It seems that around nine out of ten times when a character arrives in a motor vehicle or on a motorcycle in a film or TV show they turn off the motor but leave the headlights on. Are we to believe that people in films and on TV enjoy the experience of having their battery completely drained when they return to the vehicle and try to start it?
shareWho doesnt enjoy a dead car battery?
share
Happens all the time in the winter in Canada when it goes down to minus 25 C at night. Not fun.
-25 is just nuts. dont know how people deal with cold that bad.
shareWe acclimatize. I once worked outside for 12 hours in minus 42 degrees centegrade. I was of course dressed for it and often had to stop working because sweat is your enemy in the winter.
share-42 C ?? Are you one of the Ice Road Truckers?
shareLOL Nope. And actually that was a typo it was -49 c that night not 42. We made some sort of record that night for being the second coldest city on earth that day. Or something like that. I'd have to ask my brother he would remember. He also worked that night. Luckily for him he was running rock truck. I was working on the ground all night :(
shareOH I was MISTAKEN. I looked it up. "minus 46.1 C, or minus 58.4 C with the wind chill"
http://www.edmontonjournal.com/technology/Edmonton+shatters+cold+record/2336460/story.html
"it was colder here than anywhere else in North America and it marked the coldest Dec. 13 in the city's history"
That explains why every time someone's trying get away from the bad guy the car won't start
shareI accidentally left my car running at work all day yesterday! Oops LOL
Just came to mind reading your post.
Here are a few more.
Movie characters driving in the city will get to park wherever they like when they get to their destination.
When you are alone in the back seat of the car, make sure you sit in the middle.
Sudden accelleration of a car (be it forwards, backwards, stopping, skidding, sliding, or whatever) causes a loud skid, even on dirt or wet roads. Be prepared. Each wheel is also fitted with a smoke device to let you know when this happens. Hollywood cars are also special: when you take off quickly, you always leave a skid mark for each drive wheel, regardless of whether you have a limited slip differential or not.
Pedestrians in Hollywood have the world's best reactions, so don't worry if you have to drive down a sidewalk. Mr Pappodopolus is quite used to having his fruit cart smashed, and despite his gesticulations and curses, he always manages to get out of the way in time.
There are always people carrying around large sheets of glass on the street during a car chase.
The person behind the wheel is talking to and looking at their passenger for the entire journey without actually looking at the _road_, changing gear, signalling etc. (ex. "When Harry Met Sally").
Cars chasing each other in the middle of a city will not suffer enough damage to stop the chase.
People being chased by a car will keep running down the middle of the road instead of ducking in somewhere where a car cannot go.
A car will always explode when shot at, unless the hero is driving it.
When you drive a car, you can always recognize all the persons you know that pass you in the opposite direction.
If someone has "fixed" the foot-brakes in the car, the driver never use the hand-brake and the gears to slow down, at least not until the last moment.
Cars often end up on cliff-edges with 2 wheels in the open air. The good guys are saved just before the car falls over, the bad guys join the car in the free fall, often caused by a bird setting down on the part of the car hanging over the edge.
When a car falls off a cliff after a car chase, it usually explodes before reaching the ground.
When speeding cars hit a parked car, they fly up into the air while the parked car doesn't even wiggle
After a car crash, no movie character ever sits and shakes for five minutes, or becomes incoherent with shock.
All cars seem to run on kerosene rather than gasoline (hence the copious black smoke when they burn).
Watch steering wheels in movie cars, especially in "through the windshield looking at the driver" shots. 9 times out of 10, the spokes of the wheel, which one would think should be horizontal, or close to it, are vertical, i.e., one can see one of the wheel spokes vertical, above the dash, in front of the driver's face, even when he's driving straight.
Whenever you see someone driving, even on straight and smooth roads, they are sawing at the wheel hard enough to be running an obstacle course. The car doesn't swerve at all, of course. The amount of excess wheel-twisting is independent of speed.
Not only do movie cars always park right in front, but they are never locked. Even convertibles with their tops down, in NYC, are still there hours later.
Movie cars have all excellent brakes and can come to a full stop from 80 MPH (with loud screeches, even on dirt roads) in 20 ft.
There's never an annoying wind disturbing the coiffures of convertible passengers.
There are no stop signs in movie land. Wherever you have to drive, no matter how close or far away it is, you never have to stop before you get there.
Film cars do not have inside rear-view mirrors. Most of them do, however, have an appx 1" gray spot on the inside of the windshield where the mirror would normally mount.
Film cars never start the first time when you're running away from the bad guy.
If there is a large bump in a downhill road, speeding cars will always fly over them and hit the ground in shower of sparks. An interior view will then show the reaction of the passengers at the moment of impact. They will not be injured, even if they are not wearing safety belts. No tire damage, broken axles, or suspension failures will occur as a result of the impact. The car will then execute a sharp left turn at the bottom of the hill. Losing a hubcap at this point will be optional.
Any time you see a really nice, snazzy foreign car or a great old car like a 65 mustang, you know it's going to be smashed into a million pieces.
All too many times a Hollywood car chase will be interupted by the emergence of a semi from a driveway, alley, or street, resulting in the escape of the hunted, or the death of an expendable character.
Police cars involved in chase scenes usually tend to suffer more than any other vehicles- they have head on collisions, smash parked cars, fall into water, and of course, experience the ever popular flying-roll, causing the car to land upside down and crush the lights and siren. Usually, we never get to see the unlucky police force member before or after the inevitable accident.
A car that crashes will always explode in a ball of flames, but not until the hero can pull the important passengers to safety, and yell, "Watch out! She's gonna blow!"
Acid applied by the villain to the hero's brake lines never has any effect unless the car is heading down a steep, winding road. Cars at traffic lights have invujlnerable brake lines.
No one ever runs out of gas (even in long car chases). Corollary: every stolen car has a full gas tank and gets great gas mileage.
Vintage cars are always 100% immaculate and freshly polished. They never have any scratches, dents or repairs.
No one fumbles for car keys right before a car chase. they always jump right in and start the car up because they've left the keys in the ignition. Not a great idea in any major city.
Wow, great work! I enjoyed it a lot. Thanks.
Also it brings me to think that's why it's hard to make a good action movies nowadays. In the old days, movies could get away with all those nonsense and audience would cheered and be wowed. Adrenaline pumped then laughed along with the ridiculousness and the inventiveness of the action scenes.
Today, movies doing those cliches are lame and not funny. Audience sneers instead of cheers. It's getting impossibly hard to invent new action scenes without resorting to those on the list but keeps the action going without stalling into too much realism. Realism is boring, that's why we watch action movies in the first place.
One notable example I remember is the scene in the movie RED with Bruce Willis where he got off calmly from a spinning car then stood on the road shooting the enemy car. That's so cool! I never saw something like that before. I grinned from ear to ear.
But if I see that scene again in another movie? Ugh. That's not cool at all.
Making modern action movies is hard. Really hard. No wonder they keep churning superhero movies. Tend to be easier to create new action scenes using superpowered characters that can perform impossible feats without the audience rolls their eyes.
The list is from a site that is a real BLAST FROM THE PAST all the way from 1994!
http://moviecliches.com/
Ā
š²āšŖāš²āš“āš·āšŖāš½
Not car-related (good ones), but no one says goodbye, bye, or see you later when they hang up the phone. As though the second or fraction of a second it'd take would create a problem with the length of the film or show.
shareMy most annoying phone-related thing in movies is that there's never enough time for the person on the other end to say anything. The visible character will say something, and then rapidly respond to something the other person couldn't possibly have had time to say.
shareHa ha, I hadn't particularly noticed that, but now that you mention it, too often it's true.
shareBy the way, we had a thread about these kinds of things on the Amelie board on IMDb. I'm very pleased to find that the thread survived the transition and is here on moviechat. Anyway, it's a great thread that others may enjoy reading through:
https://moviechat.org/movies/tt0211915/posts/58c77d0e93cef4080d803d0f
Great thread. Thanks for bringing it to my/our attention. I loved Amelie but didn't register on IMDB until well afterward it'd been shown, and simply never thought about visiting the board -- another reason why I love Jim's Trending idea.
Thanks for bringing that thread to my attention, and anyone else who's reading this.
This might be an obvious answer, but who the hell has a car nowadays where you have to manually turn on/off the lights? I haven't had a car like that since the early 2000s. Unless you're driving something like an 87 Fierro, everything is automatic today.
shareI've been noticing this phenomenon for a long time, way before auto anything. Plus, in more recent productions it also happens with older pre 2000's vehicles that don't have those automatic features. Nice try. At least you actually tried to address my original question. Other than in scenes where there is a meeting at night in the middle of nowhere and the headlights are needed for lighting it's just plain careless or dumb. Maybe it's a crafty producer trick to save on lighting rental costs?
shareMy car is newer than a 1987 Fierro, and yes, I have to manually turn on and off the lights ;)
share
No.
š
I never noticed that ... really? Where is there an example of that. You should make a You-Tube video and post it.
shareI can't cite examples because I haven't kept a log, but now that you're aware of the phenomenon if you watch for it I'm sure that you'll find that it happens all the time. I notice it often.
share