Boxing. Sports in general, but especially boxing.
The zillionth remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It wasn’t an original idea when Finney wrote the damned book (Heinlein, writing about his The Puppet Masters, which predated Finney’s book, apologized for re-using such and old and hackneyed plot). But there have been four direct films based on it, and countless lesser-quality imitators. Most of these have nothing original in them.
The Puppet Masters (the book) did. I’d love to see the movie remade more faithfully – the existing movie has its moments, but is a severe disappointment. They’re apparently making the manga Parasyte into a movie, which would be good if they do it right.
Any movie about pregnant women / new parents. Basically anything babycentric. Movies about sports, including baseball which I love and especially boxing, which I loathe. I couldn’t even be made to sit through Million Dollar Baby and I am a huge Eastwood fan.
I love horror movies, but I have no intention of purposely watching any more movies where:
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a group of people take refuge in a house/hotel/inn, then are hunted down by the crazy/mutant/cannibal family that lives in the home/woods nearby/desert nearby
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people are held against their will and tortured for no apparent reason
I wish to God that at least a third of every year’s Horrorfest movies weren’t the first one, because it has gotten so very old.
Pretty much all romantic comedy formulas, but especially the ones that are based on some kind of deception where the guy is pretending to be something he isn’t. They always, ALWAYS play out exactly the same with the exact same three scenes. There’s a scene of the guy getting ready to spill the beans to the love interest, and telling her, “I have something to tell you.”
Then she says, “I have something to tell you too.”
“You go first.”
“OK, blah blah blah [something that makes it nearly impossible to spill the beans]. What were YOU going to say?”
Then (and this is what drives me nuts), he always makes up something really stupid on the spot, like “I just wanted to show you how pretty the moon looks,” or “I just wanted to wish you good luck at that beach volleyball game tomorrow,” that doesn’t follow at all from the huge serious deal he just made of the really important thing he had o tell her, and she NEVER gets suspicious or says “you brought me out here to say THAT? WTF”
Then, of course, there is the inevitable reveal of the secret,followed by the angry break-up, then there is the final scene where he chases her down and gives her a speech in front of a crowd of people. These movies never deviate from this formula EVER.
Another lousy rom-com formula is two people pretending to be a couple who really aren’t. In fact, they hate each other. But then they fall in love for REALS. But then they have a fight and break up. But then it’s ok because he tracks her down and gives her a public speech in front of a crowd of people at the end.
In all rom-coms, the guy will always have a best friend/roommate who is an uncouth slob. The woman will always have a wise cracking girlfriend telling her she has to go out and LIVE a little.
I hate romantic comedies.
The retired spy/assassin/agent paying his debt to society by teaching kids on a desolate Navajo reservation is forced out of retirement by treacherous intelligence operatives who intend to set him up as a fall guy for their latest nefarious plot.
The seemingly omniscient serial killer who plays cat and mouse with the washed-up cop/PI/reporter, who discovers that the thrill of the chase brings him back to life.
This was pretty much my choice for the “plots I’m a sucker for” thread.
If the OP had titled the thread with “can’t stand” replacing “won’t watch”, it’d be my choice for this thread, too. The well-done ones are few and far between.
BTW, I *do *know what it is about those plots that irks you so much, but you wouldn’t believe me if I told you.
Well, that IS pretty much the technique.
C’mon, you can’t just leave it hanging like that. spill the beans.
Movies whose goal is to startle or gross out the audience so they think they’re being scared (i.e., most modern “horror” films).
Special effects films. I’m not going unless there is an interesting plot. And no, x fighting y is not interesting, nor is it a plot.
Oftentimes, the girl’s girlfriend is a gay guy, but your point is made.
I can’t say I pre-emptively avoid such movies as a rule, but I routinely register disappointment when the movie I’m watching has a scientist character who fucks things up and the only thing that can set it right is an appeal to the human soul, or heart, or spirit, or some such crap.
Fuck that shit. I wanna see the religious guy freezing in the dark, while the science-and-engineering-minded realist suffers at most minor discomfort because knowing how to build a fire is a lot better than knowing how to pray for one.
I’m surprised nobody has mentioned the misfit sports team formula yet. Invariably they beat the hugely proficient scary team in the finale.
This type of movie annoys me to no end because we’re meant to think the misfits winning is the good ending, with the typically cast as one dimensional evil incarnate other team losing as a good thing. But that isn’t fair! The other team no doubt practices 16 hours a day and are hugely disciplined and talented. Yet we’re supposed to cheer when the untalented and unfit misfit team takes the gold, often winning with some stupid dumb luck move (like standing around aimlessly and having the ball bounce off him in a fortunate way).
This is a terrible message, and it annoys me that its assumed that we should cheer for the talentless team.
I’ll hazard a guess the joke is that you obviously don’t like situations that could be cleared up with a simple explanation but instead are draaaaagged out. Just like the protagonist who could prove he’s not crazy if he just calmed down and explained himself rationally, Orr could explain his interpretation of your feelings, but draaaagging it out is more fun with half-cryptic clues and missed chances and misunderstood glances across a crowded room until 80 minutes have passed and the credits roll.
Successful people losing it all to drug use.
One reason I love the original Terminator is because it so purely avoided the “Power of Human Love” crap. It was Killing Machine vs. Human Beings, period.
I let Cameron slide a bit in the first sequel, which actually did have the second Arnold Terminator getting a bit human – but at least the T-1000 wasn’t defeated by the Power of Love.
That reminds me of another one I loathe – the robot/android who wants to be human. I’d like to see an android who’s perfectly happy being an android and couldn’t conceive of anything worse than being a human.
I refuse to watch any movie that includes gratuitous amounts of violence. This includes horror movies, graphic/comic-based movies and whatever the heck genre movies like Reservoir Dogs fall into.
It’s not that I can’t handle blood. Those movies don’t scare me, either. NOT showing that level of violence and blood will probably scare me much more than actually showing it. The problem is that violence like that produced solely for entertainment disturbs me on a visceral level.
Graphic rape. I don’t need that in my head, thankyouverymuch.
I don’t like revenge movies (ie the wrongly imprisoned guy has to kill a bunch of people). The commercials for A Model Citizen look absolutely repellent to me. I think it’s because there’s basically no moral center in those movies. The justice system “failed” and so we’re all back to the wild west days where people can kill each other with impunity as long as they really believe “they’re in the right.” I’m sure that the people who perpetuated the crime that started the whole mess believed they were justified on some level, too. But the films never actually do anything except cheer the guy seeking revenge. I don’t receive any sort of pleasure from watching that.
War movies with a love story. Ok, some did it well, like “We Were Soldiers” but that’s about it. It didn’t have some stupid love triangle in it.