I ban universe-threatening/saving McGuffins--what plot devices do *you* want to ban? OPEN SPOILERS

Cafe Society
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I ranted on this is the Guardians of the Galaxy thread (Guardians of the Galaxy [Spoilers, I imagine] - Cafe Society - Straight Dope Message Board). I think it bears a more general treatment. Plus, I’d like to hear about the worn-out plot devices/points/elements/stuff that you would like to ban.

I’m not a huge Quentin Tarantino fan, but I will say this: no writer/director is as good as he in creating genuine tension and fear in a movie. In Reservoir Dogs, the fate of the cop is genuinely nail-bitingly scary. So also are the fate of the chicks in Death Proof (at various times in the movie). Real tension, almost unbearable to watch. It isn’t easy, but it can be done.

You know what totally does not produce that effect? A villain with an ultra-powerful weapon threatening to destroy a planet, a galaxy, the Universe itself. The Marvel movies have failed time and again in this regard. Did anyone find the Dark Elves in the latest Thor movies threatening at all? Was Ronan with his hammer-ensconced Infinity Stone scary in the least bit?

No. And not only do these objects not instill fear of any kind, they are devices that make for shitty, banal, worn-out plots.

It’s the same thing when a hero needs to get a magical item to defeat Ultimate Evil.

It’s that whole questy thing. Instead of the players on the field simply interacting, the focus turns toward some object. Tolkien did it about the best it’s going to be done with the One Ring, and I think the plot of Lord of the Rings is pretty boring, really.

Look at Harry Potter. I think Rowling was very good at creating a mythical world with characters that draw readers in. Plot? Not so much. Unoriginal eeeeevil villain and stale McGuffin plot with all the Horcruxes or whatever they’re called. And then each book is practically named after an object that’s gotta be got to advance the plot: Chamber of Secrets, Sorcerer’s Stone, etc. etc. Lame.

One reason why the McGuffin plot device is so lame is that it has nothing to do with daily life. Ever have to chase after an object in your life that would totally change everything? I’m not talking about trying to buy something rare and interesting online–we’ve all done that. I’m talking about getting a thing that would really empower you. Probably not because such objects don’t really exist!

What really empowers us in life is self-improvement and connections with others. That’s why the plot of the original Star Wars trilogy makes sense. Luke needs to meet Obi-Wan, then Yoda to get knowledge and training. This is realistic. The Death Star is not an evil McGuffin, either: the Empire already has it at the beginning of the movie and the Rebellion is simply dealing with it. Luke is handed his lightsaber; he doesn’t need to pull it out of a rock like Excalibur.

So yeah. Movies need to drop this shit. It makes for plots that are as boring and uncompelling as anything can be. I herewith ban this plot device FOREVAH!

What plot devices do you wish to ban?

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“The Chosen One”. Seriously, this is the lamest plot device ever. Yeah, the reason the protagonist is part of the story is because they were chosen by the author to resolve the situation. In real life there is no such thing as prophecy, no such things as chosen ones.

A Chosen One on a quest to retrieve a McGuffin is lame squared.

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there’s a lot of things in fiction that don’t exist in real life

it’s ok in Star Wars because The Force chose Anakin

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Yeah, I almost included the Chosen One in my OP, it’s such an obviously lame and worn-out trope:

I will admit I like this trope in The Matrix. Beyond that, yeah.

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I would ban the Idiot Plot … a story which only exists because an otherwise normally intelligent or even highly intelligent character acts as an idiot.

Interestingly, Zardoz might be a film that combines three of the tropes mentioned: Sean Connery’s character is The Chosen One, he acts like an idiot throughout the film though he is supposed to be highly intelligent, and there’s a magical leaf he must eat to Understand All (the McGuffin).

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Haha, good one! And true. He certainly looks like an idiot throughout the movie.

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Aw, Ani’s gonna cry. Is it because The Force raped your Mom that you’re such a wimp?

Yes, lots of things are fictional. I just particularly hate The Chosen One, because it’s so fucking lame. Why can’t it be some random farmboy with quick reflexes and a heart of gold that saves the galaxy? Why does it have to be some asshole who was chosen by destiny to save the galaxy?

The absolutely most egregious shoehorning of The Chosen One is Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland”. Seriously Tim?

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Woman who does not understand husband very important job is more important than spending time with her.

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Things like that aren’t scary because they exist in the realm of fantasy beyond what we’re likely to experience in our day to day. It makes sense that women being threatened by a crazed stalker or “is the gut-shot good guy going to survive” are more relatable. Even as unlikely as it is that one of us is going to get shot during a robbery…it’s still more likely than a space army invading our town.
Big stories require big stakes–the reason the Marvel movies are succeeding isn’t because of tight plotting–it’s because of the interesting characters and world building.

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“Try real hard.” I’m thinking of Sylvester Stallone in that mountain-climbing movie, where he’s dangling off a ledge and hanging on by his fingers, but, because he grits his teeth and grunts a lot, he climbs back up.

The “Just keep TRYING” and you’ll succeed trope. Oh, it’s hard…but JUST keep trying… With lots of close-ups of distorted facial features. Wrinkle that brow…

Yes, to be sure, there are cases in real life where it works. But there are also a damn lot of cases where it doesn’t, and if moviemakers insist on using it, they ought to toss in a few cases where it fails, to help balance the times it succeeds.

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Much as I love The Matrix, I always cringed at all the “The One” bullshit. For me, it was a major detriment to an otherwise wonderfully original film. I so wished they has resisted the trope.

The ultimate saving grace of the severely flawed sequels it that it is revealed that- in order to give humans hope (which they’ve found increases the survival rate)- The Machines wrote “The One” into The Matrix based upon popular human mythology.

This was actually a great take on the trope- but it requires watching the sequels.

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Most hated: As You Know (Bob). As in two Dopers are talking, and one of them explains to the other all about this “Cecil guy.” It is lamely handled usually.

Chekhov’s gun should be used sparingly, but also not avoided too much. Some people get mad when a plot line eventually becomes pointless (see: ASOIAF), but I rather like when the ultramegasword that will save the land accidentally gets left on the Greyhound bus, and never shows up again. This can be overdone, though.

Re: Star Wars and Harry Potter (especially the former): no stupidly-named characters. Like you know Steve Rapeandmurderus is going to turn into a Sith. But don’t avoid it too much either unless necessary, like how Lucius Siddhartha Peacenik Whifflebottom is actually the bad guy.

But Tropes are not bad!

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Yes, I think that is a large chunk of it. Some additional reasons:

  1. We know that the maximal threat can’t come true in the movie, so there is no tension. Whereas in certain Tarantino movies, we don’t know who is going to live or die, so the threat is credible.

  2. The maximal threats are themselves generic. The threat of the Aether destroying the Universe in Thor: The Dark World is not really different than the threat of the stone destroying the planet Xandar in Guardians of the Galaxy. Or the threat of the nuke going off in The Dark Knight Rises. One could go on and on. There is nothing about any of these that really captures the imagination. Each is simply another instance of “really bad thing that can’t be allowed to happen.”

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You are right about the sequels and how they take the trope to a cool and interesting place (unlike most people, I loved the second movie and, like most people, I hated the third. A pity.).

I’m trying to think why I forgive the trope in this instance. Maybe because instead of using the trope, the movie is about the trope. IOW, the people of Zion are looking for a messiah, perhaps in this case with justification. I also think that what Neo ends up being able to do is cool; it’s not generic messiahhood.

In contrast, I think Anikin’s and Harry Potter’s chosen one status feels more generic and tacked on, as if the simple application of that status is supposed to make the characters more interesting.

But the chosen one thing could have been done better and more subtly in The Matrix, fer sure.

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Police officers who are accused of misconduct investigating their own actions. That would never happen in real life. Except it is the rule, not the exception.

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There used to be a lot of movies where the plot was to “get the disk”

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For varying definitions of “plot devices”…

  1. “Lessons learned.” Why do movies have to have hacked-on ‘character development’ and ‘moralizing’? Since we’re talking GotG, I guffawed when the green girl said something amazingly treacly like “Better to die with friends than live alone” or some such BS. Oh, puh-leeeeeze!

  2. Yeah, “This will destroy X” devices are never, ever tension-inducing.

  3. “Dad is an asshole for working too much and not spending time with the kids.” :rolleyes: Hey, family, where do you think the house, cars, baseball games, vacations, etc are coming from in your one-earner household? I don’t see people in movies complaining “I hate this big house and our fabulous pool and that neat ATV you bought me for Christmas”, no it’s crap like “Oh, Dad couldn’t see my baseball game because he was out working for the money that allows me to play baseball - the bastard!” “I’m sorry, Joey. Let’s discuss why Dad is an asshole in our $50k SUV while we drive to our $750k house in the burbs.”

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Actually this one HAS been averted more in recent years, but one plot device that always annoyed me, that even as a young kid struck me as incredibly foolish, was the “YOU’VE GOT TO BELIEVE ME!!!” speech. Where someone babbles out a literally in-credible story about aliens or monsters or a secret conspiracy; and when people look at them like the delusional schizophrenic they sound like, think that increasingly shrill and hysterical pleas will make a better impression.

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You’re right that it’s often deployed poorly because screenwriters have a mistaken impression that the “stakes” of a movie depend on the objective magnitude. In reality, the destruction of a planet can have less impact than the niggling doubt that your wife might be cheating on you or the betrayal of a best friend because the only stakes that matter are the stakes that matter to the characters.

However, just as authentic BBQ is served on the cheapest, cottony white bread, macguffins can be deployed effectively for precisely the same reasons; to strip away all distraction from the central conflict.

Macguffins work best when they motivate and enhance internal conflict. Pulp Fiction was about a group of characters navigating an uncertain landscape. The Avengers was about previously independent characters learning to work together. Guardians of the Galaxy was about filling the void of family and learning to trust again.

In all of those cases, the macguffin is purely there to set up the central conflict. Any more detail furnished upon the macguffin would have distracted from the story.

So, while wonder bread might, in general, lead to the dulling of America’s middle class palates and an inferior dish compared to more interesting breads, there are still circumstances where it’s the legitimately correct choice. IMHO, the same applies to macguffins.

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Pregnant women who go from not being in labor at all, to going into labor, and delivering the baby, in less than an hour, in some inconvenient place, where the protagonist has to act as ersatz midwife.

Even women who have had several children before don’t go through the whole labor and delivery process in less than an hour (OK, there are really rare cases where a women doesn’t realize she’s in labor until she’s ready to push, but they are vanishingly rare, not once per practically every TV show ever), and no one who is within a few weeks of her due date gets on an airplane, cross-country train, or hot-air balloon. Most don’t feel much like leaving the house.