“You thought he was innocent, but he was actually guilty.” I just hate it when I go through an entire movie agonizing with the falsely accused defendant, cheering when he’s vindicated, only to find out that he was the main asshole after all (see Primal Fear) and we’ve all just been a bunch of suckers.
In fact, I just hate movies that have to be “realistic,” with a real downer ending. Going to the movies for a dose of “real life” is like going to a fancy restaurant and doing all the cooking myself–what’s the point? I see enough injustice in the real world–I go to the movies for a little fantasy!
Cliffhangers. I mean, literally, the standard scene where someone is hanging from a cliff, and the other person has a grip on them, and they almost let go, and then (naturally) they just manage to hang on.
How many times? A few thousand?
That one at the end of The Lord of the Rings I just Could. Not. Believe. A massive trilogy, it’s the climax of the whole thing, the mountain is falling down, the sky is falling in, the evil empire is (literally) collapsing, it’s an immensely satisfying and dramatic moment but Peter “the fuckwit” Jackson has to have one guy nearly fall in and the other guy just manage to grab him and then haul him up because, you know, the scene was a bit dull so it needed something exciting to happen. Right?
I lump in several already mentioned – the kid, the willful but useless girlfriend, the incompetent partner, ect. into a category I call “the friendly foil.” They are on the hero’s side, but they serve no purpose except to complicate the plot unnecessarily by getting themselves kidnapped, by doing something the audience can clearly see is stupid or just generally being in the way. This was the role Dawn played in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
I also detest The Fat Kid, or The Fat Guy. Apparently, it’s supposed to be endlessly hillarious that fat people like to eat. And the great triumph for The Fat Kid comes when he manages to rise to an ordinary level of competence.
I also hate the fact that The Tom Boy always has to sell out and girly up as a condition of adulthood.
“Ooof. I’m hit!”
“Hold on man! Just hold on! You’re gonna make it you sonuvabitch!”
“I’m sorry, buddy. You’re gonna have to win this fight for the both of us.”
<sob>“No! NOOO! Just keep talking to me, man! You’re gonna pull through!”
“It’s getting dark. Tell Mary I’m sorry. Give 'em Hell kid.” <dies>
“NOOOOOOOO! nnnggggrrrrraaaAAAAAAHH!” <blows everybody the fuck up in a berserker rage>
Reality:
“AAAAAAAAH! AAAAAAAAAH!”
“WHAT? What the fuck happened??”
“OHHHH MY FUCKING GOD! OH JESUS CHRIST!”
“Oh shit! He’s been shot!”
“GAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAAAH!”
“Help! Somebody help!”
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!”
I know who the serial killer is, so I’m going to meet him in a dark, isolated secluded place and convince him to turn himself in. Of course, I won’t bring a gun to the meeting because I’m a total idiot.
On a recent soap, two cops arrested a serial killer as he was being sworn in as the DA in a group of around 100 people. They then chatted with him for a 1/2 hour before taking him away. Not even a drop of reality in the whole scene.
The hero in a comedy (or romantic comedy) who finds himself with something embarrassing to hide - either something in his past, or something right now. What shall I do? Shall I own up to it, shall I do something sensible, or shall I try some convoluted plan that will let me hide it from people completely?
The longer it gets stretched out for, the more I hate it. I also hate the stupid situations in the first place. The American Pie trilogy were offenders here. Learn to cut your losses, people.
Gollum and Frodo struggle. Gollum bites the ring from Frodo’s finger, and Frodo falls to his knees. Gollum, overjoyed, dances about “like a mad thing”, crying “Precious! Oh Precious!” and generally not being very careful about the big-ass drop behind him. He makes one prance too close, teeters on the edge, and with a final “Precious!” falls into the heart of Mt. Doom.
I’m guessing Jackson fell back on cliche because the book version would be pretty tough to bring to the screen without it looking kind of aburd.
Related: Partner gets fatally injured, convinces Hero to leave him for the oncoming baddies. Hero gives Partner a gun so he can slow down a few of the Baddies before he kicks it.
Filmmakers: Need an easy way to spice up otherwise-boring exposition? Set the conversation in a strip club!
Most egregious example I can think of: Varsity Blues. It’s about a high school football team, fercryinoutloud, and they still managed to set a boring conversation in a strip club.
The Hollywood version of Zeno’s Paradox: someone is running from something that is much faster than any person on foot: a car, an attack dog, a guy on horseback, a dinosaur, monster, etc. They run. Their pursuer gets closer. They run. Their pursuer gets closer. THEY RUN! THEIR PURSUER IS CLOSING THE GAP! This goes on for twenty seconds and about a hundred yards, until the persued person finally gets to safety 1/4 second before the pursuer catches them; when in reality they would have been caught in two seconds or less. Someone earlier posted that they’re sick of the whole “stumbles and/or twists ankle” cliche. Why not just have what’s chasing them catch them?
That’s a good one. Even just the fact that they always have to tell the person that they know they did it, before they tell the cops.
“So it was you all along, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, and now I have to kill you.” :smack:
What about the bomb that’s going to detonate in 10 seconds, but it actually takes about 5 minutes?
And why, when they have the final fight between the good guy and the bad guy, near the end of the movie, and you already know the good guy will win, does he always have to endure a gruesome beating that would most likely kill a person in real life, before he actually starts landing any good punches on the bad guy?
