Ridiculous Movie Device - "I Want to Know Everything About This Guy"

Every time a top-secret Government agency is after a civilian in a movie, the evil head of the agency always demands the same information:


"I want to know everything about this guy, where he eats, where he sleeps, what the name of his kindergarten teacher was."


The agency head then proceeds to run around telling all his geeks that he needs it sooner and faster but never actually does anything himself aside from brooding in the back of the dimly lit control room.


Why do these guys always need to know such random information?  Shouldn't they focus on more relevant information like bank accounts, military records, known aliases and the like? Say I'm an "enemy of the state" and I'm trying to evade some corrupt rogue NSA contingent so I can expose their transgressions.  Is it really important that they know who my kindergarten teacher was?  Presumably they would also want to know the names of all my teachers then right?  What kind of game-breaking information do they expect to gain here?  Also, isn't this all top-secret?  Do we really want to involve some innocent grade school teacher?  Think about how many more people these guys then have to kill at the end of the movie during the "tie up all loose ends" montage.


I'll tell you who I really feel bad for.  It's the first year analyst to has to scrape up this useless information.  Where does one even start?  Do they cold call the teachers?  How does that conversation even go?


"Ms. Smith, this is Bob Johnson, I'm calling from the, uh, department of shipping and logistics, did you ever teach a student named Ralph Simmons, looks kind of like Will Smith now?"


"Why yes, I think so, if memory serves correctly he was the best finger painter I ever had"


"Thank you for the information ma'am, has he by any chance contacted you in the last 36 hours?"


"Why no, in fact the last time I saw him I—" (phone call ends)


What does Bob Johnson do now?  Does he tell his boss to be on the lookout for some quality finger painting?  Think how frustrated a guy like Johnson is.  He probably graduated top of his class at MIT or Cal-Tech and got a great job working for the CIA doing top-secret surveillance thinking he'd be operating satellites and monitoring terrorist sleeper cells. Meanwhile, here he is now, mixed up in some illegal black-ops project which he'll probably be indicted for, and he's looking through high school year books trying to get in touch with a retired math teacher.  No wonder our defense budget costs trillions every year.  We're paying CIA analysts to work up detailed top-secret Facebook profiles on innocent people.


For once, can the agency head just say "I want to know anything that can help us catch this guy."  Maybe if he allocated his resources better, the situation wouldn't be out of control in the first place.


PS - there is no way these secret control rooms look cool and sleek with awesome glass doors, nice furniture and thousands of flat screens.  Dollars are scarce in the Government, I'll bet it looks more like the post office.

Ridiculous Movie Device Special Edition - This One Scene In Star Wars

 

Let me begin by saying I stumbled upon this scene recently and thought of doing an entire RMD regarding torture scenes in movies.  I felt like the films always show the creepy torture guy walk in or all the weird instruments and then just pan back to an exterior shot of the house or room and you hear the character screaming.  However, upon further review, films like Hostel, Touristas, Saw, and any season of  "24", among others, have ample on screen torture sequences.  So I decided, despite surely coming off like a massive nerd, to narrow my RMD to this one stupid scene in Star Wars I (or IV, or whatever the first one ever made is called these days).

Here's the scene: Darth Vader has Princess Leia captive on his ship and he is demanding the location of the rebel base.  Leia, stalwart in her role of Senator and hair-style pioneer, of course refuses, and denies knowledge of her rebel affiliation.  Vader, not one to fall for tricks oft-used on the weak minded, brings in this stupid-looking floating mini-planet torture-bot.  This is where I have a problem.  It would appear that the only capability of this machine is to hold a syringe.  I guess George Lucas, in all his infinite nerd-dom, simply felt that a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, humans simply would never want to hold a syringe.  Think of the engineering and manufacturing costs involved with creating such a unique and sophisticated piece of equipment!  This kind of wanton government spending is exactly why you have a galaxy wide rebellion going!  Imagine how angry the conservatives on Coruscant must be!  First the Empire overthrows their radical Jedi theocracy and now they're draining the limited galaxy budget to create useless military technology?  What is this? Communist Russia? Has Emperor Palpetine ever heard of Thomas Jefferson and laissez-faire government?  You're committing thousands of clones to useless patrol duties in the corridors of your supposedly secure base and you can't spare one to inject Leia with the torture serum?  What exactly does the oversight committee in the Imperial senate actually do?  Vader is supposed to be brilliant and has shown his distaste for the Imperial bureaucracy on a number of occasions, surely he can't endorse this.

More importantly, why is Vader allowing this machine to torture HIS DAUGHTER!  This guy can choke people out using the force, clearly he is capable of superior and more cost-effective torture methods.  Seriously, what the fuck Vader?  How you gonna do your own daughter like this?  Show some heart out there you bionic bitch and do it yourself.

  

Ridiculous Movie Device - The Token Serial Killer / Bomber Planning Room

Today's RMD is the use of the token newspaper clipping room that the FBI always finds when they've finally found the serial killer or bomber.  This is one that has always killed me.  Now maybe in the 70's guys like the Zodiac killer we're all about the papers but come on, It's 2011, why are these guys not using a computer?!  Why do they feel the need to leave the door open to basically confirm that they are the killer should the FBI ever look inside their woodshed?  More importantly, who has the time between killing, plotting the next victim, and not getting caught to create this ridiculous art and crafts project.  I would love to see just one of these movies show the guy come home from a tough day of raping/murdering some innocent woman, and begrudgingly break out his scissors to begin clipping Newspapers.  When was the last time you made a collage?  You know how the glue stick never works and the edges of the paper always curls up?  How about all the annoying ink that comes off on your hands when you handle newsprint?  These people are unstable psychopaths, imagine how frustrated they must get having to constantly update this thing.  I just once want to see a killer flip out when he realizes he connected the red lines wrong, used permanent marker, and has to start all over again. 

These rooms also beg a lot of other questions:

Do these guys actually like arts and crafts?  The rooms are always laid out so perfectly.  Do you think the BTK killer ever took a decoupage class at the local community center in Wichita?   

When do they start?  Do they decide to use the news-clipping room before they start killing? After? Halfway through so they can keep track?  Do they go to Home Depot to get those bulletin boards to line the wall with before they begin?  Where does he get all these local newspapers to keep track of the national coverage? Do they have a thousand subscriptions?

What happens when they run out of space?  Is this thing fluid?  What happens if you start out your clipping room planning to kill like 1-2 congressman responsible for framing your father and instead you end up killing a bunch of henchman and assorted innocent people along the way?  Do you expand the room? Do you re-format?  How come the FBI never stumbles upon one of these rooms with only a quarter of a wall completed?  Its always packed to the gills.

Where do they get all this information to hang on the walls?  How are they getting all of these year book photos, grade transcripts, top secret files and all kinds of schematics and diagrams?  If you told me today to gather info on some random waitress I was planning to kill, the best I think I could do would be some grainy black and white photos of her getting in and out of her car at work.

Listen, all I'm saying is that these movie serial killers are all very smart, deliberate people.  Don't think for a second they're going to take a haphazard approach to their arts and crafts.  Filmmakers - from now on what say we just have the FBI open a hidden file on the killer's computer that has some articles saved down from the local paper and call it a scene.

Ridiculous Movie Device - The Forced Real Action at the End of a Training Movie

For years I've noticed certain devices used in movies that seem to get repeated without anyone ever questioning them.  Thus, I've decided to add a new segment to the QBDL, known as Ridiculous Movie Device.

Today's RMD is the Forced Real Action at the End of a Training Movie.

Everyone loves a good war training movie.  Top Gun, Stripes, GI Jane, The Guardian, Pearl Harbor, well, nobody really liked Pearl Harbor, but you get the idea.  What is one thing all these movies have in common?  Great training sequences, followed by ridiculous contrived "real life" scenarios.  Why do the producers of these movies routinely tack on a completely ludicrous one-off half-hour scenario in order to show the cast of characters "in action".  Just end the movie at graduation and let us extrapolate their success after that awesome coming together training piece.

Top Gun may be the most absurd of all of these final half hours.  The film is an iconic 80's classic, it has great training sequences, ahead of its time action and visual effects, emotional highs, emotional lows, questionably homo-erotic volleyball scenes, cool handshakes...its all gravy for a solid hour and a half.  Sadly though, this near masterpiece almost crashes and burns when then these maniacal producers feel the need to incorporate a pre-text for World War III at the end.

Lets set the scene here - its 1986, the Cold War is very much a going concern, and a "stricken communications ship" has drifted into hostile waters.  For the sake of time lets set aside the completely fabricated concept of a "communications ship," and focus on the "drifted into hostile waters".  This ship is apparently in the Indian ocean, and there are Russian MiG's in the area.  Why are Russian MiG's randomly patrolling the Indian ocean?  It's nowhere near the USSR or any Eastern Bloc countries.  I'd MAYBE give you Chinese MiGs, but Russians? Sorry, not buying it.  Furthermore, what waters off the Indian Ocean are hostile to the US? The setting is ludicrous, but fine, lets set aside disbelief on this one and just go with it.

Given this alternate universe with Soviet-controlled waters in the Indian Ocean, and some fake US ship dead in the water drifting towards an enemy with thousands of nukes, we now find ourselves in a potentially huge international crisis.  So what would it make the most sense to do at this point if you're working at the Pentagon?  Why of course let's send our newest recruits with absolutely zero combat experience half way around the world from their school in California to engage Soviet fighter planes before they get close enough to blow up a US aircraft carrier with their exocet missiles.  Excuse me for interrupting this clearly sound logic but DOES ANYBODY REMEMBER THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS?!?!?!  How about the Gulf of Tonkin Incident?  Where are the diplomatic channels?  Why are we trying to engage Soviet airplanes?  Why are they trying to blow up US aircraft carriers?  I mean its 1986, tensions are cooled, we have phones and computers, PICK UP THE PHONE AND CALL GORBACHEV!! Its a communications ship not a nuclear submarine.  Moreover, there are no existing well-trained fighter pilots on this aircraft carrier already?  Why are we wasting 36 hours getting the clearly spooked and not ready Maverick to this aircraft carrier when this ship is a sitting duck in enemy territory?  Where are all the former TOP GUN graduates?  WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?! Am I taking crazy pills or is this not the most poorly handled international conflict escalation since the USS Maine blew up by accident and started the Spanish American War?  And how dismissive is the token bald commander guy at the end?  "The other side is denying it happened," he says.  WHAT?! How was this near-war with fucking RUSSIA being kept under wraps!  Is anyone else concerned that Soviet airplanes are just firing missiles at US planes?  This is declaration of war from our sworn enemy!  Lets not just laugh it off and send Maverick back to the bar to sing Great Balls of Fire.

Terribly absurd scenes like this are routinely added into these great training movies and nobody even blinks to think about how big of a deal some of these things are.  The Stripes guys perform an unauthorized US incursion into Soviet Czechoslovakia with top-secret weapons in 1981! The GI Jane Seal unit just casually orders helicopter gunships into Libya!  These Hollywood producers are the dogs of war.

Get rid of this ridiculous movie device before we end up in a nuclear holocaust.

P.S. Everyone celebrating Maverick's big win at the end, GET BACK TO WORK, your at war now, act like it.  How unprofessional can you get?