Part of the success of entertainment media such as films and TV is that they allow you to escape reality, to become immersed in another world.

This is especially true today, with special effects that would be unbelievable to both actors and audiences just a decade or two ago.

And yet, I’ve always found it difficult to forget that what I’m watching is just an illusion, and that’s because many programmes and movies make mistakes that jar and snap you back to reality.

There are three mistakes, in particular, that always have this effect on me.

The first applies to almost every movie that involves science fiction and aliens, as well as people on Earth travelling to other countries.

What am I talking about? (You’re not the first person to ask that, either!)

Language.

It seems that no matter who is involved or where the characters are, everybody in the entire Universe can speak English!

I know, actually speaking a foreign language means a large part of the audience can’t understand what’s going on, and using sub-titles make things too hard to watch.

And in the case of science fiction / alien movies, then coming up with a brand new language is probably too difficult and/or costly, with the notable exception of Klingon, of course.

Some movies do introduce the “universal translator”, although somebody still has to have programmed it to understand both languages first. Case in point - if Captain Kirk is “boldly going where nobody has gone before”, then how did they manage to create a “universal translator” in advance?

I guess that’s why many movies, especially those in the Second World War and/or Cold War genre, have German and Russian characters speaking English in those really heavy accents. It may sound a bit cheesy, but it does serve to indicate that there are different languages involved.

Ultimately, it appears to be a balancing act between verisimilitude and allowing the majority of the audience to understand the movie without having to strain and concentrate on sub-titles.

If they really are going to use these, then they need to make them readable. The classic Second World War movie, “Tora, Tora, Tora” did have the Japanese characters speaking Japanese, which was good, but then a lot of the sub-titles were white on white, which made it all rather pointless.

My second little gripe occurs in movies where somebody, often the “baddie”, is watching something happen on a monitor, but the jerk back to reality occurs for me when you realise that there is no logical place for the camera to be to show what’s on the screen.

You see it in not only in normal movies, e.g. “You Only Live Twice”, but even in animation / puppetry too, e.g. Thunderbirds.

And the third, and final one (for today, at least), is to do with the plot itself.

There are many, many movies where something totally illogical happens, and the moment you stop to think, “that’s not right” or “but how did …”, then the spell is broken, and you’re brought back to Earth with a bump.

Sadly, this happens all too frequently, as it appears that writing a script that hangs together is very difficult.

So, an art form that is designed with escapism in mind all too often fails because of laziness or sloppiness.