In defense of The Day After Tomorrow there were other survivors in New York. At the end of the movie you see the helocopters picking up other survivors in different areas.
Also, Dennis Quaid and his friends were dressed for the very cold weather and had the proper supplies, the people walking in the streets of New York had regular clothing on.
Love the concept for the column, but I don't think a couple of these rise to true WTF status...
For example, in the "so bad I can't look away" movie, Q, it is explained how a giant flying dino/dragon/monster can fly over NYC, in broad daylight, and yet be seen by almost no one. How? It flies between people and the sun. All the time, apparently. From every angle. WOW. Now THAT is a WTF explanation/moment. Although, granted, the movie itself if so staggeringly WTF that choosing any one moment may be unfair.
Or how about when poor ObiWan Kenobi has to take one for the team - really, take one for George Lucas' desire to re-write, or for GL's not anticipating any Star Wars sequels - and explain to Luke that Darth Vader DID sorta murder Luke's father, even though Darth Vader IS Luke's father, because... er.... um... it IS true, from a .... uh... certain point of view. RIGHHHHHHHHT. *S
Or in the above-mentioned Logans Run... how about the "renewal ceremony", which looks like something out of Cirque de Sole, and the participants are wearing (I kid you not) Mylec Street Hockey goalie masks? Whoa.
Or the moment in the generally fun and very entertaining "CLASH OF THE TITANS" when Perseus says "I'm invisible - can't you see?"".... Uh, actually Perseus, no, we can't... which is kinda the point of invisibility, right dude?
Great subject for a column though... so much to choose from!
Shadow
PS - A Logan's Run remake? Can't see it. The book kinda/sorta tied in to the ideas of valuing age and experience (the youth-dominated society in LR pays a price for offing everyone at a young age ) AND a demographic view that given the birth rate, we were going to be swamped by young people. Quite the reverse has played out (at least demographically)... in the West, the number of children is dropping way off, below even the needed "replacement rate", folks live longer, and society is "graying".
PPS - The T-1000 "babe" in Transformers 2 was problematic, for me, not because she was a Terminator rip-off, but because she seemed out of place in a Transformers universe. She isn't like any OTHER Transformer/Decepticon we see (with her ability to mimic a living being, very well!) and no explanation is offered, at any point.
I agree with Hobbs on Blade Runner; shouldn't be on the list.
The while Transformers 2 movie is a WTF moment for me...did I actually pay for this?! Kidding aside, I enjoyed it for what it was but really could have done without the swinging balls.
As for The Abyss, Dirk (did your parents really saddle you with that name?) who knows what an alien ship would look like? Maybe they got their color palette from watching one too many episodes of Miami Vice.
More of a WTF moment is the last 15 minutes of Spielberg's A.I. Aliens? Cloning the mom from just the bot's memories? Seriously a true WTF moment.
JJ Abraham's Star Trek. So they've gone out of their way to show that just a small blob of the red stuff can make a black hole, yet the whole 2 ton ball of the red stuff going off (in the Earth's orbit, btw) does absolutely nothing but create just the same size black hole as the small blob did, and yet nothing in the solar system is disturbed because it's just a black hole. W. T. F?
Sleepaway Camp. The end is just, well, WTF? If you can see that ending coming, then you need some professional help. Badly.
Monty Python and the Holy Grail. This is the type of ending for a movie you have no way of ending, but it's still a WTF moment.
Fight Club. Honestly, the first time you saw it, even if you saw the little flashes of Brad Pitt spliced throughout the beginning, it was hard to see that ending unless you had already read the book.
Burn After Reading. What happens to Brad Pitt's character is a serious WTF moment.
Tropic Thunder, what happens to the director in the jungle moments after the helicopter is gone.
Um well If you were really Transformer fans you would know that there are "The Pretenders" They were super clunky toys, but had a whole mythos built around them and they are square in the middle of the Transformers U.
Alice is a Pretender, not a ripoff of the t-10000 they may have effect similarities, BUT to say that Bay was unoriginal in either of the TF movies is blatant falsehood. In fact the biggest problem most geeks have with the films (not me) is that he went in his own original direction with the concept, and most of you can't handle that.
daForce you're right about your WTF moments, LOL I loved the WTF ending of The Holy Grail.
mike10, how on earth can you defend the day after tomorrow, THEY OUT RAN COLD!!! god I hated that movie (notice I didn't say it was a piece of shit movie, or that Emmerich is a hack, I just didn't enjoy that flick...at all)
About Day After Tomorrow.....I think you could illustrate the point better if you were to mention the scene where the people were in the helicopter and suddenly it was so cold that the frickin' gas froze solid in the helicopter! thus ceasing further operation of the vehicle....now dont you think that would imply that peoples blood would freeze solid in their veins? Come on..
another honorable mention for this article should have been Signs. Aliens that are..."allergic" I guess we could say, of water....decide to come to a planet mainly composed of.....water. Um...what? Not to mention their legs were strong enough to jump rooftops but apparently not strong enough to kick through a closet door?! what gives?!
I'm a Planet of the Apes geek, (late 60's - 70's) and I love the entire series flaws and all, but I was always bugged that the Apes, Cornelius, Zira and Milo, were able to fix and fly Charleton Heston's rocket. I'm even willing to forgive the fact that the space craft took them all back to 1971 Earth, just a few years after Taylor, and then later Brent landed on the Planete of the Apes - and that's a big leap of faith, but they should not have been able to fix it in the first place.
In the original Apes movie, when Taylor tries to explain to Zira and Cornelius how he managed to "land" on their planet, (his vocal chords had not yet healed from a gun shot, so he was unable to speak) he makes a paper airplane, and flies it from one end of the room to the other. Cornelius thinks it's crazy. Apes haven't figured out how to fly yet, how could a human.
Now we flash ahead to Escape From the Planet of the Apes and three apes are getting out of the same capsule we watched sink underwater in the original flick.
Now chimpanzees are strong, but I don't see how they managed to pull the craft up from out of the water. Then, with absolutely no previous knowledge of paper airplanes Milo (Sal Mineo's last role) figures out how to make this waterlogged, circuit-fried piece of complicated machinery he's never seen how to work properly?
The Professor from Gilligan's Island, Steven Hawking, Reed Richards and MacGyver would collectively have a problem getting that out of the water, let alone back to 1971 Earth.
That's my biggest WTF moment.
Q is a really great B-movie. I love it. No WTF here.
Sleepaway Camp's ending might have been WTF, but it sure was great!
Now my addition:
In The Fifth Element, the Mondoshwarma can travel millions of miles across the galaxy, but can barely walk across the floor? Such a huge WTF at the front-end of the movie, that I could barely watch the rest. And then there was Chris Tucker... at that point my WTF had got up and went.
(and excuse me if my description is a little off, I could only stand to sit through this motion blur-laden crapfest one) "Bo-zo"
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I don't think Blade Runner should even be on this list. Yeah, its easy to do hindsite on this over 20 years later but before internets, blogs, DVD's. A lot of never knew there was a version of Blade Runner without the narration. We just accepted it for what it was. I don't think it was a WTF moment at the time of the release only years later when Ridley did the directors cut and we saw how much better it was without it.