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Oh no! It's the Movie Cliche List!
-
Nov 13, 2010
- by jbeswick
- posted in MovieSucktastic
I'm not talking about editing tricks - such as not showing every step when a character goes up a staircase. I'm talking basic, down in the dirt, filthy cliches that arrest credibility and make us all groan. Filthy damned cliches. This is obviously going to be a list that grows... and that's pretty depressing.
1
As the world gets smaller and Americans actually use their passports, hopefully this one will go away but it's really, really stupid. Basically:
- French: garlic-wearing, wine-swigging lovers/cooks who wear striped shirts, enjoy mime and talk with very, very French accents (Independence Day was my favorite here).
- English: intelligent, suave, classy, educated (hey, I'm English - this is good!) but also usually evil, timid and potentially homosexual (oh).
- German: the men are burly, the women are surly - but they're all basically Nazis (85% of all Spielberg films).
- Italian: the men can't get enough romance, the women are hot and crazy. Everyone just came from a JoS A Bank commercial.
- Australian: rough around the edges with a tendency to fight wild animals and like danger. And really, why Americans can't tell the accent difference with the English I still don't understand.
- Canadian: backward.
- Mexican: either hard-working maids with a heart of gold (Maid in Manhattan) or members of a drug gang.
- Japanese: either clueless camera-wielding tourist-types or heads of a drug gang, or Keiretsu-style corporate evildoers.
2
There are several cliche sins here, which is remarkable considering how simple elevators really are:
- Elevators will be instantly available when there's no tension. In a chase, however, the hero will have to wait (Terminator 2).
- Elevator doors close way too fast and don't have any sensors when something is blocking the door (Terminator 2).
- Elevators always have easy-to-reach ceilings with access panels to climb out.
- Elevator shaft are massive, very clean and easy to climb around (Speed, Hollow Man).
- Elevators are a good place to get assassinated.
- In a chase, someone on a staircase will invariably run up or down at the same speed as an elevator.
3
More specifically, toilets. Characters in movies don't use toilets. Ever. But with two exceptions: something incredibly bad is going to happen that involves bodily fluids and comedy, or they plan to escape from an aircraft.
4
This one's so bad that I'm amazed it's survived as long as it has. As any bomb-maker will tell you, you first need an alarm clock with a digital display and then two wires with different colors. Screw the C4 -without something showing in seconds when it plans to go bang and two wires, it won't work. I would actually be very interested to see a bomb in real life (disarmed, hopefully), since I'm pretty sure it looks like the radiator of my car.
5
This one's a staple in action and horror, and involves the character suddenly deciding to fall over something. Rather than just slightly stumbling, it's more of a flat-out 'on your ass' fall. And then, instead of just getting up, they writhe around on the floor or simply stare at whatever's chasing them. From Lord of the Rings to practically every horror film I can think about, heroes lose their balance at precisely the wrong moment.
6
Phones have become a really lazy ways to move a plot forward (TV's 24 was founded on this), but operationally have some real cliche moment:
- Conversations are never started with "Hello" or terminated with "Goodbye". In fact the average call time is about 10 seconds and movie characters would never blow through their minute plan.
- Cell phones never work when you really need them.
- Dialing is really fast and everyone answers immediately. Except in horror films, where nobody has voicemail.
- Voicemail, by the way, exists only where the characters have a 1980s-style box that plays the message to the audience as its received.
- Tracing phone calls is like zooming in from Google Earth, and always takes a prescribed amount of time, area code first (Sneakers). FYI, traces are instantaneous (look at the incoming phone number for God's sake).
7
This cliche annoys me more than most because it's always a plot device that's boring to watch and impossible to believe.
- In The Ghost Writer - an otherwise excellent film - Ewan McGregor discovers that Tom Wilkinson works for the CIA by Googling his name. Because, you know, the CIA is just not that careful.
- In The Ring and many recent horror films, the hero discovers vital plot points through a little Internet diggery (which seems to usually happen in libraries, too). BONUS POINTS: Check out the URL in The Ring and you can see the browser is pointed to a local HTML file on the computer and not the Interwebs.
8
Screenwriters have never been to court for anything apparently, but the film world of the legal system is not based in any sort of reality. Judges in movies would be struck off in real life - grouchy and strange, they allow lawyers to ramble into the realm of batshit crazy, without any regard for the inevitable mistrials later. Actually, nothing I've ever seen on TV or film resembles the real legal system at all and is all one big cliche.
9
So many movies revolve around the police that it's an entire subset of complete bullshit in itself:
- Police officers are always tenacious 24/7 workers who have drinking and marital problems but always get their guy (Heat).
- Excessive force with a bad guy never results in any investigation, and shooting at bad guys down a busy street is just fine.
- The Captain is a major pain in the ass, and will always take your gun and badge in the middle of Act 2.
- Forensics always draw chalk lines around murder victims (in real life, they just photograph the body).
10
Hollywood hates the future, and its pessimism stems from its liberal fears about Republicans taking control meaning that:
- In the future, everything happens in a dirty old warehouse - especially finales (Robocop).
- Everything is cold, sterile and detached (Minority Report) - or just pretty strange and dirty (Blade Runner).
- The ultra-cool technology that we wanted 5 years ago happened - but it wasn't a force for good (I Robot, Terminator 2).
- Companies have too much power - and they abuse it. There is no Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
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About the list creator
James Beswick (jbeswick)
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Lunch.com's "token Brit".
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Also, how about CPR in the movies: pound on the person's chest, look exasperated, then scream at them about how they never give up on anything and wait for them to come back to life. Tada!