Movies use a lot of visual shorthands to quickly communicate a point, but these shorthands don’t exist in the real world. This causes a lot of subtle problems in the real world because movies- for better or for worse- are how most of us inform our lives outside of our actual experiences. For example, if I ask you to imagine Moscow right now, you are probably going to think about an onion-domed cathedral covered in snow. Moscow is snowy, but it isn’t THAT snowy. In fact, it can get quite hot. The average annual temperature in Moscow in 2015 was 47 degrees which was slightly higher than the average annual temperature of Paris.
The point is, movies fill in the gaps a lot of us have about the world, and this can lead to a lot of misunderstandings that it is hard for people to put out of our minds because we aren’t aware that these cognitive shortcuts exist in the first place. Some of these shorthands can lead to real problems while others are simply funny to think about. Here are a few examples:
- “Go to Aisle 28 in Michaels for Conspiracy Crafts”
Scene: The main character is trying to unravel a web of lies, corruption and conspiracy that involves petty criminals, politicians, and mafia dons. To figure out all of the connections, pictures are placed on the wall with red strings showing the connections between the various parties. People that are killed have giant red X’s marked over their faces. Reality: This may be the most inefficient way to track these web of relationships possible. The cork board with photos only serves to inform the audience and provides no practical detail for the character. It does raise some questions that I would like to see…
I want to see Frank Castle in the middle of his investigation montage actually doing the physical arts and crafts- show him standing in an aisle at Joann’s Fabrics deciding which string is most appropriate for his revenge map, comparing prices, printing and carefully cutting out photos, and getting frustrated when he makes a mistake and has to unspool a bunch of thread so that the map makes sense again.
I did some consulting work for a California agency that was doing a deep dive into white collar crime involving fake pensions, tax evasion, worker intimidation (perhaps worse), etc. We had a team of forensic accountants and investigators unraveling the net, and everything was tracked on an Excel spreadsheet. This makes sense because you can easily do regression analysis to find connections and correlations from gigabytes of data. The investigation leads actually went out of their way to restrict access to photos, names, and identifying features of the people being investigated because they didn’t want any subconscious biases to affect the decisions being made.
Regression analysis isn’t sexy to show on the screen, but the corkboard is also silly. I suggest we replace this shorthand by cutting to the executive summary that the team of investigators presents to summarize the results of a difficult data analysis.
- “Help, my child has been abducted… yes, I can hold.”
Scene: The main character’s loved one has gone missing. Despondent, they call the police, and the 911 operator says that they can’t file a missing person’s report unless the person has been missing for 24 hours. The protagonist can’t wait that long and is forced to strike out on their own to find justice.
Reality: This is pure fabrication by movie writers in order to create a sense of drama. It’s not true. In fact, police will release PSA’s begging the public to report a missing person right away because it’s HARDER for them to find the person after 24 hours. It makes sense in an odd kind of way for this to be ‘true’ in movie logic because it creates drama and crisis that the protagonist has to resolve instead of handing over the search to a (supposedly) trained, fully staffed police force. Movies would be boring if the police believed John McCain and surrounded Nakatomi Plaza right away or if the Chicago PD actually searched for Kevin McCallister instead of just ringing the doorbell and then giving up.
- “Bombs should audibly tick (and also have a glowing light). It’s unfair otherwise.”
Scene: Our hero kills all the bad guys and dashes to an easily accessible time bomb. He agonizes over whether or not to cut one of the conveniently color coded wires (or, for a Shyamalanian twist, they all might be the same color). The timer approaches zero and he is forced to choose. A quick snip, a pause, and the timer stops at 1 second. The bomb lays inert.
Reality: This is a common trope complaint, so I’m not going to talk about the logistics of bomb defusing (the correct answer is to destroy it with a smaller bomb or a shotgun), but I want to talk about the fact that time bombs (or, more specifically, “timer activated explosives”) are really impractical and are rarely used.
Most bombers want some sort of control of the bomb because (1) making a bomb is difficult and dangerous and (2) a timer almost guarantees that you’ll end up exploding nothing of value. That’s why most bomb makers use some sort of active trigger- a cell phone call, a pressure plate, and button- because it offers control, reduces the risk that the bomb will be discovered, ensures that the target is actually struck, and reduces the risk that the bomber will blow himself up (time bombs are prone to early detonation). I understand this movie shorthand- a timer adds a sense of dramatic tension to any scene- but I also find this shorthand particularly insidious because politicians will cite a proverbial time bomb to justify torture and all sorts of misdeeds. Any credible threat outside of unsophisticated lone-man lunatics will forgo a simple time bomb for something that they can control.
Even in movie universes, time bombs don’t make a lot of sense. A terrorist in the story usually uses a bomb as a form of leverage to make demands. What if their demands are actually met? It’s going to be an awkward moment when the terrorist will have to explain that they couldn’t defuse the bomb because there was traffic and they couldn’t make it back in time to stop the timer.