Has military experience ruined movies for you?

[Perd Hapley]

Spun this off of Lee's thread.  These are some items the movies always get wrong.

1.  Fragmentation grenades always blow up in a massive fireball.  The frags I've seen didn't make any cool fireworks, they just blew things up.

2.  RPG's, 40mm grenades and similar weapons are used at extremely short ranges, often inside buildings.  The grenades have a fuse that doesn't arm until it travels a certain distance (it actually has to spin a designated number of times).  Anti-tank rockets have a similar safety feature, if I'm not mistaken.

3.  Subordinates address officers as captain, major, etc.   In my experience, you called them "sir," or "Captain Smith," or similar.  Except perhaps for generals, we didn't address officers by rank alone.  That was something sergeants did to privates.  "Hey private!  Come here!"

4.  Military guards always have a blank stare and stand at port arms.  This one is popular in sci-fi movies which involve top-secret govt. laboratories.  The poor kids always stand just that way until the alien monster actually consumes them.  


Got anymore?  

[Ned Hamford]

Character shields are an all time favorite of mine.  One man can take on armies.  Not to knock quality or luck, but I recall being told never to engage unless you've got a 3:1 advantage.  Movies go with the inverse.

Oh, and when the battle stops (at least in one spot) so that a hero can comfort a dying friend during the middle of a battle. 

[Dannyboy]

The grenade thing has always bothered me.  Same thing with artillery rounds impacting. 

[Preacherman]

Oh, heck, yeah!  All of the above, plus:

-  Infantry moving nicely bunched, so that any ambush (explosive, firearm, artillery, whatever) will take out an entire squad, or platoon, or even a company, all at once;

-  Bullets knocking people flat, or throwing them violently into the air (don't happen much in the real world, particularly with 5.56mm!);

-  Time-outs during combat for the hero and his/her officers/subordinates to have a nice conversation about the weather/drink some water and bat the breeze/discuss the girlfriend or romantic interest;

-  The complete absence of any sense of using cover or concealment when returning fire (as in, hero infantryman STANDS UP to use a bazooka or RPG on an oncoming tank, while all the rounds from the tank's co-ax machinegun splatter the landscape all around him while miraculously missing him altogether);

-  Fuel explosions at all times, even when hitting something (e.g. a rock) that hasn't had a fluid ounce of gasoline near it for the past millenium or so.

Oh, yeah . . . movies never did appeal to me much after military service.

[Perd Hapley]

-  Infantry moving nicely bunched, so that any ambush (explosive, firearm, artillery, whatever) will take out an entire squad, or platoon, or even a company, all at once;

You think that's bad?  Remember Starship Troopers?
http://www.armedpolitesociety.com/index.php?topic=5402.msg83707#msg83707

[RocketMan]

All of what everyone else has mentioned, plus...

How about movie scenes that show large turbine powered aircraft flying by?
A CH53 Sea Stallion, a CH46 Sea Knight, or even a Blackhawk accompanied by the engine sound from an old Bell 47G piston powered helicopter, complete with the bogus tweep-tweep sound from the rotors.
Or a C130 Hercules with the sound of piston engines, even a small single engine aircraft on occasion.
Being an aircraft nut that bugs the heck out of me.

Hollywood folks figure their gaffs go unnoticed because the audience doesn't know enough or doesn't care.  They refuse to spend money on basic authenticity in most productions.

I maintain that the Hollywood production crowd is too stupid to realize that there are many millions of us out here that are familiar with things military, aviation or firearms related, and are annoyed by the lack of realism.  If they paid more attention to such things, perhaps movie attendance would improve.
Nah, probably not.  Hollywood would also have to gin up some decent story lines, too.

[cosine]

I didn't need military experience for movies to be ruined for me, you guys at THR did just fine all by yourself.

[Perd Hapley]

I didn't need military experience for movies to be ruined for me, you guys at THR did just fine all by yourself.

[Musically] That's what friends are for.

I'm glad I can't tell the difference between one aircraft sound and another.  Heck, I can't even tell a 240 from a 25mm, and I've heard 'em both a couple of hundred times. 

[Gewehr98]

Just finished watching that CMT Toby Keith/Kelly Preston movie, "Broken Bridges".  One of the womenfolk exclaimed that she was flat broke, and that her (assumably late) husband's benefits weren't enough for her to live on.

BullPuckey!  SGLI, which all troops in the DoD have, is somewhere around $200K, mine was $400K before I converted it to VGLI.  Artistic license notwithstanding, I think my wife would do quite nicely with between $200K-$400K in benefits, after she went cheap and had me made into Soylent Green.