r/TopCharacterTropes • u/MammothPenguin69 • 16d ago

Hated Tropes Stupid Contrived Survival Stories

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  1. 12 Feet Deep - Two idiots decide they absolutely positively MUST go swimming in a pool after it's closed. An incredibly contrived sequence of events happens so they get stuck in a pool. So the movie can happen.

  2. Frozen (not that one) - Three idiots decide they absolutely positively MUST get on a ski-lift after it's closed. To the point of bribing the operator who for some stupid reason doesn't say anything. Do the movie can happen. Also, Wolves are not that aggressive. They are typically shy and avoid humans.

  3. 47 Meters Down- Arguably the most believable scenario on this list. It's still really stupid.

  4. Fall- Two idiots decide to climb an abandoned radio tower without proper equipment that would make escaping their predicament trivially easy. Stop me if you've heard this one before

so the movie can happen.

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178

u/Lukostrelec17 16d ago

....Yeah....they should be dead....very very dead.

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u/Snoo10140 16d ago

A whale's throat's not even large enough to swallow a human 🥲

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u/butyourenice 16d ago

That’s actually accounted for in the book. He gets stuck between the mouth and gullet, and the concern is that he’ll run out of air (he’s a scuba diver and has a tank) as the whale descends to, uh, its normal roaming depth. Interestingly there wasn’t much discussion of water pressure and being crushed if he managed to escape at depth, even though the chapters are labeled by remaining psi in the tank and the final escape is executed taking advantage of the pressurized air canister.

It is dumb, though.

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u/Niktwazny10 16d ago

We all know that the only way to escape from a whale is repentence and not all of that other nonsense.

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u/YuKi11e 15d ago

A pepper shaker works as well

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u/ze_shotstopper 15d ago

The water pressure angle killed me about the most recent mission impossible movie

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u/PossumCock 15d ago

Read the book and enjoyed it, but the fact that it didn't account for the fact that the deeper you go the more your air gets compressed and so every breath you take from the tank is more dense. Dude would've run out of air waaaay sooner than he actually does

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u/butyourenice 15d ago

I don’t know enough about physics so I only sort of questioned it. I figured maybe oxygen tanks have some sort of mechanism by which they accommodate pressure changes, or maybe the pressure inside the whale is somehow kept stable, because it seems like a major oversight in the book. I suspected the end would involve explosive decompression, but of the unintentional sort.

At the same time though I don’t think the whale ever does get all that deep? At one point it changes direction and breaches the surface again, so.

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u/softgray 15d ago

Deep divers use several different tanks with different ratios of oxygen and nitrogen and such, and they switch between them at different depths. The tanks don't automatically handle it.

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u/PossumCock 15d ago

the thing is that the air in the tank is stabilized at sea level. The deeper you go, the more pressure increases, and it in turn affects the pressure of the air in the tanks. And yes, decompression would be a serious issue, but I'd course all of this is too scientific and would mess with the structure of the story and since it is fiction we'll just let it slide in the spirit of story telling

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u/softgray 15d ago

He'd've been dead long before having to worry about water pressure crushing him. Look up nitrogen narcosis. And of course, even if he did escape to the surface, he'd've died soon after from the bends, because I'm pretty sure he didn't spend hours making stops on the ascent if he was that low on oxygen. Honestly a silly concept all around.

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u/butyourenice 15d ago

Oh there’s no doubt that it is silly and not scientific or terribly plausible at all! The only way I can make sense of it is that he managed to bust out before the whale got too deep, that’s all. Is there a metaphor in there about changing directions, about grasping opportunity when it presents itself? Who knows. For as contrived as the premise was, the plot and internal (lol) conflict were both notably lacking.

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u/TwoSnapsMack 16d ago

Imagine the movie turns into a comedy of a whale choking and he goes to all of his ocean friends who have different ideas to get the human out

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u/BalefulOfMonkeys 16d ago

This could have been a perfectly good Shark Tale bit, where a fish with that weird doctor mirror headband thing swims up to start assisting and says “I’ll have you know that I’m a qualified sturgeon”

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u/LiveJournal 15d ago

we dont have a scalpel but we do have a sawfish

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u/Lukostrelec17 16d ago

I just looked it up...appearently about 4 to 6 incges in diameter. Today I learned.

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u/Miami_Mice2087 16d ago

whales don't chew, if you got eaten, you'd suffocate. but he's a scuba diver, he has his own oxygen.

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u/Lukostrelec17 16d ago edited 16d ago

Sufficate or crushed, muscle contranctions, or digested. Also pressure changes.

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u/Upbeat_Carpenter_459 15d ago

Apparently the esophagus is not big enough. And its not strong enough to force you through either. It can suck down a squid, which is practically a liquid. But an adult pelvis just aint gonna go. Possibly it could chomp on you until you fit (sperm whales, like in this movie, at least have teeth for defense), but thats it.

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u/Miami_Mice2087 15d ago

interesting!

they don't have molars tho, just the front teeth, so chomping isn't gonna really happen once you're in the mouth.

i'm not watching this movie, just the thought is too much for me and my claustrophobia :) The one about the sisters trapped at the bottom of the sea was pushing it. I once had an anxiety attack while scuba diving, I have Issues with being trapped underwater.

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u/Upbeat_Carpenter_459 11d ago

I have issues with people struggling in uncomfortable situations and screaming, so I also won't see it lol. Since there's a hint of supernatural to the story, I think people can relax about the realism.

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u/Miami_Mice2087 7d ago

oh, it's magical realism? howso?