Making a mockery of logic and common sense: 10 movies that genuinely insult your intelligence
Not every movie is supposed to engage the brain, necessitate deep thinking, and then create a sense of pondering that carries on for hours to come once the credits come up, but there’s a happy medium to be found between entertainment and nonsense.
Modern franchise fare, in particular, has developed a nauseating habit of explaining not just every single detail that has happened or will happen within the film that’s currently being watched but makes a point of hinting at how it could potentially affect sequels to come.
People don’t go to the cinema to have their intelligence insulted, but it’s turned out to be an inevitable by-product of on-screen drivel that either decides the people paying for a ticket couldn’t possibly comprehend what’s going on without having it spelt out in explicit detail, or decide that everyone’s too unlearned to notice glaring scientific, narrative, or thematic holes in the story.
The following ten titles tick that intelligence-insulting box for a number of different reasons ranging from sermonising to a blatant disregard of how nature, the law, and the merits of comedy work, to the point it’s not unreasonable to feel actively dumber once they cut to black.
10 movies that insult your intelligence:
10. Elysium (Neill Blomkamp, 2013)
Neill Blomkamp burst onto the scene with the exquisite District 9, which wrapped very real social and societal concerns around a thrilling sci-fi movie. Opting to stick with the ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it approach’, Elysium stuck with the exact same themes and delivered drastically inferior returns.
Whereas the undertones were deftly woven into District 9, Blomkamp’s follow-up repeatedly hammers it over the heads of the audience as if it wasn’t clear for all to see. The poorer classes live on a slum-like Earth, the elites reside in a shiny space station, and Jodie Foster doesn’t want the peasants to ruin the utopia she’d created for those who can afford it.
It’s heavy-handed, cloying, and the ending is a complete and total cop-out. Any semblance of subtlety is abandoned in favour of a standard Hollywood third act, with the resolution coming out of nowhere and being painted as an insultingly simplistic climax. We get it; there’s a socio-political bent to the film, but Elysium didn’t need to be quite so on-the-nose in spelling it out for the viewer.
9. Volcano (Mick Jackson, 1997)
Disaster flicks need to be taken with a pinch of salt at the best of times, and with Volcano doing battle with Dante’s Peak in the head-to-head scrap between 1997’s battle of the eruption-centric films, the former did at least get to be the dumbest by far.
As can be inferred from the title, the inciting incident is indeed of a volcanic nature, with only Tommy Lee Jones and his intrepid band of scientists having the knowledge and wherewithal to fix it. The only problem is that Volcano operates as if nobody watching it has even a basic comprehension of how things work.
Depending on what any given action sequence calls for, the molten hot magma in question moves at different speeds, operates at different temperatures, and has different effects relative to what’s unfolding on-screen. Earthquakes very rarely cause volcanic eruptions anywhere, never mind in Los Angeles, and for some reason, a building made of concrete and steel has the ability to either divert or completely halt an unstoppable natural entity that can reach up to 1,200 degrees Celsius.
8. Lucy (Luc Besson, 2014)
The entirety of Luc Besson’s deranged sci-fi actioner is predicated on the belief that humans only use 10% of their brain, with Morgan Freeman‘s sonorous tones explaining the limitations of the subconscious.
The biggest issue with that setup is the fact it’s been widely debunked, with studies indicating people are more than capable of using the whole 100% in fits and starts, just not all at the same time. Beyond that, science has shown that at least 35% of the brain can be used at once during a complex task, which renders Lucy as both implausible and hinged on bogus claims.
Obviously, Scarlett Johansson kicking ass and evolving into whatever the hell it is she becomes when she reaches the magical 100% isn’t exactly reliant on being taken as an extension of reality, but Besson should have at least done some more research before penning a script reliant on a myth the majority already knew to be untrue heading in.
7. The Imitation Game (Morten Tyldum, 2014)
With eight Academy Award nominations, including ‘Best Picture’, ‘Best Director’ and ‘Best Actor’ to its name to go along with a win for ‘Best Adapted Screenplay’, The Imitation Game was lauded as one of the year’s most acclaimed prestige dramas.
However, beyond the pre-release controversy that stemmed from the film purportedly downplaying subject Alan Turing’s well-known homosexuality, The Imitation Game played so fast and loose with the facts that it barely even qualified as a biopic.
In addition to being riddled with dozens upon dozens of inaccuracies, the script – which somehow won an Oscar – made a point of reiterating in no uncertain terms through laborious exposition that the things happening on-screen were important. Everyone knew that going in, but cliches and soundbites were favoured under the presumed impression viewers couldn’t understand the gravity of what was going on without having their hands held and hearing every major development solemnly intoned aloud.
6. Transcendence (Wally Pfister, 2014)
Christopher Nolan‘s long-time cinematographer Wally Pfister dropped off the face of the planet after making his feature-length directorial debut on Transcendence, which decided the best way to herald the AI apocalypse was to give it a human face with a penchant for over-explanation.
It may have been ahead of its time, given everything that’s unfolding today with artificial intelligence, but that doesn’t make the disastrous box office bust any less dull. Johnny Depp gets his consciousness uploaded into a computer after an assassination attempt before quickly realising that he’s got the power to take over the world.
Hardly a highfalutin parable on the encroaching dangers of technology, and as if nobody would be capable of understanding his intentions, AI Johnny maintains a blank and emotionless expression while constantly reiterating why he wants to use his sentience for evil, all while a talented supporting cast exchange dialogue that beats the audience over the head with the recurring ‘computer bad’ sentiment.
5. Movie 43 (Various, 2013)
Presumably, the intention with Movie 43 was to show the world that gathering together a cavalcade of top-tier talents for an anthology comedy was guaranteed to cause uproarious laughter in the aisles, which wasn’t out of the question looking at the assembled roster.
Instead, it’s self-gratifying Hollywood nonsense at its most pretentious, with the abominable enterprise going down in the hall of shame as one of the worst films to have ever existed. There were A-listers galore, which was basically the beginning and end of the effort put in by anybody involved.
Just because audiences recognise the majority of the players, though, it doesn’t mean the game isn’t going to insult them. Hugh Jackman wishes he had a time machine so he could warn his younger self against signing on, and everybody else wishes their intelligence hadn’t been kicked down several notches by wasting their time watching the excruciatingly unfunny equivalent of celebrities smelling their own farts.
4. Battlefield Earth (Roger Christian, 2000)
Based on a novel written by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, the figurehead of the controversial organisation had sent a signed copy to John Travolta in the early 1980s, signalling his desire to see the star headline a live-action adaptation.
Biding his time until his star was burning sufficiently brightly, Travolta used his post-Pulp Fiction resurgence to make it a reality, having spent over a decade harbouring the intention to realise the dreams of the man who shaped his entire belief system.
The source material was penned by a Scientologist, it was headlined and produced by a Scientologist, but in no way was Battlefield Earth designed as thinly veiled Scientology propaganda, right? Sorry, Travolta, nobody fell for the ruse despite its clear intentions and an entire studio ended up paying the price.
3. Armageddon (Michael Bay, 1998)
Nasa hates Michael Bay‘s Armageddon with such an intense passion that the film is used during the space agency’s management training programme as a means to have prospective candidates pick out the procedures and decisions that don’t make a lick of sense, of which there are many.
When Ben Affleck pointed out to the director that it would be a lot cheaper, easier, and faster to train astronauts how to drill instead of the other way around, he was promptly told to “shut the fuck up” for daring to question the method behind Bay’s madness.
Why does a character bring a gun into space? Why are regular jobs given the most important job in human history? What exactly is space dementia? Is that really how outer space travel and the potential effects of a devastating meteor shower would work in real life? These are questions Armageddon is not interested in answering, and while it’s an entertaining enough romp, there’s no point thinking about the mechanics for more than a microsecond.
2. Double Jeopardy (Bruce Beresford, 1999)
Double Jeopardy is based entirely on the legal terminology bearing the same name, which prevents an accused party from being tried for a second time on identical or similar charges if they’ve been either acquitted or convicted of a crime.
In the movie, Ashely Judd is imprisoned for the murder of her husband, but when she discovers he’s still alive, having faked his own death, she decides that because she can’t possibly be arrested again, having already served time for killing him in the first place, she’s got carte blanche to finish the job.
For anyone with even a basic knowledge of the legal system, it was clear Double Jeopardy completely misunderstood and misinterpreted the entire crux of its plot, with the entire story implying that it’s a free pass to go ahead and commit murder with no repercussions. It was a schlocky-if-successful thriller, but it can’t be overlooked that painting its driving force as something applicable to real life was an insult to the intelligence.
1. 2012 (Roland Emmerich, 2009)
In Roland Emmerich‘s 2012, it’s posited by one character how “it looks like the neutrinos coming from the Sun have mutated into a new kind of nuclear particle,” which by extension is “heating up the Earth’s core” and giving rise to the end of days. So far, so Hollywood pseudo-babble.
Since the dialogue is coming from a physicist, it would be reasonable to expect even a shred of research had gone into the script. This being Emmerich, though, that was not the case. Neutrinos don’t mutate, they don’t even decay, and they sure as shit can’t heat up the core of an entire planet.
The science powering the entire movie was deemed “absurd” by no less of an authority than Nasa, never mind the way the depictions of assorted natural disasters make a mockery of not just science, but physics and nature as well. 2012 was never intended to be high art, but making stuff up on the spot and expecting viewers to buy it as being even remotely plausible was taken as a personal insult by the scientific community, not to mention countless audience members left scratching their heads at the verbal diarrhoea on display.
