Movie Cliches that need to be Retired.

[Rotwang]

45) Anything substantially large in space (asteroids, planets, giant stations) make a humming sound.
46) Kids who replace adult heroes. Especially if the kid runs circles around totally incompetent adults and anticipates their every move. Kids love to see themselves on screen and connect best with arrogant little brats their own age rather than adult heroes.
47) The mystical minorities who seem to be superior fighters, mystics or have special talents by virtue of their lineage. The noble native american tracker, the iron hard Asian kung fu warrior, the black pimp with a golden heart.
48) Comedy solely based on current, topical pop culture references that are stale by the time the film makes it to the theaters.
49) The hyper-intelligent anally retentive serial killer with a passion for the overly complex, baroque and theatrical. He can't seem to hold down any job above UPS deliveryman 3rd class (unicycle division), but he has refined tastes, and builds highly complex death-traps and long drawn out mind games rather than just murdering prostitutes in the park like everybody else. He is on a self-appointed mission to cleanse the world and anybody who studies his case can't but secretly agree and admire him. Despite his limited means he can build underground layers with giant water filled tanks that would require an engineering team and a small fortune to build in the real world. Of course he is totally evil, but highly charismatic and women think he's sexy.
50) Zombies

 

[Jedi2016]

4. 13 year old kids saving the day, the country, the world by hacking into a super secret computer. I remember being let down watching Jurassic Park when Lexy was able to hack into the parks computer system :rolleyes

Actually, that was in the book. And she didn't hack it so much as she knew how to use the OS. The weird GUI they had in the film wasn't mentioned, though, I seem to recall it was command-line interface. That part did strike me as odd in the film, since she could somehow recognize a Unix system based on a custom UI.

I'm not saying it's not a cliche, though.. I remember when I first read JP and thought it flowed very much like a movie, and that particular plot point has been reused time and again since then.

 

[firesprite]

Actually, that was in the book. And she didn't hack it so much as she knew how to use the OS. The weird GUI they had in the film wasn't mentioned, though, I seem to recall it was command-line interface. That part did strike me as odd in the film, since she could somehow recognize a Unix system based on a custom UI.

I'm not saying it's not a cliche, though.. I remember when I first read JP and thought it flowed very much like a movie, and that particular plot point has been reused time and again since then.

Actually, in the book, it was the boy that hacked it. Lex in the book was only about 5 years old and completely useless.

 

[Jedi2016]

Yeah, I just saw that. Been a while since I've read the book.

 

[Stormer]

51.) Theres Cliffs everywhere in fights and high speed chases.

 

[Too Much Garlic]

Moot post... deleted. .(

 

[Megamicrofish]

Guns that never need re-loading

 

[Uber Fett]

40) A cop is matched up with a totaly inappropriate partner against his will...
41) The hero cop gets 48 hours to crack the case.

Well, with 40...yes..actually that's very true in real life.
41: Only in a few very large departments, the defectives only have 48 to 72 hours to do their work before they have to push it off and be assigned a new case.

Originally Posted by Rotwang
24) In sitcoms, all male protagonists are 40-something guys, obsessed by old cars, sports and beer. They have a mental age of about 15. They are well-meaning, but completely obtuse and oblivious to the obvious. No matter what they do, they always end up being wrong. Their wives are hot, highly intelligent, perfect in every way and are never wrong or make mistakes.
25) There are no children in sitcoms, there are some highly precocious very cute wisecracking midgets who are often wiser and streetsmart than the adults around them.
Read my mind. I hate the modern family sitcom.

I was thinking the very same thing. It is just an acceptable form of sexism. If women were portrayed as men are, every women's rights group would be protesting outside of the studios.

Sadly, this isn't just a modern sitcom problem. The cutsey kid goes back to the 80's and then of course the studios went so overboard with the Full House it was nauseating. Back when I was growing up...being a smart-ass was not looked favourably upon by either the Sisters or my parents and rather than laughter was met more along the lines of punishment.

 

[DarkHelmet]

Any action sequence based on The Matrix, especially two handed gun firing in slow mo. (yawn)

Seems there is a whole genre of independent films out there with "Chronicles of" in their title.

 

[JediG60racer]

Michael Baysplosions.

 

[The Stig]

Every ****ing time I log on to the RPF... UGH!
I'M GETTING TOO OLD FOR THIS ****!

 

[James Kenobi 1138]

Bad guys want you dead. Once they have caught you, however, instead of just shooting you they tie you up or lock you in a small room so they can kill you later.

You escape, just as they were coming to kill you.

 

[altername]

Guns that never need re-loading

Gun experts that have close quarter gun fights that last longer than 5 seconds.

 

[SSgt Burton]

32) No matter how many miles of airducts you crawl through...

Airducts that are actually large enough for a person to crawl through.



Kevin

 

[The Stig]

Airducts that are actually large enough for a person to crawl through.



Kevin

Not if you're an average American.

 

[jedi573]

Let's see, off the top of my head:

- The detective's about to get suspended...but first, he has twenty-four hours to clear the case.

- If you're pretending to be a Nazi officer, you don't need to speak German. Just speak English with a German accent.

- If there's a ghost/bad guy/walking nightmare in the house, you don't need to turn on your kitchen lights to investigate. Just open up the fridge and use that light instead.

- There isn't a single computer that uses Windows. Instead they all have virtual buttons designed for six-year-olds that say stuff like "EMAIL." And if the computer has a bug, it doesn't just freeze up. It'll be nice enough to tell you "ERROR."

- Ancient Romans had British accents. And no matter what century it was, where they were, or what they were doing, ancient Romans always walked around wearing a lorica segmentata.

- If you don't have a key to the door, don't worry. Trying a number of households items, such as a credit card, paper clip, and dumb luck, will always work.

- The hero can be beaten to a pulp by a team of henchman, but he won't wince until his girlfriend dabs at his wounds later that night. Then it hurts.

- Guns don't run out of ammunition. They run out of dramatic inertia.

- Turning on the TV at a pivotal moment will never yield a commercial. It'll always be the news report discussing exactly what you didn't want to hear.



Andy

 

[defstartrooper]

Long drawn out gunfights where our hero uses an unfeasibly large amount of ammo then turns to the sidekick to compare how much ammo they have left, invariably it's 2 or 3 shots between them, somehow they manage to take out all the bad guys with those 3 shots where they failed to with the previous 8,742 shots.

Guns are also the perfect tool for both locking and unlocking doors depending on the situation.

Everyone in movies uses incredibly simple easy to crack passwords on their computers, so simple most of the time the cracker does it manualy in about 20 seconds.

If you're a movie cop there is absolutely no reason in the world to ever quit a car chase no matter the danger to yourself or public like high speed driving through shopping malls or a quick shortcut through an office.

 

[Contec]

-If anyone falls thrue a window the glass shatters in TINY TINY bits.

BTW Can anyone tell me WHY the hospital in SMALLVILLE NEVER has adequate lighting? It looks like its lighted with candles...

 

[Guri]

I'm with those who said petite nothings taking down huge bulky guys, young children easily cracking computer problems and long, drawn out car chases.

Someone gets knocked out with a single hit.

Males getting to wear bulky armor while the females are basically in their underwear.

Villain witty remarks right before they attempt to take someone down (and fail).

Hero witty remarks after taking someone down.

Heroes/Villains being either all good or all bad especially when there is no reason behind it.

 

[slightlyagitatedwookie]

The "3-point power landing" as I like to call it.

Hero drops from some ridiculous height only to land like a brick crouched and one fist to the ground . The head is lowered only to slowly rise with a straight dead pan face. Add cracked pavement for maximum effect.