Worn out scenes

[barsoomcore]

Hero gets snot kicked out of him. Hero gets more snot kicked out of him. BBEG has hero exactly where he wants him. Hero miraculously gets his second wind and defeats BBEG.

(snip)

Either could be okay in the right context, but have become cliched.

"The right context", for example, including any and all Jackie Chan movies.

And I'll chime in on the "Oh, he must be dead since he fell over. I'll just walk over and poke him with my finger." Come on! I actually CHEER when I see somebody just keep on shooting, then walk up and shoot them a few times while they're lying on the ground.

Oh, and why is that movies promise no animals were harmed in the making of this motion picture, when we all know that dozens of cows pigs and assorted marine life were KILLED so that people could EAT them? I want my movies to say,

No animals were harmed in the making of this motion picture, except for the ones we KILLED so we could EAT them. And they were tasty. Jason's barbecue sauce is to DIE for.

I mean, why are animal actors so much more important than cows or chickens or whatever?

 

[mojo1701]

I mean, why are animal actors so much more important than cows or chickens or whatever?

Because they're cute and have a good agent.

 

[s/LaSH]

I remember hearing that animals have more rights in some areas (legal/geographic) than people, especially in places like California. Strange.

Anything suspenseful is going to have a box of kittens or something as the culmination for at least one 'dun dun dun dun daahh' scene. The 'fake-out'. And inversely, anything pretty is deadly. The cuter or sexier the subject, the greater the odds that it eats the marrow of your bones.

 

[Elrik_DarkFury]

The scene where the main hero knows that pretty much everyone in the house got killed by the serrial-killer 5 minutes ago but still goes to the cellar to search (for whom or for what?!)
a)without calling the police
b)with nothing more than a spoon or a fork to defend themself
C)and they keep forgeting to open the damn lights of the cellar and they have to walk in the darkness -to make the thing scarier i suppose...
All this is,is so damn silly.

And I hate movies with animals.
a)The football playing dog who helps the team win the finals
b)The hockey-champion monkey
c)The genius pet that beats the two burglars' asses
d)The one that saves the world or ..


_________________
The Wizard

 

[Darth Shoju]

And I hate movies with animals.
a)The football playing dog who helps the team win the finals
b)The hockey-champion monkey
c)The genius pet that beats the two burglars' asses
d)The one that saves the world or ..


_________________
The Wizard

May I add an e) Dogs that do Karate?

 

[Berandor]

Karate dogs. Wow.

Though I'll echo the random love interest. Men and women can't be friends, at least not in Hollywood. There's a good-looking woman - she'll fall in love with the hero. With heroines, there are so little of them that the scene hasn't had a chance to get worn out.

The surviving pet (dog) is also old, as well as the surviving comic relief character.

But, honestly, nowadays there are so many cliché situations you can tell a movie just by watching five minutes. "The police officer will betray them", "They will fall in love", "The machines will have won and then inexplicably stop", "the cold-faced killer will hesitate before killing the love interest so the hero can save her", ...

The problem is, most of these scenes are used because they worked before. There is no believable development leading up to them. Like Pielorinho said, having people fall in love is not the problem, it's when they fall in love only because it's in the script. The same with the rest of these scenes.

But perhaps that's one more reason why I'm bored with most of today's cinema.

 

[WizarDru]

FWIW, in Troy, the scene isn't played exactly as you read it, iirc. A solider is sent to get Achilles, all right, but he's not sleeping: he's coming off of a bender. He's deadly, but he's clumsy and clearly hung-over from a night of wine and wenching. He's basically 'phoning it in' for the King...a 9 to 5 salaryman warrior.

Personal pet peeve: Any time someone uses wildly different data sources and magically combines them, almost instantly, to get some plot-necessary result. "Wait, what if you compare all the suspects who are left-handed against the DMV's records of Mazda owners in the greater NYC area?" Just once, I'd like someone to say: "Well, I can export those to some SQL databases and try and find a match, but I'll need to write a custom query application and then test it...that'll take about eight hours, sir."

Favorite really bad fake tech line comes from Lois and Clark, a few years back. When something goes wrong with "the database", the villain tells his tech assistant to stop it. Her reply? "I can't! It's collapsing into a sub-directory!!" Makes me giggle, even now.

 

[Darth Shoju]

The surviving pet (dog) is also old, as well as the surviving comic relief character.

I liked how the comic relief sidekick "survived" in Shaun of the Dead.

 

[Darth Shoju]

Personal pet peeve: Any time someone uses wildly different data sources and magically combines them, almost instantly, to get some plot-necessary result. "Wait, what if you compare all the suspects who are left-handed against the DMV's records of Mazda owners in the greater NYC area?" Just once, I'd like someone to say: "Well, I can export those to some SQL databases and try and find a match, but I'll need to write a custom query application and then test it...that'll take about eight hours, sir."

LOL that is one of mine as well. I also hate how fake and overly-graphical the operating systems are in most movies. I understand they don't feel like shelling out to show their movie characters using Win 2k, but at least make them look a little more authentic than a colorful background with 4 animated, 3-d icons.

Favorite really bad fake tech line comes from Lois and Clark, a few years back. When something goes wrong with "the database", the villain tells his tech assistant to stop it. Her reply? "I can't! It's collapsing into a sub-directory!!" Makes me giggle, even now.

*snicker* at least Star Trek put some effort into their techno-babble.

 

[Mystery Man]

Sometimes, I wish. I tend to throttle my disbelief into unconsciousness when I walk into a movie, so that I don't pay as much attention to the film on a meta-level. It often makes me into what others might call a less than discerning critic.

My father in law (retired air force, used to fly B-52's) does this constantly. Don't get him started on the alien space ship in close encounters.