Film cliches you want to fuck off

[olliebean]

Horror movies where the black guy or other minority lampshades the fact that the black guy or other minority always gets it first.

[Jim Bob]

Horror movies where the black guy or other minority lampshades the fact that the black guy or other minority always gets it first.

Yep.

[Brundle-Fly]

Horror movies where the black guy or other minority lampshades the fact that the black guy or other minority always gets it first.

Apart from Evolution (2001), what other examples are there of this? Scream (1996)? Scary Movie franchise?

[Brundle-Fly]

Characters who perform homemade surgery on themselves. A swig of JD and a sewing kit - hey presto! You're all stitched up and ready to fight again.

How many times have we seen a man screaming after having their shoulder popped back in? "This is gonna smart, buddy. (DEEP BREATH) 1...2...3...*CRACK*

[popcorn]

Characters who perform homemade surgery on themselves. A swig of JD and a sewing kit - hey presto! You're all stitched up and ready to fight again.

Beautifully subverted in Blue Ruin.

[Fr.Bigley]

Apart from Evolution (2001), what other examples are there of this? Scream (1996)? Scary Movie franchise?

Deep blue sea? Sure Jackson antagonised that big fish.

[olliebean]

After a certain point, there are probably more examples of black characters calling attention to the propensity of black characters to die first than there are of black characters actually dying first.

[Brundle-Fly]

Deep blue sea? Sure Jackson antagonised that big fish.

That was one of the greatest ever rug pulls in cinema to kill off a big name like that. FA to do with race.

[Fr.Bigley]

That was one of the greatest ever rug pulls in cinema to kill off a big name like that. FA to do with race.

So why did the big fish go for Mr Jackson FIRST-racist fush.

[pigamus]

If you show the audience a cat, you then have to dub a meow onto the soundtrack, even if the cat is very clearly not meowing.

[magval]

If you show the audience a cat, you then have to dub a meow onto the soundtrack, even if the cat is very clearly not meowing.

I don't want to drag the thread down into just nitpicking at common things that aren't cliches, but it's probably the right forum for these observations (if they're not already in here).

A bicycle that's seen must also be heard. Ring ring. We are too stupid not to realise that's a BIKE.

A cat that's seen must meow. We are too stupid not to realise that's a CAT.

A car that's moving at any speed must have screeching tyres. We are too stupid not to realise that's a CAR.

And footage from a security or video camera must display the onscreen info (rec., battery level) etc. that the person operating it would see. We are too stupid not to realise this is ANOTHER SOURCE.

The first three just seem to be filmmaking conventions that directors (or studio reps standing over the shoulders of sound guys) insist make the image 'complete' somehow, but the last one is just wrong.

[pigamus]

Yeah, but I'm not going to read all forty pages just to see if it's in there or not.

[Sebastian Cobb]

 Quite like how some library effects from an Atari 2600 game still get used when someone's playing a game and you can't see the screen.

I guess modern games are too busy in a foley sense.

[Jim Bob]

If you show the audience a cat, you then have to dub a meow onto the soundtrack, even if the cat is very clearly not meowing.

Pet Sematary (1989) is guilty of this trope.  The family daughter is laying in bed and Church (the family cat) is also on her bed.  The cat is clearly in frame and perfectly visible.  "MEOW".  No mouth movement whatsoever.  Infuriating.

[Jim Bob]

Quite like how some library effects from an Atari 2600 game still get used when someone's playing a game and you can't see the screen.

I guess modern games are too busy in a foley sense.

Speaking of crap videogame representation in film, there's an egregious example in 2000's Charlie's Angels.  Here's the relevant clip.  Not only are there crap stock sound effects placed over the footage of Final Fantasy VIII, which very clearly not from the game itself, but the two kids are playing it in 2 player mode, despite Final Fantasy VIII very much being a strictly single player only game.  Just to complete the terribleness of the scene, one of the kids is hammering the joypad buttons and all, even though Final Fantasy VIII is not that kind of game.

[Clownbaby]

Filmmakers who don't really get how games work frustrate me so much because little do they know, all they'd have to do is not show the screen and cluster up some standard machine gun/vehicle/explosion effects. It could be any game. If a character was playing a typical current game the sound effects would likely be fairly realistic and neither bleepy nor bloopy

[Sebastian Cobb]

Somewhat related, but have you ever seen the crap Bounty Bear the PI's used in Until the End of the World?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKhzsx2gVgM

[Fr.Bigley]

Wilhelm screams. Seriously. Find a new effect.


Same one with that screaming baby; it's used in every scene of anything where there's some little shit crying.

[Clownbaby]

Wilhelm screams. Seriously. Find a new effect.


Same one with that screaming baby; it's used in every scene of anything where there's some little shit crying.

The very specific screaming cat stock effect gets me but it's hard to actually find people who have noticed the same one. It's the Wilhelm Scream of cat screams. Wilhelm Scream is just gonna keep going isn't it. Everone thinks they're clever if they shoehorn that scream in. Ironically or not, it's all the same

[Fr.Bigley]

The very specific screaming cat stock effect gets me but it's hard to actually find people who have noticed the same one. It's the Wilhelm Scream of cat screams. Wilhelm Screeem is just goihg to keep going isn't it. Everone thinks they're clever if they shoehorn that scream in. Ironically or not, it's all the same

Could not agree more bout it being stuffed in everything. The cat one I know exactly which one you mean...just need to start my own sound effect lab and I'm minted. That new cat noise will be so revolting, I'll have the RSPCA on my back.

[JesusAndYourBush]

Any old VHS tape played in a contemporary setting must have tracking issues. I have video cassettes that are forty years old but still have a DVD quality clear picture. 

Also camera footage glitches that make that Zzzzttt sound. Every old LP put on a turntable must also be scratched to fuck and jump to repeat the appropriate line in the song.

And camcorder footage must have the timer displayed on the screen, and sometimes a little square around the edge of the screen that no camcorder I've ever used has ever had.

Wilhelm screams. Seriously. Find a new effect.


Same one with that screaming baby; it's used in every scene of anything where there's some little shit crying.

Likewise the laughing baby sound effect. (like Popeye on helium - "GUH-gu-gu-gu-gu.")

[magval]

Yeah, but I'm not going to read all forty pages just to see if it's in there or not.

You should, this thread rules.

[sirhenry]

And while we're on screams: the scream of a bird that's used to signify a move to a wilderness of some kind, any kind, absolutely anywhere that isn't urban. It can be an alien planet, a swamp, the prairie, a quarry in Wales... It really doesn't matter that it's the sound of a red-tailed hawk, indigenous to the deserts of California and the western US only, it's scream means that you're somewhere wild and scary.

And has done in film and TV for 50 years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLn1i0UxQGE

[AsparagusTrevor]

Rather annoyingly, this happens THREE TIMES IN A ROW in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.  Even more annoyingly, it's not even close to being the worst scene in that movie (for my money, Shia Le Buffy swinging on vines with monkeys is the absolute worst scene).

The order of badness goes...
1. Vine Swinging
2. Fridge Nuking
3. The rest of it

[Jim Bob]

The order of badness goes...
1. Vine Swinging
2. Fridge Nuking
3. The rest of it

I pretty much agree (though I would add Janusz Kamiński's hideous cinematography at number 2), though I will say that for the most part the first half of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is passable enough.  It's still weak but if it had maintained that standard for the entire movie, then I think it would be an OK sequel; still the weakest of the 4 but not awful.

Where the movie really shits the bed is once the sand pit scene occurs.  It never recovers from that, as from there on out it's just terrible; one shite scene after the other.  The best (and perhaps the only genuinely good) scene?  The motorbike chase.  I love the part where Indy hopes off the back of the bike, into the Russians' car through the rightside rear window, quickly beats up the ruskies and then hops out of the leftside window and back onto the bike.  That felt like a classic Indiana Jones gag.

[popcorn]

I absolutely fucking love the entire fridge sequence. :(

[Jim Bob]

I absolutely fucking love the entire fridge sequence. :(

I think that the preceding scene in the Nuke Town, right up until the moment that Indy gets into the fridge is fantastic.  However, no amount of suspension of disbelief is ever going to allow me to accept that he could not only survive the heat of the blast and the resulting radiation by climbing into a lead lined fridge, but could also survive being flung hundreds of feet into the air (away from the blast... for reasons?), crash landing with tremendous force on impact and then emerge, a little dizzy but otherwise absolutely fine.  Nope.  Not having it.  It's fucking stupid.  It also ends with yet another CGI gopher, which is like the rancid cherry on a knob-cheesecake.

[popcorn]

OK yeah I love the entire fridge sequence until the gopher shows up.

I know people say it's unrealistic but I... don't care? It was hilarious and brilliant. I've never really been an Indy fan so that might help.

How can you hate this shot? It's so brilliantly OTT, such a statement. Welcome to the nuclear age, old man!

[Jim Bob]

How can you hate this shot? It's so brilliantly OTT, such a statement. Welcome to the nuclear age, old man!

I agree.  It's a great shot and almost makes the preceding fridge nonsense worthwhile.  However, for Indy to have reached that far away from the blast, would mean that he'd have been traveling at a few hundred miles per hour in his fridge-cum-escape pod.  When that fridge door popped open, it wouldn't be Indy climbing out, it would be a pile of unidentifiable fleshy mush and broken bones with a fedora on top.

[Sebastian Cobb]

The fridge thing was ridiculous but at least it was daft. I loathe the car flying into the helicopter in the die hard reboot lots more.