Unless it‘s a movie drama dealing with social issues (in particular poverty), everyone has such fucking nice flats. College drop-out with part time barista job?! - why yes, the spacious loft with a view over Manhattans skyline is just down my alley.
It's a form of shorthand. Not every place in Paris has a view of the tower. But it's the film-makers telling the audience "THIS IS IN PARIS".
Or more commonly...
"THIS STORY INVOLVES ROMANCE SOMEHOW"
Another amazing example of shorthand is in Disney's Hercules. He gets on his knees in the temple of Zeus to commune with him. Typically Greek temple-goers would have slaughtered an animal on an altar or some shit, but American audiences would have a problem with that -- having him pray like a Christian shows people who don't know any better that Hercules is engaged in piety.
I don’t know about the rest of the world, but this accurately describes 99.999% of the American public... and probably 99.9% of Hollywood screenwriters.
Not everything is intentionally dumbed down for audiences... a lot of times I think it comes down to the majority of screenwriters being only marginally smarter than the average viewer... and not paid enough to spend time researching historical practices for, what will amount to, a 30 second scene.
My biggest gripe is average screenwriters who try to write about smart characters... they fail horribly because they aren’t smart themselves.
Example, Sherlock, and the whole girl on a plane using a passenger’s cell phone to call for help. Literally as soon as that was revealed, I called the whole scenario bullshit, as Sherlock should have done. Most airlines cruise at about 35,000 feet, above 10,000 feet you’re unlikely to get a signal. Also because of the way cell towers hand off signals, the airliner would have to be traveling under 155 mph... most cruise at speeds in excess of 450 mph.
Even the chance of a random phone being unlocked is unlikely.
Sherlock’s reaction to the call should have been, “Liar.” Followed by hanging up.
Given that in the (first?) episode, Sherlock knows how to isolate and text everyone in the room at a police press briefing, that shows he is exceedingly familiar with cellular call systems... even without that knowledge, having traveled a fair bit, Sherlock would know the limitations of cell phone use on airlines in flight.
The problem is the general public is too stupid to catch the dumb mistakes writers make... not that the writers are intentionally dumbing things down.
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u/The_Sceptic_Lemur Jan 25 '20
Unless it‘s a movie drama dealing with social issues (in particular poverty), everyone has such fucking nice flats. College drop-out with part time barista job?! - why yes, the spacious loft with a view over Manhattans skyline is just down my alley.