Smart and Stupid Characters, Howitshouldhaveended.com
I realize that the past couple of posts have been a little “moody”, so I thought I’d give you guys something with a lighter tone.
Have you ever been watching a movie or a TV show, and start wondering why these characters are so stupid? You just want to yell at the screen, “Hey, morons! Why don’t you try that rocket launcher that you had a few episodes ago?!” Or maybe, “You idiot, how ’bout you don’t just run in there with only a toothpick for protection!?”
I know there’s a number of times when I’ve just been annoyed that the characters in films act so stupid for no reason whatsoever. I mean, who doesn’t love the scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark where the big, sword-swinging guy comes at Indiana Jones, doing an elaborate bunch of swinging and posturing, only for Indy to look at him, annoyed, before pulling out his revolver and shooting him before walking away. Of course, it’s one of the most clever scenes in movie history, but it was actually a joke.
Originally, there was a huge, choreographed fight between the two characters, with Indy’s opponent having an upper hand with his gigantic sword. But when it came time for the scene, the star wasn’t really up to it. See, Harrison Ford was sick with dysentery at the time, and so when the shot came up, he just pulled out his gun and fired. The crew liked it so much that that’s the final cut that was left in.
But not only is that good characterization, and an excellent scene, but it’s just plain smart. It’s a character using a bit of sense, and that seems pretty rare in films nowadays, at least from what I’ve seen. I mean, work smarter, not harder, right? We don’t need big fight for the sake of big fight. Have a reason already.
Anyway, I was at work the other day and randomly happened upon a little site called “How It Should Have Ended”. Basically, it’s a bunch of cartoons (of pretty decent quality, actually) detailing how certain movies should have ended, with a funny, witty twist, of course.
I would highly recommend checking it out. My favorites are the ones on Spider-Man 3, Lord of the Rings, and It’s a Wonderful Life. Just some really funny stuff. Alright, I’m out.
- Kyle
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I agree that characters do pretty stupid stuff these days. But sometimes they’ll suprise you and actually do something pretty smart. For example, I saw a movie the other day where this guy got stuck up in a tree with a bunch of monkies, and the monkeys started swinging on vines, and so the guy started swinging on the vines too, and it looked really cool. That’s when I thought to myself, “finally, someone doing something smart in a movie these days. This is totally not lame at all.”
So don’t worry Kyle, smart characters are still out there.
BTW, I’ve seen much better movie parodies than the ones on that website.
p.s. OK, so they still had the rocket launcher, but maybe they had run out of rockets. it looked like they only had the one. so they couldn’t possibly have used it all the time. and they couldn’t sneak back into the army base every episode to get more. I think the bigger question is, how come we never see or here about that base ever again?
Mr. Cynical said this on Friday, 13 June, 2008 at 9:25 am |
For the same reason that there’s randomly an International Airport there, or the fact that blowing up a giant lab under the University didn’t cause any damage to the school, or that life is still normal for everyone despite the fact that the city turned into a 50-mile wide crater…
It’s just one of those things, you know?
Kyle said this on Friday, 13 June, 2008 at 1:33 pm |