The guy who goes against specific orders or just common sense to jeopardizes the life of his family or a whole bunch of other people or even the entire human race, to save a family pet, or even just some kind of stupid object like a teddy bear or whatever. (What’s the deal with Americans and their pets anyway?) He often makes a show in doomsday themed movies. And the guy giving the orders is always evil, and the one breaking them always good. And of course it always turns out well. I think it reflects some kind of American lone ranger kinda ideal. In any case I think he should be taken out and shot.
Observed in Independence Day, 2012, Dante’s Peak, Armageddon.
The guy who has no suggestions of his own but rails and nags at the other guy who tries to make some hard decisions in difficult circumstances.
The old guy in The Walking Dead who fortunately was killed. Some characters in Lost.
The wife-husband combo where the man is reduced to some kind of grown baby which usually has some silly pet projects in his garage but otherwise has nothing to say and which the wife just overbearingly shakes her head at.
A lot of commercials for some reason. Also sitcoms.
Snotty kids that are supposed to be cute but are really just really fucking stupid and annoying.
The really annoying brat in The Day the Earth Stood Still. Kill him!
Harry Potter is an American movie? I’d estimate that that series is responsible for 115% of all the consequence-free instances of disobedience to authority over the last 10 years. Dumbledore always pretends to forbid them, then lets them get away scott free.
Plus the movies you name are mostly crap, cut them some slack :).
Not sure I know this one. A guess a side trope is the guy who is a member of a cohesive team but for some reason decides to tell the “new guy” he doesn’t like him within 5 minutes of meeting. Team America does this for example, but I think can be forgiven because it purposely mocks these action movie tropes.
Because sitcoms are where innovation goes to die. Also the wife is hot and the man is fat.
Perhaps thankfully blocked from my mind. Snotty kids grow up to be Shia LeBoeuf.
I don’t know anyone under the age of 50 who watches his movies.
I personally love Woody Allen… He writes stories about everyday lives of romantics. I don’t find him cliche’ at all… What exactly is so stereotypical about him?
People walking in the rain to show how miserable or contrite or sincere they are. It only shows that they’re too stupid to stay in out of the rain.
Person walking along; sound of gun firing; sound of bullet striking something or someone. That’s just not how the laws of physics work, at least not from the target’s perspective.
Someone gets the drop on someone else with a pump shotgun. Drop the gun! ::racks the slide:: I said drop the gun! If I had a weapon and the guy stops to rack the slide because he was too dumb to already have one in the chamber, he’s gonna be a dead motherfucker.
though the genre has seemed to die down a bit, the typical “buddy cop” film grates on me. Particularly the notion that it’s OK do to the wrong things for the right reasons. I honestly think films like the Lethal Weapon series or the Beverly Hills Cop films have been actively harmful by instilling the notion in people that law enforcement should be able to do whatever they want and break whatever laws they feel like so long as they catch the “bad guy.”
At least the buddy cop movies don’t kill the buddy. The worst cliche ever is the sympathetic asian, black, female partner, best friend, spouse, newspaper reporter who you know is the killer’s eventual victim as soon as they appear on the screen. Think Dirty Harry movies for starters.
Stupid stereotypes are hardly limited to American movies, although each culture presumably has its favorites. I’ve read the odd German novel or two in which the male protagonist seems to have an uncanny knack for pulling in women despite having no job or other obvious means of support. It’s like an irresponsible young man’s dream, even if that is not really the main theme of the story.
(I’m thinking of Christoph Hein’s Der Tangospieler, mainly. FTR I truly enjoyed the book, even if I thought that aspect of it was odd.)
Of course he is, but at least he’s good enough to recognize it and play to type, when he does still act. And, to his credit, he pretty much stays behind the camera now, rather than casting himself as a romantic lead, as he did in his younger days.
How about any kind of movie where the characters go through some kind of protracted privation or separation from modern conveniences. As the movie progresses and their clothes become more and more torn and damaged, the young woman will inevitably end up with the legs torn off her trousers, to hot-pants length. It may be a good look, but still!
I hate the Reluctant Hero. It can be well done, but in most cases, it is badly done. There is some action or deed the hero must do, and he or she gets all mopey and will not do it, even though it is generally the sort of thing the character would do, and every character and situation in the movie leads him or her to do it, but noooooooo … can’t do it.
Zardoz is a great example. I watched it in a dollar theater once, it was an hilarious experience when an audience member yelled, “Eat the leaf, stupid!”
From what I understand, that depends on the type of gun and bullet. If it’s a subsonic round, you might hear the gunshot before you hear the bullet. Or maybe the first shot missed completely and you’re hearing that first gunshot when the *second *bullet hits nearby.
Here’s one: The evil and/or utterlly incompetent modern military force, often seen in action or horror films, or any anime taking place in a time period where you might have seen both guns and swords at around the same time. One guy with a katana going up against 50 guys with muskets and slaughters them all. Yeah, sure, that would ever happen.
And one last one: The doomed helicopter. In a certain type of movie, you can usually expect the would-be rescue chopper to crash in some memorable or unusual fashion. Personal favorite examples include any case where the monster of the film ends up inside the chopper, particularly in scenes where there is no visible way he should have managed to sneak in there unnoticed by everybody standing around. Going from Hollywood films, you’d think helicopters were a horribly dangerous and unnatural way to get around (they are, but not nearly to the degree that you see in movies. :D)
Nigerian movies are flat obsessed with tales of husbands and wives getting usurped by seductive villains, also popular are tales of property usurped from the rightful owner. One movie made me smile because I realized it was basically a retelling of The Count Of Monte Cristo except set in Nigeria.
If you ever find yourself married and moderately successful in a Nigerian movie WATCH OUT someone is gunning for your position!
Watched Contagion last night. Couple of common stupid things:
The Idiot Boss. Laurence Fishburne’s a hyas muckety-muck at the CDC and his underlings are explaining to him all the time basic things like what an attenuated virus is and the danger if it reverts. Never use the boss as the exposition soundboard folks.
Society Breaks Down Nicely. Despite everyone staying home except to rob places, the power keeps working and TV reporters keep doing their job. Nobody in the winter in Minnesota seems to freeze to death in their homes despite the chaos. Even Hong Kong somehow manages to survive nicely. Apparently the food to feed millions just appears inside people’s barricaded homes.
And then once the vaccine is started to deploy, things are just peachy again in no time. Despite being at least a few hundred days before things really start to get safe again.
What bugs me: bullets that always hit something near the hero, so you can see just how close they are to getting shot. But, if the shooter were halfway competent, the shots would be whizzing past the hero at torso-height, hitting things way in the distance, instead of splashing near his feet. That’s some mighty poor shootin’, Tex.
One of the most serious offenders I’ve seen was the old miniseries V. In one scene, our heroes are escaping on horseback as villains chase after them and fire. Crazily, the villains’ shots never just whiz past them; they always, always hit the nearest tree limb that the hero is riding by at that moment.
