Cliches and Tropes In Movies That Really Annoy You

[Misterian]

* Comic Book Movies Don't Use Codenames

* Movie Super Heroes Wear Black (unless the superheroes are either Batman, Nick Fury, or Black Widow)

Karma Houdini

Darker and Edgier (though only when it's done on something where being Dark and Edgy doesn't fit the material in question)

(* seriously I don't know what appeal some of you see in putting realism in the superhero genre [i/] , of all things.)

 

[babinro]

Not sure if this qualifies but the shoehorned love story in most comedies. This story arc is often the weakest part of a good comedy and frequently eats up way to much screen time. Office Space and UHF are both comedies that illustrate this in my opinion.

Shaky cam / fast cuts that result in any sense of confusion in an action sequence. Not sure if this is considered a trope either but I'll take the slow paced action sequences of Star Wars Episode 4 over just about any action sequence shot in the last decade.

 

[twistedmic]

* Comic Book Movies Don't Use Codenames

* Movie Super Heroes Wear Black (unless the superheroes are either Batman, Nick Fury, or Black Widow)

This reminds me of another one that I hate. Having a mask-wearing superhero repeatedly taking their helmet/mask off while in their superhero suit. It happened a lot in the Spiderman movies (Toby Maguire and Andrew Garfield) and in every single movie with Iron Man.

 

[Nigh Invulnerable]

Those mistaken assumption storylines - they're in pretty much every crap romantic comedy, plus some supposed serious movies like American Beauty, and they're just so overdone. And usually poorly done, since most of the time there's no effort to convince the audience that there's some reason the characters didn't just clarify whatever it is that they decide is happening.

THIS!!! There are way too many films, shows, etc. where the misunderstanding and drama could be remedied in 2 seconds with a simple, "Wait, did you mean XXXXX?". That really annoys me.

 

[Moderated]

snip

So people never kill in self defense? What about assassinating Osama bin Laden? We killed someone to stop him from killing people. Saying that doing something bad to stop something worse is wrong is just stupid.

 

[Moderated]

snip

The hell? A boob flash is an instant R rating here. Is it fine wherever you live in PG-13 movies(or whatever equivalent rating)?

 

[Parasondox]

snip

The hell? A boob flash is an instant R rating here. Is it fine wherever you live in PG-13 movies(or whatever equivalent rating)?

PG 13 to you is Cert. 12/12A to us (Cert 12A is Cinemas only and must have an adult with you if under 12 and Cert 12 is Home Media, suitable only for persons aged 12 years and over, not to be supplied to anyone below that age. It is illegal to knowingly rent or sell a 12-rated VHS, DVD, Blu-ray Disc, UMD or game to anyone under the age of 12 .
Then it goes to Cert. 15, which is in the middle.
Then Cert. 18 (that's Rated R for you in USA).

Here are the rules on Cert. 15 in the UK

Spoiler

-The work as a whole must not endorse discriminatory language or behaviour.[1]

-Drug taking may be shown but the film as a whole must not promote or encourage drug misuse. Promotion of drugs which are easy to obtain are unlikely to be allowed.[1]

-Strong threat and menace are permitted unless sadistic or sexualised.[1]

-Dangerous behaviour (for example, hanging, suicide and self-harming) can be allowed provided the detail of such is low so that it can not create too much of an impression of the viewer. Abuse of weapons which are easily obtained will not be tolerated.[1]

-Frequent use of strong language can be permitted, although very strong language needs to be restricted and would have to be seen as reasonable in the context. Frequent usage of very strong language would be seldom allowed.[1]

-Nudity in a sexual content must be restricted however nudity in a non-sexual content does not.[1]

-Sexual activity without strong detail would most likely to be allowed. Some strong sexual references may be allowed to, but very strong ones may not, unless used within reason. Sexual acts or references with the intention of causing arousal is not likely to be permitted.[1]

-As long as the film is appropriate for 15 year olds, no certain themes are prohibited.[1]

-Violence may be strong but should not dwell on the infliction of pain or injury. The strongest gory images are unlikely to be acceptable. The same applies to references. Any sexual violence should be discreet and be strongly justified.[1]

But that's just movies. On TV as long as it's after the watershed (9pm), you can have as many boobs, non-detailed sex scenes and swearing and violence as you wish.

 

[Erttheking]

Snip

As a fan of sci-fi myself and a pretty big writer of sci-fi fanfiction, I honestly find myself on the same wavelength as a lot of what you say.

1. No argument there. I also agree on the having each other's back aspects I'll admit to one of my characters having to pull a wounded woman to safety, yet the same thing happened to him at one point with a woman pulling him to safety. As for when it isn't the case, I think the Nostalgia Critic did a good job of talking about a woman suddenly becoming less competent in the third act. Dumbass In Distress, what a perfect term.

2, 3 & 4: No argument, they can all screw off.

5. I actually find myself on the wire here. I'm actually a really big fan of writing masculine women, heck, I even had one of my guy characters admits that he finds physically strong women to be attractive. However, a female friend of mine has been getting on my rear about it. Not because she doesn't like them, she says she likes them a lot, she just wants me to get out of my comfort zone. I actually ended up agreeing with her and I'm trying to find a balance between masculine women and more feminine ones. While I have a big extended cast with plenty of other women elsewhere, the main three women are A. a massive tomboy who identifies as a crossdresser, B. a woman who lived in an isolated tribe who is overall fairly masculine, but recently has been nervously experimenting with being more feminine and will eventually be a person who is masculine 98% of the time but will let loose days when she's in the right mood and C. another tomboy who is a shameless adrenaline junkie, but is much more comfortable with being feminine, likes wearing nice dresses and even frequents legalized brothels because she shamelessly enjoys sex.

6. Yeah, it is annoying. Although, interestingly enough, I actually saw a game on Steam called Loren the Amazon Princess that while it had skimpily armored women, had men wearing armor that was equally impractical and sexualized, I thought it was actually kind of interesting.

7. Never met anyone like this, hope it stays that way. I mean WHY? WHY DOES THIS EXIST!? In fact, I saw a picture of a man staring at a woman's ass and another man staring at his ass and he took offense to the man looking at his ass. Caption "homosexuality, the fear men will treat you the way you treat women" Kind of the same mindset but with the different gender. A gay man is a threat, a gay woman is a challenge.

Sorry if I rambled about my writing a little too much.

 

[Generalissimo]

here's a few a could think of:

Status Quo Ante Bellum: by the end of the film, despite any and all conflict and plot, NOTHING changes at all.

Redshirts: if you have people around who's only purpose is to die then spend your money on dummies rather than actors who would rather have a less shite role

Instant effect drugs: i'm no biology professor, but i can tell you that any drug will have at least a short delay before it takes effect (depending on the injection point)

the good guys lose: i understand if you want to establish your villain and his army as a threat. that's fine, but having an otherwise respectable army against him being utter morons is not. (looking at you, ME3). to extract from the ME3 example, the whole of C-SEC basically are like "what is gun? how do i bullets?" while getting roflstomped by Cerberus, despite being established beforehand as a well equipped and organised force.

shut up and shoot: the amount of problems that could be solved if either side were to shut up and just shoot their adversary rather than provide a tiresome exposition dump is uncanny.

 

[Eamar]

Snip

No problem, it's interesting to hear what creators have to say too

5. I elaborated on this in another post. Basically, I totally understand that not everyone sees this the same way I do, it's just a case of these being my personal gripes and preferences. A lot of it comes down to me identifying with "masculine" characters - I've always been "masculine" in personality myself, but I'm also completely happy with myself as a woman and definitely don't want to actually be a man. My male friends always used to joke that I was the "manliest" of all of us, and I guess that's actually kind of true (my friends aren't the most macho bunch). I also write, and while I do love writing "masculine" women, and I definitely sympathise with the comfort zone thing, I do try to include a variety of characters (male and female) across the feminine-masculine spectrum in my writing.

My main issue is that I really hate the idea of personality traits being directly related to gender. I don't believe they are (I'm part of the "gender is a social construct" crowd, but I freely admit that that's an extreme view).

6. I'd have no problem with that at all. I'm not against impractical and/or sexy outfits so long as they're consistent with the rest of the setting, ie it's not a case of all the male space marines wearing full-body power armour while the female ones swan about in catsuits and high heels (exaggerated example, but you get the point).

7. I've seen the same picture, and yeah it's incredibly disheartening. I'm always completely horrified when this trope rears its ugly head because it feels like something that just shouldn't exist in this day and age, yet distressing numbers of people seem to have no issue with it. The absolute worst part is that it's genuinely dangerous and irresponsible to write this sort of thing off as just some fantasy. "Corrective" rape of lesbians by guys who actually subscribe to this way of thinking is a very real thing, unfortunately.

 

[Erttheking]

Snip

No problem, it's interesting to hear what creators have to say too

5. I elaborated on this in another post. Basically, I totally understand that not everyone sees this the same way I do, it's just a case of these being my personal gripes and preferences. A lot of it comes down to me identifying with "masculine" characters - I've always been "masculine" in personality myself, but I'm also completely happy with myself as a woman and definitely don't want to actually be a man. My male friends always used to joke that I was the "manliest" of all of us, and I guess that's actually kind of true (my friends aren't the most macho bunch). I also write, and while I do love writing "masculine" women, and I definitely sympathise with the comfort zone thing, I do try to include a variety of characters (male and female) across the feminine-masculine spectrum in my writing.

My main issue is that I really hate the idea of personality traits being directly related to gender. I don't believe they are (I'm part of the "gender is a social construct" crowd, but I freely admit that that's an extreme view).

6. I'd have no problem with that at all. I'm not against impractical and/or sexy outfits so long as they're consistent with the rest of the setting, ie it's not a case of all the male space marines wearing full-body power armour while the female ones swan about in catsuits and high heels (exaggerated example, but you get the point).

7. I've seen the same picture, and yeah it's incredibly disheartening. I'm always completely horrified when this trope rears its ugly head because it feels like something that just shouldn't exist in this day and age, yet distressing numbers of people seem to have no issue with it. The absolute worst part is that it's genuinely dangerous and irresponsible to write this sort of thing off as just some fantasy. "Corrective" rape of lesbians by guys who actually subscribe to this way of thinking is a very real thing, unfortunately.

5. Which fits. Like I said, I LOVE writing masculine women, like my friend said, I just can't fall into writing the same character over and over again, and there are plenty of non-masculine women out there. Come to think of it, even the character I have who likes wearing dresses thought that jumping out of a spaceship in low orbit was fun. I love writing masculine women, but I have to be sure to balance it out, because while it is a problem when people show masculine women as being undesirable, it's just as easy to go just as far in the other direction with "Real Women Don't Wear Dresses" which is equally as disgusting.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RealWomenDontWearDresses

6. Yeah. Ironically, I'm a 20 year old heterosexual guy, but sexy women in gaming usually just gets eye rolls from me, and I very much love sexy women, but in serious settings it just comes off as stupid and exploitative. I've got three outcomes for sexualized characters. 1. Don't bother, 2. have the sex actually be a part of the character, I'm ok if a seductress dresses skimpily so long as the other women characters don't do it for no reason or 3. have the female and male characters be equally as sexualized, like what that Amazon game is doing.

7. I just...I don't even. I've heard about that from my friend, when I was actually telling her about my plans to write a character who was a victim of sexual assault in a military. Heck, she even said the same thing happened to masculine women. I'm toying with possibly adding those aspects, but I'm still thinking about it.

 

[Zipa]

I don't know if its a trope or not as such but it really annoys me when movies with supposed high production values and the like depict a gun fight but the guns don't actually physically cycle. It just kills the immersion of it for me. That and that guy who always seems to have a clip or magazine with infinite ammo cheats on.

 

[Vegosiux]

5. I actually find myself on the wire here. I'm actually a really big fan of writing masculine women, heck, I even had one of my guy characters admits that he finds physically strong women to be attractive. However, a female friend of mine has been getting on my rear about it. Not because she doesn't like them, she says she likes them a lot, she just wants me to get out of my comfort zone. I actually ended up agreeing with her and I'm trying to find a balance between masculine women and more feminine ones.

Did she mean your writing comfort zone or your "what you like" comfort zone? Because doing the latter would be slightly dickish as that's not a comfort zone thing at all while the former is good advice.

 

[Erttheking]

5. I actually find myself on the wire here. I'm actually a really big fan of writing masculine women, heck, I even had one of my guy characters admits that he finds physically strong women to be attractive. However, a female friend of mine has been getting on my rear about it. Not because she doesn't like them, she says she likes them a lot, she just wants me to get out of my comfort zone. I actually ended up agreeing with her and I'm trying to find a balance between masculine women and more feminine ones.

Did she mean your writing comfort zone or your "what you like" comfort zone? Because doing the latter would be slightly dickish as that's not a comfort zone thing at all while the former is good advice.

She meant my writing comfort zone. IE, don't make all your characters have the same trait. And learn how to write other kinds of characters.

 

[Vegosiux]

She meant my writing comfort zone. IE, don't make all your characters have the same trait. And learn how to write other kinds of characters.

*nods* Was just curious, and yeah, that's good advice. I actually tried my last story without a central protagonist (or well, there was a sort of an 'observer protagonist') but instead a series of linked short stories. Was a good exercise in trying out different characters.

 

[SoranMBane]

A lot of these are things that annoy me in fiction in general, but here goes:

-Whenever a character starts off a bit of exposition with some variation of "as you know..." Okay, if this person already knows this information, then why the fuck are you telling them again?

-Self sacrifice. Just... Self sacrifice. Beyond the deeper moral problems I see with basically telling the audience that the highest goal a person can aspire to is to die for the benefit of others, this is a trope that I rarely see used in any logical or satisfying way. Often times, either the "hero" is way too eager to to sacrifice themselves at the drop of a hat (like, literally, some of these people would probably kill themselves to keep a hat from falling on the floor and getting dirty), the sacrifice would have been unnecessary if the hero had spent even a single second pondering an alternative, or the sacrifice is only necessary because some fictional phlebotinum or other incredibly contrived scenario made it so.

-Whenever any animal is treated as inherently "evil" or "disgusting," and especially when the few people who don't automatically hate those animals are treated as naive idiots at best and bizarre deviants at worst ("How could anyone actually like bugs, or worse yet, spiders? Something must be wrong with them!"). The prevalence of this attitude is why I appreciate My Little Pony's Fluttershy so much. She's a true animal lover who even cares about creatures that most of her peers would consider scary or ugly, and it's actually presented as a positive thing.

-Similarly, I hate when vegetarians are portrayed as a bunch of self-righteous assholes. Not when PETA is portrayed that way, mind you (PETA are genuinely a bunch of scumbags), but normal people like myself who have simply decided to not eat meat. Believe it or not, we're not generally confrontational about it. I just want to eat my salads and veggie burgers in peace without constantly being told by my entertainment that I'm an asshole for not doing something that I don't feel comfortable with.

-Male villains being portrayed as effeminate and foppish, and, similarly, female villains being powerful and independent. It gets especially icky when these villains are contrasted by the masculine male heroes and their submissive, demure female love interests. Because only a horrible deviant would ever think of straying outside of established gender stereotypes, right?

 

[Parasondox]

A lot of these are things that annoy me in fiction in general, but here goes:

-Self sacrifice. Just... Self sacrifice. Beyond the deeper moral problems I see with basically telling the audience that the highest goal a person can aspire to is to die for the benefit of others, this is a trope that I rarely see used in any logical or satisfying way. Often times, either the "hero" is way too eager to to sacrifice themselves at the drop of a hat (like, literally, some of these people would probably kill themselves to keep a hat from falling on the floor and getting dirty), the sacrifice would have been unnecessary if the hero had spent even a single second pondering an alternative, or the sacrifice is only necessary because some fictional phlebotinum or other incredibly contrived scenario made it so.

THAAAAANK YOU!! Thank You Thank You Thank You!! Why is it that nearly every sci-fi/fantasy or any other genre have this self sacrifice element? It's getting lazy now and sometimes done for stupid reasons without any full explanation. "I must sacrifice myself in order for the world/universe to be saved blah blah blah"... erm you know you don't have to do that right and there are many other options? "but I must because I am the chosen one", FOR WHAT AND WHO?? I get it in some stories it actually works and backed up with a full and enough reason as to why he/she should do the whole "self sacrifice" thing but nowadays you see it done too many times just to add something that ends up being nothing.

Actually that's another cliche you see in movies, "The Chosen One". Really? They are the chosen one because their great great great grandparent on their mothers side, twice removed defeated this very villain (or late relative of villain) and now he/she is the only one to stop that creature or thing? Or because they have one very different unique trait about them, all of a sudden the story and events of it is all centered around this person. Because it's their "destiny". I know I something feel sorry for the supporting crew cause they do most of the heavy battles and lifting while the chosen one has to go through a few boss fights/battles.

 

[Dragonlayer]

Any WW2 movie that depicts German soldiers as cackling thugs who just love them some needlessly cruel acts of evil, instead of the valiant defenders of civilization against the Bolshevik hordes human beings they were: I get it, the Nazis were evil but you don't need to have the obligatory "Germans burn a church full of orphans and puppies" war crime scene to remind me. Oh and any WW2 movie that also depicts German soldiers, members of the finest military machine in the world at that time, as completely useless cannon fodder for the heroe's guns (minus ten million Reichsmarks if the heroes are some fucking civilian resistance).

Also: the facepalming incompetance of almost all female characters in any horror movie, whose contribution to the proceedings can usually be summed up with PLEASE STOP FUCKING SCREAMING EVERY FIVE SECONDS!