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OK we've all seen them in everything from A and B to Z movies ... the classic cliché in many films.

Clichés like the guy in the morgue doing a autopsy and eating a sandwich, donut whatever.
The good cop that is made to look like the bad cop in has to prove they're the good cop.
The guy that wins a gun fight with his last shot.
The hero getting the girl.

oh and about a zillion others ...

which ones have you folks seen.

The monster is killed, but the final shot shows an egg that is about to hatch or that already has hatched.

the undead arm reaching up from the grave as the credits roll . . . .

+ Two guys and a girl.
+ The End ???
+ The hero saves the day after blowing up an entire city, but nobody cares because he has saved the day.
+ A poorly dubbed, blond Italian kid sees a ghost or a demon but nobody believes him.
+ Spooky shadows, eerie music... AH!  A cat.
+ Aww com'on, condoms are for losers, baby.
+ Buxom women take showers whenever the mood strikes.
+ Maniac killers have to be killed several times before they are dead.
+ Crazy hermits know everything there is to know about local phenomena.
+ Clint Eastwood in a Clint Eastwood movie.

* The military / police / government or other important agency ignores the advice of the heroes, threatens them with jail (or worse) and takes the advice of the villain.

* A hunchbacked assistant.

* A beautiful woman who becomes scarred in an accident and volunteers for a mad scientist's experimental skin graft / hormone / radiation treatments.

* A cowardly supporting character who does something incredibly brave and helps save the day.

* The hero, hanging by a rope over a chasm, telling a beautiful woman or a little kid, "Hold onto me . . . and for God's sake, don't look down!"

* A crying woman, kneeling over the hero who is apparently dead, only to have the hero open his eyes and make a smart-ass remark like, "Did I miss anything?"

Whatever big discovery the characters are trying to make, in the end it turns out that it would be best if it remained a secret.

Anytime us earthlings are offered advances technology by some alien race, we never get it.  No movie can ever end with us enjoying unlimited energy, freedom from disease, etc.

Evil aliens offer the earthlings a choice between letting them kill one main character or else they'll destroy the planet.  Good guys always say "destroy the planet" because "life is precious", etc.  They never destroy the planet anyway.  I mean, c'mon, wouldn't 99.9% of people say "Hmmm, one guy gets killed, or the whole planet gets killed?  Okay, kill the freakin' guy."

Main character wants to return home but evil greedy person insists on continuing - often the movie becomes nothing more than greed vs. good at this point.

The main character was falsely imprisoned/fired/drummed out of the service and has to be set free / reinstated / re-hired to save the world/day whatever.

Painful scenes of the main character doing something unbelievably macho at the beginning of the movie.

The main character warns everyone, repeatedly, not to do what they're going to do, then saves the day when they do it anyway.

Government / evil businessman stands in the way of the heroes doing what must be done, often for the most absurd of reasons.

Main bad character tries to make friends with their evil creation, only to be killed by it immediately.  Wow, how ironic, huh?

Main characters ex-wife just happens to be in charge of preventing him from doing what must be done, she finally acquiesces at the end, and then they kiss.

Main character kisses girl at the end, even if they didn't show any romantic interest before then.

Monster that is impervious to bullets and explosives can be held at bay by a series of punches and kicks, if said punches and kicks are delivered by a main character.

All explosives, whether it be dynamite, hand grenades, C-4, etc. explode like napalm bombs.

Variant: small-part character has a book or finds a book with all the answers about local phenomena.  (reading book = cheap way to do exposition)

At a meeting with the President about what to do about the aliens, the military men always want to nuke them, and some civilian yells "No, anything but THAT."

Before nuking or otherwise engaging some other-worldly alien, the President gives some stupid speech as if he were running for office.

Villains say "now I'm going to kill you" and rather than killing the hero (or other hostage), they yak for 5 minutes to allow the hero to save the day.  (One of my peeves, actuallly --- JUST SHOOT THE GUY for crying out loud).

Short, throwaway shots near the beginning to establish a main character has a wife/husband, children and a "normal life" when none of these elements are ever mentioned again during the movie.

Women scream at the drop of an hat or at the sight of a cow (MONSTER FROM THE OCEAN FLOOR). Sometimes in more progressive films, men do as well.

Some more:

* The main character uses a Civil War sword or some other relic handed down from his great grandfather, to his grandfather, to his father, to him, to kill the villain.

* The villain points a gun at the hero.  We hear a gunshot.  The hero is fine, but the villain falls to the ground revealing a woman or little kid standing behind him with a smoking rifle.  (Up to this point in the person's life, he or she had never fired a rifle).

And just ONE TIME I would like to see someone who is being chased by a monster or killer get into a car that doesn't have a dead battery.

And if you're ever being chased by a villain in a car, make sure to run down the middle of the street where he can follow you.  Don't get off on the sidewalk or in the woods where he wouldn't be able to hit you.  And if the villain pulls up next to you on the highway and tries to ram your car off the road, never hit the brakes because that would cause him to miss.

boring lesson/ discussion of "white magic" and "black magic" and how they are different.

 The hero of the film must always make some sort of pun-like statement before or after killing the bad guy. 

Dang I was going to say that ...


I'd like to see some one that runs out of bullet, actually keep the gun instead of throwing it away ... I'm pretty sure they made more bullets than just those.

The hero's hateful kid will always turn nice by the end. Nothing makes a kid more respectful than their dad being shot or severely beaten...

The one that irritates me most is when someone knocks the mass murderer unconscious then stands there staring at the killer instead of fleeing.  Even as slow as I am I could be down the block and gone before the killer gets back up, and that's another one, WHY must the killer always get back up?

Interestingly enough, the very reason I love CREATURE FROM THE HAUNTED SEA as much as I do is it pretty much breaks nearly every "rule" one expects it to follow.

Villan or such is shot dead, , but comes back, , set on fire, , comes back, cut in half, , upper half comes back, , arms cut off, , one arm keeps coming after heroes, , that arm ground into pieces, , other hand twitches just as credits start rolling. .

The obligatory scene in which a scantily clad young woman goes off to investigate strange noises, knowing full well that there is a homicidal maniac/slobbering monstrosity loose in the neighborhood, or any of the many variations of this.
There is a good movie with M. Emmet Walsh, titled Monster, in which he explains almost every "B" movie monster cliche to his character's grandson as the movie goes along, very funny stuff. 

-The main character loses the girl due to his own complete douche-baggery but gets her back in the end.

-Guy tries to hook up with an ex-girlfriend and ends up getting her back (this never works in real life...EVER).

-Old western one-on-one shootouts

-Characters drinking heavily during the course of the film but remain sober enough to make smart decisions and perform death-defying stunts.

-Personal computers that do not run on Windows.

-People who play lots of video games are automatically computer experts.

-Characters who have no experience flying a plane, land the plane.

-In zombie movies, explaining that you need to shoot the zombie in the head to kill it.  Don't most people know that by now?

-The bad guy kills his henchman or the henchman kills the bad guy.

-The creature is not really bad...just misunderstood.

Sorry if I repeated any...

Characters who have no experience flying a plane, land the plane...not only planes but also many lead characters somehow miraculously know how to control submarines, tanks, advanced cars, alien spaceships, whathaveyou.

Hey, the guy's been p**sing you off throughout the course of the film, wouldn't you want to rub it in his face that he's about to die miserably?

Me? I'd do the deed in mid-sentence.

RE:  Just Shoot --
There's a sequence in The Good The Bad and The Ugly wherein a guy pursuing Eli Wallach catches him in the tub & launches into one of those "I've been chasing you for years! . . ." speeches.  Tuco, Wallach's character, blasts him in mid-discourse with a gun he has under the bathwater.
"If you're going to shoot, shoot!", he says . . .
peter johnson/denny cra e

STAGE 1: Tough guy lead character spies another equally tough looking dude...

STAGE 2: there's a bit of cautious staring...maybe a bit of tense dialogue where only a couple of words are said.

STAGE 3: One of them says something blatantly confrontational and it seems like a fight is about to erupt...

STAGE 4: the lead character will suddenly break out into a smile, address the other guy by his name, and both men will embrace like brothers, because of course they're "old buddies".

the number of films this happens in... especially westerns.

A car goes over a hill ... it blows up.
A car suddenly does a 180 on the air and ... it blows up.
A car hits another car ... it blows up.
A car drive off a bridge ... it blows up.
A car is shot with a hand gun ... it blows up.
A car is shot with anything ... it blows up.
A car runs into a wall ... it blows up.

I waiting for the film were a car runs a right light and it blows up.

"Douche-baggery."  I love it.  I can't wait to say this at work tomorrow.  The first time someone screws up, I'll be prepared with, "This happened because of you and your douche-baggery!"

In another thread I listed made up words as one of my pet peeves, but this is a great word, and it's hyphenated too. If the opportunity is offered I will also use this newest addition to the english language. Gave you a karma for this word my friend.

This reminds me of a great line from the short-lived Dilbert cartoon show.  Dogbert says, "They say only the good die young.  If the reverse is true I'm immortal."

:teddyr:

I gave him a karma, too.  Douche-baggery is definitely worthy of a karma increase.

If someone is in the water, you can bet you butt there is a shark nearby ... cue the shark music.


I swear I don't remember the movie it was one of those lame 50 or 60's movie in B/W some girl was in a lake, A LAKE and the rolled the stock tiger or great white shark footage.

Watched What Lies Above, aka Snowman's Pass (2004) (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0429106/) tonight and saw a couple of other cliches.  (Painful, painful movie, by the way).

(1) In a mountain movie, there must be at least one scenery shot accompanied by a hawk screech sound effect.

(2) In a mountain movie, the knowledgable guide, man or woman, must drive a Jeep.

(3) The mountain man/woman must have something in their past that makes them NOT want to go back into the mountains; usually, a lover/spouse has died "up there."

Any movie set in Africa will have a animal stampede and at least one ill tempered elephant.

I forgot one...

-The grizzled veteran character sees something crazy and says something to the effect of "I've been a (fill in job description) for 25 years and I've never seen anything like this."

This character is usually played by Scott Glenn.  :teddyr:

BTW, Thanks for the karma!  I've been using the word "douche-baggery" for about a year now.  Enjoy!

Oh, in any horror movie set in the outdoors, any group of Native Americans, Africans, or whatever will have the old mystical shaman who warns of what is about to come although no one will listen.  Or instead of a shaman the person will be a semi-mystical expert tracker with an uncanny ability to tell what they're tracking.

--The bad guys are always exploitive capitalists; socialist busybodies are always the good guys. Sometimes the dichotomy is Republicans bad, Democrats good, or sometimes it's big corporations bad, big government good, but all Hollywood films and most indie films despise the free market (except, you know, that part of the free market that buys the movies).

--Magic is always perfectly good and acceptable for the protagonists to practice. No one but wild-eyed evangelicals ever objects to occult practices, these one-dimensional characters never turn out to be right, and magic is never discovered to be evil after all. (Sometimes there's some distinction offered between "good" and "evil" magic, but the good guys are always permitted to dabble in some kind of sorcery.)

--If a handsome male and beautiful female are the main characters, they will inevitably end up getting naked and going at it with each other at some point during the movie. Marriage of any kind will be neither any requirement nor any obstacle to their having at least one gratuitous sex scene with each other.

--Speaking of gratuitous sex, no one ever gets pregnant or catches any really nasty STDs from it unless that's what the whole movie is about in the first place (i.e. the movie Knocked Up). For example, you will never see any of James Bond's women suing him for child support or medical expenses.

--Incidentally, there's never any "safe sex" in any of these movies either. On extremely rare occasions, someone may deliver a brief endorsement of contraceptives, but you will never actually see anyone using them during the aforementioned gratuitous sex scenes.

--The presence of a monster or any other horror film elements will also prove to be no impediment to having a gratuitous sex scene. In fact, chances are the gratuitous sex scene will prove to be the perfect opportunity for the monster to attack.

--Moreover, even if the fornicators/adulterers in question are horror movie buffs, they will inevitably fail to take a lesson from these films and abstain.

--This goes for drugs and alcohol too: even if they know something wicked this way comes, any movie characters at a party will insist on getting smashed and/or stoned.

--A gun will always "go off" if someone drops it; even if the clip is out, there's always a bullet in the chamber.

--The last big fight scene can never be shorter than ten minutes. No one ever just drops in, shoots the bad guy, and drops out again. (Well, Indiana Jones does that, but never in the last big fight scene.)

--In any film starring Arnold Schwartzenegger, at least one bad pun about a bad guy's death is obligatory.

--Space ships always produce a loud Doppler Effect as they swing by the camera; laser weapons always fire brightly-colored noisy laser bolts, not the silent (and mostly invisible) incendiary rays that actual laser technology produces.

--The hero can automatically use any computer console, even if it's an extraterrestrial's computer console.

--Environmentalists are always the good guys. If they are not the good guys, then they're part of a splinter group that has nothing whatsoever to do with mainstream environmentalism.

--Women are always smart and men are always stupid.

I leave you with a one more movie cliché law I've recently discovered:

Inyarear's Law of Corrective Mortality:

If a character in a horror movie is just too stupid to have lived as long as the movie claims he has, he will nevertheless restore a measure of realism to the film by getting himself killed in it.

* How about when the hero has a huge argument with an older guy.  Then the older guy turns out to be the father of the woman the hero is trying to impress.

* When people get shot in the shoulder or leg or some other "non-vital" place, they never pass out or writhe on the ground, bleeding profusely and screaming in pain.  They just grab their shoulder or continue to limp along on their injured leg as if they are only experiencing minor discomfort.

* The hero barely escapes from the villain's lair before it explodes in a gigantic fireball.  Yet the hero never suffers serious burns, is never torn apart by shrapnel, and does not experience even temporary hearing impairment from the sound of the blast.

* The President or other major political character is played by Morgan Freeman, Martin Sheen or Ronny Cox.  (Not a cliche . . . just an observation)

The police, the Army and National Guard are all useless -- but never fear, the day will be saved by some kids and their special gear made of components available at any Radio Shack.

Aliens know nothing of love and need to be educated on the matter by hunky astronauts.  They will take to the lessons like a duck takes to water.

All aliens speak English.

Well, if they try to buy condoms, the girl's father (who is either the town sheriff or minister) always catches them at the drug store.

And another one I forgot

-Anything, and I mean anything that contains a trace of alcohol will burst into flames when flame is applied to it.  This includes:  beer, vodka, schnapps, liqueur,  rum balls, etc...

* Cops and soldiers, who would NEVER go around carrying an unloaded gun, check their gun before a big confrontation to make sure it is loaded.

* Dudes, who SHOULD already have their guns loaded, will work the action of semi-autos or autos ("rack the slide") to emphasize a point or announce they are serious.  Sometimes, they will do this multiple times (wasting the cartridge last loaded...).

* Annoying or lovable sidekick gets shot, hero yells "NOOOOOOO" then continues the fight.  Bad guy gets the best of hero, only to be shot/hit in the head/stabbed/etc by the wounded, and presumably dead, sidekick just before killing the hero.

* While a good guy is hiding from a bad guy, and the bad guy(s) is searching, the bad guy talks -- "I'm gonna get you" or some similar lines, thus announcing to the hiding person right where he is.

* Shining a light in the face of someone wearing night vision gear will cause them to wince in great pain and be temporarily blinded.

* Submarine movies must show the sub going to, or below, crush depth while everyone hopes she holds together.

* The entire plot of buddy-cop movies is a cliche.  They cannot stand each other but learn to work together, ultimately being friends by the end.

Any movie with Dinosaurs and people, somebodies getting eaten.  Guaranteed!!

When human beings go up against a giant monster, they'll often use a giant robot with some type of armor or they'll get inside some type of large and mobile mechanical device that puts them in close to the same playing field size-wise.

InYerear:
Hmm . . . I detect a subtle cultural consistency to your post . . .
     Can't say I wholly agree with the bit about the "magic" -- Seems to me I can think of any number of films -- Equinox, The Evil Dead, Wicker Man, Dunwich Horror,etc. etc. -- wherein all and sundry are viciously PUNISHED for casual or "playful" magic use, and even ritual ceremonial magic that they supposedly control.
     And, really, aside from an Ayn Rand adaptation, how do you imagine the heroic Capitalist Stooge riding to the rescue?  Well, Starship Troopers was sort of pro-Capitalist, and sorta creepy. Adam Smith just isn't as cinematic as Robespierre!  Frankly, I can think of any number of "Big Corporation Bad" cliche films -- the monster comes from pollution(it used to be radiation!)--, but can't come up with ANY "Big Government Good" cliches -- If it's a cliche, shouldn't I be able to think of just one? 
     The only "gubmint" cliches I can think of is that there's always a Big Government Conspiracy behind the irrational evil occurances/monsters/poison from the sky/etc. etc., which sort of goes against what you're proposing here.  I can think of dozens of those. Can YOU name any cliche films wherein "Big Government" is good?  Really, the only one I can come up with, and nobody I saw the film with took it seriously, was the end of "Born on The 4th of July", wherein the election of Carter (Carter!!) was supposed to be the dawning of a New Age.  Good for a giggle, but other than that one, I'm drawing a blank here.
     Gotta say the sex thing is pretty accurate, though!
     Ditto "noise in space" -- I've always HATED "noise in space", especially after the beautiful silent ships of 2001, and Silent Running.
     Speaking of Silent Running -- Just how WOULD one go about having a "mainstream Environmentalist" be portrayed as a villian?  I think there's a reason that some of the things you mention ain't likely to happen.
     Executing cute puppies and kittens in animal shelters is a horrible necessity, and those who do the dreadful task have a certain heroism, but I doubt strongly we will see either a heroic shelter gas-chamber operator or happy vivisectionist (Bonzo Dog Band!) portrayed on film.
peter johnson/denny crane

Anytime there is a damsel in distress she's never a 2 bagger, she always a hottie, general wearing little to nothing (I'm fine with that BTW) and for some strange reason (I think this was mentioned already) she's wearing heels, then one breaks then she take them off, then she runs, then she steps on something and makes her limp, giving the monster, killer, stalker, rabid puppy, fuzzy bunny time to catch up with her ... almost, but alas she escape into a building slamming the door just as the monster, killer, stalker, rabid puppy, fuzzy bunny hits the door, while she leans against it, panting and whimpering as the door bangs behind her making her bounce off the door just a little. Sometimes she'll even scream something like 'Go away" "What do you want" Get out of here" or Leave me alone" as if she didn't know.

Yeah, it doesn't pay to wear heels...  The cinematic world is truly one of chauvinistic oppression, huh?  Heels are hot...

• Newer films seem to feature blatant technology plugs when the protagonist is isolated and needs help.  They'll communicate via Yahoo IM or the latest LG cellphone, say.
• Rube Goldberg-style traps have never gone out of style.  When it comes to killing hordes of monsters, it is best to devise elaborate traps... direct solutions like ammunition is useless.
• It is in vogue to give the killer some last-minute sympathetic backstory which forces you to question your previous conceptions of good and evil.  This is an excellent distraction from obvious plotholes/absurdities.
• The hero is often a displaced slacker, sexy but otherwise useless in a monsterless society.
• A fat, unsociable Red Herring is amazingly useful when all of your protagonists are buxom lingerie models (à la Hard to Die and Evil Toons).
• Giant monsters destroying a city aren't as appealing (demographically) as the struggles of a one-dimensional character (Deanzilla)
• Supernatural entities wreak havoc on small cornfield towns, never quite making it to the big cities.
• An outsider discovers a dark secret of a small cornfield town and more often than not, the mayor/sheriff is in on it.
• The historical ramifications of time travel are limited to one party at a time.  Think about it.  If Skynet wanted to assassinate John Connor, couldn't they send an army of Terminators?  Or for that matter, why not devastate the 16th century?
• Computer hackers can execute complex code on proprietary machines at roughly 200WPM, despite having no working knowledge of the system.

I think they said in the first Terminator that the resistance blew up the time machine after they sent back Reese.  That being said, I do agree with you about time travel ramifications.  I think the only film to sort of get it right was the first Back to the Future.

There's only two ways to do a proper time travel movie.  Either no matter what the hero (or villain) tries to do, the future they came from will still be exactly the same due to their mucking around in the past...or the opposite happens, the future gets completely jacked up due to their meddling.  Besides, Einstein theorized that you could probably only travel to the future not the past.

There's a plethora of these in the disaster genre.  One of the most glaring examples that quickly comes to mind is VOLCANO in which T.L. Jones is some sort of FEMA hotshot (FEMA is, or at least was, an administrative body, so who knew they had field hot- shots?).  Another I believe is called ASTEROID with Michael Biehn similarly employed.  10.5 with Kim Delaney had a similar theme.  There are others.

Perhaps it was just me being a little hypersensitive, but these movies seemed to hit the audience over the head, over and over again, with the message "government = good," and I always took that as Big Government as implied since it was bureaucratic agencies that were typically represented.


Not really villains per se, but the environmentalists in CARNOSAUR were not really painted in a favorable light.  There were a bit annoying (so maybe that one was realistic?).  PCU did a pretty good job of showing environmentalists in caricature.

Environmentalist villain ... hmmm ... Al Gore? :question:

The hot scientist wearing the Kelly Bundy skimp under her lab coat and the lunkheaded hero with the great cheekbones will hate each other's guts more as the movie proceeds, but inevitably wind up in the sack, the mutual putdowns having become some sort of aphrodisiac in the course of the crisis.

"Don't shoot, General, for God's sake!  We need to keep it alive to study it!"

When there's a group of evil hot chicks, the leader will be taller, smarter, stronger, more violent and more evil, but not as hot as the others. Second is a hottie that is Asian, Hispanic, or Black, third is a bubble-headed blond that is the hottest, but the dumbest, and the least violent. She will also usually be taken out by the leader, which we can assume is due to jealousy over her looks.

That's "In yar ear" please, or Inyarear. (I suppose I could've gone with "In yer ear" but I didn't.)


Yes, I tend to be rather on the right politically myself, so I tend to notice every slight against anything right. There have been a few notable exceptions (Red Dawn, anyone?) but it seems to me that for the last forty years or so, Hollywood and the indie film makers have always favored the left side of the political spectrum.


Maybe I just haven't been watching the right films, then, but on the other hand, was this punishment portrayed as a good thing or a bad thing? I mean, were the sorcerous characters portrayed as getting their comeuppance and the folks carrying out the punishment on them portrayed as heros, or were the folks administering the punishment a bunch of sour-pussed old killjoys and religious fanatics, and the sorcerers the heros in those films? In all the films I've seen, it's always the latter situation I see portrayed.


Then again, maybe you haven't seen all the right films. But as I said, "big government good" is just one of the ways this political jibe against the free market is expressed. More often, the "good guy" is allegedly a grassroots reformer who wants to bring in some big government to pass more laws against the evil big corporations. What this means in practical terms is not always shown.

I don't particularly like Ayn Rand myself, but it's not as if being pro-market makes you a Capitalist Stooge. (Might as well capitalize the term; your emphasis on this stereotype's name is quite appropriate.) It's not as if Robespierre is up there on the screen either, though: the good guys in political films are usually the activists, not the theorists. Adam Smith needs not be up on the big screen either, but a capitalist action hero who goes around saving his corporation and (especially) fellow employees from the predatory activities of teachers' unions, environmentalist trial lawyers, and other popular and well-funded collectives of meddlesome busybodies would be a welcome departure from way movies usually portray these respective interests.


Yes, the whole "Government doesn't want you to know this, but..." conspiracy theory angle has been pretty well played, but that's really more a distraction from the real evils of big government than a way of drawing attention to them. Again, the big government hero is usually an activist, not a theorist. The emphasis in most films is also more on "big corporations bad" then on "big government good." Nevertheless, I can think of a few rather telling examples of movie reel praise for big government:

Deep Impact:
One notable hero in this film (though there were several) is President Morgan Freeman, who announces that, by executive order, there will be no "price gouging" just because a big meteorite/comet is about to strike the earth. See how easy it is to be a big hero when you're President? Just order a thing to be done, and it happens. Actually, as a few news reports in the background make clear, his executive order is not entirely successful, as some eeevil capitalist guy is declared to have been lynched (and deservedly so, the film seems to be saying) for having charged $12,000 an hour for the use of his backhoe to dig emergency shelters. Still, the message here is pretty obvious. Big government attempts to manipulate the economy in times of emergency=good, "price gouging" capitalist entrepreneurs in times of emergency=bad.

The Day After Tomorrow:
We're all gonna freeze to death from global warming (?) because our otherwise benevolent big government is held captive to the big corporate interests of his political cronies! After the disaster, the newly chastened Cheney-esque successor President presumably adopts a system of meddlesome big-government-administrated environmental regulations to rectify the situation as he was supposed to do in the first place.

Twister:
Cary Elwes plays the epitome of evil among tornado chasers. No, really: he's got full commercial funding for his tornado chasing gear, for which he plagiarized the design from our government-funded protagonists Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt (who are always struggling to do their job while waiting for the next bit of funding to clear Congress). He must be the bad guy and he must have stolen those equipment designs because he's the big corporation's kept man.

The 6th Day:
Okay, so I actually agree with this one: the big bad guy is a corporate sharp by the name of Michael Drucker, who casually ignores the government's 6th Day Law prohibiting accelerated cloning. Along the way, a corporate screwup puts him on a collision course with former soldier and family man Adam, played by Arnold Schwartzenegger. Government is mostly represented by weak-willed politicians who are all too open to Drucker's seductive pro-cloning pitches, but it's the evil Drucker himself who sanctimoniously denounces big government's "frightened politicians" for interfering with his research at the behest of various pro-life groups and other human rights advocates. It's the army-of-one Adam who actually brings down the bad guy in the end, but obviously, if big government had been more meticulously meddlesome in the first place, all this corporate evil would never have happened in the first place, right?

Compare this to real life, where most big corporations have chosen to stay out of the morally controversial matter of embryonic stem cell research because they prefer the more immediately profitable and far less controversial exploitation of adult stem cells. It's actually those big-government-loving "human rights" advocates (to whom taxpayer-funded abortion is a "human right") who are pushing for government funding of embryonic stem cell research, and denouncing pro-lifers like yours truly for all those children--children, you heartless abortion opponents, you!--who are going to die horrible deaths from leukemia or some such just because George W. Bush vetoed the funding for government-sponsored human sacrifice. (It's not as if he actually passed any bans on the research, even; he just refuses to fund it with my tax dollars. But, you see, Hollywood sees me as one of "those" people who must be opposed to all science just because I don't favor murdering and chopping up any little babies for research.)


It's not that difficult, really: just consider that a lot of mainstream environmentalism is a sort of big business and religion in itself, and then treat it the same way most movies treat big corporations and religion (especially Christianity) right now. Have the bad guy be a rabid environmental lobbyist or (more likely) trial lawyer who gets rich off of suing companies for any and all infractions against obscure overbearing environmental regulations, even going so far as to have any researchers skeptical of his pseudo-scientific alarmist scenarios assassinated. Think of Al Gore at his worst, add a layer of exaggeration (what Al Gore would be like if he were willing to hire an actual hit man for his cause, and not just a professional character assassin), and you're there. The hero, of course, is the guy he's trying to assassinate.

I agree it's not likely that anyone in Hollywood will be doing any adaptations of Michael Crichton's State of Fear anytime soon, however.


Maybe a happy vivisectionist would be hard to pass off for a hero, but I could see a hard-bitten animal shelter operator being the hero in a noirish "hard-boiled" mystery or the like. The narrative would go something like this:

"Cute little puppies and kittens were lying there dead in the chamber, tongues lolling out horribly. It's no mystery how it happened. Like the poor saps of the Sonderkommando, my job is pulling the lever that kills 'em. Yeah, working the shelter's a rough gig. That's why I'm a professional snoop on the side; somehow, I don't feel so bad about beating some low-life stool pigeon bloody when I think how this is probably all his fault somehow. That's also why I've got two friends who travel with me at all times. The first one travels with me in a concealed-carry holster, and I have to keep him loaded at all times. The second one accompanies me in a hip flask, and he has to keep me loaded at all times. Yeah, it's a tough job."

When a young couple or a girl is being chased by a killer, monster, demon, animal they always run upstairs, thus trapping themselves.

Whenever a traveler enters a small midwestern town, he finds out the whole place is ruled by a corrupt corporation and/or rich tycoon that he has to dismantle in order to bring justice back (Road House, Man-Thing, every other episode of most '80s TV series, etc.).

Government divisions always employ people who are basically useless, requiring them to canvas for 20-year old geeks, janitors and other outsiders to figure out what this code means or where the monster is going to strike next (Transformers, Godzilla, etc).

Hardened, experienced female soldiers will always wear makeup and skimpy clothes to battle and won't have the slightest muscle mass or tone to detract from their supermodel bodies. (King Arthur, etc.)

Every country has at least one elite shadow organization dedictated to protect us against werewolves, flying saucers, and such.
Female soldiers will always be ultra-sensitive about their ability to kick ass while maintaining their femininity. They are also always just covering up for their sensitive interior.

when a guy gets fataly stab/shoot, even if its in the arm, it will come blood out of his mouth, even if he is hit in the arm

Do you have an example? :question:

My favorite cliches:

1. During a fight scene someone comes doing all sorts of flashy stuff like back flips and what not trying to be tough, and then knocked with 1 hit.

2. People who constantly get hit in the face and chest and are not phased by it, but then are hit int he groin and then are able to take damage any where on the body.

3. The storm trooper effect need I say more.

Hidey Ho! --
I still don't know, really, Mr. Inyarear . . . I've read your analysis, but don't quite get it still --
For the record, I am a registered Libertarian, so my Right Wing credentials should be unsniffable!
I still have a problem with a lot of what I read/hear on TV/radio re. the alleged "persecution" of majority Christianity or majority conservatism in film.  Seems like a buffet-style pick-and-choose complaint to me, a bit -- I would suggest, by all means, DO go out and see the films I've mentioned. 
The claim that "magic" is always used unquestioningly by the so-called "heroes" of a given film, without consequence, is a particular bugaboo for me -- one I think is promulgated by the Benny Hinn Christian crowd with no respect for nuance or anything like "truth" as such. 
I find it particularly galling in "modern times" that a faction of our culture is unable to distinguish "fiction" from within the morass of book and film we encounter currently.  Ergo, any appeal to magic or the supernatural can be seen as a veiled endorsement of Hell and Satan, and not merely fun for its own sake.  I speak primarily of the ongoing shreik-reaction from the cultural Right re. Harry Potter, but other examples could suffice.  We had, for instance, a very lengthy diatribe in the Denver Post about how the Harry Potter books invoke "actual demonic spell-casting as practiced by Satanists today", and so on.  The author went on to cite a number of books ("The Satan Sellers", etc.), that have long ago been shown to be fictional works, in defense of her position.
Anyway, the thread was about cliches, and I'm still not sure that some of the things you mention qualify -- Certainly you may have COMPLAINTS about them, but I don't think they occur with the frequency required to constitue a "cliche".
peter curmudgeon/denny harumph!

How about a big chested, no ass woman running in the woods/long hallway/alleyway from a psycopath/monster/alien/rapist(s) when, all of a sudden, she twisted her foot/trips.

Any movie that the target market is older (15-19) teens will have topless girls at some point.

To numerous to list.

Black characters in otherwise middle class, suburban settings (or upper crust settings) talk like they are in the 'hood - or any example of a character fitting common stereotypes.

The only way for two male protagonist to become friends is to:

A) Get drunk together
B) Get into a fist fight (with each other or teaming up against someone else)

Sometimes all in the same night.

Cops/military men can only show how much they care for each other by saying things like, "You son of a b***h!" while smiling or exchanging close up shots of them nodding at each other.

Frank Zappa's great song, Cheepniz, which I have championed in older posts as needing to be the badmovies.org official theme song, makes mention of how " . . . and there's always a girl who falls down and twists her ankle. (audience laughs).  Sure there is!  You know how they are:  The weaker sex & all, twisting their ankle on behalf of the little ice cream cone . . .". 
He's referring to the "rounded off-pup tent affair/tipi" shape of the monster from "It Conquered the World".
On the topic of ankle twisting:
How many women are either running along a wet sidewalk, sand at the beach, on a tile rooftop, in HIGH HEELS?!!?.  Much less prevalent in today's films, but just about ANY monster movie from the '50's and '60's have them trying to run in heels . . . amazing.
Okay, now it's the mens' turn:
How many movies can you think of wherein the lead male good-guy leaps all over slippery ceramic-tile roofs, trees, steel fire escapes, etc. etc. in smooth-soled leather dress shoes, you know, the kind you used to go to church in, and does NOT fall or die or even twist his ankle a little bit??!!  James Bond films are particularly guilty of this.  I can buy a laser-shooting pen, flying cars, jet-pack briefcases, or what-have-you, but I still cringe in disbelief when I see him leaping about rooftops in those Slick Dress Shoes.  See also Cary Grant in "To Catch a Thief".
peter slick/denny help i'm falling!!

My dad would love you :smile:

Not so unsniffable these days, especially if you've read the stuff on www.reason.com as much as I have lately, but I've noticed that the card-carrying Libertarians with a capital "L" are at least more likely to give a social conservative such as myself a hearing rather than just dismissing me as a "fascist" or making other Nazi comparisons. (Especially for my pro-Israel views. Sheesh! The times, they are a-gettin' loopy!)


Actually, where I live, it's more likely that whenever I get around to seeing any of those flicks, I'll be ordering them in rather than going out; the theaters around here mostly only show the most mainstream films. For indie films and B-grade stuff, I generally get those from two sources: the internet, and the discount bin at Wal-Mart.

When you say "majority" I think the term you're fishing for there is "mainstream" although in either case, that's a somewhat wobbly definition; if all the people who claimed to be Christian truly were, the box office figures would be a lot different from what they are now, I can tell you that! If the complaints seem a bit cherry-picked to you, consider that most of these people you're hearing from are probably talking about mainstream films, which mostly precludes the kind of movies we review on this site. What kind of selection you have is not necessarily the same as what's being offered to those folks on TV and the radio. (That's part of why I'm here in the first place. B-flicks sometimes do things Hollywood never does.)

Not all mainstream offerings these days are outright hostile to Christianity and/or social conservatism, but consider how hard it is to find one that's friendly to either or both. When's the last time you saw an anti-sodomy movie, let alone one that takes a Christian position on homosexuality? There are maybe all of a few brief scenes from a Mel Gibson movie or two that dares cast homosexuality in an unfriendly light. Compare that to the brazenly pro-sodomy Brokeback Mountain, to the open perversity of V for Vendetta, to American Beauty's vicious caricature of an anti-sodomite, etc. That's a mainstream selection; don't forget slightly-less-well known pieces like Priest and If These Walls Could Talk. Which way does it look like Hollywood is pointing to you? And that's just on one issue: with Million Dollar Baby, we get a brazenly pro-euthanasia message; with The Cider House Rules, a pro-abortion screed. A lot of other mainstream films, though they're not really pushing any big agenda, are awash in promiscuity and gratuitous sex. Is it so hard to see why we might think Hollywood's more than a bit hostile to us?

Now I'll concede that there are more pro-Christian films than there used to be. There are also a fair number of flicks (Knocked Up comes to mind) that might appeal to what someone called the "South Park Conservatives" too. Still, from where I'm sitting, it seems we've got a long way to go before any of us on the loosely-defined "Religious Right" can be considered to be getting much of a fair shake. Likewise, conservatives who don't care to wade through the crudeness and vulgarity of South Park are likely to come up a bit short for entertaining movies to watch.


Well you're not dealing with someone like that here; I, for one, actually complained against the Doom movie for NOT including all the Satanic imagery and the whole "lone marine takes on the forces of Hell itself" theme of the game. The magic in Harry Potter is not wholly innocent, but a lot of it is just "storybook magic" of the sort one finds in tales by the Brothers Grimm. (I'm a big fan of their works too, by the way.) In any case, I wasn't talking so much about obvious fantasy on the order of Harry Potter or even barbarian sword-and-sorcery flicks like Conan the Barbarian. I was thinking more of horror movies--Puppet Master, anyone? Stephen King's Carrie also seems a little too friendly to magic and unfriendly to those who oppose magic: Carrie's the poor misunderstood magical girl and Carrie's mother is the caricatured fundamentalist who's too nuts even to accept that menstruation is natural! Then too, if any cheap teen slasher flick has a professed "psychic" in with the teenagers being slashed, you can bet that instead of secretly being the villain or just being a really preposterous fraud like Madam Clio, she'll turn out to be the hero, and right about all these magical "visions" she's having.


It seems to me that enough movies (and TV series, I might add) have these contrived heroic "psychics" in them for it to be a cliche. How about these for a cliche rules:

--"Psychic" powers will always turn out to be real.

--The teen psychic never turns out to be a nutcase or a fraud; instead, it always turns out that you should have listened to her.

Yeah, that's a good observation -- That at no time does anyone claiming to have psychic powers turn out to be a fraud . . . Except for The Wizard of Oz.
I think something you may be running up against here is that the opposite of what you intend simply isn't cinematic enough -- Take dragons for instance.
I'm sure David Lynch or someone could come up with an unusual film that had someone faking a dragon invasion for their own gain, but what's more cinematic is to have real flying fire-breathing dragons, no?
It occurs to me also that in the 1930's and '40's there WERE any number of mainstream films that exposed the monsters as fakes:  The Black Cat, The Old Dark House, one of Lugosi's Vampire films that was a remake of London After Midnight, etc.
* * *
I think too that there is a fundamental problem with any sort of "anti-sodomy" movie, just as there are fundamental problems with anti-Jew or anti-black movies.  Certainly mainstream Muslims find many of our films that show un-burkad women highly offensive.  I remember when I lived in Pakistan and India, the incredible lengths the popular films went not to offend the Hindu majority.  And, yes, I do know the difference between "mainstream" and "majority", and I don't think we really need to change my wording.
I'm not meaning to argue or pick nits here, but surely you can see how it's not possible to return to the days of Stepin Fetchit or Mantan Moreland, with their bug-eyed social caricatures -- well, unless it's Eddie Murphy doing it.  I guess I don't think there's any way to do an "anti-sodomy" film without it being bigoted.
peter johnson/denny crane

The most supremely evil movie villains, to a man, are classical-music listeners.

Yes, the more Eeeevill they are, the more erudite, well-spoken, and fashionable they are.  The more politely Alan Rickman speaks, the more dreadful the outcome is sure to be.
peter champagne/denny truffledeath

You make some very good points, Inya- I've always felt signs of true tolerance & equality are really just the pendulum of power swinging from one extreme to another, then back again... and forth... and back...

Notice, too, that The Wizard of Oz was a fantasy filled with good ol' storybook magic. I wonder if anyone has thought of doing another Dirty Harry movie: I could see one of those stories having a psychic turn out to be nothing but a clever fraud, as it would fit in with how those movies always made fun of TV cop show cliches. (Harry's partners keep getting shot, Harry keeps shooting bad guys week after week, and he keeps crashing vehicles too, but in his semi-realistic world, people actually notice this and complain about it.)


Again, this is more of a fantasy tale, although in this case it involves fantasy creatures invading an otherwise realistic world. If the directors want to do a fantasy-invades-reality film, more power to them. They could possibly play with a further theme about fantasy turning out to be down-to-earth reality after all, though: in such a scenario, the dragons would turn out to be real enough, but also shown to be the results of a breeding experiment gone hideously wrong.


Yes, I've heard of a few like that from the old days. Still, those are more stories about monsters than about magic or (maybe I should say) psychic power.

I think the opposite scenario, in which reality invades fantasy, could be cinematic as well; I've never seen a movie do this, but in one comic book, a fellow came up with the idea that just as magic could still do some amazing things in a world already filled with our amazing technological achievements, technology would tend to be pretty amazing to people living in a world filled with magic. The comic book showed a bunch of dimension-hopping thieves loading the goose that lays golden eggs and other wonderful treasures from a storybook fantasy into the back of a big yellow Pontiac.

I've also seen an RPG in which, although the natives of a particular planet all use swords and sorcery, the protagonist has a pistol (with limited ammunition) that proves very effective against the local creatures. I could see that scenario playing out in a movie: "A sword? Forget it, kid. Those dragons have long-range blasts of fire. You want to take one out and save yourself a princess, try this AK-47 and its armor-piercing rounds instead."

For that matter, didn't Masters of the Universe have a cop blowing away some magical invaders with his shotgun? I'll bet that was a crowd pleaser. Too bad movies don't do things like that more often.


I'm not into caricatures either, but I think you underestimate what's possible. With due respect to various people with their odd desires, though, being into sodomy is not the same as being black or genetically Jewish; I've never heard of anyone who could just stop being black or Jewish--or start, for that matter. Michael Glatze, a former homosexual leader, has now given up homosexuality; did you hear about that? Then there's the basketball player Sheryl Swoopes, who wasn't always into lesbianism, but is now; did you hear about that? I might add that I oppose sodomy among "straight" people too; nothing is moral merely because "straights" do it.

One doesn't have to caricature gays to have them be the bad guys in films, nor does one have to reduce everything to simplistic "good guys" and "bad guys" scenarios. All that's necessary is to turn all the cliches inside out and portray gays going straight, straights going gay, gays oppressing ex-gays, and gays not finding gayness very morally uplifting or enjoyable. Bigotry always relies on caricature; take out the caricatures and be more realistic, and you can do anything without truly being bigoted.

That's not to say people won't be offended, of course. The only film exception I have ever heard of to the Hollywood rule that "all gays are wonderful people who will help you improve your life" is a film called (most unfortunately, in retrospect) Windows that came out in 1984. It dealt with the recently-divorced heroine having to escape the obsessive desires of a certain lesbian who has her eye on her. Gay and lesbian advocacy groups howled very loudly and drove it out of theaters everywhere. To this day, I have never yet been able to see it for myself. To put it mildly, seeing this kind of "advocacy" in action did greatly influence my views of homosexuality, but not in the direction these advocacy groups wanted them to go, I think.

The incredibly wretched movie Gigli also took a contrary position to the whole "gays can't change" cliche, but that's a pretty rare exception, and I can't think of any others; besides, it wasn't a very realistic portrayal of what makes lesbians go straight. I don't think it was the sight of a really beautiful woman that caused Michael Glatze's pendulum to swing the other way, y'know?

Ozzymandias speaks: This is one you don't see much these days, but probably more realistic for the times when the films and TV shows in question were made. I've noticed this in research for my novel which takes place in the 50s and early 60s.

Pre-teen boys (and girls too) are always decked out in cowboy outfits complete with cap guns. Granted, Baby Boomer grew up not only with the adult Western boom on TV, but afternoon and Saturday morning TV was filled with juvenile Westerns and old B-movie Westerns.

I think the last film to feature this was the kid in Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

Ozzymandias has spoken!!!

Re:  Changing Gays --
     Here you lose me, I fear.  For every single, exceptional, case that can be cited re. "quitting homosexuality", as if it were like smoking or a change of wardrobe, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of cases of failed attempts to "change".  One problem I have with promoting "ex-gay" strategems is their loss of touch with observable reality:  The reality of thousands of gay men and women praying and punishing themselves for decades in hopes that they WOULD change, and then have nothing happen beyond their own sense of guilt, encouragement to suicide, or criminal behaviour.  Indeed, much of the drugging and promiscuity that the Christian Right finds so appalling in gay culture can more easily be explained by these feelings of worthlessness ground into gay people by the majority culture, and not a product of homosexuality per se.  Were this so, then it would be impossible to explain the existence of long-term committed homosexual relationships that last as long as straight ones do --- 20, 30, 50 years.  Personally, I know of 2 such couples.
     Living so close to Colorado Springs as I do, the headquarters of the "ex-gay" movement, it's no trick to read of this sort of struggle every month or so in the local press.  One of the shining lights of the movement was outed about a year ago in the local publication "Westword" for getting caught going back to gay bars after "marrying" an "ex-lesbian" & performing like a trick pony for the Focus on the Family group.  It seems driven by the same sort of self-hatred that drives some Jews today to champion anti-semitic causes, and drove the multi-billion dollar industry in hair-straighteners and skin bleaches for blacks.
     Based on what I've read, the "Ex-Gay" movement is an ideologically driven dog-and-pony show that so far has no long-term case studies of "success" to support what it is they claim.  Far more reasonable to me is that yes, some men and women find themselves more attracted to their own gender, some exclusively so, and that we, as humanity or society or however we wish to call ourselves, really have no business demonizing folks whose most visible "flaw" would be seeking same-sex companionship.
     Really, I must say, I grew up in Virginia at a time when water fountains and waiting rooms in hospitals, not to mention bathrooms, were labeled "White" and "Colored".  I have to note that virtually every single anti-gay argument I've heard today I can find a mirror for in conversations of my youth -- just substitute "n****r" for "gay", and I can easily go back 40 years & relive it all. 
     And I probably don't need to tell you, but feel a need to say so anyway, that at the forefront of keeping the darkies in their place was the local Christian Establishment.  My word, they would say, miscegenation is forbidden by the Bible!  Does it not say we should seek out our own kind?  Marry within our own tribe?  God doesn't want those darkies touching our white women!! Very rare indeed were the white Southern Baptists who had the courage to break ranks & march, etc.
     To me, the whole business of "gay choice" and "gay conversion" are on par with Creation Science.  If one starts citing passages of the Bible to prove a point of bigotry, then, as I'm sure you already know, we can also go to Leviticus and cite the passages relevant to selling our daughters into slavery, stoning our wives to death, and a host of other things we no longer practice.  Do you shave?  Eat pork?  Eat -- God forbid! -- crab or lobster??  Then you and I have our places also reserved in Hellfire, for these are abominations before the Lord.  Point of doctrinal fact, cultural shifts HAVE occurred, some pretty significant ones within just the last 50 years.  Heck, even Bob Jones University eventually backed off of their stand on interracial dating a year or so ago!!
     I'm sure you mean well, but if you really believe what you propose here -- and I think you do -- then you ARE arguing for oppression, regardless of cinematic content or direction.  Oh, right, this thread was about movies, wasn't it?
     As far as film goes, we have ample evil queers to look at or laugh at throughout cinema history.  Take the slimy gay couple in "North by Northwest" as the first thing to spring to mind.  Martin Landau grinding Cary Grant's fingers into Washington's skull before being shot like the filthy faggot he is!  To be fair, I can think of many films where the pendulum DID swing too far the other way, as a sort of overcompensation, much like the Blaxploitation films overcompensated in their depiction of Black Power.  The exerable remake of "To Have or Have Not" and the equally poor "Victor/Victoria" spring to mind as ham-handed, stridently shrill gay-culture propaganda vehicles that shot themselves in the foot with their earnestness.  I don't believe these films could be made today, or if they were, they would be looked upon as needlessly old-fashioned.  If you wish for an ignoble example of a gay man in popular culture today, take a gander at Jack on "Will and Grace".  A more useless individual would be hard to compose.
     Now, despite your arguable definition of what constitutes bigotry, I do not think that caricature alone defines its parameters.  It can also depict the group to be repressed as somehow noble or good, yet subject to inevitable decline and extinction simply because of who they are -- Red Injuns, anyone?  Perhaps the determinate factor of fairness would be how we're trying to depict black detectives in TV detective shows today:  Just part of the crowd & not trying to be special in any way.
     Also, I wish you'd re-read your statement about how the "advocacy" groups colored your perception of homosexuals.  I don't know how old you are or where you grew up, but this sounds to me like an echo of all the grey-hairs complaining about the "uppity nigras" and "what are they complaining about?  They got it almost as good as whites! I don't mind 'em, except in numbers, but they want to take over!!  And I don't want n****rs shoved down my throat!!"
     Advocacy groups don't appear out of thin air for no reason.  They appear because somebody feels stepped on and that there IS something to advocate.  We had white advocacy groups in Kilmarnock when I grew up as well, who felt stepped on by the uppity nigras.  I don't have to tell you the names of those groups if you're up on US history.  Today these white advocacy groups are thought of as either wicked or a curious echo of Southern past, except for the vociforous minority that keeps them alive.  No doubt, in time, the "ex-gay"/Focus groups will be thought of in a similar fashion.
peter johnson/denny crane

Take a deep breath, Peter Johnson.

One piece of ductape is all that is required to completey gag someone...or villians will tie up someone and not gag them so they can still speak

But the biggest cliche in films...childhood best friends that become arch enemies in adulthood, usually wth one being a cop and the other a villianous scumbag...

Dear Inyarear:
Breath taken.
Awaiting further instructions . . .
peter j/denny c

I'll instruct as proxy, release, inhale, repeat. Kind of like shampoo just healthier.

Now, take down your sneering and ill-conceived rant/flame/bash, and we'll discuss this in private.

Ozzymandias speaks: Along the same lines is the one from a lot of old TV shows where one of the characters has a twin brother or sister that is the exact opposite than them. It is usually played by the same person.

My favorite of this group was Abraham Lincold Hogg, Boss Hogg's black suited, economy car driving minister brother. I also liked Ophelia, Morticia's blonde flower-child sister who could liked to use judo on Gomez. My least favorite was Alice's whistle-blowing, ex-Marine DI cousin who made the Brady's do exercises every morning. I can't remember the character's name. I hated that episode as a kid. :hatred:

Ozzymandias has spoken!!!

"Grizzled guy"^TM usually dies heroically to save everyone else in the end. 

Monsters kill people (presumeably for food) but they never eat their victims.

There's got to be a comic relief character who's usually unbearably obnoxious, and more often than not he'll appear to get killed but then he actually lives.

Most monsters have some sort of extremely hard exo-skeleton that makes them immune to gunfire, but this doesn't stop people from shooting at them hundreds of times.

What exactly was perverse about that movie?

Sometimes "Grizzled Guy"TM actually turns out to be the hero, Empire of the Ants, The Thing, Prophecy...
Do you not hear??!? dey kill only to keeel!!!
Wouldn't you? Someone may pierce it.
Guy tortured girl for weeks, she forgives him.

The Monster kills every male character it comes into contact with but only captures the (usually) lone female character...allowing the remaining characters to mount a rescue mission.

All unattended bathtubs run over, regardless of the built in overflow. Same for sinks.

Just about everything. It's pro-terrorist, pro-sodomy, anti-American, and anti-Christian. If you need the long version of this answer, you can find that in a few reviews (http://www.christiananswers.net/spotlight/movies/2005/vforvendetta2005.html) my fellow Christians have written, as well as one (http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/012/561ssywx.asp) by a fellow conservative.

Having read Alan Moore's other famous work Watchmen, I see that he is a lot fairer to opposing viewpoints than the V movie ever was. (He's also a master of probing at perversities--Watchmen was an examination of just about everything that could possibly be wrong with guys who dress up in masks and fancy costumes to fight crime.) That's why V for Vendetta is definitely not his movie, even if it was adapted from his book.

You know, now that you mention it, anti-Americanism in films is getting to be something of a cliche too.

You realize America was founded through rebellion which nowadays would be considered terrorism.  Consider the Boston Tea Party and how much property damage was done.  If that took place today it would be considered terrorism.  There is nothing anti-American about being against the establishment.

QUOTE:   You realize America was founded through rebellion which nowadays would be considered terrorism.  Consider the Boston Tea Party and how much property damage was done.  If that took place today it would be considered terrorism.  There is nothing anti-American about being against the establishment.

The Tea Party was more of an organized act of vandalism than terrorism, actually.  The ship's captain was informed of the night the tea would be destroyed so he could have his crew ashore, the lone sentinel was tied and guarded, then released after the deed was done, and the smashed lock of the cargo hold replaced with a new one.  Sam Adams and his men wanted to make sure that what they did was a clear political statement and not a random act of destruction . . .  his men were also instructed to dump ALL of the tea into the harbor and not keep any for themselves.  The one fellow caught stuffing his pockets with tea leaves was thrown overboard and forced to swim for shore, an incident immortalized in JOHNNY TREMAINE.

I don't think so.  IndianaSmtih can correct me if I'm wrong, but the 'enemy' the rebels were fighting against were soldiers representing the British Crown.  One of the big offenses that led to both the Declaration of Independence and the War itself was the quartering of troops (and its incident looting).  Fighting an organized army representing a sovereign State is about as far from terrorism as one can get.

That's the thing that defines terrorism - indiscriminate attack of civilians.  They may claim it is for political reasons, or rebellion or whatever, but it is essentially the cowardly attack of unarmed people just doing the daily grind.

Pro-sodomy? I must have missed that part, although I do admit to not watching it too intently. .

To elaborate a bit further, Terrorism is simply fighting a war through terror, rather than a direct confrontation. Its purpose is to make the civillian population scared enough of attacks on themselves as individuals, that THEY pressure their governmental officials into giving in to the terrorist's demands. One step further is when the people start blaming their own government for not giving in to the demands of the terroristic forces, and blaming them for the violent outcome. Kinda reminds me of Stockholm Syndrome, only on a larger, less individual scale. The Boston Tea Party is not in any way an act of terrorism. Unfortunately, our government and media have caught on to the "terrorism" groove and realized they can turn large masses of people towards or against anything they choose, simply by adding "terrorism" or "anti-terrorism" to its name. Unfortunately, people fall for it. 

I just watched it last night, never heard sodomy mentioned in any way. America was only vaguely mentioned, and not in any outlandish way. I think people are way too sensitive and seeing opposition where none exists. It was a movie, not much else to it. .

What about the tough guy cliche' where the main character is impossible to defeat?

Chronicle of Riddick anyone?

"Give me the water. ALL of it :hatred:"

Dear Inyarear --
  Really resent the fact that you call my reasoned and heart-felt response some sort of "rant/flame/bash" -- I in no way called you names or got "personal" or got in any way all "Ad Hominem" on you.  We were having an actual intellectual discussion.  I expressed a reasoned argument based upon my life experiences.  You choose not to respond, but somehow blame me for . . . what?  Being a "bully" or something?  My very carefully worded response to you -- I reworked it several times to in fact NOT be gratuitously insulting -- was meant to elicit a response from you as to exactly what you mean, as if you DON'T
  I did, in fact, attempt to carry on our correspondence in private -- I sent you a private in-box posting in fact.
  Please check your mailbox/personal message section.
 

   Dear Inyarear --
   Well, hitting the wrong buttons sometimes leaves off certain sections of a posting --
   However, the basic jist of what I intended does exist even though the post left off a paragraph or two --
   Yeah, I'm angry that you want to dismiss what I had to say about what you were posting as just some sort of rant/flame.  Not so.  I don't bear you any ill-will -- Hell, how could I?  I've never met you, nor you me.
   I'm all for carrying on the discussion in private -- simply hit my mailbox, or write to me at my e-mail address posted on my profile.
   One of the things I said in the message that disappeared was that you are very erudite.  I hope you continue to be so, and please post messages in my box here & we can talk in private.
peter johnson/denny crane
   

This is quite a long thread and though I read it all I may have missed this one:

Any killer in a slasher movie always tells the very last victim his reason for the killings before attempting to kill him/her, yet all the other victims get killed really fast without any reason to them whatsoever.  I personally find that very rude.

When the villan and hero meet within eyesight of the Hero's goal (self-destruct button, off switch for some doonsday device). The villan beats the hero, and stands there with him near that goal while he gloats and explains his actions, , , while the hero devises plan-b, which is executed while the villan lets his guard down for just a second (but the rules must say the hero has to say something cool first).

This one really annoys me and I saw it in a film last night ...

Anytime the hero is faced with many opponents, not 5 or 10 but maybe 20 or more they all stand around and wait for "their turn" to fight. Even with guns! They don't start blasting away all together to kill them they attack in 1, 2's or  3's so the good guy has a sporting chance to defeat all 30 or so of them. This happen why to much in Kung Fu style movies and other martial arts films.

If you've seen Equilibrium this happens a few times in that movie when the cleric is fighting and it's not the only one there have been many. Neo fighting all the Mr Smiths in the Matrix (think it was the last one) off the top of my head is another.   

Ah yes....MONOLOGUING!
Gotta love THE INCREDIBLES just for that.

As I said, the best "monologuing" example is in "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly" --
Gotta love a gun beneath the bathwater . . .
peter crane/denny johnson

Tuco :"If your gonna shoot,Shoot! Don't talk"
What i wanna know is, he had a cap and ball Colt...how did he keep the powder and primers dry?
Earwax?

All movie bombs will be deactivated when the digital readout hits 1 second left. 

The Hero's Sweet Lovin' powerup.  The hero must have has obligatory Sweet Lovin' with his ex (whether it's an ex-wife opr ex-girlfriend he couldn't commit to) who he has just reunited with.  The sweet Lovin' must occur before he goes to stop the main evil overlord once and for all. 

Characters are always able to turn on the television/radio and immediately tune in to the news story concerning them, or pick up a newspaper and have the pertinent story splashed across the headlines, no matter how trivial the story might be in the grand scheme of things (SOCIALITE HEIRESS SUSPECTED OF MURDER!!!).

While a bit more believable, I suppose, in these days of 24 hour news channels, this was going on all the way back to the 1920's.

I thought SHAUN OF THE DEAD did a good job of lampooning this particular cliche' with the characters being annoyed by the ever-growing "Dead walk the Earth" news story and constantly channel surfing to get a wy from it.

No, remember when he holds up the General Store and builds his own gun?  He asked the clerk for cartridges before robbing him.  I'm not much of a gun historian so the gun he may have had in that scene might have been a cap and ball gun.  But, they addressed that earlier in the film.

That scene makes the movie for me.  :smile:

LOL!  I can think of one movie where that doesn't happen.  "Goldfinger".  The bomb stops at seven seconds so the readout reads "007".  Cheezy but cool.

While diffusing a bomb in a movie, either the person diffusing the bomb or someone helping him by radio/phone will say "it's the blue wire - it's always the blue wire."

Nowadays, it has become cliche also for the person diffusing the bomb to realize that THIS evil bomber will try to outsmart them and use the RED wire instead of the blue one - so he cuts red instead.  And diffuses the bomb.

Tip for writing a better bomb diffusing scene: make ALL the wires black - the good guys won't know what to do.   :teddyr:

Shooting computer monitors will destroy all the data.

Shooting electronic key codes to open doors, will in fact open the door.

At least in Nighthawks, SS had the gun in a ziploc bag.


The one I like is when the bomb is in the microwave (Ford Fairlane is one), that the bomb EXPLODES when the timer reaches 0. On MY microwave, it simply stops cooking when that happens. STOPS is the key word. ..

Computer Monitors always project the image on the screen onto the users face.

Seen this one to many times to count.

Ahhh, but Kubrick used it to great effect in 2001.

The way to get a necklace off a woman is the grab it by the chain and yank it so it breaks.  She will still be able to wear it afterwards, without repairs.

This also applies to dog tag chains as well...

Space movies require at least one 'accident' during a space-walk.

In dinosaur movies, plant eaters are always friendly, and safe to just walk right up to and pet. Carnivores, always mean and dangerous to humans. If you apply this to modern mammals, this would mean that bramah bulls make better pets than houscats.

Frankly I'd rather have a Brahma Bull than a house cat.

Yeah I'm bringing a old thread back to life ...

But there are more.

Everyone grabbed by the neck is lifted off the ground. A shot of their feet dangling follows.

All aliens are fully fluent in American English.

If the main character has kids, it's for the sole purpose of having them be menaced by the monster / natural disaster whatever (though all the other kids in town will be smart enough to avoid it).  In the end there will be a big reconciliation and the happy music will play.

If you go to the arctic or antarctic, someone will have to explain that you can freeze solid in 20 seconds if you stand outside.  Then later in the movie people will be walking around outside with no problem, without even wearing gloves or anything on their head.

The monster can hit a main character so hard that they literally fly 20 feet (or maybe even 100 feet) through the air, which dazes them for a moment.

When the bad character has the good character completely at his mercy, and is gloating and explaining their evil plan, the monster will kill the bad character with a big jump scare.

Navy SEALS will run into a room, and everyone in the audience will know the monster is not in the room.  However, the SEALS will fire at least 1,000 rounds of ammo into everything in the room before cautiously moving forward and finding the hidden exit that the monster escaped through.

No matter how frantic the situation (enemy army about to break down the door, bomb about to go off, natural disaster about to wipe the place out, etc.) there will always be just enough time for the heroes to stop and have a heart-to-heart with a fallen comrade, or for a key plot point to be explained, etc.  Often this will be such a touching scene that the "tragic but at the same time uplifting and hopeful" music starts playing which fills the heroes with newfound purpose and determination, yadda yadda yadda guy kisses girl.

No important character will ever die until they've completed a heart-to-heart talk with their estranged wife/daughter etc.

A monster can kill off lesser characters with a single swipe of it's deadly appendages (perhaps even cutting them into several pieces), but its powers will be reduced by 99% when combating the main character.

Whenever the good characters are locked in a room by the bad guys, there will always be a very obvious air vent for them to escape through.

All ventilation ducts are big enough for people to crawl through.

Any time there are critters on the loose, it will always be the week of the town's big festival, without which the whole place would go bankrupt.

That's because they're walking... or in some cases cuddling

Don't kill it Commander Jim! http://www.badmovies.org/forum/index.php/topic,116331.0.html (http://www.badmovies.org/forum/index.php/topic,116331.0.html)

No, I wanna hear the rest of your story now, Jin! http://www.badmovies.org/forum/index.php/topic,115984.0.html (http://www.badmovies.org/forum/index.php/topic,115984.0.html)

Well we'd never know, would we?

That's why they're the main character, they kick ass.
 :smile:
Blame Jaws

Really nasty bad stuff happening to a character you really like and then when you think he's defeated the evil, he gets viciously slaughtered at the end.

Same again but this time he wakes up from a coma and you think "phew" it was all make believe.

All ventilation ducts are spotlessly clean.

A character that has been reincarnated will look exactly like their previous incarnation.
Also (mostly a science fiction cliche) black character dies to save white folks.

Unless you're talking about Milla Jovovovovovovich

I dunno, is Jerry Dandridge considered "cool"?

OK, I'll grant you Milla Jovovovovovovich. Aye, the mountains truly be but hills but the landscape is still worth surveying quite closely.

I dunno, is Jerry Dandridge considered "cool"?


(http://aycu10.webshots.com/image/35089/2002277947409846926_rs.jpg) (http://allyoucanupload.webshots.com/v/2002277947409846926)

Oh, come now, how is Jerry not cool? Look at the man as the Fearless Prince Humperdinck!

In any pre-1990 movie, if an "unauthorized" person tries to enter a computer system, the words ACCESS DENIED will flash up on the screen in a big, red Ariel typeface.

In older movies, all secret technology (such as death rays) will look like a bunch of stereo gear and Navy surplus electronics stacked in a clothes closet.

Besides, she makes up for it in brains. Milla can always go get implants, , , but bimbos will always be bimbos. .

When being chased at 100 miles an hour by someone in a car next to you no one ever thinks to simply hit the breaks.

Only skateboarders and social outcasts smoke pot in movies, and only upclass lawyers and people wearing suits use cocaine (and thats the only drug that aparently exists to these people)

You can in fact send email and voice/data to the center of the earth wirelessly.

You can also track anything in the world with GPS satellites, even if its 200 miles below the surface of the earth (The Core was full of wonderful screwups)

Hollywood server farms never have cat5/fiber showing, they all magically just work....

Anyone can hack into an encrypted network by plugging a laptop into a server rack. period.

Cellphones never have a signal when your stranded or in danger.


We use the term "ass-hattery" for this in my unit.

Boss: Enough with this ass-hattery, get back to work.

Nicole Kidman is only a 34B which is fine in my world but rather flat in Hollywood.


But other movie cliches, I saw one last night on a movie.

Any you need to board up a window or door there is always plenty of wood in the house already cut to the correct length with nails already started on each end. I know I have a closet full of them, just in case.



You can also get a wireless signal (Cell phone or internet) anywhere on earth even in the deep Amazon or in caves. Unless you are in danger.

But which B-movie has Kidman been in?


Were you watching Night of the Living Dead last night? They had quite a bit of spare wood and nails in the house.


I love Ming's new chapeau! Everyone make a Merry Christmas under penalty of death!

Not full blown "B" but based in "B"

Bewitched and Batman Forever



No it was Mosquito one lame flick. I think it was on Sci-Fi, might have been Chiller. And the busted out wood had very interesting zig-zag cuts that all looked very much alike, must have been a special wood to break like that from the zig-zag tree.

Here is the cover if you wish to punish yourself.
(http://img.verycd.com/posts/0610/post-202538-1161783865.jpg)



Why think you earthling.

After our modern industrial society has collapsed, somebody somewhere will still be producing fuel, tyres and spare parts for cars. Oh, and ammo.

BMX Bandits?

There is only ever one hero who is strong and capable, never several even if Earth has been taken over by 9 foot hairy alien beings and the humans must rise up against them to reclaim their planet.

And whenever said hero fights these 9 foot aliens, he can get pummelled and beaten and thrown 20 feet across the landscape but he never looks bloodied or broken and doesn't even sweat with the effort.

I never saw Bewitched. I lost interest when I read the plot synopsis. However, I do agree with you on Batman Forever. The movie was enjoyable in a very goofy way. Carrey played a good Riddler. I would nominate it for marginal B-Movie status.

Ozzymandias speaks: In movies of the 50s and 60s, there would be a beatnick guy working on an abstract painting. Someone would either get mad at him and throw a liquid beverage (coffee, soda, beer) on it or a wacky fight involving the throwing of liquids (ketchup) or food (pie) would break out. After the liquid has splattered on the abstract painting, the artist looks at it and exclaims, "Oh wow, man! That made it look better!"  :twirl:

This shows up in action/horror films, as well as comedies.

Ozzymandias has spoken!!!

"But what's not to like about her? She's young... She's beautiful... She has... large tracts of land..."