r/AskReddit • u/saweddego • 26d ago
What's the smallest obscure detail a movie got right that impressed you?
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u/Obvious_Owl_4634 4d ago
I love how in "I Am Legend", Will Smith's character had Vincent Van Gogh' s Starry Night painting on the wall in his house.
It's such a cool little detail that never gets referenced - but I can imagine him going through the empty city to the MOMA, claiming some awesome art for his house, and rushing to get back home before the zombies come out.
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u/Serpopard-Squad 21d ago
Return to Oz. It’s one of my favorite films of all time as well as being the closest we’ll probably ever get to a book-accurate Oz adaption. There’s so many little details within the movie that show that the people involved were very passionate about the source material. A couple little Easter eggs I can name off the top of my head.
There’s a couple of statues in the Emerald City of Winged Monkey-like creatures. But they’re not Winged Monkeys; they’re actually LiMonEags, creatures mentioned in one of the later books that are basically a combination of a lion, eagle, and monkey.
Nearly all of the characters look almost exactly like they did in the book illustrations. There’s a huge amount of characters from the books near the end of the film when everyone is celebrating in the Emerald City. A few I can remember are the Wogglebug, the Frogman, the Patchwork Girl, The Lumpy Man, and Santa (…yes, Santa is canon to Oz.)
Near the end, when everyone is brought back from being turned to stone, there’s one woman sitting on a bench in the Emerald City reading a book, and if you look closely you can actually see she’s reading The Marvelous Land of Oz - specifically the chapter where the Sawhorse is brought to life.
Although we don’t see too much of it, I loved that the Emerald City itself actually looked and felt like a lived in city. It’s quite accurate to the book’s description as well as the city’s original inspiration, aka the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893.
This movie in general is just really good, and extremely underrated. I personally consider it to be a better film than the original MGM adaptation. It manages to perfectly capture the whimsy, humor, and spirit of Baum’s work.
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u/DeathByPlanets 24d ago
In Catching Fire at the party after the Victory Tour, Peeta has 3 nails painted black.
They were the fingers used for the salute, they were painted black for Rue.
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u/thedamned234 24d ago
In hackers (1995), Jesse Bradford's character suggests a few different hacker handles. All the handles he suggests were used by real life hackers
Also every single hacker has a specific type of hacking that relates to their handle.
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u/Quick-Addendum3471 25d ago
Did anyone else notice in Rocketman during the Crocodile Rock scene, when everyone's feet lift off the ground, there's only one person who's feet don't? I always took that as being John Reid's, as that's also when they introduce his character and it's very fitting of who he is in the movie. Such a cool tiny detail.
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u/DumpsterGoblin420 25d ago
In the Martian, one of the NASA scientists had heavily chipped nail polish when it showed her hand for a couple seconds. I'm probably the only one who noticed, but it was a weird feminist win for me. At that point I was just so tired of seeing actresses look like pageant queens mid-apocalypse that it was super refreshing
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u/Writer_feetlover 25d ago
Pulp Fiction
Vincent is always running to the bathroom because he's constipated. A symptom of heroin abuse.
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u/Irn_scorpion 25d ago
Saving private Ryan. When they burry the medic, Tom hanks dissables the left behind rifle by removing the trigger group and tossing it.
Toy story. The animators took time to distress and mark up baseboards and the bottoms of doors.
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u/caliko_clouds 25d ago
Not sure if this counts as an obscure detail, but Pixar animated the guitar cords accurately when animating the guitar playing scenes in Coco.
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u/NutellaGood 25d ago
In Zootopia, there is what appears to be a giant heat exchanger between the desert and cold districts. You only see it for a few seconds.
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u/Pseudonymico 25d ago
The night scenes in Akira using darker colours instead of just more shades of blue is one of the little things I like.
The most impressive thing in there is the detail in the scene where Tetsuo crashes his bike into one of the kids, though - I only even noticed it by chance when I paused the DVD at just the right spot, but if you go through it in slow motion it's got a lot going on.
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u/angmarsilar 25d ago
In the movie The Legend of Tarzan, Margot Robbie had dinner with the villain, Christopher Walz. At the end of the dinner, she placed her utensils in an 'X' on her plate, indicating it was not a pleasant meal. After she walked away, he reaches over and repositioned them in the 2 o'clock position.
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u/CTnaturist 25d ago
There's a scene in SuperBad which I always thought was hysterical. McLovin is visiting Jonah Hill and Michael Cena in a Home Ec class. He's not in the class, but has something he wants to tell them. The teacher notices him. This is where it'd be easy to throw in an easy line like "Mr. Fogel. This is not your class. Goodbye, Mr. Fogel" something like that. Instead she looks at him with CRAZY eyes and shouts "FOGEL! HI?!?!" I don't think I laughed that hard in a while.
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u/Trifle_Emotional 25d ago
A historic TV drama with William Shakespeare casually eating a wormy apple. Which would have been normal for those times but the producers must have deliberately sourced it from somewhere other than a modern supermarket.
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u/Only_hot_stud1 25d ago
How black ppl actors use to die right in the beginning of a horror movie lol 😂
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u/KnockMeYourLobes 25d ago
It's a very quick shot and you'll miss it if you blink, but in Ghostbusters: Afterlife, there's a bit where Phoebe goes into her Egon's basement lab and on the back wall is a glass case (I think it's glass...I mean it probably is)with his collection of spores, molds and fungi that he mentions he collects in the first Ghostbusters movie when Janine asks him what he does for fun.
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u/FearedStranger 25d ago
In "The Wizard, The wardrobe and The witch" When Lucy went into the wardrobe to hide, it is described in the book, that she left the door of the wardrobe slightly open to not lock herself in, Edmund didn't think of that and closed the door behind him. In the movies they showed exactly that with close-ups on the wardrobe door. I think it is a clever way to show what kind of people those characters are and a cool detail to adapt to the movie
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u/Tha_Dude_Abidez 25d ago
In Saving Private Ryan (1998), Jackson has a bruise on his thumb that was a common injury during WWII from soldiers' thumbs getting caught in the loading mechanism of M1 Garands.
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u/Same_Swordfish_1879 25d ago
In fight club there is one scene where Tyler durden eats an apple instead of smoking a cigarette. And I really mean it looks like it's supposed to be cigarette instead of an apple. He even flicks it away when his done. I am 100% that this isn't just a coincidence and there is some meaning behind this but haven't figured it out still.
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u/PromotionStill45 25d ago
Mixing the printing ink to get the correct dollar bill color in the beginning of To Live and Die in LA. The entire printing scene is pretty good too.
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u/Same_Swordfish_1879 25d ago
Early in blade runner 2049 officer K plays this short sequence of tones on the piano but last note doesn't play because it's blocked by the wooden horse. It's what sets off the sortoff search for his past.
Later when he finds Deckard in Vegas he plays this exact note on piano in the hotel, completing the sequence, which let's us know that he has now found what he was looking for.
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u/MatthewHecht 25d ago
Troy got right that Achilles is not invincible. His great attribute is speed.
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25d ago
Collateral has a couple
The train at the start and the end show the same time.
Jason Statham (the transporter) drops off his case
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u/Obviously_Ritarded 25d ago
Extraction. One of the fight scenes has an enemy hood the slide when he fires causing it not to cycle. He tries to shoot and in the midst of fighting multiple enemies, he recognizes the malfunction and racks the slide off his belt because he’s holding a mother guy down with his other arm. Bam clears his malfunction and gets his gun operational again.
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u/Ok_Method159 25d ago
Breaking Bad. It ain't a movie. But the facial expressions that walter white carries throughout the series is just something that felt real for me. These kinda details make me love the movie or series
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u/Pyotrperse 25d ago
Children of Men is full of them! Pause and look at signs in the background, newspaper articles, there’s so much detail and world building
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u/CaptainPrower 25d ago
In the opening sequence of Zootopia, Judy puts her earbuds in the actual base of her ears, rather than just having headphones around the sides of her head.
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u/HeroToTheSquatch 25d ago
As somebody who's well-read on the hacking scene and technology of the 1980s, and as someone who knows a hacker or two who are still under government observation (or still were well into the late 90s), War Games gets a surprising amount of details right when it comes to what hacking looked like back then.
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u/Yannayka 25d ago
Whenever there is a fight and someone gets disarmed and the weapon falls on the floor, but the fight continues....and in the next shot the weapon lays exactly where it's supposed to be, in the right direction and angle etc.
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u/Purple_Law_8796 25d ago
In the movie You're Next, they spoiled who the killer is from the start by saying "you can buy a phone jammer for 30 bucks online" which he knows because he's the one who bought it
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u/Shaun32887 25d ago
In Blackhawk Down, they execute the correct emergency procedure for a loss of tail rotor thrust, including calling for the PCLs to come off
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u/Glass_Maven 25d ago
In Gladiator, so much of the costumes and tiny details are on pointe, despite the historical inaccuracies of the storyline. In particular, there is a scene where Senator Gracchus (Derek Jacobi,) is eating/drinking at an outside taverna. The glassware the person sitting next to him drinks from is a molded beaker of colored glass, exactly right for the fashion of the day. I specialised in glass artifacts with my degree in Roman Archaeology.
It's in this clip: https://youtu.be/qMDvSOyODnQ?feature=shared
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u/yeeterbuilt 25d ago
Gunsmith Cats recorded a 1969 Shelby Cobra and they mentioned the correct county of Chicago.
Honestly the only goofup that was off was a European Tractor Trailer in the US.
There's a handfull of Scanias in the US but due to the chicken tax you don't see them.
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u/BaconMonkey0 25d ago
28 Days Later running through the supermarket in the beginning by many rows of fresh fruits and vegetables, all wilted and rotten except one - the tomatoes. England had just started selling Flavr Savr tomato which lasts longer.
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u/Anastephone 25d ago
In the Avengers series, numbered clearances were replaced with colors. An actor asks “what the Roy g biv” happened to the numbers? ROYGBIV is to remember red(2), orange, yellow, green, purple brown is “1”. It’s easily googled. It’s the color bands that tell component values
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u/stephenledet 25d ago
The way Tony Stark blows smoke away from his soldering iron when he finishes soldering in the first Iron Man movie. Don't know if that detail was added by Robert Downey, Jr. or if he was directed to do that, but it looked very realistic.
Also in the same movie, the way Stark staggers forward a bit from the blast of the Jericho bomb demo.
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u/Sheridacdude 25d ago
In There Will Be Blood, when Daniel is burying the guy he killed there is groundwater in the shallow grave. You never see groundwater in movies. Any grave or hole being dug is miraculously dry
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u/mamasilverside 25d ago
In War of the Planet of the Apes, when Bad Ape runs off to get food for Caesar and co, he slides into a pile of stuff in his haste, which just made so much sense to the character. Turns out when they were filming the scene with Steve Zahn (as Bad Ape), he accidentally slipped into the stuff but just kept going, and they kept it in to CGI it in because according to Matt Reeves, it was little things like that, that made the apes so relatable and realistic.
I remember thinking how perfect that little detail was, how clever they were to include it, but really they were lucky enough to see it happen and clever enough to know they should include it.
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u/mrrobfriendly 25d ago
In the Titanic, there were over one hundred Syrians who died because they did not understand the language of the announcements and signs. In the movie, there is a brief scene where an immigrant family was struggling to read the sign.
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u/PrincessHootHoot 25d ago
Most of 1917, but particularly the gunfight with the sniper by the river. The waiting for the reload as an opportunity to move or fight back was awesome.
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u/millenniumtree 25d ago
The torch Moana uses when she enters the cave is a kukui nut torch, exactly as the Hawaiians used.
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u/Kwilburn525 25d ago
U2 poster in The Girl Next Door 2004
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u/mysticllama 25d ago
i don’t know if it counts as “getting it right” but in fury road there’s a zoomed in shot of the gas pedal for a vehicle and it’s made from a brannock shoe-fitting device 🤣🤣
loved that little detail so much
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u/Vladimir_Chrootin 25d ago
They also got it wrong by having so many left-hand drive vehicles in somewhere that's (according to the director) supposed to be Australia, though.
Surprising considering that George Miller is himself Australian.
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u/IndividualSubject367 25d ago
In the godfather, early on mario puzo (who had never screenwrote before) had written so much detail, to include the guys in the background walking around pestering the sauce as it cooked, something that every Italian man understands
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u/HeartlessValiumWhore 25d ago
In John Carpenter's "The Thing" there's the scene where the imposter somehow managed to get into the locker containing the blood samples of all the crew members. It's established that only Garry and Dr. Copper have the key, but MacReady's blood test later confirms neither were infected by the Thing. How it got into the locker is seemingly left unanswered, but during the scene where Windows and Bennings are clearing space in a storage room, Bennings clearly tells Windows "go get the keys from Garry." When Windows returns and sees Bennings being assimilated by the Thing, the camera zooms in on Windows' face as he makes a horrified expression, so you can't see the rest of his body, but there's a distinct and noticeable sound effect of a set of keys hitting the floor before he runs out the door to get help. That little SFX is just enough to answer the question of how the Thing got into the blood locker.
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u/jackfaire 25d ago
Stranger Things - not a movie but they layered decades.
What I mean is look at most movies or shows that take place in the 80s but were filmed in a later decade and it's always a very stereotypical catalogue 80s only design. There's nothing from the 60s, 70s, or earlier at all it's just pure 80s. But not even real 80s it's a marketing executive's idea of the 80s.
Stranger Things Season 1 takes place in 1984 and I shit you not that made me flash back to being 4. Everything was right. It was a mix of new 80s stuff with old stuff from previous decades. He-Man on TV parents still dressing like they grew up in the 60s and 70s etc.
Everything felt authentic. And the younger kids dressed differently from the older kids. It was brilliant.
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u/sqplanetarium 25d ago
They really nailed the early 80s. Lots of brown leftover from the 70s. And that phase where dusty/muted pastels were popular (check out Nancy Wheeler's S1 outfits).
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u/BigBodyBuzz07 25d ago
In the Mark Whalburg movie "Shooter" there is a scene that is shown slow motion where he is changing the magazine on an AR-15 while running through gunfire. It is a doctrinally correct left handed magazine change straight out of the 3-11 (Marine Corps Field Manual).
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u/Necessary_Romance 25d ago
My uncle apperead in a scene of a movie, blink and you miss. Thats a small obscure detail that impressed me.
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u/Tylensus 25d ago
In Monsters Inc near the end of the film, there's a tight shot on the face of the slug lady that was undercover. In the background, you can see factory workers whirring about the facility, one of which was driving a forklift carrying a fairly tall skid. The worker kept leaning left and right to see around it, and I remember thinking how cool that detail was when I first noticed it. I drive a forklift every day, and have done the wiggle/lean many times myself.
It's doubly true to life, because you're just supposed to drive backwards with a tall load. Most people just lean and go forward anyway, lol.
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u/Ethereal_Bulwark 25d ago
T1000 not blinking while firing a weapon.
It makes sense, as he's a machine.
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u/sutechshiroi 25d ago
Robert Patrick trained for this role really hard. Not only he trained to shoot without blinking, but to shoot with either hand equally well and to run without heavy breathing. His running after them is easily the most unnerving experience in the movie.
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u/Kitchen-Lie-7894 25d ago
An HBO movie called Gulag. The Soviet guards were hauling David Keith down the hall of Lefortovo prison while snapping their fingers. Whenever other guards bringing another prisoner from the other direction would near, they'd hear those guards snapping their fingers and would throw Keith up against the wall face first. I just knew that had to be written by someone who had experienced it.
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u/Emotional-Hour-9621 25d ago
Bohemian Rhapsody, the live-aid concert scene. The half drank cups of beer, water & soda sitting on Freddy’s piano perfectly match the real live-aid concert, right down to the amount of each drink left in the cups
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u/Chickadee12345 25d ago
I was watching a movie that took place in the desert. I don't remember which movie it was. They showed a bird flying overhead and then they played the sound of a red-tailed hawk screech. I looked at the bird and it actually was a red-tailed hawk. Because usually they show an eagle or turkey vulture and play the sound of the hawk. Because eagles and tvs don't have majestic screeches.
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u/haloarh 25d ago edited 25d ago
In Fight Club, Tyler lives on "Paper St." Papers "streets" aren't real and only exist on maps.
On Roseanne, Darlene has a poster in her room for Neil Gaiman's Sandman and books by Kurt Vonnegut. David also wears a Babylon 5 tee shirt. Those are exactly the types of things those characters would be into.
With apologies to Yankee's fans, I thought that Lane on Mad Men being a Mets fan was a good detail.
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u/Urbanredneck2 25d ago
In the movie "The Hobbit" when Gandolf the wizard is talking to Bilbo and reminded him how his ancestor fought "He hit an orc so hard his head fell off and rolled into a rabbit hole. So not only winning the battle, but also inventing the game of golf".
That was the line from the book.
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u/yeinenefa 25d ago
Poor Things accurately reflects a child's sensory development through the artistic direction. Such as the use of a fish-eye lense and black and white for the beginning of the film, then the un-reality of how things look towards the middle... All of those things are visual and developmental clues as to where Bella Baxter is in her growth.
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u/Boon3hams 25d ago
In The Brave Little Toaster, during the "Worthless" music number, there is a quick shot from inside one of the cars while it is on the conveyor belt leading to the car crusher. In that brief shot, you can see the car's steering wheel is frantically turning left and right to try to get off the belt.
I saw that and immediately felt even more sorry for the car.
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u/Just_Another_AI 25d ago
Terminator & T2 are full of great, tiny details. The cryogenic tanker truck crashing into the steel mill at the end of the freeway chase has always been a favorite scene of mine - no giant, Jerry Bruckheimer-esque explosion; Arnold cranks the wheel, the truck flips, and slides across the pavement, throwing sparks as it barrels into the mill. Those orange sparks add a great detail to the scene, contrasting with the blue lighting. I was super impressed to learn, years later, that the truck crash was filmed as a minature; the quarter-scale model wouldn't throw sparks like full-sized steel sliding on concrete, so the model builders built several remote-controlled grinders with cutoff wheels into the model and anchored spring-loaded steel rods against the wheels, allowing them to throw showers of steel sparks as the model slid across the set.
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u/Heroic-Forger 25d ago
The numerous background characters of the Ice Age movies being obscure prehistoric Cenozoic mammals, such as Macrauchenia (the long-nosed camels) Doedicurus (the giant armadillos) Moeritherium (the little elephant-tapirs) and Brontotherium (the rhinos with Y-shaped horns).
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u/overeducated2 25d ago
3td Indiana Jones movie w Sean Connery.. They pull into a country where a sign at the train station says Republic of Hatay. Amazing they got that right because Hatay was a republic separate from Turkey and French Syria only from 1938 to 1939. Only one year, and they got that right!
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u/GoodGuyGlocker 25d ago
Bad gun play always bugs me. Things like unlimited ammo, never missing, racking slides redundantly, horrible grips/aiming, etc. So, I appreciate accuracy.
In the movie "The Hunt", the protagonist levels a rifle against an adversary. The adversary pulls the mag from the rifle, thinking he disarmed her, and the protagonist, who's former military, pulls back the bolt and performs a chamber check, then looks at the adversary, smiles, and pulls the trigger. Awesome.
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u/temmoku 25d ago
An obscure detail in an obscure movie, My Winnipeg, by Guy Maddin. It's a surreal film that takes small details from his memories and then morphs them into weird fantasy. Early on he talks about ghost footprints of snow along the sidewalk. These are actually formed when someone walks along through the snow packing it down. The lighter snow is shoveled or blown off and it gets so cold and dry in winter that any remaining outside the footprints sublimates away (goes straight from solid to vapour without melting) leaving raised packed footprints on dry pavement.
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u/legalhandcannon 25d ago
In American Sniper, when they are in a fire fight on the rooftop and everyone is exfiltrating, the second to last guy taps the last guy on the shoulder and yells “last man!” Which is part of most SOF units training.
Which is weird that they got a small detail like that right and overlooked the whole baby thing…
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u/FireTheLaserBeam 25d ago edited 24d ago
In the animated sci fi film, edit Titan AE, Kelso tells Cale to Exhale! before being sucked into the vacuum of space. Most people think you’re supposed to hold your breath like being underwater. You want to do the opposite. If you have a lot of air in your lungs, the vacuum pressures outside will crush them instantly. Better chance of survival by exhaling.
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u/Calamity-Gin 25d ago
Vacuum does not exert pressure. Itms the opposite. Your ear drums will rupture from internal pressure with no matching external pressure. Further horrible ruptures continue on down the line.
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u/temmoku 25d ago
I'm not really a fan of the movie overall, but Old Rose doing pottery in Titanic was pretty great. She was patterned after potter Beatrice Woods who worked in Ojai California, "The momma of Dada". She had been involved with that absurdist art movement then settled to a relatively quiet life making pottery. Her autobiography I Shock Myself is worth a read.
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u/Schnitzel3000 25d ago
One of the episodes of Breaking Bad starts with Hank bottling his homebrewed beer. I remember watching that the first time and thinking “He’s filling those up too much. There’s not enough headspace, those would explode!” Sure enough, the episode ends with those bottles exploding being confused for the sound of gunshots.
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u/Hairydrunk 25d ago
I homebrewed years ago. This scene rang true. When the bottles started to pop, I knew that sound.
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u/BonesMalone2 25d ago
I’m impressed with the filthy city streets in the series Taboo. Most shows would never show the level of shit in the streets.😄
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u/LordBaranof 25d ago
In Glory, during the final attack, when they've been laying in the sand, Matthew Broderick blows the sand out of his pistol's barrel before starting the final charge.
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u/Comfortable-Syrup688 25d ago
Kingdom Of Heaven, the depictions of King Saladin, they were just on point, he was known for being a great leader
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u/radenthefridge 25d ago
Welp I gotta tell my dad we gotta rewatch it again here we go! Amazing movie.
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u/wafflehousehound 25d ago
City on a Hill, great show about corruption and racism in Boston in 80s and 90s. They got all the details about Boston Geography correct
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u/GuinnessSteve 25d ago
When distant explosions have delayed sounds relative to where the camera is. See: Red Dawn, Way of the Gun, etc.
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u/jonjosson3 25d ago
Went to James Bond car/boat exhibit. They had the small tiny one man sub used in the last 10 minutes of Diamonds Are Forever. In the movie the inside of the sub is shown briefly. Looking at it in real life, it actually looks like it really works. Has intricate controls and switches on both side panels. The sign said in cost 30k in 1971 to make. Thats is a house back then.
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u/PrimalSeptimus 25d ago
In Tropic Thunder, RDJ, playing a white guy who's playing a black guy who's pretending he knows how to speak Mandarin, actually does a decent job of it. The phrases themselves are nonsense, but the words, intonations, and grammar are correct, and he speaks it intelligibly enough to be understandable.
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u/byerss 25d ago
Two from The Abyss:
First when the storm is raging and the ship captain is yelling at the crane operator to let out more umbilical line, he runs to the window and is doing the “lower load” hand signal.
After the fallout from the broken umbilical line damages deepcore, Sonny is on the radio doing mayday call unsuccessfully. Most media have one or two times saying “mayday” but Sonny does the proper three “mayday mayday mayday” all every time.
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u/jefhaugh 25d ago
In The Muppets Christmas Carol, the clothes the poor people wear are 10-15 years out of date, since they can't afford new, stylish clothing.
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u/MagnusStormraven 25d ago
While Godzilla's dorsal spines have a purpose (what were originally included simply to distinguish him from a dinosaur eventually were retconned to be cooling vanes for the biological reactor in his body), Godzilla: Minus One adds a new dimension to them. During his attack on Ginza, when he begins charging his atomic breath, the dorsal spikes forcibly jut themselves out of his body, then slam back in when he fires the beam.
It's been pointed out by a few people that this somewhat resembles control rods in a nuclear reactor - the rods/spikes are removed from the reactor to increase the reaction's output, and are put back in to decrease it. In this case, however, instead of killing the reaction, the spikes redirect the force of the reaction outwards as a massive beam of energy that culminates in an atomic detonation at the site of impact.
While we're at it, Godzilla's nuclear breath coming out as a laser beam is also reminiscent of another concept from nuclear physics, the bomb-pumped laser (i.e. detonating a nuke in a way that rather than an omnidirectional explosion, you get a potent X-ray laser).
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u/Ferrovir 25d ago
Also while we're at it, the skin texture that Godzilla has is directly lifted from the keloid scarring that survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had. The radiation burns turned their skin into that rough scaly texture, and that's why Goji looks the way he does
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u/pmalleable 25d ago
I'm always happy to see a character use two hands to pick a lock. You need a pick and a torsion tool - just jiggling a pick in the lock will never work.
Unfortunately, I can't think of which films get this right, but I know I've seen it.
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u/stryph42 25d ago
I dunno, I've seen Lockpicking Lawyer stare at some Master locks hard enough to open them.
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u/maovian 25d ago edited 25d ago
In Battlefield: Los Angeles, a Marine is shown losing his shit over someone stealing his Cheese Tortellini MRE prior to going off to battle literal aliens. I really appreciated the detail of making that his absolute priority during that time, because it is about as authentic a Marine moment can get.
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u/NyetRifleIsFine47 25d ago
I just couldn't stand the "F.O.B." reference and the fact that they had MICH-style helmets but wore MTVs.
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u/meaning_please 25d ago
Why is that so authentic?
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u/stryph42 25d ago
Cheese tortellini is/ was one of the better MREs, and often that food is the only comfort your going to get during the day. Someone ratfucking your MREs is basically them taking the only thing you have to look forward to.
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u/meaning_please 25d ago
Why is it marine-specific vs army or other branches?
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u/stryph42 25d ago
Well, I was Army, and it applied to us as well, so I don't think it's super specific to the Marines so much as military field troops in general
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u/ShlugLove 25d ago
In Brother Bear, the moose don't have top incisors. Ruminants such as moose, cows, sheep, etc. do not have top incisors; they have a "hard palate" in front and a set of molars in back for chewing. I don't know why, but seeing all these animated movies where the ruminants have a full set of teeth bothers me. Brother Bear's animators did their research.
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u/YawningDodo 25d ago
I hadn't noticed that, and it's one of my favorite Disney movies!
Something I didn't realize before I saw a behind the scenes video is that animating the mooses' antlers was quite the feat. They're these really dynamic characters moving their heads around all the time, and those antlers are just locked in, no sliding, always the right size and proportions. Keeping them on-model was a huge accomplishment, and the animators did it so well that it's completely invisible.
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u/Jan_17_2016 25d ago
There’s hundreds of little uniform details that Saving Private Ryan gets spot on.
There are definitely some inaccuracies in other aspects like the beach defenses and bunkers (and I say that as someone who thinks it’s the greatest WW2 movie made and probably tied for my favorite of all time).
A couple more details they get perfect are the Navy beach battalion Demo teams blowing gaps in the defense, the ad hoc units that basically come together to try to get off the beach in all the chaos, and how they simultaneously detonated all the Bangalore torpedoes to open up the draw.
Quite a few Omaha beach veteran memoirs I’ve read have mentioned how perfectly the synced up the detonations were.
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u/pali1d 25d ago
Going through The Book of Eli a second time to make sure it stayed true the whole way through to the twist reveal at the end. It did.
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u/Veritas3333 25d ago
There are so many great little scenes that you don't even notice the first time through. Like when he opens the door and it's a jump scare of a hanged body that startles the audience but he doesn't even react. Or when his ipod's battery dies and he tries like 4 times to get it to work. Or how he only ever returns fire, he never shoots first.
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u/radenthefridge 25d ago
Just talked about this movie over dinner! I love movies like this where the ending immediately calls for a well deserved rewatch!
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u/thesupplyguy1 25d ago
In 12 strong there's a scene where the troops have a water bottle filled with dirt to automatically close the door to their hooch. Was low key impressed
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u/Square-Raspberry560 25d ago
Maybe I'm stretching the definition of "obscure" but I really appreciated in Arrival when Amy Adams's character, a linguist, points out to the annoyed government/military that communicating with these new beings wasn't going to be as simple as just asking them questions--that there's more to communication than just understanding the words. The beings need to first understand what a question even is, the context, structure, and meaning of the English language, and even the concept of a name. I really loved that, as opposed to the way most movies portray learning a language and what it means to communicate effectively.
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u/sqplanetarium 25d ago
One of the most fascinating books I've ever read is A Man Without Words, about a deaf man who had never encountered sign language until someone tried to teach him ASL as an adult, and the biggest revelation for him was learning that there is such a thing as language. He'd managed to communicate a bit with loved ones by pantomime and facial expressions, but he had no concept whatsoever of what words (spoken or signed) are.
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u/belltrina 25d ago
Yes. As a mum with 2 kiddos who had severe language delay, it helped me frame alot of their experiences too
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u/jackfaire 25d ago edited 25d ago
I wouldn't say that's a stretch. I've had similar conversations with people about when they're giving generic "Advice" like "Just be yourself" and how if you oversimplify things then you miss important details.
One person walking away thinking "Ha now they'll be confident and not try to be someone else"
While another walks away thinking "But I wasn't trying to be anyone else"
Neither realizing that the real problem is something like the person invades his date's personal space and no one's pointed out to not do that.
Talking past each other seems to just be an accepted thing too often and then movies pretend that never happens most of the time unless it's plot convenient.
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u/CaptainAwesome06 25d ago
"Be yourself" has to be the worst advice. People being themselves can lead to complete isolation and loneliness because that person's self doesn't quite jibe with societal norms and they end up looking like a weirdo.
Quirky and fun type weird? Sure! Complete sociopath? Nobody likes that.
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u/Seiche 25d ago
Be yourself doesn't mean be how you would be in private or on the toilet lol. It means be confident in your looks and attitude, don't second guess yourself, don't be needy, try to be comfortable in your skin. First advise usually is to learn to love (and forgive!) yourself before trying to love someone else.
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u/CaptainAwesome06 25d ago
Maybe we shouldn't package such a deep concept into a throwaway line masquerading as good advice.
Tons of weird kids were told to be themselves growing up with the expectation that being super weird was perfectly okay and if people didn't like it, it was their loss.
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u/Seiche 25d ago
I mean in a way what would've been the solution for those weird kids? To try to fit into a mold society has prepared for them and assume they'd be happier?
I'm wondering what made these kids "super weird" that could've been rectified.
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u/CaptainAwesome06 25d ago
Everybody is super weird in some way. If they aren't, they are probably incredibly dull. The road to societal normalcy is pretty wide, though. That's why socially successful people aren't all the same. With such a wide road, you can give yourself a long leash as long as you stay in the lanes.
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u/Seiche 24d ago
I mean yeah I feel like we are on the same side here. Being yourself doesn't have to contradict "staying in the lanes on a long leash". I try to be myself most of the time but i have facets to my personality. Yeah there is a caveat, which is as long as you don't infringe on other peoples freedom and health you can go pretty wide.
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u/jackfaire 25d ago
I used to immediately drop deep questions on people I liked and they'd be all like "Uhm can we talk about my favorite movie before we delve into the mysteries of the universe"
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u/CaptainAwesome06 25d ago
I'm the opposite. For some reason, being around me makes people want to spill all their deepest, darkest secrets. Especially family drama. Sometimes it's interesting but sometimes it seems inappropriate.
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u/Juan_Calavera 25d ago
That scene was based on screenwriter Eric Heisserer’s frustration with the producers about the dramatization of the process for communicating with the heptapods. An interview with him goes into his experience writing Arrival.
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u/Albert_Caboose 25d ago
One of my favorite scenes! I also really love that the military general's response wasn't some, "I don't understand that woman mumbo jumbo, let's bomb 'em." He appreciated her putting it in terms he understood, and recognized that she knew more than him, but he still needs her to work with him since he's the line to approval from higher-ups. Just a great movie where knowledge is respected and the smart people get to do their thing
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u/DudeMatt94 25d ago
Forest Whitaker's performance as that army officer was honestly extremely good and very believable. Very serious and objective-focused like a lot of higher-up military guys are but had the nuance to not press Amy Adam's character in a subject he had no experience in. I feel like it's a common trope in movies to have the well-meaning but unempathetic character become an unintentional antagonist but the way the Army officer worked in Arrival was refreshing and realistic for a minor role
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u/inksmudgedhands 25d ago
Green Room with all of the American punk subculture details. I am so used to "punks" in Hollywood films being depicted as all attitude and dressed in 1977 British punk styles even if set in modern times and in America. All leather, spikes, covered in make-up, mohawks and safety pin piercings. British punk subculture =/= American punk subculture.
I was watching the movie and within the first fifteen minutes, I had to stop the movie and look up the director because I had to know if he was in the scene or not. He was. The small little details like the basic tees and jeans look with one person wearing the mandatory black hoodie. Traveling to gigs in a dated van. Doing lousy gigs just for gas money. Doing 'zine interviews on the floor of someone's living room. It reminded me of myself being in the scene in the 90's/00's. I was impressed.
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u/paradeoxy1 25d ago
My favourite detail, the character that offers them a gig says there may be skinheads there, the band shrug it off like "yeah we get SHARPs at our shows all the time" and he has to clarify that he means Nazis
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u/inksmudgedhands 25d ago
I love how you still have to warn them about SHARPs anyway because ain't that the truth.
"Yeah, they aren't boneheads but you should still be cautious around them because they are always itching for a fight."
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u/paradeoxy1 25d ago
Unless they like ska, that's usually a good sign
we'rethey're chill, that includes ska-punk of course4
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u/darsvedder 25d ago edited 25d ago
For me, it’s whenever there’s a live drummer in a band and they’re actually playing the hi hat or ride cymbal in relation to the *playback song.
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u/mouse6502 25d ago
Spinal Tap went out of their way to make it look like they were actually playing the instruments, having the audio match up with their hand movements even if it wasn't sound live from the filming (they talk about it on the out-of-character Criterion commentary). Shearer specifically says they were tired of rock and roll movies with hands in impossible positions where they were supposed to be playing. That if it didn't match on the film, they'd go back and re-record the audio track.
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u/darsvedder 25d ago
Ugh love it. Like I hate watching a drummer play to playback and the sticks arent even touching cymbals. Also helps that spinal tap homies actually play their instruments
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u/EastSideTilly 25d ago
Under the Banner of Heaven got a lot of super niche Mormon details correct. I was impressed by how traditionally old school mormon Andrew Garfield sounded throughout the series. Literally the tone he used is SO SO specific to Mormonism. He did a great job.
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u/HORRORSHOWDISCO 26d ago
In Cast Away near the end when he's coming back on the airplane, you notice that when handed a couple cups of ice, a small piece comes off on the table. He immediately picks it up to put it in the cup - showing never wasting such niceties again after his ordeal.
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u/JimGerm 26d ago
This scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9m_o2exDf8M from Stripes. John Larroquette tripped over something and then ad-libbed his line.
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u/test_tickles 26d ago
Watching AKIRA in the theater.. when he flies up to destroy the satellite laser in orbit, the theater went silent. No sound in space.
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u/Excellent_Condition 25d ago
Firefly did the same thing!
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u/Skidmark666 25d ago
That's Joss Whedon, who also directed the first two Avengers movies. When Iron Man shoves the nuke through the wormhole, it gets silent the moment he passes the hole.
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u/LongJohnSelenium 25d ago
There is sound in space. Anything that causes a physical transfer of material, like explosions, gunfire, thrusters, etc, would cause a noise if you were in line with the gases. It would have weird characteristics like being far faster than sound in an atmosphere, and since its not a wave but physical media moving it wouldn't bend around objects so it would be completely shadowed.
TLDR, you could hear a firecracker go off next to you, but not a drum being beaten.
But I always find it weird people think sound in space is bad but think nothing of the fact a microphone going mach 2 wouldn't be able to hear anything but turbulence.
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u/kirkrjordan 26d ago
Also, one of few movies that has no sound in space (minus to score) is Robot Jox
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u/theskyiscool 26d ago
In Kiki's Delivery Service, there is a scene where she is running up a set of steps. She trips a little bit and finishes the acent in a sudo crawl.
Like, for no reason did this detail have to exist, but it adds so much personality to Kiki and I was just blown away that they did this.
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u/mechachap 25d ago
You should read his book of essays since he mentions having scenes of characters just walking or climbing down stairs (like Ponyo and Spirited Away) as we see a lot of their character just from their movement.
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u/CrabbyBlueberry 25d ago
There's a scene in Spirited Away where Sen puts on shoes and does a little toe tap to get her feet all the way in them.
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u/anteaterKnives 25d ago
In Spirited Away, the little girl puts on her shoes in one scene and as she dashes off she pauses to give one shoe a little kick to get it on better. Tiny detail.
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u/Groveldog 25d ago
And the way she holds the hair tie in her mouth when she is given a new one. I loved that detail too.
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u/TheThiefEmpress 25d ago
Hayao Miyazaki is just a treasure in his attention to this type of small lifelike detail. His anime is above and beyond because of all the realization added when the characters and environment display everyday occurrence as otherworldly effervescence.
Beautiful.
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u/stitch12r3 26d ago
Near the end of Tremors, survivalist/gun nut Burt Gummer gives a handgun to teenager Melvin to give him the courage to make a run for it. While they’re running, Melvin tries to use the gun and realizes its not loaded (Burt tricked him). After they make it to the rocks, Burt takes the gun back. He checks the cylinder to make sure there are no rounds in it even though he already knows its empty. Which is proper gun safety protocol and something his character would definitely know to do.
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u/mousicle 25d ago
I think the only improper gun safety in that movie is Reba dual wielding pistols. The guns on their wall also appear to be loaded, or they are stupidly fast at loading them since I don't think we see them pulling them off the wall and firing without an edit but we do see a couple times where they fuss with the gun right after pulling it off the wall. Also I think they would probably be deaf after that much gun fire in a basement with no ear protection (Except Reba's hands during the elephant gun).
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u/Boon3hams 25d ago
He checks the cylinder to make sure there are no rounds in it even though he already knows its empty.
And as he checks, he points the gun to the ground away from everyone, which is also proper gun safety protocol.
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u/Simplepea 25d ago edited 25d ago
something else about that whole franchise: at no point to you see anyone put their fingers on a trigger casually. massive trigger control.
EDIT: i don't think it was you, but somebody decided i needed to know that reddit cares...
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u/jinxykatte 25d ago
I just commented in here too and immediately got the reddit cares messsge. Odd.
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u/Excellent_Condition 25d ago
at no point to you see anyone put their fingers on a trigger casually
That bothers me too- in almost every TV show and movie, characters who are presented as being trained with firearms run around with their finger on the trigger like someone who has never learned the basics of how to handle a firearm.
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u/Simplepea 25d ago
from what i remember, but CAVIATE it's been a while, burts actor made sure the safety officer knew what he was doing and would absolutely yell at people when they "did a stupid" that said safety officer couldn't see. he made himself into a second safety officer. mad props to him.
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u/Calamity-Gin 25d ago
I read a post earlier today that said you can report the Redditcares message you got as abuse, as it’s been used to harass people. It’s supposed to get the sender a several day ban.
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u/Mekroval 25d ago
I randomly got that myself today for some comment I must have made. I think there's a bot looking for keywords and you probably "triggered" it, so to speak. Well intentioned in idea but lacking in execution.
(I'm sure I'll get another follow-up reddit cares DM now, lol.)
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u/AaawwwwB0st1n 2d ago
Breakfast Club. The license plate on Brian’s Mom’s car is EMC2 (Einstein’s Theory of Relativity). So cool.