Action Movie Cliches Part 2

While watching another movie the other day, I came across more movie cliches I don’t like.

Deadlines are an easy way to add tension to a story. After all, we face deadlines of one sort or another every day; like the start of work, assigned papers in college, or manuscript deadlines given by editors to writers. But when it comes to movies, I dislike the seasonal, and moon/sun/insert-celestial-body-here alignment. If the sacrifice or incantation has to be done at precisely the right time (and the hero usually knows this several days in advance) then really why battle them when all you have to do is stall them? And if the event lasts only seconds or minutes, it seems simply stalling the villains isn’t very heroic. It doesn’t feel like the hero really stopped them. Do you see what I’m getting at?

And if all this evilness is supposed to occur at a certain time, usually midnight, how is it every single clock and watch in the world is perfectly synchronized? Go into any building with more than two clocks and I’m sure they won’t match exactly. How about a movie where the hero fails because his watch was off by three minutes? And when is midnight? Is it Central Mountain Time? Greenwich Mean Time? If the man-beast transforms at the stroke of twelve, does it turn sooner or later if you take it to another time zone?

Another cliche is the evil creature/employee who turns good at the last moment when shown kindness earlier in the film. They also often come barreling in right when the hero or heroine is about to die. There is a lesson here, villains. Treat your minions with respect and they won’t turn on you.

Another one that bothers me is when direct sun/moonlight triggers something. Usually it is a transformation, like a werewolf, or something similar. Often, cloud cover reverses the effect. But really, if sunlight kills vampires, why are they okay in the shade, or somewhat dark buildings? Wouldn’t it sting even a little bit? This was somewhat averted in the Blade movies when they said UV light hurts vampires. If there is something special that is in sunlight that harms your creature, mention it. And don’t let cloud cover totally reverse the effect. If moonlight makes a werewolf, it will revert back to human as soon as he goes into a building. Just because the moon is covered doesn’t mean it isn’t there. If the rays are filtered, the effects should be filtered, not shown as an on/off effect.

There may be a part three to this post if I see any more cliches I don’t like. Do you have any that drive you nuts? Thanks for reading.

Action Movie Cliches

I was watching the episode “The Lazarus Experiment” of Doctor Who. The main villain was played by Mark Gatiss, of Sherlock fame. At one point in the episode, he rolled his shoulders and cracked his neck. It was a cliche I hate in movies and TV shows. It is most prevalent in a action movies, I think. Usually the main character is about to go into battle, and to loosen up, their neck makes a cracking sound. Drives me crazy. There are a few other action movie cliches I dislike.

Final fights in the rain - Most of the time, rain has no place in stories. This cliche goes along with the ‘sad scene/funeral in the rain’, which I hate too. Unless the weather is directly involved in the story, most of the time these spontaneous rainstorms are frivolous. It worked in Roland Emmerich’s Godzilla. The reporter said it would rain all weekend, people commented on it, and it was fairly constant and consistent. Rain was unnecessary at the end of The Matrix Revolutions. Besides a few cool shots, the water was pointless. Fight rain usually does nothing to add an obstacle to the hero’s journey. 

The sidekick/minor character gets the final shot/killing blow - This happened inDie Hard, another-wise perfect action film. After killing Hans Gruber and reuniting with Holly, John McClane is about to go home. Up pops the supposedly-dead terrorist for one last gun blast. Is it McClane that puts a bullet in him? Is it the hero who has been shot at, beaten up, forced to remove glass from his feet, and ruined a white shirt? No. It was patrol officer Al Powell (Reginald VelJohnson) who kills him. If he gets the final shot, then why wasn’t he the hero of the movie. In The Dark Knight Rises, Selena Kyle killed Bane, which I was really disappointed with. And her bad joke. The entire setup of the movie was Bane versus Batman. He should have had the killing blow, not Catwoman. I have no problem with the sidekick helping the hero. I just hate it when they come in at the last minute. It always seems to me the writers wrote themselves into a corner and couldn’t figure out how to save the hero.

I’m sure there are plenty more I’m forgetting about but those are my major peeves. How about you, readers? What movie cliches do you hate? As always, thanks for reading.