[HN Gopher] Title drops in movies
___________________________________________________________________
Title drops in movies
Author : gaws
Score : 467 points
Date : 2024-11-06 02:48 UTC (20 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.titledrops.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.titledrops.net)
| alehlopeh wrote:
| The movie It doesn't have as many title drops as I would've
| expected. Also I don't recall anyone ever saying The Lord of the
| Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring in that film.
| tcho wrote:
| Elrond Peredhel, Lord of Rivendell:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8cU48PD0LI&t=7s
| stavros wrote:
| You should, perhaps, read the article.
| agolio wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did
| you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened
| to "The article mentions that".
| PittleyDunkin wrote:
| How would the commenter know to bring it up without reading
| the article? This feels like dodging the question of "why is
| the determination of a title drop so bad?"
| throwaway314155 wrote:
| There's a section in the article regarding how to handle
| colons.
| PittleyDunkin wrote:
| Yet again, this feels like dodging the question of "why
| is the determination of a title drop so bad?"
|
| C'mon it was half the content of my comment and you still
| refused to acknowledge it. What do you want
| lmm wrote:
| Why should colons be such special case? Why not treat
| commata or dashes the same way? (And conversely, did they
| count the one in the Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie title?)
| alehlopeh wrote:
| I obviously read at least some of the article.
| _puk wrote:
| I think the GP's point (badly made) may be that the Lord of
| the rings example is addressed explicitly in the article.
|
| "titles containing a colon are split and either side counts
| as a title drop. So for The Lord of the Rings: The
| Fellowship of the Ring either "Lord of the Rings" or
| "Fellowship of the Ring" would count as title drops"
| vundercind wrote:
| Including films where the title is a character name makes the
| data set less interesting. " _Barbie_ title-drops a ton!" yeah
| ok.
| tedunangst wrote:
| I'm imagining some film school student explaining how Barbie
| would have been a better movie, a real film even, without
| mentioning the character's name.
| PittleyDunkin wrote:
| They could have just named the character and avoided this too
| wmf wrote:
| In _The Ghost Writer_ the main character 's name is never
| mentioned.
| jachee wrote:
| _Fight Club_ , either.
| zwp wrote:
| And _Layer Cake_
| aidenn0 wrote:
| It's implied that his name is "Jack," assuming the poetry
| written from the point of view of Jack's organs were an
| earlier coping mechanism for the MC.
| bregma wrote:
| Now watch _Rebecca_.
| whatsgolden wrote:
| Barbie could be en even better movie if one did a shot each
| time the name was heard.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| That would make it a _Fatal Attraction_.
| onionisafruit wrote:
| Including "It" on the list made it seem like a parody.
| jhbadger wrote:
| Exactly. If they had limited it to cases where "it" is
| referring to Pennywise, that would be one thing, but not when
| anyone uses a very common pronoun!
| tczMUFlmoNk wrote:
| I think it's quite interesting to include. Apparently
| _Barbie_ says "Barbie" more than _It_ says "it", which is
| fascinating!
| loganc2342 wrote:
| I've never seen _It_ , but having seen _Barbie_ , it's
| not all that surprising lol.
| sim7c00 wrote:
| whole conversation makes me just think: But how can we
| not say it, if we don't know what it is!
|
| Ni!
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| I guess this is the downside of making a data analysis thing
| as a side project to hopefully get something going, but not
| having the time to take care of all potential edge cases.
|
| I guess "Them!" is also affected by this, and maybe The Thing
| or The Birds...
| n2d4 wrote:
| This is IMO one of the coolest use cases of AI. With a
| half-decent prompt, an LLM is pretty good at tasks like
| those.
| inanutshellus wrote:
| Both you and GP seem to have stopped reading the article
| early...
|
| He specifically calls out `"real"` title drops just a few
| sections later.
| quuxplusone wrote:
| To be fair, the article starts out seeming real for about
| the first third. It's only after the first list -- Barbie,
| Damini, Sita,... Azhar, It -- that it descends into obvious
| parody. Quote:
|
| "What's interesting about the (Fiction) list here is that
| it's pretty international: only two of the top ten movies
| come from Hollywood, 6 are from India, one from Indonesia
| and one from Turkey. So it's definitely an international
| phenomenon."
|
| Here the writer slides seamlessly from talking about movies
| with _title drops_ to talking about movies with _single-
| word titles which are also the name of the main character_
| , but is still saying things like "What's interesting about
| this list..." and "...an international phenomenon," as if
| those are remotely the defining characteristics of the list
| he just gave. (The defining characteristic, again, is
| "movies named after the protagonist." That's all.)
|
| Then there's a section break. Since the article clearly
| outed itself as parody right before the break, I think it's
| _totally reasonable_ for anyone to stop reading it at that
| point. (Although maybe not 100% reasonable to come back and
| comment on HN about it, except maybe to express
| disappointment and save other people the bother of reading
| that far themselves.)
|
| Anyway, after the break the author says, "You might have
| noticed [an icon on each movie that is] named after one of
| its characters." But scroll back up and you'll see that
| icon is missing from 4 of the movies in that list of 10:
| "Saina", "Nussa", "Arif v. 216", and "It". Of those 4, 3
| are clearly named after a main character. The fourth (like
| "Ecks vs. Sever") is named after _two_ characters (Arif and
| 216) but the graph shows that the author is counting
| instances of the name "Arif" alone, not instances of the
| phrase "Arif v 216".
|
| So not only is the article trying to be funny, it's not
| even playing by consistent rules -- it's a parody of an
| academic paper but _also_ just flat-out lying about the
| data! That 's not only annoying but uncool.
|
| I would actually be interested in reading a real article on
| the phenomenon of title drops in movies, e.g. by someone
| who'd gone through a bunch of movies and tallied which of
| them contain title drops. But the linked article is just
| garbage.
| cwmma wrote:
| after doing a naive approach he then drills down into more
| proper title drops.
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| Have you stopped scrolling once you realized that? The article
| acknowledges that, and even has a special category of movies
| named after characters with just a single title drop.
|
| That said, Barbie is a funny case indeed, as it's named after
| about half of its characters :P
| n2d4 wrote:
| Yes, but it would've been much more interesting to read about
| title drops where this is _not_ the case. The top titledrops
| listed that are not names of a character are all names of
| something else, like locations or objects.
| account42 wrote:
| The problem is that there aren't any lists for title drops
| excluding boring cases like that. So all the lists get
| dominated by those cases.
| Terretta wrote:
| Might acknowledge, but fails to fix. For instance, leading
| genre is biography since they aren't excluding 'name
| dropping'.
| beAbU wrote:
| I agree, I think this analysis can benefit from some data
| sanitisation.
|
| _It_ is a silly one to include, because the word _it_ is
| picked up by their analysis. Need to remove all hits except
| where the characters are referencing Pennywise directly.
|
| I also noticed that in some cases a namedrop was registered
| where the eponymous character speaks, e.g. _ALIENS: hisses_.
| These need to be removed as well.
|
| Movies where the name of the movie is the name of the leading
| character needs to be removed as well, or at least filterable
| from the list.
|
| All of this makes the site a little less interesting imo. A
| _good_ title drop in a movie is a fun little easter egg,
| especially if the name a bit more conceptual, e.g. _The Phantom
| Menace_. The way this site is set up at the moment makes it a
| bit more difficult to find those really good title drops.
| alach11 wrote:
| This seems like something that could be handled easily with a
| second-pass on the data using an LLM. And the author has made
| the dataset available... [0]
|
| [0] https://www.titledrops.net/
| kqr wrote:
| Indeed, and this contaminates all other analyses as well. Sure,
| shorter titles are dropped more frequently - but that sounds
| like it could be just because character names tend to make for
| short titles.
| ramon156 wrote:
| What a pessimistic view.
| shrikant wrote:
| What a fun read! I should point out though that the movie Saina
| definitely needs a "name" icon next to it, as it's a biopic of
| badminton player Saina Nehwal.
| KTibow wrote:
| I would've liked 2d charts or at least stacked bar charts for the
| correlation ones to see if the correlations are different for
| ones with only one drop or many drops
| devonsolomon wrote:
| Just dropping in to say thank you! Fun read, fun idea, well
| executed.
|
| Smells like the old internet!
|
| Runpee.com for when best to pee during a long film, Mr Skin for
| nude scenes (Flesh of The Stars in Knocked up fiction) ... and
| titledrops.net for title drops.
| FoeNyx wrote:
| Your list made me remember doesthedogdie.com which lists
| diverse trigger warnings in movies and other media.
| devonsolomon wrote:
| Ah yes ! Should have included.
| JimmyWilliams1 wrote:
| well educative for people from creative fields
| chrisallick wrote:
| https://youtu.be/OiqPmsBYieA?feature=shared i had the titular
| line in star wars...
| senjin wrote:
| First thing I thought of. "Man, I'm just so tired of these Star
| Wars."
| jzl wrote:
| Yay, someone posted it before I had to. This skit is 25 years
| old now!
| mhh__ wrote:
| Patrick, you're the American psycho!
|
| I really like a credit drop a la Gaspar Noe just rolling the
| credits mid way through Climax.
|
| I like the idea of a surrealist scene in a restaurant where the
| credits are just tucked away in a menu. Maybe it's been done
| benoliver999 wrote:
| "The only way for me to solve this crisis is to be Superman 4 -
| The Quest for Peace"
| evil-olive wrote:
| one of my favorites is Robocop 2 (1990):
|
| > 00:23:19 it gives me great pleasure to introduce to you,
| Robocop 2
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| Deathstalker 2 is probably my favorite instance of a sequel
| number being incorporated into the title drop. Not only is it
| one of the first lines of the movie, the timing is impeccable.
|
| https://youtu.be/BkPxZLWeTBg
| xsmasher wrote:
| Robocop 2 is a critique of sequels - everything must be bigger
| and better, designed by committee, with every idea (directive)
| shoved into the box until it becomes unworkable.
| bananaflag wrote:
| > So for The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring either
| "Lord of the Rings" or "Fellowship of the Ring" would count as
| title drops (feel free to hover over the visualizations to
| explore the matches)!
|
| An unacknowledged partial title drop for that movie is that "Lord
| of the Ring" (with no s at the end) is uttered.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| That isn't the same thing. The Lord of the Rings is the One
| Ring. The Lord of the Ring is Sauron.
| throwawaycities wrote:
| In The Rings of Power Sauron is called Lord of the Rings
| (plural)
| account42 wrote:
| I'm not sure why you think fanfiction is relevant to this
| discussion.
| Kiro wrote:
| > The Lord of the Rings is the One Ring
|
| Source? I can't find anything.
| jachee wrote:
| _"One Ring to rule them all_
|
| _And in the darkness bind them."_
| jimjimjim wrote:
| and Sauron used/uses that ring as a tool
| jimjimjim wrote:
| uh, no. I'm pretty sure Sauron is the Lord of the Rings
| including the one ring. Since he, you know, kind of made them
| all.
| the_af wrote:
| While you're right about Sauron being the Lord of the
| Rings, he didn't make all of them.
|
| The three Elven rings were made in secret by Elves, and
| were untainted by Sauron. Disregard the TV show, which
| shows a version contradicting Tolkien.
|
| This is the reason at the end of the Return of the King,
| with Sauron defeated, Gandalf, Galadriel and (Cirdan?) are
| able to openly wear the three again. Had they been tools of
| the Enemy, they would never have been worn again.
| chrismorgan wrote:
| Sauron is twice called the Lord of the Rings in book two.
|
| In chapter one, Many Meetings, Gandalf tells Frodo:
|
| > _Yes, I knew of them. Indeed I spoke of them once to you;
| for the Black Riders are the Ringwraiths, the Nine Servants
| of the Lord of the Rings._
|
| And in chapter two, The Council of Elrond, Glorfindel says:
|
| > _And even if we could, soon or late the Lord of the Rings
| would learn of its hiding place and would bend all his power
| towards it._
|
| In the final chapter (The Grey Havens) of book six, the Red
| Book is also titled by Frodo "THE DOWNFALL OF THE LORD OF THE
| RINGS AND THE RETURN OF THE KING". Now _there's_ a title
| drop.
|
| (Just in case it's not obvious: I'm talking about the _books_
| here, not the movies. Never seen 'em.)
| the_af wrote:
| I don't have my Fellowship at hand now, but doesn't Frodo
| joke near the beginning he's "the lord of the rings" and
| Gandalf scolds him by telling him something like "there's
| only one lord of the rings"?
|
| Found the quote by googling, he was scolding Pippin, not
| Frodo, and it was "Ring" singular after all:
|
| > "Hurray!" cried Pippin, springing up. "Here is our noble
| cousin! Make way for Frodo, Lord of the Ring!"
|
| > "Hush!" said Gandalf from the shadows at the back of the
| porch. "Evil things do not come into this valley; but all
| the same we should not name them. The Lord of the Ring is
| not Frodo, but the master of the Dark Tower of Mordor,
| whose power is again stretching out over the world!"
|
| (Book II, Chapter I)
| the_af wrote:
| The "Lord of the Rings" (plural) is explicitly acknowledged
| by Gandalf to be Sauron in the book.
|
| Also in Peter Jackson's movie.
| bombcar wrote:
| Sauron is referred to as the Lord of the Ring _and_ the Lord
| of the Rings (second being much more common) multiple times.
|
| The Ring is referred to as The Ring, The One Ring, The Ruling
| Ring, and a few other things, but I do _not_ think it is ever
| referred to as the "Lord" of anything.
| rurban wrote:
| I favor those dramatic Gaspar Noe title drops, the title in huge
| red letters full screen, over characters naming the title. It's
| huge.
|
| But then opensubtitles couldn't be used to analyse that.
| niels_bom wrote:
| Referenced strongly in 2024's The Substance.
| rurban wrote:
| Yes, exactly! Good catch
| test1235 wrote:
| sometimes the title is in the script, but isn't actually a line
| said by anyone:
|
| Aliens (1986)
|
| _(Aliens hissing)_
|
| https://www.titledrops.net/explorer?movies=tt0090605&title=
| contravariant wrote:
| They even included one in the article. At least I sincerely
| doubt that "The Scarlet Bond That Time I Got Reincarnated as a
| Slime" [sic] was dialogue. Given the context I'm fairly sure
| it's just the title showing up on screen, but subtitled because
| it's in Japanese.
| nighthawk454 wrote:
| "That's the name of the movie!" - most Pitch Meeting videos
| latexr wrote:
| For reference: https://www.youtube.com/@PitchMeetings
| gowld wrote:
| and "Roll Credits" in CinemaSins
|
| One thing they deem to be a movie "sin" is the fact that movies
| will often have a line of dialogue in which they'll say the
| title of the movie. Whenever a movie does this, the CinemaSins
| Narrator will exclaim "Roll Credits," as though the title of
| the film can only be mentioned in the absolute last line of
| dialogue.
|
| https://popculturalstudies.wordpress.com/2018/01/18/in-defen...
| highlights some examples.
| bombcar wrote:
| Now I wonder how many title drops are the last line or near
| enough as such ...
| locusofself wrote:
| One of my favorite title drops is in Arrested Development:
|
| Michael Bluth: "Your average American male is in a perpetual
| state of adolescence, you know, arrested development"
|
| Narrator: "Hey! Thats the name of the show"
| extraduder_ire wrote:
| The narrator, Ron Howard, also appears in an episode while
| still doing the narration and referring to himself.
| xsmasher wrote:
| The show is more meta than Deadpool.
|
| > Chachi: "Look, this is not the first time I've been brought
| in to replace Barry Zuckerman. I think I can do for you
| everything he did, plus skew younger..."
|
| > Narrator: "No one was making fun of Andy Griffith. I can't
| emphasize that enough."
| redundantly wrote:
| "What, we some kinda... Suicide Squad?" (*_*)
| alexnew wrote:
| Love data x film. https://stephenfollows.substack.com/ does a lot
| of this kind of work.
| undebuggable wrote:
| It's actually well executed how they managed to say exactly once
| "Amadeus" or "Patton" in their biographical films.
| savef wrote:
| I was utterly disturbed by a story sent into the Kermode and Mayo
| radio show many years ago. The listener explained that their
| family went to the theatre, sat down in their seats to watch the
| film, and then upon the first utterance of the title of the film
| they would clap, stand up, and walk out.
|
| I assume this to be a joke. I've never found any reference of
| anybody doing this online, or anybody even discussing this one
| story from the show. But holy shit does it make my skin crawl.
| yard2010 wrote:
| Tangibly related, mandatory family guy reference:
| https://youtu.be/lospTnfovr8
| sidcool wrote:
| Happy to see Damini movie in that list. It's an excellent
| Bollywood movie from the 90s. I know the list is not indicative
| of the quality of the movie. But still happy to see this obscure
| Indian movie. Worth a watch. Highly rated on IMDB too.
| darekkay wrote:
| Maybe I was (un)lucky, but the only film I've checked was
| "Inception". It's spoken at 19:24, but the explorer states the
| title is not dropped at all. I had to actually look it up, as
| I've doubted my memory for a second.
| ggm wrote:
| Was 'je ne regrette rien' playing when you had that doubt?
| mk_stjames wrote:
| Wild, that was the first title I tried as well. It is such a
| specific word, hence why I tried it first.
|
| It's actually said eight times in the movie (I ctrl+f'd an .srt
| file). The page mentions the methodology was to use
| opensubtitles.com, but not how which specific version was to be
| used from that website was chosen (because opensusbtitles.com
| lists tons of possible files for each language depending on
| what version of torrent/etc they match). It is possible that
| the download script used accidentally chose non-English .srt
| files sometimes for some films.
| GolDDranks wrote:
| While the 1995 Japanese anime series, Neon Genesis Evangelion
| revolves around human-shaped weapons called "Evangelions", the
| "Neon Genesis" part of the title is neither part of the original
| Japanese name, nor its direct translation. The Japanese name is
| Xin Shi Ji evuangerion / Shin-seiki evangerion, "Evangelion of a
| new era/century". The series has other non-direct translations
| too, and apparently this style was approved of the original
| creators, but it was always a bit of a mystery whether the gap in
| the interpretation was intentional or not.
|
| However, over two decades later, with the re-boot movie series
| Rebuild of Evangelion, in the final scenes of the final movie,
| the protagonist name-drops the words "neon genesis" in
| appropriate context. I've never grinned as hard in movie theater.
| twic wrote:
| What does the dialogue say in Japanese? Neon genesis or new
| era?
| miltonlost wrote:
| Neon is relating to "new" via neo- prefix, with -n added on
| because the Western idea in the 90s of Japanese aesthetic was
| futuristic neon.
|
| Genesis is for as beginning to the new era. It's etymology is
| Greek for "origin, creation, generation" which is a sort of an
| "era". Plus a looser translation provides the extra wordplay
| and thematic heft with the Angels due to Genesis being first
| book of the Bible.
|
| Not a translator but I write a lot of poetry, and that's what
| would be going through my mind as I see the difference between
| the literal translation and the English decision and the
| additional capabilities this translation gives. In my mind, the
| initial translator 100% intended this "gap", which is less a
| gap and more of an additional layering.
| nine_k wrote:
| BTW neon the gas was called so because it was a new discovery
| (in a well-searched area, the composition of air). The name
| basically means "a new something", neuter gender, could be
| "lo nuevo" in Spanish or "das neue" in German.
|
| Since "evangelion" and "genesis" clearly are taken from
| Greek, so was apparently "neon".
| Telemakhos wrote:
| They're both ancient Greek, but different grammatical
| genders: neon (neon) is neuter, while genesis is feminine.
| Better might have been "nea genesis" if those two words were
| to be interpreted together. But, "evangelion" (euaggelion) is
| also Greek and neuter, meaning the gospel, good news, or a
| reward owed a messenger for his good news. I always figured
| the "new" of "neon" belonged with the "evangelion," and
| "genesis" was just kind of hanging around for no particular
| reason.
| gnrlst wrote:
| I remember about 12-15 years ago, as a weekend project, I reached
| out to the creator of OpenSubtitles dot org and asked him for a
| dump of all the subtitles, which he promptly and happily
| provided. I then indexed them all in elasticsearch (it was a
| pretty nascent tech at the time), and created a movie quote
| finder, with timestamps. E.g. you could search for "i love you"
| and it would tell you all the movies and timestamps that phrase
| would be uttered. My lazy ass didn't go beyond a localhost
| version, but I still remember fondly of having gotten that
| working, it felt like magic at the time.
| mkl wrote:
| A bug: In "Highest title drops by decade", 1960, "Best rated (at
| least 1 drop)", it lists _Psycho_ with 0 drops. It really does
| seem to be 0, so shouldn 't show up here.
| mook wrote:
| A different bug in the article: It lists That Time I Got
| Reincarnated... (awfully long title) as having one, but I'm
| pretty sure that's just a translation of the title card:
| 73 00:13:32,095 --> 00:13:34,055 No... Look!
| 74 00:13:47,068 --> 00:13:47,600 That Time I
| Got Reincarnated as a Slime 75
| 00:13:47,610 --> 00:13:49,987 <b>The Scarlet Bond</b>
| <b>That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime</b> 76
| 00:14:04,627 --> 00:14:05,992 Find him?!
| bux93 wrote:
| Some movies have a working title and the release is different. We
| may never know how many title drops are in those. Although we
| know that the working title for "The Dark Knight" was "Rory's
| First Kiss".
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| The working title of the project is often public, e.g. on signs
| to the location shoot, and as such is often cryptic so that
| that the casual observer won't know that e.g. "Rory's First
| Kiss" is a Batman movie.
| -t0mm wrote:
| Brokeback Mountain apparently has 0 title drops, even though all
| Ennis and Jack have is Brokeback Mountain!
| epolanski wrote:
| Most ridiculous one has to be "I have my 50 shades of grey" or
| something like that dropped in the same movie.
|
| I only know this because of the fun honest reviews made of it.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| "I'm 50 shades of fucked up" if I recall correctly, which was
| as much forced as it was cringe. I never watched the film or
| read the books thankfully.
| epolanski wrote:
| You're right, I rewatched the video!
|
| It's even worse than I remembered.
| olddustytrail wrote:
| No, you're both wrong, nothing was "forced".
|
| That dialogue is from the book. The book gets its title
| from the dialogue. The film has the same title and dialogue
| because it's based on the book.
|
| There is no point where script writers are sat down trying
| to figure out how to work the title into the dialogue.
| r0bbbo wrote:
| There was an Instagram account or YouTube channel that used to
| make funny videos of the films ending with the credits rolling at
| the exact point the title of the film was said--anyone have any
| recollection of that?
| r0bbbo wrote:
| Found it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DMndH8QiI4
|
| The closing music choices are excellent.
| cezart wrote:
| The Elephant (2003) has my favorite Title drop, and of course, is
| not marked in this database. As I remember it, at some point in
| the movie we are shown a drawing of an elephant randomly hanging
| in the room of one of the protagonists. Both the drawing, and the
| main protagonists are easy to ignore, yet are the main subjects
| of the movie.
| G_o_D wrote:
| Indian Movies had this trend since early days till lates 90s
| Every movie has 1 dialogue 1 song That says title of movie
| jonplackett wrote:
| I just came here to say I love the bulgy animation as you scrub
| through the movie to see the drops.
|
| This is a fun idea but I also appreciate the extra effort to make
| it nice to explore!
| arethuza wrote:
| Isn't "Dune" said _once_ in both of the Villeneuve movies?
| Yasuraka wrote:
| I remember it in the second one at least:
|
| https://youtu.be/r99hB4FzhXw?&t=153
| Avlin67 wrote:
| what is title drops ? what doest it mean ?
| gield wrote:
| The article explains it very well.
| latexr wrote:
| The first line1 of the article explains it. It even has "title
| drop" in bold.
|
| 1 Literally
| adriand wrote:
| How sure are we that these so-called title drops are what this
| article purports them to be rather than the name of the film
| coming from the content and/or dialogue that is contained within
| it?
|
| An analogy: when someone writes a song and then they need to name
| it, they will frequently choose a word or phrase that appears in
| the lyrics. When Leonard Cohen sings "hallelujah" in the song of
| the same name, is that a "title drop"? I assume not.
| latexr wrote:
| > How sure are we that these so-called title drops are what
| this article purports them to be
|
| What does the article purport them to be? Right at the top I
| see:
|
| > A title drop is when a character in a movie says the title of
| the movie they're in.
|
| That makes no distinction if the title or the script came
| first. The article does call out movies who do that in a cringe
| or obvious way (like Suicide Squad, which had prior art) but
| also includes movies where that is unavoidable, such as Barbie.
|
| More importantly, _it doesn't matter_ which came first. As soon
| as you make a line and a title the same, the line becomes a
| title drop. _The audience sees the final product_ , not the
| process.
|
| > An analogy
|
| That analogy doesn't work. Songs are typically repetitive and a
| few minutes long. Everyone expects them to name the title. A
| movie, on the other hand, is an experience that asks suspension
| of disbelief from you, it tries to engross you in its world
| over the course of multiple hours. When a character title
| drops, in a second you're suddenly and forcefully pulled back
| from the illusion and reminded you're watching a movie.
| nkozyra wrote:
| > What does the article purport them to be? Right at the top
| I see:
|
| It seems to imply a concerted effort to mention the title of
| the movie in the script in a meta, fourth wall breaking sort
| of way.
|
| In some cases that's obviously true - Hot Tub Time Machine,
| Suicide Squad from their examples - but other times an
| untitled script just needs a title and it's plucked from the
| script.
|
| I think there's a distinction there, because the latter is
| less of an Easter Egg sort of thing and more "ok now we need
| a title."
| latexr wrote:
| > It seems to imply a concerted effort to mention the title
| of the movie in the script in a meta, fourth wall breaking
| sort of way.
|
| It makes _zero difference_ to the movie watching experience
| if the script line came from the script or the other way
| around. While you're watching the movie, _the effect is
| exactly the same_. So even if you took a line of dialog to
| make your title, it becomes a title drop nonetheless
| because the audience doesn't know (nor should they care)
| which came first.
| metabagel wrote:
| I don't think anyone would regard using Barbie's name in
| the movie as a title drop.
| latexr wrote:
| _The article_ does:
|
| > Unsurprisingly, movies named after one of their
| characters have an average of 24.7 title drops, more than
| twice as much as the usual 10.3.
|
| And this thread started exactly with the point of what
| the article considers title drops.
|
| The article also highlights the interesting case of
| "movies named after a character with single title drops".
| I'm willing to bet that in those movies, _if the name is
| proffered late enough in the runtime_ , it may feel like
| a title drop because the the audience suddenly becomes
| aware the name had never been said before. When the name
| is said all the time or once but too early (so you'll be
| primed to expect it more often) then the effect is bound
| to be lessened.
| nkozyra wrote:
| > It makes zero difference to the movie watching
| experience if the script line came from the script or the
| other way around.
|
| I disagree; if it's a quote that serves the narrative and
| isn't jammed in as a reference it doesn't have the same
| effect as the meta examples. Less of a fourth wall break.
| latexr wrote:
| That's just called good writing. You could decide on a
| title first then skilfully add it as a quote that servers
| the narrative. Again, _as an audience member you don't
| know_ 1, except when it's glaringly bad. It's the toupee
| fallacy.
|
| 1 I hope it's obvious I'm excluding cases where someone
| deliberately seeks behind-the-scenes information. We're
| talking about having only the result of the work as
| context.
| cgriswald wrote:
| It's like anything in film. The viewer can speculate how
| it was constructed based on evidence in the work itself.
| The writing divide is certainly not the only source of
| evidence.
|
| More generally we are not limited only to the film when
| trying to categorize based on this distinction. The
| distinction exists even if it is not always discernible.
|
| That said, I think trying to construct separate lists
| based on this distinction would be nearly impossible.
| amp108 wrote:
| > It makes zero difference to the movie watching
| experience if the script line came from the script or the
| other way around. While you're watching the movie, the
| effect is exactly the same.
|
| Certainly not true in the case of a work adapted from
| another source like a novel. The words "The Fellowship of
| the Ring" are never uttered in _The Fellowship of the
| Ring_ , and Peter Jackson's ham-fisted insert there was
| obvious even to people who hadn't read it, but especially
| to those of us who have.
|
| And, by that token, if the dialogue suddenly seems
| awkward and stunted for no other reason than to insert
| the title, most people would probably conclude that the
| title came first.
| latexr wrote:
| And as I pointed out several hours ago, that complaint is
| about bad writing, which can happen in either direction.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42062800
| darepublic wrote:
| The movie "It" neither uses title drops, nor was the title
| plucked from the script.
| jsbg wrote:
| > it doesn't matter which came first
|
| imo it does matter and is the difference between cringe
| (sometimes intentional) and not
| latexr wrote:
| It's not the order of the writing that determines that, but
| _the quality_. Yes, the order can influence it, but it's
| not the determining factor.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42062800
| throw4847285 wrote:
| My favorite "title drop" in a song is in How Soon is Now by the
| Smiths. After an instrumental break, Morrissey sings, "You say
| it's gonna happen now? What exactly do you mean..." You can
| almost hear the next line should be "How soon is now" but
| there's a pause and then he sings, "See I've already waited too
| long..." The title captures the mood of the song but is never
| actually said. It feels intentionally left out.
|
| On the movie front, No Country for Old Men does something
| similar.
| latexr wrote:
| Reminded me of a scene in Barry1 where the title character gets a
| small part in a movie and while his washed-up teacher is
| reviewing the script he sees Barry's single line of dialogue and
| exclaims "That's the name of the movie! They can't cut that!"
|
| 1 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_(TV_series)
| mobeigi wrote:
| Wow I love the presentation of this website, very nice!
| Sebb767 wrote:
| > Similarly, movies named after a protagonist have a title drop
| rate of 88.5% while only 34.2% of other movies drop their titles.
|
| What is much more interesting is that 11.5% of movies named after
| their protagonist never mention them by name. I guess I can
| imagine a few edge cases where this would be usual (protagonists
| not usually called by their name due to their position, like
| kings, and movies with little talking), but it's surprising that
| there are that many.
| edgineer wrote:
| Unfortunately he'll miss e.g. "I'm sick and tired of these
| motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane."
| NiloCK wrote:
| A pointed reversal of this is "We Need to Talk About Kevin",
| which went unsaid through the movie.
| miltonlost wrote:
| Which is why it's such a great title. All that irony
| darepublic wrote:
| Intentionality matters. "It" should not count as a title drop.
| Nor Barbie (or any movie where the title is the characters name).
| But I understand it would be way more difficult to run the
| numbers with such a constraint. But this is a case where, to me,
| the results are very much tainted and thus I had to stop reading.
| To me this is like when developers run into a hard issue and
| somehow play a game of semantics with the wording of a ticket to
| avoid putting together something useful for the user
| TheGeminon wrote:
| If you read a bit further he excludes instances like that and
| listed films with only a single (likely intentional) title
| drop.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| While it is somewhat arbitrary, I am sure that "Barbie" is
| intentional, the somewhat obnoxious repetition of the word
| "Barbie" fits the theme. Also, maybe you stopped reading a
| little too early as the case where the title is a character
| name is specially addressed.
|
| "It" may be the the special case here, as it is a very common
| word by itself but that a movie is named like this is notable
| enough for it to be included.
| quirino wrote:
| I was more surprised by the fact that "Barbie" was said more
| times than "it", even though all of the "wrong" instances of
| "it" were counted as well.
| dkdbejwi383 wrote:
| It's possible there are just more lines of dialogue in
| Barbie than It, given the conventions around each genre. I
| haven't seen It, but I can assume with It being a horror
| film there are longer periods with no dialogue for suspense
| etc.
| GauntletWizard wrote:
| Barbie also has multiple characters named Barbie; There
| are times where Barbie is said three or four times in a
| single paragraph and even a sequence that's just a
| complete graph of Barbies saying "Hi Barbie" to each
| other.
| zellyn wrote:
| As noted by other commenters, the author addresses this,
| although I would have loved to have had a version of all the
| _statistics_ with name-based drops elided.
| cgriswald wrote:
| I think a case could be made for "It" being a quasi-name and
| therefore a different word that is spelled the same or, because
| "it" is a pronoun it only counts when it is used to refer to
| the thing that the title itself refers to.
| badmintonbaseba wrote:
| Fake title drops is one of my favorite memes, which is a
| screenshot from a movie/series with fake subtitles. Example:
|
| https://preview.redd.it/in-the-netflix-original-series-resid...
|
| edit: oops, just noticed the article also mentions the meme
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Sometimes the title is added after the script
| jdlyga wrote:
| "I'm just so tired of all these star wars"
| MPSimmons wrote:
| Oh my god this seems like so much work. I'm exhausted on their
| behalf.
| julianeon wrote:
| The one in Hot Tub Time Machine will never stop being funny to
| me.
| jml7c5 wrote:
| There's a parody account on Twitter that I dearly love for these.
| In particular:
| https://x.com/Saythetitle/status/909933269982105605
|
| (It's a shame there's no nice way on Twitter to sort by number of
| favorites. You can approximate it by searching for
| "from:<accountname> min_faves:<number>", but it doesn't correct
| for the number of followers the person had at a given point.
| Which is a problem with subreddit "top" sorting, come to think of
| it, as it strongly weights recent posts when the subreddit was
| more popular. Always wished they'd fix that.)
| racl101 wrote:
| For as cheesy as the Fast and Furious movies are they still
| haven't really done this with the exception of Tokyo Drift I
| think.
| frmersdog wrote:
| The hardest name drop of the last decade has got to be
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ln6ZxXSnMwg (Massive spoilers for
| Last Fiction 16).
|
| Yes, it's a game, but from one of two series that cemented video
| games as a cinematic medium, when developers so desire. 35 years
| of build-up, and a love letter to the whole series, including
| (especially) the ones people derided (FNC). Also, interesting
| because it's not a direct quote of the title, but still something
| that everyone who got to this point recognized immediately.
| nickdothutton wrote:
| "A View to a Kill (1985)" The database does not recognise when
| the movie name is spoken by 2 people. In this movie 1 character
| begins the sentence "what a view..." and a 2nd character
| completes the line: "...to a kill".
| throw4847285 wrote:
| How about movies where the title drop is the very last line? I
| can only think of one (it's not really a spoiler, but SPOILERS I
| guess).
|
| The last line of My Dinner with Andre is "my dinner with Andre."
| I think that only works because the whole movie feels like a
| stage play, and there's something very stagey about that choice.
| zb wrote:
| The one that sprang to mind for me was _The Name of the Rose_.
| Oddly it doesn't show up as a title drop in the data.
| gothroach wrote:
| Does this not take in to account lyrics in musical movies? I
| looked up Across the Universe and it reported zero name drops
| despite there being at least a dozen.
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