Yeah, that’s really stupid, there’s never an actual reason why they don’t just say it, except there’s still an hour to fill.
Ridiculous misunderstandings because people simply refuse to actually talk to each other. This probably happens more in sit-coms than movies but really, people, it’s called communication. Just talk to each other.
Yes.
Chief Wiggum: “We call that retirony.”
Woman is carrying an armload of items, usually papers messily stacked. She trips or is suprised and drops papers, which scatter everywhere. Man rushes over to help her as she berates herself, then they both look up at the same moment into each other’s eyes…instant attraction / kissing / sex.
Or how about the person who has one item of info that is crucial to understanding / saving the day, but ‘there is no time to explain, you must trust me!’ and the lives of everyone depend on following that person without question. Nelson on The Simpsons parodies this one when he leads the children to the stolen lemon tree and stops to get a drink, etc. all while saying ‘I said there was no time to explain, and I stand by that.’
People blab confidential info or gossip in very public places without checking to see if boss / spouse / child is around, possibly standing right behind them.
Sci-fi shows are the worst for this. “Captain, please come to engineering immediately. You’ll want to see this.”
I realize that it’s not too exciting to watch someone talk over the intercom to someone else, but it strains my suspension of disbelief to see the person in command being summoned with no explanation by his subordinates time after time.
I’m sick to death of the bad guy’s lair blowing up or tumbling to ruins as soon as the bad guy is defeated. Personally, I blame Tolkien.
War movies all have a formula for determining who will live and who will die.
The biggest named star might die, but if he does it will not be until the last five minutes.
The minute that a supporting character talks about either his mom or his girl back home, you know he’s not going to survive the movie.
The nerd is going to be a killing machine and survive.
Doomed heroes and the women who love them are the most fertile people on Earth. Whenever a woman has sex with a doomed hero only one time, it will result in a healthy baby (Cold Mountain, Pearl Harbor, Terminator, etc.).
And while it’s been mentioned in several other threads it might as well be repeated: you can always tell if you’re in Paris because every window has a view of the Eiffel Tower. Ditto D.C. and the Capitol, San Francisco and the GG Bridge, etc… Even Tim Burton, a director not known for his use of cliches, did this one (without irony) in Big Fish, where only two minutes of the movie took place in Paris and there’s the Eiffel right out the window; personally I’d have had the window looking either onto a Shinto shrine, Big Ben or Independence Hall.
Well, “Saving Private Ryan” broke two of those. Ryan talked about his brothers and mom and lived, and the nerdy guy was useless in a fight, and only killed one guy.
But Tom Hanks still died in the last five minutes. 
And Giovanni Rbisi talked about his mom and “BANG!”
They also have to jump out of the dark in front of the hero when the music goes silent.
You forgot that driving a car over a cliff will make it explode in mid-air.
Damn! I opened the thread to post this (expecting it to be maybe the third item) and was getting excited that I might still be able to do it when I hadn’t seen it by page 3. Eh. This is the biggest cliche for me.
Saving Private Ryan did a really good job of playing with this one when the medic died.
There are actually several types of mines that do this. One example is the Bouncing Betty. When you step off of it it actually shoots up into the air and then explodes.
I think you are by yourself here. Just about all of the other posts are annoyed with the unreality of the cliche situations. I particularly like when a movie defies your expectations, breaks from cliches, and presents something like the situation you presented. But then again I may be alone.
You’re not alone.
The next time a ticking time bomb is part of the plot and the guy doesn’t know how to disarm it, or which wire to cut, the reality is that the damn thing is going to go off.
Any scene where there’s a countdown or a time limit is annoying as hell, and that includes Lost from two weeks ago, and last night’s Threshold. Disaster will be averted at the very last second, every time, and I’m mightily sick of it.
Actually, the time I was shot… (admittedly, shoulder) it didn’t hurt that bad for at least a good two minutes.
Then again, I have a fairly high pain threshold.
Perhaps TMI (young’ns hide your eyes), and somewhat related to the sex scene notes above, but I find it pretty funny when a couple finishes having sex in a film, and the guy rolls off, and they lay side by side all nice for like 5 minutes talking.
- If they used a condom, after that much talk, it’s now slid off and dumped its contents all over the guy, but he obviously doesn’t seem to care.
- If they didn’t, the woman is now lying in a pool, and it’s all hunky dory!
Do sound bites count? I’m sick and tired of the “hawk scream”.
Whenever there is an audition scene in a movie, there is always someone who has to do something geeky like twirl a baton in a cheerleader uniform, play the accordion, or break dance.There is always a crazy person, too. And the one who gets selected for the part is always the last person who tries out.
The bumbling idiot who stumbles his way through a firefight, and somehow like a feather in a hurricane survives by sheer dumb luck. I’d love to see a character who has been established as a bumbling idiot stumble into a firefight and immediately get his head blown off.
I’m getting tired of excessively acrobatic fight scenes, especially if they’re in slow motion. It was fun for a while, but it’s gotten old, and one-upmanship has made some fights absurd. People are cartwheeling, rolling, spinning, flying through the air, arms and legs wheeling everywhere. It’s like cirque du soleil with the occasional karate chop.
One of the most memorable examples of this was in Mission Impossible 2 (which was, admittedly, ridiculous for many reasons). At one point Tom Cruise comes face to face with a bad guy, at a distance of only a few feet. Instead of punching him in the face or delivering a swift kick to the groin, he elects to jump in the air, do a back flip, and then kick the guy in the face as his legs come around.