"OH COME ON" Moments

Have I ever mentioned before that my boyfriend hates watching movies with me? According to him, I'm too critical. Instead of sitting back and enjoying the ride (like he insists I should), I'm on high alert for any little feck ups in the story. (And I'm very, very vocal about it when I spot one.) I like to call them "OH COME ON" moments. (Because, nine times out of ten, that's what I yell.)

Here are a few I griped about that all but made my boyfriend throw his bowl of popcorn at me:

(Fair warning: This post will probably contain spoilers. If you come to a movie you haven't seen, but want to, maybe you should skip to the next one.)

The Hangover

OH COME ON Moment:

So, you expect me to believe Doug spent two whole days on a sunny Las Vegas rooftop with no food or fresh water and did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING aside from throwing his mattress off the roof? Have none of the writers ever seen I Shouldn't Be Alive? The lengths a human being will go to to save themselves are incredible, and yet Doug couldn't be bothered to bang on the door or call for help to the people below?

According to Wikipedia, "[in Las Vegas] the summer months of June through September are very hot and mostly dry, with average daytime highs of 94 to 104 °F (34 to 40 °C) and night-time lows of 69–78 °F (21–26 °C). There are an average of 133 days per year above 90 °F (32 °C), and 72 days above 100 °F (38 °C), with most of the days in July and August exceeding that benchmark." 

Excuse me, but screw that. Any person in their right mind would've been trying like crazy to get someone's attention. But not Doug.

Superman

OH COME ON Moment:

Is it just me, or did Superman let an entire neighborhood of people die horrifically to save his girlfriend? You remember that iconic (and very silly) scene where Superman reverses the Earth's rotation and turns back time? (However the hell that works...) Remember why he did that? Because while he was busy saving an entire neighborhood from the Hoover Dam's imminent collapse, Lois Lane died during the earthquake Lex Luthor's missile caused. So, Superman reverses time and saves Lois Lane from being buried alive.

But the whole reason he couldn't save her the first time around is because, at the exact same instant, the Hoover Dam was about to collapse and unleash watery death on a neighborhood full of innocent men, women, and children. Sooo...if Superman turned back time and saved Lois instead, logic tells us he couldn't also save those people. Jeez, Superman--and I thought you were supposed to be the good guy. Haven't you ever heard the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few?

Speaking of Spock...

Star Trek

OH COME ON Moment:

When Nero is transported into the past, he destroys the USS Kelvin and kills Kirk's father. The next time we see him is twenty-five years later when he destroys the planet Vulcan. But...where the hell has he been for those twenty-five years? My sources tell me a deleted scene included on the DVD actually explains he was captured by Klingons and imprisoned for twenty-five years, escaping right around the same time Kirk and Spock are graduating from Starfleet.

Mkay, I'll take that answer, but I don't have the DVD, and if I didn't have trekkie friends that actually bought it, I never would have known about that scene. I get that they probably had to cut it for time restraints, but they could have squeezed in a line of dialogue or SOMETHING to explain where the feck Nero had been all that time! Because without it, those who don't watch the deleted scenes are faced with a real OH COME ON moment.

Edward Scissorhands

OH COME ON Moment:

This one actually kind of pains me to bring up, because I love this movie. Buuut...it wouldn't be fair to leave it out just because this movie is so close to my heart. (And, to be honest, I like all the movies on this list so far. So...yeah.)

If you've seen this movie, you probably remember the end--Edward has returned to his house on the hill and his ice sculptures are the reason behind the "snow" that falls on the neighborhood ever year. But...where does Edward get the ice to make his sculptures? I mean, he's a recluse who probably doesn't have an internet connection or even a phone line, so it's not like he could just order them. But somehow he has access to enough huge blocks of ice to rain "snow" down on the neighborhood below? C'moooon.

The Empire Strikes Back

OH COME ON Moment:

Y'know how Luke is getting trained in the ways of the force with Yoda while Han, Leia, and the others are being chased by the Empire to Lando's Cloud City? And by the time Han, Leia, and the others arrive on Cloud City and are taken captive by Vader, Luke has already finished his Jedi training? Well, how the feck did that work out?

I thought Jedi training was something you started when you were a young child. How freaking long did it take the Falcon to reach Cloud City? Either that was the slowest trip ever, or Luke somehow covered years of Jedi training in mere days. Maybe the Falcon's engines went out several times during the trip or something. *rolls eyes*



You should definitely watch out for these moments in your WIPs. No one wants their readers to get through an important scene and say, "Wait...but what about (insert detail here)? OH COME ON!"

And, since we're writing books, we don't have the luxury of using excuses like, "The scene that explains where my villain has been for two decades was taken out because of time restraints--it's on the Extras menu, though," and, "The only reason that training process that usually takes years seemed to take a few days was because of faulty parallel editing!"

Have you ever experienced an OH COME ON moment?

Do you watch movies purely for the entertainment or do you have a critical eye?

HAPPY WRITING, LOVELIES!