Most movies are completely unrealistic for the most part. Nobody will ever see superheroes flying through the sky in reality, but even when it comes to everyday life, there are so many instances that movies get something simple totally wrong.
Whether it’s hard to accurately depict on screen because it wouldn’t work for the scene or simply because viewers don’t want to be reminded of their real lives, movies tend to avoid certain truths.
Redditors have pointed out some of the biggest things the movies get wrong, most of which could be easily avoided.
Playing Video Games
WorriedLeading2081 believes that Hollywood doesn’t understand video games. And while that’s so true when it comes to making movie adaptations of video game properties, the Redditor is talking about when characters are actually playing games in movies. They claim that “the equipment never matches what’s on-screen.”
That happens all the time, as whenever characters are playing a game in a movie, the actors are simply button-bashing the controller, and it doesn’t correlate to what’s happening in the video game. Even in an Easter egg in Hitman, two boys can be seen playing a video game in the background. And, ironically as Hitman got a lot wrong about the games, even the game is being played wrong.
Climbing
One thing that movies get completely wrong according to AJBIsHere is climbing. The Redditor explains that “hanging your entire body weight from one hand is much more difficult than it looks in movies.” The best example is Mission: Impossible 2 when Ethan Hunt is literally doing exactly that in the opening act.
It isn’t exactly one of the most exciting stunts in the M: I franchise, as the series went on to see Hunt jump onto moving planes and perform HALO jumps. But it is one of the most intense stunts that have audiences holding their breaths and clutching onto their chair arms. However, it isn’t remotely realistic.
Children
MeuShane hilariously notes that children are rarely realistically depicted in movies, and that “they are either totally dumb or unrealistically intelligent.” There are so many kids in films who are like Kevin McCallister in Home Alone, an eight-year-old who outsmarts two middle-aged men.
However, there are a handful of examples where kids have been written well too, with the most recent being C’mon C’mon, which is one of the most overlooked 2021 movies. The film is about a child who is annoying but still vulnerable and fun to watch.
Driving
When it comes to driving in movies, the industry has struggled to shake off this cliché ever since 1940s noir films. Timely_Temperature54 questions, “Why does every actor when pretending to drive feel the need to constantly turn the wheel back and forth?”
And in the case of the Fast and Furious series, it isn’t just constantly unnecessarily turning the steering wheel but constantly shifting gears too. Even when testing the top speed of his Eclipse, Brian O’Connor shifts gears seven times in the opening scene of The Fast and the Furious.
Law Enforcement
Again, this might not be known to general audiences, but SlimTimMcGee makes a great point about law enforcement in movies. They explain that when a police officer discharges a weapon, they “will be immediately put on leave. They won’t be on duty, out in the streets later doing it again.”
It also works the other way too. A common trope in movies is when law enforcement agents are stripped of their guns and their badges and then suspended, but they are still compelled to pursue the case. But that would no officer in their right mind would ever do such a thing.
Giving CPR
It’s such a movie cliché when somebody is close to death and another character has to perform CPR, and TheAmazingSpider-Fan thinks that movies always get it wrong. They claim that in movies, “you just get people with bent arms giving weak attempts at pushing on someone.”
While that does happen often, in the recently released Titane, the winner of the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, there is one of the most brilliant depictions of giving CPR. A trainee fireman has to resuscitate an old woman by thumping her chest to the beat of “Macarena,” much like the scene where Michael performs CPR to “Stayin’ Alive” in The Office. And according to The Guardian, studies have proven that the song is the perfect tempo to give CPR.
