All The Tropes

Third-Act Stupidity: Difference between revisions

Page Discussion

Third-Act Stupidity (view source)

Revision as of 08:39, 29 December 2014

1 byte removed ,  9 years ago
m
update links
VisualWikitext
m (update links)
Line 8:
A [[Villainous Breakdown]], [[Honor Before Reason]], and [[Revenge Before Reason]] might be confused for this trope, but are not, as those are logical progressions of events in the story.
 
Compare [[Lowered Monster Difficulty]], [[Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?]], [[Third-Act Misunderstanding]], [[You Can't Thwart Stage One]].
{{examples}}
 
Line 29:
* ''[[Once Upon a Time In Mexico]]'': The [[Femme Fatale]] spots her ex-boyfriend wounded in the street from a distance; the sensible thing to do would be to snipe him, as she was perfectly capable. But instead she goes down to talk to him, so that they could have a dramatic final exchange and {{spoiler|so that Sands could shoot her}}.
* None of the characters in ''[[Hellboy (film)|Hellboy II]]'' make intelligent decisions in the third act, which lead to {{spoiler|the villain getting the [[MacGuffin]] and the [[Love Interest]] dying}} (although critics felt it didn't hurt the overall film).
* The movie ''[[Underworld (film)|Underworld]]'' when the [[Big Bad]] has rendered the hero completely helpless and has him on the floor at his feet... but then walks away to deal with another problem. The hero of course recovers and saves the day.
** Of course, the Hero is the spitting image of his dead daughter - a daughter he'd already been mortified by having to kill before. It was possible he wasn't able to bring himself to deliver the killing strike this time.
 
Line 42:
* ''[[Charmed]]'' Zankou, S7's Big Bad is smart enough to come up with some cold-blooded torture that weakens the sisters' confidence enough so he can steal the Book of Shadows. Then in the finale his IQ seems to plummet and the sisters manage to goad him into doing something stupid so they can attack him. It was a shame because he was one of the few worthy opponents they had up to that point.
* Part of the fun of ''[[Columbo]]'' was [[Zig-Zagging Trope|zig zagging this]]. He's seem like a fool, and even seem to fall into this, but it's all an act.
* The [[Big Bad]] in the ''[[Doctor Who]]'' special "[[Doctor Who/NS/Recap/NS/S4 /E17 E18 The End of Time|The End Of Time]]" tells the Master in the most insulting terms that the moment his plan (which the Master is an essential part of) succeeds, the Master [[You Have Outlived Your Usefulness|will be killed]]. While the Master is standing next to the machine that forms another essential part of the plan. He also passes up numerous opportunities to [[Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?|shoot the Doctor]] despite having previously shown a willingness to kill people for disagreeing with him; and the Doctor ''isn't'' part of his plan.
** In the original series story "[[Doctor Who/Recap/S13 E5/E05 The Brain of Morbius|The Brain of Morbius]]", the Doctor defeats and captures Morbius by the middle of the last episode, deciding to remove his brain and return it to the Time Lords. It's fairly logical for him to threaten Solon, the [[Mad Scientist]] responsible for giving Morbius his new body, into doing the job for him. It's less logical for him to leave Solon alone to do the job and go and check on Sarah in a room with a lock on the door. To the surprise of no-one but him, Solon locks them in and revives Morbius.
 
 
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Special:MobileDiff/1211499"