Here's a fun one- which are the worst? I'll go first with an obvious one, because I just watched it happen AGAIN, the year 2014, in an otherwise good movie.
It goes something like this:
Villain and Hero fight, Villain gets upper hand, points gun at Hero or whatever, Hero is now at his mercy.
Hero may or may not say: "why?" or, "before you kill me, tell me how to plan to..."
Villain is all too happy to oblige. (The Incredibles referred to this as "monologueing.)
Audience is theoretically too absorbed in learning of this great plot twist/explanation.
Hero seizes an opportunity to turn the tables.
Villain loses, hero wins.
Here's how it would really go:
Villain gets upper hand, points gun at Hero.
Hero gets shot. Immediately. Until dead.
Thuggish, that last graph sounds like a recipe from Southern Living! (..."shot. Stir until mixed. Immediately heat in microwave 20 seconds. Until dead.) --- from the "Yellow-Line Cookbook"---recipes for roadkill.
I have a soft spot for Tom Hanks's romantic movies:
Meet cute, boy gets girl, boy or girl screws up relationship (boy loses girl), friend/dog/weird event brings them back together, they (supposedly!) live happily ever after.
Many of these plots are redoes of stories going back to Mr. Shakespeare. He is of course the best.
Haha, your last sentence cracked me up, Thuggish.
A stereotypical group of teenagers camp out in a secluded place, despite warnings from a crazy local, to have unprotected sex, but ends up getting killed by local ghost/slasher/creature one by one.
Or a housewife mother/father/parents discover their child/ren acting weird and saying they have made "friends" that are actually ghosts/demons. And almost there's no memorable ending to these films, partly to make a sequel.
At least that's how I'm judging the films to be by their trailers.
The Pride and Prejudice formula has been done a million times. Character pines for someone unattainable, blind to the soulmate who's been by their side all along.
Serial killers who toy with the detectives assigned to a case. I get that they might want to leave a signature to have the general public acknowledge them, but cat-and-mousing with specific cops makes me yawn.
A group heist/crime whose participants are paranoid that one of the others will give them up.
As for individual scene/shot clichés, god, there are so many. A few that come to mind:
• Brushing their hands over a dead compatriot's eyes to close them
• Flinching at each shot of a 21-gun salute (likely following the above), or a convict flinching at a judge's gavel
• Pausing at a podium and shitcanning their prepared speech
• Establishing a crime scene by tracking the unspooling of yellow police tape
• Toilet-cam POV as an interrogated face is dunked into it
• The final-second resignation on a bad-guy’s face just before a bomb blows him to pieces
• Awkward elevator ride with cheesy muzak as a moment of comic relief during an action sequence
• Sliding someone down the length of a bar in a fight, taking out all manner of glassware in their path
^
Ha ha ha, great list.
How about this- why are air ducts always so big?
Or- why is there always big red LED numbers on a bomb? Nobody is supposed to find it, which means no one would ever see it anyway, so...
Oh! And the soldier showing his buddy his girl back home (like he's never bothered to until until this moment that they know each other so well), then getting wasted. Should have known right then that Shooter would be such a terrible movie.
These are fantastic.
One of my faves is that moment when after a bad argument a couple parts ways. They both walk away in opposite directions and then the girl will turn around to see the guy still walking away. She sighs and turns back and continues walking. Then the guy turns around to see the girl still walking away, and then he sighs and continues walking.
They bone later.
Gordon, the list in that order makes it sound like you're writing about a really flinchy person. Heheh.
The cliche that drives me the battiest is the subgenre of books (and independent films) that are all about a white, upper middle class dude who is immature or emotionally under developed in some way and has no direction. Some kind of catalyst happens, and he is forced to grow as a human being and enter the real world with the rest of us. Why does ANYBODY give a shit about these stories? One or two well written ones, sure, that could be interesting, but there are SO MANY. At least with the stories about rich white dudes on the same journey, it's usually a comedy full of gags and you might get some laughs out of it...
a white, upper middle class dude who is immature or emotionally under developed in some way and has no direction. Some kind of catalyst happens, and he is forced to grow as a human being and enter the real world
That's writers without life experience writing what they know. That seems to happen more in literature than film (praise be to the gatekeepers). And don't forget the manic pixie dream girl who teaches him how to love.
And yep, if I reordered my list, they could all be from the same movie!
Ooo, nice one Renee, hadn't even thought of that.
Although, to be fair, as bad of story telling as it is... The white upper middle class dude who refuses to grow up is the norm these days, is it not? What's the average age "kids" move out of the house now? Like, 26, 27 or something?
What about the "old people are different than young people" plot? I think Jack Black made one or two, dozen, of those...
And I'll skip over the good ol' "white people don't understand black culture, slang, etc." plot, because Chris Rock is irrelevant now.
I've just never understood the appeal of the end pay-off being, "and then he realized that he had to work and pay bills just like everyone else, the end." And we're supposed to be inspired by it? Blergh.
And I figured it out - your movie is about a guy and his best friend, who served together in the war (pick one). They mistakenly get involved in a crime, and the best friend is killed in front of him. After the military funeral (or perhaps AT the funeral, since we're talking cliches) he is wrongly arrested for the murder. While on trial, it is clear he will be convicted, so he gets desperate. He convinces some other military buddies (I guess they were SEALS, because they work with demolition) to break him out of jail during the weekend recess, and they hunt down the guy who killed his friend -- who, after a big bar fight while trying to get information, they discover is ALSO A HOMELAND TERRORIST! They are running all over L.A. (because that's obviously where they live) with police chasing them, and the knowledge that this guy has a bomb set to go off somewhere (cut to Thuggish's scene - a bomb sitting in a dark, industrial looking room, counting down the seconds -- they only have an HOUR!).
They figure out that the bomb is in the very same building the baddie is using as his base of operations, narrowly escaping the LAPD (after crashing into a fruit cart, catching some serious air over a hill, and eventually having to abandon the car so they can slip into a really gross area, like say, a sewer, to escape). They get to the building and have to ride up the elevator covered in dirt, sweat, and sewage stink alongside a yong business man who is obviously freaked out. They get to the top -- time's running out! They confront the baddie, but there is a shoot out, the baddie gets away! Our protagonist has been shot! His Navy Seal buddy is sitting next to him, telling him not to give up, and through his heartfelt conversation, he gets the protagonist to open up about his wife, and he shows him her picture, and it's a really intense bonding moment, he admits she's left him...THEN the protagonist has a surge of determination and gets up, limping, holding his bleeding leg, to find the bomb. His buddy runs out to find the baddie.
The three of them are back on the top floor. Throughout this time, protagonist has been in communication with the police who believe he has taken the building hostage. They still don't believe he is innocent, but are confused when he evacuates the building and tells them to evacuate the entire city block. The bomb is counting down, there's less than a minute! The Navy SEAL buddy can't take it anymore, there's no way the dude is giving them the code to stop the bomb, he runs for it. Now it's just our protagonist, the bad guy, and the bomb.
The baddie explains that he doesn't care if he dies, the cause is bigger than that. He explains all of it, including how he didn't intend for Protag's first friend to be killed, but he doesn't regret it because screw the military (that's how we know he's REALLY bad). In the last moments, Protag runs toward Baddie with the bomb, heaving the heavy thing into Baddie's gut - we see his face, and he realizes what is happening - and the bomb goes off, thrusting him out the top floor plate glass window. Protag is thrown to the floor in a shower of glass, but is somehow, unharmed. The police heard everything over the radio, they know he's innocent. He is once again a hero. His wife is outside, with the police, wearing a shock blanket, which she throws from her shoulders when she runs to him and throws her arms around him. She gets it now. She understands. He is a hero, and that is a hard burden to carry.
I think I got all of Gordon's and most of Thuggish's - I didn't go with the air-ducts because I find the action hero who is grossed out by sewage and/or rats to be funnier than Bruce Willis in an airduct. We can probably rework that in the script though. I also added a few cliches that weren't mentioned.
EDIT: DUH! The Baddie escapes through the airducts and is discovered when he literally falls into the arms of the guy looking for him.
How fast can we get this pitch greenlit?
Related: I love the Twitter feed for TVNetworkNotes. It's all about the dumbing-down.
Wow, Renee, not bad at all.
See if you can work in the phrase "turn in your badge and your weapon." maybe even "i don't want to see you anywhere near this investigation!"
Oh, and maybe the baddie's girlfriend has a change of heart and helps the hero at his most desperate moment of crisis?
EDIT
Wait a second, we've forgotten the comic relief...
And it's left open for a sequel because the bad guy was only PART of the terrorist cell.
Thuggish - the comic relief was the elevator ride, and the bad guy coming through the ceiling. And obviously the Navy SEAL buddy is a smart mouth.
^
Right, my bad.
How about we throw in a one liner, Ah-nold style, when we kill the villain?
Ha! Nice, Renee, that sounds like a summer blockbuster to me :)
Also: The geeky girl who is actually beautiful and only needs the makeover or to remove her glasses/hair clips (cue slo-mo shot of swishing hair)
The old love triangle of monster v's prince charming thing: where the supposedly good looking guy is bad and the bad looking guy/monster/ogre is actually the "one".
Close up shot of someone screaming nooooooooo
In horror films: closets with those wooden slatted doors so the person hiding inside can see everything...
Renee, How cool would it be if we really wanted to make some dough on your script treatment there, we could stretch it out so that all the events occur in exactly one day's time. We could have a 24 episode season and call it (and I'm just brainstorming here) 24!
How bout this one.
Our story's hero is captured/infiltrates the enemy group. He then finds that his ideals are more similar with his captor's/villian's. He identifies with them and adapts to become one of them, to fight off the real badguys, his country's/culture's military/police.
A la Dances with Wolves. Last Samari. Avatar. Point Break. Etc.
JR - that's a great idea, but I really don't think we could keep it fresh for longer than a season or two...
Oh I almost forgot, we'll need at least one scene where the guy walks away in near slo-mo while an explosion goes off behind him, unflinching, preferably one of those up shots where the cameras on the ground.
Renee-
If you need to keep seasons of freshness, look to the 80s. I'm stuck in an elevator, and she's having the baby now!? Oh no, the dedicated student got hooked on caffeine pills trying to study and someone took them thinking it was vit C. And when you're truly out of ideas... flashback episode!
We need to make this movie. We'd do a better job than most stuff out there, and money is nice.
If I can get that together in five minutes with only Gordon & Thugg's cliches for inspiration, IMAGINE what we could do in a couple of weeks if we all put our heads together. Get Hollywood on the phone, we've got a hit!
Two important cliches we forgot.
The character that is supposed to be dead is really alive.
The character that is supposed to be good is really bad.
Which brings us to the opening of our Sequeal.
Close up of Buddy #1 from the first film, with a flashback of how he really faked his own death to frame our hero in hopes to keep him from stopping the mayhem. He used the fake blood in the vest deal, and used a body double at the funeral. Another flashback sometime of how Buddy #1 was ordered to kill a bunch of innocent middle easterns in the war. Add that to the fact he got shafted on his pension, and he lost a leg, he's pissed and the U.S. government is going to pay. He is indeed the leader of the terrorist cell and is back "With a Vengance."
Meanwhile, our hero is on his second honeymoon rekindling things with wifey when he's called back to duty, This time in New York however. TBC>>>
Ah yes, the New York sequel.
WHY HASN'T ANYONE PHONED HOLLYWOOD YET? Do we have to do everything around here? GAH!
Anything that wraps up with "And they were dead the entire time!" or "He was dreaming/hallucinating the entire time!" gets an automatic F- from me. It doesn't matter how good the journey was because the ending completely invalidates everything that comes before it, and no, it isn't clever.
The reticent soldier called back into the fray for one last job.
The dumb grunt hero who gets a smart sidekick, who makes you wonder how the dumb grunt ever made it alone in the first place.
The pretty girl/handsome guy who's actually insecure.
Dangling from a cliff or other height that would kill the character if their pinky slips.
The religious fanatic driven to kill using twisted religious beliefs as justification.
The town is actually populated by cannibals.
Super powered katanas and people who know how to use them in a post-apocalyptic western world.
Dialog including discussion of whether a storm is, in fact, coming or passing with allusions to the subtext of how a person or group is dealing with recent or expected emotional trauma.
--
All that considered, I think cliches can be okay if done well. I'm guilty of some of that up there, but if it works, it works. *shrugs
^
well, there's a so-called cliche because it works beause human beings are so often a certain way. then there are the kind where you have to wonder, why would that ever happen? big red LED numbers on the bomb, for example.
@renee
let's get a script first, then i'll get weinstein on the phone.
i already have the logline, though: every movie you've ever seen... AGAIN!
you know, it wouldn't hurt to make sure we have at least one topless scene as well...
Wait, stop! Why doesn't the couple fight like the hate each other all the time?
This cliche is a really recurring one in Latin American works: rich girl/boy meets poor girl/boy and they fall in love. The evil mother/father of the rich character tries to set them apart by any means (ususally trying to kill them, kidnap them or threaths). The pair of lovers manage to overcome the antagonist plots and usually it turns out that the poor character was actually the long lost child of someone and gets a lot of money when that lost family memeber dies. The two characters get married and live happily ever after.
I just watched something with this through the whole movie:
Black man is going to enter the frame.
Low key crappy beats play, vaguely hip hopish.
Play that loop every time a wild Black man appears.
JUST IN CASE you didn't realize, a wild Black man is about to come on screen.
Bonus points for said vaguely hip hop music to completely clash with the rest of the OST.
Dude needs to turn his headphones down, huh? The other characters can hear him approaching from miles away … heh. Don't get me wrong, I like how composers will dedicate specific instrumentation to characters, but that one's pretty on-the-nose, and probably racist. See also: Asian characters' cues with their kotos or bamboo flutes, or Mariachi strums to signal a Mexican (nearly always in E Minor).
should we give the villain a cat?
Yes, and a thin mustache. Could be pencil or handlebar. As long as it's thin.
Scientists who are evil or driven evil/mad after an experiement (which they test on themselves) goes horribly wrong...
Good guys walking away from an explosion, in slo mo, without looking back.
Sassy gay best friend!
Speaking of which, why do you never see a gay person who works at a call center or an office or a drug rehab or factory?
I've seen some working rehab … errrrr, I mean on TV and stuff.
Speaking of, I hate how in romantic comedies, the female lead (guys, too, sometimes, but especially the ladies) always has some cutesy dream job, like owning a bakery or interior design. And for her, they'll write a guy who works with his hands, like a carpenter or sculptor. The male-written equivalent of this would probably be a video-game tester who meets a stripper on the cusp of inheriting her father's liquor store.
Yes, and a thin mustache. Could be pencil or handlebar. As long as it's thin.
Or, a goatee...
^ What about a working in advertising, or for a magazine?
Gordon I just had the worst in my head mashup of ALL of those things happening in a movie with all of those people in it. That would be the hottest of messes soundscape ever. Someone needs to do it.
oh shit, i just remembered... we need to get in touch with sean bean's agent right quick for the character who gets killed off half way through the movie.
The hero laying on the ground, villain about to shoot him/her, and just as they're about to pull the trigger the villain takes a bullet to the head from the other hero that was supposed to be dead.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!
… or a bullet from someone else who's not used to handling a firearm, it trembling in their hands afterwards. Then they go limp, the trigger guard spins around their finger and the gun clatters to the ground, this life-taking instrument they'd otherwise want no part of.
That one's my favorite. If you've never handles a handgun before, the kick is going to put you off target. Period. Watching someone who is experienced with a handgun doesn't prepare you for the kick, because they've already figured out how to control that.
She was Nexus 6, is why.
@ Renee
I have a whole list of gun false-hoods I hate in movies. The worst specific offender was in that movie The Client when Susan Surandon can't find it in herself to shoot someone, but nails an electrical box with a pistol that's at least a hundred yards away, and only 6x12 *inches* or so.
Have you ever fired two guns whilst leaping through the air?
(So sad I couldn't find a gif of this)
sigh... you know, it's on the list, but i have yet to have two good pistols at once. and the ground is always so hard where i go shooting.
i played a lot of max payne about ten years ago, though...
Is it really bad if we can give an honest yes?
^Dwayne, your ego knows no bounds! :)
Hey, jumping though the air firing two guns doesn't take ego! Just a willingness to miss.
