May 1, 2017

EP. 178 — 23 Convoluted Movie Schemes That Need A Second Look

The term ‘movie magic’ typically refers to the technical brilliance of bringing dinosaurs to life onscreen or how Denzel Washington can make an entire theatre of men and women pregnant with a single knowing glance. But there’s a second type of movie magic that often goes overlooked: when movies are so good, we don’t notice when their characters’ plans’ make absolutely no sense. 

All the great ones do this. In ‘Return of the Jedi’, all of the main characters get captured attempting to break Han Solo out of Jabba’s palace, but it’s all good because that was seemingly their plan all along? Why wait to get captured when you can just drop in, lightsabers blazing, bust your dude out of the carbonite and smoke fools in an epic prison breakout? Seems like Luke wanted to fight the Rancor all along.

There’s a whole category of these where bad guys try to weaponize monsters. From the ‘Alien’ series to ‘Jurassic World’, it’s just a bad idea. 

Christopher Nolan is a real magician when it comes to bad movie plans. ‘The Dark Knight’, ‘The Dark Knight Rises’, and ‘The Prestige’ all have glaring examples of movie schemes that don’t hold up under an ounce of scrutiny.

So, join Jack O’Brien, Michael Swaim, and David Christopher Bell as they discuss the failing of Nolan’s villains, why ‘Westworld’ makes no sense, and how the dudes in ‘Jaws’ had a bigger boat the whole damn time.

And make sure to get tickets to our next LIVE Cracked Podcast, coming up on Saturday, May 13th at 7pm at the UCB Sunset Theatre in Los Angeles. Jack O’Brien is joined by Cracked’s Carmen Angelica, Alex Schmidt and Michael Swaim, and comedian Blake Wexler to combine the podcast’s two favorite topics: great moments in history and binge drinking. 

They’ll discuss the drafting of the US Constitution, the Russian Revolution and other famous moments in history where everyone was completely sh*tfaced. Tickets are only $7 and available here: https://goo.gl/PWmm2y

Footnotes:

Video: Cracked: 3 Ridiculous Movie Schemes That Make No Sense: https://goo.gl/BGkAFW

Article: Cracked: 6 Terrible Plans in Movies That Just Sort of Work Out: https://goo.gl/DA0Hk

Article: Cracked: The 6 Most Pointlessly Elaborate Movie Murder Plots: https://goo.gl/nuKW4V

Article: Cracked: 6 Famous Movie Villains Whose Evil Schemes Make Zero Sense: https://goo.gl/zkR1RT

Article: Cracked: 6 Huge Movie Plot Twists That Caused Even Bigger Plot Holes: https://goo.gl/L3957

This episode is brought to you by Squarespace (www.squarespace.com code: CRACKED), and ZipRecruiter (www.ziprecruiter.com/cracked).

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