Ask Lemmy

The joker, well from movie to movie. In the dark knight he is cunning and is like a genius then in the movie joker he is just an ass hole

Elizabeth Keen in Black List. Writers constantly told us how brilliant and special she was, then showed her acting like a dimwitted, hormonal teen.

Honestly many of them. But that may be the flaw of being written by people who aren’t as smart as the characters they’re trying to portray. Or the target audience has to also remain interested. Another aspect of this is many of those who are very smart are not these extrovert characters tv audiences would be interested in. It’s the whole big bang theory problem.

In the original trilogy of novels by Timothy Zahn, Grand Admiral Thrawn is a legitimate strategic genius who keeps winning until the heroes manage to squeak out a final victory by finding exactly the right flaw in his plans.

In the Ahsoka TV series, Thrawn mumbles vapid syllogisms that only sound profound if you listen to the tone of voice instead of the words. He constantly makes basic Evil Overlord mistakes and oversights, and only achieves the barest minimum success in the end through plot armor and luck.

It's like they're two different characters.

James Bond

While he's not exactly potrayed as super genious, he's still supposed to be an extremely compenet secret agent yet the only thing he seems competent at is having an extremely good luck. The only reason he's still alive is because the villains don't kill him the first moment they get the chance but instead they always need to deliver this monoloque before executing him which is what causes him to then eventually get away and kill you instead.

Like how many of the movies start by him just naively walking into the enemy compound armed with pistol and wearing a suit while practising zero stealth and then getting caught by NPC security guard. If this is how you operate then how the fuck havent you been killed already?

Sam Altman. Just another power hungry a.hole

The crew of the Prometheus.

Really, Weyland, are you sure these are the best people you could hire for this task?

Anyone on Doctor Who. There's a universal war going on, and you have so many decisions made by characters that don't make sense but are accepted as barriers anyways.

In Stargate Atlantis, Elizabeth Weir is supposed to be some world-class diplomatic genius that has a resume as long as her elbow on earth.

She spends the first two seasons squabbling over the leadership position with Shepard, dealing with petty dissent from the scientists on the expedition, doesn't manage to resolve a single conflict peacefully and she violates several basic human rights

Trump

Ty Burrell played Mr. Peabody in the Dreamworks film based on the old Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon shorts, where a super intelligent dog had mastered time travel. A year prior, Burrell was regularly being outsmarted by an orange in ads for Tropicana juice drinks.

I'm just sayin', if you were going to hire someone to be a pompous canine smarty-pants, well... David Hyde Pierce is RIGHT THERE.

Jimmy Neutron. Almost all of his problems came from him trying to cheat his way out of something and/or making overcomplicated solutions to simple problems that inevitably backfire because of some simple flaw he never thought about.

Academically, he's a genius, but his overinflated ego prevents him from seeing that he ain't all that smart when it comes to the real world.