Lazy cliches and plot contrivances

johnny_ultimate

So you're a screenwriter. You have this fine little script, lots of good ideas and well fleshed out characters. But there's one bit you're drawing blanks on. You need a good resolution, but you just can't think of one. So you get a little cheeky, and use something you've seen before. You've taken the easy way out. Your screenplay is finished, and the film gets made, making you a tidy little sum in the process. But you can't help but feel a little bit dirty inside.

Here is a thread for you, the viewer, to complain about those overused tricks that even the best writers sometimes fall victim to. Things that lazily propel the plot forward, or resolve a complex problem a little too easily. Here are some personal least favourites to get the ball rolling. Some film titles have been spoiler tagged just in case:

Stealth Transport:
I've ranted about this before, but it refuses to go away. Basically, this means that a character is 'suddenly' and 'unexpectedly' hit by a vehicle of some sort. It's often a bus, sometimes a car, occasionally a train (note: the latter's harder to pull of, considering the necessity of tracks renders the surprise somewhat less surprising, although fair ****s to

Christopher Nolan for pulling it off in Inception

).

My problem with this trick is that it is so overused now that you can spot it a mile off, when the stealth car has yet to even make the necessary exit to hit the protagonist's vehicle. It's the slightly off framing, the sudden strange pacing, a general look of unreality. It's a cheap way of forcing sudden change upon a character, and while once perhaps shocking (see: Final Destination, which at least has a sense of humour about it), it now just seems lazy. And worst of all, even talented film-makers like Almodovar or the Coens have been known to resort to it recently. Bah!

The Airport run:
There's little more urgent than a character leaving on a jet place, not knowing when they'll be back again. So a plethora of writers airports as the setting for the tense, important climax. It sometimes works, mostly doesn't. It just seems cheap, when everyone knows that hundreds of other films have ended on a similar note. What's wrong with alternate transport means, like the girlfriend who, I dunno, is getting on a space shuttle for a ten year long mission in an hour (I'd watch that film). It's just always an airport. Not a bus terminal, an airport. Actually, on that note...

Running alongside a train:
It's a classic image: someone leaving for ever, partner running along the platform by the window, someone getting up and running to the back door, watching as their partner departs, their love destined to never be. A nice symbolic image the first time, but definitely overused now. I saw it last night in the Secret in Their Eyes, where they use it as the opening scene, and it just doesn't work as a dramatic event. We've seen it before, and the melodramatic orchestral score rarely helps.

The last minute battle reversal:
see:

Avatar, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars

. The 'nature fights back' cliche is also a derivative of it. When all seems lost, there's always that group that was mentioned an hour ago, who will - at the most dramatic moment possible (that's important - it doesn't work if everyone's there at the start) - show up and totally save the day, reversing the tide of battle instantly. It's a handy way out of a bind, and an effective way for the underpowered, under-prepared underdog to succeed. But at the same time, at it's worst it feels like a cheap trick, a deus ex machina of sorts that allows the most audience friendly conclusion.

The line of incidental dialogue, brushed off casually earlier in the film, that becomes a vital plot point an hour later:

Splice

was frickin' dreadful for this.

There's many, many more out there. Any such contrivances that drive you up the wall?

FearDark

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Klltwoa6glE

LittleBook

My Dad watched Taken last night (for some reason) and he mentioned one of my favourites ... that the "good guy" with one gun makes a kill with every bullet but the "bad guy", who invariably carries a small arsenal, couldn't hit water if he fell out of a boat!

Personally, as a woman, I hate the way that female characters are addicted to shoes and ice cream, wear shorts when exploring jungles while everyone else is in trousers, can't run 10 yards without falling over something and invariably end up being saved by a guy.

duckworth

The 'Split Personality' twist.

Invented and perfected by Psycho - now reused and abused by bad thrillers (and reasonable pieces like Fight Club) ever since.

There are a number of variations on this of course, the 'it was all in the protagonist's head' variation, the 'it was all a dream' variation - there's loads of them. All terrible, lazy, and bloody frustrating for the viewer.

Basically a long tired path of sh1te that has lead us to M. Night Shyamalan!

Penn

What I like to call the 'Q effect'. During the film (most likely action), the character is given something. Later in the film, the character ends up in a situation that seems possible to escape from. Luckily, that object they were given is the exact object they need to escape or perform some task.

Every James bond film before Daniel Craig, Bond would be given probably about 3 gadgets. And during the film, those EXACT gadgets are the gadgets he'd need to escape. Same with some other films.

Necronomicon

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

The line of incidental dialogue, brushed off casually earlier in the film, that becomes a vital plot point an hour later:

Splice

was frickin' dreadful for this.

I had flashbacks to

Predators

when I read this.

When Topher Grace explains the paralytic properties of the Alien plant to the heroine, they might as well have planted a nylon sign above them saying 'WILL BECOME SIGNIFICANT LATER'.

Busi_Girl08

- Girl running listlessly around a forest to escape from the baddy, falls and breaks her leg (The Strangers, House of Wax, etc)

- "You're a nurse? But...you're a guy!!"* Over-drawn scene of the lead character, who is a "Misunderstood" arsehole starts taking the piss out of the male nurse, etc (The Hangover, Knocked Up, every "comedy" buddy/rom-com movie)

That's all I can think of for now, but these two in particular drive me mad.

I'm not sure if you could strictly call this one a cliche, but it's still really annoying :mad:

bnt

I wear glasses, and don't see a problem with that, so it annoys me when Hollywood does the lose the glasses bit. You see it most in "ugly duckling" movies, in which some geeky guy or girl undergoes a makeover, and the glasses are the first thing to go. Of course, the glasses in question are incredibly ugly, which is a lazy way of making a character look ugly to begin with - but do you ever see a character getting some nicer glasses?

If you can just drop the glasses, without suffering any consequences, maybe you didn't need glasses in the first place? You can't just switch to contact lenses overnight, it takes time to get the prescription right and settle them in, so that's not it. (I know from experience that the wrong contact lenses will have you falling down and/or throwing up in no time at all.) Ditto for Laser surgery - it's not instant.

I'm not quite sure what to make of Guy Pearce's glasses in L.A. Confidential. It's set in the 50s, in a macho world (L.A. Police), and the police captain (Dudley Smith, played by James Cromwell), tells him "lose the glasses" in so many words. And he does - literally - but we do see some consequences: it nearly gets him killed on more than on occasion. :cool:

Busi_Girl08

Glasses are also, apparantly, a very effective disguise.

Glasses - Clark Kent.

*Takes off glasses*

"OMG SUPERMAN'S HERE!!"

*I realise that's more of a comic cliche than a movie cliche, but still.


Also, in movie world, a pair of sunglasses and a trench-coat appears to give characters the power of invisibility.

r3nu4l

I don't know if this is the fault of the screen-writer or the casting crew but in every film where there's an IT/computer genius, it's always:

1. a guy
2. he's super-weedy, pale as a ghost and is depicted as a bumbling nervous fool when around real people
3. he's never been laid

I also get annoyed when baddies decide to kill the good guy in a very complicated and unnecessary way...think of Bond movies where bond is lowered into shark-infested water so slowly that he has plenty of time to make an escape. Just shoot him in the head as soon as you capture him ffs!

Busi_Girl08

r3nu4l wrote: »

I don't know if this is the fault of the screen-writer or the casting crew but in every film where there's an IT/computer genius, it's always:

1. a guy
2. he's super-weedy, pale as a ghost and is depicted as a bumbling nervous fool when around real people
3. he's never been laid

Specifically... this guy.

purple_hatstand

I recently watched In The Bedroom for the first time and found it one of the most infuriating films I have ever watched. A nice slow build-up establishing character and atmosphere and a plausible moment of dramatic conflict to set up a brilliantly-controlled examination of grief and loss is all jettisoned in the final reel when

the good guy kills the bad guy and buries the body in the woods in the middle of the night.

Apparently, American audiences responded well to the 'closure' this gave the central character(s), but I thought it was a lazy contrivance which ruined an otherwise excellent film.

Similar examples of this can be found in The Pledge and the less good Unfaithful.

krudler

When the shot is set up in such a way where the character on screen only sees the monster/mask wearing villain/ghost when we, the audience sees it. M Night Shyamalanadingdong is the worst for this, as if the only thing the characters in the movie are spatially aware of is the frame of the shot they're in, theres a shot in the village where Joaquin Phoenix sees one of the monsters, and it literally takes a sidestep 2 inches off screen and its gone, but thats to us! he should still be able to see the bloody thing tiptoeing away! drives me nuts..

johnny_ultimate

r3nu4l wrote: »

I also get annoyed when baddies decide to kill the good guy in a very complicated and unnecessary way...think of Bond movies where bond is lowered into shark-infested water so slowly that he has plenty of time to make an escape. Just shoot him in the head as soon as you capture him ffs!

The whole lack of 'shooting in the head' often annoys me too. If you've gone through that much hassle, make sure the job's done! Don't just fire randomly, let them drop, and walk away. The 'bullet proof something-or-other' in the pocket thing is the same.

Similarly, those moments where a character is shot, and the main villain goes to deal with the good guy, and then the dead character stumbles in to save the day, once again, at 'the most dramatic juncture possible'. In general, if you don't see a character die on screen - i.e. their death is obscured, suggested or ambiguous - you can rest assured they'll be back.

And one more: lying to the audience. When the audience is shown something, which later proves to be a lie (like, say, the hallucination of a main character) it feels wrong. It's a dirty trick: the audience should only doubt the validity of what they're seeing if there's a proper narrative reasoning for it. In something like the remake of

My Bloody Valentine

, it just gives them a cheap ability to shoehorn in a plot twist that the audience had perfectly valid reasons to doubt. A cheap 'shock' tactic, and the worst way to approach a final twist. Nothing wrong with scenes to throw the viewer of the mark, but lying to them is not cool.

monkeypants

The "hip" black guy who simply can't sit still and shut his face. Always has to have something to say, even if it doesn't make sense. There was one movie I remember, can't remember the title, but it was in an airfield terminal and all this chap could say was "Man, that's whack!" and "Man, you're trippin'!"

During a struggle, the bad character gets knocked down or unconscious. Instead of taking advantage, the good character assumes they're done and wanders off. Would it really be too much to take another 20 second to crack their fcuking head open?

Penn

Children wandering off and having adventures and the parents barely even notice. Where are your kids? Oh I'm sure they are just standing directly behind me and are just being extremely well behaved by making no noise whatsoever, which is kinda unusual because they're normally a wise-cracking troublemaker

LittleBook

r3nu4l wrote: »

I also get annoyed when baddies decide to kill the good guy in a very complicated and unnecessary way...think of Bond movies where bond is lowered into shark-infested water so slowly that he has plenty of time to make an escape. Just shoot him in the head as soon as you capture him ffs!

Brilliantly parodied in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery

Another one is the queueing up to fight the hero thing that happens a lot ... 1 good guy, 50 bad guys who all wait patiently for the preceding bad guy to get thrashed before jumping into the fray. Just hop on him!!

krudler

LittleBook wrote: »

Brilliantly parodied in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery

Another one is the queueing up to fight the hero thing that happens a lot ... 1 good guy, 50 bad guys who all wait patiently for the preceding bad guy to get thrashed before jumping into the fray. Just hop on him!!

They tried that in Oldboy, look what happened there

sixpack's little hat

The 'hero' of a movie being an expert at absolutely everything imaginable, particularly fighting/killing people.

An example of this is The Kingdom which is on tv right now. The 4 FBI agents are all in different forensics fields etc but it just so happens that all 4 of them are combat experts, what a coincidence.

Can't think of any other examples offhand but this happens in so many films it is a joke at this stage.

Eirebear

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

The last minute battle reversal:
see:

Avatar, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars

. The 'nature fights back' cliche is also a derivative of it. When all seems lost, there's always that group that was mentioned an hour ago, who will - at the most dramatic moment possible (that's important - it doesn't work if everyone's there at the start) - show up and totally save the day, reversing the tide of battle instantly. It's a handy way out of a bind, and an effective way for the underpowered, under-prepared underdog to succeed. But at the same time, at it's worst it feels like a cheap trick, a deus ex machina of sorts that allows the most audience friendly conclusion.

Strangely, this concept actually gave me one of my favourite scenes at the cinema this year in

Toy Story 3

Valmont

All of these things are definitely annoying but do you not find that when you've watched so many movies you just have a feel for the bad ones from the trailer? I like to think I'm open minded enough to watch films I might not usually go for but films like Avatar or Predators I know are going to annoy or disappoint me.

ps. I took insult with a scene from Broken Flowers being used in the worst movie cliches video!

duckworth

Eirebear wrote: »

Strangely, this concept actually gave me one of my favourite scenes at the cinema this year in

Toy Story 3

Isn't it funny how all our expectations of originality go out the window when we're watching a Disney/Pixar film? Nobody seems to care when the Disney Films use all these cliches (and ultimatley they are all based on the same template).

People are raving about Toy Story 3, and yet it includes pretty much every cliche listed above. It even has the worst example of Deus Ex Machina I've ever seen in a movie

in the furnace bit

Why don't we care when it comes to cartoons?

karma_

The line of incidental dialogue, brushed off casually earlier in the film, that becomes a vital plot point an hour later:

Splice

was frickin' dreadful for this.

I hated Repo Men for this very same reason, as soon as the line was uttered early in the film I knew exactly how things would end up.

johnny_ultimate

Eirebear wrote: »

Strangely, this concept actually gave me one of my favourite scenes at the cinema this year in

Toy Story 3

If it is the

furnace scene

you're referring to, the main reason it works is because the 'all hope is lost' moment that preceeds it is so powerful. It could be argued that it is a cliche - and watching it I did feel it felt a wee bit sudden - but the sense of relief I felt as a result overwrote the laziness of the resolution.

There is the argument that some cliches work when used well, and their effectiveness in one or two examples is what made them so popular in the first place. The nature fights back works extremely well with a very literal deus ex machina in

Princess Mononoke

, for example. It all depends how invested you are in the film in the first place. Going back to

Toy Story 3

I was willing to forgive a few contrivances because I was so engaged by the characters and story. In other films, the cliches are more noticeable because you weren't really enjoying it in the first place. The very worst kind though, are ones that render a previously interesting film much less interesting.

conorhal

I can't remember the number of essay's I used to write in English class in primary school that ended with the line "...and then I woke up, and it was all a dream!"
Why have so many screenwriters never progressed beyond primary school plotting is beyond me.
I absolutely loathe the stock 'get out of a plot cul-de-sac clause' that is the use of any of the following cliché’s to wrap up a story:
'it was all a dream' or 'he was dead all along' or 'turns out the murderer was his schizoid other personality' or 'he's actually in an asylum as an inmate'.
Basically any movie that has an underdeveloped and ludicrous plot twist based on subverting your perception of everything that you have invested the past two hours of your life watching, thus completely invalidating them.

It's Lazy. lazy, lazy writing. There are a few exceptions like

Fight Club or even The 6th Sense

, which managed to organically weave the twist into the plot, while other like

Shutter Island

it just infuriate me.

Busi_Girl08

^

Boxing Helena

FTW.

Brendog

LittleBook wrote: »

My Dad watched Taken last night (for some reason) and he mentioned one of my favourites ... that the "good guy" with one gun makes a kill with every bullet but the "bad guy", who invariably carries a small arsenal, couldn't hit water if he fell out of a boat!

Personally, as a woman, I hate the way that female characters are addicted to shoes and ice cream, wear shorts when exploring jungles while everyone else is in trousers, can't run 10 yards without falling over something and invariably end up being saved by a guy.

Its also fun to notice that "The Good Guy" kills x10 amount of people that "The Bad Guy" kills.

In all action films the bad guy will kill one hostage. The good guy will kill, mutilate, decapitate all the bad guys. Then say some cheesy line like, "Talk about murder on the dance floor".

Basic psychology rates someone like this as a sadistic sociopath. Someone who enjoys pain brought on himself and others....



Hollywood directors use clever cinemamatic techniques to cover this up, such as, having aliens for baddies or casting a German.

LittleBook

conorhal wrote: »

I can't remember the number of essay's I used to write in English class in primary school that ended with the line "...and then I woke up, and it was all a dream!"
Why have so many screenwriters never progressed beyond primary school plotting is beyond me.
I absolutely loathe the stock 'get out of a plot cul-de-sac clause' that is the use of any of the following cliché’s to wrap up a story:
'it was all a dream' or 'he was dead all along' or 'turns out the murderer was his schizoid other personality' or 'he's actually in an asylum as an inmate'.
Basically any movie that has an underdeveloped and ludicrous plot twist based on subverting your perception of everything that you have invested the past two hours of your life watching, thus completely invalidating them.

And again parodied in Adaptation ... "Find an ending, but don't cheat, and don't you dare bring in a deus ex machina" ... cue crocodile :pac:

conorhal

LittleBook wrote: »

And again parodied in Adaptation ... "Find an ending, but don't cheat, and don't you dare bring in a deus ex machina" ... cue crocodile :pac:

:pac:

I was actually thinking of that scene while I was typing, the look of embarrased shame on Cage's face when his 'clever ideas' crumble in that writing class scene was priceless!

Penn

Or sports films. Only 10 seconds left on the clock.... Down by one goal/point.... Let's pass it to the worst guy on the team because nobody will think we'd be stupid enough to do that and let's just pray he doesn't mess up, because even though he tries hard and loves the sport, he's just really bad at it. Which doesn't say a lot for us because we must suck if he managed to get on the team in the first place

krudler

paddyirishman85 wrote: »

Or sports films. Only 10 seconds left on the clock.... Down by one goal/point.... Let's pass it to the worst guy on the team because nobody will think we'd be stupid enough to do that and let's just pray he doesn't mess up, because even though he tries hard and loves the sport, he's just really bad at it. Which doesn't say a lot for us because we must suck if he managed to get on the team in the first place

And you must have a rousing half time/last time out speech. Although Any Given Sunday and Friday Night Lights are exceptions to this, because they're great