The Post Where I Complain About Movie Tropes

Originally Written on February 19th, 2016 for Tumblr

I watch a lot of movies. Sometimes I notice some really obvious, and really stupid movie cliches. Here are some of the worst.

1. No Bars!
This makes sense in context, but boy is it fucking frustrating. What is the point of setting a story in the modern day, when the one thing that we all use to communicate with everyone at all times has to be phased out? I’ve seen it so many times, characters go to a place and either don’t use their phones, which is stupid, or have a scene where they go “oh geez, I got no barz guyz!”. I actually prefer the latter because some movies just get it out of the way. Fucking fine, get your “no bars ex-machina” in there. I get it. I get why it exists. Because if it didn’t, the movie would be over. This is especially true in horror films. It’s really hard to build any sort of tension or isolation when you have a device that is designed to prevent isolation and allow access to any person in the country. Picture the last scene in Nightmare on Elm Street. Freddy is in Nancy’s house and can’t reach her father to alert him of danger… if she had a phone, that shit would be over.

2. No, he’s not in there.
A character gets brainwashed by some evil force or whatever, and for half the movie is a giant shit. Then the heroes start to triumph over main villain guy, and then… wait for it…. a “tearful” scene where the hero says “dude bro, I know you’re in there! This isn’t you! Etc.” And then the character is good again. Can we please fuck off with this shit? Every goddamn time I see a character get possessed by something, it ends with this scene and I’m sick to death of it. Because it should never, EVER work. Star Wars gets me for some reason. In Jedi, Luke pulls this shit with Vader and it further destroys his character. I don’t know about you, but I never got how Vader just decided to 180 at the last moment and kill the Emporer. Maybe it was just a writing flaw that they wanted to push harder, but whatever. But we’re left to assume that Luke’s words did some shit to change his mind right? So how the fuck does Luke saying “I know you’re in there” somehow cause him to think “oh shit what I’m doing is wrong, guess all my actions including murdering children in the Jedi temple is forgiven now that I heard that shit”. Dumb.

3. Perfect Teeth
I don’t get why everyone nit picks character designs, but no one actually nit picks the nit picky things in character designs, like bullet consistency and teeth. I don’t know why, but I notice it every time. Are the characters in your movie, starving, recently vomited, or in a setting with poor highgyne? Well too fucking bad! They will have absolutely flawless teeth no matter what! Can’t have movie stars looking ugly! Looking ugly is for people who aren’t in movies! There are multiple characters in Mad Max: Fury Road who look like they’ve had their teeth cleaned on a weekly basis. Like the breeder girls you can make a case that Immortan Joe wanted them clean… which is weird… but even Max and some of the War Boys look like they just happened to save some Crest during the 100 years of dessert and decay. This feeds into the bigger problem of “we can’t have our stars look ugly”. Movies in the past didn’t give a shit about this. Weaver never shied away from sweat and blood in Alien, Rambo was always dirty and bloody and grimy, Edward Norton and Brad Pit get punched repeatedly in the face in Fight Club. Where is the grime in movies nowadays? Where is the no-holds bars brutality and dirt that Rambo, Reservoir Dogs, and Fight Club had. Fury Road impressed me with Furiosa. Theron was great fit, and she wasn’t afraid to shave her head and just smear grease on her face, good going!

4. Sci-Fi News Exposition
Goddamnit writers. Someone needs to teach you how to do your job. If you want to get exposition about your world to build lore and such, can you do it in some method that doesn’t include news footage at the beginning that explains everything. Especially in post-apocalyptic movies. Yeah thanks for reminding me how fucked up the world is and will probably be at the start of this movie. Thanks for having a completely boring and uninspired opening scene that makes me hate your movie already. World building is important in Sci-Fi movies, especially when there’s shit that is important to the plot, but for fucks sake, all it takes is some clever exposition in some other manner that isn’t depressing news footage.

5. The Wilhelm Scream
I actually do not mind the Wilhelm Scream.

6. The “Guy wants to control evil thing plot”
I am so fucking sick of this. Much like the “I know your in there” story, it should NEVER EVER WORK. It should never ever work and also shouldn’t get as far as it does anyways. A bad guy wants to unleash… something, some amalgamation of Satan right, then the bad guy wants to control it for evil. Um, yeah OK, what exactly makes you think that you can control FUCKING SATAN? Legend of Korra Season 2 gets a lot of shit for not being very good. They’re right. It’s not great, but I was told it was going to get better once the main plot picked up. And that plot is… fucking stupid. The villain wants to unleash the fucking magic chakara god, not demon, god, so he can control him. Not only does it work, but he transforms into some stupid giant kaiju made out of magic. Fuck that shit man. You aren’t special or powerful enough to be a real villain, therefore we need something else that’s scary. If this plot happens, I want the “villain” to bring out the evil thing, and then have it kill them within the first half hour. Then we can get to the real shit. That death better be brutal too, just as a reward for wasting my time.