Hello, the Internet,
and welcome to another episode of The Spit Take.
My name's Jack O' Brien,
I'm the editor-in-chief of Cracked
and like you I demand
that movies be uncompromisingly realistic
at all times, no matter what.
Not when dinosaurs or magic
or superpowers or space wars
or Games of Thrones are involved, obviously.
But there's this one logical leap
that's been bugging me since I was five
and watching Jaws for the hundredth time.
I'm talking about the useless, stubborn dipsh*t character
who only exists to manufacture plot for the hero.
Known as "straw men" for the life-size effigies
we all stuff with hay as teenagers
and practice our sexual maneuvers on -
*beep*
Known as "straw men" for the military-training dummies
who stand in for actual enemies
during military field exercises,
These characters behave in a way
that would never happen in real life
all in the name of moving the story forward.
I'm talking about straw men like...
And then we'll go to the title card...
Wait, so how do you guys get good at fingering?
In Die Hard 2, 'Die Harder',
Dennis Franz plays Carmine Lorenzo,
The pant-crappingly incompetent
chief of police of Dulles International Airport.
John McClane happens to be at that airport
and happens to come across
some well-armed terrorists who he quickly dispatches.
He wants to inform Carmine
and start a formal investigation into the matter
and Carmine says,
"Good point, fellow law-enforcement official, let's get started."
Nah, just kidding.
He flips out,
throws McClane out of his office
and threatens to kick him out of his airport.
"Look, you are in my little pond now.
"And I am the big fish that runs it."
Nobody refers to themselves
as the big fish in a little pond.
That's right up there
with wondering aloud
if somebody might be compensating for something
for the sort of circumspect self-awareness
that angry men tend not to possess mid-tirade.
It's not like John McClane is some random punk.
He's an actual cop
and a really good one.
Carmine knows this because
he saw the first Die Hard like the rest of us.
But instead of saying,
"Hey, you're that hero cop from the news
"who's really good at being a cop!"
Or, "Hey! Even if you weren't a hero,
"I'd still listen to you
"because you're an experienced cop,"
Or, "Hey! Here's just a basic amount of respect
"I'd show anyone,"
he says:
"Oh, you think that LA badge
"is gonna get you a free lunch
"or something around here?"
MacClane: "No. Maybe a little professional curtesy."
"Ha! In an airport on Christmas week.
"You've gotta be kiddin'."
I mean, when you put it that way, yes.
Doubly yes, actually.
You should be nice and professional
with fellow cops all the time,
but now that you mention it,
yes, especially because it's Christmas.
Good point!
"Hey, MacCalane, don't start believing
"your own press.
"Yeah, yeah, I know all about
"you and that Nakatomi thing in LA.
"Well, just cause the TV thinks you're hot sh*t,
"that don't make it so."
So Carmine knows that MacClane
almost single-handedly
stopped major terrorist thieves in Los Angeles.
Which he seems to think
is some glorified pit stop
on the way from Sacramento to San Diego.
And not one of the biggest, most difficult
to police cities in the world.
"I'll send your f*cking captain in LA
"a f*cking commendation."
All of this is doubly insane
when you remember MacClane
isn't acting on a hunch.
He legitimately ran into bad guys
with special guns that won't get picked up
on metal detectors.
There's an actual threat
and all Carmine can say is,
"Los Angeles?"
Jerk-off motion, jerk-off motion, jerk-off motion.
It's worth noting,
that like any good straw man argument,
Carmine goes out of his way to ignore
some actually very good reasons
to mistrust MacClane.
The guy just shot someone he thinks is a terrorist
on the one-year anniversary
of the time he shot a bunch of terrorists.
Logic would dictate
that wouldn't happen
to one off-duty cop once,
let alone a second time on the anniversary
of the first time.
A rational person could be forgiven
for assuming MacClane's just suffering
from PTSD.
A single Christmas hasn't passed
without him accidentally running into terrorists
and being forced to kill one.
That's a great reason to distrust him,
maybe hold him for questioning.
"I got everybody from the Shriner's convention
" to the goddamn boy scouts
" traipsing through here.
"I got lost kids,
"lost dogs,
"Not now, later!
"I got international diplomats,
" I got a f*cking reindeer flying in here
"from the f*cking petting zoo!"
The fact that your airport
has boy scouts, Shriners,
and a reindeer passing through it
is not a great reason.
Or even a reason, really.
You're yada yada-ing
over what is at the very least manslaughter.
In order to kick the person
who did it out of your office
because you've got traveling Shriners to worry about?
Who gives a shit if Shriners are delayed?
It's also important to remember
that absolutely none of this is earned
We're not leaving out a scene in the beginning
where MacClane walks into his office and is like,
"Hey Carmine, fuck you, fuck planes,
"LAX is a better airport,
"I don't respect your authority,
"I'm from Hollyweird
"and you can suck my dick!"
He shows up to help
and Carmine immediately decides
to make MacClane's job
of stopping the terrorists
just a little bit
Harder.
But it's all worth it
so MacClane can get off this sick burn.
"Hey Carmine, let me ask you something.
"What sets off the metal detectors first,
"the lead in your ass
" or the shit in your brains?"
Oh Snap!
That didn't make sense.
Mathew Modine's character in Dark Knight Rises,
acting commissioner Peter Foley
was more excited about catching Batman
than he was about catching actual criminals.
When he's not ignoring terrorists,
he's telling Joseph Gordon Levitt,
the only competent cop in the movie,
to shut the hell up.
"Someone get this hothead out of here."
His primary problem with Levitt
seems to be that he's a "hotshot".
Even though all evidence suggests
his definition of "hotshot"
is "one who does basic police work."
"John Dagget's body was just found in a dumpster
"an hour ago."
Thought you might want to know."
"Why?"
"Well, his name's all over these permits I just pulled
"to half the tunnels under Gotham.
"That's MTA maintenance,
"sewer construction, and other things."
"Where did you get to
"with the tunnel searches?"
"Remind me to tell detail
"to keep hotheads out."
But it's not clear
what they are looking for
in a Gotham police officer.
Because when Bane takes
the Gotham Stock Exchange hostage
and the police are called in,
Foley responds with this:
"They have direct access to the online trading desk!"
"I'm not risking my men for your money."
I'm not risking my men for your money?
But you're the police.
We need you to
from time to time,
put your men at risk
to stop crimes from happening.
I know, it sucks,
but that's the system.
You can't be against vigilantes
but for cops who pick and choose their cases.
You can't hold back the police
until just their money's at risk
We need them for
all crimes.
Ideally there'd be no crimes
but that's not our situation right now.
I'm starting to see
why this town needed a Batman.
To be honest,
the title of Strawman Supreme
could extend to almost everyone
in the first two Ghostbusters movies.
The general public's response
to the ghostbusters
can best be summed up
by the scene where they're forced to work
as birthday party clowns
for disrespectful kids
because everyone apparently forgot
they saved New York from ghost 9/11.
"Who ya gonna call?"
"He-Man! He-Man! He-Man!"
Today, we're gonna focus
on the king of all ungrateful dickheads,
Walter Pack, the EPA agent
who makes it his mission
to stop the Ghostbusters from busting.
Regardless of how good it makes one feel.
"Exactly what are you a doctor of, Mr. Venkman?"
"Oh, I have Phds in Parapsychology and Psychology.
"I see.
"And now, you catch ghosts."
That's Pack's first scene in the movie.
He meets Dr. Venkman for the first time,
finds out he has two Phds
and catches actual ghosts
and his conclusion is still,
"Nah, you ain't sh*t.
"I'll call you Mr. Venkman."
Will anything impress you, man?
Jesus, I'd hate to be that guy's kids.
"Yes, it's true.
"This man has no dick."
But maybe that won't be a problem.
And just to be clear,
this guy's objection has nothing to do
with the fact that he wants to investigate
the equipment the Ghostbusters were using
to see if it has any negative impacts on the environment,
which would be reasonable given his job.
His problem is that in his heart
he believes the ghosts are an elaborate hoax.
"Don't patronize me,
"I'm not grotesquely stupid, like the people you bilk!"
The Ghostbusters have been busting ghosts
all over the city and on TV
for at least weeks,
but he insists the Ghostbusters
are using scents and gases
and doing elaborate light shows.
"These men are consulate snowball artists.
"They use scents and nerve gases
"to induce hallucinations.
"People think they're seeing ghosts.
"And they call these bozos who conveniently show up
"to deal with the problem
"with a fake electronic light show."
Keep in mind it's 1984.
Real human being alive in 1984
were impressed with the special effects
in the movie Ghostbusters.
Because they were some
of the most advanced special effects
anyone had ever seen on film.
Where you've got the help of editing
and mirrors and colored pencils,
I'm not sure how special effects work.
Meanwhile, this guy and millions of eyewitnesses
see these things happen in real time
in real, actual reality
and he's still like,
"Nah, that's a special effect.
"I would know, I hold a vague job
"at the Environmental Protection Agency."
Oh, also this scene,
where he tells a police officer
to shoot one of the Ghostbusters
if they talk or move.
"My friend, don't be a jerk."
"Step aside!"
"If he does that again, you can shoot him."
I don't think a random EPA agent
has authority over the NYPD
to order executions at will,
but luckily cooler heads prevail.
"You do your job, pencil neck!
"Don't tell me how to do mine!"
-"Thank you, officer."
Smart.
Good cop, good cop.
Good of you not to shoot any of those scientists
at the behest of a clear maniac.
Now, as I alluded to up top,
Jaws has been one of my favorite movies
since I was four.
To this day,
the first thing my cousins from Philly
ask me about is Jaws.
Which, if you wanna know
how to pronounce Jaws in Philadelphian,
it's the plural of "Joel".
As in,
"Yo Jackie, you gonna stay home and watch "Joels"?
Anyways,
I never made my love affair with Jaws a secret
because why would it be a secret?
Liking Jaws is nothing to be ashamed of
because it's a perfect movie.
Except this one part,
which isn't perfect.
This guy.
He sucks.
First thing that happens in this movie
is people get eaten by a shark on a beach.
So before we meet any of the characters we care about,
we get shark death.
The Mayor asks Chief Brody what to do
and Brody says,
"Hey, let's close the beach
" and get rid of that human-murdering shark
"before anymore humans get murdered
"by sharks at our beach."
"We're not only gonna have to close the beach,
"we're gonna have to hire somebody to kill the shark!
"I mean, we're gonna have to tell the Coast Guard!"
-"Mr. Foreman,
"we have to start a shark research panel!"
And the mayor is like,
"We tried everything! The beaches stay open!"
"But those beaches will be open for this weekend!"
Of course,
there's no reason for a person like this to exist
anywhere other than a movie plot.
He's not gonna shut down the beaches
just because a shark is eating people
and shark experts think it's gonna keep happening.
He asks shark experts their opinion,
and then tells them to go f*ck themselves.
Why even have shark experts on retainer at that point?
It's a question every politician
must confront at one time or another.
The tiny beach community of Amity
apparently has some sort
of terrible gambling cocaine addiction
because they can't afford to sit out one Fourth of July.
"We depend on the summer people here
"for our very lives."
Yeah, there's a chance
someone will be brutally dismembered
in front of a national TV audience
already aware that attacks have happened there.
Sure, they have conditions
for a mass panic on their hands already.
Yeah, they have to patrol the ocean
with a SWAT team of armed people
who almost shoot a kid
for swimming with a fake shark fin on his back.
It's worth the risk so people can f*cking swim.
Also, this is the only beach in America,
I guess.
Man, this mayor must have been elected
on a strictly pro-swimming at all costs platform.
And, to be clear,
the only victory that Chief Brody got
was convincing the mayor to hire Quint.
"I'm gonna hire Quint to kill the shark."
He never said,
"I need the army to come in
and help me wipe out this shark
and devastate local businesses.
It was just,
"Hey, can we hire this weird drunk
"who hates sharks and is good at finding them, please?"
And only after someone was murdered by a shark
at his beach in front of him
and the entire nation on the nation's birthday
was the mayor like,
"Hmm, I guess!"
Hey guys, hope you enjoyed that.
If you can think of any other movie straw men,
please share them in the comment section.
Or, if you have other words
spoken with a Philadelphia accent
that you can phonetically spell for me,
for example, Jaws being
"Joels" or Todd Glass has a thing about
how people from Philadelphia say
Philadelphia as 'Fluffy"
"Fwuffy"
Please share that in the comment section as well.
And like and subscribe.