Just Eat Gilligan / Live-Action Films

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Just Eat Gilligan in Films — Live-Action.

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• Bob Denver, a.k.a. Gilligan, hung a lampshade on Gilligan's Island himself in Back to the Beach.
  Bartender: Hey, I knew a guy who could build a nuclear reactor out of coconuts but couldn't fix a two-foot hole in a boat.
• Brubaker: Brubaker doesn't fire the corrupt and murderous former trustees because he knows the other prisoners will kill them if they lose that protection. This leaves them in a position to continue committing murder and hurting his reforms.
• Rosemary's Baby. Call home to Mom, have her buy you a train ticket. Since everyone around is being creepy and lying to you, and the honest ones are dying, just go back to Nebraska or wherever.^note Omaha. And since those special witch foods aren't available back home, that should solve the problem of the inconvenient pregnancy. Of course, Rosemary was chosen for the plot specifically because she was the sort of person who wouldn't do just that. She's the type of good Catholic girl who won't leave her husband, or have an abortion, no matter what. She's also the sort of person to remain in denial about a situation as long as she possibly can, so that she will continue to convince herself everything is just fine long past the point that another woman would go running for help. In fact, the first time the witches tried this plot, it failed because the woman was Genre Savvy enough to not cooperate, so they had to drive her to suicide and be more careful with their choice. Plus the fact that the creeps, husband included, are extremely controlling. It's likely they'd just find a way to prevent her leaving.
• Meanwhile, in The Stepford Wives, the above Rosemary's Baby justification for stupidity is also relevant. Yes, you at least have more reason to stay, as you're tied to your kids, but you're the one who was making so much over wanting a career. You're not even fighting for independence at this point, you've already achieved it; and you've already figured out what's rotten in Denmark, so you're the last woman (actually, she literally is) who should be sticking around for the inevitable.
• In Enchanted, Giselle is teleported to the real world by coming out from a sewer. It seems that to come back to her original world she just had to go back to said sewer and throw herself in it as it was shown in the ending by Prince Edward and Nancy.
• Hellboy II: The Golden Army: It's not until the last couple of minutes of the film that Hellboy (or anybody, really) thinks of just melting the crown that controls the Golden Army, which is after everything has ended and the Big Bad has died courtesy of his twin sister committing a Heroic Suicide and taking him with her. It's never made clear if it was a viable option (the Big Bad was pretty damn determined to kill humans regardless and would probably have looked for a different method), but it's also not made clear that it wasn't.
• Spider-Man Trilogy:
  • In Spider-Man 2, a large subplot is the fact that both Peter and Aunt May can't make rent in New York. While Peter might not want to live with May for safety reasons, the characters never even discuss the possibility. Further, Peter's professor Doc Connors complains that he is a great student but has terrible attendance (because he's working the pizza parlor and superheroing), but they never consider working for the university as an option.
  • In Spider-Man 3, Mary Jane is forced by the New Goblin to ditch Peter Parker, on pain of death. She doesn't even explain to Peter why she is dumping him, which brings up the obvious question: why doesn't she just tell him what the New Goblin is doing since she knows he's Spider-Man and therefore the best option there is to stop him? It's not like the New Goblin was even keeping tabs on her to make sure she wouldn't tell, by keeping Peter in the dark all she's doing from her perspective is letting a crazy murderous New Goblin hang around completely unchecked based on his word not to hurt anyone.
• In Stagecoach, John Ford was once asked why, during the climactic chase scene, the Indians didn't just shoot the horses to stop the stagecoach? "Because the movie would have ended right there", he replied. Also the horses were probably the most valuable thing (to the Indians) on the stage. They didn't know about the stolen money and probably didn't know how many women were there. So if you kill the horses, all you get is the chance to rape and murder. This is underscored by the fact that when one of the Apaches gets close enough to the stage, the first thing he tries to do is hijack the horses.
• Under Siege 2: Dark Territory: Steven Seagal spends half the movie keeping the specially encoded CD the villain needs to carry out his evil plot out of the evil villain's hands. He should have just broken the darn thing.
• The Twilight series. Why doesn't Edward turn Bella into a vampire? It would avert almost all of the conflict after the first movie. At first, it's more justified as Bella asks Edward and he refuses because he doesn't like being a vampire and doesn't want her to be one. But when it becomes clear in later installments that they're going to be together and that everyone agrees that she should become a Vampire with even Edward agreeing to do it, Edward's reluctance needlessly continues to complicate the matter. Furthermore, most of the other Cullens are on board with her becoming a vampire. They abstain from turning Bella themselves out of respect for Edward's wishes but as their lives are continually placed in jeopardy trying to protect her, you'd think eventually one of them would just turn Bella and get it over with.
• From Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever: An early action scene relies on the idea that the Defense Intelligence Agency is not allowed to actually shoot Sever in their attempt at apprehending her. (She's the only person who knows where she stashed a kidnap victim, so they need her alive.) As a result they try to shoot around her to pin her down so they can apprehend her. Needless to say, she escapes with ease. If just one person in the DIA had remembered that tasers exist, or tranquilizer darts, or tear gas, then the movie would have been over right there. Granted, that would also make The Bad Guy Win...
• Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure falls victim to this until almost the very end, when the two not-so-bright heroes finally realize that, duh, they have a time machine, and proceed to arrange it so that, in some future time, they will go back into the past and cause certain events to happen in the present which will allow them to escape from jail and make it to the school in time to deliver their fateful history report. The climax of the sequel features both Bill and Ted and Big Bad Nomolos DeNomolos playing this game, each attempting to get the advantage in a Mexican Standoff... until Ted rightly points out that only one side gets to win, then go back in time and stage everything just right, and they had in fact planted all the items he thought he planted to lull him into a false sense of security. Probably not so much of a concern, because the film is too silly to be taken seriously.
• A few moments in the Star Wars Saga have moments that could've solved some problems rather easily, but the characters still make some rather idiotic decisions.
  • Episode I: The Phantom Menace has Qui-Gon and Queen Amidala forced to land the Naboo ship on Tatooine, since the hyperdrive is disabled, and requires a new one. Watto refuses to take Republic Credits as currency and claims that nobody else has a Naboo ship hyperdrive. As shown in Episode IV, the easy way to get off Tatooine is to hire a transport, potentially even a smuggler, rather than an overly convoluted plot to bet everything on a pod race. Especially since all they needed to do was send one person to warn everyone about the Trade Federation and then everyone else could have been picked up at their leisure. It's heavily implied, though, that once Qui-Gon encountered Anakin, he became determined to free the boy from bondage and make him a Jedi. So once he met him (very shortly after landing on Tatooine), it became (in Qui-Gon's mind at least) less about escaping to Coruscant with the Queen and more about helping this Force prodigy who by all indications is The Chosen One achieve his destiny to bring balance to The Force.
    Finding him was the will of The Force. Nothing happens by accident.
  • Episode II: Attack of the Clones offers a notorious example. During the Battle of Geonosis, Obi-Wan and Anakin spot Dooku escaping, and Anakin orders the gunship's pilot to shoot him down, but he replies that they are out of rockets. Anakin doesn't even think to order the pilot to use the gunship's laser cannons and laser beam turrets to blast Dooku away. If they did, Dooku would've been killed off, he wouldn't have escaped, the Clone War doesn't have to happen, problem solved. Even if the war still begins, the Confederacy probably would've fallen quickly without Dooku's leadership. Pablo Hidalgo of the Lucasfilm Story Group, whose job it basically was to explain away stuff like this, stated that the gunship's lasers were strictly air-to-surface, and flying high enough to target Dooku with them would make them easy targets for the enemy's heavy fire. A mention of this in the film would have been nice, however.
  • In Legends, it is perfectly possible to quickly clone Force-sensitives (for every one success, you're likely to have ten failures that are insane or grotesquely-mutated, but Palpatine wouldn't care). Presumably, the only reason Palpatine didn't have the Kaminoans create a clone of Anakin Skywalker that he could easily raise to be totally loyal to him from the start as soon as he had access to both was his prideful desire to corrupt THE Chosen One that the Jedi put all their faith in. After Darth Vader was crippled on Mustafar, though, he has no such excuse, because we see him willing to pick up any moderately powerful young Force-user as Vader's replacement.
  • How It Should Have Ended asked why, in Rogue One Galen didn't just give the Death Star plans to Bodhi to give to Saw and the rebels instead of simply a message explaining what the Death Star is and that the plans that reveal the weakness he built into it are on Scarif, a very heavily guarded Imperial planet, effectively forcing his own daughter to go on a suicide mission. Word of God is that neither the characters nor the audience saw the whole message, and later parts detailed a plan to meet him and transfer the plans directly, also implying he didn't have access to the full plans himself, but this raises more question, like why Saw, who presumably saw the whole message, didn't shout anything about such critical info as Jedha was destroyed, or why the rebels needed the entire plans and not just the location of the exhaust port.
  • In A New Hope, had the Imperials destroyed the supposedly-empty escape pod with R2-D2, C-3PO, and the Death Star plans, it's very likely all events in the original trilogy would have been averted; Luke would have never gotten involved in the Rebellion, gotten in touch with the Force, and so forth. As the Family Guy spoof asks, "Hold your fire? What, are we paying by the laser now?"
  • If Tarkin had called in Star Destroyers to surround Yavin IV while he moved the Death Star in to fire on it -to stop the rebels from fleeing during the several minutes it takes the Death Star to get into position and fire, if nothing else- the majority of the rebellion would have been crushed at Yavin, even if Luke had still destroyed the Death Star. Robot Chicken asked a similar question of why the remaining Imperial Fleet didn't just keep fighting the rebels at Endor even after the Emperor and Death Star were gone, but the New Canon explains that Palpatine had special contingencies in the event of his death that the Imperials were more concerned with.
  • In The Force Awakens, Stormtrooper Captain Phasma gets caught by Finn, Han and Chewie at Starkiller Base, in an effort to lower the shields around the planet, so that the Resistance X-Wings can fly in, and destroy it. As the movie's How It Should Have Ended parody pointed out, she could've pulled off an I Surrender, Suckers moment and not lower the shields at all, and instead alert Starkiller Base to the presence of the intruders, thus preventing the dropping of the shields and ensuring the First Order's victory since the X-Wings wouldn't be able to fly into the planet and take it out. The new Expanded Universe and a deleted (and non-canon) scene in The Last Jedi establish that Phasma is actually a Dirty Coward with no loyalty to anyone, but Finn didn't know that when he came up with the plan.
  • The Last Jedi has an entire chunk of the movie revolve around a dangerous plan by the heroes involving getting a code-breaker so Finn and Rose can sneak aboard one of the First Order's ships and disable a Hyperspace Tracker, all because the Resistances current leader, Holdo, is giving them no indication of a plan, leaving them desperate enough to go behind her back in order to try and save the Resistance. It later turns out she did have a plan, and never told anyone for reasons never made fully clear, which became criticized because the entire plot, and her death later, could have been avoided if she simply told the heroes she had a plan, rather than her refusal to just tell people she had a plan. Detractors often point out that if she simply said she had a plan, but wasn't explaining further to avoid it being leaked, than the heroes would have been safe in the end. Due to Rule of Drama, nor letting the movie's themes be spelt out, this very obvious point is never acknowledged even when Poe flat out begs out to just say she had a plan.
• Star Trek: Generations: In the Nexus, Guinan notes to Picard that he can travel to any place and any time he chooses. Picard inexplicably chooses to arrive mere minutes before Soran obliterated the star in the Veridian system to stop him with Kirk's help, rather than any earlier point in the film, such as his first meeting. It was even brought up by The Nostalgia Critic in his review of the movie.
• If The Purge is strictly an American phenomena (it was instituted by the New Founding Fathers of America, and no country not run by these baby-killers would institute it), then why doesn't everyone who can afford to simply take a vacation to another country the week the Purge is set to happen, and thereby not risk getting murdered? The implication is that for those who can't afford adequate protection, it's safer to stay and protect your property than to risk it being stolen or burned down, and pay tons for the plane ticket, but what if you have children or elderly with you who can't fight? Or what if you have no property worth risking your life for that you can't take with you? Or what if you decide not to pay for the plane ticket and simply hop the Canadian or Mexican border for a week, which is trivially easy? At the very least, you'd think the dead-homeless would leave the major cities around the time of the Purge (it's not until the third film that it's mentioned that the borders are closed during the Purge to prevent this, but 1) it's not made clear about whether or not this is a new measure and 2) the question still stands, only thing that changes is the fact you can't leave during the Purge). Fortunately, the film is a metaphor for general poverty, and runs on the MST3K Mantra.
• In many 50's monster movies, the protagonists will declare a monster immune to conventional weapons after a few torso-shots from low-caliber revolvers don't faze it, oblivious to the fact that bigger guns and more critical points on the body exist. At the very least, Dead Space and Return of the Living Dead showed that even something that can't technically be killed can still be dismembered or burned until it no longer poses a threat.
  • One relatively newer film that resurrects this subtrope to absurd levels is Halloween Kills, in which the entire city of Haddonfield knows that The Determinator killer Michael Myers has been on a murder spree for an entire day now, and yet the best plan they come up with to deal with Myers is to just attack him one by one, armed with nothing but melee weapons and an occasional pistol. Even with hours of prep time, not a single person in entire Haddonfield tries to shoot Myers from afar with a long-barreled firearm or to run him over with a car, even when he’s flagrantly standing in the middle of a street. Interestingly, the original Halloween II (1981) subverted this by showing that after the initial murders and Myers’s escape that took everybody by surprise, the protagonists soon found a way to make Myers Deader than Dead.
• In Jem and the Holograms (2015):
  • The main characters gain access to an AI companion called Synergy, which was developed by Jem's father and has the ability to display holograms and information (not to mention that it has a design similar to BB-8 from Star Wars: The Force Awakens, a robot concept that proved to be a massive merchandising success in real-life). At this point, the characters are also struggling to make money in order to prevent the government from foreclosing on the aunt's house, which is in arrears. It doesn't occur to any of the girls that this robot (which has groundbreaking design technology in the film's universe) would net them a meeting with virtually any tech company out there if they chose to license it or sell the concept.
  • The main conceit of the second act (that Jem leaves her friends in order to pursue a solo career with Erica Raymond and therefore get the money she needs) falls flat within the world of the film. The contract Erica gives her is vaguely worded and puts Jem in such a position that she would be an indentured slave to the company, performing shows with no expectation of payment and no guarantee of royalties or future earnings. If Jem was as famous as the film played her up as, she would have many ways of making money outside of Erica's influence — either by selling music through a third-party provider like iTunes, monetizing her videos on Youtube, booking shows herself or selling memorabilia.
  • There is no adequate reason given for why Jem gives up her earrings to Erica, nor any reason given why she just doesn't ask for them back from the owner (given that they are a personal item that Erica shouldn't have any reason to want to keep them in the first place, and Jem needs them to fix Synergy). Instead, Jem and the group enact a plan that involves breaking into the record company's offices after-hours so they can steal the earrings back. This only happens so that they can find Rio's father's will that explains that he's the real owner of Starlight Records.
• In Happy Death Day, the protagonist, Tree, is stuck in a "Groundhog Day" Loop in which she is killed at the end of every day. The killer in question though, never gives Tree the impression of being anything more than a normal human and is in fact two people; a dangerous but untrained and under-equipped serial killer and another college girl. Tree doesn't try simply killing or incapacitating either killer until she knows their identity though, even though she could easily use the loop to get good weapons and know exactly when and where they'll strike if she follows roughly the same path each time.
• The Lord of the Rings:
  • In a hotly debated topic, everybody keeps bringing up the eagles. Why don't the Fellowship just use them to fly to someplace near Mordor, and then get to Mount Doom quicker, and then drop the Ring, and end it once and for all? Interestingly, it's a case of this leading to a short story with a Downer Ending; without Gollum's interference, no one would have had the will to destroy the Ring. Also notice that it's not listed under Literature. The films do not explain the role of the eagles in Tolkien's works, but that role makes using them a touchy matter. For one thing, they say they're afraid of archers (which Sauron has in spades), they're not subtle (being giant eagles), no one knows how the Fellowship was going to enter Mordor, and to top it all off, the eagles get their marching orders from God via His right-hand angel. Just as His angels, such as Gandalf, are to aid but not dominate the Free Peoples, the eagles answer to a higher power. However, nothing's stopping the Fellowship from getting Gandalf to convince God to let them use the Eagles for their mission, ditching Sauron temporarily, and then blindfolding the Eagles and flying them straight to Mordor.
• Back to the Future Part II:
  • During the third act, Marty learns that Old!Biff gave the almanac to Young!Biff in 1955 and that Young!Biff earned his first million(s) in 1958 by betting on the ponies after turning 21. That gives Doc and Marty about a three-year span of time to steal the almanac back from Young!Biff, rather than going to November 12th, 1955, the day Old!Biff went to give his younger self the almanac, and risk running into 1955!Doc and Part I!Marty. Alternatively, if they still think it would've been better to get rid of the almanac as soon as possible to minimize any changes to the timeline and because they probably don't know where else Biff is besides that date, they could have just waited until about 3 am on the day of the Under the Sea Dance (after the storm had passed) and stolen it while he was asleep or whatever. All of the urgency of the third act in Part II is incredibly forced.
• In George of the Jungle 2, the scheme of Ursula's ex Lyle and her mother to hypnotize her into thinking she's married to Lyle falls apart partly because they don't think of hypnotizing George Jr. too or leaving him with George. Additionally, it doesn't cross Junior's mind to tell his mother the truth until near the end.
• The War of the Worlds (1953)/War of the Worlds (2005): Had the aliens stayed away from Earth, they wouldn't have gotten sick and died.
• Avengers: Infinity War:
  • Many reviews love to point out that since Thanos's goal is to fix what he perceives to be overpopulation and diminishing resources problems, he could've just used the Infinity Gauntlet to create never-ending resources or alter the universe's fertility rate instead of killing half of the universe. Perhaps the heroes could have even aided Thanos in assembling the Infinity Stones rather than putting up the sheer resistance we see in this film. The Word of God response is that Thanos is a Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist whose true desire is to prove that his original plan (killing half of his race to prevent overpopulation) would have worked (There's a reason he's called the 'Mad Titan', after all). Indeed when he found out that the heroes are not "grateful" for his actions and are trying to reverse it, Thanos drops his good intentions entirely and declares that he will use the stones to erase the whole universe before remaking it so that they will be grateful for his actions.
  • Another notable case of this trope becomes apparent during the scene where Dr. Strange, Iron Man, Spider-Man, Mantis, and Drax attempt to pry the Infinity Gauntlet off Thanos's arm, which ultimately fails when an enraged, grief-stricken Quill wrecks their attempt and allows Thanos to snap out of his Mantis-induced trance. Keep in mind that Dr. Strange is a powerful sorcerer who can open portals leading into nearly anywhere in the universe, which are also shown to inflict clean Portal Cuts; if he had thought of putting Thanos's arm through a portal and closed it while it was halfway through, the team wouldn't have had a hard time preventing the death of half the universe in the first place. Supposedly, this is the only one out of the 14 million outcomes that led to their victory over Thanos but given the fact that said outcome involves Tony & Natasha being dead, other timelines being altered as a result of their Time Travel or the potential consequences of people suddenly reappearing 5 years later, it's really hard to see it that way when Strange putting more effort into subduing Thanos or Thor finishing him off would have had a far better outcome as far the viewers are concerned. Word of God would eventually claim that Thanos was simply too durable for Strange's portals to cut him.
    • Another solution would be to remove the stone from the gauntlet rather than removing the gauntlet itself.
• Avengers: Endgame: When the remaining heroes decide to go back in time to get the Infinity Stones before they were destroyed by Thanos, they go for a very convoluted plan to go to various points in the timeline (namely, the events of The Avengers (2012), Thor: The Dark World, and Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)) to retrieve the stones. However, they never think of going to between when Thanos did the Snap and escaped to The Garden planet and the day he used the Infinity Stones to destroy themselves (two days before their raid on Thanos's place with Captain Marvel) and taking him down there and retrieving all the stones in one fell swoop. Of course, this would entail fighting Thanos with all of the Infinity Stones, but given that Thor, alone, fatally wounded Thanos in said powered up mode, and he'd be showing up with MAJOR backup this time, it's not looking good...
• Miracle on 34th Street features a guy being put on trial because the adults think he's insane for claiming to be Santa. If he wanted to prove that Santa was real, why didn't he just ask the adults where they think the presents are coming from?
• Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them: If Newt Scamander couldn't get the lock to his suitcase fixed, he could've just grabbed some rope to tie it shut...which he does by the end of the film.
• Jaws: The Revenge features the shark specifically coming after members of the Brody family. The mother decides to leave town, but if the shark was only coming after them, wouldn't it be easier to just stay away from the water?
• The Hateful Eight: It's repeatedly pointed out that John Ruth would get just as much money for bringing in Daisy dead as alive, and it would certainly make his life much easier. But he insists on bringing her in alive, and his only defense is a flippant claim that he wants to give the hangman business. Oswaldo makes a small speech about the nature of justice which seems to resonate with John. In the end, Warren and Mannix do their best to bring Daisy to justice by hanging her themselves instead of just shooting her. Ironically, summarily executing the bounties was the bounty hunters' plan in the film this takes much of its inspiration from, as the Bounty Hunters were the antagonists.
• The Adventures of Captain Marvel: If there are no repercussions for destroying the Golden Scorpion at the end of the serial, it should have been destroyed long ago so that more people wouldn't die over it.
• Alice in Wonderland (2010): If the Cheshire Cat can turn invisible, why couldn't he just snap the Red Queen's neck while she isn't looking instead of having Alice scar herself for life by beheading the Jabberwocky and nearly lose her life attempting it?
• Played with example in New Jack City. When the Italian mafia tries to assassinate Nino Brown during a wedding, officer Scotty Appleton, who is undercover, sees a perfect chance to kill Nino by shooting him in the back of the head during the chaos. But when he is about to pull the trigger, a mobster starts firing in his direction, forcing him to return fire missing his chance. Afterwards, he tells his boss that he is tired of waiting to arrest Nino Brown when he could have just killed him.
• In the setting of Inception, the danger of dream invasions is well enough known that businessmen hire people to do it to their rivals and undergo mental training to defend against it. But given that you need to be hooked up to a bunch of machines in your sleep, a few real bodyguards who clobber anyone who tries would protect you better than the training would, while also protecting you from mundane kidnapping or assassination. Yet neither of the MegaCorp owners has any physical protection.

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