17 Mindless Moments in Movie Plot Line History

Culture

I recently came across a piece about how the Battle of Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back was a monumentally stupid plan. And while Star Wars gets plenty of hate (mostly from its own fans), it is by no means the only movie with really stupid plans. So, for your pleasure, here are the worst plans in movie history. 

1) Trying to Stop a Car With a Thumb, It Happened One Night

 

So, your thumb gestures say you are either independent and uncaring, utterly pitiful, or an incurable gossip with a story about the farmer’s daughter? And these will help you hitch a ride? Step aside and let the lady flash some skin.

2) Getting Your Eggo Prego, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Your husband is perpetually drunk and bitter because you ended the only meaningful relationship he ever had. Your brother-in-law controls the family business and his wife pops out kids like a toaster oven. Your mother-in-law thinks you are a problem and your rich father-in-law refuses to die. So forcibly attempting to have kids will solve all your problems. Right…

3) Challenging Bruce Lee Alone, Enter The Dragon

This man has infiltrated your base, decimated your army, and killed all your top thugs. In his previous lives, he has defeated an entire dojo of martial artists and killed Chuck Norris. And you thought you could take on him with a fake hand that has really long nails? Good luck, young Grasshopper.

4) Accepting the Friend Zone, When Harry Met Sally

You’re suave, she’s sophisticated; you’re into her, she’s into you; none of your other relationships work and you always end up going back to one another. Why the crap would you avoid being together for 50 years?

5) Challenging a Genius in a Bar Conversation, Good Will Hunting

So, you’re a preppie that wants to impress a rich, British heiress by showing off how much you know about economic theory. So you assume that in a bar literally walking distance from Harvard and filled with hunky guys that can break you in half, you would just be able to quote some first-year grad student BS and no one would catch you? How’s that working out for you, chief?

6) Pretending to be a Dude in War, Mulan

Your father is a celebrated war hero and you’re a village girl that has lived a sheltered life. Did you think you would be able to put on boyish clothes, infiltrate a group of manly men, go through the toughest regiment exercises in China, and go to war (where getting stabbed results in medical treatment that involves taking your clothes off and inspecting ever crevice of your body)? You’ve really thought this one through, dear daughter.

7) Attacking Earth, The Avengers

“Your brother the demi-god; a super soldier, a living legend who kind of lives up to the legend; a man with breathtaking anger management issues; a couple of master assassins, and you big fella, you've managed to piss off every single one of them.” As always, Tony Stark knows the score.

8) Challenging Clint Eastwood, Gran Torino

“Ever notice how, once in a while, you come across somebody you shouldn’t have f****ed with?” When an old man can fearlessly recite that speech to a group of thugs, you don’t fight him and you don’t hurt his friends. When that man is Clint Eastwood, all you really do is ask yourself: Do you feel lucky?

9) Killing The Elephants, The Protector

This dude can take on an entire army with nothing but his limbs, courtesy of the ancient art of Muay Thai. So you decide that the best plan of action is to kill his elephants to stock your novelty restaurant for people with a taste for the rare and endangered. You deserve to have your limbs broken.

10) Being With a Married Guy, He’s Just Not That Into You

It doesn’t matter how dreamy he is. It doesn’t matter how much of a nice guy he pretends to be. It doesn’t matter if he says he’ll leave her. If a guy has a wife, stay the crap away from him; you can always do better. And if you think you’re the exception and he will change because of you, I’ll let you in on a little guy code secret: He won’t.

11) Trying to Fool Someone Attractive, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days

You have to do an article on how to lose a guy fast. He has to convince his boss he can make some woman fall in love with him but he’s only doing it for his career. Well, when the person on the other side is as charming as Kate Hudson or Matthew McConaughey, you’re bound to fall in love for real, you dig? So, for all these crappy romantic comedy experiments, don’t approach someone you can’t back away from.

12) Using Bullets to Stop Magic, The Mask

He has a mask that makes him an immortal lunatic that eats up bullets and turns into a mini-twister. He can generate dynamite from thin air and can transform your pool into a Looney Tunes-styled toilet that will drown you. As funny as his fighting may seem, is shooting him really a good idea?

13) Trying to Blackmail A Defense Analyst, Burn After Reading

You don’t know anything about the CD of intelligence secrets other than the fact that it is “numbers and dates and … numbers.” You think that trying to sell it to the Russians is going to net you enough money for cosmetic surgery. You choose to ignore the fact that the unauthorized dissemination of classified materials is a federal crime. And worst of all, the guy you’re trying to blackmail has worked with intelligence agencies his whole life. Yes, blackmailing him would not end with you getting shot in the head, right?  

14) Getting Married, Blue Valentine

Ladies, Ryan Gosling and all other guys that look like him are jerks. They will change the second you marry them, becoming horridly insensitive and slightly bald. So, ignore all guys with such chiseled bods and stick to us kind guys who will always treat you awesomely. Seriously, we’re worth it.

15) Telling the Truth About Destiny, Wanted

You are the head of a guild of assassins, the best of whom is such an incorrigible fatalist that she would even kill herself if her name came up in the machine that decides who lives and dies. So, when you’ve been accused of breaking the code, the only way to defend yourself is to say, “we are all destined to die and must be killed?” I don’t know what you were planning there, dude.

16) Attacking A Space Race, Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius

A race of highly advanced goo aliens with more weaponry than any PG-rated movie in history has just kidnapped every parent on the planet, and so efficiently that you did not even find out about it until you woke up. So, the ideal way to attack them is to make a fleet out of amusement park rides? I know you’re just a kid but, seriously, that’s just stupid, Boy Genius.

17) Hiring the Gorgeous Baby Sitter, Paper Man

You are struggling with your married life and facing terrible writer’s block for your book about endangered chickens. So you decide to move into an isolated town, where you also hire an emotionally damaged babysitter that looks like Emma Stone and is likely attracted to older men because of her need for a father figure. Yes, that will only work to save your marriage.