Film cliches you want to fuck off

[Fr.Bigley]

typical runaway Harrison Ford type doing it for the first time.

Also, how did he shave that beard with just a pair of scissors? It' a proper wet shave job that in the next scene. the continuity guy must have been a right cunt.

[St_Eddie]

Also, how did he shave that beard with just a pair of scissors? It' a proper wet shave job that in the next scene. the continuity guy must have been a right cunt.

Ummm...

[Fr.Bigley]

Must have been a Mandela effect thing. I stand corrected.

[thelittlemango]

Watched yet another film where a (usually) female character is hiding from the killer, normally under a bed, in a cupboard or behind some tree if they've been chased in the woods and the only thing they have to do to survive is stay quiet until they pass, then they can taste sweet freedom. Yet what always happens is the character breaking out into a series of fearful gasps and breaths, which they then try to stifle by putting their hand over their mouth, the killer gets closer and lo and behold these gasps/breaths become so forceful that one sneaks out from beneath the person's hand and the killer is alerted and the character is in trouble.

Does this happen in real life? Do people struggle to just stay silent? Do they really need to physically put their hand over their mouth to cover it rather than just stop making these noises? It's rubbish.

[olliebean]

In real life it'd be an involuntary fart that gave you away.

[Starlit]

Tech person is giving complicated instructions to someone to correctly and safely delete a hard drive or something, and then the person that they're instructing just shoots it or chucks a grenade into it followed by a quip along the lines of, "I know a quicker way"

[olliebean]

I feel like I've posted this one before, but on the offchance I haven't: close-up of someone's face, upright but with a pillow pressed against one side of it. The camera rotates, usually while zooming out, to reveal they're actually lying on a bed.

[Magnum Valentino]

Great version of that in Bunny and the Bull, only it's an entire bed and he's standing up.

Nicely designed wee film from your man that directed Paddington, worth a watch.

[Fr.Bigley]

Was the first instance of that Gregory's girl? sure it was as they made a hooha about the technique of a camera on a bit of string n that.

[Brundle-Fly]

Somebody having a sharp object or digit prodding a recent flesh wound or pressure applied onto a broken limb to make them talk.

I only want this cliche to fuck off because it always makes me wince in pain.

[Magnum Valentino]

"Sorry."

"Thank you."

"I'm sorry I ever met you", or any variant on the above.

[Chriddof]

Tech person is giving complicated instructions to someone to correctly and safely delete a hard drive or something, and then the person that they're instructing just shoots it or chucks a grenade into it followed by a quip along the lines of, "I know a quicker way"

The most ridiculous example of this was in an episode of CSI (I forget which CSI it was). The head agent manages to find a secret underground computer lab that's abandoned and running automatically. It's in the middle of carrying out a massive cyber-attack, and the Agent-Who-Knows-About-Computers is trying to tell Head Agent how to stop it with about 10 seconds to go. Then he hears a load of gunfire - we cut back to the room to find that he's shot the cyber-attack to death.

Except - in a intensely stupid final fake-out twist that had me rolling my eyes out of my head - suddenly the monitor sputters back into life, and we hear the emotionless female computer voice going "Two... One..." and then Head Agent properly shoots the cyber-attack to death by blasting a hole in said monitor.

The monitor: the most dangerous part of a computer.

[Captain Z]

Watched yet another film where a (usually) female character is hiding from the killer, normally under a bed, in a cupboard or behind some tree if they've been chased in the woods and the only thing they have to do to survive is stay quiet until they pass, then they can taste sweet freedom.

They watch as the killer moves further away from their hiding place, and disappears safely out of view. They turn around to begin their escape and the killer is RIGHT BEHIND THEM.

[Fambo Number Mive]

Have we mentioned revolvers that somehow allow the person using them to fire ten times without reloading?

[famethrowa]

Have we mentioned revolvers that somehow allow the person using them to fire ten times without reloading?

Or the ones that require cocking (oooh pardon) about 5 times, making all sorts of clunks and clicks in a threatening manner?

[gib]

Tech person is giving complicated instructions to someone to correctly and safely delete a hard drive or something, and then the person that they're instructing just shoots it or chucks a grenade into it followed by a quip along the lines of, "I know a quicker way"

This reminds me of when a TV set (of the old kind) isn't working properly, perhaps the vertical hold is being annoying and no matter what character 1 tries they can't fix it. Character 2 then casually bashes the top of the telly with their hand and it starts working perfectly.

[BlodwynPig]

Or the ones that require cocking (oooh pardon) about 5 times, making all sorts of clunks and clicks in a threatening manner?

Did you know the sound effect they use in all Hollywood films for those actions is the sound file used for Savile's "Clunk Click Every Trip" advert. True fact. It become public domain in 1992 and has been used ever since. First used in Lethal Weapon 3 and Bad Lieutenant.

[Sonny_Jim]

Tech person is giving complicated instructions to someone to correctly and safely delete a hard drive or something, and then the person that they're instructing just shoots it or chucks a grenade into it followed by a quip along the lines of, "I know a quicker way"

In a similar vein, why does Han Solo shoot the radio he when they get found out they aren't real stormtroopers (he says 'boring conversation').  He knew how to turn it on, why didn't he just turn it off?  #GeorgeLucasRuinedMyChildhood

Character 2 then casually bashes the top of the telly with their hand and it starts working perfectly.

Percussive maintenance, innit.  Sometimes solder cracks (it's like electronic glue), especially when it's gone through a lot of thermal cycles (ie getting hot and cold, like old tellys used to do).  So giving a smack in the right place jolts the connection back together.  Modern surface mount stuff is soldered differently and is a shit load smaller/cooler so you don't see it much nowadays.

[purlieu]

Oh yeah, the old CRT telly we had used to go weird colours, the only way to fix it was a bang on top in just the right place.

[JesusAndYourBush]

I had an old telly and the controls for the volume/brightness/etc were connected internally by some weird system of pulleys & strings and sometimes everything would turn up to maximum - meaning the volume went really loud.  A swift whack would always unjam it - for years - until it finally stuck in that position when something broke inside.

[Gulftastic]

In a film constructed almost entirely of cliches, there is a fine example in 'Armageddon', the most anti-intellectual movie ever made.

As they are trying to take off from the asteroid before Bruce Willis blows it up, the space shuttle refuses to start, leading the cosmonaut to show how they do it in Russian space force by whacking it with a big spanner. Hey presto!

[gilbertharding]

Oh yeah, the old CRT telly we had used to go weird colours, the only way to fix it was a bang on top in just the right place.

Someone I knew when I was a student had a telly where the colours were permanently borked, so that everything was green. We watched the film Paris Texas one evening, and became so used to it that once the film was over and we switched the lights on, the colour green was absent from everything else we were looking at. It's the closest I ever want to come to proving that experiment where you wear glasses which invert the image projected onto your retina, to see how long it takes for that to become normal.

[JesusAndYourBush]

Someone I knew when I was a student had a telly where the colours were permanently borked, so that everything was green. We watched the film Paris Texas one evening, and became so used to it that once the film was over and we switched the lights on, the colour green was absent from everything else we were looking at. It's the closest I ever want to come to proving that experiment where you wear glasses which invert the image projected onto your retina, to see how long it takes for that to become normal.

One of the channels is showing old repeats of Sabrina The Teenage Witch at the wrong aspect ratio,  with the 4:3 picture stretched wider, but I've a feeling the copy they're using is already very slightly cropped top & bottom so it's not as wide as you'd expect, and adjusting it to display as 4:3 makes it look a tad too narrow, so I left it as it was.  I found that after a short time my eyes adjusted the image to look normal, and when I changed channel later - right before my eyes I saw a too narrow image slowly in the space of a few seconds adjust width until it looked normal.  'Twas really weird.

[Brundle-Fly]

"Hit me, if it'll make you feel any better."

Wallop

"I guess I deserved that."

[Icehaven]

Probably had this already but wiggling a piece of metal around in a lock, even when you can't see it, will unlock it in a few seconds. I was rewatching Silence of the Lambs a few days ago and realised a huge plot turn rests on this, as well as other ridiculousness such as there only being 2 policemen in the room with Lecter while there were dozens downstairs, and how their bumbling makes it easy for him to overpower them (although that might be the point, the place and people weren't set up to hold him) but that's for another thread.

[St_Eddie]

Probably had this already but wiggling a piece of metal around in a lock, even when you can't see it, will unlock it in a few seconds. I was rewatching Silence of the Lambs a few days ago and realised a huge plot turn rests on this, as well as other ridiculousness such as there only being 2 policemen in the room with Lecter while there were dozens downstairs, and how their bumbling makes it easy for him to overpower them (although that might be the point, the place and people weren't set up to hold him) but that's for another thread.

That whole scene is absurd and a blemish on an otherwise virtually flawless film.  Aside from the aspects of the scene which you mentioned, consider this; Lector has disabled the two guards and freed himself (side note: not only did they only have two guards to oversee the opening of Lector's cage but they also didn't have a security camera in the room?!).  Time is of the essence and Lector must now make his escape, which will involve skinning the face off one of the guards and switching clothes with him and then dropping the corpse down the elevator shaft, but first Lector decides to take the other guard and single-handedly hoist him up the side of the cage and position him in place in a Christ figure pose.  He also decides to take the cloth banners and arrange them symmetrically either side of the strung up guard.  Oh and he also rigs up a bunch of lights to really give his gruesome display that final theatrical touch.

First of all, I severely doubt that a single man could manage to hoist a corpse up into that position, regardless of how much time they had.  Secondly, even if Lector could do this, how long would it take?  I'd wager at least an hour and that's an incredibly conservative estimation.  Thirdly, is showmanship that much more important to Lector than actually making his escape?  The whole scene is a ridiculous and fantastical absurdist moment, in an otherwise relatively grounded film.

I know that the director, Jonathan Demme, has stated that he chose to forgo the realism of the shot for the dramatic impact but it's not only a few steps too far in terms of stretching credibility for me; it's taking a running leap into a rocket ship and then blasting off into the stratosphere.  It breaks my suspension of disbelief and completely takes me out of the film, shattering my immersion in the process.

[Icehaven]

That whole scene is absurd and a blemish on an otherwise virtually flawless film.  Aside from the aspects of the scene which you mentioned, consider this; Lector has disabled the two guards and freed himself (side note: not only did they only have two guards to oversee the opening of Lector's cage but they also didn't have a security camera in the room?!).  Time is of the essence and Lector must now make his escape, which will involve skinning the face off one of the guards and switching clothes with him and then dropping the corpse down the elevator shaft, but first Lector decides to take the other guard and single-handedly hoist him up the side of the cage and position him in place in a Christ figure pose.  He also decides to take the cloth banners and arrange them symmetrically either side of the strung up guard.  Oh and he also rigs up a bunch of lights to really give his gruesome display that final theatrical touch.

First of all, I severely doubt that a single man could manage to hoist a corpse up into that position, regardless of how much time they had.  Secondly, even if Lector could do this, how long would it take?  I'd wager at least an hour and that's an incredibly conservative estimation.  Thirdly, is showmanship that much more important to Lector than actually making his escape?  The whole scene is a ridiculous and fantastical absurdist moment, in an otherwise relatively grounded film.

I know that the director, Jonathan Demme, has stated that he chose to forgo the realism of the shot for the dramatic impact but it's not only a few steps too far in terms of stretching credibility for me; it's taking a running leap into a rocket ship and then blasting off into the stratosphere.  It breaks my suspension of disbelief and completely takes me out of the film, shattering my immersion in the process.

Agreed, and don't get me started on the very end scene,where Lecter is following the prison governor down the street, the governor obviously very wary of his safety (security is mentioned as he gets off the plane), frantically looking left and right, but not once behind where he'd see a very obvious white man in a del monte suit standing out a mile following them.

[popcorn]

Yeah I rewatched Silence a few months ago and that scene struck me as very silly too.

Agreed, and don't get me started on the very end scene,where Lecter is following the prison governor down the street, the governor obviously very wary of his safety (security is mentioned as he gets off the plane), frantically looking left and right, but not once behind where he'd see a very obvious white man in a del monte suit standing out a mile following them.

It really made me laugh in Hannibal when he's stalking Clarice around the station, taunting her - is he behind her?! is he over there?! a master of evasion! - and then he walks out into the car park and some hired goons are like "ey, there he is boss" and bundle him into a van.

[Icehaven]

Horror cliche - someone tries to open a door but it's locked, then as they walk away it creaks open behind them.

[thecuriousorange]

Camera pans to a framed, crudely photoshopped picture of a character with Saddam Hussein.