Despicable Me/Headscratchers: Difference between revisions

Rescuing 1 sources and tagging 0 as dead. #IABot (v2.0beta9)
No edit summary
(Rescuing 1 sources and tagging 0 as dead. #IABot (v2.0beta9))
 
(7 intermediate revisions by 2 users not shown)
Line 1:
{{work}}
* Why didn't Vector know the shrinking ray would stop working? In the beginning of the movie, we see him shrinking his toilet and his sink and his toothbrush. Are we to assume he never noticed it coming back to size again?
** The Nefario principle states that the bigger the mass, the shorter the duration of the shrink effect. This works pretty well for all shrunken objects, the sole exception is a minion that grew back to normal too early. But perhaps it wears off on living beings faster, too?
** He probably just threw the shrunken objects out and got new ones. He didn't see them because they were at the dump.
** [[Fridge Horror|Good thing we don't know what happened to the elephant in Asia, as it was likely taken out of that big room and placed ]] [[And I Must Scream|in a small box or something.]]
*** Wouldnt the force of a quickly growing elephant break the box?
* [[What Happened to Thethe Mouse?|Did they get the pyramid back?]]
** [[Lampshade Hanging|No,]][[Rule of Funny|but it made a great]] [[Brick Joke|brick joke.]]
** Would that be a [[A Worldwide Punomenon|sandstone block joke]]?
Line 30:
** Maybe it was a [[Rule of Funny|joke]]
** Robbing banks is for ordinary, everyday, ho-hum villains. Gru is a ''super'' villain.
** Or maybe the Bank of Evil secretly controls ALL the Banks. Everywhere.
*** I guess the banks figured that after so many robberies; if you can't beat them, join them.
**** "Bank of Evil: Formerly Lehman Brothers." Besides which, bank robbing is risky business for a (relatively) small reward; probably not enough to finance a moon shot on its own.
Line 38:
** Dr. Nefario said "The larger the mass of an object, the quicker the effects of the shrink ray wear off!" He should have said ''original'' mass.
** The problem is, if he somehow made the moon that much less massive, it would have to move a lot faster to conserve momentum.
*** [[Punctuated! For! Emphasis!|It. Is. A. Cartoon.]]
* Dance lessons are kind of expensive. The three girls have obviously been going for some time, but... would an orphanage ''really'' put out the money for that? Especially one run by Miss Hattie?
** Well, some activities give some organizations a discount and even let some under privileged kids learn free. Miss Hattie might have let them take dance class so they could get out of her hair when they aren't selling cookies. All the activity would make them tired. Also, a regular activity would make Miss Hattie look like less of a monster to the public. Though we don't buy it.
*** Miss Hattie seems to be the type to stick them in a box of shame when she wants them out of her hair. The dance classes and inconvenient recital seems to be there only because the script calls for it.
**** Unless the dance school teaches Miss Hattie's future minions agility and coordination to prepare them for mastering fighting skills later on.
***** You, sir or madam, deserve some kind of a prize.
* Why Gru didn't punish Dr. Nefario after finding out that he called Miss Hattie to get the girls?
** Because he thought Nefario had made a painful, but necessary decision.
*** Not to mention Nefario helps at the ends without hesitation.
*** Also Dr. Nefario did previously say "If you don't do something about it (about the girls distracting him from his job), then I will". Gru only said "I understand" meaning he agrees with Dr. Nefario's action.
** For my part, I wondered that as well, and wondered why Gru didn't remind Dr. Nefario just ''who'' was supposed to be working for whom.
*** Gru treats Nefario less like a minion and more like a father figure. Since we never really see his father, it's entirely possible he didn't have one. Him giving Nefario so much slack is actually consistent with Gru's desperate but suppressed desire for a family. He doesn't punish him because 1) he thinks Nefario did something painful but necessary to better his life, like a father would, and 2) he doesn't consider Nefario someone he can punish anyway.
* The pyramid just stands there in Vector's back yard, yet, apparently, the authorities have failed to find it. Wha-a-a?
** Didn't you noticed? He ''repainted'' it! [[Rule of Funny|Nobody would be able to find it that way!]]
Line 54 ⟶ 56:
* Vector has no air tanks in his suit, and however rich his father is, there is no way he could launch a rescue mission immediately (that is if he would intent to rescue the loser at all). Are we to assume that right after his dancing number Vector died a slow, agonising death of suffocation?
** The anti-gravity minion seemed alright, although maybe [[Batman Can Breathe in Space|these minions can breathe in space]]?
** Suffocation isn't that agonizing.
*** Can't say I speak from experience, but supposedly air-hunger ''is'' extremely unpleasant. Though on the moon it would probably be over pretty quick.
** Gru made a moon rocket out of junk. I'm sure Vector's fabulously wealthy father could fling around enough cash to get a rescue rocket put together by that afternoon. Besides, again, it's a cartoon, you're supposed to see Vector being stuck on the moon as a funny, wacky punishment for him being a jerk, not a sentencing to a realistic and horrible death.
* Why weren't the dozen boogie robots at the end dance scene?
** Holy crap this so hard. I came here to post that.
Line 67 ⟶ 70:
* Gru asks one of the minions "How's the family?". ''Minions can have families?''
** Well, since all of the minions are grown from the same DNA, and share a 'father' (Gru), they could be considered 'brothers' of each other. That or the minions are all assigned into arbitrary "family units" somehow.
*** Or they just group themselves into family units as they please. "Hey, you. I like you. You wanna be family? Yeah, there's this other minion that's having a hard time, he can be our kid."
* It's hard to say exactly what would happen if the moon were made to instantly disappear (an equivalent to the shrinking effect, because the mass went away along with the volume). Arguably, it's nonsensical to model such a situation without including a plausible cause for it. (For example, exactly what ''direct'' effect would something capable of destroying/pushing the moon have on Earth?) But here's what ''wouldn't'' happen: [[Physics Goof|waves instantly collapsing]]. '''Waves are not tides'''<ref>Tides are the gradual daily changes in sea levels, and the moon is just one of several factors that add to them. Waves are caused by plain ol' wind.</ref> and of course the loss of tides wouldn't be '''instantaneous'''. This one bothers me because of the perpetuation of that common conflation (tides are waves) and related misconception (the moon causes waves) — Even I held that last notion until writing this and researching! (I was originally just going to complain about the speed of the effect.)
** Addendum: In any case, the tides would be less of an immediate big deal than the (however slightly delayed) change in readings for all the various scientific instruments pointed at the moon. Why no footage of a humorously bewildered NASA?
** [[Angrish|SDGkdflghdosjghpdsfghing]] CARTOON!
* On this [https://web.archive.org/web/20121219124924/http://www.nick.co.uk/a/despicable-me/characters.aspx character interview thing], Gru says the Minions are ''recyclable''. Just...''[[Fridge Horror|what?]]''
** [[The Matrix|Watched them liquefy the dead so they can be fed intravenously to the living...]]
** Given the [[Word of God]] that the Minions are genetically modified corn kernels, Minions might be recyclable in that if they die, they can help contribute to the growing of more genetically modified corn via becoming compost.
* Towards the end of the movie, Gru sends his adopted daughters back to the orphanage from whence they came. Then the girls are kidnapped by Gru's arch nemesis, and Gru rescues them during the big damn climax. Then in the last few scenes of the film, [[Plot Hole|they're a big happy family again without any explanation]]. It's nice that Gru realized what mattered to him, and all, but he'd still given up custody of the girls, and for bonus points, told the (evil) woman who ran the orphanage that she resembled a donkey. Was the explanation cut for some reason, or did the writers just forget?
** Gru probably decided to just freeze ray the woman and take the girls back home. He may have rescued and love the girls, but that doesn't mean he's instantly turned into a saint. Guy freezes people so he doesn't have to deal with the annoyance of standing in line at the coffee shop, imagine what he'd do to someone keeping his kids from him.
*** They still deliberately set this up as a source of conflict and then glossed over it, [[Unfortunate Implications|as though it was somehow obvious that he'd get his girls back the moment he decided he wanted them]]. Also, the question of whether Gru's association with these girls would make him into less of a bad guy was the whole point of the film, so it's sort of weak that they omitted the scene if he ''did'' just steal the girls back, because that would have actually been relevant to the question of exactly how reformed he really was by the end of the film.
**** What the below comment says. However Gru accomplished getting them back, it would have been effectively impossible to make it as epic and stirring as Gru storming Vector's lair, which is as far as literary devices go his "winning them back" scene. Any scene dealing with the orphanage would have been, from a story perspective, superfluous and repetitive, even if it was in practice two distinct actions. You don't throw in scenes in movies just to satisfy nitpickers, that's not good writing.
** Avoiding [[Ending Fatigue]]
* The orphans selling cookies thing is quite clearly a thing that the orphanage does to raise funds and whatnot - and yet Gru's big plan hinges on the girls selling cookies AFTER THEY ARE ADOPTED. WHAT THE HELL.
** Children sell cookies for all kinds of stuff. Mostly charities or to finance the trip of their scout troop to a gathering.
*** Still, we didn't see them signing up for another group, no groups I know of sells cookies all year long, and the oldest girl would have noticed something was fishy if they weren't signed up for another cookie-selling group but expected to sell cookies anyway. So the whole thing is kind of confusing. Like the dance lessons.
*** I was under the impression that they were delivering cookies he had already ordered from them the first time, when Gru saw them allowed in. Not selling new ones. Girl scouts don't drag around boxcars full of cookies, they have an order form, you order, they come back a week later.
**** Really? When I was in Girl Guides, we had boxes of cookies to cart around.
** Whether they join another group is kind of irrelevant, since them delivering the cookies Vector ordered (and yes some organizations do it that way) is part of Gru's plan, and it's Gru who gives them the cookies.
* Where is all the merchandising? I want my Minion toys dammit!
** I saw someone on WWF beat up someone with giant minion, so they are out there.
Line 90 ⟶ 97:
* Why do the Cookie Robots betray Gru and lock him in Vector's fortress? Vector is confirmed to be unaware of the entire situation, so he couldn't have reprogrammed them, and Nefario's strong loyalty to Gru makes it unlikely that he would either.
** I thought they were on a timer, and Gru took too long.
** I just figured [[AIA.I. Is a Crapshoot|they were badly programmed]].
*** Yup, they were made by the guy who heard "boogie robots" at first. And then there's the "dart gun" incident...
* According to the "Nefario Principle," it takes a shorter amount of time for bigger objects to regain their normal size. But the ship was the first thing to grow back, and the much-smaller Minion was the second. Huh?
** The principle states that objects with greater mass return to normal size faster. The ship is obviously heavier than the Minion.
Line 100 ⟶ 108:
* Who is Dr. Nefario, why is he there, [[Ho Yay|and why is a picture of him in a bathing suit on Gru's phone?]]
** Dr. Nefario is some nearly senile, old, mad scientist that Gru probably hired a long time ago. As for the photo, that was probably a vacation photo that Gru thought was hilarious and wanted to be reminded of repeatedly. Heck, it was probably one of the few photos he had of the demented doctor.
*** Yeah, people keep silly photos of their friends all the time. Nefario's Gru's friend and father figure, him having a picture of Nefario at the beach isn't [[Ho Yay]] any more than someone having a photo of their family on their wall indicates that they have the proclivities of a [[Game of Thrones|Lannister]].
 
{{reflist}}