Cliches that you hate with a passion.

[lightningmagurn]

I hate when the amateurs or rebels or underdogs beat the well trained, well funded, well disciplined and well armed cops/storm troopers/SWAT/Soldier types for no good reason. Or when movies so clearly fail to hire a military or police adviser. 9 times out of 10 any competent fighting force would, or does, have a plan to overcome the scenario that the director has concocted, and it would cut out the poorly done fight scenes. I watched Red State last night, and this happened, kinda.
I also hate the "Disposable gun" style of armory. When they have about a hundred guns, a loaded magazine in each one, a round in the chamber, and no spare mags, boxed rounds, speed loaders, pouches, vest, anything. They grab a weapon, shoot it till it's dry, and then get another. The matrix does this worst, but many movies are guilty.
It's not really a cliche, but when people in movies never maintain their weapons, and when they clearly don't know how to hold/operate them.

 

[Smeggs]

I believe there's a TV Trope for it...

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ThemeMusicPowerUp

Pretty much any anime I've ever watched has this at one point or another unless the characters were already super-powered ass-kickers (DBZ). Gurren Laggan has to be the worst of the bunch, whenever ROW ROW FIGHT DA POWAH would play it eventually made me roll my eyes, not helped by the fact they repeatedly yelled their "WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK I AM!?"

Also there's the power of friendship conquers all shit. Main character getting their ass kicked, then some crazy shit like hallucinations of their friends start popping up around them or through some form of magic they can hear their friend's voices, and suddenly they gain superior strength over the evil guy who was whupping their ass a minute ago? I'm sorry, but logic dictates that if you were just getting schooled, having someone to fight for is not going to suddenly make you the superior warrior. I bet there's a trope for that too but I have no idea what it'd be called.

 

[MegaManOfNumbers]

"We can't kill him, then we're no better than they are!"

Your right. The only exception I believe is Batman, Seeing that he really is one step away from being as psychotic as his enemies.

I'd say.... Harems.

HOW THE FLYING.... Sorry, too loud.

*ahem*

How the flying fuck does that even begin to make sense, I have a relatively- er, functional social life and I can say no man or woman can be attractive to swoon more than 2 people at the very MOST. Also, Evil antagonists.

For Christ's sake, no one is evil or good. We just hate each other. Designating someone as evil and another as good is not good storytelling, it is bad.

Antagonists aren't evil, just disillusioned, dictatorial, obsessive, fucking insane, manipulative, etc., or a mix of multiple traits.

Hell, that antagonist might be the guy doing the right thing! It's not that hard to make a non-cliche antagonist. Now a good story line, that's an ENTIRELY different subject.....

 

[Smeggs]

I hate the cop-out "It was all a dream" ending. It might have been clever the first time someone did it, but after that, it got old.
Besides, it essentially makes everything you just watched/read/played absolutely worthless.
You didn't just experience an epic quest of hardship and victory, you just experienced the thoughts of a sleeping person.

That is called a St. Elsewhere. Go the whole time then find out it was all a dream or some sort of mental breakdown.

 

[Hazy]

"We can't kill him, then we're no better than they are!"

Your right. The only exception I believe is Batman, Seeing that he really is one step away from being as psychotic as his enemies.

I can forgive Batman because he's a true hero. To him, the act of taking a life is directly against his views and moral code. It's written into his character.

I'm talking about the stupid shit like Ezio pulled in the end of Assassin's Creed II.

 

[Smeggs]

"We can't kill him, then we're no better than they are!"

Your right. The only exception I believe is Batman, Seeing that he really is one step away from being as psychotic as his enemies.

I can forgive Batman because he's a true hero. To him, the act of taking a life is directly against his views and moral code. It's written into his character.

I'm talking about the stupid shit like Ezio pulled in the end of Assassin's Creed II.

I liked how it worked in Saboteur. If you don't shoot the guy at the end he jumps off the tower himself xD

 

[Christian Amado]

Weird endings that are deliberately incomprehensible also tend to show up a bit to much in anime/video games. It's one thing if I need to rewatch it with new perspective but when I need some guide book to get it that's just bad writing.

 

[breadsammich]

Hmm. We're looking for something incredibly dangerous that has already murdered half of us and scattered their entrails about the place... I know! Let's split up to look for it! I'm sure nothing horrendously gruesome will happen to the guy that we've all been saying was going to die from the start.

"Oh, it IS an axe murderer...haha... Guys, you were right! It was an axe murderer!"

*thwack*

 

[Alaster Angelo]

Those silly faces anime/manga characters make, they just... bug me. Is it so hard to actually draw an actual facial expression?

 

[Skoldpadda]

A sequel or prequel uses a well known line just so fans can go "aahh awesome! a shout out to the series, coooolzzz." It has really started bugging me ever since I saw Rise of The Planet of The Apes.

Yes yes yes!

I saw this most recently on the Star Trek remake. The "Dammit, Jim!" line was forced and cheesy as fuck. There was so much cringing, it hurt my sphincter.

It's used to FANTASTIC effect in this scene though ^^
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1x-ATlpqo1M
But that falls under parody, so that's ok, just wanted to post it.

Ok, anyway. The clichés that bother me most are:

- (videogames) "You have to get x things, or go to y places to be able to go to the final showdown." I know it has its place, it tries to strike a balance between non-linearity and still keeping some kind of story structure, but after a while, it gets grating, and I start to wish they try another way of doing things. Bioware is particularly guilty of this (Jade Empire struck a good balance though.).

- (videogames) "You can do anything! How cool is that?! This way, we can avoid writing a decent story, and get away with it." The sandbox game. I wouldn't mind it, if it weren't so much of A Thing these days. The scarcity of good storytelling makes us reward mediocrity, and I haven't seen a really good storyline in ages. And if there is, it sacrifices gameplay to such a degree you wish they'd made a movie instead.

- (detective stories) "The guy that got two seconds screentime, and one line, within the first ten minutes/pages, did it." You know, the guy you'd least expect. After a while, the guy you'd least expect, becomes the guy you'd expect first, and the whole intrigue is pointless from the start. You'll ignore it, and just wait on the deus ex machina that solves the whole thing. Because it's almost never a clue that was there in the first half of the story. Suddenly it's there and the mystery unraveled.

- (music) Those end-of-year-lists on the radio. There's a "Timeless 100" list on a popular, so called "alternative" ,radiostation, where I live, that does one of these every year. Everyone I know listens to it. I can't stomach it anymore. These "Timeless 100" are only "timeless" because they keep force feeding that shit to us. It's a whole afternoon and half an evening of the worst music that has ever been heard since the cataclysm that killed the dinosaurs. You know, maybe they all killed themselves to Europe's fucking Final Countdown.

 

[Promethax]

"Peace is ALWAYS the answer."

or

"Any evil can be talked to and reasoned with."

THATS NOT HOW THINGS WORK, DAMMIT!

 

[Samus Aran but a man]

The hero and heroine are about to kiss. Their lips are a quarter of an inch apart?but then they're interrupted.

 

[Nouw]

"Oh no, the villain is about to attack me! Oh shit, I just tripped. I guess crawling away will do the trick!"

Whenever someone falls in a horror film, they lose their fucking legs. Stand up!

 

[twistedmic]

I don't know if this has been mentioned yet, but I'll say one that I hate. I hate it when people in a horror/slasher flick grab a weapon and only hit the killer/monster once then run away only to have the killer/monster get back up and resume chasing them. The original Friday the Thirteenth was the worst offender that I have seen.

 

[Arina Love]

muscular "badass" men like in gears of war god of war and pretty much every action game, it's truly annoying and i'm to tired of those. How about developers grow some balls and create strong woman character for once. lol as you can see i'm FemShep and Lightning supporter!

 

[DementedSheep]

But there so many to chose from

***** female side kick (who is often set up as a ?touch chick?) who in practice actually just makes things worse and needs to be rescued all the time. Also her attitude is just a defence mechanism because someone hurt her in the past. She is really a fragile flower and just afraid.

?I love you but I?ll only hurt you!? and angsting about being a ?monster?

The loud, hyperactive, adolescent, out to prove themselves protagonist.

Hero figures out some emotional scar the antagonist has and then upon revelling this knowledge the antagonist will cry, decide what they are doing is wrong and probably sacrifice themselves to fix things.

Amnesia or memory regression causing them to forget something important that happened in the past and will be the key to figuring out what is going on.

Love conquers all

The group of misfits who were kind of just thrown together and have only really got into whatever it is a couple of months ago taking out the guys who have be training and working hard at it for years.

The handsome asshole with a dark past that pre teen girls seem to gush over.

?There is no way they could have survived so we should just leave without checking?

The very serious honourable Asian who fights with a sword.

?Oh no they couldn?t possibly have survived! Wait what?s that? A silhouette of person limping towards us holding their side? It?s them, their alive!?

"We can't kill him, then we're no better than they are!"

This^
Especially since the hero has usually been mowing down henchman but for some reason has moral qualms about killing the big bad.

 

[Singularly Datarific]

"The misunderstanding" part

Listen up, movie characters: if you're clearly in love to the stupid gushy point of there being a movie about it, a misunderstanding is not going to hurt it too bad. If it does, you're being shallow and stupid and you don't trust each other so there's no point in making a movie about a romance like that.

 

[Suijen]

"We can't kill him, then we're no better than they are!"

"So I'll let him go to prison, where he'll escape and kill thousands, and then the cycle continues my having a guiltfree conscience > hundreds dying".

The obligatory love interest.

I would like to see a movie in which the lead guy and lead girl are just good friends.

And lastly, I hate it when a helpless pretty girl is running away from an enemy only to trip on a rock. This happened at least 10 times in Inuyasha, and made me want to strangle her. "WOMAN! You are entering a land of demons and danger! Don't you think you should wear more than a school girl hentai outfit?!"

 

[Vault101]

"We can't kill him, then we're no better than they are!"

Your right. The only exception I believe is Batman, Seeing that he really is one step away from being as psychotic as his enemies.

I can forgive Batman because he's a true hero. To him, the act of taking a life is directly against his views and moral code. It's written into his character.

I'm talking about the stupid shit like Ezio pulled in the end of Assassin's Creed II.

which is kind of weird...because it really (really) didnt pay off at the end

-that america is the centre of the universe an american ausdiences cant process somthing in their little brains if its not american enough...for example upon hearing the the "kid that dies" in MW is an american tourist...in london, that actually shocked and offended me more than the fact that the kid dies

-the guy has to bregrudgingly watch a romcom while the female tears up and crys...seriously girls can heve taste in movies too

-the Ideal man is some bland mussclebound asshole who whines at anything offending his masculinity

-if you are single you are NOTHING

-you are SPECIAL, you dont have to train for years or work really hard...you can do cool shit because you were born into it....granted I can accept this if its done well (harry potter) though thats a little complaint I have with Desmond from assasins creed

what if you had a movie (more action I guess)..where there are two charachters...a main one and a sidekick...except they are BOTH female...amazing right? I dont know of many, because its like females are the "exception" to the "norm" of males

why I like dragon age and mass effect and fallout NV, you can totally do that