Stating The Simple Solution / Live-Action Films

Stating the Simple Solution in Live-Action Films.

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• In 28 Days Later, Private Jones implores Corporal Mitchell to shoot Sergeant Farrell rather than stab him with the bayonet. Mitchell's refusal to do so ultimately leads to Jim's escape, as it panics Jones into triggering his gun.
• In Aliens, after a disastrous first contact with the Xenomorphs (in which it also becomes clear that Newt is the only surviving colonist), Ripley suggests that with no further risk of civilian casualties and the area clearly compromised, the survivors should recall to the Sulaco and nuke the colony from orbit. Notably, the simple solution is only viable after the original plan fails disastrously, due to the risk of accidentally nuking any potential survivors, and becomes apparent as the simple solution due to the remaining Marines debating different solutions that they weren’t certain would be effective against the Xenomorphs.
• In Aquaman (2018), when Mera uses her hydrokinesis to draw the sweat from his brow and activate the cylinder containing King Atlan's final message, Arthur points out a more practical method, to which she gives him a disgusted glance.
  Arthur: I could've just peed on it.
• Austin Powers:
  • Scott Evil expresses his impatience with the means his father, Dr. Evil, uses to attempt to dispose of Austin Powers:
    Dr. Evil: All right guard, begin the unnecessarily slow-moving dipping mechanism.
    (guard starts dipping mechanism)
    Dr. Evil: Close the tank!
    Scott Evil: Wait, aren't you even going to watch them? They could get away!
    Dr. Evil: No no no, I'm going to leave them alone and not actually witness them dying, I'm just gonna assume it all went to plan. What?
    Scott Evil: I have a gun, in my room, you give me five seconds, I'll get it, I'll come back down here, BOOM, I'll blow their brains out!
    Dr. Evil: Scott, you just don't get it, do ya? You don't.
  • When Dr. Evil is explaining his evil plan to hold the world for ransom, Number Two points out that they're already making far more money from their front business, rendering the plan pointless. But Dr. Evil has no interest in being a legit businessman.
• Batman Forever:
  • Inverted on both sides of the ledger: Riddler talks Two-Face out of just shooting Batman by claiming that taking out a cultural hero will leave him with a guilt trip, so it's better to make him die after mental and physical suffering since no-one mourns a pathetic shell of a man. Meanwhile, Batman talks Robin out of wanting to kill Two-Face by warning him that it won't make his anger go away. Two-Face ends up conveniently falling to his death later on anyway.
  • There's also the scene where Two-Face fails at immolating Batman and decides to simply shoot him with a rather large gun. It would have worked if 1) Two-Face had not missed with the first shot and 2) Dick Grayson hadn't been there to rescue Batman from the resulting rubble.
    Two-Face: No more riddles, no more curtains one and two! Just plain curtains!
• Beneath Hill 60: After the German tunnelers get proof that there's a bomb underneath their lines, the New Meat digger asks his NCO why they can't just abandon the booby-trapped area and set up a new command post a short, strategically meaningless distance back. He's told their leaders will never admit defeat by giving up ground without a fight.
• Blue Thunder features a non-shooting variant that otherwise plays this trope perfectly. The good guys have recorded on special videotape a conversation that exposes the Government Conspiracy. The bad guys go crazy chasing down the tape in an attempt to retrieve it before it can be given to the press. At the very last second, one of the conspirators reminds the others that the tapes are contained in special cases that are able to erase them by remote command (a fact that was introduced earlier). In a subversion, they try to do exactly this, but the case got knocked off in a scuffle with a mook and so the command fails. In their defense, the heroes had changed the code number on the tapecase in question. The Simple Solution ("So erase them ALL.") wasn't Stated until near the end of the movie. Erasing all the tapes is obviously problematical and a very last resort.
• In Cinderella (2015), when Ella is asked why she doesn't just leave the Tremaines and move away, she states that she can't because she cares for the house her family has owned for 200 years and doesn't want to see them practically destroy it.
• In The Count of Monte Cristo (2002), ever-practical Jacopo asks this question of Edmond Dantes in response to hearing his plan to slowly destroy his enemies. Dantes declines, insisting that his enemies must suffer as he has suffered.
  Jacopo: Why not just kill them? I'll do it! I'll run up to Paris — bam, bam, bam, bam — I'm back before week's end. We spend the treasure. How is this a bad plan?
• In Enter the Dragon, Lee brings this very point up to the man recruiting him to infiltrate Han's Island only for a hasty explanation that Hand would never allow a gun to ever be brought to his home, and the local laws in Hong Kong and the border of China make smuggling firearms very difficult. Lee visibly rolls his eyes at this. This is because even though Bruce Lee was a martial arts master without equal at the time, he had absolutely no illusions on the firearms vs. martial arts debate and, playing a (sort of) secret agent in this movie, very much wanted to use one. But the producers nixed this idea, much to Bruce's annoyance.
• In Ernest Goes to Camp, when the campers have successfully fought off Krader's mining company and saved the day, Krader grabs a gun and decides to settle things once and for all. His Amoral Attorney Blatz points out that they could easily seek legal satisfaction as the camp legally belongs to them, meaning Ernest and the boys are on the hook for some serious trespassing and assault charges if they just call the cops, but It's Personal to Krader and he doesn't listen.
• In Fargo when Jerry is explaining his complex plot to get his own wife kidnapped and get the ransom money, Grimsrund and Showalter point out that he could just ask his father-in-law for the money. The film ultimately reveals that the scheme is actually for much more money than Grimsrund and Showalter thought, and Jerry would not have even been able to borrow that much from his father-in-law.
• Lampshaded in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: "If you're gonna shoot, shoot, don't talk!"
• In Ip Man, Colonel Sato crosses the Moral Event Horizon for shooting Master Liu after his three-on-one fight goes awry and afterward keeps asking to just shoot the title hero, but keeps getting prevented from doing so by the more honourable General Miura.
• In The Karate Kid, Mr. Miyagi's best advice for defending yourself in a fight is "No be there." He stresses that you don't have to worry about defending yourself or winning a fight... if you simply don't fight.
• In The Karate Kid Part II, Miyagi has the Goons' leader in a position to kill him; he instead stops his hand less than an inch from his face and squeezes his nose while making a honking noise. Daniel asks him why he didn't kill him, and Miyagi says he didn't need to. Later in the movie, Daniel does the same thing to the Japanese Goons' leader.
• In The Coen Brothers remake of The Ladykillers (2004), the crew's leader tries to think up an elaborate solution to a casino employee who stands in the way of their heist. After being shut down several times, the crew's young idiot chimes in with "why don't we just bribe the guy?"
• Used in Last Action Hero. After Practice handcuffs Jack and Danny, he goes into a long speech about why he's working for Vivaldi. Meanwhile, Danny frees himself with a handcuff key he happened to have, pulls a gun on Practice, and rants at length about how dumb movie villains always explain everything when all they have to do to win is shoot. At which point Vivaldi shows up and pulls a gun on him mid-speech. "You're not so smart yourself, kid."
• Botched pretty stupidly throughout the "educational" short Magical Disappearing Money, where a money-saving witch badgers grocery store shoppers into saving money by telling them not to buy any kind of pre-packaged or prepared foods, in favor of buying only raw materials and making everything from scratch. To name one example, instead of buying Mexican seasoned rice, the witch points out that you can buy plain rice instead and save money! Great tip, unless somebody put seasoned rice in their cart because they wanted Mexican rice, you idiot, in which case they'll have to spend more money buying the seasonings, vegetables, and meat stock separately to make it themselves.
• Defied in Major Payne. Rather than cooking up another Zany Scheme to drive Payne away, Cadet Wuliger suggests merely going to the principal, as what Payne is doing to the students as a Drill Sergeant Nasty can't possibly be legal. Cadet Stone shoots this down, believing the principal won't do anything, as he doesn't care if it's legal or not. However, Wuliger's suggestion does inspire Stone's scheme to depict Payne as a pedophile, believing if they paint Payne as something that vile, the principal will have no choice but to fire Payne. Unsurprisingly it doesn't work, as since the Major sleeps with his eyes open he catches them red-handed trying to slip a cross-dressing cadet into bed with him.
• A legendary behind-the-scenes example occurred during the filming of Marathon Man. For the movie's infamous torture scene ("is it safe?"), Dustin Hoffman, a known method actor, stayed up for two days straight and hyperventilated to get into the right hysterical frame of mind for the role of victim Thomas Levy. Sir Laurence Olivier, who played the torturous Dr. Szell, saw Hoffman working himself into a frenzy and calmly asked "My boy...have you tried acting?" It makes more sense when you remember that Olivier was British and Hoffman from the United States—method acting is far more common in the latter country, where the former relies more heavily on external acting.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • In Ant-Man, once Dr. Pym has explained the whole situation with Darren Cross and the threat the Yellowjacket poses to the world and how he intends to break in and destroy the suit and all the research, the first thing Scott does is simply point out how they should just call in the Avengers to deal with it. Naturally though, given Pym's history with Howard Stark, he is having none of that:
    Dr. Pym: I spent half my life trying to keep this technology out of the hands of a Stark! I'm sure as hell not going to hand-deliver it to one now! This is not some cute technology like the Iron Man suit! This could change the texture of reality! Besides, they're probably too busy dropping cities out of the sky.
  • Avengers: Infinity War: While it doesn't turn out to be so simple, Tony's first suggestion on hearing about Thanos wanting all six Infinity Stones is just "shove the Time Stone down the garbage disposal". Dr. Strange and Wong refuse on the grounds they swore an oath to defend it. However, the other Avengers do figure this is a solution for the Mind Stone, just not one they'd rather go for, since it's kind of attached to the Vision.
  • Avengers: Endgame:
    • The movie begins with the heroes plotting to steal the Infinity Stones back from Thanos and use them to undo his culling of half the universe. However, it turns out Thanos had anticipated this possibility and destroyed the Stones to prevent anyone from doing so, necessitating the much more complicated "Time Heist" plan of taking the stones from alternate timelines.
    • And speaking of the Time Heist, upon being told that the heroes have access to time travel, Rhodey suggests a much simpler alternate plan.
      Rhodey: If we can do this... you know, go back in time... why don't we just find baby Thanos and... (mimes garroting someone)
      Banner: First off, that's horrible—
      Rhodey: It's Thanos.
      Banner: —and second off, time doesn't work that way! Changing the past doesn't change the future!
    • Also also' speaking of the Time Heist, Scott's initial suggestion is just use the time machine to go back and prevent Thanos gathering the Stones together in the first place, which is what leads to Rhodey's remarks, and Hulk's explanation.
  • Spider-Man: No Way Home: When Peter's friends are rejected from college because of their association with him, he goes to Doctor Strange to ask him to erase the world's knowledge of his identity. The spell goes awry, but Strange manages to contain it. He tells Peter that there's nothing else to be done; if the college refused to reconsider, then Peter just has to accept it. Peter hadn't even realized that he could call the college.
    Strange: I'm sorry... Are you telling me that you didn't even think to plead your case with them first before you asked me to brainwash the entire world?
    Peter: ...Well, I mean, when you put it like that, then—
    [cut to Peter outside the Sanctorum, getting the door slammed in his face]
• Defied in Matilda when the students tell the titular girl about The Trunchbull and how she physically and psychologically abuses the students, even going so far as to outright torture them by locking them in an iron-maiden-like device called The Chokey. Matilda points out they should tell their parents and get the woman fired and likely locked up, but the other kids point out they've all tried and their parents simply don't believe them, as the stories are so ludicrously and unbelievably over-the-top.
• In a 1997 low-budget B-Action flick called Mean Guns a character played by Ice-T is overseeing a deathmatch between a bunch of hired killers for a Briefcase Full of Money. One of the killers surprises Ice with a knife and goes on and on about how he's going to kill Ice-T's character and how much he hates him, all the while Ice T keeps telling him to throw the knife. As the guy looks away for a second, Ice T draws his own knife, throws it and kills the guy saying, "See? You throw the fucking knife. Don't stand there and hold it, throw the motherfucker!"
• In The Phantom, when Kit and Diana find the jade Skull of Touganda at the Museum of World History, Diana suggests contacting an acquaintance of hers to have the skull retrieved. Kit, however, simply smashes the glass surrounding the skull and grabs it.
• The Prestige: Angier obsesses madly over his professional rival Borden's signature magic trick, the Transported Man, in which Borden seems to teleport across the stage. His engineer/assistant Cutter points out the most obvious answer of how Borden is doing it (a body double made up to look like him), but Angier refuses to accept such a mundane explanation. Come the end of the film, it is revealed Borden was, to the surprise of nobody but Angier, using a body double to pull off the trick. The only real twist to it is that the double was his twin brother, meaning there was no need for make-up. Contrast that with Angier, whose Complexity Addiction is so bad that he had to resort to a full-on cloning machine to do the trick in a way that satisfied him.
• Used in The Pumaman; the Big Bad uses Mind Control to make the hero jump to his death, instead of going with his mooks' more practical suggestion of just having one of them shoot him, to make it look like death from natural causes. Which would have all been great had it not been for the fact that Vadhino tells us at one point that thanks to the mask, Kobras has total control over the police. So... why did it have to look like an accident again?
• In Disney's Return to Oz Mombi asks why the Nome King did not turn Dorothy and company into ornaments right away, and instead let them play a near impossible guessing game to get their missing companions back. The Nome King replies "it's more fun this way." The same excuse is used in the book Ozma of Oz, but in that case, the only reason everyone was found in the guessing game was that Billina eavesdropped.
• In The Sandlot, Scott Smalls takes his stepfather's baseball autographed by Babe Ruth, not understanding the true significance of it, and it winds up in the nearby junkyard with with a terrifying guard dog dubbed "The Beast". Smalls suggests they go talk to The Beast's owner, Mr. Mertle, to have him get the ball back for them. Squints shoots this down by claiming that "Mr. Mertle's the meanest old man who ever lived," prompting an increasingly-complex series of schemes to recover the ball. When they finally do get it back, they inadvertently knock over Mr. Mertle's fence—directly on top of the Beast. The kids rally to save the dog, who turns out to be an enormous but friendly bull mastiff named Hercules, but then must own up to their vandalism to Mr. Mertle. He talks to them and expresses surprise that someone has finally gotten the better of Hercules by recovering the ball, then asks, "Why didn't you just knock on the door? I'd have gotten it for you." Cue the other kids shouting at Squints and hitting him with their baseball caps.
• In Shark Week, Elena points out to Tiburon that now he has abducted his victims, he could just put a bullet in each of their heads and be done with it. However, Tiburon feels that vengeance is like a bottle of fine wine; it should be lingered over and savoured.
• Justified in Six String Samurai, where the USSR have occupied a post-nuclear America for decades.
  "Why don't he just shoot him?"
  "We haven't had bullets since '57!"
• In Sling Blade a man who owns a repair shop spends hours trying to figure out why a small engine won't start. His simple-minded assistant, Karl, then points out that it doesn't have any gas.
• Played for Laughs by Tom in Sonic the Hedgehog (2020) when being threatened by Dr. Robotnik over the phone, to basically rub in the "good doctor's" face that he's not at all intimidated by him.
  Dr. Robotnik: I want you to know that the only other person who ever punched me in the face was the school bully. He hit me in the cafeteria, causing a blunt force contusion to the soft tissue surrounding my orbital bone. Humiliated me in front of the entire school, and you know what I did in response?
  Tom: Uh, I'm assuming you reported him to the principal's office. 'Cause, y'know, that kind of behavior is really unacceptable.
  Dr. Robotnik: No. I examined the inefficiency of a world where brawn trumped brain, and I used technology to resolve that inefficiency. The boy ate his meals through a straw for a year, and I have never lost a fight again... Until today.
  Tom: Hey, hooray for me then, huh?
• In Star Wars: Attack of the Clones, Count Dooku puts the heroes into an arena, to be killed by large monsters. This, of course, doesn't work, and Viceroy Gunray demands their execution by shooting. Dooku actually listens, but The Cavalry arrives before anything can be done about it.
• In Stripes, when John and Russell "borrow" the EM-50 to meet up with their girlfriends in Germany, Captain Stillman erroneously assumes they're attempting to steal it for the Soviets. Sergeant Hulka suggests that if that's the case, instead of sending a single squad of green troops after them, they should deploy some of the crack soldiers and air recon forces that have been stationed near the border since the start of The Cold War to find it and bring it back. Stillman vehemently declines since he doesn't want his superiors to know the EM-50 went missing on his watch. Sure enough, Stillman mistakenly leads the platoon into Czechoslovakia and are captured by Soviet troops (Hulka bailed out when he was ignored warning Stillman of this). And after John and Russell end up saving them with the EM-50, they get heralded as heroes while Stillman gets reassigned to an Alaskan weather station.
• Super Mario Bros. (1993) has a moment where Iggy and Spike report that the Marios are lost in the desert. Koopa immediately asks why they aren't out there holding them off instead of wasting time getting back to him, and when they can't respond he decides to make them smarter so they won't screw it up.
• In the kids' film 3 Ninjas, the title middle-schoolers successfully defeat The Dragon, only to have some random mooks pull guns on them. The heroes clearly consider this to be cheating.
• In Total Recall (1990) The Dragon attempts to kill Quaid several times but is stopped by the Big Bad, on the grounds that Quaid is actually his friend and ally, and is only fighting them because his old memories have been erased. When Quaid escapes from them and becomes a serious threat, the boss reluctantly gives permission to kill him, and his underling replies "It's about goddamn time!"
• In Van Helsing, we have the vampire bride Aleera who constantly taunts and plays around with Anna but never gets around to actually killing her. When she finally has her cornered, Anna is thrown a stake by Carl and instantly stakes Aleera on the spot. Telling her (as a Shout-Out to the The Good, the Bad and the Ugly) "If you're going to kill someone, kill them! Don't stand there talking about it!"
• xXx: State of the Union has Darius Stone knock out instead of kill Charlie, the woman who framed him for murder. His superior, Gibbons, says that he should have killed her. Later on, Stone is held at gunpoint by Charlie, only for Gibbons to shoot her. He reiterates, "I told you to kill that bitch."

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