Did you ever watch something that was so friggin cool to see up there on the screen, big or otherwise, that it took a long time for you to start questioning if what happened was even possible at all, let alone probable? Did you even question it or are you still okay with it even now? Suspension of Disbelief is very important to the consumption of entertainment. It crosses all genres and often looks different depending on what medium it is applied to.

I have a friend at work whose dad loved 80s action movies. Like the Schwarzeneggers, the Stallones and to a lesser extent, the Van Dammes. He would hear nothing about how ridiculous the action scenes were, how they should have been shot so many times etc because “this is how men are supposed to act damn it!” As long as someone was being sufficiently macho he was willing to fully suspend any and all disbelief so that Chuck Norris grab an emergency beer from the glove compartment, drink some, take a small beer bath before he activated the rocket engine on his super Ramcharger and rocket out of the pit the bad guys were burying him alive in.

I have a similar relationship with James Bond. I get that the movies are misogynistic, repetitive, cliched and totally 100% unrealistic but they can also be fun and great action films at the same time. There is a scene in Skyfall where Bond catches the villain Silva relatively early and then makes a quip about his radio that he used to call in the cavalry in a super sarcastic and condescending manner. Silva is taken into custody, escapes into the subway and as Bond catches up to him and almost apprehends him a second time, he responds that he took Bond’s advice and invested in a “radio” also sarcastically which the then uses to blow a hole in the subway and drop a speeding train down a level pointed at Bond so he can make his escape. Now, he was never free between first capture and this show down, so that means he had to plan the escape, set explosives in such a manner that he would almost be caught in pretty much that exact same location and have a train passing through at that exact moment as well and have a radio ready to set off the explosives in case someone caught up with him in that exact location but also have the presence of mind to turn the tables on Bond’s quip just before detonation. Is all that pretty much impossible to throw together in the middle of London for the world’s most wanted man to set up from his remote secret island? The answer is I don’t care because it was friggin awesome!

There are plot holes, inconsistencies, and poor decisions, questionable and unquestioningly false physics and “OH COME ON!” moments littered throughout many of the great cinematic achievements of film history, and today’s prompt: What movie(s) did something so well that you are willing to suspend your disbelief?