Idiot Plot/Film: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}Examples of the [[
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== Films -- Animated ==
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** Thumbelina does ask the bird to take her home several times. It generally thinks that it's more important to abandon her in favor of finding Cornelius. Yeah.
* ''[[The Simpsons Movie]]'':
** Right after Springfield is sealed in the dome, Professor Frink reveals that he has a laser drill that can break through it, but it's outside the dome. The trapped Springfield residents could have dug a tunnel under the dome, retrieved the drill, and started breaking through. Not a single person in town figured this out, even
** The residents spend most of the episode oblivious to the possibility that their problems could be solved with an old-fashioned town hole digging (Willie asks himself why he didn't think of that), and it is a guest star (Sting) who is the best digger. Springfieldians just are not very smart, especially when it comes to digging holes, since moreover in another episode they dig themselves into a hole and their plan for digging their way out is to "Dig up, stupid." The real idiot plot in this movie is Homer dumping waste into the lake after he was warned by his non-idiot daughter that this would be the death of everyone and everything he loved. But then again, it's quite common for Simpsons plots to exist because Homer willingly crippled his IQ (with a crayon) and did something stupid. [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] in a later episode wherein the townspeople discuss the possibility of containing Springfield with a dome. Digging is mentioned.
* The last third of ''[[Gumby]] [[The Movie]]'' falls into this. Someone even suggests calling the police after the blockheads have Gumby and the band kidnapped, but the agent says "No time for that". While it thankfully turns out well with the blockheads tied up and the robot substitutes deactivated...They literally just ''leave the blockheads'' tied up...''in their lab''...and '''within a meter of the controls'''.
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{{quote|'''Ripley:''' "Did IQs just drop sharply while I was away?"}}
* ''[[Dumb and Dumber]]'' is one of the few movies that invokes this intentionally (it's in the [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|title]]) and [[Played for Laughs|does it well.]]
* The 2007 Christmas movie ''Christmas in Wonderland'' would be a 10
* ''[[The Room]]''. [[William Shakespeare]] could have been describing the film when he wrote "[[Macbeth|It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.]]"
{{quote|'''[[Riff Trax|Mike Nelson]]''': They must be having a ''dumb'' contest. It's the only explanation.}}
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** There's also the fact that Nuala seems completely unaware of the fact that she ought to actually ''warn'' the Paranormal Investigation team about stuff. She just stands there with her mouth hanging open when her brother drops the Forest God seed, not telling then to keep it from water ''until it's two inches from a drain''. She then oh-so-casually tells Abe that her very dangerous, psychotic, human-hating, murderous brother will be able to find their hide-out because they are mentally linked and thus he knows everything that she knows. Apparently this wasn't worth mentioning ''before'' bringing her there, so they could find some way to hide her without her figuring out where it is? Or that she only thinks to hide the map and crown piece when her brother is right at the door, breaking in? Or Abe deciding to get drunk and sing love songs after being told that Nuala's brother would be showing up for blood instead of warning the team?
* ''[[Open Water 2 Adrift]]'' concerns six people who sail a luxury yacht into the middle of nowhere and decide to go swimming. It would have been nice if one of them had remembered to lower the boarding ladder first. The one hydrophobic woman who didn't want to go swimming gets thrown overboard by her 'friend' trying to cure her fear of water. So now we have six people trapped in the water and an infant alone on board. Believe it or not the stupidity level increases from there.
* The three protagonists of ''[[Frozen (film)|Frozen]]'' (not the Disney film) are this trope, over and over again. Parker doesn't know a thing about how to ski, yet she acts all [[Damsel Scrappy]] and ruins her boyfriend's and his best friend's skiing weekend and setting in motion a catastrophic chain of events that ends up with {{spoiler|the deaths of both men}}. Not that they're entirely blameless either; they decide to bribe a ski lift controller for a last ride. When the resort is going to close for ''five days''. With ''a snowstorm approaching''. They deserved ''everything'' they've got. Dan is to blame too, for having brought his shrill of a girlfriend along when she clearly should've stayed elsewhere.
* ''[[Star Trek V: The
** Sybok's [[Evil Plan]] is pretty dumb and only works because everyone else in the galaxy is apparently an idiot. He takes a Federation officer, a Klingon and a Romulan hostage so that a starship will be sent for him and his primitive followers to hijack. This plan relies heavily on only one of the three most powerful governments in the galaxy bothering to make a rescue attempt, that they sent one ship rather than a whole fleet, and that that ship would not have functional transporters.
** Hilariously, Sybok is outraged when Kirk and company attack Paradise City, saying he didn't expect ''violence'' to result. Yes, how ''dare'' the Federation take the forced overthrow of Nimbus III as a hostile act! And that's to say nothing of how the Klingons or Romulans would treat it...
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** Let's not forget that the ''Enterprise-A'' is malfunctioning mess that even Scotty is having trouble with. Nonetheless, Starfleet decides to send her into the conflict to save the day. Kirk himself asks why another ship isn't sent given the obvious problems with his. An admiral responds that there aren't any other qualified captains on-hand. So why not just loan Kirk and company a functioning ship?
** This is especially ridiculous as an exterior shot shows the Excelsior in the same dock as the Enterprise! Or, what, is the engine STILL sabotaged from whatever Scotty did to it over a year ago?
* ''[[Star Trek: Nemesis]]'' was mocked [http://www.stardestroyer.net/Nemesis/Pictorial.html here] for characters doing things the stupidest way available:
{{quote|- Hey Data, do you remember your evil twin Lore? No? Me neither. Let's transfer your knowledge, much of which is sensitive military information, directly into the brain of this mystery Soong-type android we just found. Yeah, good idea.
- I'm in no hurry even though my DNA is fucked up so I'll die in 24 hours unless I kidnap you and drain your blood. No hurry at all, so let us wait till tomorrow, because ... because ... }}
* ''[[Con Air]]'':
** It starts off with an Army Ranger meeting his wife in a bar, and her getting hit on by a drunk guy who later tries to beat him up in the parking lot, along with two friends. The drunk guy ''had to rip off'' the lead's ribbons-several rows of 'em-before starting the fight. Poe, of course, rips 'em a new one, culminating in the first guy pulling a knife, whereupon Poe gives him a strike to the head that accidentally kills him. Cut to the courthouse, where his lawyer advises him to plead out so he can get a reduced sentence. The judge disagrees, citing the fact that Poe should be held to a higher standard because he's...an Army Ranger. Given that he was wearing a uniform before the fight, and the assailants tried to ''rape his wife'' and ''kill'' him, he should've gotten off with self-defense. The lawyer doesn't even have him dress in a spare uniform—or even rent a suit—at the trial. The rest of the film can be excused by [[Rule of Cool]].
** His wife implies that he was a hellraiser before he joined the army ("You were almost 'that guy' again"), Poe's wife runs before the knife comes out, and the guys' friends take the knife with them as they flee. This might make a self-defense claim risky...if there hadn't been dozens of witnesses in the bar to prove that the other guy started it earlier in the evening. The [[Idiot Ball]] was bouncing off every character in that courtroom.
** In addition to being idiotic, its also full of [[Hollywood Law]]. In real life, a judge cannot dismiss the terms of a plea bargain while simultaneously keeping the defendant's confession on the record. Without the plea bargain being upheld, there is no guilty plea.
* ''[[28
** Monkeys infected with a deadly and highly contagious virus, that makes them super aggressive and can spread by the slightest scratch or bite are held in steel frame cages? Check! A scientist discovers activists trying to release the monkeys, and tries to get them to stop by [[Poor Communication Kills|cryptically telling them]] the monkeys are
** Jim
* ''[[28
** The so called "shelter", where people are crammed in at the first sign of trouble ''without first checking whether the zombie that started the trouble is inside or not!'' And then demonstrate how the doors to this impenetrable shelter can be breached by zombies and panicked humans alike from inside - had no-one in the military heard the saying "don't put all your eggs in the same basket"?
** That's not even the start of it. For no reason whatsoever, they ''turn off the lights'' which not only lowers visibility and harder to see the (so far) lone infected coming, but greatly panics the civilians before it even shows up. Wouldn't it have been easier/safer to tell everyone to stay in their rooms? And what's more, the infection started because a man tried to see his wife (who was an [[Typhoid Mary|asymptomatic carrier]] of the virus) was able to enter the room. The room was ''completely'' unguarded, despite the military being well aware that she had the virus.
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** ''[[Return of the Jedi]]''. The idea of the Rebel scum falling into the Emperor's neat trap and only overcoming it because the strike team [[Rock Beats Laser|finds and allies itself with an unsophisticated but forest-capable warrior culture]] would work pretty well if those allies were Wookies, as was originally intended. Heck, judging by Chewbacca, the results could have been too brutal for that kind of movie. But when the furry aliens are instead Ewoks, short and cuddly teddy bears, the Imperial legions can only be defeated through the utmost incompetence, the officers losing 50+ from their IQs, and all the soldiers forgetting what "coordination" means. Top award goes to the officer who gets tricked by Han Solo into opening the bunker door.
*** It gets worse. Absolutely nothing about the Emperor's plan actually requires allowing the Rebel sabotage team to land on Endor at all, because they have no way to signal back to the Rebel fleet before it enters the Endor system. If they'd just tractored the shuttle into the ''Executor's'' hangar bay as it flew by, Vader could still have captured Luke alive and everybody else would be dead. Hell, they could have then lowered the deflector shield to make the Rebel fleet ''think'' everything was fine as it jumped into the system, then raised the shield again before they actually got close enough to shoot at the Death Star—but were already close enough for the Imperial Fleet to block their escape route.
*** Compare the Endor Mission premise to ''[[The Guns of Navarone]]'': an elite infiltrator team tries to scout out ''and'' destroy a strategical target in one fell swoop, with an unreasonable deadline. Their allies will die out if they screw up, and it's mostly a desperate gamble as it is. The differences? Mallory's team had: a local guide so that they would know what's where, demolition supplies to take out the target without exposing themselves first, and [https://angrystaffofficer.com/2018/06/29/are-the-shields-up-decision-making-in-return-of-the-jedi/ means to communicate back, so that their allies would know whether the path is clear to press on, or it will be pointless death], in case the team cannot get away in time for rendezvous and report in person. It sounds downright sane when put this way. Only combination of incompetent allies ''and'' surprisingly competent enemy action brought them down to the level of [[Indy Ploy|desperate improvisation]] at which Skywalker's team started... expecting to do the job somehow. The Rebels relied on dumb luck, and their deadline was set by their own plan rather than enemy action.
** Pretty much ''everything'' that happens in ''[[The Phantom Menace]]''. Darth Sidious orders the Trade Federation to secretly kill the Jedi ambassadors when his whole plan hinges on the Federation's blockade being highly visible to stir up discontent in the Senate. When Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan are trapped at the film's beginning, the Trade Federation sends in the battle droids instead of keeping the Jedi locked in a room filled with poison gas. Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan split up and take separate transports down to the planet's surface without any way of knowing if they'll land remotely near each other. The Trade Federation lands its forces on ''the other side of the planet'' from their target. The captured queen is sent for "processing" rather than being held in the secure, occupied palace. The reason they need the queen in the first place is to force her to sign a treaty "legalizing" the invasion and occupation. Qui-Gon hatches a convoluted scheme involving betting on a slave boy entering a pod race to win spaceship parts (using the Force to cheat) instead of trying to get the parts from anther vendor, trading the ship in for a new one, buying passage on another ship to get where he needs to go, or just stealing the parts since he's willing to break the rules. The Trade Federation blockade is somehow devastating an advanced, civilized planet, and sends away all but one of its ships for the final battle. The Chancellor needs to send a committee to verify the testimony of the Jedi he personally sent to investigate a situation. When faced with reports of a Sith Lord running around, the Jedi council sends a whopping two Jedi to deal with him. The good guys commit to a ground war with the Trade Federation when all they needed to do was sneak some pilots into the hangar and shoot down the droid control ship, neutralizing the enemy army. And even after Anakin saves the day, ''nobody does anything about his still-enslaved mother''.
** ''[[Attack of the Clones]]''. Obi-Wan impulsively jumps out a window to grab a droid without knowing where its going or what its armed with. A bounty hunter hired to kill Padme subcontracts to a second assassin instead of doing the job himself. When pursued into a nightclub, the assassin attempts to ambush and kill the pursuing Jedi warriors rather than getting the hell out of Dodge. The Jedi send the young, rash Anakin to guard a woman he already had emotional bonds with ''and'' was clearly flirting with. The safest place for the endangered Senator is evidently picnicking in romantic, wide-open areas on her home planet. Obi-Wan is told that the clone army was ordered years ago by someone impersonating a dead Jedi, but nobody investigates where this suspiciously convenient army came from.
** Everything about Anakin's training. In ''[[The Phantom Menace]]'', Qui-Gon Jinn is established to be a bit of a Jedi Hippie, defying the Jedi code. Qui-Gon Jinn discovers a 9 year old slave boy who has great potential for power. Qui-Gon goes through ridiculous lengths to free the boy (which itself is part of another Idiot Plot) and presents him to the Jedi Council to request to take him on as his apprentice. The Jedi wisely tell him to fuck off, telling him that he's too old and his attachment to his mother and his past as a slave (which would be traumatic for any child) make him dangerous and a possible threat. Even Obi-Wan Kenobi, Qui-Gon's apprentice and best friend, tells him that the kid is dangerous. Some shit happens and Qui-Gon gets killed by a Sith Lord, who is swiftly killed by Obi-Wan. Qui-Gon's dying wish is for Obi-Wan to train Anakin, based on some ancient prophecy that says someone would rise to bring balance to the Force... despite the fact that there are only ever two Sith Lords at a time (no more, no less) and that Obi-Wan just killed one of them, and the fact that all things considered the Force is pretty balanced. Ignoring the fact that there is a good chance Anakin will fall to the dark side, ignoring the fact that there is a Sith lord out there no doubt looking for a new partner (remember, no more or no less than two), and ignoring how the kid is ''clearly'' troubled, sweating and scowling during his examinations, Yoda decides to let him become a Jedi anyway. Essentially, all these Jedi Masters' instincts keep telling them what a bad idea training Anakin would be, and they repeatedly mention how they don't trust him, how he's dangerous, how sending him off on these missions is risky - but they do it all anyway, so Darth Vader can happen.
** No reason is ever given as to why the Separatists would follow Sidious. In the second movie the Trade Federation only follows Dooku because he claims to be opposed to Sidious after he betrayed them in the first movie. All of Palpatine's plans seem to rely on every leader of both factions being completely incompetent, to the point of leaving obvious clues that the Separatist leadership commissioned the clone army specifically to be used against them. A lot of the problems in the trilogy could be explained as him making things extra convoluted for his own amusement, just because he could get away with it. His hologram doesn't even hide his face or change his voice.
** [[
{{quote|Oh, and I just also happen to look and sound like a monster that wants to take over the world now. Don't mind my creepy black cloak, my horribly evil sounding voice or my terrifying face. Also don't mind the fact that I'm yelling about creating a galactic empire run exclusively by me. No, no, no, you see it's the ''Jedi'' that are trying to take over. That warranted them all being executed by the army that is controlled by myself without any kind of evidence to prove what I'm saying is true. Yup, we just killed them all, '''even the children'''. Then we '''burned down their temple''', and you're all just gonna have to take my word for it. Trust me, look at my face. Would this face ''lie'' to you? ''(cut to a poster saying "Vote Palpatine, 3036, '''or else!'''")''}}
** ''[[The Last Jedi]]'' is less a film about good defeating evil by outsmarting the villains and more a tale of both sides tossing around the [[Idiot Ball]] and the good guys only surviving by because the villains have have it in their possession longer than the good guys do.
*** The opening battle of the film has Poe Dameron take his single X-Wing in a frontal attack against a First Order dreadnought, the ''Fulminatrix'', to disable its deck guns so it can't defend against the bomber attack that follows. Reasonably okay except for the fact it's Poe hitting the dreadnought solo. The bombers take the form of vehicles that must ''drop'' their ''unguided'' bombs from underslung bomb bays, using a ''handheld trigger'', so that they fall onto the dreadnought from directly above, ''all of this taking place in space, i.e. zero gravity''. Additionally, they're flying in such close formation that the destruction of one bomber by enemy fire also takes out several others. The sequence is clearly another [[George Lucas Throwback]] to [[World War II]] movies, but a badly misplaced one.
*** Plus despite the traditionally [[Point Defenseless|bad point defense]] in the franchise, Hux doesn't have any fighter screens to launched until after Poe has already destroyed the point defense on the ''Fulminatrix''. [[Never Live It Down|He also falls for an obvious prank call]] and has the ''Fulminatrix'' fire on the (mostly evacuated) Resistance ground base that is not going anywhere rather than the Resistance capital ships preparing for a hyperspace jump. The fact they have a Siege Cannon near the end of the movie is impressive as this sequence gives the impression the First Order never heard of the concept before.
*** Even discounting the Bombers, the Resistance has it's own stupidity in this scene. Specifically Leia who tries to call off the attack as it is happening and when Poe shuts off his comlink, never tries to give a similar order to the Bombers directly. After everything is said and done, Leia claims the at the attack was too risky and demotes Poe. However the Resistance is a military with a chain of command. Leia, being at the top of the chain of command, would have to give her approval of any battle plans. If it really was too risky, she could have vetoed the plan before it happened and not revoke her approval when it was already underway.
*** To quote a famous admiral who died an inglorious death in this film: "Our cruisers can't repel firepower of that magnitude!". Poe's determination to destroy the ''Fulminatrix'' was not motivated by him being hot-blooded and irrational. He correctly points out that it is a "fleet killer" and it's main cannons are able to fire right ''through'' ground-based deflector shields. This means that it would be a one-shot-kill for ''any'' Resistance ship or base. Destroying it was as much a matter of survival as destroying ''Starkiller Base'' was in ''The Force Awakens''. Ironically, if it had not been destroyed, then the Resistance would have been wiped out halfway through the movie.
*** The lack of a [[Time Skip]] raises even more problems for Rey as mentioned below as well as raising the question why neither the bombers or the capital ships were used to attack ''Starkiller Base'' when they would have done it quicker than with a few dozen Starfighters (and one of the capital ships is even called a bunker-buster meaning it would be perfect for that situation)
*** The shocked reaction that everyone displays towards the fact that the First Order can track ships through hyperspace. They did exactly that in ''The Force Awakens'' . It was how they discovered that the Resistance base was on D'Qar -- by tracking Snap Wexley's X-wing when he returned from his surveillance flyby of ''Starkiller Base'' . That the First Order knew to target D'Qar immediately after Snap's flyby should have at least put the idea into everyone's heads. For that matter, Han was able to detect the ''Millennium Falcon'' as soon as Rey flew it off of Jakku and similarly expressed concern about the First Order having hyperspace tracking. The latter was after the Guavian Death Gang and Kanjiklub had managed to locate ''him'', despite him having taken a detour from his planned route to recover the ''Falcon''. It comes across as Leia and the other Resistance leaders being stuck in 30 year old notions of what can and cannot be done with regards to tracking ships.
*** After being put in a [[Closed Circle|trap]] with diminished forces, Leia and Holdo decide to evacuate the main cruiser to a secret rebel base, keeping this dubious plan secret from the crew. In fact, they refuse to acknowledge that they have ''any'' plan whatsoever. It involves taking the four ships the Resistance had left, limping away in a Stern Chase, burning out the last of their fuel to limp to a base holding little more than a bunch of rusted, antiquated, salt-corroded equipment to hold a [[Last Stand]]. This is while it's known the First Order can track them. This secrecy results in a mutiny and a [[Shaggy Dog Story|pointless adventure]] of Finn and Rose that almost [[Poor Communication Kills|gets a lot of people killed, and it lets the support ships get picked off like flies and ends with what's left of the Resistance forces as sitting ducks.]] The transports also don't have shields, weapons, or hyperdrives when we clearly see them using transports that all three of those features in the last movie that disappear into the ether for the sake of this movie.
**** The First Order gets in on the action as well, unfortunately. There is no reason why the First Order shouldn't try to have half the fleet do a hyperspace jump ahead of the Resistance Fleet and end the battle right there. There's also no justifiable reason why they don't unleash all their TIE fighters against a fighterless Resistance fleet after calling back Kylo Ren; ''he'' may be too valuable to lose, but two TIEs managed to blow open the bridge without any preliminary attack and there's no fighter force to counter them. A [[Zerg Rush]] of such TIEs would almost certainly either annihilate the entire remaining fleet or cripple it early.
*** Finn and Rose park their ship on the beach outside Canto Bight, and don't move it when told it's illegal to park there, making it the only reason for authorities to be alerted and their mission to fail.
*** The battle on Crait has plenty. For starters the First Order should fire whoever designed the siege cannon for not being smart enough to make it a walker when we saw the SPHA-T from ''[[Attack of the Clones]]'' which was this very concept 50 years earlier. Secondly the Resistance makes no attempt to use their artillery cannons against the either the First Order TIEs or the Siege Cannon and instead trying to use ''Anti-Personnel Blaster Rifles''<ref>which shouldn't even work as these First Order TIEs have [[Deflector Shields]].</ref> and [[The Alleged Car|barely stable Ski Speeders ]] respectively. Nor do they consider letting the First Order use their Siege Cannon and then using [[Grenade Spam]] and [[More Dakka]] to slaughter any Stormtroopers who come through the bottleneck.
*** While the Emperor was overconfident to the point it killed him (unlike Snoke, who at least kept the lightsabers in his sight). One ends up needing a [[Heroic Sacrifice]] and achieves [[Near Villain Victory]] while the other gets blindsided not even half-way through his plan.
*** Rey expecting Kylo Ren to rejoin the light side falls apart when you realize that not once in their entire subplot has he expressed any desire to do anything remotely in that direction, not even to express regret or contrition for his actions in ''The Force Awakens'' , including the murder of his ''father''. In fact, he agrees with her accusation that he's a monster, and even his version of the night in the hut years ago with Luke admits that he was already a pretty dark force user, and he never even attempts an explanation for his massacre of some of his fellow students. Rey, meanwhile, starts to ignore everything he did to her and her friends in ''The Force Awakens'' after he agrees he's a monster, making her look like an incredible idiot to expect anything different in him from last film.
*** Captain Phasma falls into textbook [[Bond Villain Stupidity]] when she decides not to kill Finn and Rose with a firing squad like a traditional military execution ([[Star Wars: The Clone Wars|or what the Republic would have done]]) instead use Laser Axes. Not Vibro-Axes like Jabba's goons (which would make sense since Phasma justification for forgoing a firing squad is she "wants it to hurt") and then she has the executioners do a bunch of flashy maneuvers so the Finn and Rose don't get beheaded by the time before Holdo's hyperspace ram comes to [[Contrived Coincidence|conveniently]] save them. For added stupidity she and every one else in the hanger[[Failed a Spot Check|somehow lost track of a ''orange and white'' droid that was with them]] that them somehow hijacks a [[Chicken Walker]]. She also doesn't seem to learn from her mistake less than 5 minutes ago as she tries to engage Finn in a melee duel [[Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?|instead of just shooting him with her sidearm.]]
*** Rose ramming Finn's speeder [[Negated Moment of Awesome|before he ram his own speeder into the Siege Cannon]]. She did this because of a one-sided romantic infatuation with him but never considered that by ramming him, there was a chance for ''both'' of them to be killed rather than just one of them as it would be if Finn successfully rammed the Siege Cannon. Her rationale that it is more important to save those you love than to destroy the enemy is nonsensical as that was exactly what Finn was trying to do. The fact that we get to see the Siege Cannon firing when she does her speech really highlights her stupidity.
*** Kylo does this big time when goes to confront what he thinks is Luke on Crait. He should have noticed something is wrong after "Luke" was completely un-phased by having [[There Is No Kill Like Overkill|every single walker firing on him]]. He also should have [[Offscreen Inertia|noticed Luke hasn't aged a day since Kylo destroyed his new Jedi Order]] and is using the lightsaber he saw get destroyed in Snoke's throne room. All signs point to it not being the real Luke but he chooses ignore them all and confronts him directly without ordering the rest of his troops to storm the base. End result is a meaningless victory for the bad guys, as Kylo's incompetence leads to The First Order capturing the base [[Book Ends|''after'' the Resistance finished evacuating.]]
*** The entire point of the film, and indeed this trilogy, is the importance of protecting the New Republic from the imperial ambitions of the First Order. Yet the New Republic is almost entirely excluded from the story despite the opening crawl of ''The Force Awakens'' stating that the Resistance is supported by them. While it is true that their capital was destroyed in ''The Force Awakens'', the Republic canonically spans tens of thousands of star systems and expanded universe materials state that the Republic's military was comparatively small because they supposedly encouraged member systems to have local defense forces. This makes it very odd that the Resistance is trying to flee in the opposite direction to the Outer Rim the day after they destroyed the super-weapon the obliterated the Hosnian System -- which they have telemetry to prove. It's not like it can be argued that they are trying to protect the Republic by luring the First Order fleet away, since the First Order will inevitably return their focus to subjugating the Republic once they lose interest in the shrinking Resistance.
* ''[[Transporter 3]]''.
** The villain uses an elaborate setup to force the transporter to do a job, including bracelets [[Made of Explodium]]. The villain also has literally hundreds of [[Mooks]] positioned along the route to keep the pressure up on Frank. The job: Drive a girl across Europe. It's never explained why they need Frank badly enough to justify the fuss about him or even why this big and well-organized crime syndicate needs an external expert for moving a person from A to B.
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* ''[[The Strangers]]''; if the two leads had a brain ''cell'' between them, the movie would've been a lot shorter and NO ONE would've died.
** Subverted in ''[[Ils]]'' (aka ''Them''), the French film from which ''The Strangers'' cribs its premise. The two leads may be frightened, but they're not idiots, and they do pretty much everything right. {{spoiler|It still doesn't save them in the end.}}
* ''[[A Sound of Thunder]]'', which [https://web.archive.org/web/20160327083916/http://www.agonybooth.com/recaps/A_Sound_of_Thunder_2005.aspx the Agony Booth's recap] describes as an "Idiot Plot fractal".
* ''[[Orphan]]'':
** The only one in the movie who wasn't a complete idiot was the mother. Esther breaks her own arm in a vise to frame her, and the doctors somehow believe that the mother was able to do it one-handed. Daniel (her son) decides not to reveal Esther's violence until he has evidence, even though the mother had already asked him about it and would believe him anyway. But Maxine (the deaf daughter) swept the medal podium at the [[Too Dumb to Live]] Olympics. Maxine watches Esther break a young girl's leg and murder a nun, but covers for her out of fear. Okay, I'll buy it, even adults can be cowed by threats. But then Esther tries to murder Maxine herself ''twice'', tries to murder Daniel at his treehouse (Maxine at least intervenes), and then ''succeeds'' (in certain cuts of the movie) in murdering Daniel at the hospital - '''Maxine never tells a single adult.'''
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** Aside from Llewelyn, everyone who deals with Chigurh loses 50 IQ points. After pulling him over and handcuffing him, a deputy simply holds an entire phone conversation with his back to the man and gets strangled. The Sheriff realizes that this hired contract is running around killing people and going after Moss, and instead of contacting federal authorities, other law enforcement officials, etc.....he basically does nothing and just retires. Also, an idiot ball to anyone who works with Chigurh as he apparently is quite willing to off any employers or associates if it strikes his fancy.
* Fernando Meirelles' film adaptation of Saramago's ''[[Blindness]]'' has a brilliant premise but doesn't make much sense.
** There is an epidemic across the city that renders people blind. The people who are blind are almost immediately thrown into concentration camps despite no one knowing anything about the virus. While hysteria and quarantines would be expected, the movie decides to crank [[Humans Are
** It is an Idiot Plot because the politicians in the novel and the sequel ''SEEING'' ARE idiots. Fortunately, no real politician would act like them.
** Oh, and the filmmakers are of the belief that not only do people stop caring about hygiene when they go blind but they [[Unfortunate Implications|will be reduced to crawling around and acting like animals.]]
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* In ''[[Johnny Mnemonic]]'', the bad guys looking to '''suppress''' the data stored in Johnny's head are, for some reason, bent on ''specifically'' cutting off Johnny's head and cryogenically freezing it, even though suppressing the data would be as simple as killing him and destroying his head (which is even easier and [[Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?|only requires a gun and a bullet to achieve]]). Johnny also gets the bright idea that the data in his head is "worth a lot of money," despite that among the two factions who want the data, one doesn't want to use it for anything at all and the other wants to give it all away for free; nobody is in any position to get any money or make any money from the data.
** To be fair, while they have no plans to ''sell'' the cure, since they themselves are not immune to the plague they have every reason to want to keep a copy around for their own use.
* ''[[Unknown (2011 film)|Unknown]]'': {{spoiler|A GM corn company hired a team of assassins for industrial espionage. They assumed that the head of the project would have a copy of the genome on his laptop, and most likely that it was the only copy. They trick an insane assassin into getting rid of a piece of evidence, when they could easily have done it themselves.}}
* Played for laughs in ''[[Mystery Team]]''.
* A fine example of this trope not being bad is the ''[[Creepshow]]'' segment "The Lonely Death of Jordy Verril." Everything that goes wrong in that segment is a direct consequence of Jordy being an ignorant idiot, which is how he's characterized from the first frame.
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* ''[[Underworld Evolution]]'' features what is intended to be a crack squad of [[Badass Normal|elite troops trained in killing vampires and werewolves.]] At the climax, they must seek out and destroy a lair of werewolves before they can unleash the [[Big Bad]]. They are surprised to find this lair is only accessible from an underwater entrance, but that's fine—they [[Crazy Prepared|have scuba gear.]] Oh, wait. [[Idiot Ball|They forgot the silver ammo for their werewolf hunt,]] so if they go in, they're incapable of doing any damage to the enemy before werewolf bites turn them into werewolves. [[Too Dumb to Live|So they go in anyway.]]
* ''[[The Comic Strip Presents]]:'' ''[[The Movie|The Supergrass]]'' would have been about 15 minutes long had the police actually bothered to investigate Dennis and find that there was no truth to his claims of being a drug dealer. [[Played for Laughs|It's the Comic Strip, after all.]]
* In ''[[Star Trek:
** It's made clear in the movie that they are not setting up long term colonies but plan to explode the space around the planet making it uninhabitable for centuries. Or rather, that's the ''villain's'' plan, because, they are too close to death to [[Immortality Immorality|become immortal]] by the natural effect of the planet. Why the Starfleet people went along with that—when the natural healing effect is already enough for any non-villainous purpose—is never brought up.
* ''[[Night of the Lepus]]'': "We have to stop this insurgence of rabbits, so let's inject one with a serum I know absolutely nothing about. That should do the trick!"
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