It's Family Guy. I know it, you know it, we all know it. It's not the most intelligent of cartoons and it certainly isn't known for insightful meta commentary on media analysis.
However, I think one cutaway gag actually provides clever insight into the way we analyze media: Home Alone With Competent Robbers.
If you haven't seen it, it's incredibly easy to describe, or you can just look it up: The two famously incompetent and buffoonish robbers, Harry and Marv, make it inside the McAllister house safely, avoid the obvious traps while pointing them out, then simply shoot Kevin in the head rather than letting him taunt them.
It's a hilarious cutaway, and probably wasn't intended to be anything more than a quick joke before moving on with the plot, but I see it as an excellent satire of a very annoying type of media criticism: "Why didn't [character] just do [smart thing]?" A lot of times, the answer is simple: If they did, the movie/show/book/game would be BORING. Or it would massively conflict with the tone. Yes, it would be smarter for Harry and Marv to just avoid the obvious traps and kill Kevin McAllister, but nobody wants to watch that.
Similarly, I know that Tolkien heads can easily disprove why Gandalf couldn't have just asked the Eagles to take the One Ring to Mount Doom, but would you really rather watch that than the LOTR movies we got? Might be interesting to watch but wouldn't be nearly as good.
Yes, I know the victims of slasher movies make all sorts of stupid mistakes we all see coming, but is it really better if they're all hyper competent? That means they all either avoid traps, depriving us of the over-the-top violence we come to slashers for, or they get punished for doing nothing wrong, which just feels wrong. Part of the fun of slasher movies is shouting at absolute dumbasses for making stupid mistakes and getting themselves killed.
Sure, there's probably tons of counter-examples you can come up with, like the second-act misunderstanding you see in so many kid's films and in romcoms. But my point is: So many nerds on the internet are constantly looking for ways to make movies less entertaining. And whether intentional or not, Family Guy did a great job satirizing that attitude, in a quick cutaway.
Also if I don't end up on r/superseriousfamilyguy I'm gonna be extremely disappointed in all of you.
It really wouldn't be? Like, the thing about murdering a small child is that, for all their myriad flaws, the police and justice system do take it seriously. It's going to get investigated a lot more thoroughly than a random robbery, and, given that they've been robbing many homes in the area, there's a high chance that they'd get caught. And if they do get caught it massively increases the punishment they would face. There isn't even much benefit to it - if they'd been wearing masks (which they inexplicably decided not to do in the short) the kid wouldn't have been able to identify them, and if they haven't fallen into any of his traps then they haven no reason to want him dead.
The "competent robber" thing to do would be to immediately withdraw and target another house, preferably in another neighborhood. After all, the entire reason they were targeting it was because they thought it was abandoned! Because that's what smart robbers do! Who the hell wants the risk and complication of getting involved with a kid when they could just find an empty house, smash the window, grab what they want, and be gone?
(That would be even more boring, of course. But it's the actual smart thing to do.)
Isn't it also literally a lifetime of difference between burglarizing a house they presume empty, versus breaking into a house they know is currently occupied?
From what I see this is a difference between 1-5 years in low-security versus 10-20 felony, even worse if the prosecution states that the traps set by a child indicate some sort of like... home invasion situation.
I've heard many times that this is one of the reasons to present a home as occupied when you're away - no sane burglar would even attempt a house with residents inside
Like how there's a huge difference between "covertly stealing" (theft) from someone and "openly stealing" (robbery) and "threatening force to take away" (...briganding?) in my home country. Each one is like... easily double the sentence length and severity of the previous one.
That's why most thieves would literally prefer to return you the stuff they stole if you notice them. That action alone kicks the possible sentence down a notch.
Also, one thing no one is bringing up is the fact that if these robbers were competent, Kevin wouldn't set up any traps to begin with.
He only set up those traps because he knew Marv and Harry were coming, since they were incredibly obvious in how they were staking out the house, if these guys are competent there's gonna be no traps and Kevin will still be asleep in bed.
Not only that, but if Kevin's asleep in bed with no traps, if these robbers were competent, they probably could have smothered Kevin in his sleep, done what they did. Throw in that his parents just left him home alone on a trip to France, and it's entirely likely that the police pin the crime on the McAllisters doing it before they left.
Competent guys would just skip a house with a human inside tho
But then, competent guys wouldn't leave a calling card to make it easier to know it was them who did the burglary, so we found out from moment one these guys were incompetent.
Honestly, the fact that so many people seem to think (successful) criminals are Stupid Evil is a rant in its own right. I once got in an argument on r/prequelmemes with someone who was genuinely convinced that Watto should've just taken the gambling argument to Gardulla, because he'd immediately hold the Jedi and Queen ransom.
Y'know, despite Watto having no evidence Qui-Gon's a jedi, the fact that counter-cheating a loaded die is just tit-for-tat, the fact Gardulla has no reason to have beef with a jedi who's just trying to get off the planet, and the tiny little detail that it's heavily implied Watto hasn't given Gardulla his owed cut of Watto's winnings from betting on his races.
But yeah; apparently Gardulla would take the word of a self-confessed scalper who took time out of his day to tell him to his face he's been scalping him about an alleged jedi who just wants to get out of his territory.
So much of what some people think the "smart" thing for a character to do not only makes the story less interesting, but also will at least half the time rely on the character being basically omniscient and/or well-respected.
[deleted]
He does own slaves.
See now THIS is the analysis I'm here for. Take my upvote.
Yep…hell, I think Marv even brings up just hitting a different house, but Harry is the one fixated on the Mcallister’s
They assumed the house was unoccupied, so there would be no one there who could identify them. And wearing a mask would be suspicious if it hadn't been the middle of winter, which it was. So the lack of masks is STILL stupid.
I can think of some examples where characters are competent, but the story sets them up so that either they couldn't have known something vital, or the situation they're dealing with is just supernatural and every smart solution either goes wrong, or even saves them from certain death but doesn't bail them out of the situation.
I find those satisfying, much more than a character being dumb and then dying. It doesn't have to be boring just because they're smart, you just need to set up the story so characters feel smart but that doesn't solve everything.
I don't want the eagles to take the ring to mount doom. I want walking it over or whatever to be presented as the smartest plan based on available resources and information given to the characters.
My favourite approach: the show spends a small amount of time showing the character trying the smart thing, or they ask a couple smart questions, only to have it fail for whatever reason.
And then the story just moves on. Like, "Okay, we could keep going down this route, but you don't really want to watch them try 30 logical solutions, do you? Let's get into the actual plot now."
Yeah, that's really all it takes. Just enough to show the character didn't go along with the first dumb thing that came to mind, but they decided it was the best choice from a list of alternatives to show the character actually tried to think about it. Even if they maybe missed an obvious solution.
Sticking with the lotr thing, that's actually shown, As they discuss the various paths to get past the Misty Mountains. Gap of Rohan, too dangerous, Sauroman has patrols. The mountain path, just as dangerous, and Moria ultimately just as dangerous but could have avoided the goblins
Depends on the movie
I don’t need smart choices in a Friday the 13th film but I still appreciated horror movies with smart protagonists like the collector for example
Yeah, it definitely depends on what a story is going for. Sometimes the dumb thing leading to disaster is the point. Sometimes a story needs two dummies to step on every lego in a house.
But I also do like moments where the burglar notices the trap, smiles and step over it, only to land on an even more obnoxious trap hidden right behind it.
That’s how Dutch defeated the Predator in the first movie. He lured him to an ‘obvious’ trap, and the Predator smugly avoids it…and thus didn’t notice the real hidden trap
It can also be very frustrating to viewers. As it can make the viewers feel like the author is stringing them and the character along on a misery conga line instead of actually giving them a win.
Yep.
It’s two different genres with two different styles.
Both can be good, but if you try to put one into the other BOTH sides are going to be disappointed.
you're thinking of The Thing.
The whole « Why the Eagles did not take the Ring to Mount Doom » is dumb because we are told in the books that the Eagles can only carry people over short distances (which is why the Eagle King dropped Gandalf in Rohan to get a horse after rescuing him from Saruman), and that Sauron had flying Nazguls patrolling over Mordor. It is actually a dumber plan than « Have some Hobbits discreetly sneak in Mordor to destroy it and hope they don’t get caught. »
I appreciate that the OP acknowledged this, but we still can’t help ourselves and have to explain why it wouldn’t work.
Like if you compare the map of Mordor to what’s depicted in film, it got shrunk massively. I could understand movie audiences thinking it would be a quick little flight to drop the ring off, but it wouldn’t actually take a couple hours depending on exactly how fast the eagles can actually fly bearing a load. Plenty of time for the opposing air force to react.
Yeah even if they didn't have dragons they still have bows and ballistas, the eagles and the fellowship would've become pin cushions!
Also, the Eagles aren't animals, they're intelligent beings. The ring can corrupt them. You'd just get a Dark Bird Lord.
Frieren does this perfectly in a pretty malicious way in S2 with the Hero who's understood Macht's powers, fighting style and weaknesses only to find out that none of those are true, Macht just holds back out of personal interest.
He made every right choice, made the best decisions he could with the information available and still suffered a crushing defeat because of what he didn't and couldn't know.
My favourite example is Carpenter's Thing. They aren't idiots, but they're faced with some unfathomable alien creature and do everything they can to kill it or survive it and still lose
We don't even technically know that they failed in killing the Thing. They certainly are defeated in every other way one can be: Certain death is imminent; they don't know if the Thing was destroyed or if their deaths are in vain; their ability to trust each other has disintegrated to nothing, but they're both too exhausted of energy and resources to do anything about it. But we have no way to know if the Thing has actually survived.
John Carpenter's The Thing in a nutshell. The characters in this movie makes all the right call given the limited amount of information they have at their disposal and still, most likely, end up getting completely wiped out by the Thing.
Because let's be honest, that ending is ambiguous but grim either way. Either Mcready and Childs are both the latest instance of the Thing and they lost or only one of them is the Thing and they lost or they're both still human but they're still going to die of cold eventually so they're fucked either way.
One of the most powerful forces in the universe isn't gravity or nuclear fission, it's the frame of the camera. According to TV and movies, what is framed within the camera's view is the only thing that characters are able to see. Therefore, robbers cannot see Lego pieces and Hot Wheels cars directly in front of them because the camera didn't show them.
The same way that the Joker could not see Batman standing right next to Rachel until he said the line "Then you're going to love me." and punched him.
A doyalist answer shouldn't be used to justify a watsonian problem.
Yes, Harry and marv are incompetent, and thr story is better that way. But they are also incompetent in-universe. If they were presented as an elite group of suepr-spies, then thr narrative would break. It wouldn't matter if Kevin making punks of them is the better movie. It being a better movie is why they are set up thr way they are.
Home alone is actuslly a great example of this all around.
Why is Kevin left behind? Because if he wasnt, we wouldn't have a movie. But we are shown thr in universe reason - a hectic travel schedule with a large number of extra people, a time crunch due to alarms not going off, a neighbor kid throwing off their count, and unusual sleeping arrangements.
If something needs to happen for the story to work, it is the writer's job to make sure thet thing makes sense within thr story. "It needs to happen that way for the story" is the motivation for the writer to massage events to create that outcome, its not a reason the audience should be accepting by itself. It is entirely a valid crisis to point out that the writer failed to justify things properly.
This is also how tou get complaints of plot armor. Obviously thr main character will live, the plot demands it. But it becomes plot armor when the demands of thr plot are the only thing keeping them alive. It is the writer's job to justify why they survive the danger they are in.
Wait I think that's actually what the antagonists in Home Alone 3 are.
Also they're after some nuclear missile chip or something, so the stakes go from "This house is gonna get robbed" to "North Korea is gonna nuke the world"
There is a reason home alone 3 isnt a beloved classic like the first one is.
Bingo.
This is the difference between "turn your brain off and don't think about it" and something that is actually well crafted. The best stories justify themselves so well that everything seems natural. Home Alones setup for Kevin being left at home seems natural, because everyone has had a run of bad luck resulting in a big mistake.
That is so much better than making his whole wealthy family into morons to justify the plot happening. The Wet Bandits are just regular thieves. They're allowed to be a little dumb, and the damage to their ego explains why they keep at it even when they should cut their losses.
Problem is, it's a "doylist" complaint in the first place.
It's not "why do the wet bandits not act as competently as the story claims they do", it's just "why don't we have competent robbers instead"?
I've never seen someone ask that seriously about home alone. Like the family guy skit, its just a joke about how different it would be. Because home alone did adequately justify itself.
Other times people do have serious complains about hamstrings not justified in thr narrative, and get a dismissive "its a better story" response.
Very good analysis of what makes plots work
Eh
Shooting a kid for a ROBBERY is a massive evaluation
There’s being at risk of getting arrested for merely ROBBING a place vs “oh fuck a body”
And even the competent part for the robbers ain't even accurate.
They had no masks, no gloves, and shot a unsupressed gun in what I believe is an upper middle class neighborhood.
Like people in those neighborhoods have the cops on speedial.
I’d argue the robbers in the movie are more competent than the family guy ones
Also I mentioned that above but "competent" robbers wouldn't even attempt a break-in of a house with a person inside, let alone a CHILD. Because in US law, as far as I see, these are WILDLY different felonies with VERY different penalties.
This easily changes it from burglary (1-15 years, depending on severity) to home invasion (minimum of 10-20 years in prison) with a whole bag of charges the prosecution can easily drop on them (like the traps mean that the kid was being besieged and this is like premeditated, this means he knew they're coming, etc)
And then they go and shoot a little boy??? So now instead of as little as 1 year in prison, that already went to like 10 years minimum for home invasion, they're looking at a 25 to life first degree felony murder? These cases barely even go cold too. Also his parents are Very Rich in a Very Rich Neighborhood, there's gonna be some Senator, living three streets down, that would feel Personally Threatened, and pester the local chief of police on every golf lunch they're having, whether these POS have been caught.
Yeah like there's a difference between a petty theft and breaking in a house with 1 kid inside then immediately shot him dead while making it as if it's the intent behind the break in
Yup. As another commenter mention, home invasion in a rich neighborhood with a premeditated murder of a child sounds like a nationwide manhunt scenario
Important to note for slasher movies.
Characters are unaware of the genre they're in. They don't know they're in a horror movie and therefore their decisions make sense
Yeah. I sometimes hear sounds in my house. My first thought has never been "the ghosts are here".
Five year old girl: -"Dad our new house is haunted."
Dad: -"Ok, honey we'll move out immediately and sell it at a huge loss."
I don't know, I hate that bit.
Grabbing a 700-1000°F doorknob and going like "in reality it is just REALLY warm and you can just let go without any issue " is really arguing in bad faith in my opinion.
You know what would be also realism?
Harry and Marv breaking their neck from getting hit by a paint can
There is a video that "scientifically" breaks down the injuries they would have sustained in the first two movies. Kevin wound up killing them twenty three times.
Shoutout to violent night for having home alone traps that are fucking brutal
There's a great video that explains why Family Guy's reference jokes aren't typically very good. Basically Family Guy's jokes tend to mostly just make fun of the original media even when it's not warranted, they're oftentimes not funny unless you get the reference, and they fail to expand the joke much.
Family guy reference jokes can be a lot of times very stupid it's like that Slick of life anime protagonist who point out very obvious things and completely miss the point
They also seem to completely lose the humor / Irony in a lot of the shows they joke about
Yeah, when touching things that hot, by the time you feel that it's hot you already have burns.
The joke always felt kind of edgelordy to me - I know, a cutaway Family Guy gag that feels like it's trying too hard? It seems impossible to imagine - because if they were competent robbers, then... they wouldn't shoot the kid. Two nondescript burglars burglarizing a house; the police will come round in three hours and maybe see if any place nearby has security cameras. Two burglars murder a child; nationwide manhunt. So yeah, it was less "Ha ha, we are satirizing the overly nitpicky CinemaSins culture attitude that demands competence over delivering an entertaining story!" and more like "what if home alone but kevin got SHOT? and the viewers went "oh SHIT oh FUCK kevin just got SHOT!" and we said "yeah (puts on sunglasses) we just went there"."
But I see your point and they easily could have been satirizing that instead and it flew over my head.
Also that's a difference between burglary (1-15 in prison) to home invasion (a person is inside the house as it's being invaded, that's a minimum 10 years) to first degree felony murder (life in prison to capital punishment)
So if they were competent, and they saw a kid inside, they would just turn around, leave the house, and flee the state, to let the situation cool down.
You don't need to be a Tolkien head to disprove the eagle thing. You just need to have enough common sense to know that flying towards a giant fucking eye and the only other power in the setting with an air force is a bad idea.
They’re the Wet Bandits, not the Wet First Degree Murderers.
Doesn’t roll off the tongue well.
It's also a saturated market. How many dry murders do you get?
I think you’re forgetting a large part of what makes this work is characterization. The reason why people don’t care as much about the Home Alone robbers as opposed to, let’s say, the main characters from Jurassic World, is that the robbers are characterized as idiots whereas many of the characters from Jurassic World are characterized as at least intelligent/heroic while making terribly dumb/selfish/evil decisions.
There is no misunderstanding between how the characters are framed and how they perform in Home Alone which makes the stupidity on display easier to digest. These are two goofballs who are meant to be goofballs and act like goofballs. When we ask “why didn’t they do smart thing” the answer is clear “they’re stupid”which we’ve seen through all the other stupid things they’ve done.
When we ask the same question in Jurassic World, the answer tends to be “because that’s more entertaining” which isn’t nearly as satisfying. Ideally a story should have the more entertaining options happen while making sense in the story
Side note but this post made me look it back up and realize that there's a stealth breaking bad joke. Todd kills a kid with a pet Tarantula because he's afraid he might be a witness. That's why they mention the tarantula here.
Pretty sure it's a reference to the fact that Marv ends up with a tarantula on his face in the movie, leading to one of his iconic screams
Wait a damn minute that scene might actually be genius then
You’d appreciate the YouTube series “how (insert movie) should have ended.”
Sometimes they will specifically make fun or talk about how a character should have done the smart/ reasonable thing to solve the problem.
Their videos on the Jurassic World trilogy are better than the films themselves.
The issue is mostly that when characters are acting in ways that are extremely contrived just for the sake of the story happening, it can take you out of the story completely, because you're instead thinking about how stupid it is.
Eg. For the "Home Alone With Competent Robbers", they aren't wearing masks or gloves, they immediately escalate a robbery into a murder (of a child even), and they're shooting a gun in a residential neighbourhood. Nothing about that seems competent to me, that just seems like they're both getting the chair.
I feel like this criticism is talked about ad nauseum on Reddit. Where some people say, "Well why wouldn't they just do this," and then someone else says, "Not everyone needs to act completely rationally in fiction," and then someone else says, "yeah but they should act consistent with their character," and so on and so on.
Look, I think it's pretty simple. If you're part of the target demographic for a movie, and when you leave after watching it for the first time, you say, "Wait but why wouldn't this person just do this," then the movie did fuck up. A viewer shouldn't be left thinking like that. However, if you only notice the issue after a rewatch, or if it's a kid movie and you only notice the problem when you're older, or if you only think about the problem because someone on Reddit pointed it out, or whatever, then I think it's typically nitpicky. Because if it didn't occur to you during the movie that the person could just do X, then it makes sense to me that it also didn't occur to that character that they could do X in the context of the movie.
Home Alone is pretty explicit about the fact that the robbers are actually pretty dumb, driven by emotion and illogical. Once they realized someone was in the McAllister house, the logical decision was to not go after that house because there would be a witness and there's no reason to pick up a murder charge. Just go after the other houses. But they're stupid and so they go after that house. Then, after they get hurt by Kevin, it becomes personal to them. If you ask, "Why didn't the robbers just ignore the house or shoot Kevin," the answer isn't "so that the movie could happen." The answer is because they're buffoons and they just didn't have a gun on them.
Compare that to something like Now You See Me where there's absolutely no reason given for Ruffalos behavior, since he's actually in on the whole thing. His behavior when he's alone is inexplicable, and a lot of people notice this issue while watching it. Why did he behave the way he did? So that the movie could happen and so that audiences would be surprised by the twist. The only explanation is meta.
If you realize it doesn't make sense as you leave the theater, the movie fucked up.
If you realize it doesn't make sense when you wake up the day after, the movie succeeded.
If you realize it doesn't make sense as you're watching it the movie fucked up spectacularly.
Absolute cinema
I agree with you 90%. At some point, a character’s incompetence is beyond unrealistic, to the point that I can’t suspend my disbelief anymore, the immersion is broken, and I can’t enjoy the story anymore. Also, sometimes it is just fun to poke fun at characters being stupid, even when they it is perfectly understandable.
People don't make rational choices when they're upset.
As a huge tolkien fan, I want to contend that the eagles absolutely could have taken the ring to Mt doom.
The problem lies after that. Tolkien has stated that no being in middle earth could willingly destroy the ring. That includes the eagles. They would keep it.
The only way the ring could be destroyed is the way it happened- intervention of gollum, and him then falling into mt doom.
If the eagles had gotten there without gollum, it wouldn't have mattered
My only issue with this is being burglar and being willing to kill aren't at all the same thing. My dad was a career criminal and never killed anyone desoire decades of breaking and entering, hold ups, car jackings ect.
Why do you think the pertinent question is "what would you the viewer prefer to watch" and not "does the story adequately justify why it plays out the way it does"?
I find it amusing that this is the one post which gets alot of attention on /r/characterrant that's about Family Guy. I mean I wrote a post analyzing Meg from a character's perspective and that got a quarter of the upvotes despite it being well written and all. Written before /r/superseriousfamilyguy popped off iirc
It is kinda interesting that Family Guy actually gets very little attention here then again that's gonna be a given
Believable convolution is just good writing.
You just can’t be obvious about the bullshit reasons your characters do things or the convenient coincidence that puts characters on converging paths.
what is the willing suspension of disbelief? (read this as an answer on jeopardy)
IMHO, a good example of competent people still failing horribly and that being quite agonizing to watch is the TV show Black Sails. Most of the characters involved are experts at what they're doing and quite smart, yet they regularly fail due to being outsmarted or just outmatched.
Even when someone does something stupid, it usually makes sense from their perspective and only turns out to be stupid im.hindsight. Great series.
"Guys, would it be more interesting if fictional characters were competent and didn't make painfully obvious mistakes for no reason?"
Yes. Some ideas are stupid.
Just don't make a movie about a child terrorising incompetent burglers. Simples.
Give folks a reason to act stupidly. Give them an emotional impetus. Incomplete information. Just be vaguely sensible.
I think the Donald Trump Home Alone doesn't get enough credit for this. Harry and Marv do learn from the previous movie and don't make the same mistakes. But so does Kevin. Heck, the family learns from the previous movie and makes all new mistakes. It's still dumb, but it's dumb in new ways.
Home Alone isn't a great example of a movie that is fun because it's not realistic. They actually went through great pains to make it believable that this family forgot a child on vacation. Many movies put much less care into setting up the premise. There were a lot of kids, a chaotic situation rushing to the airport, a bad headcount from mistaking a neighbor for Kevin, soda got spilled on Kevin's ticket, there was a power outage, etc. Yeah the goofy cartoon traps aren't realistic but nobody was Media Analyzing the movie over that because that's not what people care about. People care about being able to believe the basic premise of a fictional universe. If the McAllister family had only two kids and they forgot one of the kids for no reason at all, it would ruin the entire movie because you would be thinking "why are these parents so stupid?" The entire time. Nobody cares if the robbers are stupid or not, and a stupid robber isn't unrealistic anyway, most criminals aren't the sharpest tools in the shed.
My beef with the LOTR eagles is why the fuck are they even there? Yeah it would’ve been dumb if they just flew to Mordor in a quick 20 and just smart bombed it into the volcano but did they even need to show up at the end? Just have someone else come pick the hobbits up.
It’s like if at the end of a Spider-Man movie, Dr. Strange, Thor, and the family that beat Galactus is there giving a statement to the police. Yeah it would’ve been a dumb movie if one of them kicked the Vulture’s ass in 2 minutes but why did they bother showing up at the end?
They were shown previously in the movies rescuing Gandalf from Orthanc, so at least there is precedent. I'm not sure who you're thinking of for a replacement, but I would have found it a lot more ridiculous if Aragorn's army marched all the way up to Mt.Doom to rescue them in time.
They were there cause they showed up in the hobbit iirc and earlier when they rescued Gandalf.