Distinction Without A Difference / Live-Action Films

Distinctions Without a Difference in Live-Action Films.

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• In Avengers: Age of Ultron, Tony has a plan involving the casket they just recovered from Ultron.
  Bruce: So, you want me to help you put Jarvis into this thing?
  Tony: No, of course not! I want to help you put Jarvis in this thing. We're out of my field here. You know bio-organics better than anyone.
• Avengers: Endgame has Ant-Man pitching he use of the Quantum Realm to time travel back to get the Infinity Stones. Captain America then asks if he's talking about a time machine. Scott denies it's a time machine (since it's more a process than an actual machine), but when he tries to explain this, he realizes the difference is inconsequential and concedes that, yes, it's a time machine.
• The Big Lebowski:
  The Dude: Just stay away from my fucking lady friend.
  Da Fino: Hey, hey, I'm not messing with your special lady.
  The Dude: She's not my "special lady," she's my fucking lady friend.
• The Big Red One:
  Griff: [referring to German soldiers] I can't murder anybody.
  The Sergeant: We don't murder; we kill.
  Griff: What's the difference?
  The Sergeant: You don't murder animals; you kill 'em.
• In The Blues Brothers, Jake finds out from Elwood that the rest of their old band had taken straight jobs. Jake is upset that Elwood lied to him and claimed that the band might still get back together; Elwood replies, "It wasn't a lie... it was bullshit."
• Bull Durham: The "cocksucker" argument between Crash and an umpire. Crash gets mad at the umpire and says he made "a cocksucking call" (Crash tagged the other team's player out and the ump called it "safe"). The umpire spins around and gets in his face about whether Crash is "calling me a cocksucker". Crash initially denies it, insisting he said the ump made a cocksucking call, but the ump doesn't listen and continues demanding to know if Crash is calling him a cocksucker. Then Crash starts taunting him that he's begging to be called a cocksucker, and then he does call him one to his face and gets thrown out of the game.
• Ferris Bueller's Day Off has this during Ferris and Cameron's argument after Cameron dupes Rooney over the phone.
  Ferris: I didn't hit you. I lightly slapped you.
  Cameron: You. Hit. Me.
• In Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties, as Jon tells Smithy about the mix-up between Garfield and Prince:
  Smithy: Are you saying you have a cat that's Prince's Doppelgänger?
  Jon: No, I'm saying they look exactly alike, and there's a chance they may have gotten mixed up.
• In Get Him to the Greek, Aldous offers the sage advice: "Don't think of it as a threesome, think of it as having sex with your girlfriend while someone else also has sex with your girlfriend." This one actually makes some amount of sense, since there's a distinction between these kind of threeways and the kind that involve lovemaking between all three participants.
• In High School Musical 2, Sharpay whines about how she doesn't deserve the bad things currently happening to her, as (in her view) she's a good person: "I've never lied! Beat Except when necessary..."
• Home Alone 2: Lost in New York: The black/white mafia movie that Kevin watches (and includes in the security system) has one of the criminals claim that they're convinced the other character is innocent... except the gun they have isn't convinced and opens fire on them.
  "Alright, I believe ya. But my Tommy Gun don't!"
• It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World: On their way up to the park in Santa Rosita, Ding tells the cab driver to pass the cab in front, which has the Crumps in it. When the cab driver asks what they're in a rush for, Benjy replies, "We ain't in any rush, we want to get there in a hurry!"
• In Jumanji, Peter tries to take matters into his own hands to end the game and reverse all the chaos it’s caused. Unfortunately, it doesn't end in his favor.
  Peter: I thought I could end the game myself. I was only ten spaces away!
  Judy: [Reads] "A law of Jumanji having been broken / You will slip back even more than your token".
  Sarah: You tried to cheat?
  Peter: No, I tried to drop the dice so they'd land on twelve!
  Sarah: Oh, okay, honey, well, that would be cheating.
• In Kermit's Swamp Years, one scene has Blotch refer to Kermit, Goggles, and Croaker as "the Soggy Pants Brothers". Goggles replies that they don't wear pants and proves it by presenting his backside to Blotch. When angrily asked by Blotch if he just mooned him, Goggles answers that he wasn't mooning him, he was just showing him his bare backside.
• From Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation:
  Luther: Benji needed my help.
  Benji: I didn't need help. I just...I needed assistance, it's a different thing.
• The Mummy (1999): To save his own skin, Beni agrees to work for Imhotep. In a scene where Beni is acting as translator, Evie tries to show how much "better" she is with languages than he by "correcting" his translation... with a synonym.
  Beni: Come with me, my princess. It is time to make you mine, forever.
  Evelyn: "For all eternity", idiot.
• The Mummy Returns:
  Evie: Alex, I'm serious. If you've lost that key, you're grounded.
  Alex: I didn't lose it, I just can't find it. There's a difference.
  Evie: Well you'd better start finding it, then.
• In National Treasure, Ben tells Riley that when Thomas Edison was asked about his first failed 1000 attempts to make a light bulb, he replied that he didn't fail. He just figured out 1000 ways how not to make a light bulb.
• Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl:
  • Jack Sparrow loves doing that.
    Anamaria: You stole my boat!
    Jack: Borrowed! Borrowed without permission, but with every intention of giving it back to you.
    Anamaria: But you DIDN'T!!
  • Subverted earlier; Jack is not denying theft, per se, but if Will's going to be on a ship, he needs to use the right terms.
    Will: We're going to steal a ship? That ship? [beckoning to the Dauntless]
    Jack: Commandeer. We're going to commandeer [points to the Interceptor] that ship. Nautical term.
• In Rat Race the rich gambler (John Cleese) orchestrating the titular race is "too rich to be crazy. I'm 'eccentric!'"
• From The Shining, as Jack Torrance has lost it and starts menacing his wife.
  Jack: I'm not gonna hurt ya. You didn't let me finish my sentence. I said I'm not gonna hurt ya. I'm just gonna bash your brains in. I'm gonna bash them right the fuck in!
• Short Term 12:
  Sammy: Can we play Big and Small?
  Grace: Is that a real game, or is that just a game you made up?
  Sammy: It's a real game I made up.
• The Slipper and the Rose: The King of Euphrania at one point declares, "Kings don't cheat. They adapt to circumstance, but they don't cheat."
• Gargamel isn't obsessed with The Smurfs, he just "can't stop thinking about them".
• Spaceballs:
  • The protagonists Lone Starr and Barf need '1 million spacebucks' to get out of a debt with a creature called 'Pizza the Hutt' in a situation clearly meant to mirror Han Solo and Chewbacca's within Star Wars. After being given a mission to rescue a king's daughter and successfully demanding that price, Barf is afraid by how they are risking their lives for money. Lone Starr replies:
    Lone Starr: Barf, we're not just doing this for money. [Beat] We're doing it for a shitload of money!
  • Before that, they were hesitant to accept the mission:
    Barf: Look, Your Highness, it's not that we're afraid—far from it! It's just that we've got this thing about death. It's... not us.
• Speed:
  Jack: [to Payne, holding Annie hostage] Mister, you're crazy!
  Payne: No, Jack. Poor people are crazy. [pointing to ransom money] I'm eccentric.
• A classic example from This is Spın̈al Tap:
  Marty: The last time Tap toured America, they were, uh, booked into 10,000 seat arenas, and 15,000 seat venues, and it seems that now, on their current tour, they're being booked into 1,200 seat arenas, 1,500 seat arenas, and uh, I was just wondering, does this mean uh... the popularity of the group is waning?
  Ian: Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no... no, no, not at all. I, I, I just think that the... uh... their appeal is becoming more selective.
  • Subverted in the end. Ian is the only one who knows that the band's popularity is declining in America, but is exploding in Japan.
• Hela, while recruiting Skurge in Thor: Ragnarok:
  Hela: When I was young, every great King had an executioner. Not just to execute people, but also to execute their vision... But mainly to execute people.
  • The Grandmaster really wants people to know that he doesn't own slaves. He employs "prisoners with jobs". They're people used as chattel and forced to unwillingly perform menial labor or fight in a colosseum, but they're totally not slaves.
• Troll 2:
  Holly: He's not my beau. He's my boyfriend!

• Wrong is Right: General Wombat says that America "may not always be right, but God knows we're never wrong."
• In X-Men: First Class, Emma Frost interrupts the CIA Director and Stryker Sr. when they're discussing the possibility of a war. She prefers not to use that term; it implies that both sides have an equal chance of winning.

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