Film pet peeves

[drivebyluna]

Be as general or specific as you like.

My pet peeve is coming from the fact that I'm currently watching Bitch Slap but I've seen this happen in other films. I hate it when they make the sound effects louder than the actual dialogue. Usually I watch movies on my computer and this causes me to constantly turn up and down the volume on my speakers so that I can actually hear what they're saying but without blowing out my eardrums during action scenes.

[Gilberto]

Bitch Slap was a disappointment overall.

Here's one I noticed while watching Smallville. Movies about superheroes and superspies all have this moment where he opens up this cool cabinet full of exotic weapons and stuff, but it's mostly crap they never use in the movie and would never come in useful. Most of the time there's one single ninja throwing star hanging by itself on a nail. What good would just 1 ninja throwing star be? We used to have those in Junior High. They weren't useful then either, but at least we outgrew the illusion that they would become useful.

[broox]

Jan 8, 2012 1:52:51 GMT -5 drivebyluna said:

Be as general or specific as you like.

My pet peeve is coming from the fact that I'm currently watching Bitch Slap but I've seen this happen in other films. I hate it when they make the sound effects louder than the actual dialogue. Usually I watch movies on my computer and this causes me to constantly turn up and down the volume on my speakers so that I can actually hear what they're saying but without blowing out my eardrums during action scenes.

Dvd's don't even come with "stereo" as an audio option anymore. They assume that everyone is using a fancy surround sound system. This is one of the reasons the dialogue is hard to hear, it's mixed for surround. Very irritating.

Here's a peeve: I am getting a little weary of movies glossing over the fictional death of untold thousands. Watch any modern action movie and you'll see car chases that lead to enormous pile ups, or buildings exploding, or entire countries being destroyed (for example transformers movies or the day after tomorrow) and nobody seems to care. I like big action sequences too, don't get me wrong, but when you get to the scale of destroying a city you should give the scene a little gravity by showing something of the tragedy of it all. Or maybe not, I dunno.

[lynn]

Sure, where's the scene where the transformers attend the funeral of the hundreds of people killed in their epic battles?

[Gilberto]

Yeah, I guess it's because all that mindless action wouldn't be so fun if we had to face the emotional consequences of it.

You know what movie's the worst on this? Star Wars! They just totally blow up Leia's whole planet and Han's the only one who's upset because chunks of Alderaan and Alderaanian body parts make it harder for him to drive through space.

[lynn]

Leia sure doesn't seem to grieve about it. And she calls herself human!

[broox]

And Luke seems much more upset about Ben's death than he does about the deaths of his aunt and uncle. Leia, who presumably lost her entire family and everyone she's grown up with, has to comfort him.

[Gilberto]

That's one of the best jokes in the Family Guy Star Wars episode, because Luke's known Ben for, like, a day and Leia's whole world is gone.

[broox]

Lord, now that I think about it, I guess it is literally a day. In one day Luke went from finding R2 missing from the garage to destroying the death star. And somehow I can't find time to do the dishes.

[Gilberto]

I know, and he's like "I can't believe he's gone", all cry-cry, and she just sits there and feels bad for him. It's an interesting statement on Lucas as a storyteller, because Leia is a non-character from a nothing planet so he doesn't even consider that she should be devastated and Luke's comments make him look like a self-obsessed little bitch.

[broox]

And to show how sexist Lucas is: why does Luke instantly take to the force (after less than ONE DAY of training he merits a "the force is strong in this one" from Vader, who is Lord of the freakin Sith). Vader, who has spent some quality time with Leia, notices no such force in her. Leia takes three movies to learn that she has the force, and even then has no awareness of it. They're supposed to be twins right?

Here's what Lucas thinks a male jedi looks like:



And here's a female one:



'Nuff said.

[Gilberto]

Can't argue with him on that one. The hot jedi's not the problem. The problem is that when things go south on the mushroom planet, she goes down like a sack of potatoes without so much as putting up a fight.

This whole sequence made the movie not work for me. The epic legendary destruction of the jedi is no time for showing off hot extras or featuring your friends' kids. Between belly girl getting shot down in Mario world and that kid who can't even deliver his line or stand still when he's supposed to be seeing Darth Vader coming at him with a freakin' lightsaber, the whole thing was amateurish. If all it takes is one montage to take down every jedi in the universe, you kind of don't feel sorry for them.

[drivebyluna]

This is more of a TV pet peeve but I still can't believe that production companies use the laugh track. It drives me crazy. There's a lot of show my friends watch like Big Bang Theory or How I met Your Mother that I simply can't watch because of the laugh track.

[wilson]

But...but....how will I know when something funny happened?

[broox]

I hate laugh tracks too. On some old fashioned sitcoms they don't bother me as much, like on Friends for example. Maybe because there are actual audiences there. The absolute worst is when they add them to shows that don't have audiences, like MASH for example. Awful.