Film titles which have no relation to the content. (list / game)

I can't put it any more succinctly than that.

I found myself in a discussion about cool movie titles that have nothing to do with anything in the movie.

Some titles are blatant, eg. Death of a Salesman, Coffee and Cigarettes, some are a little obscure or cryptic, eg. 21 Grams, The Butterfly Effect, The Usual Suspects, while others remain debatable, but some seem to have no relation whatsoever.

So what film titles can you think of that have absolutely no connection to the plot?

(And if you disagree with a film someone else has mentioned, please explain why.)

Let's start with....

Reservoir Dogs.

Or is that a euphemism for something I don't know about?

Trainspotting

I didn't see any trains getting spotted.

Maybe it has some other deeper meaning, I don't know.

Do you understand what the butterfly effect is? If you did then you wouldn't put that in the list.

^He said it was obscure, not unrelated.

I've heard trainspotting is where people watch or count trains that go by, I suppose as a way to pass the time without being constructive in anyway. So, it is related.

Ah yeah I missed that. But if you watch the dvd with the features on it it explains what its about, i guess if you just see the film it could appear to be obscure or cryptic.

big fish? i haven't seen the movie in a while, so don't recall the explanation

Survival0200 said:

Trainspotting

I didn't see any trains getting spotted.

Maybe it has some other deeper meaning, I don't know.

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it makes a little more sense if you read the book.

alasdair

'big fish' is an old joke about 'the fish the got away'... a true story teller like the father would probably come back from fishing trips and talk about the one that got away; it was a really 'big fish'. I really liked that movie.

i was thinking matrix reloaded, but that's actually perfectly named seeing as that was all it did...
how about... wow, this is hard... 12 monkeys? or am i forgetting the most important scene again... umm... i can't think of a single one after 15 minutes... i give up sorry. good thread

thanks knight

alasdairm said:

it makes a little more sense if you read the book.

alasdair

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since you did, what is the explanation?

there's a scene in the book where the guys are hanging out (maybe shooting up?) in a decrepit, disused railway station. they meet an old drunk guy who asks them (i'm paraphrasing) "what you boys up to? trainspotting?"

if you're not familiar with the bizarre hobby of trainspotting, there's more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railfan

as the boys walk away, renton realises that the old guy is his (or one of the other guys') father.

to me (and many others) train spotting (in the railfan sense) is the epitome of pointless pastimes. i think welsh is drawing a parallel with heroin. that's just my opinion.

the scene in the disused station was omitted from the movie.

alasdair

how about... wow, this is hard... 12 monkeys? or am i forgetting the most important scene again...

Click to expand...

i think 12 monkeys is just the name of the group of people that brad pit leads and that frees the animals from the zoo

^yes that's right.

this is a hard game, but a good one

The Silence of The Lambs
A Scanner Darkly
A Clockwork Orange
Blue Velvet


Snakes on a Plane

The writer of the novel, Anthony Burgess, claimed that the term "clockwork orange" was a Cockney phrase, but most philologists agree that there has never been any such phrase until the appearance of his book. Burgess lived in Malaysia during the 1940s, and the Malay word for man is "orang", from which "orangutan" (man of the jungle) is derived. There is, however, an English slang expression for a gambling device known as the "one-armed bandit" in the U.S.: a clockwork fruit (the gambling device typically is referred to as a "fruit machine" in the UK due to the depictions on its dials; clockwork in England is a word applied to a plethora of mechanical devices beyond just time-pieces). The anthropomorphic look of a "fruit machine" (thus, its name "one-armed bandit" in the U.S. for its roughly man-sized shape and "arm" giving it a humanoid appearance) may well have given rise to the term "clockwork orange" in Burgess' fertile mind as Alex, through conditioning, is turned into a robot (which a fruit machine resembles). Gambling also is a game of chance, and Alex literally is gambling with his soul. This is made explicit, particularly in the film, when Dr. Brodsky tells Alex -- who is upset over the use of Beethoven on the soundtrack to the atrocity films and claims he has been enlightened -- to take his chance, as he will be free in a fortnight (roughly the time an annual vacation in an English resort such as Blackpool -- the Las Vegas of Britain -- with its scores of fruit machines, would take).

wizekrak said:

The Silence of The Lambs

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that's got everything to do with the content of that movie!

alasdair

I thought we were just using the literal meaning of the words in the title, without the implied message.

If you look at the meaning behind the title then most of the ones I've listed fall flat.

EDIT: as far as Trainspotting goes I used to think that it was a euphamism for shotting up. Ie: producing track marks (train spots). After reading the book it is indeed scoring heroin at an old abandoned railyard. Oh and it's Begbie's father they see at the station.

L2R said:

NAKED LUNCH

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being a slightly small fan, i did a small amount of googling and found this

"http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060907/ap_on_re_us/surgery_death

"the title was suggested by Burroughs's friend kerouac"
anything more beyond this would be appreciated.

i dunno, i was probably taking more out of it than intended (is there any other way to watch a david lynch movie?) but the title "Lost Highway" fit the movie perfectly for me. A story following a warped consciousness... surely is travelling down a much ignored path...

YEAH!! I GOT ONE!! EAD!!

Elephant - Gus Van Sant - watch it goddamnit!

i can't think of a single other movie, and i've been cheating (googling)

I somehow saw this thread title as "Film titties which have no relation to the content.". I had two pages worth of names ready to go.

As it stands...

Star Wars: stars were not at war here. Worlds were, people were, aliens were, droids were... stars were not.

Scarface: I never saw one scar