Fandom Enraging Misconception / Live-Action Films

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• James Cameron's Avatar:
  • An "avatar" is a transgenic hybrid telepathically controlled by a human. Go to any collective forum for this movie and call any one person in the film Avatar, or call the Na'vi "Avatars", or ask what this has to do with Avatar: The Last Airbender, and chances are you'll get a front row seat to a Flame War.
  • Referring to the Na'vi (meaning The People) as 'Na'vis' (technically, 'the Na'vi' is Department of Redundancy Department if you go by a literal translation, but ignored for practicality since it also refers to them in a species context).
  • Other mangling of names cause annoyance, such as 'Navi', 'Ney'tiri'/'Neyti'ri' or other omissions or addition of apostrophes.
  • Calling ikran/toruk 'dragons' will cause a lot of annoyance, especially since if you don't want to use the actual name, there are even convenient English versions, and can be considered particularly egregious because they are not.
  • Examples other than words include the depressingly common complete misunderstanding of what tsaheylu is (likely perpetuated by a certain Flash animation). Other misconceptions include some people who claim that either the floating mountains can't exist, claim that Pandora's magnetic field would kill a human, or that there is no oxygen on Pandora.
• Back to the Future: If there's one way to annoy any Back To The Future fan, it's getting the date that Marty and Doc traveled to in the future in Back to the Future Part II wrong, which is October 21, 2015. This isn't fans being petty, rather the result of an Urban Legend that has gotten ridiculously out-of-hand. Once real-life history got into the decade of the 2010s, pretty much every year there has been a picture claiming that that particular day is the day they went to in the future (with the date being Photoshopped to the current date). This is despite the fact that the films always used Exactly Exty Years Ago in regards to when they travelled to different years from 1985. This has been taken up a notch with Tumblr pages such as these, which are dedicated to photoshopping the date every single day. People kept falling for it until the eventual actual day from the movie rolled around.
• Call Black Swan a ripoff of Perfect Blue and prepare to get lectured on how the two films are very different.
• Fans of the Child's Play films tend to get enraged when people ask why don't the victims just hold the doll down, or throw it, or kick it away (which does happen, but it usually doesn't stop him). It's established in the first Child's Play film that the Chucky doll is possessed by the soul of a human serial killer and that the longer Charles Lee Ray stays inside the doll, the more human he becomes. So Chucky essentially has the strength of a grown man despite being a tiny doll and also has an extremely high tolerance for punishment. And that's not getting into things like the shock value of having an inanimate toy come to life and attack you, which would prevent most people from reacting rationally.
• Do not tell fans of Dredd that it's a rip-off of The Raid. Dredd was actually in production first, but The Raid managed to get released first. The similiar premises seem to be largely a coincidence.
• Godzilla:
  • If you want to refer to Godzilla by a diminutive nickname, remember that it's "Goji", not "Zilla". "Zilla" was the monster in the 1998 American remake, who was emphatically not the real Godzilla (see below).
  • Even among the more tolerant fans who allow American pronunciations, that mutant iguana from '98 is Zilla, now that the Japanese movies have used him. Before that, he was G.I.N.O.
  • Saying that Godzilla (2014) is a remake of the 1998 film doesn't sit well with Godzilla fans. Same thing goes for when journalists or critics say that the '98 film was "the last Godzilla film" until this one, out of apparent ignorance of Godzilla: Final Wars and the rest of the Millennium series.
  • Calling the Shodai-Jira (that being the Zilla from G'98) by the name "Ameri-Goji", "American Godzilla", or, if you really want to piss them off, just "Godzilla" is sure to net you a fair amount of correction. Especially now, since the names "Ameri-Goji" and "American Godzilla" are being applied to the Legendary Pictures version, and not Zilla. And calling Shodai-Jira by the name "Godzilla" will net you quite a bit of reminders of the legally official name change that happened in the early 2000s, when Tri-Star lost the rights to Godzilla. This isn't 100% accurate, but it's the general consensus among fans^note While the design is currently trademarked as Zilla for all works produced after reversion of rights to Toho, the creature is still listed and trademarked as "Godzilla" on rereleases and home video distribution. A trademark on a published work can't be changed after the fact. And this is all ignoring that the Final Wars Zilla is a different individual than the '98 animal, who was said to have been killed in New York in 1998.. However, calling him "Godzilla-USA" is not considered drastically wrong, since that was his name in Godzilla: Generations, a Toho-produced Sega Dreamcast game that was released the same year the "remake" was.
  • Stating that Godzilla and his fellow monsters destroy "fake-looking cardboard cities" will probably earn you a long lecture about how the miniatures were actually extremely detailed, expensive and built using materials that real buildings are made of, such as wood and plaster. The only time Toho ever used cardboard buildings was for a scene (not even from a Godzilla movie) that required models light enough to be lifted by a compressed air tank to simulate anti-gravity lifting city blocks into the sky.
  • Minilla and Godzilla Junior, despite being the same concept of Godzilla's adopted son each in a different canon, are considered separate characters. Confusing one with the other is guaranteed to rile up fans.
• Hulk:
  • Never refer to Nick Nolte's character as the Absorbing Man, Nick Nolte or even the Absorbing Dad. Ang Lee purists know him as either David Banner or the Father.
  • Don't tell people that it is connected to The Incredible Hulk (2008) to begin with. Makes more sense since the actors and crew were not even involved for the MCU installment to begin with.
• Stating that James Bond is a codename instead of the character's real name and that each actor plays a different character is practically guaranteed to anger fans of the series as it is contradicted quite clearly by merely watching the films, some of which deal with his past and family history. James Bond is his real name. 007 is his codename. No Time to Die in particular spells this out very clearly, but this mistake is still frequently made by very casual filmgoers and non-fans. Part of the reason is due to the fan theory that each of the different Bond actors is actually playing a different agent with the codename, but, prior to the Continuity Reboot with Casino Royale (2006), the different portrayals are still said to be the same character. This is most clearly demonstrated in Diamonds Are Forever in which Bond, played by Sean Connery, takes revenge against Blofield for killing his wife Tracy. The Bond who married Tracy in the first place was George Lazenby in On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Further proof can be found in The Spy Who Loved Me where Agent X brings up that Bond, now played by Roger Moore, married only once and that his wife was killed, and For Your Eyes Only, in which Bond visits Tracy's grave.
  • Even the Continuity Reboot suffers from this to a certain extent, since in Casino Royale it's explicitly stated that Bond is newly promoted to double-O status, but M is still played by Judi Dench, who played M in the Pierce Brosnan movies. This leads some to believe that the new films are a continuation of the old with a new "Bond."
• Granted, fans of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen tend to be a bit more tolerant than most, because they know that it's not exactly faithful to the source material (which isn't faithful to its own source material, either, so we can be forgiving). However, there are some no-nos even here, chiefly in character name spelling. It's Dorian Gray, not Darien Grey or any other permutation. It's Jekyll, not Jekall or Jekil or (heaven forbid) Jekkie. And Harker is Mina's married name, so fan authors wishing to give her long-lost relatives would do well to either make them in-laws or give them another surname entirely (such as Murray, her maiden name from the original Dracula).
  • The only one which anyone can really get away with messing up is Allan Quatermain. Although his first name always has two Ls, there's wiggle room for his last name; even in the books by his creator H. Rider Haggard, the spelling of Quatermain was sometimes inconsistent. Generally, you can choose to spell it as Quatermain or Quartermain, so long as you remain consistent about which one you pick — but, as one fan put it, "you cannot get away with Quatermaine, Quartermaine, or Nickelback."
• Call Mad Max: Fury Road a knockoff of Borderlands, and you'll be met with a number of Mad Max fans (and Borderlands fans, for that matter) who will inform you just how wrong you are as far as which property inspired which. There's also a distinct Japanese variation; older anime fans and manga-ka will correct younger fans who believe Fury Road was inspired by Fist of the North Star - truth being the exact same thing as the Borderlands example, that the latter was very much inspired by the former's predecessors.
• Maleficent is a part of the Disney Live-Action Remakes franchise but it's not a remake. It's an Alternate Continuity. Many fans of both it and the original Sleeping Beauty get mad when people think of it as a straightforward Perspective Flip.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Fans will not take calling the Winter Soldier/Bucky Barnes a villain very kindly, since as the Winter Soldier, Bucky was brainwashed and thus not willingly choosing to do villainous actions. Even Sebastian Stan is fed up with interviewers referring to Bucky as a villain.
  • Fans get very irritated when people mistake a film as part of the MCU just because it's based on a Marvel character. No, films like Deadpool (2016) or Fantastic Four (2015) are not part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as they were made by different studios who own the movie rights to characters Marvel Studios don't have. Films like Hulk or The Amazing Spider-Man Series are not to be considered canon even though they star characters who are in the MCU, as they were either made before the formation of the MCU, or had their rights owned by different companies at the time.
• Pronouncing Chico Marx's first name as "Chee-co" will expose you as a total noob to fans of the boys. It's CHICK-o (the oldest Marx Brother was very popular with the ladies).
• Smith, the main villain in the second and third Matrix films, is an Agent (service program of the Matrix) only in the first movie, and his entire existence in the second and third revolves entirely around the fact that he is not an Agent anymore, but an independent virus. Some in the Matrix community will unplug you if you call him an Agent in the context of the latter two films.
• Pete's Dragon (1977) is named Elliott. He is not Puff the Magic Dragon.
• From the Star Wars fandom:
  • The weapons used by Jedi and Sith in the Star Wars movies are called lightsabers^note Except for that one time young Anakin refers to Qui-Gon's saber as a "laser sword", and that one time when Luke Skywalker turns Rey down and mocks her for bringing Luke's own saber to him., not laser swords, not laser blades, and certainly not "lightsabres".^note The end credits for the original trilogy are the only place this spelling "officially" occurs
  • On that note, do not call Darth Vader "Dark" Vader unless you want to earn the ire of fans.
  • And don't call Han Solo "Hans Solo", either.
  • If you post to forums, it's advisable to avoid spelling the name of Chewbacca's species, the Wookiees, with only one e.
  • Never call Star Wars "Star Trek". A universal one to both franchises is also to say that the Fandom Rivalry is pointless because "They're all the same thing." They will put aside their differences to beat you down for such a condescendingly dismissive statement.
  • Many of the main characters are Jedi. NOT "Jedis."
  • Clone Troopers of the Grand Army Of The Republic and Stormtroopers of the Galactic Empire are not one and the same. Clones were genetically modified and trained for war their entire lives, bordering on super soldiers, while Stormtroopers are mostly naturally born recruits by the time of the original trilogy. Yes, the Clones were the first Stormtroopers, but Clones are shown more often than not to be superior marksmen. (To be fair, the reason for that is because Clones usually aren't shooting at someone with plot armor. When Stormtroopers have a target that the story doesn't need alive, they suddenly turn into expert shots.)
  • Bringing balance to the Force does not mean making an even amount of Jedi and Sith. Balance means harmony, which the Sith actively disrupt with their abuse of the Force. You can argue that the Dark Side needn’t cause discord, but the Sith clearly use it thus.
• Referring to "Toccata and Fugue in D minor" as "Dracula's Theme" around either music fans or horror franchise fans will make you seem like a moron. It hasn't even been used in a Dracula movie (the 1931 film uses an excerpt from "Swan Lake" in the opening title). It has been used in some cuts of the 1925 Phantom of the Opera, and in The Abominable Dr. Phibes.
• To the fanbase of the Underworld series of movies, particularly every single person who knows anything about mythology, it is Lycanthrope. The term "Lycan" is a clear shortening of the scientific name for the disease/curse (or rather the real world symptoms that mimic it), designed to be a slang insult to the species (at least until the prequel, at which point they tossed out their own sense).

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