MovieChat Forums > Airplane! (1980) Discussion > Wrong intonation makes no sense

Wrong intonation makes no sense


You see - or more correctly, hear - this so much.

I wonder why this is? Do the actors and voice actors not know what they are supposed to convey, do they only focus on words or 'believable performance', disregarding the point and meaning of WHAT they are actually saying altogether?

Disregarding the poi.. never mind, not gonna do that joke.

When Leslie Nielsen's character says something like '.. on finding someone back there, who can not only fly this plane, but who didn't have fish for dinner', he intonates it just as wrong as the tortoise in 'Kung-Fu Panda', when he says '..will not only bring peace to the valley, but also to you' (I am paraphrasing).

There's also an old game, called 'Day of the Tentacle' (I refuse to call it 'Maniac Mansion 2', because it's so very different and doesn't really feel like 'more of Maniac Mansion' on any level), where a voice actor makes the same mistake in the intro (if I remember correctly), not sure if it's Hoagie or someone else.

So what's wrong with their intonations? Well, they stress the wrong word. '..will bring PEACE to the valley' would imply that he will also bring OTHER things to the valley.

Stressing 'VALLEY' would mean 'will bring peace to valley AND other locations/things/people/etc'.

Leslie's character stresses 'FLY', which implies he should be able to do OTHER things to this plane as well. If he had stressed 'PLANE', it would still possibly imply that he could fly other things as well, but it would make more sense to then switch to the 'didn't eat fish'-part. Especially considering it would be practically irrelevant if he can fly other things or not.

Not to mention that Leslie's character makes the 'The Matrix'-mistake of saying 'ONE THING' and then listing 'TWO THINGS' ('search and destroy' = two things).

'Not only FLY.. but didn't have fish' = TWO things.

So not only is wrong intonation and stressing of wrong words prevalent, lousy math skills of either writers or characters are ridiculously common!

I mean, if it was something like 'detract eighty-two million seven hundred fifty thousand two hundred twenty nine from two billion four hundred sixty three thousand five hundred fifty five', I could understand if a character makes a mistake like that.

But not being able to tell ONE from TWO? That's inexcusable and makes no sense.

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