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People Explain Which Things Instantly Ruin A Movie Or Show For Them

People Explain Which Things Instantly Ruin A Movie Or Show For Them
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Movies and television shows are supposed to be forms of entertainment that work by suspending us in a different world for a while. We, as the audience, are just supposed to kick back and enjoy.

But admit it, we've all been watching something and just decided "NOPE!"


One Reddit user asked:

What instantly ruins a movie/series for you?

Look, we're not saying Reddit is full of deliciously petty Betties, but some of the reasons people stop watching things have us legitimately cracking up over here.

Look at these responses

If you've spent any length of time in theater or production, you know it basically breaks down into 2 camps - talent and tech.

The comments section did pretty much the same thing.

The "talent" crowd had major complaints about acting, writing, plot, etc.

High Achieving High Schoolers

stockard channing grease GIFGiphy

30 something high school students.

- catching_comets

To hitch onto this, I'm not a fan of the constant hyper-sexualization of teenagers.

99% of teen dramas could be set in a university. But for some reason Hollywood (or whoever) insists that we watch 25 - 30 year olds pretend to be 16.

- ThisbodyHomebody

Yeah Riverdale is a good example. Literally every "teen" on that show is constantly casually drinking and constantly having sex.

- ClownPrinceofLime

And most of the characters run some sort of actual business or organization.

- wasabi_gamer26

Ahh yes because I too own a bar or run a Biker Club in my teen years.

- itisthesaint

Oh of course, I myself am currently the manager of a speakeasy and also a whole ass YMCA. I also intern with the FBI in my somehow existing free time.

- wasabi_gamer26

Very relatable. It reminds me of my teen years when I ran a rival criminal enterprise and rum company against my father.

- clownprinceoflime

Joey

When characters become caricatures of what made them great in the beginning. Prime example is Joey on Friends. Started out as goofy and slightly dumb, ended up functionally brain dead.

- MonkeyDog853

One example that really bugs me is how in an early season he explains to Ross what pets going "to the farm" means, but in a later season he believes Chandler when the duck and chicken went "to the farm."

- simpersly

Forcing The Fireworks

Forced romance.

Especially in western action movies, where there is a male lead, and a hot female side character, who shows no signs of being in to each other, but will always end up kissing in the end.

- ogger15

Any TV show that forces romance on the main characters.

You guys have been cool for a few years now all of a sudden you love each other? And you're cops, doctors, firemen, etc? That sh*t don't fly in the real world.

Just stick to shooting bad guys and killing about 30 without any police inquiry or administrative leave. Oh wait. That really does happen.

- metabolicperp

That Riddick movie where Vin Diesel is just sooooo sexy that even the lesbian goes straight for him, lmao.

- westphall

Accentuate The Positive? 

When the actors can't do the accent of the place they're supposed to be from accurately. Just hire a person from the area. It's so stupid, but once I pick up on it I can't stop focusing on it. It's so distracting.

- pinetreecountry

Even worse is when actors/actresses start of a show/movie with one accent but slowly over the duration of the show revert to their native accents. And then never use the proper accent again.

Also! When there are families where every member grew up together (within the context of the show) but everyone has a different regional accent.

Bogus.

- Deswizard

Petyr Baelish changing his accent every single season of Game of Thrones!

- optsynseco

Just Kill Them Already! 

"If you kill him, you'll become just like him!"

So all those countless goons that were slaughtered don't count, huh?

- Evus1999

What bugs me about this trope is that it ignores the innocent people who are almost definitely going to die if you don't kill the big baddie.

Killing for vengeance or justice might be subject to debate, but killing a certifiably-bad person to stop innocent people from getting killed is not.

- Forq2

My favorite episode of the Mighty Max cartoon was the one where Norman was fighting the guy that killed Norman's father. He has the bad guy backed up to the edge of a cliff and the bad guy says "if you kill me, you'll be just like me"

Norman says "I can live with that" and shoves him over the edge

- bdmorrungf

The "tech" crowd had an awful lot to say, too.

Sound Shenanigans

On Air Dj GIF by The Mowgli'sGiphy

When there's too much audio fluctuation. Like you can't hear a word they're saying in a dialogue, then cut to an action scene and volume is so high the neighbors think there's a shootout at your house.

- AlbertaGirl4ever

Ugh! This!

Nothing yanks me out of a film more than having to play DJ.

- WaffleHouseNeedsWifi

This, definitely. Or when the score is too loud compared to the dialogue.

I wind up having to really concentrate to pick out the words while some bullshit string section saws away mindlessly, ugh. When I watch at home I turn the volume down to virtually nothing and watch with closed captioning on to avoid the auditory overload.

- adjustedlatitude

Product Placement

Blatant product placement. It works in certain situations, but when it's "in your face" or overdone, it's distracting. Count the logos in Man of Steel or that shiny new Hyundai Tucson in the Walking Dead that never gets guts on it or dust on it for a couple of seasons.

- love-to-the-yar

Michael Bay pretty does this a lot and is pretty unapologetic about it in the Armageddon commentary.

"Yeah it doesn't even fit Liv Tyler's character that she would have that car, but they gave me a lot of money, and that's money I can use for more special effects.."

- 3-Dman

The worst I ever saw was in Bones

"Wow Angela, a Prius? I didn't take you for the type".

"As an artist, I love the spacious cargo area and fold-down seating, perfect for bringing my next piece to the gallery. And the back up camera makes pulling into the loading dock a snap!"

Then she shows off the lane assist and they get arrested for drunk driving.

- akefay

One of the Paranormal Activity movies was awful with it.

"Guys, I heard something. Let's turn on the XBOX KINECT and see what it shows us."

What's going on guys? -- "We just found a ghost using our XBOX KINECT!"

"I'm so startled! Let's turn on the XBOX KINECT to lessen our startledness."

It's been awhile since I've seen it, but those might be direct quotes.

- ipeelavalampgoo

Shakycam

Action sequences filmed in Shakycam.

I'm looking at you, Paul Greengrass, or at least I would be if the picture would stabilize for just a second.

- jwelshuck

When I went to see the hunger games and they already had shaky cam for when Katniss was just jogging I went, "Oh no...."

- your-yogurt

That's why I just can't stand the "found footage" style of movie.

Like so many rave over the first Blair Witch and scorn the second but to be honest I prefer the second simply because it doesn't give me a headache from the bouncing around of the camera.

- CascadingFirelight

Justin

When it has been adapted from a book and they change things. When doing what was in the book did would have been just as easy or easier to replicate on screen. I will still give all adaptations a chance before dismissing them. E.g. The Passage series by Justin Cronin. Loved the books, but the Fox series changed people's race, gender, and literal storylines. Why?

- keanureevestookmydog

Boring

Work From Home Kids GIF by MOODMANGiphy

When fun characters have kids and their whole role gets reduced to being parents.

- ilikesarcasticpeople

Titans

I know I shouldn't be bothered by this, but the fans usually ruin the show for me.

I'm watching Attack on Titan Season 4 right now, and the fans are berating the animators for using CGI when they only had like 10 months to make the season while other seasons had much longer, and they're sending death threats to the creator for - I kid you not - the MUSIC choice in one of the episodes.

I love the show but boy do the fans make me feel like I'm supporting something that's not worth supporting, which I know is incorrect, but it just bugs me.

- ChonkyRaccoon34

Kill the Killer

Not killing the serial killer.

You know, that scene where the serial killer is knocked out and the main characters start running instead of hitting his head with a f*cking hammer.

Edit: Or shooting him right in the head.

- DaKillerFreakShow

babies...

raising arizona babies GIFGiphy

When the childfree character, suddenly decides to have kids. Like wtf this happens in every show. Big Bang Theory with Penny. Even a progressive show like Brooklyn Nine-Nine with Jake and Gina not wanting kids at first then having them.

- CrazyMiith

Just Go

Series mainly for me. Shows that have longer episodes but when the episode is just talking about stuff that is irrelevant, something we already know, or dragging conversations out when they could of ended a while ago.

- Oscer560

I feel this with the border patrol series. If they covered each case beginning to end it would only be a quarter as long. Instead they have 3 stories in parallel, but when changing between each one they throw in a recap, for every scene.

- ChalkOtter

The Good, the Bad

In films: Convoluted circumstances of getting together.

In series: Characters making the same mistakes and never learning from them - Nurse Jackie going back on drugs, The Flash where Barry goes back in time to mess with the time line Again.

Poor Writing: Sorry, how many times did the H50 writers crap all over Danny William's character to make Steve look good?

- AcrossTheMilkySeas

Brain Games

Brain Amnesia GIF by William GarrattGiphy

Episodes where some or all characters forget all their memories and lives and are put into a new alternate reality and slowly figure it out to escape back to their original lives.

Those sort of episodes are the kind I never get through.

Plebbadeb

Screenshots

Trailers.

No seriously, stop showing us three seconds of every scene in the film. Now I know what to expect as soon as we enter a location because I recognize it as "the cave with that fight scene" or "the office where they were making out" or "that cliff that she almost falls off". The second the scene opens I know where it's headed now if I watched the trailer. and that SUCKS!

mjd188

Do it Right

'Representation'

When movies shoehorn in representation for no valid reason. "This character is gay" The character will never act on it, and it adds nothing to the conflict. "This character is gay" can do good things for a plot. For something like a murder mystery, it could change everything about the case.

But more often than not, it gets shoved in so they can tout it about on twitter and show off how 'progressive' and 'inclusive' their media is. It's so incredibly frustrating. I just want to see good tv, I want an interesting story. Instead, I've burned half an hour on virtue signaling television that has added nothing to the story, which is kind of the only thing I am there for.

I hate poor representation of characters in media, especially when it is done solely to draw in an audience, rather than tell a story. Just represent characters as is appropriate to the character, not the audience. Look at Critical Role, a wonderful web series. The characters portrayed feel alive, and at least one off the top of my head is blatantly gay, but it is in character for her. It works. This kind of thing can be done, but the media repeatedly does it incorrectly, all to pander to a group they don't understand.

Irish-Fritter


So now that you've read what everyone else has to say, I'm going to confess that I'm a big "tech" person when it comes to this. I can forgive ridiculous plot points, insufferable Mary Sue characters, and loose ends like WHOA.

But let one boom mic drop into the shot or have something on set be out of place and I pick up on it right away. There is an episode of the original American Gladiators that I distinctly remember from childhood because one of the obstacles was starting to come apart and I was upset that I couldn't put my hand through the TV and fix it.

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When I was in seventh grade, I had aspirations to be a poet. I made a Mother's Day card for my mom with a cute (but now, cringe-worthy) poem inside, and a hand-drawn picture of a rose that took me hours to perfect.

A friend saw the card and said they wished they could do the same. Then suddenly, she asked if she could buy the card from me. I said no, since I needed to give it to my own mother, but I said I could make her a copy. From there, my friend got the idea for me to make copies of the card to sell. I went along with it, mostly because I didn't think it would actually work.

Turns out, it did. After making sure people would actually be interested, we went to the library after school and made several color copies of my card for 10 cents each. The next day, we sold each card for $1. Not only did we make enough money so that my friend and I could both afford to get our moms an actual present in addition to the card, but we had enough leftover to put us over the top for the money we needed to buy the matching faux leather jackets we'd been wanting all year.

The next year, many people who bought cards asked me to do it again, so I did. Once again, we made a killing. We didn't try to do it again once we got to high school, but it was definitely fun while it lasted.

When we tell people this story, they think it's a pretty crazy money-making scheme. Maybe it is, but we're not the only ones who ever did anything like this. Redditors know all about crazy money-making schemes, and are eager to share their own stories.

It all started when Redditor primeiro23 asked:

"What are the craziest ways you’ve heard of people making money?"

Tumble Into Business

"In college, I take a class on how to start & run a small business. Prof tells us to think of ridiculous business models for our fictitious businesses as we will get more out of the class that way. Stupid ideas ensue. Selling paperclips door to door, refilling car gasoline tanks in people's driveways, service to read & summarize the newspaper to executives etc."

"One classmate decides he is going to sell tumbleweed."

"Guess who quits college and started a successful business? Tumbleweed guy. Takes a van to the desert, collects tumbleweed and sells them to Hollywood movie & TV studios who need them. Keeps the tumbleweed in a warehouse and since they never spoil, his only costs are gasoline, storage & a website. He eventually becomes the number one tumbleweed provider to studios around the world, shipping tumbleweed globally."

"Made a heap of money selling what millions of people drive by and ignore every year."

– Accomplished-Fig745

Synopses

"I did have a job reading and summarizing newspaper articles to the boss. Literally only task I was hired for."

– Draigdwi

"An actual union job in the film industry is reading scripts and summarizing them in short mean book reports."

– Trixiebees

Jump!

"Heard of crazier, but a guy I know, friend of my mother's, went to Texas 30+ years ago. (we are from Norway), and he noticed every single garden had a trampoline. And it was almost always "jump king" - the circular with blue mat ones."

"So he went to the HQ, bought 10 and took back to Norway. Within days they were sold, and he ordered 50 more, same thing. So he became the only importer and has God knows how many millions to his name today."

– alexdaland

"This IS wild. I went to Norway recently and one of the first things I noticed was that almost EVERY yard had a trampoline in it."

– TrulyMadlyCheaply

Working For A Home

"Back when Dogecoin took off I wrote a guide on recovering old lost wallets and it got so popular I was flooded with requests for further help. Some corrupted wallet files, some lost passwords, etc."

"I have a background in computer science and experience in data retrieval and password cracking, so I started helping people in exchange for a percentage cut (industry standard for wallet recovery). All above board with a contract and everything."

"For a while I was getting new clients every week and making hundreds up to thousands of dollars on every successful recovery (with a fairly good rate of success). The biggest one I ever recovered was a 19 letter long password someone had lost. The work dried up when the price of doge dropped but it got me the down-payment on a house."

– internetpillows

Horsing Around

"A cabbie in Dublin once told me a story about one of his fares who had a brilliant hustle."

"The guy was a sculptor. He would watch horse races, then when a horse won, he'd use social media to contact the owner directly with a digital mockup of a life-sized sculpture of the winning horse. Now, the people who own winning racehorses tend to be very rich - we're talking sheikhs, oligarchs, billionaires. Every now and again, one of these owners would bite, and spend €100,000 euros or so on a statue commemorating their animal's win."

"Dude only did a couple a year, and spent the rest of the time living the good life."

– escoterica

Sweet!

"Richest guy in a rich town near us makes enormous amounts of money buying Hershey bars and rewrapping them with customised retirement celebration designs or corporate logos to be given away at events. Literally just rewraps them in pieces of paper and doubles or triples his money."

"Every time I try to start a company or invent a better product or something, I ask myself why I’m not just rewrapping candy bars."

– perchance2cream

"F**k man, I think I found my new niche."

– LibertyPrimeIsASage

Slightly Used

"I went to college in a capitol C college town. A friend of mine bought an old school bus, fixed it up and took out all the seats."

"At the end of every semester she would drive around the neighborhood that was the fancier side of off campus living and collect whatever the rich kids were throwing out before they moved / went home for the summer. Flat screen TVs, couches, computers, tables, it was wild to see what people would chuck out and replace the next semester rather than having to deal with getting a storage unit or moving themselves."

"Sold it all on Craigslist over the summer or the beginning of the next semester and made a killing."

– sam_neil

Credit Where Credit Is Undue

"When I worked in a really busy, upscale restaurant my coworker would put all of his cash-paying customer’s bills on his credit card and keep the cash which he used to promptly pay off his credit card."

"He did this all day, every day for quite a while and the points started to add up and he was getting free airfare, etc."

"Worked great for a while until management notice a rise in credit card processing fees with an emphasis on one employee and they shut him down real quick."

– blinkysmurf

We Found Gold!

"My buddy worked his way through college by panning for gold. This was in 2009 in California. Most days he made nothing, occasionally he would come home with a couple hundred bucks worth and I think once he found a night worth over $1k."

– discostud1515

"My cousin had a metal detector when he was in HS. He would go every weekend down to the lake and take it with him on vacation. He found all kinds of things. He did find gold jewelry and would sell it online. He made so much money he bought his own car."

– Content_Pool_1391

Sleeping For The Job

"I knew a woman whose job was literally to sleep."

"A local office building owner wanted somebody on-site 24/7 to be the point of contact with first responders if they ever needed to be called. So they hired her to come in to the building in the evening when the maintenance crew was finishing their work. And she would settle up to sleep for the night in a bedroom they'd set aside for her. In the morning she'd hand the building back over to the office employees and go on about her day."

"No first responders were ever called. It's about the least stressful legitimate job I could ever imagine."

– CaptainTime5556

The Secret

"Back in the 90s, I knew a guy who put an ad in the classified section of the newspaper which read something along the lines of, “For $10, I’ll tell you my secret to making easy money. Send $10 cash to (address) to find out how.” People would send him $10 & he would then instruct them to put a classified ad in the newspaper telling people to send $10 & how to make money."

– freudianfalls

Accident Payment

"I was pushed down the stairs by a teen girl who told me to "pay attention and get out of her way" i ripped my dress during the fall and was getting back up when some guy rushed up to me, apologized for his daughter and handed me $500 as compensation."

– thebrilliantcounc

"LOL - years back, I was in a parking lot during a snowstorm. A guy was trying to pull around me, slid on the snow/ice and hit into my passenger side door. It really and truly was an accident. He was all apologies. We exchanged info - he said to get a quote and he would pay for the damage."

"Well, the car I was driving at the time was a crappy old Ford worth maybe $500. But, I went to a body shop, got a quote on the repair and it was $900. I faxed it to him (this was back in the 90's, LOL) thinking he'd tell me to go through the insurance company and just have the car totaled out."

"To my surprise, I had a bank check for $900 from him in my mailbox three days later. Now, I already owned another car, so I pocketed the $900, sold the smashed car for parts for $300 and ended up with $1200 on a car that was worth only $500 before the accident. I was very glad that he ran into me!"

– Deleted User

Only Feet

"I have a friend who sells pictures of her feet. In heels. Barefoot squishing cake. In mud. She charges extra for special requests. Has strict ‘no go’ rules. Never shows anything above the calf so she can’t be identified (no tats). All proceeds go to her kid’s college fund. Has made enough to fund a PhD."

– NotACrazyCatLadyx2

The things people do for money! But, I guess it works for her!

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