Things I'm Sick of - Action Movie Cliche #39

[Holy Bovine]

My personal peeve is reserved for characters outrunning fireballs and explosions.

It started (to my recollection) with Return of the Jedi when Lando outruns the Death Star's destruction in a faster than light starship.

That was Ok.

Then it started getting stupid.

Keanu Reeves outrunning a cold fusion explosion on a dirt bike in Chain Reaction.

Geena Davis and Samuel Jackson outrunning a bomb's explosion and jumping out a window in Long Kiss Goodnight.

Just recently I saw World is Not Enough and Pierce Bronson outruns a really slow motion explosion that destroys an underground lab. He has time to slide down a chain, climb onto a platform, activate an elevator and run away - this is all after the bomb has already exploded mind you.


I just hate, hate, hate this nonsense - and I know that it will probably keep happening because audiences always seem to cheer and shout whenever it happens on the screen. *blech*

 

[Don21584]

"Second reason is because that style of fighting simply doesn't fit into the 'atmosphere' of the Resident Evil genre."

Exactly, there is nearly no hand-to-hand combat in the games to my recollection, unless you count swiping a knife or pushing.

 

[Fenes]

For bad clichés, look at "The Musketeer". IMHO, at least as bad a movie as Dungeons & Dragons. I am particularly "fond" of the scene where the main (and lone) hero scales up a tower using a rope, and the evil henchmen don't cut his rope from above - they scale down using their own ropes to fence in mid-air, getting their own ropes cut... It also has the "I kill my own man for failing"-bit in it.
Dumas must be doing 3000 rpms in his grave.

 

[Darkness]

Desperado - possibly the worst movie ever made. And apparently El Mariachi was good!

El Mariachi is quite cool. Damn shame that Desperado sucks so hard...

 

[Kaptain_Kantrip]

Well, they were certainly inspired by certain parts of the Living Dead movies. Not all of them. Romero seemed to not be making an RE movie but instead taking his chance to try and make another Living Dead movie that just happened to be called Resident Evil. I liked the RE games. I don't care much for Romero's films. So I'm happy.

First, how can you NOT like Romero's films? I would LOVE another Living Dead film to add to Romero's trilogy. Romero makes uncompromising, dark, gritty films where you care about the characters: KNIGHTRIDERS, BRUISER, MONKEY SHINES, NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968), DAWN OF THE DEAD, MARTIN, SEASON OF THE WITCH, THE CRAZIES... Okay, so DAY OF THE DEAD was kinda bad except for the FX, but that was budgetary.

Second, I like killing the zombies in RE much more than fighting those stupid Lovecraftian rip-off bosses. When the game runs out of zombies, I run out of fun. The zombies are more numerous and therefore more of a threat. They are also more interesting than the bosses. The bosses make no logical sense whatsoever and are just there for "gross-out" value and because video games are supposed to have "boss monsters" tougher than the usual bad guys.

 

[Pielorinho]

Oh, man -- Martin freaked me out. I've never seen a more disturbing vampire movie.

Daniel

 

[Xaven]

What has started to bother me is the slow motion fighting moves that I first saw in the Matrix. It seems like every movie has that in there now.

 

[Kaptain_Kantrip]

The Matrix ripped that style off from quality Hong Kong "Wuxia" movies like Chinese Ghost Story, Tai-Chi Master, etc. I hate how all these clueless dumb americans go around accusing Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon of "ripping off" The Matrix, LOL. Idiots.

 

[Xaven]

I jsut said that that was the first movie that I saw that had it in there, I didn't say it was the original. I am not a big fan of kung fu movies, but some people are, it is opinion. NO reason to call people idiots.

 

[SteelDraco]

El Mariachi is quite cool. Damn shame that Desperado sucks so hard...

Now now, the movie did have one redeeming feature - Salma Hayek. Also, one cannot ignore the fact that Quentin Tarantino gets his head blown off. Any movie in which he dies has to get at least some bonus for that.

Although you're right, it was just an awful movie in all other ways.

As for me, I'm starting to get awfully sick of overdone fight choreography. I'll forgive it in HK action movies, since that's really the whole point of the genre, and the Matrix was well-done enough that I had no problem with it. However, excess use of special effects just to make fight scenes look 'kewl' is really starting to annoy me. See Mission Impossible 2 for a fairly glaring example of this, or The Musketteer.