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What An Idiot: Stupid Movie Character Moments


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Bringing back this old TWOP thread, in which we discuss the many, many, many idiotic things movie characters have done.

I'm kicking this topic off with the moment from the original 1981 Clash of the Titans, when the queen brags about Andromeda being more beautiful than the goddess Thetis. Already a stupid thing to do, but to make matters worse, she does it right in front of the STATUE of said goddess. Not to mention the fact that it was the kingdom's patron goddess. How stupid can you get?!

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Baby in Dirty Dancing not immediately telling her father who the father of Penny's baby was.  The second she realized that Johnny was misunderstood to be the father she should have corrected her dad.

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I'd estimate that 90% of teenage characters fall into this category. 

 

Anyway, I'm watching a film called Erased with Aaron Eckhart. I'm trying to get through it, but when you have two people being dumb within the first 20 minutes, it's a challenge.  A couple of examples:

 

His character and his teenage daughter are held at gunpoint and forced into their car.  The gunman and daughter are in the backseat, with the gunman ordering Eckhart where to drive.  In order to "disable" the gunman, Eckhart decides to speed up the car and then suddenly brake, sending the gunman flying into the windshield and the car into a tailspin.  Shockingly, this does not disable the gunman, and Echkart proceeds to try and wrestle the gun from the perp while trying to maintain control of the car. Of course, shots are fired.  The car spins out of control and dovetails.  The gunman is eventually killed. Unfortunately, the character and his daughter live, and the film does not end.   

 

Later, Echkart and his daughter are hiding out at a public train station, because Eckhart has found a key to a locker that will hopefully provide insight to why someone might be trying to "erase" him.  He tells the teenager to stay put while he goes to the locker. There are policemen roaming around, and appear to spot Echkart.  And of course, the daughter decides to leave and go find him.  They spot HER, and almost catch them.  Due to plot contrivance, they escape.  

 

Mind you, all this time, the daughter is getting unreasonably hostile and loud, demanding to know why someone is trying to kill them, because despite him telling her that he doesn't know and will find out, she needs answers right then. Sigh.  

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I'm not sure which character to pin this one, but whatever theme-park designing genius in Jurassic World  who decided that a ride, that involves exploring dinosaurs around the park in a driveable pod, didn't need some kind of autopilot or recall feature in case something in the park went wrong.  Why the hell would you let any moron just drive around in your million dollar park amongst dinosaurs with no way of forcibly bringing the pod back?

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I'm not sure which character to pin this one, but whatever theme-park designing genius in Jurassic World  who decided that a ride, that involves exploring dinosaurs around the park in a driveable pod, didn't need some kind of autopilot or recall feature in case something in the park went wrong.  Why the hell would you let any moron just drive around in your million dollar park amongst dinosaurs with no way of forcibly bringing the pod back?

Why would you want to put dinosaurs in a theme park at all?! Four movies later, and they STILL haven't learned their lesson!

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I still think it was tremendously stupid for Marcia Gay Harden's character in Mystic River to blab her suspicions about her husband being a killer to the FATHER OF THE MURDERED GIRL instead of going to the police. What did she THINK was going to happen?!

Even worse, it turned out he wasn't the killer. So she basically got her husband killed for nothing.

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Full Metal Jacket

 

You have a recruit in boot camp who went over the deep end and now is in the latrine cradling a gun with a crazed grin on his face. Do you:

 

A) Call the MP's

B) Inform your commanding officer

C) Verbally abuse him and hope he doesn't kill you or something

Edited by BatmanBeatles
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In Jurassic Park when Lexy turns on that damn flashlight during the big T-Rex scene.

I second that with The Mist every one in the grocery store using flashlights to look at gigantic bugs on the windows.

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The owners in Cujo deserve to be on this thread for not getting Cujo vaccinated for rabies. I don't care if they were poor. If you own a big dog and let it run loose where it could be infected by dozens of rabid animals, it's just asking for trouble.

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The scene in In the Bedroom when Tom Wikinson has his son's killer at gunpoint and the guy actually has the nerve to try to justify the murder with the excuse that the son was sleeping with his ex-wife. Hey, moron? When the angry, grieving father of the man you MURDERED has a gun to your head, making excuses and blaming the victim probably isn't the smartest move!

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I just watched the Netflix movie Extinction and have to mention the stupidity of the youngest daughter. Actually, all the main characters in that movie did stupid things, but the youngest daughter did something that has annoyed me about a lot of young kids in movies. While the invaders are trying to get into the main characters' apartment the parents tell their daughters to hide in a closet. But the youngest daughter left her stuffed animal in the living room so she goes back to get it and almost gets herself killed. Of course she is a kid and one of the main characters so she lived, but she was so annoying that I spent most of the movie wanting her to die.

Spoiler

Her stupidity was made even worse when we learn of the plot twist that the main characters are actually not human, but artificial intelligences. Artificial stupidity seems a better term for the characters in this movie. Especially at the end when the parents make it to the train station just as the train is leaving. The kids run out of the train towards the parents to hug them while the humans are getting into the station and once again the main characters almost get themselves killed. If they were actually intelligent the kids would have stayed in the train and waited until their parents were also in the train before the hugging. Then the train could have left sooner and they would not have been in danger of almost getting themselves killed.

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In this little-seen but campy thriller called P2, a woman who I will call Not Young Jodie Foster basically tries to escape a psycho Wes Bentley who kidnapped her in a 6-level underground parking garage. At the end, she gets him handcuffed to the door of a car that got wrecked while they were playing chicken. She used a stun gun to help subdue him for that, and she begins to walk away. Psycho Wes Bentley then calls her the c-word, and that seems to be the final straw for Not Young Jodie Foster. She takes the stun gun and sparks up the trail of leaked gasoline to the car that Psycho Wes Bentley was handcuffed to, and he's burned to death. I mean, the guy was fucked either way at the end, but what an idiot.

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Harry, Ron, and Hermione wearing the Horcrux locket in Deathly Hallows Part 2. Seriously, they knew the necklace was evil -- it has VOLDEMORT'S SOUL INSIDE -- and the best way to keep it close was to WEAR IT?! Not stick it inside Hermione's magic bag that could hold everything no matter what size?! 

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I watched Kingsman the Golden Circle last night. In it the main villain forces her goons to have their finger prints removed and teeth filed down to make them anonymous. But then she forces them to get a very unique molten gold tattoo, something that made them a lot more easy to recognize than dental records.

 

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So I re-watched the 1996 adaptation of 101 Dalmatians because I hadn't seen it in ages, and, wow, Anita is the ninny to end all ninnies.

From their first scene together, her boss, who happens to be Cruella de Vil, who is obviously a few colors short of a rainbow in the sanity department, shows a very, very, very unusual and disturbing interest in Anita's dog Perdita having puppies. Cruella insinuates herself into Anita's private life more than once (even barging into her house uninvited), loudly announcing her obsession with Perdita's puppies, and Anita doesn't seem to find this rather odd, disturbing, or even an incentive to quit her job outright and find someone less intrusive and nutty to work for! That's right, nothing in Cruella's behavior gives off red flags in Anita's dull little brain, until after Cruella's henchmen finally steal the puppies!

I mean, Lord knows I can be a bit slow on the uptake, but if my boss were showing an unhealthy interest in my private life and certainly my dog's, I might, bare minimum, be a tad concerned and consider being on my guard just in case something terrible happens!

Yeesh, and we thought the humans in the Lassie franchise were morons!

 

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@Wiendish Fitch I rewatched it yesterday too, and yeah, I have to agree there were plenty of red flag signs Anita overlooked. Love Joely Richardson and all, but yikes!

Though I’m gonna have to say that the cartoon Anita wasn’t that bright about Cruella either. The cartoon Cruella was basically Patty and Selma to her Marge, showing up randomly just to shit on her husband — and like that ninny Marge, Anita does little to actually stick up for him. Plus, if your own dog (poor Perdita) is terrified of Cruella, that’s a pretty big warning sign that you shouldn’t have this woman as a friend, let alone your house?

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I think my biggest eye-roll moment in the entire MCU so far was the scene between Black Widow and Hawkeye in Endgame, when they argue about who gets to sacrifice themself. Not that I don't appreciate a well written self-sacrifice, but this was moronic. How about sacrificing your ego for the greater good and just pick one of you? When it got to the point that they both tried to jump, I just kept thinking what a great subversion it would be if they both ended up falling down, thus rendering the whole thing meaningless since one of them had to survive. It would serve them right. I would like if maybe a future Deadpool movie made a spoof of that scene. 

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This is a combination of UO and Stupid Moments:  Risky Business.  I couldn't see it in a theater because I was a few years under the R rating age limit, but couldn't wait for it to come to video because it seemed like everyone loved it.  It was all the talk.  Dumb, dumb, dumb!  I hated it.  Joel is swindled out of everything (? it's been a while--I do remember an expensive crystal egg) and he still goes back to the prostitute who conned him.  I was reminded of it because my 23 year old son watched it the other day saying that he'd heard a lot about it and wanted to see what it was like.  He hated it for the same reason. 

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I dunno, did a rich white kid from Highland Park really need to get into the prostitution game? Yeah, Guido used him as a front to get access to all the other rich, suburban white kids, but hey Joel got into Princeton on mediocre grades, so he wasn't exactly empty-handed.

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Boy, the adoptive dad in Brightburn was incredibly stupid. He tries to shoot his alien son in the back of the head, the bullet bounces off like rubber, and his first instinct was to reload when it’s obvious that bullets won’t work is to reload?

Not to mention that he was dumb enough to think an apology for trying to kill him will work after all that. The mother tries that too after trying to stab him with the piece of the alien ship. Guess how that works out?

Edited by Spartan Girl
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I know it would have ruined the plot of the rest of the movie, but in Thelma and Louise, why did Louise give Thelma the money to hold on to?  Her room wasn't any more or less secure than Thelma's.  I haven't seen it in a while, though--did she give an explanation for it when she handed it over?  I don't remember her doing so.

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6 hours ago, Shannon L. said:

I know it would have ruined the plot of the rest of the movie, but in Thelma and Louise, why did Louise give Thelma the money to hold on to?  Her room wasn't any more or less secure than Thelma's.  I haven't seen it in a while, though--did she give an explanation for it when she handed it over?  I don't remember her doing so.

Agree! Of course, there was NO real justification (other than sheer stupidity) for Thelma to have sung like a canary about the monies to the virtual stranger Brad Pitt's character JUST because they'd rolled in the sheets!  Yes, I know that Mr. Pitt's character drifter, grifting character was wrong and would have deserved to have been punished for having stolen the monies but she was just STUPID to have done so and I REALLY wish Louise had eviscerated Thelma for having done so and BLOWN it for the two of them! 

Of course, Louise herself would have been better off had she told Thelma that if she didn't quit making puppy sounds at the sight of this hitchhiker, she'd put HER on the side of the road- and then the two of them could have just driven past Brad Pitt's character with Louise letting Thelma stew in her own thereafter! 

And, yes, I know that both the above actions not having happened would have 'ruined the plot'. However, each action took away  the protagonists' arc of attempting to overcome having been  victimized to the less appealing arc of proverbially shooting themselves in their feet via dumb (and easily avoidable) actions! 

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Some of the details are hazy because I haven't watched it for a while, but in Glitter, Dice (the d-bag love interest of Billie, Mariah Carey's character) refuses to pay Terrence Howard's character for his initial involvement in Billie's career after she becomes a star and gets tired of his interference.  There was a signed contract and though he was a shady character, it seemed like he actually was owed some money.  Dice doesn't even try to break the contract legally and just says it was a "bullshit deal" and thinks that will be the end of it.  At some point, Terrence Howard's character enrages Dice by making threats toward Billie, and I think they get in a fight.  Toward the end when Dice and Billie are apparently about to reunite after being apart for a while (because of Dice being a d-bag), he is on the street when Terrence Howard's character gets out of a car and yells his name.  This seems like it was a set-up for a big chase and climactic confrontation.  Instead, Dice opts not to flee and actually starts running a few steps right toward TH, who just pulls out a gun and shoots him without taking a step.  I guess they didn't have enough left in the budget for a more dramatic confrontation!  I actually thought of putting this in the "unintentionally funny moments" thread, but there haven't been any posts there for four years.

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Quinn in This Is Where I Leave You is a moron. First for not having the brains to use protection while cheating on Judd with Wade his douchebag boss for a whole year so that she winds up pregnant with Judd’s child in the middle of divorcing him. Then she’s dumb enough to call both Judd AND Wade to the hospital when she thinks she’s miscarrying, which was a recipe for a volatile situation. Yes, maybe she gets a bit of a pass on the last but because she obviously wasn’t thinking clearly. But still.

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In Sleepless in Seattle why does Sam (Tom Hanks' character) get in a plane and fly to New York when he discovers Jonah has gone there to meet Annie on top of the Empire State Building?  Jonah has not landed in NYC yet - notify the airline that he is a runaway and have them put him on the next flight back to Seattle, or have them hold him at the airport until Sam arrives.  

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Child’s Play 2: Chucky trying to convince Andy to let him out of the closet the teacher locked him in with the old “I promise I’ll never kill anyone again.” Of course Andy wasn’t dumb enough to fall for it, but did Chucky really expect that to work?! And did he really think his “NOW OPEN THE FUCKING DOOR!” would be any more convincing? 

Yeah, Chucky isn’t always the smartest toy in the box, huh?

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(edited)

I know horror movies are chock-full of morons but this one takes the cake:

In Omen: Final Conflict adult Damien is now trying to stop the new Messiah from defeating him, so he has all his minions hunt down and murder all baby boys born on March 24 (thanks, movie, for picking a day so close to MY birthday, ugh). And yes there’s an awful montage of baby death. Little does he know, his number two minion’s new baby was also born on that day, but keeps the date secret. Now the minion’s wife has no idea who and is working for until one of the priests trying to assassinate Damien warns her—and for proof, she finds he’s got a record of all the newborn babies that were killed in the last week.

Pop quiz: You just find out your husband is part of a satanic cult responsible for a string of infant death, all of them born on the same day as YOUR baby. Do you:

A) Take your baby and get the hell out of dodge right then and there?

B) Wait for him to come home, then scream and cry at him and do NOTHING ELSE?!

Yup, she picks B. And sure enough, Damien figured out the baby’s real birthday, sends out his hellhound to hypnotize the idiot mother and…well, I think you can guess what happens.

Edited by Spartan Girl
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(edited)

Somebody pointed out that the Tobey Maguire Peter could have saved himself a lot of pain if, in Spider-Man 2, he just told Harry flat-out that his dad was the Green Goblin after he unmasked him. Yeah, he was in a rush to go after Doc Ock, but it would have just taken like 30 seconds.

But then again, it should have been obvious to Harry when he found all the Green Goblin's weaponry in his dad's secret room that there was more to the story anyway.

Whatever. All the characters in that trilogy were idiots IMO.

Edited by Spartan Girl
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I FINALLY got my friend to watch Hamilton last night, and she loved it of course. But Hamilton outing his affair with the Reynolds pamphlet was the end-all be-all of paranoid and idiotic moves. Burr, Jefferson, and Madison probably weren’t going to use it against him, so he basically ruined his own reputation—not to mention publicly humiliated his own family— for nothing.

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Continental Divide (1981): The cardinal rule of living in a cabin in the mountains is to never EVER leave your doors/windows open. Any wild animal can get in. Ernie (John Belushi) forgets to close the door after Nell (Blair Brown) goes out, and GUESS WHAT HAPPENS? A mountain lion wanders in.

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43 minutes ago, Spartan Girl said:

Continental Divide (1981): The cardinal rule of living in a cabin in the mountains is to never EVER leave your doors/windows open. Any wild animal can get in. Ernie (John Belushi) forgets to close the door after Nell (Blair Brown) goes out, and GUESS WHAT HAPPENS? A mountain lion wanders in.

I don't know why, but I wondered what would happen if the other kind of cougar wandered in. That's the premise for the 'adult' version.

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Atonement: How come when Briony walks in on Robbie and Cecilia in the library, the two of them just walk out and leave her standing there without so much of an explanation? Because they just are pissed that she interrupted them? I mean, in hindsight it was not a smart move. If Briony just ran out of the room before they could do anything, it would be one thing, but she just stood there. Taking those extra seconds to talk to her might have gone a long way to change everything that followed; it could have cleared up the whole debacle over the mixed up letters and maybe even what she saw by the fountain. Because if she understood all that, she never would have been so quick to assume he was a sex maniac that raped Lola.

Don’t get wrong, I’m not blaming Robbie and Cecilia for their own misfortune. It was just another circumstantial mistake that triggered everything. But people assume that Briony was a bad seed that deliberately ruined their lives, and that’s not exactly true. Her only crime was that she was quick to assume the worst. The only true villain of the story was Paul Marshall.

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14 hours ago, Spartan Girl said:

Atonement: How come when Briony walks in on Robbie and Cecilia in the library, the two of them just walk out and leave her standing there without so much of an explanation? Because they just are pissed that she interrupted them? I mean, in hindsight it was not a smart move. If Briony just ran out of the room before they could do anything, it would be one thing, but she just stood there. Taking those extra seconds to talk to her might have gone a long way to change everything that followed; it could have cleared up the whole debacle over the mixed up letters and maybe even what she saw by the fountain. Because if she understood all that, she never would have been so quick to assume he was a sex maniac that raped Lola.

Don’t get wrong, I’m not blaming Robbie and Cecilia for their own misfortune. It was just another circumstantial mistake that triggered everything. But people assume that Briony was a bad seed that deliberately ruined their lives, and that’s not exactly true. Her only crime was that she was quick to assume the worst. The only true villain of the story was Paul Marshall.

I think it was a combination of them being pissed that she interrupted them and her adolescent feelings for Robbie leading her to make a terrible decision. It couldn't possibly have occurred to them that she'd accuse him of raping Lola or anyone else, but Briony was only thirteen when she walked in on them, and the casting of then fifteen year old Saoirse Ronan makes her seem more mature (and harsh) than she actually was. I don't believe they even discover Robbie gave her the letter he meant for her sister by accident, that she read it and that's why she decided he was some kind of pervert. By the time she discovered them going at it, IMO she already thought badly of him and was hurt without knowing why.

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56 minutes ago, Cobalt Stargazer said:

I think it was a combination of them being pissed that she interrupted them and her adolescent feelings for Robbie leading her to make a terrible decision. It couldn't possibly have occurred to them that she'd accuse him of raping Lola or anyone else, but Briony was only thirteen when she walked in on them, and the casting of then fifteen year old Saoirse Ronan makes her seem more mature (and harsh) than she actually was. I don't believe they even discover Robbie gave her the letter he meant for her sister by accident, that she read it and that's why she decided he was some kind of pervert. By the time she discovered them going at it, IMO she already thought badly of him and was hurt without knowing why.

She was 15?! Wow. She looked younger to me.

They did know she opened it and read it, but they didn’t think much of it. And they still could have at least given some bullshit excuse when she walked in on them, which is what anyone else would have done when caught in the act by a child, it just struck me as odd that they just left her without saying a word like she didn’t exist.

I don’t think Briony’s crush on Robbie had any conscious impact on her decision. She wasn’t a jealous brat that decided to ruin Robbie’s life because he was in love with her sister. She saw what looked like Robbie making her sister strip at the fountain, she read what appeared to be lewd stalkery-type letter from him, and all that led her to genuinely believe that what she saw in the library was an assault, and neither one of them bothered to clarify otherwise. So when she saw Lola being attacked by a man, she automatically assumed it was Robbie, even when she hadn’t actually seen him clearly.

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(edited)

Recently, people on the Titanic thread have pointed out how completely idiotic Rose throwing the Heart of the Ocean back into the sea at the end truly was.

And I agree.

She could have given it to a museum. She could have given it to her family as an heirloom. Hell, she could have pawned it for money the second she showed up in New York after the sinking with only the clothes on her back—maybe she didn’t want to risk Cal and her mom tracking her down through the necklace, but still. Instead she throws it back into the ocean. Really, really dumb.

Edited by Spartan Girl
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I just finished watching A Jazzman’s Blues, Tyler Perry’s new movie on Netflix that he apparently wrote 27 years ago. Like all the other movies, there’s no holding back on the melodrama and the characters make stupid decisions that wind up in tragedy:

Spoiler

Bayou narrowly escapes getting lynched by escaping to Chicago. He becomes a famous jazz singer in Chicago…only to go back to the South for Leanne and their child, thinking that they can run off together with no one being the wiser despite the fact it’s only been a year and he’s still being hunted by Leanne’s husband and the sheriff.

And guess what fucking happens?!

Even if Bayou’s asshole brother hadn’t sold him out, odds were that he would’ve gotten caught anyway. On that note, why did he even take his brother with him? He was a junkie and an asshole, he didn’t owe him anything. Common sense would dictate that he would be a liability on such a delicate mission, especially when your life was literally on the line!

I know love is blind, but JFC 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️

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Pretty much anyone at the party during A Weekend At Bernie's.  How do they not realize he's dead??  Especially that woman who um well beds him.

Or is that just a comment on shallow people can be.  Or perhaps overthinking it 

Edited by BlueSkies
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I mentioned Jennifer Connelly in another thread and it made me think of House of Sand and Fog.

Lester in that movie was a total idiot.  For really a lack of a better way to put it he saw a beautiful vulnerable woman he could get into her pants and well it caused all sorts of hell for everyone 

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2 hours ago, BlueSkies said:

I mentioned Jennifer Connelly in another thread and it made me think of House of Sand and Fog.

Lester in that movie was a total idiot.  For really a lack of a better way to put it he saw a beautiful vulnerable woman he could get into her pants and well it caused all sorts of hell for everyone 

Kathy could qualify under this too. She lost her house because of her own damn fault, and instead of taking responsibility for her actions, she took it out on the family that moved in, and she and Lester pretty much ruined their lives.

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16 minutes ago, Spartan Girl said:

Kathy could qualify under this too. She lost her house because of her own damn fault, and instead of taking responsibility for her actions, she took it out on the family that moved in, and she and Lester pretty much ruined their lives.

I had a little more sympathy for Kathy...

I forgot what her backstory was but I've been through periods like that, just not wanting to leave the home kind of thing 

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1 hour ago, BlueSkies said:

I had a little more sympathy for Kathy...

I forgot what her backstory was but I've been through periods like that, just not wanting to leave the home kind of thing 

Yes, but even her own lawyer pointed out that if she bothered to check her mail and saw the eviction notices sooner, it all could have been avoided. So once again, her fault.

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