The Most Annoying Scene In The Action Movie
May 16, 2011 13 Comments
We’ve all encountered this scene a million times in movies/TV:
Guy: I’ve got to go do the thing.
Girl: Please don’t go! It’s so dangerous and when you walk out that door I don’t know whether you’re coming back in!
Guy: But it’s got to be done. And it’s my job.
Girl: Okay, fine, just go. But I can’t promise I’ll be here when you get back.
Most recently seen on Justified as Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant) makes his way back to Harlan County to…well it doesn’t really matter.
The point is, two questions spring to mind here. 1. Why is this scene so fricking annoying?, and 2. given that it’s so fricking annoying, why do scriptwriters keep on copy/pasting it into their plots?
These facts are usually present. 1. The thing the guy is going to do, that’s basically all he does. It’s not just his job, it’s his existence and the only thing he’s good at. 2. It’s also very important, i.e. the right thing to do (the girl always doesn’t care). 3. Crucially, the fact that the guy is the type of guy who does these things is, presumably, prominent among what attracts the girl to the guy. In other words, for the girl to ask the guy not to go get the bad guys is hypocritical and self-defeating; that’s the only reasons she’s with him, and if he ever stopped being that type of guy, she’d probably dump him.
So the only real effect of the ‘Don’t Go Do Your Job’ scene is to make the chick a damn nuisance that you want offscreen ASAP so you can get back to the interesting stuff.
So why even include it? Theories.
- Scriptwriters (being mostly guys, and disproportionately gay guys) don’t know anything about women. So, they don’t know what motivates them, what their interests are, what they would or might actually say in a given situation. So, they rely on tropes such as Don’t You Walk Out That Door.
- Relatedly: Scriptwriters are all misogynists who hate women and genuinely think a perennial, selfish, and stupid ‘don’t do your job’ stance is all that they are capable of or can add to the plot.
- Once the hero gets the attractive girlfriend/wife, scriptwriters feel they are boxed in (what bad can happen now?) and need to sprinkle drama in there to keep things interesting. So the girl inexplicably trying to prevent the guy from doing his job because it’s ‘dangerous’ – that’s the best they can think of.
You know what my favorite part of the entire Rocky series was?
Adrian: There’s one thing I want you to do for me.
Rocky Balboa: What’s that?
Adrian: Win…
Adrian: Win!
Damn that was good. In light of the above, it was even a bit groundbreaking. Sadly.
Agreed re: the annoyance of that scene and the greatness of the Rocky (II?) line – even though it seemed rather contrived.
My least favorite scenes are many, mostly from popular gun movies, e.g. Lethal Weapon 206 (or whatever). ‘Cop killer’ bullets will penetrate a skip loader scoop, but not two layered ballistic vests. Not only are the writers inexperienced with women, they never took a Physics class. Or shot a gun.
There is no such thing as a human “scriptwriter.” Long ago in a lab in Fresno they perfected the Scriptwriter Mark II, a specialized computer that does nothing but combine and recombine every single cliché and hackneyed trope from every movie ever made, and then spit out scripts, which are then made into the product we know as the “Hollywood movies.” Those people wandering around Southern California claiming to be scriptwriters looking for a break are actually actors hired out by the studios, because it was decided that it would simply be better for business if consumers of film were allowed to think that the movies are still written the old-fashioned way, by real people. The mystery of why movies are so formulaic and seem to be the same movie made over and over with slightly different camera angles and cars in the background actually keeps people interested in the movies, and gets enough people going to each new release in the hopes that “this time it will be different.”
Anyway, I forget what pill I was supposed to take. Was it the red one or the blue one?
4. Every other movie has that scene and if you fail to include it and the movie bombs some studio exec will ensure you never work again by asking “why didn’t you include the ‘don’t walk out that door’ scene? Everyone knows that you have to put that scene in an action movie.” whereas if you fail while making the exact same movie as everyone else, no one gets blamed.
I remember noticing this over thirty years ago. Burt Reynolds made a film about a bubble gum chewing stuntman called “Hooper” and Sally Fields’ character told him, “I won’t be here when you get back.”
Some of what you’re seeing is just classic “straight man.” As in: Lou Costello is not a foil that shows But Abbott’s crankiness; Abbott is a foil that shows Costello’s kookiness. So this is the way it’s supposed to work, really. They aren’t trying to define her character, they’re trying to define his. If they were trying to define her character this way, I think everyone would understand this is stupid and silly and they wouldn’t do it.
One other point that might be raised in defense is that there is an element of truth to this. A young, available woman’s instincts generally seem to compel her toward a two-step monty of selecting, targeting and “winning” the male who is most out-of-control, and then bringing him into (her) control. Hooking up with James Dean and then morphing him into Dagwood Bumstead. I’ve always thought of this as an evolved trait: Select the genetic stock that will produce the strongest offspring, and build a home with it. I seem to recall Chris Tucker doing a comedy routine about women asserting control over men in very subtle ways, he said it starts with “Are you wearing that today?” and the guy sheepishly replies “uh, no, this is just something I was throwing on to…uh…bring in the mail. Or take the garbage out. I’m going to change out of this just as soon as I get that done, baby.” And then that’s it. Once she’s deciding what you wear, there isn’t anything else. What are you deciding for yourself, if she’s dressing you?
Goldeneye did it right. Izabella Scorupco glides out to the beach in a white bikini (hair perfectly dry) to give Pierce Brosnan a thorough scolding about being a British Secret Service agent who kills people for a living, knowing full well that’s what he is and that’s what he does. And, apparently, having met him just ten hours earlier. It’s a pretty stupid scene, but it adds balance because hey, we’ve been defining the character by showing him do this stuff for oh, 37 years by then…might as well add some post-cold-war psychoanalysis to the mix. So that works, kinda, mostly because Izabella looks amazing. The Hooper scene kind of doesn’t.
I’m playing Devil’s Advocate here. I’m mostly in your corner on this. The “I won’t be here when you get back” trope is a close cousin to my absolute most-detested pet peeve, “I’m coming with you, no you’re not, yes I am no you’re not yes I am.“
lol Andreea,
and Morgan, I only read the first part of your message (am kind of sleepy) but it seems spot-on.
Also, every one of us likes to be thought of as brave. I still remember being proud of myself for daring to do this or that (ordering real Czech food in Prague – not for the faint of heart) or, well, I forget. And if they’d have a man saying to another man “that’s very brave of you”, well, that’d sound either gay or codescending.. having a woman cry out ‘oh don;t do it’ makes the man seem even braver than he is, it calls out to our instincts that often like to see
a: the woman as protector
b: the man (an extension of us. for example, I remember telling a gf once that she cannot make light of bruce willis’ problems in Die Hard for she maketh light of my predicament – I so very much identified with him, you see) impressing the living daylights out of the woman
c: the man impressing other men (he has a woman and he’s brave and so very determined and he will follow his manly instincts despite anything, despite love-interest.. for that is what being a man is all about. I was with a female friend when I ordered that blood sausage in prague and all sorts of other obscene and foul tasting stuff and I still recall her ‘you r so brave’ look, even when I couldn’t eat the stuff (but I did have a few horrible bites of each and every thing – I challenge u to do the same).
And there’s the time I went out into the garden even though there were some bees there. If only there’d been a woman (a beautiful one preferably) saying “ohh please don’t!!!”
Thinking about this some more…
There are other examples besides Adrian/Rocky where this is not done, and they seem to make a bigger impression on us. Two others that come to mind are: Death Star attacks in Star Wars…they’ve got one girl in the whole trilogy, and she never says anything like “oh no please don’t go.”
And the unforgettable line in 300. “Come back with your shield, or on it.” Whoa. You have to stop and think about that for just a second…the ramifications…
“I’m going out into the garden to water the plants.”
“But– but there could be bees there! The roses are blooming! Don’t go! It’s not worth it!”
“…”
“If you go out that door, I won’t be here when you get back!”
“…”
“I mean it!”
“Honey, did you forget to take your medication today?”
Morgan probably listed this in his “never do any of this again in a movie” post, but I always quirked an eyebrow at two verbal tics above all others:
1. Don’t do it! He’s/It’s not worth it!
Well, why not? You saying I shouldn’t plug this evil f*k*r? Why?
1B. If you do you’ll be JUST LIKE HIM/IT/THEM!
If that’s all you got, I’m doing it. You wait outside cringing on top of a chair, I’ll swat the bug, and then we’ll go for a beer.
2. We’re not that different, you and I…
I have written a scene in a story where the hero just laughs at the villain for trying this line on him. It’s moronic and it betrays most modern writers’ inability to even identify heroism and nobility, much less convincingly bring it to life in one of their carbon-copy protagonists. Just because THEY can’t tell the difference, doesn’t mean the audience can’t, nor that there really isn’t one.
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Y’know, maybe we’re looking at it all wrong; perhaps it’s just the ultimate shit test, and the hero passes.
The screenwriters may not consciously know about game, per se, but they do know what makes an alpha an alpha, even if not the terminology and the abstract theory behind it all. It is a bit of relationship drama, yes, but it establishes what sort of stuff the hero is made of; even though it may cost him the silly chick, he’ll do the right thing, anyway. Because that’s what a man should do.
I think you’re right; that’s the intent, anyway.
Now have you got a similarly cogent explanation for “[You know,] [I think] I’m/we’re [getting] too old for this [shit]” (#39)? That’s been worn down to a frazzle more than anything else I daresay…and I have strong doubts that even the scriptwriters themselves understand what is supposed to be communicated here…
Yeah; I dunno. That cliche is annoying, and I don’t know why it persists.
Interesting you mention Adrian/Rocky, considering she busts out the most egregious example of this in Rocky 4, screaming at Rocky “YOU CAN’T WIN!!” as he’s about to fly to the god-damned USSR to fight Drago. Thanks for the support, sweetheart. I’m only going around the world to fight a roided-up murder machine that earlier killed my best friends with his fists. No big deal.