Stupidity: Booth shoots the stalker's door lock...and then kicks the door in anyway. Shooting the lock achieves nothing, it wouldn't have made the door any easier to kick in, it's just him generating paperwork and an issue with his shrink.
Jon Sandys
21st Sep 2022
Bones (2005)
19th Sep 2022
Riddick (2013)
Stupidity: They go to great pains to lock the nodes behind an explosive lock, then have a debate about whether Riddick's somehow broken in. They eventually unlock them, check they're still in place...then just leave the locker completely unattended and unlocked while they discuss plans, and Riddick of course steals the nodes.
11th May 2022
Alien: Covenant (2017)
Stupidity: Despite landing on an alien planet which they have minimal information about, they just wander around with no protective equipment whatsoever. No face mask, no air filter, they're entirely unprepared for the prospect of anything bacterial/fungal which could do them harm. Even after people get sick others say "don't touch anything" without any concern that the cause might be airborne.
29th Apr 2022
Avengers: Endgame (2019)
Stupidity: They make a big deal about how they've got the bare minimum of Pym particles left as Hank has been snapped away, but it never occurs to them to use their supply to jump back to a very safe time when Hank was around with a vast supply of them. They could bring them to their time and then have no end of attempts to get the stones without being on such a knife-edge.
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Suggested correction: The problem is that they need to steal particles, and if they fail doing that, everything fails. They never thought of doing it that way because of that. Only when they failed in the past did they have to risk that, with again the possibility of failing. They couldn't take the risk to have their only chance of reversing what Thanos did fail because they want to be leisurely about it, ironically. They could do it in one go, that was the best bet and lowest in risk.
13th Oct 2021
What If...? (2021)
What If... The Watcher Broke His Oath? - S1-E9
Stupidity: Ultron says he can destroy galaxies with a thought. So regardless of Dr. Strange's protection spells, he could destroy the planet they're all standing on, or evaporate the atmosphere, leaving them all suffocating in space, and just step away from the fight entirely while they die.
20th Sep 2021
Lucifer (2015)
Stupidity: Amenadiel isn't an idiot, but he KEEPS talking to Ghost Dan around other people, then gets surprised when they think he's crazy, or has to catch himself and come up with explanations for his behaviour. Would it be that hard to just stay quiet for a while? Dan understands the situation and wouldn't be offended.
10th Jul 2021
Black Widow (2021)
Stupidity: Natasha is in Norway on the run - Norwegian radio mentions her by name, Yelena talks about her being on magazines, she's very recognisable, and yet she goes into a gas station with her sister without changing her appearance in any way, and loudly talks about being an Avenger and killing people, right in front of the gas station attendant who for all she knows would be on the phone to the authorities the second she's out the door.
4th Jul 2021
Hobbs & Shaw (2019)
21st May 2021
Men in Black: International (2019)
Stupidity: The train which takes M from New York to London arrives looking like an old tube train, then when she's on board converts into a high-tech train, to her amazement, and whisks her across the Atlantic. Except...why did it ever look like a regular train? She's in a MIB station, it's only used by agents and aliens, it goes to another MIB station, and when it arrives and people get off / on before it continues its journey, it stays in its high-tech form anyway.
17th Apr 2021
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (2021)
Stupidity: Bucky makes a great show of being about to shoot Zemo...then pulls the trigger with just a click, and drops all the unloaded bullets on the ground before the Wakandans take Zemo into custody. Granted he might have wanted the satisfaction of scaring Zemo, but dropping the bullets a) serves no purpose, because the gun's already been demonstrated to be empty, and b) just makes a mess that he's got to clear up, unless he wants to leave a dozen bullets lying around in a public square.
9th Apr 2021
Justified (2010)
The Promise - S6-E13
Stupidity: Markham lets Ava call her uncle's phone, and she doesn't let on that Boyd answers instead. He later says "I don't trust anyone", but he didn't demand she put the call on speaker for transparency, he's quite happy (at the time) to just hear one side of the call.
24th Mar 2021
The Flash (2014)
Stupidity: The team knows that Eva can snatch people through any reflective surface, and make a great show of killing the lights to prevent reflections...which are then replaced by emergency lighting, rendering the whole process pointless. They also drop shutters over the outside of the windows, leaving the reflective windows themselves unprotected inside the lab! And Barry promptly stares pensively into one at close range...and is of course snatched by Eva.
15th Mar 2021
Superman and Lois (2021)
The Perks of Not Being a Wallflower - S1-E3
Stupidity: Superman finally smashes the weirdly strong bad guy through a wall, then goes to Lois, says "he's gone", and whisks Sarah to hospital. But he has no idea if the bad guy is "gone" or not - they've just had an epic fight, he has some sort of super strength / resilience, and for all Superman knows he'll come around in 10 seconds and finish the job of murdering Lois.
Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.
Suggested correction: Superman knows the 'strong bad guy' is close to his own strength. After fighting him, he knows what effect the crash through the wall would have had on him, if he was knocked out, and how long he would be out for. So he knew there was little risk of the guy coming around in 10 seconds. Alternatively, he X-ray scanned the area and saw the guy was no longer there.
11th Dec 2020
The Wolverine (2013)
27th Nov 2020
The Mandalorian (2019)
Stupidity: Ahsoka is fighting against the spear-wielding woman. She keeps blocking the spear using both her sabers. It would be very straightforward to block the spear with just one lightsaber (as she proves she can do just as well after she loses the smaller one) and use the second one to, for example, cut off the woman's hands.
Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.
Suggested correction: This is opinion, not stupidity.
24th Nov 2020
Doomsday (2008)
Stupidity: This highly trained squad of soldiers is sent into a known contaminated zone with all manner of chaos going on within in...and the second one of them sees a woman outside his APC he ignores a direct order and pops outside to see how she's doing.
17th May 2020
Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008)
Stupidity: Whenever General Grievous fights another lightsaber-user, there's almost always a moment with all the sabers crossed dramatically in front of both participants, one preventing the other striking a killing blow. Looks good, but utterly ridiculous, because he's got 4 arms and 4 lightsabers - he could easily block the blade in front of him with one or two arms, and simultaneously swipe at their head and legs, which no-one with two arms could ever defend against. Of course that would make for a lot of very short duels.
9th Apr 2020
Altered Carbon (2018)
Stupidity: "Rei" comes into the circle, having been champing at the bit to "turn him into a smear on the floor." She's wielding a sword, Kovacs is unarmed, and she...slices him a bit, instead of a quick killing blow.
20th Jan 2020
Titans (2018)
Stupidity: Donna runs in to save everyone from the collapsing pylon, dying in the process, despite the fact that Superboy or Raven, both more powerful/resilient, could have stopped it falling without any issues whatsoever. Not even like anyone was distracted - the fight was over, they were all just standing around.
7th Jan 2020
Common mistakes
Stupidity: Some object (or person, occasionally, like The Mummy or the witch in Hellboy) which "can't be destroyed", but can be broken up into large parts and "hidden", often into ornate boxes with a map or record of the location. Nobody ever thinks to break the parts down into hundreds of pieces, then scatter them randomly into separate oceans, up a mountain, into building foundations, into a mine, or thrown in a volcano.
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