Ooh! Ooh! Just thought of one–
*The first symptom of any fatal illness is always a cough.
These are taken from stuff about how to be truly evil. I figured they might work here since they also have all the cliches about being evil.
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I will design all doomsday machines myself. If I must hire a mad scientist to assist me, I will make
sure that he is sufficiently twisted to never regret his evil ways and seek to undo the damage he’s
caused. -
I will never utter the sentence ‘But before I kill you, there’s just one thing I want to know.’
-
When I employ people as advisors, I will occasionally listen to their advice.
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I will not have a son. Although his laughably under-planned attempt to usurp power would easily
fail, it would provide a fatal distraction at a crucial point in time. -
I will not have a daughter. She would be as beautiful as she was evil, but one look at the hero’s
rugged countenance and she’d betray her own parent. -
Despite its proven stress-relieving effect, I will not indulge in maniacal laughter. When so occupied,
it’s too easy to miss unexpected developments that a more attentive individual could adjust to
accordingly. -
I will hire a talented fashion designer to create original uniforms for my legions of terror, as
opposed to some cheap knock-offs that make them look like Nazi stormtroopers, Roman footsoldiers,
or savage Mongol hordes. -
No matter how tempted I am with the prospect of unlimited power, I will not consume any energy
field bigger than my head. -
I will keep a special cache of low-tech weapons and train my troops in their use. That way, even if
the heroes manage to neutralize my power generator and/or render the standard-issue energy weapons
useless - my troops will not be overrun by a handful of savages armed with spears and rocks. -
I will maintain a realistic assessment of my strengths and weaknesses. Even though this takes some
of the fun out of the job, at least I will never utter the line ‘No, this cannot be! I AM INVINCIBLE!!!’
(After that, death is usually instantaneous.) -
I will not order my trusted lieutenant to kill the infant who is destined to overthrow me - I’ll do it
myself. -
I will not interrogate my enemies in the inner sanctum - a small hotel well outside my borders will
work just as well. -
I will be secure in my superiority. Therefore, I will feel no need to prove it by leaving clues in the
form of riddles or leaving my weaker enemies alive to show they pose no threat. -
I will not waste time making my enemy’s death look like an accident.
-
I will make it clear that I do know the meaning of the word ‘mercy’; I simply choose not show them
any. -
One of my advisors will be an average five-year-old child. Any flaws in my plan that he is able to
spot will be corrected before implementation. -
All slain enemies will be cremated, or at least have several rounds of ammunition emptied into
them, not left for dead at the bottom of the cliff. -
My undercover agents will not have tattoos identifying them as members of my organization, nor
will they be required to wear military boots or adhere to any other dress codes. -
The hero is not entitled to a last kiss, a last cigarette, or any other form of last request.
-
I will never employ any device with a digital countdown. If I find that such a device is absolutely
unavoidable, I will set it to activate when the counter reaches 117 and the hero is just putting his plan
into operation.
21.My legions of terror will have helmets with clear plexiglass visors, not face-concealing ones.
22.My ventilation ducts will be too small to crawl through.
23.My noble half-brother whose throne I usurped will be killed, not kept anonymously imprisoned in a
forgotten cell of my dungeon.
24.Shooting is not too good for my enemies.
25.The artifact which is the source of my power will not be kept on the Mountain of Despair beyond the
River of Fire guarded by the Dragons of Eternity. It will be in my safe-deposit box. The same applies
to the object which is my one weakness.
26.I will not gloat over my enemies’ predicatment before killing them.
27.When the rebel leader challenges me to fight one-on-one and asks, “Or are you afraid without your
armies to back you up?” My reply will be, “No, just sensible.”
28.When I’ve captured my adversary and he says, “Look, before you kill me, will you at least tell me
what this is all about?” I’ll say, “No.” and shoot him.
29.After I kidnap the beautiful princess, we will be married immediately in a quiet civil ceremony, not a
lavish spectacle in three weeks’ time during which the final phase of my plan will be carried out.
30.I will not include a self-destruct mechanism unless absolutely necessary. If it is necessary, it will
not be a large red button labelled ‘Danger: Do Not Push.’ The big red button marked ‘Do Not Push’
will instead trigger a spray of bullets on anyone stupid enough to disregard it. Similarly, the ON/OFF
switch will not clearly be labelled as such.
My favorite is the “Fallacy of the Talking Hero”. (Think James Bond). The bad guy knocks down the good guy or takes away the heroes weapon. All the bad guy has to do is blast him and the hero is dead. But no, the bad guy feels compelled to talk to the hero and tell him he is going to enjoy watching the good guy die. This alway gives the person we are rooting for a chance to grab back his weapon or take the villains weapon and kill him. If the bad guy had done what we all would have done and blast the hero he would have won.
The other one is that the fruit stand always gets hit. In one bad movie they put in a fruit stand and called it “Siskel and Ebert’s”. It got hit. Both Ebert and Siskel agreed it would have been funnier if the stand had lived.
Keith
All aliens, through some freak of evolutionary nature, will always speak English, usually unaccented.
Topaz, A slight amendment to your list that I think is somewhat more approriate…
28a. When I feel that I must gloat because I am evil and meglomaniacal, and need the hero to feel that he might have a chance before I kill him. When he asks me about my plans, I lie like the dog I am…and then kill him.
The cliché I’m always amazed at is the one where a disguise actually fools people, even close up. (Until the wig or moustache falls off.)
The latest movie Big Momma’s House is one example,
but Mission Impossible 2 is a better one.
He only makes one almost undetected reference to the nature of disguises when he won’t kiss the girl on the lips.
A cold rubber mask would be a dead giveaway, but they never even say that and no one I talked to caught it until I mentioned it.
Whenever someone in a movie changes their shirt, you never see them put on deodorant; in fact, you never see anyone use it at all. Maybe it’s just my hangup, but I’ve always believed that when you change your shirt, you reapply deodorant. It could be a very sensuous moment: actress curves her arm above her head…slides the applicator up and down…then repeats for the other side…but no director has ever seen the potential eroticism.
Movie characters who are deeply religious are either (a) self-righteous, hate-mongering hypocrites, (b) naive simpletons, or © brainwashed cultists. This goes double for characters who are priests or clergy.
Hardly ever on film or TV will you see a religious character who is socially adjusted, likeable, and rational.
<SOAPBOX>
I firmly believe that this negative portrayal is generating huge bias against organized religion in American thought.
</SOAPBOX>
You rarely, if ever, see the characters take a bathroom break.
Oh, and about the 555 phone numbers. In Magnolia they had a real number for Cruise’s character’s hotline.
And also a bunch of carrots with the leafy green tops still attached…
And if the groceries are going to be knocked out of someone’s hands, then of course the round stuff that rolls (tomatoes, oranges, apples) is never in the plastic bags from the produce section, it just falls out and rolls all over, so someone will trip on it.
To add to Topaz’s list:
When being chased by the bad guys, I WILL run towards the nearest exit, not up the nearest staircase.
Remote controls for TVs are huge and clunky and make a really loud ‘click’ when the buttons are pushed.
And when people talk on the phone, they don’t ever pause long enough to let the other person speak, but they repeat everything the other person said so that we know what the phone call was about.
The drunk who witnesses an unbeleivable incident (perhaps invoving futuristic technology), looks at his booze and then shakes his head (saying “never again!” is optional).
Most characters can take 10+ powerful strikes without falling over.
Said strikes make satisfyingly punchy noises.
If the hero is well-built, his shirt will tear during battle, thus necessitating its removal.
If there is a secondary woman character on the good side, she will always be drawn into a one-on-one cat-fight with her evil counterpart.
Another one…
In the movies when someone gets shot with a handgun…
…if they are the hero it just scratches them with a flesh wound, but if they are a bad guy they instantly fall down dead. OR if the hero gets shot and killed he’ll have time to say a few last works like “I’ll always love you”
IRL people who are shot bleed, scream, cry, beg, flop around, have urine and feces in their wounds and on the floor etc…
The best moving shooting I’ve seen was in Resivoir Dogs.
If a chase goes into a theatre, there will always be convenient sandbags to drop on the head of your chasers. These sandbags will not be attached to any scenery, so there will never be a disturbance in the action of the play going on onstage
No one in a horror movie considers leaving town. If someone started slaying my friends here at school, I would take the time to visit friends across the country whom no one knows I’m connected with.
Lesbian sex scenes will feature closeups of feet.
Damien Karras? Although, yeah, that is one example out of many…
Oh, and another cliche. I hate how people can point a gun at someone, with their finger wrapped around the trigger for ages and nothing ever really happens. The gun never goes off by accident, or anything…(Well, there was Pulp Fiction- that’s one thing I love about that film.)
And I agree with the gun shooting thing- how the hero always manges to say something like “I’ll always love you”- good thing about Reservoir Dogs was it pretty much accurately shows what its like to actually get shot.
I’m a huge Quentin Tarantino Fan, :p, can you tell?
Somebody told me that the Army has had problems with this since WWII. Apparently, prior to TV and widespread action movies, when people got shot in combat they tended to struggle on for a while. (Gunshots are rarely instantly fatal). Then in Korea and Vietnam, soldiers tended to collapse and stop when shot just like the folks in the movies. The Army spends a long time trying to get soldiers to unlearn this.
I don’t know if it is really true, but I liked it.
Back to the main topic, nobody has mentioned the lesser cousin of the fruit cart… the large pane of glass being carried by two people which will undoubtedly end up shattered.
Someday, I would like it to be plexiglas or such and have the person run into it and fall over.
Boy meets girl. Boy likes girl. Sometimes girl likes boy too but either won’t admit it or can’t through peer pressure or the like. Sometimes girl just doesn’t like boy in which case boy will have to do something impressive like tand up[ to the system, save a nerd from getting beat up or rescuing her from a bad guy.
Anyway let’s go back to the likes boy scenario. If she likes him too they’ll go out but suffer conflict - usually a misunderstanding but sometimes a stupid act on the boy’s part - and break up. The hero will either spend the movie getting back together (comedy/romance) or just find her in his arms at the end of movie (action). Regardles they’ll end up back together.
Hetero only of course. Lesbian scenes are optional and trendy and good for extra $s nowadays but will be thrown over for what Hollywood still sees as true love.