Strawman Has a Point/Film

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Examples of Strawman Has a Point in Film include:

  • In The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Frollo's grim depiction of the world "out there" actually sounds quite realistic, considering that this is Mediaeval Europe we're talking about.
  • A Lifetime Movie of the Week that was attempting to preach a Gay Aesop ended with a mother crying over her son, wondering "where did I go wrong?" However, what she was crying about wasn't that her son was gay, it's what he was doing. Firstly, he was having a lot of one night stands with men he barely knew after finding a gay bar. Secondly, he had to keep lying to his parents and his girlfriend about where he was going, what he was doing, and why he was doing it. Naturally, he shows no remorse about any of this. The mother even makes it clear she thinks he's ruining his life, but the movie still expects us to hate her for trying to convince him to not throw his life away. While you're supposed to sympathize with the gay son, he comes across as such an unrepentant Jerkass that it's impossible to feel sorry for him.
  • Patch Adams:
    • While reviewing [dead link], Ebert and Siskel agreed with the film's strawman villains. Yes, they were shown insisting on being professional at all times, which apparently includes things such as flatly telling someone they had a few weeks to live and then heading off to complete your rounds without another word, Ebert and Siskel said they would run if they got a wacky doctor like Robin Williams' character. The option of having a reasonable amount of bedside manner without going overboard is never offered. This is a bit of Viewers Are Geniuses - on their face, the traditional doctors seem reasonable.
    • Also, Patch's roommate is supposed to be a Jerkass Straw Vulcan whose hostility is motivated by his frustration over Patch's subversive antics. When Patch calls him out after he turns Patch in for suspected cheating, the roommate points out that he's seen how little studying Patch actually gets done and asks how Patch still manages to get such high marks. The viewer has yet to see Patch do much studying either, so it seems primed for Patch to defend himself with a recitation of some medical jargon or explain how he's got Photographic Memory and doesn't need to study or something. Instead, Patch launches into another speech attacking the roommate for being a Jerkass, and the viewer is left to assume Patch wears his smart hat offscreen because he's the protagonist, so he couldn't possibly be cheating to excel in an academic system he has such little regard for.
    • One line by Adams about how "it's not like getting involved with your patients causes you to explode" completely destroys the movie's moral when one character getting involved with a shady patient causes them to be shot in the head. Adams's methods directly caused a main character to die, but we're not supposed to notice that.
  • Ebert's review of The Life of David Gale, which is a different type of this trope: the movie's central characters go so ridiculously far to show that their position is right, you can't help but be disgusted with them.
    • They go so far, in fact, that they destroy their own position. 'It is possible for an innocent man to be executed!' kinda loses its punch if you have to add '... if he deliberately frames himself for the crime, withholds exculpatory evidence from the police and his own attorney, and sabotages his own defense at every opportunity.'
  • In Cape Fear, Bowden gets the chief of police to try to drive Cady out of town before Cady has done anything illegal. Cady hires a lawyer who is portrayed as fussy and over-liberal, but who makes the entirely legitimate point that Cady is being harassed for no reason. Of course, Cady does not stay innocent for long.
  • In Look Who's Talking Too, the mooching brother-in-law is essentially a strawman for everything that is not a Proper New York City Attitude, including the fact that he has a gun. However, it's a little difficult to argue with one of his rationalizations for having it:

"You know, you people really amuse me, stockpiling your canned food and your water in case of disaster. But when the shit really hits the fan and you're sitting over here with your stuff, and the guy next door has a gun, who do you think's gonna go hungry? Him, or you?"

    • Notable is that John Travolta's character doesn't even try to refute this. He just calls the brother-in-law "insane", apparently the audience is expected to automatically share his frustration.
  • In the Killer Bee movie The Swarm, Michael Caine's character, Dr Bradford Crane, is clearly supposed to be the hero and Richard Widmark's General Slater the villain. The trouble is that all of the schemes for dealing with the bees suggested by Slater all seem eminently sensible but are shot down by Crane on the grounds of the "environmental damage" (even after the bees have already blown up a nuclear reactor, killing upwards of 30,000 people) whilst none of Crane's schemes actually work until the end. On top of that, Crane defeats the swarm of bees by setting an oil slick on fire, even though that's not exactly great for the environment.
  • Contact:
    • It plays with this trope, with National Security Advisor Kitz being a Jerkass with very valid concerns, such as if the device meant to achieve Faster-Than-Light Travel is actually a Trojan Horse doomsday device. Given the themes the movie touches on, however, this trope is likely to have been deliberately incurred; in the book at least, it was definitely deliberate. Near the end, Kitz accuses Arroway and the other scientists of faking the events of the story, Arroway initially thinking he is in denial but comes to realize that from an outside perspective that is indeed how it must look. She eventually takes his offer to quietly look for evidence that would support her claims rather than making public accusations of a Government Conspiracy. On the other hand, he really is concealing convincing evidence (that the recorder had only static, but the length at least proved the time dilation effect was true).
    • Kitz does agree to give Arroway more money for research. Furthermore, in the film Kitz loses his temper at the congressional interview. That is not a sign of a person willing to consider dissent.
    • On the other other hand, Arroway herself is a Strawman With A Point (strangely, considering author Carl Sagan's point of view on the subject), as her arguments on the qualifications for the pilot of the machine are perfectly reasonable and is subsequently dismissed because of her anti-religion views.
  • Its a Wonderful Life: The tropes of Straw Man Has a Point and Inferred Holocaust overlap. Pottersville, for all its faults, has a thriving nightlife and a stable economy. Bedford Falls only has a moderate manufacturing economy, no obvious places to find excitement, and an oppressive lack of culture. Once the factory closes down Bedford Falls will suffer depression and unemployment. Pottersville has backup industries, such as the nightclubs, that can encourage outside investment.
  • The Mexican film Un Mundo Maravilloso (which was made as a leftist Take That to the liberal and free market economic policies of recent Mexican governments), has the Minister of Economy as the antagonist, and he is portrayed as an ignorant, insensitive and greedy dick who lives comfortably on a mansion while the protagonist (a homeless, jobless hobo) is shown sleeping in the streets; however, at one point of the film the minister is shown having a conversation with the protagonist, and he mentions that sometimes he would like to be "Just as free as you are". This is portrayed as another ignorant blather from his part, but when you consider that he, being the Minister of Economy, in reality has the tremendous responsibility of keeping the economy of an entire country smooth and running, and the fact that the hobo has practically zero responsibilities and commitments, it becomes hard to argue against that. In this case, the point is not that the minister had it worse than the hobo, but the notion that success always comes with responsibilities and commitment, the film doesn't dwell on that and even portrays the middle class (a more inspiring example) as the Butt Monkey.
  • The closest thing that 2012 has to a villain is Oliver Platt's heartless presidential adviser, who's an obvious Take That to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. However, after the fifth or sixth argument where his level-headed pragmatism is contrasted with the Honor Before Reason Save Everyone bleeding-heart attitude of the rest of the cast, you kind of have to wonder if maybe the writers didn't secretly agree with him. Some examples:
    • People act like Platt is a monster for not trying to save his own mother, but he points out that she's very old, very sick, and "would want to meet her Maker on her own terms".
      • We can also reasonably presume that Platt had previously discussed with his mother whether or not extraordinary measures should be used to prolong her life if need be as that's a routine issue you discuss with family members who are that ill, and if she agreed with Platt on this issue then nobody else really gets a vote.
    • Ejiofor complains that "only rich people" are being let onto the Arks, to which Platt responds that the money they spent buying tickets is what funded the Arks in the first place. (Well, that and snarking "Oh, you mean life isn't fair?!")
    • When Ejiofor wants to open up the Ark to save one more family, Platt chews him out for wanting to risk everyone's lives just for a slim chance of saving five or six more people.
  • Plan 9 from Outer Space. Eros. Would you allow an alien species to get their hands on a device that could blow up not only the world but the universe? Compare and contrast with Robert E Wise's The Day the Earth Stood Still.
  • A frequent problem in Cowboy Cop type movies, particularly Dirty Harry, where the wishy-washy liberal superiors chastise Harry for his flagrant abuse of the rights of the suspect and ignorance of police procedure. But the thing is, they're right, and Harry would be a terrifyingly dangerous person in real life. This whole issue was deliberately acknowledged in the earlier film, Bullitt, where the superior turns out to be completely right: it's not good to be a loose cannon. Dirty Harry itself acknowledged this with the second movie, with the primary antagonists being a group of Cowboy Cops. It is instructive to note that despite all the other rules he breaks, Harry has never actually killed anyone outside standard law enforcement rules of engagement.
  • In the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still, various characters from the government and military are depicted as being callous, paranoid, and inhumane when they immediately imprison the injured alien visitor and attempt to interrogate him about what he's doing on Earth. Even though the viewers are supposed to be disgusted with their behavior, there's one minor problem; Klaatu is indeed planning to destroy the entire human race, taking all of a day and a couple interviews to verify it as the right course. The "inhumane" government officials were completely correct to treat him as an enemy.
  • In 28 Weeks Later, the American military eventually order the total execution of all non-military personnel in London, infected or not, rather than risk letting the newly-resurgent virus spread. American soldiers gun down hordes of frightened civilians who are obviously not yet infected, which is pretty horrifying. However, we also know that the virus completely wiped out Britain in a matter of weeks, so this extreme position does not seem so unreasonable. By the end, we learn that the heroes' successful escape from the mass execution has, in fact, allowed the virus to spread to the rest of the world and possibly doomed the human race. It's likely that the film always intended the heroes' position to seem somewhat dubious, albeit with good intentions.
  • Christmas with the Kranks expects the viewers to side with the neighbors who criminally harass the title characters for simply deciding to to celebrate Christmas by taking a cruise instead of how they usually did. Their daughter went off on a Peace Corps assignment and this is the first time in almost two decades that they've had this kind of time to themselves, except that the annual Christmas lights competition in which the neighborhood competes annually would count against them having a family out of town and not competing, and they couldn't have that. That's right, the entire plot of the movie is because the neighborhood wants some little certificate or maybe a trophy to put in Town Hall for a year. Makes you wonder how the film would expect them to react if, say, a Jewish or Muslim family moved into this neighborhood. The film was critically panned, with many critics pointing out the horrific Unfortunate Implications and arguing the message was downright vile.
  • In the film version of Sgt Bilko, the villain is a military higher-up who wants to run Bilko out of the Army for essentially running a team of Neighborhood Friendly Gangsters out of an American military base, and also for getting him blamed for a crime Bilko committed and getting the villain transferred to Alaska. Since this is actually a completely reasonable thing to do from any objective viewpoint, the villain is made to accomplish his goals through methods even more criminal and underhanded than Bilko's, in order to make sure he doesn't get the audience's sympathy.
  • In South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, Sheila Broflowski initially has something of a point, which is actually illustrated in the early scenes of the movie. Just as she argues later, despite Terrence and Phillip: Asses of Fire being rated R, children still find ways to see it, and it actually does turn into a bad influence on them, Up to Eleven with Kenny, who accidentally kills himself imitating the movie (though it's a scene where a character kills himself setting a fart on fire). It's only once she becomes a Knight Templar and prompts other Moral Guardians to ban it (and, you know, start a war with Canada) instead of admit any responsibility over their children's actions, that she becomes a villain.
  • In Easy Money, Rodney Dangerfield's wicked mother-in-law uses a substantial inheritance to basically blackmail Dangerfield into giving up the things he enjoys most—smoking, drinking excessively, gambling (it is shown early on that he can't control his urge to go too far and blow his winnings) and doing drugs (which he hides in the bathroom he shares with his twelve year old daughter), and losing excess weight.... and probably adds healthy years to his life by doing it.... she is made out to be all bad by the way she mistreats the staff at the department store she owns—but when Dangerfield shows up there with his friend, they both are mocking and abusive to all the staff they deal with.
  • In the made-for-TV movie Zenon: The Zequel, General Hammond (not that one) arrives to decommission the station, which was still suffering the after-effects of the sabotage in the previous film. His actions are seen by the main characters as evil. Here's what he really does: decommission an unstable space station before it falls to Earth, doing untold damage, attempt to apprehend a girl who thinks it's ok to smuggle aboard a shuttle, chase after spaceship thieves, and other actions perfectly in line with what any good soldier or policeman would do.
  • Lex Luthor in Superman Returns accuses Superman of selfishly withholding the advanced alien technology he inherited from his dad, so that the planet is forced to stay dependent on Superman. While he's probably wrong about Superman's motives, he has a point. Sharing, say, what Kryptonian science knows about medicine or space travel or producing food would probably save a lot more lives than individually putting out fires with super breath. Ultimately, however, Superman withholds the tech because he doesn't want it to be exploited by power-hungry despots like Luthor.
    • It's important to remember that Krypton exploded. If Superman doesn't know whether or not the Kryptonians did it to themselves with their own technology (and remember that one of the motives for his five-year space trip was to try and find out exactly how and why Krypton came to be destroyed), he has an obvious reason to be reluctant to hand that technology out on Earth.
  • In Ferris Buellers Day Off, vice principal Ed Rooney is depicted as a Dean Bitterman-type who's seemingly trying to stop Ferris and his friends from having fun for no good reason. Except he does have good reason: it's his job to enforce school regulations, and Ferris has been breaking the regs by skipping school at least nine times before he hacks into the school computer to alter the records, and does so by blatantly exploiting the good will of everyone around him, including his parents. Yet, the movie turns the audience against him by having him go way too far in trying to catch Ferris; breaking into his house and assaulting his dog and having him act as though he's trying to catch Ferris out of spite instead of trying to enforce the rules.
  • Dean Wormer's point of view in Animal House is understandable—no sane college administration would want the Deltas around, and the rest of the student body might well have been good and tired of their endless pranks, hell-raising and rule-breaking. The Deltas may have been Affably Evil, but evil they were nonetheless... a lot of the stunts they pulled would get people who tried them in Real Life tossed straight into jail. The fact that Wormer goes overboard ultimately justifies him being the villain.
  • In the hilariously Anvilicious and Narmy Lifetime Original Movie Cyber Seduction: His Secret Life, the mother of the protagonist freaks and panics upon learning that her son is looking at Internet porn. The father is very unconcerned and doesn't think there is anything abnormal about a teenage boy looking at porn. We are expect to consider the father an oafish buffoon over this for some reason. We can argue all day about the morality of pornography, but it's not like people looking for dirty stuff on the internet is, you know, uncommon. We know that he is wrong because he is a) a male, b) disagreeing with a female, c) in a Lifetime Movie of the Week.
  • In Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, two government agents angrily interrogate Indy after Russian spies kidnap him and an old partner of his, murder several American soldiers at a top secret test facility and make off with an alien corpse. Considering what just happened and that Indy's old partner was working with the Russians, the interrogation doesn't seem that unnecessary.
  • In Accepted, a high school senior rejected by every college ends up inventing one out of thin air. The thing spins out of control and becomes an actual, factual school set out of an old mental institution. The Dean Bitterman at the nearby traditional college wages an accreditation jihad against the upstart. The guy's a Jerkass, and the new school (with its emphasis on the students) is presented as a brave bastion of new educational methods. But as Dean Dick points out, the new place doesn't have a health center, more than one faculty member, or even a library. One doesn't have to be a crusty old academic to argue that a college should at least have a freaking library.
  • An extremely disturbing example of this occurs in the Saw series. In the first two movies, Jigsaw is shown as a psychotic (if somewhat atypical) Complete Monster who deserves no one's sympathy. However, some fans actually thought he had a point with his "those that don't appreciate their life don't deserve to live it" philosophy. In the sequels after II, he goes from Complete Monster to a Well-Intentioned Extremist and is portrayed in a much more sympathetic light, especially compared to the other villains in the series. By the time we get to Saw V, several characters actually say, outloud, "We deserve this". So, the movie makers saw that people were sympathizing with their psychotic character, and instead of discouraging it by making him more crazy, they encouraged it by making him less of a strawman. The end result is that many fans wind up thinking that the psychotic murderer is in the right... somehow...
  • The title character of Hitch makes some very valid points about continuing with one's life, adapting, and moving on after a relationship goes sour. He gets called out on this by one of his clients who outright calls him a coward for not chasing after one's love; granted, in the client's case, the breakup was because of a misunderstanding, but on Hitch's case there was a very clear and valid reason for it. As expected, since the film is a Romantic Comedy, Hitch gives in and goes great lengths to get back his love interest even after several rejections, incurring extreme behavior and injuries to himself. Try imagining how that would work in Real Life. All which leads to the Why Would Anyone Take Her Back moment in the end.
  • Other People's Money:
    • One of the rare deliberate examples. In it, we see a ruthless corporate shark played by Danny DeVito (no stranger to playing ruthless and underhanded business types) who launches a hostile takeover bid for a failing 'mom-and-pop' wire-and-cable company run by an idealistic, noble-hearted businessman (played by Gregory Peck, of all people), so that it can be broken apart and sold. The battle lines would seem to be clearly drawn in favour of 'ruthless corporate guy = bad', 'idealistic fatherly small businessman = good', and indeed Peck's character makes a stirring, idealistic speech to this effect towards the end. All well and good—until DeVito's character stands up a moment later and makes a similarly convincing, if more ruthless, practical, and greedy, speech about how the company is dead in the water with or without him and should Know When to Fold'Em.
    • This point is also set up earlier in the film, when the company's lawyer tries to use a quasi-ethical maneuver to buy him off. He turns her down flat, pointing out that would work out fine for him and the owner, but the stockholders would get hosed.

Lawyer: So, you're Albert Schweitzer now?
Larry: Not Albert Schweitzer, Robin Hood. I rob from the rich and give to the middle class. Well, the upper middle class. Caviar?

  • Many critics who disliked Lions for Lambs felt this way about Tom Cruise's character. A Senator with Presidential ambitions, his role in the film is an interview with anti-war journalist played by Meryl Streep discussing his new plan for Afghanistan. The Senator outlines a reasonable plan and makes some good points, but the film basically expects us to side exclusively with Streep's character simply due to her being anti-war and it being an anti-war film.
  • In Jaws 2, it's obvious that the viewer is supposed to side with Brody, who's in the same position as he was in the previous film—he knows there's a shark out there killing people, but no one wants to listen to him and everyone wants to keep the beaches open in order to keep the tourist dollars rolling in. However, the filmmakers seem to gloss over the fact that Brody started a panic on a beach full of people—sounding an alarm, screaming at people, and firing his gun—actions that could have resulted in someone being injured or even killed, not to mention the possibility of a lawsuits that would cost the town even more money than a canceled summer season. Even though the day after they fired him the shark went on a rampage and killed several teens and nearly killed several others, including the Mayor's own son, Brody didn't exactly endear himself to the town with that stunt.
  • The Green Berets, a 1968 film about the Vietnam war starring John Wayne. The film's agenda is pro-war and one of the characters is a strawman journalist with anti-war arguments that are shown to be "weak". Most people watching the opening scenes of the film today will root for said journalist. The fact that the verdict of history has not been kind to The Vietnam War and those who were in support of it probably doesn't help.
  • At the end of Innocent Blood, the vampire Marie, having just inadvetently created a bunch of Mafia vampires and having to clean it up, walks towards the rising sun with the intention of killing herself and thus preventing herself from making the same mistake again. She's talked out of it by her new love interest, but now that we have just seen just how easily it is to make a vampire - indeed multiple vampires in a single evening - it's hard to say she shouldn't kill herself.
  • In The Gamers 2, one of the players goes on a long, bitchy rant about how the roleplayer of the group squandered an Unlimited Wish spell on raising the Dungeon Master's character. While this was done to showcase how he's a whiny bitch with no sense of play, the fact that they raised another party member from the dead as a means to infiltrate the church they were in means that yes, she really did waste it. His real problem was 1. Doing it in a bitchy way, and 2. Storming out and quitting the game forever.
  • The government in The Crazies locks down the town whose water supply was contaminated by a bioweapon that causes extreme aggression and proceeds to kill anyone who even has a chance of being infected and burn the bodies. They also file the uninfected into buses to be evacuated, only to have them all murdered and burned. In the end, they nuke the town, although the protagonist and his wife survive and make it to the neighboring city. The guy in charge of the containment proceeds to order the containment of the entire city. The post-credits news report shows that nuking the town didn't work. While the army are definitely in the wrong, given they created the bioweapon in the first place, the lack of a cure for the condition and its extreme virulence make stopping a global pandemic more of a concern.
  • In the 1971 film of On the Buses, the audience is encouraged to support Jack and Stan as they bully the female bus drivers whose only "wrong" is working in traditionally male jobs and getting angry at Stan for intentionally disrupting their work. We're also encouraged to support them when they humiliate Blakey for the unforgivable crime of hiring female bus drivers and getting angry at the men for groping female staff.
  • Cypher from the The Matrix is disillusioned with being pulled out of the Matrix and learning the Awful Truth that the real world is a Crapsack World future. On top of that, he's living on a cramped hovercraft and working under a guy who risks the lives of his crew to fulfill an oracle's prophecy. After he sells out his crewmates to the Agents so he can return to the Matrix with his memory wiped, he tells Trinity that he'd choose the Matrix over his cramped existence of doing what Morpheus tells him. Quite a few folks, including an in-universe faction from the Matrix Online called the "Cypherites", think he was right in his belief that a blissfully-ignorant life in the Matrix can be more real than life in the dark, desolate future of the real world. It also doesn't help that the 3rd film completely forgot that the rebels don't free adult humans from the Matrix because they have a tendency to Go Mad from the Revelation, making the reveal of the Matrix to the whole world an Esoteric Happy Ending.
  • In the live action film of One Hundred and One Dalmatians, the evil fashion exec Cruella Deville is dismissive of the idea that Anita, her employee, should leave her job in the event of marriage. This is meant to show Deville as callous and cynical, but her observation is most likely correct: In her words, "More good working women have been lost to marriage than war, famine, disease, and disaster. You have talent, darling. Don't squander it."
    • Then again, the belief that starting a family is a bad thing—even if it's what one chooses to do—and a waste of one's talent is absolutely brimming with Unfortunate Implications.
  • Enemy of the State has a retroactive example in the Big Bad, an NSA official who believes the government should have the power to secretly wiretap American citizens due to the threat of terrorism (the full scope of which most Americans, particularly those opposing the bill, were unaware of). He's shown to be willing to frame or kill off anyone who opposes him, furthering the message that the government shouldn't have the right to surveille unsuspecting Americans. The film predates 9/11 by ~3 years, while staying faithful to the NSA's full communications capabilities, but in light of the fact that a devastating terrorist attack (whatever you belive its origins to be) in the real world prompted the government to give the NSA explicit authorization expand its warrantless wiretapping authority to American citizens, it makes the issue of whether or not the government should have this authority[1] much less black and white than when the film first came out.
  • In Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of The Black Pearl, pirates are shown to be evil, murderous, and a dangerous lure for Will Turner, who only helps Jack for the sake of a rescue mission. Fast forward to the third film At World's End, where the film wants you to totally sympathise with the pirates and despise the ruthless Lord Beckett. But realistically, Lord Beckett is simply cracking down on murderous criminals who deserve punishment. His actions would be socially progressive, had he not Jumped Off the Slippery Slope and then crossed the Moral Event Horizon by having a child hanged. The intent seems to have been to portray Grey and Grey Morality, with everyone involved some level of corrupt (except for Will Turner), with even the heroine becoming a lying, murderous bastard.
  • In La Haine, the more one observes the main characters and their tendency to escalate every small issue into violence, the more one feels the police are absolutely right to treat them with suspicion and loathing at every turn, including the use of force. Though it is no doubt a Grey and Grey Morality tale, it is not that hard to be Rooting for the Empire.
  • In the 1976 stinker Rattlers, at one point the female lead goes off on the sexism in the professional world; it's treated dismissively by everyone in the film (including the male lead) but really, she's got a good point about how men at the time systematically denied deserved recognition in all professions to women of high accomplishment. Doesn't help that the movie's godawful.
  • Many reviewers, particularly Roger Ebert, found this happening in Star Trek: Insurrection. While the Bak'u were supposed to come off as innocent victims of the Son'a and an under-the-table Federation, they instead came off as selfish pricks who won't share (or tolerate anyone of their own who wanted to share) their planet's amazing healing powers, leaving the rest of the galaxy to suffer diseases and ailments they themselves easily overcame. The Federation and Son'a land grab does violate the sovereignty of the Bak'u, but since the Bak'u are such jerkasses, it's hard for some to sympathize with them.
  • Despite his decision to shut down the containment grid (primarily out of spite), Walter Peck was right. The Ghostbusters were operating very dangerous equipment that should have been examined beforehand. His initial plea to see the containment grid was reasonable, but because he was crudely brushed off by Venkman, he overreacted. Had Venkman not treated Peck and the E.P.A. like an enemy from the beginning, they could have avoided the massive meltdown. That said, Peck should have listened to the Engineer who was working for him and thought twice before de-activating the Ghostbuster's power grid. His initial approach also wasn't helped by the fact that, although his motives and concerns were reasonable, his attitude was condescending, evasive and quick-to-get-hostile, thus making it not entirely a surprise that Venkman was rubbed the wrong way by him.
    • His request to see the containment grid isn't really all that reasonable. For one, he has no reason other than vague suspicion he invented himself to explain why he would need to see the power grid. Ultimately his accusations against the Ghostbusters have nothing to do with the environment at all... he thinks they're bilking people and that, despite it not being his purview, job, or power, that because he's involved with a powerful government agency he can make them stop. And Venkman's refusal to let him see it makes sense as well. The containment grid is proprietary technology and the backbone of the Ghostbusters' business... if Venkman let anyone who stopped by and asked to see it do so, they could theoretically be put out of business in months by a wave of knockoffs.
    • Also, it is criminally irresponsible for an EPA agent to order that the safety systems on something labeled "hazardous waste containment" be turned off until he has verified that a) there is no hazardous waste actually in there and b) the environment will not otherwise be harmed by opening it up. Seriously, this guy is in a job where he potentially works with every form of hazmat known to man—he should know better than to go around opening up strange containment tanks without testing the contents first, especially when both the owners of said tank and his own engineer are agreed "THIS IS A BAD IDEA".
    • Worst yet, opening the containment tank violates the one legal reason he has to be there at all. Everything else that Peck is accusing the Ghostbusters of is completely outside his agency's jurisdiction. He thinks they're con men? Call the NYPD fraud squad. He thinks they're using unlicensed nuclear technology? Call the Department of Energy. The EPA only has a right to butt in if they're engaged in unlicensed hazmat storage... but if he honestly thinks that then he should never have opened the tank because you just don't bust open hazmat tanks and dump on the floor.
  • In the second Iron Man film, Tony Stark is Hauled Before a Senate Subcommittee in which a senator tries to convince him to hand over his Iron Man armor to the government, insisting that the armor is a weapon other hostile nations are intent on reproducing. Tony refuses, arguing over the definition of the armor as a "weapon", proves the other nations' Iron Man knockoffs are not a real threat and that he alone is managing a type of nuclear deterrent, leaving the committee chamber to thunderous applause. However, the film purposefully shows Tony's mistakes in judgement as Tony (before later Character Development) is a very unstable individual (getting drunk while wearing the armor and using his repulsor weapons wildly), and that all it takes is one smart individual to make a breakthrough to that can challenge his superiority (meaning he isn't as unique as he think he is). At the end of the film, Tony ends up consulting for the government (a tie-in to the Avengers film), while still maintaining ownership of the armor and the government is developing their War Machine companion armor. The Senator still hates him, though.
    • However, the later revelation (in Winter Soldier) that the Senator in question was a HYDRA operative puts Tony's actions before the Senate into the category of 'Lucky you, dodged a real bullet there'.
  • Teaching Mrs. Tingle: the title character is a high school Sadist Teacher who has it in for the lead character, who is just trying to become valedictorian. At the start of the film, Mrs. Tingle gives a C grade to a project she worked 6 months on, a historical recreation of the diary of a girl accused of being a witch during the time of the Salem Witch Trials. Except that the diary describes witch-burnings, when the accused witches at Salem were all hanged, meaning the teacher was well within her rights to mark the assignment down.
  • Extreme Measures features Dr. Myrick, who violates just about every single ethical tenant of being a doctor while researching traumatic spinal cord injuries and how to repair them. He argues that all the red tape is getting in the way of science and that lead researchers on several medical fields are being hampered by them, and they're not getting any younger. The film had him experimenting in humans back in 1996; in Real Life, it was not till 2010 that researchers were finally successful regenerating spinal cords in mice.
  • In the film of The Devil Wears Prada, Miranda Priestly delivers a "The Reason You Suck" Speech to her poor, put-upon assistant Andrea, who just wants to be a writer and doesn't understand why everybody looks down on her for not being a fashionista. The problem is that she works for the editor of a fashion magazine. Miranda's speech shows quite nicely that problematic though it is, the industry influences everyone and is ignored at one's own peril. Moreover, thinking that you're "above" the field you work in is not a professional attitude or one you should display in front of your boss and coworkers, who have slaved and sacrificed to succeed in an intensely cutthroat line of work.
  • In the film of Silent Hill, Sean Bean's character, Chris De Silva, is openly against Rose, his wife and the heroine, taking their daughter to the town of Silent Hill in an attempt to cure her mental illness. We're obviously supposed to side with Rose and her maternal instinct to help her daughter, and thus think of Chris as a jerk for being against it and having her credit cards cut when she tries it, but the problem is that her plan is almost suicidally stupid. In-universe it is public knowledge that Silent Hill is a very dangerous place due to a coal fire making the area uninhabitable, something she should know about especially since she apparently extensively researched the town. Not only that, she also didn't seek assistance from people who are familiar with the area to help navigate the town (something that Chris does as soon as he reaches it as well, mind you), and is thus risking both her own life and her daughters. To top it all off, she's doing this under the incredibly vague assumption that going to the town will somehow cure her illness, and not simply make it worse. It should also be noted that Rose is essentially kidnapping Sharon, and thus Chris is completely in the right to try to stop her.
  1. ↑ although the program is not constitutionally sound in theory, a court of review found that the program was constitutional and there are a lot of conflicting opinions as to its legality.
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Strawman_Has_a_Point/Film?oldid=1999163"