Your most pointless TV/movie/book nitpicks

[Paul Farquhar]

Dragon Age 2

Dragon Age: Soap Opera?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

This is an insane plotline firstly because why do you need anti-countermeasure systems to deal with a civilian airliner?

Have you seen The Concorde... Airport 79?

A normal, non-armoured car gets shot up

This trope is pretty much universal. If you can't see through it it provides cover against military grade gunfire.

 

[Gammadoodler]

Whenever a Federation ship travels to or from Earth, they always pass Jupiter. Warping to the edge of a system then travelling in along the plane of the ecliptic appears to be standard Federation practice. It is less likely to be taken for an attack, and presents more opportunities to gather data.

Honestly, always passing Jupiter sounds more like something to nitpick rather than an indicator of a likely standard practice.

Seems like the kind of thing you'd expect from someone who saw a diagram of the Solar System but can't imagine the planets in that diagram moving.

 

[Yora]

There are literally only 6 recognizable landmarks when you are approaching Earth, and Venus would be both confusing and bland looking. There's not a lot of options to visually communicate "we'll arrive at Earth in a moment".

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Honestly, always passing Jupiter sounds more like something to nitpick rather than an indicator of a likely standard practice.

Seems like the kind of thing you'd expect from someone who saw a diagram of the Solar System but can't imagine the planets in that diagram moving.

Commercial aircraft follow air traffic lanes. Busy star systems could have their own air traffic control systems, with monitoring stations in the vicinity of the outer planets. As the most massive body in the solar system that is not a star, Jupiter makes a natural navigation target.

 

[Imaculata]

Since we've just had a ton of Christmas movies:

In a Muppet Christmas Carol (Which is pretty accurate to the book, more so than most adaptions), during the intro you see a sign on the building where Scrooge works, which reads: "Scrooge & Marley". However, the Muppets made the choice to pass the role of Marley to Stadler and Waldorf, thus adding two Marley brothers, where the original story had only one. So why does the sign still reference one Marley? Shouldn't the sign be plural too?

 

[MarkB]

Since we've just had a ton of Christmas movies:

In a Muppet Christmas Carol (Which is pretty accurate to the book, more so than most adaptions), during the intro you see a sign on the building where Scrooge works, which reads: "Scrooge & Marley". However, the Muppets made the choice to pass the role of Marley to Stadler and Waldorf, thus adding two Marley brothers, where the original story had only one. So why does the sign still reference one Marley? Shouldn't the sign be plural too?

Are you assuming that both Marleys passed simultaneously? At some point it was Scrooge & Marley & Marley, then it became just Scrooge & Marley.

Since then it's become just Scrooge, but he's too cheap to spring for a new brass sign.

 

[MarkB]

Okay I got two more for Reacher S2 - spoilerblocked in case you care about the plot of Reacher which you probably don't because we're watching it because Big Man do Big Man Things, but anyway.

1) So they're discussing the main McGuffin, which turns out to be this special guidance system for missiles, which is too smart for countermeasures, and also does a top-attack thing where it intentionally appears to miss the target before veering down on it (IRL this latter has been tried and doesn't work very well, because it's a great opportunity to lose the target), and shock, horror, they're worried this might be sold to terrorists in order to attack civilian airliners. This is an insane plotline firstly because why do you need anti-countermeasure systems to deal with a civilian airliner? I guess certain Israeli airliners and US government airliner-airframe planes have them but come on. Secondly because this isn't being integrated into air-to-air missiles or proper SAMs, only MANPADS - i.e. shoulder-launched SAMs - the place where it would be least likely to be useful! Thirdly, they're insanely cheap! They're getting them - possibly only the warheads/guidance systems at least, though what we saw appeared to be an artillery shell so whatever - for $100k each! That's absolute chump change! Less than a Stinger MANPADS, an ancient 1980s ass piece of kit! This is supposed to be super-cutting edge US-specific tech - if that's true, China alone would pay a 1000x that for it just to reverse engineer it on the offchance it was good! I guess maybe this is a very old book being adapted or something? But wow. I was thinking maybe they were just getting a chip or something but apparently not.

2) A normal, non-armoured car gets shot up and none of the bullets go through to the interior at all (except via windows). The people shooting are using a 9mm, a 5.56mm carbine, and a 4.7mm H&K PDW. I could buy the former maybe, but the latter two? They'd go in one side and out the other, or deflect around crazily inside.

This is obviously the tip of the Reacher iceberg but it's stuff that made me go "Oh come on..." - I preferred the previous series where there was a lot less of this and a lot more Big Man is Big and this Solves Problem or implausible-but-fun combat.

The shoot-out at the funeral immediately took me out of it and right back to Lloyd Bridges in the first Hot Shots! movie. "God, I love a good funeral!"

Thank goodness that it's impossible for people using scoped sniper rifles to hit targets running directly towards them and poking the top half of their body over tombstones.

 

[Ryujin]

The shoot-out at the funeral immediately took me out of it and right back to Lloyd Bridges in the first Hot Shots! movie. "God, I love a good funeral!"

Thank goodness that it's impossible for people using scoped sniper rifles to hit targets running directly towards them and poking the top half of their body over tombstones.

Well they were only professional killers, not trained military personnel.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Have you seen The Concorde... Airport 79?

Oh my I haven't - though a Concorde at Atlantic-crossing speed would be too high for a MANPADS (and also too fast for some older missiles if fired from behind). It'd be easy enough to hit on descent or ascent though. Wow that movie was a big hit in 1979 and I've never even heard of it. It even had Alain Delon in it!