“I’m Getting Too Old For This Sh!t!”
Movie Clichés I Never Want to See Again
• The opening of film on water, panning up to distant cityscape as we fly towards city. So overdone, so lazy, please establish your location in a more original way.
• In an effort to show what a loser/how lonely a character is, they come home and go to the answering machine and instead of reading the digital # readout like we all do, they press the button and we hear the female voice announce “You have no messages.”
• Person being chased reaches car or home. Door is locked, retrieves keys and drops them.
• One character has something important to say, something that will change everything but when they are about to say what they need to say, the other person will interrupt but then will say, “Sorry, go ahead.” But will be told “No, you go ahead.” And as a result, whatever it is the other person says will result in main character not saying what they were about to say. Even worse if afterwards the other person says, “I’m sorry, you were going to say something.”
• If the driver is speaking to the passenger, they will spend an impossibly long time staring at the passenger instead of at the road. Somehow they NEVER rear end the car in front of them.
• “I could tell you, but I’d have to kill you.” Seriously, can everyone PLEASE agree to delete this phrase from our collective consciousness?
• The person who notices some wet substance on the ground or wherever and bends down to run a finger through it, look at the finger (often rubbing two fingers together) and usually realize it’s blood.
• If you’re a woman and there is a killer on the loose, just take a relaxing bath and he will find you.
• If a person with important information to reveal tells the detective to come by at such and such a time and he will tell him all the info, he will be dead when the detective arrives.
• If a person good person dies with his eyes open, a friend will close them, and they will remain closed. If a villain dies with his eyes open, no one will close them, and the camera will linger on his face.
• All characters keep detailed newsclippings of important events in their lives, particularly those events that must be painful to recall, such as the loss of the character’s immediate family due to their own negligence. NB: If the news report would have come out while the character was in jail or on the run, all the more reason for the character to have kept it intact.
• If a person’s clothes get snagged on something, they tear very easily and leave a large, noticeable chunk behind. The Person trying to not be found never seems to realize this has occurred.
• If the movie is animated, one of the kid’s parents will be dead. This is almost always the mother.
• If there are three or more sisters in the movie, one of the sisters will be extremely neurotic and married to a lawyer/doctor/shrink, one will be single and looking for love (the lead) and one will be a mother with at least two kids (a boy and a girl or two girls, never two boys).
• Every sword/knife pulled from a holder always makes a metal against metal sound
• All movie mothers will prepare a breakfast, usually consisting of scrambled eggs, bacon, etc. Dad and the kids will invariably arrive at the table 30 seconds before Dad has to leave for the office and the kids have to catch the school bus. Each will have time only for a sip of coffee/juice and/or one bite of toast. There must be enough food left over in these homes to feed a third world nation!
• Beverages are served either half full or completely empty (especially coffee).
• Coffee is never served steaming hot unless it is for comedic reasons
• When a helicopter is hit by a bullet or rocket, it’ll explode immediately if it contains a villain, but if the hero is on board, it will loose power, smoke will come out of the doors, and it’ll just reach the ground in time for the hero to get clear then duck just at the moment it explodes.
• Whenever a hero enters a dark room where he feels confident in being alone, someone (villain) will be sitting in a chair waiting for hero to turn on the lights before speaking. Sometimes intruder will be the one to turn on the light.
• The hero will always refuse the assistance of friends or medical personnel after a fight. If the hero gets into a second fight, his most injured body part will always be punched or kicked.
• A hero will show no pain even during the most terrific beating, yet he will wince if a women attempts to clean a facial wound.
• The bad guy has the good guy in his sights, his trigger finger poised to squeeze off a life-ending round. A shot rings out, and we shudder—but the hero does not fall. As he frantically checks his body for the mortal wound he must have sustained, a dazed look overcomes the villain’s face, and he slumps to the floor. Then, and only then, the camera reveals a gun-toting savior who blew away the baddie before he could kill our protagonist.
• Like above, only hero and villain are in a life and death struggle with gun, it goes off, who got hit? The same with a struggle over a knife. Any close up struggle with a pointy object will result in death.
• Walking toward the camera in slow motion as a massive explosion happens in the background, without flinching, and miraculously not being hit by any shrapnel
• In a scary movie, if someone is looking in the refrigerator for a late night snack, when they close the refrigerator/freezer door, the killer will be standing there OR a friend/parent will be standing there, startling them.
• Surprise cat appearances. Almost always shrieking for no good reason.
• Character in vehicle, glances in rear view mirror, nothing suspicious, character reaches for something (radio), sits back up, eyes go back to rear view mirror, killer’s eyes looking back.
• Character stepping lightly past killer’s body only to have him reach out and grab their ankle
• Any movie in New Orleans takes place during Maudi Gras
• The super-sped up cityscape. This scene requires shots of a moving and setting sun, buildings lighting up, and people zipping around.
• Eight to ten-year-old kids are the best computer hackers on earth and can break into any system.
• Anytime anybody picks up pieces of a broken glass they will ALWAYS cut their finger. They will also always suck their breath in through their teeth and stick the injured finger in their mouth.
• When someone, usually the hero, appears to be shot fatally but a few minutes later, when the camera goes back to them -What’s This!- they aren’t dead after all. They will ALWAYS groan, reach up with both hands and rip open their shirt (nobody cares about buttons in the movies!) revealing the –SHOCKER!- bullet-proof vest (even though the obvious bulge from a bullet-proof vest was never visible under their clothes in the previous scene). They will then pluck the bullet from the indentation, stare at it and drop it to the ground. Occasionally the person will do something that defies all reason; they will REMOVE THE VEST and go after the bad guy. Because, as everyone knows, when a bullet-proof vest takes a hit or two they are rendered useless. Again, I have two words for all bad guys: HEAD SHOT!
• When ever a person is being chased on foot, regardless of the time of year or city, there will be some sort of parade to try and loose your pursuer in.
• Any time a secret tracking device is used so the bad guy can track the good guy, the tracking device will have a blinking red light AND when the camera gets a close up we can hear it beeping. An AUDIBLE secret tracking device? Really? See Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls.
• When the power plant/missile site/whatever overheats, all the control panels will explode, as will the entire building.
• When the tech guy is given a blurry, extremely pixilated part of an image (i.e. license plate) and they are able to clear it up to crystal clear, easily readable condition
• Making hacking look cool by making the computer’s mainframe look like some sweet virtual world of colorful corridors and cubes you need to click on.
• If it’s a tavern in a western, some grizzled old f*ck will spit tobacco juice in response to our hero entering.
I have a site archiving every movie cliché I could think of/find at:

http://movieclichearchive.wordpress.com/

Please feel free to stop by and if you can think of one I haven’t listed, there is a section at the bottom of each category to leave a suggestion.
Enjoy!

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