The Smart Choice is Boring

I caught Olympus Has Fallen a while back, and if you're looking for some mindless entertainment where a bunch of stuff blows up and people get killed, then you're in luck. This movie will definitely deliver. If you were disappointed in the latest entry into the Die Hard franchise, then you might like the fact that Olympus is pretty much Die Hard in the White House. You'll probably spot several moments lifted straight from that 80's classic.

While watching the movie, I couldn't help but be bothered by several important plot elements. Now, I realize that going to an action movie for the plot might be counter-productive, but I am a writer, and plot matters to me, even with an action movie. Many action movies, Die Hard included, have a plot dependent upon one thing: characters making stupid choices. In order to have our hero be the only one capable of stopping the bad guy, everyone else in the movie has to make the exact wrong call at the exact wrong time. It's a staple of the genre.

Naturally, Olympus Has Fallen presents several moments in which the plot is advanced by the characters' poor choices. Some of these choices are understandable, others are downright frustrating, but in the end, they serve the plot. Because had everyone made the right call, the movie would have either been very short or very boring. As frustrating as it is, sometimes we have to endure these illogical character choices if we want our action movies, and I'm going to explore this idea using Olympus Has Fallen. Not only am I going to examine the poor choices, I'm also going to look at one very smart choice and examine its impact as well.

I'm going to go deep into spoiler territory from here on out, so don't proceed if you don't want to be spoiled.

Do you still call it a DVD?

I just bought The Avengers on DVD. Well, that's only partially true. There's a Blu-ray in there as well, but I don't know if I'm going to use that term for it. I like the term DVD, and even though "technically" a Blu-ray is different, my brain files it away as DVD. That's just what is is. A CD plays music. A DVD is a movie. My brain has no need for another term for what is essentially the same thing. You put a disk into a player and a movie comes on.

Yes, all you technically savvy people will be able to fill me in on how exactly a Blu-ray is different. (Not to mention different from the HD-DVD.) I know all this. I know about storage capacity and high definition and things like that. I get it. But you have to understand, it's still the same size and shape as a DVD, so that's what I'm going to call it. True, the case is slightly smaller, but when I want to put in a movie on a disk, it's going to be on a DVD. I might eventually come to terms with the new terminology, but for now it's just one extra step in my thinking process that just isn't needed.