
Originally Posted by
Dywyddyr
I just watched Olympus Has Fallen and realised, finally, how tedious it and its ilk really are.
How it should go:
Bad Guy: Ha! My master plan is in motion and my minions have just had a cake walk massacring your highly trained and professional armed forces.
Good Guy Spokesman: We have 5,000 tanks, 200,000 infantry and eleventy-three carrier fleets heading for your position. Give up now.
BG: I have taken every possible contingency into consideration and am prepared to destroy all of those forces in detail if required so to do.
GGS: We've just sent Special Forces to prove you wrong.
BG: You mean the ones I wiped out three seconds ago when they fell into my carefully-prepared trap?
GGS: Okay we give up.
BG: Finally. Give me all your money, all your women and make sure Broken Arrow is on TV at least twice a week 1. Then I will let you live.
GGS: We accede to your demands and are standing down now. Oh, would you let Jim know? Tell him to come home.
BG: Jim?
GGS: Yeah. Don't worry about him. He's in your building somewhere, alone and unarmed. He won't be a problem because he's got alcohol problems/ relationship problems/ nobody gets on with him.
BG: Alone and unarmed? Sh*t. I'm pulling out. I'll be back next week with a more infallible plan.
Yeah, okay, the one-man-against-overwhelming-odds is pretty neat now and again 2, but really, One Guy succeeds where teams (or battalions) fail?
Apart from the general infeasibility 4 has no single Bad Guy in the films ever seen Die Hard/ Lock Down/ or the 1,0001 other films where that happens?
Bad Guy can plan for the most ridiculous counter move by the Ineffectual Good Guy Spokesman 5 and have an unexpected super-weapon 6 in position anything up to a week beforehand but he can't count on his minions 7 to stop one f*ckin' guy coming down the corridor.
Oh yeah... (with particular reference to this film) why is the President as stupid as f*ck?
Aide gets tortured for the secret code that will unlock the nuclear weapons; aide resists; president waits a while and then orders said aide to submit, because, and I quote, "they need my code too, and they'll never get it from me. Ever."
So he let her be tortured for a while before making her comply? Thus ensuring her injuries were sustained for no reason whatsoever?
Surely the rational thing to do would be either A) tell her to submit straight away or B) (more rational 8 although somewhat less compassionate) accept that she's not going to surrender her code. That way Bad Guy can't possibly get the code even if the President does, despite his claim, give his up. It's a belts and braces thing, y'know?
1 It's a Scott Adams thing, don't worry about it.
2 With the added element of "In similar circumstances that would be me" 3.
3 Unless I've got a book to finish. Or the hamster needs feeding. Or... something.
4 I mean, how come the One Guy never works for the Bad Guy?
5 Said counter move usually proposed and initiated by the Good-but-Arrogant-and-Basically-Out-of-Touch/ Slightly-Incompetent General.
6 Usually the Acme Plot Device TM (with or without extra knobs, dials and rotary-barrelled cannon).
7 Banana!
8 On the subject of rationality - why DO the Good Guys always surrender? Okay, don't kill the President 9 and we'll pull out of South Korea, thus sparing a dozen people while ensuring millions will probably die and further millions end up living under a nutcase in charge of an evil commie regime.
9 WTF? Is it the man or the office that's important here? Go ahead kill that guy, you won't break the nation or the institution, the second you're dead Mr. Bad Guy we'll have a new president and you'll have lost BIG TIME 10.
10 I can't, for the life of me, remember whether it was film or a comic, but there was one (fictional) hostage situation where Bad Guy had a gun to Minor Good Guy's head and told One Guy to surrender "Or I'll blow her brains out". One Guy smiles sharkily and says "Go ahead - her being alive is the only thing that's keeping your intestines internal at the moment. What do you think's gonna happen if you pull the trigger?". Bad Guy: "Er, I surrender?"