My original diary, If Famous Movie Scenes Happened in Reality, was posted about a year and a half ago, but I found it fun enough that it's worth revisiting with some additional cases. Not that I don't enjoy imagination, but I'm also a big fan of reality and occasionally like to slap people with it for shits and giggles. So, I would like to present how some popular movies would go if the premise were suddenly transported to the real world.
1. My Cousin Vinny
Premise: Two guys on a road trip from New York are arrested in Alabama and tried for murder in a case of mistaken identity. The only lawyer they can get a hold of is Vinny, a trash-talking, wise-cracking, incompetent personal injury attorney from Brooklyn who will work for free because he's a cousin of one of the defendants. Hilarity ensues, but along the way he demolishes what seems at first like an air-tight case and gets the case dismissed.
Reality: This is Alabama. The defendants are from New York - one Jewish, one very obviously Italian. It would not matter that Vinny completely demolishes the prosecution's case. It would not matter if he proved it physically impossible for the defendants to be guilty. In fact, his success would make both the judge and the jury hate him and them even more, and be even more determined to punish them for even existing. They would feel like their state and community had been disgraced because a case brought by them had been demolished before their very eyes by an outsider, and they would vindictively wish to see those responsible for debunking it punished. Vinny would move for dismissal, and the motion would be denied.
The jury would deliberate for a few hours, during which one or two very mousy, very passive decent people would try to steer the other jurors back to their responsibilities as human beings, but they would be shouted down, and a guilty verdict would be delivered. The judge would then sentence the defendants to death, and they would spend at least a year on Alabama death row until a federal judge got a chance to look at the case and throw it out. Prosecutors would decline to go for a retrial, but the original prosecutor, judge, and jurors would all insist they did the right thing, and some would inwardly gloat at "gittin' them Yankee bastards." The guys would go back to New York, their lives shattered, and would sue the state of Alabama without ever setting foot on its soil again.
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2. Forrest Gump
Premise: A mentally retarded man gets to personally experience every major event of the late 20th century through an endless series of coincidences and improbable accomplishments.
Reality: Forrest would never leave Alabama, and probably never leave his hometown unless his mother took him to nearby towns. He would know essentially nothing about the events of his lifetime other than local ones. He would help his mother until she died, and then he would live alone. He might make friends with a squirrel or raccoon who runs by his porch on occasion, which he spends most of the day sitting on and drinking lemonade. He would be quite fat by the time he reached middle-age. Gardening would be his main interest. Jenny would be a waitress single-mom living in another state (she got pregnant by some random guy), and one day would send him a letter (because he wouldn't have a phone) telling him about her life.
They would correspond on occasion, and he would tell her about his garden and his squirrels and raccoons. Then one day the letters would stop. Because of complicating factors from the condition that made him slow and, as a child, have back problems, he would be prone to infection and die in late middle age of the flu. A few friends of his mother's would attend the funeral, and then the house would be sold to a company planning to build a Wal-Mart on the site.
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3. Legally Blonde
Premise: A ditzy sorority girl decides to get into Harvard Law School to get back with the Harvard-bound boyfriend who dumped her. She gets in, earns her law degree, and finds someone much more worthy of her.
Reality: Her test results would be a catastrophic failure, and her application to Harvard Law School would not even reach the review committee - it would generate a one-paragraph form rejection because she would lack vast numbers of prerequisites, have abysmal test scores, and her only references would be from people in her existing academic community. She would be depressed for a few weeks, then find another boyfriend.
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3. Ferris Bueller's Day Off
Premise: A high school kid, his girlfriend, and their friend go on a citywide truancy romp and have madcap adventures trying not to get caught while reflecting on their lives.
Reality: Ferris's mother, remembering all the other times he had faked being sick or gotten caught truant, would see through his ruse immediately and drag his ass out of bed. If he ditched anyway, his mother would find out when Ed Rooney called her to complain about his absences, and she would drive around town looking for him. Eventually she would find him, because teenagers are predictable, and Cameron would make a run for it so Mrs. Bueller wouldn't see him and call his father. Mrs. Bueller would then drive Ferris and Sloan both to school and personally deliver them to Rooney, who would be waiting with police to arrest Ferris for breaking into the school's computer system to alter his attendance records. Having personally seen the records being messed with as he looked at them, he had contacted the school's system administrator to get records of the remote connections and had found Ferris' phone number.
Sloan gets detention, but Ferris is suspended and has to go to juvenile court. His parents take away his computer, will not let him see Sloan or Cameron, and spends his long grounding miserably doing homework, household chores, and humbly taking the gloating and mockery of his bitchy sister. He gets probation for the computer hacking, and is forced to take regular drug tests, not ditch class, not go near a computer for the next year, and clean up crap on the side of the road. When she can finally see him again, Sloan soon tires of his misery and dumps him for someone more exciting who doesn't have to constantly check in with a probation officer.
Meanwhile, Cameron is forced to confront his father over the Ferrari incident. Although he tries to be assertive, his father completely ignores everything he's trying to express and instead just sends him off to military boot camp. Eventually he works up the courage to run away from the camp and becomes an alcoholic bowling alley attendant somewhere in Ohio.
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4. The Matrix
Premise: A computer hacker discovers that the world is a virtual-reality zoo in which humans are the prisoners of an AI civilization.
Reality: The hacker's name would not be "neo" - not unless he was 12 and the year 1982. He would not do business in nightclubs, or be visited by hot chicks with tattooes unless he was paying them. Cryptic instant messages would be ignored as spam, not treated as tantalizing clues to a mystery. It wouldn't matter whether he took the blue or the red pill, because they're both roofies and Morpheus is a pervert. Agent Smith, it turns out, is actually a law enforcement agent who doesn't appreciate people breaking into protected servers and selling what they find. His oddly stoic demeanor is the result of a WASP upbringing and several failed marriages that have left him only his work as a consolation. Neo makes a deal, loses his job, does a little time in a minimum security facility, then walks out to a six-figure security consulting contract.
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5. Groundhog Day
Premise: A snarky weatherman keeps reliving the same day, over and over, in Punxatawny, PA on Groundhog Day.
Reality: When he goes to the doctor, Phil would find out that he had had an aneurysm somewhere in the hippocampus and only thought the same day was repeating. Although he believes strongly that he knows what's going to happen and has seen it happen before, objective tests prove to him that he does not, and that this perception is an illusion. Nevertheless, even this revelation feels like he has experienced it before, because his brain is continually signaling recognition. The next day, which is not Groundhog Day, will also feel like he has been living it over and over. He will be taken to the nearest hospital as soon as possible for monitoring and perhaps surgery, and will feel during the trip that he has taken the trip an infinite number of times. While in the hospital, he will feel he has been there forever. Unless medication or surgery manage to alleviate the symptoms, he eventually commits suicide because time already feels like it's been infinite. He does not wake up to the sound of Sonny and Cher.
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6. Fight Club
Premise: A corporate cog finds emotional release by participating in underground boxing matches, but the phenomenon spirals out of control into a terrorist movement.
Reality: The protagonist might enjoy fighting because he is severely mentally ill, but other people would mostly not have the same desires. A few would try it, but then realize that pain sucks and the injuries they sustain cost them money to fix - money that would then be unavailable for things that do not suck, or for the needs of their families. Eventually the main character would be sued and/or arrested for an injury he causes during a fight. Everyone in the area would know about him, and women would despise him as a self-harming nutball who pays insufficient attention to hygiene. Marla would be afraid of him because he's violent, and would have nothing to do with him.
His attempts to harangue people into fights would get him repeatedly arrested, and ultimately he would end up homeless and mumbling pithy Tyler Durden aphorisms to himself. He might come to believe that everyone he sees is part of his "secret army," and interpret random looks as acknowledgment, but eventually he would be so disorderly he'd be locked up in a psychiatric ward and restrained to prevent him from hitting himself. Through heavy medication and long years of therapy, he might be able to hold down a simple job, although he would have recurring medical problems from all the self-inflicted and fight-related injuries he had sustained. This would include needing dentures, because all his teeth would have been knocked out.