MAMEWorld Forums - The Loony Bin - Re: Why must knowledge ruin fantasy?

> In particular... any movie/show that has anything to do with the military. I'm
> re-watching Smallville again and on Season 2 Episode 11.
>
> When Whitney returns to the school, he's wearing the rank of PFC (E-2) on his
> sleeves, but he has blood stripes on his pants (A very common mistake by fucktards
> who try to fake service for priority at airports and what not... you don't get those
> stripes until you're a Sargent (E-5)).
>
> Later on, "LT McNulty" arrives at his mother's house to inform her that Whitney is
> confirmed dead. All well and good, except what would be LT insignia in the Navy is
> Captain in the Marines. It should have been Captain McNulty.
>
> Why are these bonehead mistakes always made? Uniform regulations are public domain.
> 10 minutes of research to get a uniform correct, and another 10 to get the
> medals/ribbons correct.
>
> Then there are other non-military examples such as Lucy. As I said, the first half
> was alright, but you had to ignore much of the story. It would have been much more
> entertaining if the story wasn't so retarded I didn't know how retarded it was..

I'm not a screenwriter, but my guess would be that they don't have time to research every little detail. Especially on TV, they have to bang out a lot of scripts in a relatively short time. So plot critical details might get some research, but they just wing it on incidental details. They can get away with it because only a small percentage of the audience will notice any given error. I would never notice problems with military uniforms, but computer foolishness drives me nuts.