Great movies have the ability to move us on a profoundly emotional level, even movies that are merely good can also help us enjoy ourselves and forget our troubles. And of course, bad movies, when viewed in the right context, can provide plenty of entertainment.
However, movies do have some setbacks, in addition to being so prevalent in our day to day lives that we have come to internalize the various tropes, clichés, and various out-and-out lies that are told throughout them.
While some things only happen in movies, like alien invasions or living happily ever after, a lot of what happens in films do happen in real life, just not quite how it is depicted.
Here is a list of the top 22 familiar movie scenarios that don’t work quite the same in real life.
01 – Kissing before brushing teeth in the morning:
Morning breath is disgusting, and nobody is exempt from having it, yet, in movies, some movie characters often kiss passionately right after waking up! Now, compared to real life, I am sure some people out there don’t mind, but the majority of us would prefer to brush our teeth first before making out.
02 – Huge breakfasts:
It is so common in movies when compared to real life, to see entire families having elaborate breakfasts in the morning before work and school. Where do these people find the time? Most people, in real life, are a mess in the mornings, rushing and eating whatever they can scrounge up so that they can beat traffic and get to where they are going in time.
03 – Order food and leave without eating it:
Speaking of food, in movies vs real life, how many times have you seen your favorite movie actor/actress order something to eat, only to have some urgent matter come up that would require the actor/actress to leave their freshly cooked order untouched? I’ve seen this movie scenario enough times to know it is complete malarkey. Most of us, in real life, would tell the waiter/waitress to pack it up to go; after all, we paid hard earned money for it.
04 – Air ducts are not as big as you think:
Don’t eat too much if you plan on squirreling through an air duct though. This is because, in real life, these ducts are hardly big enough to fit a toddler, much less a full grown adult. But in movies, air ducts and ventilation shafts always seem to be big enough for our movie heroes or villains to escape through.
05 – CPR:
And if one gets stuck in an air duct suffocating to death, don’t expect movie style cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) to work, as movies tend to depict CPR as something you do for a couple of minutes to resuscitation a person. However, in real life, you could literally perform CPR for hours just to keep someone from suffering permanent brain damage. In fact, the statistics are pretty grim, with only 8% of people, who receive CPR, coming back to life.
06 – Locators:
Some folks may find it difficult locating an address even with the help of a global positioning system (GPS), but It is only in movies, compared to real life, that a friend would work straight into your home, for the first time, and know exactly where your bedroom or a location is.
Action movies are especially guilty of depicting a slightly skewed version of real life. Here are just a few of the most common action thriller clichés that work completely different in real life:
07 – Bad guys lining up to fight:
Whenever the main hero, in a movie, faces multiple opponents in a fist fight, the bad guys get together and proceed to fight one at a time. If movie scuffles were anything like it is in real life, good guys, who dared to fight more than one opponent, would get the living daylights beaten out of them.
08 – Getting knocked out like it’s not a big deal:
Speaking of physical altercations, movies like to pretend that getting knocked unconscious is merely an inconvenience. Movies like to play it loose with people getting knocked out, and getting up a few minutes later as if nothing ever happened. In real life, if you get hit hard enough to lose consciousness for a few minutes, you are likely to suffer a concussion and possibly serious brain damage.
09-Character transformation:
In the course of searching for someone/something, or maybe be being chased around by a couple of bad guys, have you ever noticed, in a movie, how a character with no combat training could just suddenly become a trained killing machine? This seems to be a common occurrence in many movies that I have seen.
10 – The way chloroform works:
One of cinema’s favorite tropes is the cunning villain pouncing on his/her clueless victim, covering his or her nose with a cloth soaked in chloroform that would knock them unconscious within seconds. While chloroform is, in fact, able to work as a sort of anesthetic in real life, it is nowhere near as effective as movies make it out to be. In real life, an average adult would have to directly inhale the substance for a full five minutes before losing consciousness.
11 – The way cars explode:
It seems like every movie based high-speed car chase ends up crashing and blowing up. While most real-life high-speed chases do end up in a crash, real-life cars will sometimes catch on fire but almost never explode.
12 – Explosions not being deadly:
One of the most powerful images to have come out of the ’80s and 90’s action movie craze is a guy walking so cool away from an explosion and not looking back. In real life, 100% of those guys would be dead because real life explosions are deadly. The shock wave caused by even the smallest explosions can cause significant internal injury and send numerous debris flying through the air.
13 – Infinite Bullets:
Something else that action flicks, when compared to real life, get wrong is how they portray gunfights. You would, If you have ever seen an action flick, see good and bad guys alike shot their guns with magical abandonment as if they will never run out of bullets! However, in real life, a typical gun will have anywhere from 6 to 15 bullets per clip.
14 – Gun silencers:
Gun silencers or sound suppressors don’t work at all like they are portrayed in the movies. In fact, in real life, unless you use special sub-sonic ammunition, suppressors are still incredibly loud, even louder than most people realize.
15 – Digging is exhausting:
Another common action/thriller movie vs real life trope is the digging of ditches to dispose of bodies. Digging is exhausting and backbreaking work, but movies make it seem easy. In real life, you would be digging for hours, and your hands would develop painful blisters before the right sized hole, big enough to hide a body, is made.
Another section that movies, vs real life, get it wrong is how much faster the movie world seems to move when compared to our reality. For example:
16 – Countdown clocks:
Have you ever seen a movie where there is a countdown clock ticking down, and even though it says there are seconds left, the action on screen takes minutes? Films, of course, never occur in real time.
17 – Hacking computers:
Something else that also takes much longer in real life than it does in movies is computer hacking. The movie hacker is typically a dark and enigmatic figure typing frantically in dark rooms lined with monitors. Real life hackers look more like office IT guys than anything Hollywood has depicted over the last couple of decades, and work at a much more methodical pace than their fictitious counterparts.
Movie characters, vs real life, are often able to perform unlikely feats and display incredible physical capacity. For example:
18 – Running forever:
Movie based characters are able to run after each other for what seems like hours without tiring out. Most of us, in real life, would be out of breath and panting after thirty seconds. And unlike real life, some movie based characters never ever seem thirsty after a long run.
19 – Holding breath underwater for way too long:
The average person can hold their breath for about 30 seconds. And while some trained individuals are able to hold it for about a minute, without proper training, in real life, most folks would die if they held their breath as long as some movie characters effortless do.
20 – Jumping through windows:
If you ever tried to jump through a window in real life, vs in movies, you would most likely bounce right off it, and with some serious bruising to boot. And if you were unlucky enough to shatter the glass while jumping through it, like they so often do in the movies, you would end up with shredded skin and bleed all over the place.
21 – People that disappear without alerting those standing right next to them:
This is a suspense and horror movie cliché. They were just standing right there! Where did they go? Real life people aren’t silent ninjas who can easily scurry and disappear in the shadows. If your friend or someone you know was talking and standing next to you and left, you would one hundred percent notice, but I guess it is not like that in some movies.
And finally, one of the most incredulous displays of Hollywood superhuman ability:
22 – How quickly people find what they are looking for:
I’ve spent close to an hour looking for a pair of glasses that were on my head. Once, I found my car keys inside the fridge! If you have ever misplaced an item in your home, in real life, you know how incredibly frustrating it can be trying to find it. However, in movies, people seem to have an extraordinary sense because when they lose something, they typically find it within 30 seconds of searching for it. This is one of the many things about movie vs real life that I just don’t buy!
Tags: Acting Entertainment Life Movies real life situation Reality
