Movie cliche/s

This thread is dedicated to anything mainstream and cliche.
Ill start by prisenting the cop-budy movie cliches wich are all mentioned in this article.

Have fun.

In horror flick
:A horny couple having sex will always appear, and gets butchered only after they "finished".
:Anybody who has sex dies, apart from the heroine.
:The heroine is most often a blond Caucasian woman.
:A guy hears a noise, and just when he/she prepares himself, a cat appears, and few seconds after he/she calms down the killer grabs him from behind.
:When the heroine runs into the car to get away from the killer, the car is always broken.
:The police is totally useless.
:The killer never run, but can somehow catches the heroine who is running.

In war movie
:When a guy says "My wife is pregnant" or "I'm going to marry her when the war is over", only 2 things can happen. Either he gets mortally wounded and says "tell her I love her" before his death, or he gets a Dear John letter.
:The sniper often hides in a church tower
:When there is a "good" German in the film, he always hates the Nazi.
:When there is a "good" Japanese in the film, he always lived in America before the war.
:When the success chance of a operation/battle is 1%, it always succeeds. When it's 99%, it always fails.
:When the "bad guys" are using a boltaction rifle, it will always be jammed in the most convenient moment.
:When you are in a submarine, you always hear a beeping sound.
:When a submarine gets hit by a depthcharge, screws in the wall will burst out.
:Every German tank is a Tiger, and every Japanese fighter is a Zero.

Whenever any hacker, computer geek, uber programmer, or what whatever sits down at any computer, system or terminal…

They always know the menu system or key short cuts and commands for any and every system, OS or computer and even for specialized unique programs they have never seen before.

Whatever device they plug into the system they are using, always works – they never have driver issues, scratched CDs or (going back a bit) dead floppy disks.

They can of course all type at blazing speed and rarely if ever mistype.

Less unreal now – but upload and download speeds are often extremely unrealistic.

edit: for submarine movies at some point a water or steam conduit will burst do to enemy attacks, forcing one of the senior officer to turn some shutoff valve and get wet in the process.

Originally Posted by conon394

Whenever any hacker, computer geek, uber programmer, or what whatever sits down at any computer, system or terminal…

They always know the menu system or key short cuts and commands for any and every system, OS or computer and even for specialized unique programs they have never seen before.

Even if it's in an alien language (Independence day)

Bad guy is Russian - Good guy American who saves the world.

British quite often portrayed as being evil.
e.g.Braveheart

Horror movies:

- if there's a mirror in the scene, you'll suddenly see someone's reflection in it (usually a ghost or a psychopathic killer)

- if it's an Asian horror movie, the ghost is usually a little girl with long, black hair hiding her face (and she usually crawls or keeps really low to the ground)

- pointless, yet gratifying sex scene

- if a character isn't watching where she's walking/running/crawling, she'll almost always run right into the psychopathic killer

- close-up shots of a character's face means something "scary" is about to happen

- an unsuspecting character will investigate a highly-suspicious noise (and of course will get killed after looking around for the source of the sound)

- if an unsuspecting character investigates a noise, he/she will first see a cat/dog making a noise; after feeling at ease with himself/herself, that's when the psychopathic character jumps out

- if a character is alone, then he/she will probably die (unless it's the main character)

- if a character is sitting/standing by a window, something will predictably bang up against that window (usually accompanied by an unnecessarily loud musical note)

And the black guy ALWAYS dies first

Even if it's in an alien language (Independence day)

I almost forgot that one. At first I was thinking hey maybe the Feds wrote a manual after 30 years of tinkering with the wreck – but than I recalled it was supposedly not powered the whole time – so yep just about the worst individual example. I think in terms of quantity the last ‘Die Hard’ movie had almost constant stream of said clichés…

-Character shields.

-Bad guys only take a bullet or a good kick before they go down, but good guys can survive multi-megaton explosions and still save the day.

-Bad guys are infamously bad shots.

In disater flicks theres always that scientist, or engineer, or just general expert forcasting doom, who isn't listned to untilthe **** hits the fan, same thing applies to alot of alien movies,
( in ID the president dose actually listen to Goldblooms charachter right before the **** hits the fan and isn't a complete bufoon like in almost all the other films)
also goverment tends to know to an extent the truth behind whats really happening and has the thing to solve it

(Half truth in ID because only the seceteary of state knew about a51)

- If the main hero is a police detective he's probably about to retire.
- Americans are never the bad guys.
- Every big corporation is evil.
- All women scientists/doctors are both hot and expert marksmen
- If the film doesn't have enough explosions its either a drama or has a semi-clever plot twist at the end (or both).
- Germans cant shoot
- Neither can russians, arabs and blacks.
- If someone got away in a car you can bet your shiny metal arse that the killer is hiding in the back seat
- The government always hides something.

http://www.moviecliches.com/

Perfect for this thread. Some examples:

PHONES
All phone numbers begin with 555.
People speaking on the phone never introduce themselves, and never ever say "good-bye" at the end of a conversation.
A ringing phone is usually picked up within 3 seconds.
Don't give the person on the other end of the phone time to say what they have to.
You also never have to look up a phone number, for anyone.
When a phone line is broken or someone hangs up unexpectedly, communication channels can be restored by frantically beating the cradle and saying "Hello? Hello?".
Always knock over the phone if it wakes you up. If you are expecting a call, make sure that you pull the covers up completely over your head so that knocking it over becomes easier. All houses have phones next to the bed.
There's a dial tone to be heard on A's phone immediately after B has hung up on his/her end.
The Movie Telephone Time Vortex.
How often have you seen something like this:
Phone rings. Hero/Heroine picks it up. "Hello. Yes. O.k. Right. Thanks, Goodbye." (Total elapsed time on phone: 5 seconds.)
Hero/Heroine turns to other character: "That was John. He says that the Marilyn left for the lawyer's office about an hour ago, and she should have been there by now. He's called the lawyer's office but Marilyn apparently never got there. He also called Bill's, thinking she'd stop by there, but Bill hasn't seen her. John says he's going to call Anne, as Marilyn said she and Ann were going to go shopping sometime today. If she's not at Anne's, he's going to call the police. He suggests that we drive over to Mario's and check with him as to whether or not Marilyn told Wally about the statue. However, he thinks this is unlikely as Marilyn doesn't trust Wally, she only trusts us and Fransisco. John also suggests we try to get in touch with Fransisco . . . ."
On the subject of phones, how about variations of the Bob Newhart-style conversation where we only get to hear one side of the conversation, as in: Marilyn hasn't shown up at the lawyer's office yet? (PAUSE) And you already called Bill's? (PAUSE) What did he say? (PAUSE) He hasn't seen her either. (PAUSE) So, John's getting nervous? (PAUSE) He's going to call the police...
If I'm not mistaken, the conversation must have gone like this:
"Marilyn hasn't shown up at the lawyer's office yet."
"Marilyn hasn't shown up at the lawyer's office yet?"
"No, and I've already called Bill's."
"And you already called Bill's?"
"Yes."
"What did he say?"
"He hasn't seen her either."
"He hasn't seen her either."
"John's getting pretty nervous about this."
"So, John's getting nervous?"
"Yes, he's going to call the police."
"He's going to call the police..."

When phone-calls are traced you can see a map on the screen with a beam closing in on the caller, and the caller always knows how long he can talk before he has to hang up to not be traced down. He always manages to say everything perfectly timed for 2 minutes.
Video-phones display pictures of the callers looking straight into the camera. The camera must be in the middle of their screen, in other words.
If the hero tries to call someone he needs urgently he won't need more than three rings to know that he/she is not there.
If someone wants to call the hero, he/she will let the phone ring forever before hanging up, expecially if the caller does not know that the hero has to fight his way to the phone through a bunch of bad guys.
A person is placing a phone call to a company, such as "Sports Illustrated." The phone at the other end is picked up, and the person PLACING the call says, "Hello, Sports Illustrated?", as if they are checking to make sure they called the right place.
What this means is that at a major company, someone is answering the phone with "hello" and that's it! Not, "hello, Sports Illustrated, can I help you?" or anything like that, just "Hello!"

The "enter password" windows on the abovementioned terminals usually take up 2/3 of the screen, using 24pt letters. Also, there used to be an insane amount of beeps.

When a hacker type character uses a computer, he/she always mashes the keyboard at random, and never uses the mouse.

The good guys always win.

-Movies made about non-english speaking places with out subtitiles will have one character with an exagerated accent (Gerard depardieu from man in the iron mask) And all the rest will sound like they're from Ohio (Like everyone else in Man in the iron mask)

Adding to the previous post, it seems in most American movies foreign people (besides Africans or Arabs/Turks or Russians) have English accents. For example, in The Sound of Music almost everyone had English accents, despite it taking place in Austria. That's why I hate that movie.

Originally Posted by ^Mr.S

Adding to the previous post, it seems in most American movies foreign people (besides Africans or Arabs/Turks or Russians) have English accents. For example, in The Sound of Music almost everyone had English accents, despite it taking place in Austria. That's why I hate that movie.

It's the best choice IMO. It would have been horrendous to have them speak English with a German accent. Even more cheesy...

Rambo's Law.

1 man with a machine gun versus 50 with machine guns stands a better chance at victory than 50 versus 1.