Collateral damage...ever bother you?

So if James Bond is trying to save a continent from biological destruction, he could plow a truck into a schoolyard full of kids. Meaning; they would be dead anyway if he fails.
Last night, I watched Die Hard the extended car chase in Russia.
Spoiler: John saves the world from nuclear destruction, so I guess all of his actions are justified.

However, he didn't know this at the time, he was just trying to save his son from jail. I am not a "car chase" guy, except for "Live and Die in LA", the greatest car chase ever.
In movies, think of all the people who are injured or killed, property damaged, lives ruined because the hero was trying to blah blah get the microfilm, not let him get away...

I also get bothered when cops or federal agents are "knocked out or blown up" because they were doing their job unaware of the hero's true motive.
I know. It's just a movie. We like explosions. We love shooting. I do love action movies. Hypocritically, I also hate when they have some lame reason why nobody got hurt.
Does anybody else look at all the collateral damage in a movie and think "Oh, that poor guy in the BMW was on his way to an important meeting"?

Last night, I watched Die Hard the extended car chase in Russia.

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Saw this film very recently and throught the same thing after the car chase: how many people did JM kill and how much $ damage. Same in Fast Five when they're dragging the safe. Umpteen millions in damage$ and they wipe out half the police force. And a minute later it's all forgiven and forgotten. Kinda silly.

"A construction job of that magnitude would require a helluva lot more manpower than the Imperial army had to offer. I'll bet there were independent contractors working on that thing: plumbers, aluminum siders, roofers. In order to get it built quickly and quietly they'd hire anybody who could do the job. Do you think the average storm trooper knows how to install a toilet main? All they know is killing and white uniforms. All right, look-you're a roofer, and some juicy government contract comes your way; you got the wife and kids and the two-story in suburbia - this is a government contract, which means all sorts of benefits. All of a sudden these left-wing militants blast you with lasers and wipe out everyone within a three-mile radius. You didn't ask for that. You have no personal politics. You're just trying to scrape out a living. All those innocent contractors hired to do a job were killed - casualties of a war they had nothing to do with."

I thought it was odd in Star Trek Into Darkness that everyone is so emotional over Kirk even though several skyscrapers full of people just toppled over. The same goes for all the destruction in Man of Steel. These types of scenes make the movies into tragedies in my opinion. I hate when they just brush over so much death.

I thought it was odd in Star Trek Into Darkness that everyone is so emotional over Kirk even though several skyscrapers full of people just toppled over.

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OMG. Almost worth a new thread. I thought the same thing. Battle LA was a ridiculous example. Millions of people are being eradicated from the planet but lets stop and feel sorry for the little boy.

Here is my thought. If the hero is thinking "all these people will be dead or in danger" if I don't do something, it is OK.

An example is when a hero is trying to save his girlfriend or partner and 10 people die in the chase or firefight...

It would be different if they were making a tragedy, but often they just skip over addressing the loss of life and go straight to the hero being triumphant over the villain. When that many lives are lost, the happy feel good ending seems so out of place to me.

Far too often a car chase or big explosions are just a contrivance to have some action. Rarely is the amount of destruction justified by the plot. The nuclear bomb is the perfect example cited, if this bomb goes off everyone dies anyway. If you have to kill dozens of people and ruin neighborhoods to stop it you still come out ahead.
But killing dozens and causing massive destruction to save one person? Poor writing.

Of course, my wife can watch thousands die without feeling, but heaven forbid that little puppy doesn't make it.

This is what I was thinking when watching the Avengers movie. Well the city is saved, even though we caused billions in damage and a huge loss of life. :lol

Sluis Van Shipyards said:

This is what I was thinking when watching the Avengers movie. Well the city is saved, even though we caused billions in damage and a huge loss of life. :lol

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Actually, wasn't that brought up in the film itself, with one of the news broadcasts having some higher-up saying something along the lines, "Who's going to pay for the damage?" I could have sworn that was in there (or maybe it was the deleted scenes for the ending).

I am also slightly guilty of what this thread is accusing. In one of my stories, Trigger, the entire third act consists of a teenage weapon without a war finally fighting back against a high school gang, taking out all 30 members within the halls of the high school, even damaging, if not destroying, a couple of classrooms in the process. But thinking about it now, even though the gang members did push the character too far, what set him off was the fact that they had hurt someone he knew. And by having this character taking all of them out, the gang members' families would have to deal with the emotional loss. However, after doing some thinking, to me, the character's action is justified because he's not only thinking about the person he cared about who was hurt and being driven by guilt for an action (or inaction in his case) that took place before the events of the story, but the amount of damage the group has caused to others over the years and what more they would cause if he didn't succeed or let it go (in fact, the gang's actions is also justified, as the character killed two of their own in the first two acts and they are following the tradition of the original gang that had been founded).

The reason why I revealed this information is that the story creator, every character's action has to have a purpose and meaning behind it, and it must be justify able to the character. Even something as dumbed down as, let's say the remake Gone in 60 Seconds is true. Memphis ends up getting in a car chase when it comes to finally getting Eleanor, not because he needs the money, not because he doesn't want to be caught, but because his brother's life is in his hands. Is the car chase and any and all damage and harm worth it? In the character's eyes, yes it is. Is it justified in the eyes of the victims? No, because they don't know the full situation. It primarily depends on the point of view. Let's use Battle: Los Angeles as an example, since someone brought it up. Yes, there are others that are dying, but since we're focusing on a small group, following them, the lost of the father is something that hits home to the group and the kid, whereas if it was another group on the other side of the city, it wouldn't mean the price of eggs in China in comparison to what they're going through. The same can be said about tragedy in real life. I live in Florida. A hurricane could hit Alabama, the Mississippi, an Earthquake in L.A., thousands of people killed, hundreds left injured. Now, to them and those there, it would be a major tragedy because they're in the middle of it. For someone like me, who's in Florida, who has no direct connection, it could be tragic or not, depending on how I feel about it. Basically, the events the characters go through is like the tragedies in other places, while the audience is like me in Florida.

That is just my opinion and what I know when it comes to writing.

No one has brought my favorite collateral damage fest: Man of Steel. The amount made me shake my head.

Lady: He saved us!

Really? Metropolis looks like dust!

never really thought about this until i watched man of steel.

everyone gets so up in arms about 'the ending' yet they fail to notice the 1000s of people he's killed whilst they punch each other through buildings that collapse shortly afterwards.

very much one thing that does not translate to live action very well. in the cartoons you see the same and it's fine, it's a cartoon, but in a real setting you can't help thinking 'weren't there loads of people in that building?'

Whenever a mystery person has fallen to their death from the sky, or unidentified debris washes up on shore, or something similarly unexplainable happens, I like to think "James Bond was here".

When a secret base goes kaboom, it can't go unnoticed. It would be on the news for weeks.

Your pointing out almost any action movie ever made.... EVER! Stop watching them. I wanna see superman kicking ass. And I dont wana be on a downer while watching it. Its NOT real! Lol waddaya want. 15 mins of action and 2hrs of families mourning!? Stop going to see those films if you cant get on with it.
Im surprised no ones conplaining that all movies arent recorded in real time. And that watching months of someones life in 2hrs is preposterous! !! Unless we have time travel machines.

I do wonder about it sometimes in all honesty. But letting it bother me is a bit too far. MoS has enough issues without things that are generally in all films of the genre.



J

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I seem to remember a Marvel comic during maybe the late 80s or early 90s that dealt with this very issue. It was all about the actual damage done by super hero/villian fights. I think it came out right after the epic Spider-man/Firelord fight where half of Manhatten was destroyed. If I remember correctly the name of the comic was Collateral Damage. I think there was even a part in it about where citizens could buy Super hero battle insurance.

Anybody remember that comic?

I also remember a spiderman cartoon where a truck cleaned up all the webs

I know, it's an action film. You can't think about it as real life. Funny, I saw this today. It is a parody SNL did on West Side Story.
- Yahoo Screen
Why were you singing?

I remember watching the cartoon of Superman vs Doomsday and they keep on coming back to flatten more of Metropolis every single turn. Supes should have punched Doomsday to the moon or something and continue the battle there.

Avengers did show the heroes trying to get people to safety and at least pretend they were saving people. After all Loki and the Chitauri were trying to conquer the planet, not destroy it, like Zod in MoS.

Man of Steel showed people running to their death. While invincible people kept punching each other like two MMA champions trying to kill each other by hitting each other with padded whiffle bats.

I understand they wanted MoS to be realistic, but it would have worked a whole lot better to have the Man of Steel actually save somebody else than Lois Lane and actually help fix the mess or something rather than have somebody make a pompous voiceover to trick us into believing Clark Kent is an actual hero. They could have put in footage of Leatherface cutting up people instead and it would be equally credible ...

The only collateral damage in movies (from car chases or whatever other disasters) that has ever bothered me was the real damage, for instance the beautiful cars they destroy. I have seen so many cars I would love to have get blown up or wrecked just for entertainment :cry

I remember reading an article saying that there were 132 cars totaled (and 500 something seriously damaged) in the latest Die Hard movie :sick

Think of all the police cars they destroyed between the two Blues Brothers movies...

For years I've been wondering how the family of that guy riding the escalator in Total Recall dealt with his brutal murder at the hands of mysterious gun wielding maniacs.

I get more bothered by the fact that there isn't more collateral damage, like, from SHRAPNEL when the hero does a cool explosion walk-away thing. Nobody EVER deals with shrapnel. The only movie I remember that did was the Peacemaker, starring George Clooney. Apparently, even if you blow a window in, the shards of flying glass and wood from the frame just evaporate. THAT'S what bugs me about collateral damage.

How about those poor mall security guards who got the holy hell beat out of them by a Special Forces soldier while one of them got shot in the chest in Commando? Not to mention the destruction of an innocent phone booth, the theft of a bulldozer, the vandalism of a sporting goods store, the theft of military grade weapons and hardware from said store, the destruction of a police transport wagon, assault on and attempted murder of at least two police officers, the theft of a seaplane, flying said plane without an authorized flight plan on record, destruction and theft of multiple vehicles, a string of what would be seen as spree killings, and the wholesale slaughter of an entire compound full of basically innocent paramilitary troops (probably there out of fear or the need to feed their families).