The--literally--explosive finale.

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If we don't play god, who will?-James Watson
I never think of the future, it comes soon enough.-Albert Einstein
The large print giveth and the small print taketh away.-Tom Waits
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a yo-yo.-Enoch Root, The Confusion
When I was a kid, if someone brandished a shrink gun he'd get a little bit of respect!-Myron Reducto, Harvey Birdman

The chess game, with supposed excellent players; where white is pondering for minutes over black’s last move. White will then move his bishop and black will check-mate with his knight! To the complete surprise of black!

Like black never saw it coming!!!......c’mon, don’t the producers give any credit to the fact that many in the audience know this would never be the case with anyone who remotely knows the game?

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~~Phlash~~

Unknown objects are operating under intelligent control... It is imperative that we learn where UFO's come from and what their purpose is..."

Admiral Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter Director, Central Intelligence Agency 1947-1950

A newer one is how a movie or show will try to ignore bad writing by hanging a lantern on it. Recognizing and commenting on how "[something surprising] happens this way in the movies" by a character may sound like an smart observation but then they go ahead and let someone get into trouble the same old way despite it. Just because it sounds witty doesn't make it original and any less repetitive.

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"What you think you thought you saw you did not see." Agent J, MiB - Manhatten Bureau

A view through binoculars being shown as two connected circles instead of one circular field of view.

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Rovers forever! - ToSeek
"Carl Sagan sent a message to ET,
Neil Armstrong walked in the Sea of Tranquility
Steve Squyers built Spirit and Opportunity
Dan Haylen upchucked in zero gravity." -Brent Simon, The Space Camp Song
'Evolution and science are one thing, but you don’t mess with Yoko Ono. Everybody knows that. ' - 386sx

I'm tired of evil supervillians that somehow magically have every stupidly advanced technology, without any issues, while everyone else in the world has normal tech.

Bad guy with lasers, while the rest of the world has P90's.

Bad guy has cryogenics in 2000.

Bad guy has seemingly limitless resources for R&D, and can make an amazing gadget for almost anything, but still fails.

The female character that is nearly worthless in a fight. She just stands back and lets the male protagonist get beat up; though maybe will come in and smash a vase over the baddie's head or something, and get knocked on her duff or kidnapped for her "efforts".

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If we don't play god, who will?-James Watson
I never think of the future, it comes soon enough.-Albert Einstein
The large print giveth and the small print taketh away.-Tom Waits
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a yo-yo.-Enoch Root, The Confusion
When I was a kid, if someone brandished a shrink gun he'd get a little bit of respect!-Myron Reducto, Harvey Birdman

Plus, in real life the vase would stop the baddie a bit longer.

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Rovers forever! - ToSeek
"Carl Sagan sent a message to ET,
Neil Armstrong walked in the Sea of Tranquility
Steve Squyers built Spirit and Opportunity
Dan Haylen upchucked in zero gravity." -Brent Simon, The Space Camp Song
'Evolution and science are one thing, but you don’t mess with Yoko Ono. Everybody knows that. ' - 386sx

I give this one a pass. While technically incorrect, it is an easy way for the director to convey that we have the same point of view as they guy with the binoculars.

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"That's Not Blight. It's New Jersey" - The Wall Street Journal

The worst example I know of is in the latest Bourne movie. (The first was excellent and the next two were junk.) The good guy is fighting another agent such as he once was, and we know that the woman he came in with is still nearby (but injured) and so is a dropped gun. In terms of plot and character development, we know that the big difference between the good guy and other such agents is that he's changed his ways and is no longer just a lone heartless killing machine to whom other people are only targets, but now someone who values other people and can have relationships in which both people help and rely on each other. This has already been demonstrated even in this scene by the fact that he came in with a friend/ally and the other guy came in alone. All that the plot really required of this scene was that the enemy be killed, so by what means he died wouldn't have changed the big picture at all. But they made it just another "good guy wins the fight" scene, instead of using it to show the importance of the difference between the two fighters by having the good guy's friend/ally get up and save him with the dropped gun. So they wouldn't have her get into the fight, even made more physically believable with a loose gun that they'd already put in the scene, even when it would have made the scene much more dramaticly potent and relevant and less improbable and redundant.

(It reminded me of a Christian theologian I once heard saying that a literal reading of Revelation is an immoral one because it makes it appear that good wins over evil only because it happens to be more powerful, rather than just because it's good.)

But the new Treadstone assassins have been built up as super-agents and unbeatable by anyone but Bourne. Therefore he must be the one to defeat this agent - his friend simply isn't up to it.

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"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" - Wayne Gretzky

When kids are stargazing with telescopes or binoculars, one person will always see somebody's face in a nearby building and freak out, because they think they're looking at a giant alien or something. They even wrote a scene like that into the Holocaust novel The Children of Wilesden Lane. I will bet ten to one that the girl in the story (Who existed) didn't actually do that.

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Rovers forever! - ToSeek
"Carl Sagan sent a message to ET,
Neil Armstrong walked in the Sea of Tranquility
Steve Squyers built Spirit and Opportunity
Dan Haylen upchucked in zero gravity." -Brent Simon, The Space Camp Song
'Evolution and science are one thing, but you don’t mess with Yoko Ono. Everybody knows that. ' - 386sx

Future military or police who don't know or use even basic infantry tactics.

This one probably needs its own thread.

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"What you think you thought you saw you did not see." Agent J, MiB - Manhatten Bureau

Good one. Thank one bugs the smeg outta me too

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Carl Matherly

Offical Battlestar Galactica Apologist

Named Time Magazine's 2006 "Person of the Year"

This is because most people involved in these projects have no experience in either profession, and in many cases have contempt for said professions. The tv show "Babylon 5" was such as mish-mash of military ranks that it is obvious that nobody in charge knew anything about military rank structure, and the differences between the services. It, and most other productions would have benefited from the services of a military advisor. Or, at least some good reference books.

Even if they hire professionals in those professions, there is no guarantee that they will follow the advice that they paid for. See "Starship Troopers" as a major offender in this one.

David.

Ah..Starship Troopers, sending a teen soap heartthrob to do a mans job, not a good idea. Though, and I am likely going to get flack for this, but I do like the soldier citizen idea. It gives the people who are responsible for choosing the government, a stake in their country. Many call it fascist, I say, so what. Humanity was in danger, you might as well fight as one. If you strip away the racism of fascism, and use it as a bonding force, it isn't bad idea, if there is an external enemy. The thing is, fascism needs an enemy, or it will create one. And that, to me, is its biggest drawback. All right, I said my piece back to topic, my apologies.

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Avoid the movie. Go read the book.

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"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" - Wayne Gretzky

Unbeatable by anyone but each other would be the better way to put it, since he was one himself. But that highlights part of the problem. We've seen him fight too many others who were supposed to be his equal (or more, since they have been in practice more recently after he quit), so getting the same outcome from every such fight isn't credible. This scene was the perfect opportunity to break that mold precisely because his directly winning the fight himself wasn't even necessary to the story and even neglected a part of the character's development.

She had a gun available and was close enough for it to be an easy shot (especially if she took a few steps closer) but far enough away to be at no risk of a sudden lunge or disarmament, and the men even got themselves into a small confined room with just one door, perfect for being shot at. Hand-to-hand ability, or even ability with hand-held weapons (which weren't really available there anyway), was irrelevant. Anyone can get shot, especially under those circumstances. (Bourne himself did before the first movie even began.) In the movie, I think they wrote her injury bad enough that she apparently couldn't get up until it was over, but that was only to keep her out of the fight; the injury could have been written mild enough to get up from if they hadn't wanted her to just be out of the way for the fight scene.

(BTW, I just remembered an interesting counter-example to the cliché of women in fight scenes, and it happens to be a pretty close parallel to this one because it was otherwise generally a duel between two men until she interfered. In the final fight scene in "The Highlander", Connor actually loses to the Kurgan and is just about to lose his head when a mortal woman (I forget the details) shot, stabbed, or clubbed the Kurgan, thus giving Connor a second chance. He then won the "second fight". She must have somehow been gotten out of the way by the Kurgan immediately after that, but even with that, her role still was important, making it so that Connor won not by being better at violence, but because he was the better person.)

(Of course, if they'd really wanted to go uncliché with that movie, they would have had the Kurgan kill Connor and then get beheaded by the mortal woman. No more immortals, and the "prophecy" {who in the world made it, anyway?} was just wrong!)

I'm not even sure the idea would fall under the definition of fascism, but I suppose the word's changed it's meaning so that it's meaningless except as a derrogatory term.

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"What you think you thought you saw you did not see." Agent J, MiB - Manhatten Bureau

I'll walk the fine line of politics with this. . .

This was one of the ideas behind the citizen militias that appear to have been the driving force behind the second amendment. In the early years of the United States, full citizenship and voting rights were often exclusive to landowners--who were also expected to have arms available for the defense of the state if necessary.

That will be all I will say on the matter since this is also off-topic.

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Keeper of the Jabberwock