Reminds me a lot of Gears of War 4 and some of 5.
i usually dont have much of a problem with these, but i have seen one example where the protagonist had the super power of super intelligence
One can be an extremely intelligent idiot.
That’s the entire “It’s always sunny” plot!
Every horror movie:
I’m wondering about examples of this sort of movie. Are they talking about obvious ones like Dumb and Dumber, Blazing Saddles, Airplane!, etc.?
Or do they mean movies that were supposed to be serious, but are accidentally bad because of bad writing?
Definitely the badly written movies. Where the whole plot would have changed if they just communicated.
I always go back to Prometheus when talking about the “Idiot Ball” because it’s the gold standard. You’ve got these world-class scientists sent on a trillion-dollar mission who don’t even know what they’re doing there until they wake up from cryo, and then they immediately act like children playing in a backyard.
The second the sensors say the air is “breathable,” they’re ripping their helmets off like they’ve never heard of a space-virus or a spore. It’s insane. Then you’ve got the biologist, a literal professional, seeing a hissing, alien “space-cobra” in a clear threater posture and his first instinct is to try and pet it like a stray cat.
And don’t even get me started on the guy who literally mapped the cave with high-tech drones being the one who gets hopelessly lost in it. Or the “Prometheus School of Running Away from Things” where you run in a perfectly straight line under a falling, circular ship instead of just… stepping to the left? It’s like the script needed the plot to happen so badly that it just stripped every character of their survival instincts and professional training.
Compare that to competency porn shows, like the Martian, where they FEEL like the best of the best
I used to hate Prometheus but caught a second viewing years later and came around a bit. The running only straight thing is… yeah. But I’ll defend the inclusion of stupid scientists as a key part of the story because the movie goes out of its way to show that these are people only interested in getting paid, which suggests they might not be the best scientists. Yeah, it’s a “trillion dollar mission,” but I’d assume that in the future that trillion dollars isn’t as much as it might be for us. So these are, perhaps, the cheapest scientists that Wayland can buy, the sort of guys who’d give up years of their lives and careers to fuck off on a starship based solely on the premise of “we might find the aliens that made us.”
Think Burn After Reading
Romcoms are notorious for it as so many plots come down to a refusal to stop and communicate
Good one. Yeah, there’s some misunderstanding, and she yells at him and stomps out, and he never bothers to say “I wasn’t even there, I was at work.” But then you wouldn’t have 90 minutes of hijinx as he goes on some half-baked but romantic plan to win her back, involving a hot air balloon and dynamite.
Instead of just telling her what really happened.
Not a movie, but death note.
If the dude didn’t take the obvious bait every episode there’s no way of catching him.
I mean a whole lot of horror movies would end in 5-15 minutes if the victims weren’t idiots who decide to explore the obviously dangerous “thing”.
Or if they’d just break a window instead of freaking out because the door is locked.
Ah, valid, Horror is my least favorite genre. Probably a lot Idiot Plots there.
Life comes to mind for me. Its a set of unfortunate and stupid events made worse entirely by the fact that these highly trained scientists abord a space station are too stupid to do proper quarantine.
I don’t remember that movie. I first thought you meant that movie with Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence where they go to jail for Life. Hilarious movie.
I like Jake Gyllenhall, so I think I’ll watch your Life, even with your bad review.
Prometheus comes to mind as well. Aww look at this cute alien snake thing. I’m gonna take my helmet off and pet it.
Oh look, the USA
You shouldn’t attribute to idiocy what is committed in malice.
It’s always sunny does this brilliantly.
Also Arrested Development
Isn’t this the plot of C-SPAN?
Yeah, I don’t think I’ve seen another TV show jump the shark so quickly. Still, it’s kinda on brand if you read the series it was based on.
it’s also known as life
Isn’t this most horror movies? “Oh I’m going off alone”, “let’s check this really dark and creepy area”, “let’s go find the source of that errie noise!” As that all drop one by one.
They obviously wouldn’t do that if they knew they were in a horror movie, though.
See: Alien Earth.
just like all the news coming from the US nowadays
Does this include the plot points where there’s a misunderstanding in a relationship? Like where a girl sees her boyfriend hug another girl but doesn’t know it’s his cousin or something and instead of talking about it just ignores him and so he ignores her and it’s just dumb and entirely avoidable?
That’s similar to the one where the couple breaks up over a misunderstanding and all it takes is one of them explaining in like 10s. But instead someone storms off while the other pleas, and deep down you’re like, “That motherfucker so wanted it to end anyway.”
But then we deal with post-break up scenes and you realise they’re just idiots that still haven’t even thought to clear up the misunderstanding via a single text, call, or friend. It could all be resolved, laughed about, and fucking again like that afternoon.
“wait! I can explain!”
No waiting or explaining ensues
The real idiots are the audience who finds that compelling instead of engaging
Ah that’s end of season 2 or beginning of season 3 of every series that has a couple in it, right?
Only if 3rd parties who witnessed the context of such misunderstanding re-enforce the stupid. Otherwise that’s just your average contrived romance drama.
They already said idiot plot
Often, but not always, yes. If the misunderstanding is reasonable and they had ample opportunity for an explanation but didn’t, then yes, it’s an idiot plot.
If they legitimately didn’t have an opportunity to explain, or the explanation, while true, was completely unbelievable, that’s not an idiot plot IMO.
I feel like there are so many plots that stem from simple miscommunications or a lack of communication between two charatcers which would easily resolve the whole situation.
I think idiot plot is supposed to be so stupid that it’s essentially not possible to happen irl
The example you outlined could happen in real life if one person completely blocks the other or something
Would be an idiot plot if everyone involved is fully able to communicate to the other parties, everyone has plenty of information, and they decide to go through with whatever stupid shit they think they need to do, that would be completely unavoidable and anyone with half a brain would understand that they don’t need to do what they think they need to do.
Like a movie where there’s a killer on the loose and nobody thinks of even trying to call the police. No “oh there’s no signal here”, just straight up nobody even tries.
That’s gotta be its own trope
It is, they even reference it in the IT crowd.
“So I followed him to the restaurant.”
“She was his sister, wasn’t she.”
“Yeah.”
The entirety of American history, or at least since Jan 6, 2021, when Trump would have been immediately arrested and tried for treason in a sane and efficient society
I earned my Reddit permaban because I said that in most countries throughout history, on the evening of a failed coup like Jan 6, the entire staff of the White House would have been dragged out onto the lawn of the White House and publicly executed.
Brazil nearly suffered the same consequence, thankfully bozonazi is jailed now. Too bad a lot of the supporters are still out and about, including his sons
So… the majority of popular sitcoms and movies.
I immediately thought of the Cohen brothers
Yeah Burn After Reading, Fargo, and the Big Lebowski were my first thoughts
They usually involve competent professionals though. I’d say some of their plots are more about idiots than they are idiot plots.
