Too Dumb to Live/Film: Difference between revisions

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* In ''[[Skyline (Film)|Skyline]]'', with LA full of alien monsters eating everything that moves, our heroes decide to try and escape in cars with big, growly engines and in broad daylight. Granted, their chances weren't all that good whatever they tried, but at least on foot and at night they had some small hope of evading detection. And let's not even think about the fact that their entire daylight plan was to escape by boat. From flying aliens. Yeah, that will work!

* [[Drill Sergeant Nasty|Hartman]] from ''[[Full Metal Jacket]]''. When Pyle is in the middle of a nervous breakdown and holding a rifle, he decides that, rather than call the MPs, he should insult the poor guy. It doesn't end well for him.

* Also in general, ANY movie where at least one character stops running to tell the murderous psychopath/monster/demon/abomination/whatever to "wait."

** As Cracked.com put it, "You know what makes a really effective defense against sharks escaping? Hundreds of miles of dry land."

* The Northern Water Tribe counts as this in ''[[The Last Airbender (Film)|The Last Airbender]]'', since the firebenders need torches to bend fire, Pakku suggests extinguishing all of them to render them powerless and... they never actually do that.

* Everybody in ''[[Screamers]]''. Two sides are fighting a war on a planet. One side deploys the screamers, small burrowing robots. Ok, not so bad. Said screamers are equipped with an adaptive learning AI. Ok, that's risky, but not suicidal. The screamers are also built in an automated factory, and the screamers design and build newer generations of screamers. At this point, the concept moves from "risky" to "out and out suicidal". But the worst part, the thing that make you suspect the designers of the first screamers had a death wish, is the robots programing. The screamers are programed to kill any living thing they encounter, without any Friend or Foe system. Naturally, the screamers kill every single person on the planet. Its the worst case of this trope and Genre Blindness I've ever seen.

** To be fair, the film implies that the Screamers were only set up and let loose by the Alliance after the planet's population had already mostly been killed off with bio-weapons and nuclear strikes by the NEB, and the Alliance was literally at the point of losing the war if they didn't do something crazy and desperate to change the balance of power. It's also pointed out by the surviving Alliance commander that this was a crazy act of desperation, and that there were all sorts of potential unintended consequences. So not quite Genre Blind so much as simply an attempt at Refuge in Audacity that didn't work out so great. Also, the Alliance troops did have an Identification Friend or Foe system they could wear, called a "tab," that was supposed to protect them from screamers.

* Ed from ''[[Shaun of the Dead]]'' takes this to new levels. The characters need to get past a horde of zombies, and do so by acting like zombies to avoid drawing attention. When they are nearly to apparent safety, Ed's phone goes off... ''and he answers it and starts cheerfully talking on the phone, less than ten feet from dozens of zombies.''

** Previously, he had "accidentally" crashed their first car, giving him an excuse to drive a Jaguar instead. Following after the cellphone incident, the electricity comes back on and he starts playing a pinball machine, which draw the attention of a zombie in the same building as them.

** The worst part is that if the girl HAD finished off Pamela any of those other times, she probably would have lived a long life. The only reason she's killed in the next movie is because Jason witnessed her killing Pamela, which he probably wouldn't have if she had killed Pamela before she finally did. Not only that, but since we never get any evidence that Jason killed anyone before Part 2, might this might have even been what drove Jason over the edge.

* At one point in a screening of ''[[Halloween (Film)|Halloween]]'', Laurie Strode's stupidity is too much for one audience member. When she fails to make sure Mike Meyers was dead after he came back from apparent death the first time, the audience member shouts, "You stupid bitch, you deserve to die!"

'''Sarah''': No, don't bet on it. Tyrannosaurs have the largest proportional olfactory cavity of any creature in the fossil record with the exception of one. }}

*** So naturally, she continues to wear a vest ''covered'' in the blood of the aforementioned tyrannosaurs' infant. It's not like she forgot that it was there--Roland pointed the blood out to her and she explained that it was the t-rex infant's, and even then didn't think that there might be some danger in carrying it around.

** There's also the part near the beginning when the pizza delivery boy and his brother go down into the sewer for his car keys at night and nearly get killed by the Predator. It wasn't even like it turned to night by the time they got to the sewer, they clearly waited until night to go down, presumably so no one saw them doing it. Granted they didn't know that the Alien or Predator were on Earth yet, but still one would think that going into a sewer at night is just asking for ''some'' sort of trouble.

** Also none of the characters seem capable of realizing that the Predator is fighting the Aliens and that maybe it would be a good idea to just let it go about it's business and not bug it. The main character seems to at least partially notice this near the end, choosing to flee and leave the Predator alone rather then trying to fight it (an action that gets some other characters killed).

** In the second film, Ross specifically tries to knock Bruce out with gas instead of making him angry, and orders his men ''not to engage''. If Bruce hadn't seen Betty there being kept away from him, it might've worked. Nice job breaking it, Betty!

** Emil Blonsky deserves special mention. He held his own in a battle with Hulk, mainly because of how quick he was, due to the super soldier serum he'd been given. After he and the rest of his military division have thrown everything they have at Hulk, and he is still walking, Ross tells Blonsky to fall back. Blonsky then rips off his earpiece, drops his gun and attempts to stare down the Hulk, saying "Is that all you've got?" Cue Hulk-powered thrust kick to the chest, followed by being smooshed all over a tree.

** This is easily explained by the book. The burial ground calls out to people, and at one point the main character mentions that he feels great when going off to bury Church. Besides, the main character is insane with grief after Gage dies and just loses it when his wife and Jud get killed as well.

** Then came the movie ''Pet Sematary Two'' (yes, there was a second movie), which was more of the same, but with most roles reversed either gender-wise or species-wise, plus a much higher body count, reanimated or not and a MUCH higher "creepy" factor in that the plot dared to bring up the utterly stay-up-all-night-thinking-about-it scientific side of the undead people/animals, courtesy of Dr. Chase Matthews the veterinarian: first the kids Jeff and Drew buried Zowie the dog after he was shotgunned by Drew's abusive stepfather Gus, and upon Zowie's return didn't really feel like there was anything wrong when the dog acted nasty -- Zowie was probably just irritable from being away from home for a bit. Of course more burials took place, including Gus himself and Jeff's actress mother Renee, who is taken from her grave much like Gage in the first book/movie. Interestingly, the undead Gus even does some of the burying, effectively enlisting Clyde the bully (who he killed while undead) as his henchman.

* The military, law enforcement, and basically the government in general in the 2008 remake of ''[[The Day the Earth Stood Still (Film)|The Day the Earth Stood Still]]'', though pretty much all of government in all of fiction is guilty of this trope, and it's not an entirely unexpected reaction to aliens being suddenly real. Klaatu comes to Earth and reaches out his hand to the protagonists. Clearly, putting a bullet in him is the appropriate response. Only later do they realize he was able to shut down their defense network on a whim, and so they decide imprisoning and (implicitly) ''torturing'' him is a good idea. Klaatu's decision, after consulting a spy on Earth, is naturally that [[Humans Are Bastards]] and have to go, so the swarm of nanobots beings devouring every man-made object in its path. The military bombs it to hell and back, only to see it grow larger. The Secretary of Defense at least grows a brain at this point, but the president orders even more bombing as if the opinion of his military adviser isn't worth considering.

** Klatuu's people deserve extra stupidity points as well. Consider that their entire motivation for destroying humanity is to preserve the non-human portions of Earth's biosphere. They then set their nanotech-based weapon on "Dissolve Everything", ''including rocks and trees!'' In the immortal words of Robert Asprin, "Very inferior as superior beings go."

** And then of course he totally ignores the diplomatic mission entrusted to him and spends three months having a fun time. The Humans probably assumed he would have at least told Na'Vi that the humans needed them to move before, you know, the very last day.

*** "Having a fun time" was actually helping the diplomacy along a bit. For one, Dr. Augustine was allowed back into the village (she had been presumably banished after the school shootout). Of course, he still massively fucked up by forgetting the original mission. One has to wonder how he was even a former Recon Marine...

** Though it is not lampshaded, it could be that she was sheltered inside all of her life so that no one would notice her birthmark/tattoo. Wearing a bathing suit or skinny dipping, someone would eventually notice it.

* In ''[[Lethal Weapon]] 2'', the bad guy who is responsible for killing Riggs's girlfriend and a bunch of their cop buddies is involved in a major shootout. He's a South African diplomat, so when they have him dead to rights, he pulls out his passport and intones, smugly, "Diplomatic immunity!" He gets shot in the head for his trouble by Roger Murtagh, who delivers the immortal line, "It's just been revoked."

*** Not to mention that diplomatic immunity does not protect you when you're openly committing crime and your guilt is obvious. If nothing else, your country will revoke it in a heartbeat because they don't want to be associated with your crimes.

*** Even moreso, diplomatic immunity means immunity from prosecution, not harm. He had just shot a police officer and was still brandishing the gun at another police officer, who would not have to worry about diplomatic immunity since he'd be excused for shooting the guy due to self-defense concerns.

* Arguably, the central character Annie in the 2010 film ''Trust''. At the age of 14, she starts chatting online with someone called Charlie whose admitted age over the course of the chats goes up from 16 to 20, then to 25, and when she meets him in person at a mall we see he has to be in his late thirties at least. And what does she do? Instead of walking away, she gets into a car with him. And then goes to a motel room with him. And models in red underwear for him, before he rapes her. Admittedly she is 14, but in this day and age if a 14 year old girl does not even think to let a friend or family member know she is going to meet up with a stranger on the internet, and then ignores the cardinal rule of not getting into a car with a stranger (which hopefully most six year olds know by now) then she is clearly headed for a nasty shock.

* Very much Frank of ''State of Grace''. A mafia boss who goes to extreme lengths to kill his own friends and relatives just to satisfy the requests of another gang, against which he fears to lose in case of a mob war. It's really no surprise that he ends up being topped by Terry, his last remaining childhood friend, with even more added irony cause Terry was actually an [[Reverse Mole|undercover cop]] and was having qualms about busting Frank and the others.

* A variation (arguably) in ''[[The Vanishing]]''--Rex Hofman isn't too ''dumb'' to live, per se, as much as he is too ''obsessed'' to live. After spending years trying to discover the truth behind his girlfriend's mysterious disappearance in a crowded public place, he finally tracks down Raymond Lemorne, the man behind it. But if he kills Lemorne, he'll never find out what happened; his girlfriend may even still be alive, for all Rex knows. And he can't involve the police because there's no evidence against him. The only way he can ever find out what happened to his girlfriend, the all-consuming question he's been trying to answer for years, is to take a drug-laced cup of coffee that Lemorne offers him. He does. And wakes up [[Fate Worse Than Death|in a coffin]], [[Buried Alive|the sound of dirt thudding on the lid above him.]]

* '''EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER''' in ''[[Splice (Film)|Splice]]''. Their so friggen stupid that when they all get killed or even raped by the monster, it's hard not feel as if they had it coming. When your characters are so stupid that you don't feel bad that they're getting raped and murdered by a horrible genetic monstrosity, something is obviously wrong.

** Then there's Greedo, a bounty hunter so amateurishly stupid that he doesn't get the most basic line you need to say when you are covering your quarry, "Keep your hands where I can see them."

* In ''Omega Man'': Richie subscribes to the popular "Children are Too Dumb to Live" concept. After Neville cures Richie of the plague, Richie asks if he will cure the Family (the bad guys). Neville declines on the reasonable basis that they are homicidal maniacs who worship the plague and prescribe the death penalty for those who are not afflicted by it. So Richie decides, on humanitarian grounds, to walk into the lair of the Family and tell them about how he was cured and they can be too. It is a relief to see Richie exit the gene pool. Too bad he brings down the hero as a result.

* Quite a few characters in the film adaptation of ''[[Battle Royale]]''. Toshinori Oda probably takes the cake for surviving a burst of gunfire due to his bulletproof vest, then jumping up a few seconds later and loudly proclaiming "I'm alive!"