Helicopters never hover in the movies

YouTube link. 

I don't mean "never" in the literal sense; I used the word in the title to emphasize my utter frustration with scenes like the one above that opens the movie "The Thing."

I watched the movie last night and enjoyed it, but in this scene I counted I think four passes by the helicopter pilot, who swoops down on the dog - and then zooms a quarter mile past it and has to make a wide loop to turn around.  Meanwhile the passenger fires off eleven shots with a rifle at a black dog on a white background without even grazing it.  Later in the scene there are several more "swoops" and more shots, and a "thermite grenade" misses by about a hundred yards.

I "know" why the pilot doesn't hover over the dog, of course.  Kill the dog, and there's no movie.  But it is so logically inconsistent that I want to scream at the scriptwriters.  I've seen the same helicopter misuse in an old James Bond movie and I think a handful of other action/adventure movies (you guys can probably remember specific ones).

This was an excellent movie, but c'mon... I can only suspend disbelief for so long.

Addendum:  It's also true in the opening scene of A View to a Kill.