond girl is just there to be an eye candy trophy, and no one ever pretends otherwise. Sure it's sexist but at least its honest!

Strongly disagree on romance subplots - that's all romance stories are good for. I have never once seen a straight-up romance movie worth watching - and I guarantee that all the examples springing to your mind right now as you go to correct me are romantic comedies, ie they had to include a gakload of innuendo and slapstick to distract you from the total absence of interesting plot and character development otherwise - but if executed well they can enrich a proper story.

My biggest pet peeve with movies is the same as it's always been: I despise fridge logic. I hate getting up after watching a film and immediately realising the whole thing falls apart with even a moment's consideration, it makes me feel like I wasted my time.

 Yodhrin wrote:
and I guarantee that all the examples springing to your mind right now as you go to correct me are romantic comedies

You're right

But I also think romantic comedies are by and large the only good "romances", with a few stand outs in the genres of tragedy and drama but the overwhelming majority being repetitive and melo-dramatic garbage. At least romantic comedies make me laugh, so there's some redeeming value there. And of course a well executed romantic sub-plot can enrich a story. Anything well executed enriches a story, but there are few well executed romantic sub-plots. Most are either distractingly bad, or so meh that I completely forget about them because they're otherwise identical to the thousands of others and thus completely forgettable.

I despise fridge logic. I hate getting up after watching a film and immediately realising the whole thing falls apart with even a moment's consideration, it makes me feel like I wasted my time.

I find this to be true of most movies (and many TV shows) honestly.

Like Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull. Please someone explain to me... why did the Soviets need Indie at the start of the movie? They seemed to know exactly what they were looking for, had infiltrated American society well enough to find and raid a top secret government facility, had an inside man already, and what... They couldn't find the box they needed? Indie is the only one who knew the skull was magnetic? With how hellbent the ruskies seemed I don't buy that. What they know that looking into the skull gives you crazy visions, but oh knowing its magnetic was beyond them? And I'm pretty sure all the boxes in this warehouse all have writing on them, you telling me there's no inventory for what's in the place? I don't buy that for five seconds. This is the United States government. It inventories everything, and since there has to be an inventory somewhere, why did they bother involving the guy who stampeded his way through Nazi's in this scheme?

Honestly the overwhelming majority of plots collapse when you think about them hard enough, but that's just kind of were willful suspension comes in (yet that too has limits). EDIT: Though for me this may just be an example of TVTropes will ruin your life.

 LordofHats wrote:
Romantic sub-plots.

I. fething. Hate. Romantic sub-plots.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm all for a good romance story line.

Good one. I think the problem comes when the romance isn't natural or convincing, but is just tacked on to complete the hero's win. So in Jurassic World, Chris Pratt's character, who probably had a name, well of course he ends up with the women played the lady from some other films I can't quite remember. It completes his win, he is the hero and he get gets the girl. But the actual romance is somewhere between non-existent and terrifying.

As you point out there are some contortions made to fit these sub-plots in to movies that are actually pretty horrifying. As you say it means that the pretty girl is actually really nice and worth pining after, even when all her friends are horrible. It means that if you just prove how manly and virile you are then the girl should be expected to fall in love with you, as if she has no personal reasons to choose anyone else for any reason she wants.

And mostly, like with the extras, its just really boring. When the girl in scene 3 meets the hero and they start bickering, we know exactly how it will play out.


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 Yodhrin wrote:
Strongly disagree on romance subplots - that's all romance stories are good for. I have never once seen a straight-up romance movie worth watching - and I guarantee that all the examples springing to your mind right now as you go to correct me are romantic comedies, ie they had to include a gakload of innuendo and slapstick to distract you from the total absence of interesting plot and character development otherwise - but if executed well they can enrich a proper story.

Dr Zhavago, Anna Karenina, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. There's others that I don't like but a lot of people love, like Titanic, so they do exist. But I accept the list is pretty short.

My biggest pet peeve with movies is the same as it's always been: I despise fridge logic. I hate getting up after watching a film and immediately realising the whole thing falls apart with even a moment's consideration, it makes me feel like I wasted my time.

Whether this bothers me depends. I think it depends on how important it is to the plot, and whether it could be explained away with some kind of explanation that just wasn't shown. If it isn't a key plot element, and there is some kind of explanation that could make it possible even if that wasn't included on the screen it doesn't bother me much.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 LordofHats wrote:
But I also think romantic comedies are by and large the only good "romances", with a few stand outs in the genres of tragedy and drama but the overwhelming majority being repetitive and melo-dramatic garbage. At least romantic comedies make me laugh, so there's some redeeming value there.

I think romantic comedies work best because they get you laughing you like the leads more, and so buy in to and care more about their relationship. The problem with a lot of straight romances is that everyone is so dramatic and struggling from the beginning to end that you just don't care.

I think a big part of it are limitations of the medium because my opinion on this is very different for books, and somewhat less harsh for television . Movies only have an hour and a half to maybe three hours tops to sell you on the story. As a result film tends to lean more heavily on archetype and caricature as short cuts to rapidly relay information to viewers while moving things along intrinsically leaning films toward cliche more than other mediums. It's hard to make a film stand out on a story level at a certain point, which is one reason I think why budget movies put a lot of their creative effort into technical achievements with CGI, frantic action, and fan service rather than trying to reinvent the narrative wheel.

For every inventively fun Jack Sparrow to come out movies, there a billion Bond rip offs whose films are probably more memorable for their set pieces than anything relating to their characters or plot. And of course sequelitis will inevitably ruin the inventive products of films. God damn that last Pirates of the Carribbean film was just god awful... and oh look a needless cliche and forced romantic sub-plot. At least Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley had some decent on screen chemistry and being hopelessly in love was treated like plot rather than singular defining character traits.

Another thing I hate in media is prophecy. Computer games are the worst for this, but its in everything. When one character is declared the chosen one by prophecy it undermines all their achievements, instead of their talents and choices causing their success, it just happens because it was meant to be. The only examples I can think of where prophecy works are Dune and GoT. In Dune that's because pre-destination is a major theme and the books after the first one actually work to undermine prophecy as it used to create a standard hero's journy. In GoT it has worked so far because the show has used misinterpreted prophecy as a driver of the story, and because the big prophecy hasn't been concluded yet so there's still hope Martin will do it right.

 LordofHats wrote:
I think a big part of it are limitations of the medium because my opinion on this is very different for books, and somewhat less harsh for television . Movies only have an hour and a half to maybe three hours tops to sell you on the story. As a result film tends to lean more heavily on archetype and caricature as short cuts to rapidly relay information to viewers while moving things along intrinsically leaning films toward cliche more than other mediums.

I think part of it isn't just time, but pacing. Films have momentum and that momentum is what keeps us engaged. Adding 15mins of screentime to explore a sub-plot and explain away some plot hole might stretch the runtime and that can be a problem, but the bigger issue comes when it kills momentum flat. That's why I think the future vision and metahuman email parts of BvS were such a blunder. They weren't that long, the movie was overly long with or without them, but they were inserted at a time when the film was finally starting to draw all its elements together. It just killed momentum flat.

Momentum matters in books as well, but not at much, so it's less of an issue.

It's hard to make a film stand out on a story level at a certain point, which is one reason I think why budget movies put a lot of their creative effort into technical achievements with CGI, frantic action, and fan service rather than trying to reinvent the narrative wheel.

I think a big part of it is that mid-range movies don't do very well any more. It seems these days you either throw $5m or less at a film and hope for a breakout but don't care if it tanks or doesn't even reach cinemas, or you put in $100m plus in and hope it will be one of the mega-hits of the year, or at least expect it to do well enough to recoup its costs. There's little scope left for films around the $30m to $50m range.

So there's lots of experimentation and gambles being made at the low end, and almost none made at the top, because you don't gamble with $100m investments. Which means boilerplate plots with boilerplate characters, and CGI scenes of things they know audiences liked in other movies. And if you do gamble, like letting Depp play Jack Sparrow as an effete drunkard, and it works, then you take that as a new solid investment and you get Depp to do that same thing in like 5 more movies.

 sebster wrote:
Another thing I hate in media is prophecy. Computer games are the worst for this, but its in everything. When one character is declared the chosen one by prophecy it undermines all their achievements, instead of their talents and choices causing their success, it just happens because it was meant to be. The only examples I can think of where prophecy works are Dune and GoT.

There is only one chosen one, his name is Ash and he carries a boomstick.

One thing that really bugs me in sci fi movies and TV and even video games is when they show computer monitors that are magical things that have transparent screens floating in the air. I know if I had a monitor like that it would annoy the crap outta me, cuz I'd be able to see everything going on behind it.

My irritation with movies, and you see this alot, is when you have a guy pointing a gun at someone he really wants dead, but doesn't shoot for some reason and ends up being stopped.

You see this in Rogue One - the commander dude was pointing a gun at whatsherface, and he knows that she's going to ruin his plans, but does he shoot? Nooo he has to monologue and then surprise surprise gets his stupid ass shot by the obvious love interest who wasn't really dead because reasons.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly have an amazing scene that takes the piss out of this contrivance, where you have a gunman ambush the ugly guy, go into a long monologue, and then gets shot by the ugly who had a hidden gun. The ugly guy then says "if you're going to shoot, just shoot. Don't stand around talking about it."

Sphere's translation error.

1) Hackers as essentially Sorcerers, basically everything in movieland is connected to the intertubes except when narrative means its not

2) Laughabley undergeared/inept 'special forces', ie Shield, Argus, DEO, UNIT

3) The DCU, all of it

 sebster wrote:
I think a big part of it is that mid-range movies don't do very well any more. It seems these days you either throw $5m or less at a film and hope for a breakout but don't care if it tanks or doesn't even reach cinemas, or you put in $100m plus in and hope it will be one of the mega-hits of the year, or at least expect it to do well enough to recoup its costs. There's little scope left for films around the $30m to $50m range.

So there's lots of experimentation and gambles being made at the low end, and almost none made at the top, because you don't gamble with $100m investments. Which means boilerplate plots with boilerplate characters, and CGI scenes of things they know audiences liked in other movies. And if you do gamble, like letting Depp play Jack Sparrow as an effete drunkard, and it works, then you take that as a new solid investment and you get Depp to do that same thing in like 5 more movies.

Yeah, it's unfortunate how studios and audiences have conspired to drive things to this state of affairs. Certainly the studios have greatly refined the 'blockbuster' formula since the mid-'70s with Jaws and Star Wars. But audiences have also fed it through increasingly rigid and narrow expectations to the point of simply becoming blockbuster consumers. When they go to the multiplex, they tend to want to see certain things for their $15, and get POed when they don't. This co-dependent spiral is what leaves the industry with a glut of ultraexpensive superhero and franchise films, and little funding for or interest in those mid-level films.

Audiences even partake in box office horse racing, which is a really weird phenomenon when you think about it. Martin Scorsese recently had this to say about Aronofsky's mother!, box office and filmmaking, and I think he's on point:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/martin-scorsese-rotten-tomatoes-box-office-obsession-why-mother-was-misjudged-guest-column-1047286

Except of course Mother was just horrific ( coming from someone who loved Black Swan).

The antidote to Blockbuster itis, ironically quality TV now.
See movies that are different and don't worry about it. That's why I don't watch many copycat comicbook movies etcetc.

Are we going to need a "Mad Doc Grotsnik's Ramblings and Random Thoughts" thread pretty soon?

Scenes with police where the writers clearly don't understand a damned thing about the police, how they work, or how they behave. The first episode of The Gifted really offends in this regard.

Too many comic book movies. Too much CGI.

 gorgon wrote:

 sebster wrote:
I think a big part of it is that mid-range movies don't do very well any more. It seems these days you either throw $5m or less at a film and hope for a breakout but don't care if it tanks or doesn't even reach cinemas, or you put in $100m plus in and hope it will be one of the mega-hits of the year, or at least expect it to do well enough to recoup its costs. There's little scope left for films around the $30m to $50m range.

So there's lots of experimentation and gambles being made at the low end, and almost none made at the top, because you don't gamble with $100m investments. Which means boilerplate plots with boilerplate characters, and CGI scenes of things they know audiences liked in other movies. And if you do gamble, like letting Depp play Jack Sparrow as an effete drunkard, and it works, then you take that as a new solid investment and you get Depp to do that same thing in like 5 more movies.

Yeah, it's unfortunate how studios and audiences have conspired to drive things to this state of affairs. Certainly the studios have greatly refined the 'blockbuster' formula since the mid-'70s with Jaws and Star Wars. But audiences have also fed it through increasingly rigid and narrow expectations to the point of simply becoming blockbuster consumers. When they go to the multiplex, they tend to want to see certain things for their $15, and get POed when they don't. This co-dependent spiral is what leaves the industry with a glut of ultraexpensive superhero and franchise films, and little funding for or interest in those mid-level films.

Audiences even partake in box office horse racing, which is a really weird phenomenon when you think about it. Martin Scorsese recently had this to say about Aronofsky's mother!, box office and filmmaking, and I think he's on point:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/martin-scorsese-rotten-tomatoes-box-office-obsession-why-mother-was-misjudged-guest-column-1047286

I don't think it's fair to blame audiences even partially. There's a lot of factors at play, but the big ones are mis-marketing and the economic realities faced by working-poor and lower-middle class families(ie, the vast majority of the audience especially for mass-market blockbusters).

In the latter case, families and individuals with limited disposable income want to know with a high degree of certainty that they're going to enjoy the product they spend money on *before* they spend the money, and that does lead to a kind of "consumption conservatism" where people will spend money on media with enough similarities to their existing preferences in order to ensure they don't end up with buyer's remorse - an experience that you know going in will be reasonably entertaining to you, if a bit safe and samey, is better than going to see something "risky" that might be incredible or might be total garbage to your taste. And frankly that's an entirely rational mindset.

The problem comes when you bring in the former issue - mis-marketing - and all the other corporate-capitalist motivations for those making and selling the movies. They know most audiences don't have the cash to regularly step outside their comfort zone, so they focus-down their big budget products to have the widest possible appeal, and when they do produce something that the executives don't think will fly with that audience but which cost too much for them to make to try and flog as an "indie/arthouse" affair, they choose to lie, to distort, to cut trailers dishonestly, to imply that it plays to that audience's expectation when it really really doesn't. And that's cynical, even bordering on false advertising, but it is also rational behaviour for corporations.

The problem, as with just about everything, is the attitudes, assumptions, and practices of modern corporate capitalism - if people don't earn enough, they don't take risks with their consumption; if a corporation's only true imperative is to maximise shareholder value, then to do anything other than play to the biggest audience possible and use every trick just this side of legal to maximise sales to them is folly. Modern big-budget blockbuster filmmaking is an inevitable result of corporate media and of capitalism as it is presently conceived, and no amount of pretentious wittering by self-regarding "auteurs" like Scorsese and Aronofsky is going to change that simple economic reality.

 Breotan wrote:
Scenes with police where the writers clearly don't understand a damned thing about the police, how they work, or how they behave. The first episode of The Gifted really offends in this regard.

Funny, those kind of scenes often seem pretty bang-on when you're looking at them from the other side of the interrogation table. They might get precise details of procedure wrong, but plenty of folk only ever experience cops as disinterested time-serving bumblers or store-brand fascist thugs.

I don't think prophecy irritates me, but I do find it more often than not to simply be lazy, especially since most writers make their prophecies very straight forward and very dull. There have been people who've been inventive and cryptic. Rick Riordan I think is very good at this, as is J.K. Rowling. Like an effective romance sub-plot, good prophecy can add to the tension, especially when the prophecy plays out in ways other than the audience or characters expected.

Ain't much ground to play with "the chosen one will rise and defeat the evil one" though, and that's like 75% of all prophecies.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Breotan wrote:
Scenes with police where the writers clearly don't understand a damned thing about the police, how they work, or how they behave. The first episode of The Gifted really offends in this regard.

I'd replace "police" with "any profession/field" that the writer was too lazy to put even cursory effort into researching. Good old Dan Browning. Not the most irksome thing in the library for me but I do dislike it. Much like throwing a romantic sub-plot into the film to round out the demographics, or using a prophecy to get otherwise dull and boring characters to move along the plot, it's just lazy writing. I think cops, scientists, and lawyers get hit by the most but it hits the military hard too.

Would be fun if the chosen one is prophesied to bring a dark age or something.

Roman soldiers that do not throw their pila but instead use them like hoplite spears. However, I think the last movie where roman soldiers actual threw pila was before WWII.

Also, Romans with bracers. Bracers everywhere! They are like the short hand for Roman.

There's a thing that always bothers me is bomb countdown clocks. One of two things happens:

1. They just stop it with a few seconds to go. Stop it with 18 seconds to go, or 23 seconds to go. Now just 2 or 1. It's stupid.

2. Countdown clocks that suddenly get faster when you fail to disarm a bomb by cutting the wrong wire. That's not how timers work!!!

That and the zoom/enhance nonsense, and 'typing fast = hacking' thing.

 Breotan wrote:
Scenes with police where the writers clearly don't understand a damned thing about the police, how they work, or how they behave. The first episode of The Gifted really offends in this regard.

This reminds me of the time someone in my animation class tried to point out to the teacher that Hades is not "the devil" in greek mythology and is in fact just an overseer of the underworld (which isn't hell), unlike how the movie Hercules portrayed it. My teacher worked on Hercules (and we all knew it).

I have never seen an old lady use such a wide range of profanities and emotionally devastating words. Apparently Disney paid them to go to greece to study it's mythology and she really didn't appreciate it that people constantly point out that they got it wrong.

People often wonder why I never criticize that movie. I tell them it's because I prefer not to be verbally (and potentially physically) eviscerated.