Movie Cliches We Love and Hate

[Brynnie-chan]

Sorry if this has been posted several times before, but I try not to resurrect dead threads. I reincarnate them instead.

So, I looked around on Google for a particular cliche I love, but everyone else thinks of something different. The scene I love that is reused throughout movies is this:

The hero has either (a) almost won or (b) just figured out the bad guy's nefarious scheme in an M. Night Shyamalan-style twist. In the middle of some dark place, or just offstage, we suddenly hear a slow, condescending clap. The camera pans over to the bad guy, who congratulates the hero in a voice dripping with sarcasm. This, of course, is followed by some banter and the big fight.

It's so classic, and it's used less and less nowadays. It's like all the scheming, cunning bad guys stopped with the James Bond movies. The last time I saw a scene even remotely like this was in the Spongebob movie. So sad...

And now for a cliche I hate!

I think everyone hates this one. At the end of some cheesy kids' movie, at the feel-good ending part, some piece of slapstick happens, or someone cracks a dumb joke, and they all crack up like the guy invented funny. That scene, to be blunt, always makes me feel like banging my head on a brick wall. TAKE IT OUT OF THE CLICHE VAULT AND BURN IT.

[McDuffies]

I actually like the dumb joke at the end cliche. But I like trash, and to me, authors tripping over an attempt to close the curtain with a laugh, is pretty much like when some people laugh when they see someone fall.

But most of cliches I can think of, I hate.
I hate when the plot depends on a bomb with a digital clock being stopped at the last second.
I hate when a hero has to fight some very large bully and, after failling to do it phisically, he electrocutes him. As if electrocuting someone is the only way of outwitting them.
I hate it when bad films try to be better by making it aware how bad they are. When they make a joke about their own cliches. Like when two people are trying to stop the bomb, and have to cut just one wire, but argue about which colour it is. At first it was supposed to be a gag about how easily bombs are easily stopped in movies, but the joke is so overused that it's the cliche on it's own now. Also when horror movies make references to the old cliches, how only virgins stay alive to the end of the film or how hero returns to check if the dead guy is really dead, but he isn't - and how these films in the end still go through the same cliches they mocked.
I hate false scares, when a cat runs out and scares a guy, so that the real threat comes unsuspected. That system stopped working long ago, now when we see a can in the horror movie, we know that the villain will be there in a second too. There are other ways to scare someone, it's just that director has to have some actual skill for that.
I get that some genre films skew reality, like, in an action film or adventure physics of it don't always have to be realistic. But I hate it when they're making supposedly a gritty, realistic film, street-life or political or whatnot, and still characters fall through glass panes and fly away in slow-motion when they're hit by bullets. In fact, I hate it when they're making a supposedly dramatic film, that in the end boils down to action, to car chase or whatever.

[Killbert-Robby]

Dislike : If you're on the American side, you win the movie.

[Mr.GtF]

I really hate it when during a 'family' film or film aimed at a younger audience the writer feels the need to insert a bit of toilet humour for cheap laughs. It's like they consider all the children in the audience to be idiots incapable of understanding even simple jokes and so rely on the bumbling (usually rotund) sidekick to spontaneously fart or belch. I'm not condemning every instance of a noisy outburst of bodily gasses or whatever, because the young 'uns do get a little giggle out of it (I mean who doesn't like a good fart joke now and again eh?) but please just not at every slow moment!

I'm still dead inside from 'Thunderpants.'

[IVstudios]

I hate how in most fantasy movies you can tell if a character is good or evil based on what race they are. Orcs, Goblins and Trolls = Evil. Elves, Hobbits/halflings, and fairies = Good. In fact, it mostly boils down to Ugly=Evil, Beautiful=Good with the occasional exception of the beautiful but evil (and of course, vain) queen.

I also hate the Cliché of using a Fart in place of an actual joke. Farts are not funny to anyone over age 7. At least not anyone smart.
Edit:

I really hate it when during a 'family' film or film aimed at a younger audience the writer feels the need to insert a bit of toilet humour for cheap laughs.

Beat me too it.

I do enjoy the cliché of the everyday guy in crazy situation, as long as it is a convincing "everyday" guy and not the annoying Hollywood idea of "everyday" guy, which is uptight, slightly-nerdy, 40-something middle management white guy in a suite and tie that "thinks he's 'hip' but he's not." Not that those people don't exist, but there are a lot of other kinds of "everyday" people out there.

[EvilChihuahua]

A recent trend in films which I hate is the ragtag team of misunderstood kids, who work their hardest to overcome their problems and win the championship....

...and then LOSE. But hey, they learned a lot about themselves.

I always feel cheated by that ending. Sure it's more realistic, but If I want to try really hard at something and then lose to someone who was born with more talent than me, I'll go play real sports. I watch movies for the sake of escapism, not to relive all of my failures.

[Yeahduff]

Uh, definitely not cliche, and is definitely better than the cliche of winning at the buzzer. Man, all the hoops The Waterboy had to jump through to get to that mediocre ending. Of course, the rest of it sucked too, so...

[Prettysenshi]

I hate talking animal sidekicks.

The wisecrackin sidekick who doesn't do anything worth while, but gets the girls (usually played by a black actor ie Rush Hour, that crappy movie with Eddie Murphy and Owen Wilson, etc)

The loser getting the girl at the end, despite still being a loser.

Black "street" films with the thug now caring father trying to avenge whatever and to do so, he has to turn "gangsta" again. Load of crap.

Fart jokes. I mean c'mon. That gets old at 13.

Anything that comes from the people who brought you Scary/Date/Teen Movie.

Torture porn movies.

Final Fantasy Plots in movies, where the person you think is the bad guy actually isn't the bad guy, but just a pawn of the REAL BAD GUY, who's uber powerful and predicatble as well.

When your loved one in the film is dying and you want to say that you love them but they don't get the chance to say that they love you back. Like, would it kill you to let them have that last moment? Geez. The inner chick flick fan in me hates that.

[Shishio]

Like, would it kill you to let them have that last moment? Geez. The inner chick flick fan in me hates that.

Yes.

EVERYONE MUST SUFFER.

[Princess]

How shopping bags always have a french bread stick and a stalk of celery in them.

[Cope]

Soppy deathbed speeches! Every movie death should involve getting shot in the head just to avoid this.

[Jesusabdullah]

The rag-tag team of misunderstood kids cliche is probably my favorite, especially when each kid has a whacky yet totally stereotypical skill! Though, it doesn't necessarily have to be kids. The clapping villain cliche from the OP is pretty awesome too. Having the two meet (having the villain applaud the futile actions of the rag-tag team of misunderstood kids) would be simply epic.

The cliche I totally hate is the "unlikely partners" cliche. Think Christ Tucker and Jackie Chan in Rush Hour, or Owen Wilson and , erm, Jackie Chan, in Shanghai Noon (This makes me wonder if it's just a phenomenon of later Jackie Chan movies ). They're the ones where the partners are stuck together, and they totally don't understand each other's cultures or ways of doing things, but! After a bunch of hilarious hijinks, they finally learn to Work Together and bring down the bad guy in a climatic final battle! *ugh*

I wonder why I like the rag-tag team but not the unlikely partners? Probably because their disagreements are over differences in stereotypes (for example, the "what's up mah nigga" scene in Rush Hour).

[McDuffies]

I really hate it when during a 'family' film or film aimed at a younger audience the writer feels the need to insert a bit of toilet humour for cheap laughs. It's like they consider all the children in the audience to be idiots incapable of understanding even simple jokes and so rely on the bumbling (usually rotund) sidekick to spontaneously fart or belch.

I remember I noticed that first time while watching "Borrowers". There was a dog that ate only cheese and farted all the time, and I thought - gee, when we were kids, we had to watch films for older audience to get a glimpse of scatology.

A recent trend in films which I hate is the ragtag team of misunderstood kids, who work their hardest to overcome their problems and win the championship....

...and then LOSE. But hey, they learned a lot about themselves.

One cliche replaces the other, I guess, and it takes about twenty years too realise that one's got old too.
But "Cool Runnings" was kind of nice 'cause that was based on a true story and that's how it really ends. I'm sure some smartass Hollywood producer wouldn't hestitate to turn the sport history around, because sad endings don't sell too well.

I hate talking animal sidekicks.

The wisecrackin sidekick who doesn't do anything worth while, but gets the girls (usually played by a black actor ie Rush Hour, that crappy movie with Eddie Murphy and Owen Wilson, etc)

Funny how at one time, hero was always synchronized by a white actor, and little, annoying sidekick was always, without exception, a black actor, whether it made any sence (wtf? chinese dragon talks like a rap musitian?) or not.
Then ther turned it around in "Over the hedge" and made the main character synchronized by a black actor and little, annoying sidekick a white actor. I guess that was their idea of extreme originality.

celery

Yes. celery in a bag and no pants down! What's a matter with that? That's just plain disregarding common laws of physics!

[Princess]

Yes. celery in a bag and no pants down! What's a matter with that? That's just plain disregarding common laws of physics!

I am mystified

[MixedMyth]

Dislike : If you're on the American side, you win the movie.

You mean this isn't true to life?
*surveys past 40 years of American history*
Oh...well then. Carry on.

[Prettysenshi]

Like, would it kill you to let them have that last moment? Geez. The inner chick flick fan in me hates that.

Yes.

EVERYONE MUST SUFFER.

/me watches the Notebook

Damn straight, Shishio

[IVstudios]

Then ther turned it around in "Over the hedge" and made the main character synchronized by a black actor and little, annoying sidekick a white actor. I guess that was their idea of extreme originality.

... What? The only black actor/actress in that movie was Wanda Sykes, and she wasn't the 'main' character.

[Joel Fagin]

A tired old cliche we all hate?

George Lucas.

- Joel Fagin

[Nanda]

Then ther turned it around in "Over the hedge" and made the main character synchronized by a black actor and little, annoying sidekick a white actor. I guess that was their idea of extreme originality.

... What? The only black actor/actress in that movie was Wanda Sykes, and she wasn't the 'main' character.

McDuffies thinks Bruce Willis is Black!

[RobertBlake]

This whole trend of reviving stuff from the 80s in order to make a few more bucks off the franchise. In short, Hollywood raping my childhood.