Movies & TV Shows set in a particular city that totally fail at it

[destroycreate]

A conversation in a different thread got me thinking about how often movies or TV shows will take place in a certain city, and think that the audience is dumb enough not to notice. Most often this happens with TV movies, but I can definitely think of some bigger movies that have done this. This is super common but I guess I'm asking for examples that are laughably bad and unrealistic. I'm still having my 1st cup of coffee this morning so this is all that comes to mind, but would love to see what you all come up with.

Some that come to mind:


Source

Takes place in Oakland, but in every other scene there are skyline shots of Vancouver, especially with the nearby mountains which are unmistakable for the PNW.




Same thing with Rumble in the Bronx as someone called out in a different thread. I remember watching it and laughing at how polar opposite to NYC Vancouver is.

[wwmiv]

A great current example is 911: Lone Star. The Austin they’re depicting outside of the skyline shots isn’t Austin or anywhere close to being like Austin either. It’s filmed in Los Angeles and it is very obvious it is filmed there. The architecture, the urban design, the roads, the plants, the weather, the wildlife, the topography, the culture and people: it’s all wrong.

[ChiMIchael]

Definitely John Q. They thought putting the Chicago skyline in the background was enough to ignore the house(s) and settings screamed Los Angeles.

[iheartthed]

While it might be a cult classic, RoboCop completely fails at depicting Detroit.

[Crawford]

I recently watched a dumb Steven Segal film (is there any other kind?) called Marked for Death, that supposedly takes place in Chicago, but with snow-capped mountains, palm trees and blatantly obvious LA vernacular. It bugs me when they don't even try.

Also, the original Halloween, while a classic, is pretty bad re. setting. It's supposed to be Haddonfield, IL, aka small town Midwest. But the foliage is all wrong (it's pretty obvious they just spread around fall leaves), there are mountains in the background, and the light is unmistakably SoCal. The light is so different around there.

[Centropolis]

both The Office and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia have routinely had towering mexican fan palm trees (tall LA street palms) in the background of shots.

[the urban politician]

I was annoyed when Gotham City switched in the most recent set of Batman movies from Chicago—where they actually tried to make it look unique (enhanced Chicago, so to speak), to Manhattan. When they switched to New York they didn’t even make an effort to make Gotham City look distinct from New York City.

[Steely Dan]

The scene in Christmas Vacation where the Griswolds (who are said to live in suburban Chicago) head out on a Saturday afternoon to cut down their own Christmas tree out in woods, but some how end up driving 24 hours to Colorado's rocky mountains, is locally famous for its WTF disconnect.

There aren't mountains like that anywhere remotely close to Chicago.

[the urban politician]

Pretty much every movie set in the US but filmed in Canada is a head scratcher. I mean, it’s so obvious…

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

I was annoyed when Gotham City switched in the most recent set of Batman movies from Chicago—where they actually tried to make it look unique (enhanced Chicago, so to speak), to Manhattan. When they switched to New York they didn’t even make an effort to make Gotham City look distinct from New York City.

......because Gotham City IS New York City......

[the urban politician]

^ But it’s not New York City. In the DC Universe, Gotham City is a distinct city separate from New York City

[Crawford]

I think the last Nolan-directed Batman was a NYC-Pittsburgh mashup? Some of the street scenes were clearly nowhere in NYC, and I think there were some Pittsburgh skyline shots.

While the Nolan Batman movies are great, I don't like how they handled any of the Gotham scenes. The first one looked all Hollywood backlot, the second one just looked like Chicago, the third was just NYC-Pittsburgh. I thought Gotham is supposed to be a bizzaroland NYC.

The 1990's-era Tim Burton Batman movie was the best Gotham setting, IMO.

[Steely Dan]

"Gotham" has been a nickname for NYC fot quite some time.

"Gotham city" in the DC universe is a fictional city based upon an amalgam of many different large US cities. It was intentionally fictionalized by the writers of batman such that it could be any big US city.



From wikipedia:

Gotham City is traditionally depicted as being located in the U.S. state of New Jersey.[1][2][3][4][5][6] Gotham's look and atmosphere was primarily influenced by New York City and Chicago,[7][8] although it was designed to more generally resemble any major American city.[9][10]

Locations used as inspiration or filming locations for Gotham City in the live-action Batman films and television series have included Chicago,[11][12] Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, New York City, Newark, New Jersey, London and Glasgow.[13][14][15][16][17][18]

Origin of name

Writer Bill Finger, on the naming of the city and the reason for changing Batman's locale from New York to a fictional city, said, "Originally I was going to call Gotham City 'Civic City.' Then I tried 'Capital City,' then 'Coast City.' Then I flipped through the New York City phone book and spotted the name 'Gotham Jewelers' and said, 'That's it,' Gotham City. We didn't call it New York because we wanted anybody in any city to identify with it."[19]

"Gotham" has been a nickname for New York City that first became popular in the nineteenth century; Washington Irving had first attached it to New York in the November 11, 1807 edition of his Salmagundi,[20] a periodical which lampooned New York culture and politics. Irving took the name from the village of Gotham, Nottinghamshire, England: a place inhabited, according to folklore, by fools.[21][22]

[badrunner]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

^ But it’s not New York City. In the DC Universe, Gotham City is a distinct city separate from New York City

There is no New York City in the DC Universe. There is a Metropolis though. Both fictional cities are modelled after NYC.

[badrunner]

Originally Posted by Crawford

I think the last Nolan-directed Batman was a NYC-Pittsburgh mashup? Some of the street scenes were clearly nowhere in NYC, and I think there were some Pittsburgh skyline shots.

While the Nolan Batman movies are great, I don't like how they handled any of the Gotham scenes. The first one looked all Hollywood backlot, the second one just looked like Chicago, the third was just NYC-Pittsburgh. I thought Gotham is supposed to be a bizzaroland NYC.

The 1990's-era Tim Burton Batman movie was the best Gotham setting, IMO.

The 90s era Batman the Animated Series is the definitive Gotham City for me. It's the closest to the original vision from the comics. Gotham from the Joker movie is pretty good too.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Crawford

I think the last Nolan-directed Batman was a NYC-Pittsburgh mashup? Some of the street scenes were clearly nowhere in NYC, and I think there were some Pittsburgh skyline shots.

While the Nolan Batman movies are great, I don't like how they handled any of the Gotham scenes.

The first two were filmed mostly in Chicago and London, and the last (Dark Knight Rises) was filmed mostly in NYC, Pittsburgh and London.

[suburbanite]

The two most popular mockumentary series, The Office and Parks and Rec, do a decent job with set selection, but in the episodes that feature extended outdoor scenes, trying to substitute LA for Rustbet/Midwest is difficult.

I think about like the Rabies Run episode of the office:

• Video Link

As they're filming the scenes throughout residential neighbourhoods, the bungalows, front fences, stucco construction, etc. make it painfully obvious that you're not in Scranton, PA. Pretty difficult to find this kind of vernacular in LA:



I think Parks and Rec had it slightly easier, since small town Indiana actually would feature more bungalows, but you'd still expect the houses to be more spaced out and probably wouldn't see many jailbar windows.

[Pedestrian]

It’s not a city thing but any movie or TV show that supposedly takes place in the midwest and has mountains in the background ruins it for me. Great as it otherwise was, “The X-Files” did that in some of their later shows.

[sopas ej]

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

It’s not a city thing but any movie or TV show that supposedly takes place in the midwest and has mountains in the background ruins it for me. Great as it otherwise was, “The X-Files” did that in some of their later shows.

Oh yes, "The X-Files" did that for me too. I watched the show for the first 3 or 4 seasons.

Being that I'm into cars and even little details like road signs and traffic lights, I could already tell that the show was shot in Canada. The cars they used had daytime running lights, which have been required in Canada since 1990. The US didn't start allowing them on cars until the 1995 model year (DRLs are allowed but not required in the US, of course).

There was another show shot in British Columbia that I would catch on TV occasionally 10 years ago or so called "Psych." It was set in Santa Barbara but it was so obvious to me that their outdoor shots were not in Santa Barbara. I think one of the lead characters even drove a car that wasn't even sold in the US.

[the urban politician]

I’ve always been irritated at the fact that the movie “Chicago” was filmed in Toronto