Knowledge That Spoils Films / Tv Shows

[Jemble Fred]

That's fine, but it was always possible to look, and aim, and hit a target.

[checkoutgirl]

Even today, where you can aim accurately over long distances with a standard rifle, there's a lot of spray-and-pray stuff

I think I read somewhere that for every three tons of bullet fired in Iraq, one solitary bullet finds its way into a terrorist. Most bullets are just used as covering fire, basically firing to stop the other guy firing. Fascinating stuff for sure.

[Tiny Poster]

A History Of Violence is the only film I can think of with some good old soixante-neuf fun in it.

[phantom_power]

No, you can't have your cake and eat it.

Of course you can. What would be the point of having a cake otherwise. Nolan can pitch the film at whatever level of realism he wants. Clearly with these films he has pitched it that these crazy gadgets exist but tries to integrate them into a more realistic environment.

Also, sonar does exist. It isn't some crazy sci-fi concept

[phantom_power]

I read somewhere that the sharp shooting in Westerns is a fallacy. See duelling pistols, flintlock shoot outs too. The old guns did not have any such accuracy that we observed in say, Django Unchained.
Is this bollocks?

I think it is as much a fallacy in that it didn't happen, if nothing else. Very few people got killed by gunshot in the "wild" west and most claims by sharp-shooters and bandits were wildly exaggerated. Generally life was hard enough without turning on each other and people tended to help each other out rather than get drunk and fight

[SteveDave]

I think it is as much a fallacy in that it didn't happen, if nothing else. Very few people got killed by gunshot in the "wild" west and most claims by sharp-shooters and bandits were wildly exaggerated. Generally life was hard enough without turning on each other and people tended to help each other out rather than get drunk and fight

And calling each other "Cocksuckers"

[Jemble Fred]

I'm pretty sure there weren't a great many people lining up to help out an escaped slave bent on revenge.

[Kane Jones]

A History Of Violence is the only film I can think of with some good old soixante-neuf fun in it.

Not as sexy as that bit in Borat.

[Ignatius_S]

I read somewhere that the sharp shooting in Westerns is a fallacy. See duelling pistols, flintlock shoot outs too. The old guns did not have any such accuracy that we observed in say, Django Unchained.
Is this bollocks?

Due to various technical improvements, guns saw a number of improvements (e.g. rate of fire, accuracy) and some weapons would have been incredibly accurate – this is confirmed by replicas being tested.

However, due to the cost, many people would have used very cheap guns, which didn't have decent accuracy but that was usually because the sights were poor. In many Western films, the quality of weaponry (particularly the sights) is mentioned.

A far bigger fallacy is to do with the speed of drawing – in plenty of films, it's shown that who is fastest on the draw is invariably the man left standing, when this wasn't the case. It's all very well shooting first, but if you don't hit the target the first time, then you've given the other person just a little longer to get their aim. That's not to say it wasn't useful having a fast draw, however. Fanning
revolvers in order to get off shots is also something that didn't happen.

Perhaps most disappointing of all is the fallacy about how common gun battles were – research shows that such violence was relatively rare.

Also – and this has been cropping up in debates of contemporary gun control debates - there was far more gun control than people like to think. However, this to a degree is shown in quite a few films.

With regards to Django Unchained, when the hero fires, his bullets manage to pass through three people killing them all but the baddies can't shoot through a thin wooden cabinet – accurate, it ain't.

[Ignatius_S]

I think it is as much a fallacy in that it didn't happen, if nothing else. Very few people got killed by gunshot in the "wild" west and most claims by sharp-shooters and bandits were wildly exaggerated. Generally life was hard enough without turning on each other and people tended to help each other out rather than get drunk and fight

To a degree – but drunken brawls weren't unusual and often cited a bigger cause of death than gun violence.

[Tiny Poster]

And calling each other "Cocksuckers"

"Varmints" actually

[Jemble Fred]

Modern historians also argue that hornswoggling was almost entirely unknown in the Old West.

[Cerys]

And calling each other "Cocksuckers"

"Varmints" actually

Thankyou for prodding my brain!

[Mark Steels Stockbroker]

What would be better is if every sex scene cut away to footage of some cowboys firing ineffectively at each other for several minutes. And then to a hacker clattering a keyboard and yelling "I'M IN!!!"

[Tiny Poster]

aw hell naw

[lazarou]

Due to various technical improvements, guns saw a number of improvements (e.g. rate of fire, accuracy) and some weapons would have been incredibly accurate – this is confirmed by replicas being tested.

Probably the biggest factor in increasing the accuracy of firearms was the development of rifled barrels, which took centuries to become standard practice. Muskets before those could be comedically inaccurate, which is a large part of the reason they were deployed to fire in volleys. Early "rifles" were vastly more accurate but had a significantly lower rate of fire due to a more involved reload process, so it took a long time for muskets to be phased out entirely. That and they were considerably more expensive to produce.

You don't see a lot of muskets in westerns, though.

[Famous Mortimer]

Also, people getting thrown backwards when they are shot is utter poo.

Someone debunked a famous case of some bloke getting shot back in the 60s by firing guns into melons and such, which not only didn't cause the melons to jerk backwards, but in some cases fall forwards. Something to do with bullets having a lot of velocity but chuff all mass.

[Hangthebuggers]

Not so much knowledge, but going back to the 'code/hacker' thing again - there always seems to be some cunt who knows the code inside out.

Like in Skyfall that speccy bastard 'well I should know, I built the code'.

But this happens more than I like. 'That spaceship? Yeah I built it'.  ---  'The security for the hi-tech building, yeah, I designed it'.

Fuck off.

[gabrielconroy]

^ Also see: Independence Day, when they somehow manage very quickly to design a completely crippling computer virus to take down the alien mothership despite having hardly any knowledge of their technology. Apart from that though, the film was stunningly realistic.

[Thomas]

Also, people getting thrown backwards when they are shot is utter poo.

I liked it when, in Django Unchained,

Spoiler alert

the woman called Lara, I think it is, is thrown hilariously backwards through a door when our hero shoots her.

[close]

I imagine the massively wrong angle is some spaghetti western homage or other.

According to TV Tropes dot com, 'Quentin Tarantino wanted to do this in Pulp Fiction, with one version of the script outlining

Spoiler alert

John Travolta's character flying through the air in a deliberately over the top fashion after Die Hard shoots him

[close]

with a sub-machine gun.'

[Small Man Big Horse]

I remember I read a Cracked article about this kind of thing and it altered my perception of every film since.

1. Silencers on guns (in real life) reduce the noise by about 10% or something, they basically make no difference. Every film that features a silencer shows someone getting shot in one room while a child sleeps blissfully undisturbed in the room next to it.

Ah, yeah, I remember reading that and the Silencers one has annoyed me ever since.

[Gulftastic]

I was really disappointed when I learned that silencers didn't make guns do that 'phut!' noise that the movies love.

[Thomas]

Does 'knowledge of a fanbase' go in this thread?

Bloody Sherlock fans.

[El Unicornio, mang]

Also, people getting thrown backwards when they are shot is utter shit.

Unless you're shot with a shotgun

[Thomas]

Nuh uh - even shotguns don't send you flying.[nb]I've read.[/nb]

[Mark Steels Stockbroker]

Isn't the point that the victim is backing away when they are hit by the shot, and the subsequent loss of bodily control means they collapse in the direction of movement? Or not?

[El Unicornio, mang]

Yeah, I can't imagine any shot making someone "fly", but like the bit in the Godfather II when Vito's mother is shot at close range with a shotgun and it propels her backwards, seems realistic. I could be wrong though.

[Alberon]

Sound travels slower than light so it always annoys me when you see something blow up some distance away and you hear the bang at the same time.

Even the news has been guilty of this. I believe it was the BBC that retimed the sound of a real air strike so the bangs matched the flash.

Noises in space and spaceships banking like airplanes is a separate but obvious issue. It's so common though I only really notice when films get it right or at least nod towards it like Battlestar Galactica's muffled sounds.

[El Unicornio, mang]

I was always impressed with Akira having total silence when the space thing blew up.

[Gulftastic]

I was always impressed with Akira having total silence when the space thing blew up.

That was another tick in 'Firefly's' favour. I think they made Joss Whedon include sound in space when they made the movie.