zero hour trope — noun: an action-movie device where a hero faces an imminent deadline, forced to make one perfect split-second move.
By Robert Scucci
| Updated
We need to talk about the zero hour trope for a second, because I refuse to believe that every single little thing goes right all the time. If you’re wondering what the zero hour trope is, it’s when the clock is ticking in an action movie and the hero only has so much time to snip the right wire, rescue the girl, and perfectly time their jump out of a window as the structure behind them gets engulfed in flames. Nearly every action movie uses this setup, and somehow nothing ever goes wrong.
Aside from movies like Blue Ruin, where real-world rules are allowed to exist, it’s not common for total disaster to unfold when the hero does everything right because that would be a total bummer. But when it does happen, it’s refreshing. It’s how the world works, and our action heroes could stand to be humbled every once in a while.
Let’s Talk About Patch Update Tuesday
I started thinking about all the things that could go wrong with the zero hour trope during a workday meltdown. Microsoft is notorious for Patch Update Tuesday, which hits on the second Tuesday of every month. I’m fastidious when it comes to routine maintenance, and I need my computer to not run giant updates during peak hours so I can meet deadlines. Patch Update Tuesday doesn’t care. It arrives when it wants, and it always ruins my life a little.
I try to run updates off-peak, and when they drop during the day knowing I can spare the bandwidth, I just let them run so I don’t get ambushed later. But here’s the problem: these updates bottleneck your entire system until you comply. They take about an hour, but sometimes your computer locks up so badly you have to ctrl + shift + escape your way into the task manager and start force-closing everything.
This past Patch Update Tuesday, I was queued up to host a podcast and wanted to get the update out of the way early. It didn’t roll out until an hour before showtime, and then it took two hours to finish, my own personal zero hour trope hell. During the show, everything froze, production derailed, and we ended up delayed by three hours. I couldn’t open the Task Manager. I couldn’t troubleshoot. I was held hostage by Patch Update Tuesday and had to rearrange my entire night around it.
Why am I equating the zero hour trope to Patch Update Tuesday? Because my job and extracurricular activities have low stakes, and a routine security update still succeeded in blowing up my day. I did everything the right way, and everything still went wrong. So, when action heroes need to hit a kill switch to stop a nuclear warhead from launching, what happens if that device is powered by servers being held together by decades-old legacy software with an unmanageable user interface? Bet you didn’t think of that.
Space Force Understands The Struggle
Dr. Adrian Mallory (John Malkovich) of Space Force knows exactly what I’m talking about, and I’m thrilled that the show actually played the zero hour trope straight and let a minor inconvenience derail everything. When Dr. Chan Kaifang (Jimmy O. Yang) is instructed to access a satellite to help intercept an asteroid hurtling toward Earth, he’s blindsided by an automatic Windows update that will take 49 minutes to complete. The problem is that impact will occur in 11 minutes. Dr. Mallory screams “F*** MICROSOFT!” because the fate of the entire world is on the line and the update refuses to cooperate. The crew is forced to improvise everything manually.
This is what the zero hour trope should look like all the time. Reality is filled with stupid obstacles. It doesn’t matter if the stakes are an asteroid or another Patch Update Tuesday. Something annoying will always find a way to get in the mix.
Flares And Flags Save The Day Yet Again…
What’s most infuriating about the zero hour trope is how convenient everything is. Look at The Rock or White House Down. Both movies rely on the exact same setup and payoff, where Nicolas Cage’s Dr. Stanley Goodspeed and Joey King’s Emily Cale wave their flares and flags just seconds before fighter jets are about to blow the White House and Alcatraz off the map. Fighter pilots are busy doing fighter pilot stuff. What happens if they just don’t see the signal? With that many moving parts, something should absolutely go wrong in this context.
1994’s Speed is another perfect example. Jack Traven (Keanu Reeves) has until noon to disarm a bomb and collect ransom money for Howard Payne (Dennis Hopper). But if Payne detonates the bomb manually at noon or the bus dips below 50 mph, doesn’t that wipe out any leverage he has? He needs the hostages alive. A blown-up bus takes the ransom money off the table. Sorry, boss.
This Spiral Brought To You By Microsoft
Until the zero hour trope gets handled with even a little realism, I’m going to keep using it as an excuse to complain about Microsoft. I don’t hate the trope, contrary to what you may think. I just know life never works that smoothly. The next time your computer locks up, think about the implications if you were a spy, hacker, or operating a submarine running outdated software that suddenly decided to start a forced update seconds before an incoming missile attack.