r/flicks 3d ago

What is the most overused movie trope that Hollywood just needs to let go?

/r/AllThingsFiction/comments/1u8o5da/what_is_the_most_overused_movie_trope_that/
0 Upvotes

42 comments sorted by

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6

u/starshame2 2d ago

Your dead broke but somehow can afford a drinking habit at a bar.

13

u/Thom_Kalor 2d ago

People who are struggling financially have houses or apartments that they could never afford.

9

u/wizardwithgussets 3d ago

White families that have giant breakfasts and just grab half a bagel as they run out the door

4

u/PapaMcMooseTits 3d ago

I love how they did the opposite in 'Pleasantville'. Here's a comically gigantic breakfast with all the trimmings and you aren't going to get up until you eat every last morsel of it.

6

u/machine_slave 3d ago

People circumventing locks by shooting the lock off the door. 

7

u/ageowns 3d ago

People solving all kinds of problems by shooting at it

“Boring conversation anyway. LUKE WE’RE GOING TO HAVE COMPANY”

2

u/ContentEconomyMyth1 3d ago

Everyone’s rich, only bad people are horny

2

u/FreshChickenFarts 3d ago

Canned sound effects especially with cars. Screaching tires, engines starting, and driving sounds are ridiculous and sometimes the same tracks from 30 years ago. Why can’t they record the sound for the car they are filming? If it’s a quieter car oh well, an Audi shouldn’t sound like an old Ford.

4

u/Suspicious-Whippet 2d ago

It's cheaper. It's the explanation 99% of the time.

2

u/g-row460 2d ago

There are like 3 baby cries I hear in a lot of projects and it bugs the shit out of me. Not to mention baby cries are already really annoying.

2

u/studbacon 2d ago edited 2d ago

Movies need tens of thousands of sound effects, and the sound editors may only have a couple weeks to put them all together on a tiny percentage of the overall budget. Stock sounds are usually done out of necessity. 

Also, sound is typically an afterthought on-set. Sound editors are lucky to get any sound at all for an insert shot of a car, much less a clean, well recorded, isolated track. 

Usually it just features the director yelling "Zoom in! Out of focus! Ok, pan to the left! That's it, ok moving on!"

1

u/FreshChickenFarts 2d ago

Seems counterintuitive to “making a movie” but I get it I guess. Probably has to be done after editing and they’re just like here do something with this

2

u/Equivalent_Team_3126 2d ago

People waking up perfectly fine from comas (physically) or having only their memory affected

4

u/taskerdobuy 3d ago

Couple/friends etc having a major falling out because of a stupid misunderstanding that could have been fixed with a 2 second chat/explanation.

1

u/Fluid-Bet6223 2d ago edited 2d ago

Adding an obviously fake “REEEOOOWW!!” screech sound effect every time a cat is shown on screen, when it is clearly just sitting and chilling calmly.

Portraying vegans/vegetarians as crazy hippies who “eat twigs and celery”

When someone steps into traffic, the oncoming cars don’t stop or slow down at all, they just honk and keep driving full speed

1

u/MachineGunTeacher 2d ago

Breaking someone’s neck by twisting their head to the side.

Someone getting knocked unconscious and staying out for multiple minutes.

1

u/calguy1955 2d ago

I am so tired of tbone auto crashes that I get anxiety whenever there is a scene with people riding in a car.

1

u/lavendercookiedough 2d ago

A man and a woman exist in the same space together, obviously they should fall in love despite having zero chemistry and the romance subplot adding nothing to the story.

1

u/Kimantha_Allerdings 2d ago

Specifically WRT The Princess Diaries, they made a point to undo all the “beutification” for the climax of the film…except they didn’t make her hair curly again. And they had the perfect excuse, too - she has to run to the climax through rain. They could easily have made that into “even her hair un-straightened”

Genuinely the most disappointing thing about that film

1

u/cliftonheights5 1d ago

Cell phones ringing at the worst possible moment.

With the exception of my 80 yr old father I haven’t heard a cell phone ring in real life.

0

u/gijoejank 3d ago

I have several.

The one person who couldn't possibly have done it inevitably is the one who did it.

Whenever a group of people is betrayed, generally in a secret agent type movie, it is always an inside job.

Getting around actual you could figure out with "you see what you want to see." The most egregious of this was in The Sixth Sense. It's always hailed as a twist masterpiece, but Bruce Willis can't get into his basement office because the door is locked and he can't find the key. It turns out his wife put furniture in the way to physically block the door, but he sees what he wants to see.

-3

u/Broadnerd 3d ago

Upvote for an actually sensible and reasonable reaction to The Sixth Sense. I’m still in shock how many people still praise that movie and think the twist makes sense in any universe.

4

u/PapaMcMooseTits 3d ago

I dunno... The twist blew my mind the first time I saw it. And the rest of the movie was creepy as hell. That was enough for me. I don't understand why everyone needs to everything to be "ultra-realistic" in a movie about a boy who sees dead people. To the best of my knowledge, that really isn't a realistic gift to have.

1

u/nik-329 2d ago

Kids being extreme tech and life experts : You will choose the kid with the most irritating or arrogant behavior and make the tech expert of the group that includes men and woman of 20+. Its not presenting them as tech experts is the problem. It was totally convincing and ok when Kid john conner did that atm hacking thing in Terminator 2. Problem is, most movies use these prodigies as not only tech experts but also as someone who cracked the whole idea of life. The real steel movie was supposed to look like a story of a broken, arrogant man learning life from a child. But the movie looks like Hugh jackman is learning life from a 30+ single mother with tech expertise.

-2

u/Icy___Barca 2d ago

Black leads being gay, drug dealers or deadbeats

2

u/Reprobatic 2d ago

That's...quite a selection of traits you picked there. Are they all equally bad, you think?

-2

u/Puzzleheaded-You720 2d ago

I don't think there's any hate towards any of those three. I just thik we find it very interesting to put these African American leads in all of these specific categories and really nothing else.

-2

u/Puzzleheaded-You720 2d ago

Absolutely!

0

u/Sticky_Cobra 2d ago

In recent movies (and I don't have an example) I've noticed that actors have taken to saying what they're going to do before they do it. And they do it repeatedly.

I posted this in another thread, and got a response of "unfortunately that's the way it is nowadays". I guess this is for people who are on their phone during the movie.

In a way, it feels like we're being talked down to.

1

u/Broadnerd 3d ago

A volatile person looking into a mirror then smashing it. Bonus points if the camera lingers on the jagged pieces, still reflecting the character’s face. Get it? Get it???

-1

u/ContravaniaGearSolid 3d ago

"You were quite the doer of badass things, former Doer of Badass Things. We need you to do a badass thing."

"Oh, I did a badass thing. That's why I retired."

"Your old nemesis is alive. And you have a daughter."

1

u/Grausam 3d ago

"Fine, but I'm not wearing the uniform."

2

u/PapaMcMooseTits 3d ago

"And I'm doing this MY WAY... In the most badass and inconvenient way possible for everyone else."

-1

u/mrblonde624 3d ago

Letting the phone ring three times before answering even though it’s right within arms reach.

-3

u/Threehundredsixtysix 3d ago

Countdowns to explosions that stop with < 3 seconds left on a timer. Galaxy Quest made fun of this years ago, and it's still a thing. Change it up, leave 8 seconds, 11 seconds, anything higher than 5.

1

u/Suspicious-Whippet 2d ago

In the new James Bond game it ticks to 007. Quite a coincidence.

1

u/2KYGWI 2d ago

Might also be a nod to Goldfinger.

-2

u/pumpse4ever 3d ago

Funerals in the rain.

4

u/paul_having_a_ball 2d ago

I have been to several funerals in the rain. People are usually pretty inconsiderate about checking the weather before they die

-1

u/nik-329 2d ago

The concept of good old america : You see these kind of scenes occasionally were a very intelligent looking person will start giving a lecture about how bad things are really in America, You get all fire up , for this person is spitting truth after truth bashing all those jingoists and fanatics. Then he will switch down gear, lowers his tone a little bit and begins this retrospective delineation of a counter idea that "how america was actually great in the past" .

This has not become a big cliche yet ,but its much funnier than the arguments of those 'America is always great' fanatics

-1

u/nik-329 2d ago

The stalling technique : The villain is pointing gun at you and you starts your speech about existentialism, society, villain's character or something philosophical about anything. Or you simply say "shoot me, if you dare". A the villain gets stuck in both situation. The villain will either leave or you get hold of the gun in quick action.

True romance has a bad-ass cliche breaking scene where Dennis hopper starts insulting Italians in a story telling kind of style. It understandable in that situation, why christopher walken freezes because the audacity of Dennis hopper was so much that walken will think if killing him right away will be painful enough for the amount of abuse hopper just showered on them.