I’ll go first. Mine is the instant knockout drug. Like Dexter’s intramuscular injection that causes someone to immediately lose consciousness. Or in the movie Split where there’s the aerosol spray in your face that makes you instantly unconscious. Or pretty much any time someone uses chloroform.
Chefs and cooks scattering as a fight is taking place in the kitchen.
Good people listen: this is a small containment of probably tired, most likely angry, and definitely hungover professionals (armed with a variety of sharp, stabby instruments) that are working their ass off on deadlines… YOU DID NOT JUST KNOCK OVER MY TRAY OF 700 PETIT FOURS FOR TONIGHTS RECEPTION!!!
MOTHER! FUCKER! Would most likely be followed by a royal (icing) ass kicking.
Picking a lock with just one pick. That’s not how it works, you need one to apply a rotating force and another one to lift the individual pins. Sometimes shows even get it right in one season and then totally blow it in the next one.
Oxygen tanks are not bombs.
I think the worst example of this was a Robert Redford move I saw once where an oxygen tank was loaded in a tube, the stem was knocked off, and the tank flew into a guard tower and exploded like it was an RPG.
Grenades. A hand grenade has a kill radius of 5 meters and an injury radius of 15 meters. You’re not going to toss one around a corner and survive.
Eh, you are if you’re tossing it around a concrete wall. We tossed grenades into bunkers while laying half a foot from the opening when I was in the Army, and it was fine. You feel it, but you’re uninjured. Now if you mean something like a commercial office wall, then yes, you gonna die.
It’s Always Sunny makes a joke about this. They throw a grenade in a car, expecting it to be a huge awesome fiery explosion.
Instead, “poomf” and the car alarm and airbags go off with a little bit of smoke.
“That’s it? Well maybe the cops will think we just like, disintegrated or something I don’t know”
My pet peeve is that screenwriters, directors, and producers know and recognize even more tropes than we do. Somewhere along the line, things were rushed and/or lazy. Someone just said “aw, fuck it.”
If the filmmakers don’t give a shit about the final product, why should I?
Tropes are not something one should avoid at all times. Tropes are there because they work. It’s the lazy use of tropes as a crutch that is the problem.
It might not be fair to say they don’t give a shit. More often, I’ve found that productions simply hit a wall of time or money.
Just about anyone can write or edit a great story with enough time. But movies and shows are produced against a running clock, and they have obligations and limitations that go beyond the screenwriter’s imagination or the editor’s time. There are so many varied interests involved in a single production. Sometimes the issue is TOO many people giving a shit, and not being able to find a workable compromise in time.
Nonsensical or thoroughly debunked technobabble. The most annoying for me is faster than light communication via quantum entangled particles. Yes entangled particles will change each other’s state faster than light but this effect CANNOT be used to send information of any kind. At all. Ever. This has been known since engagement was first discovered but Hollywood is always like “I’m just going to ignore that second part.” I don’t even have anything against ftl comms or any other physics breaking things, just use an explanation that isn’t literally impossible and well known why it’s impossible for God’s sake.
As long as they pull a /r/VXJunkies:
Looking for a double-helix transistor to magnify your oblidisk? Want to discuss ballooning algorithms or Dormison’s Paradox? Ever wondered about Swedish teutonic logic commands, the Hans-Rodenheim Law of Vectoral Momentum, Fankel readings, Mornington axions, the Armistan Codex, Envels, or the newest breakthroughs in ion insulate module technology?
Or this Technobabble, I’m OK with it.
Video is a classic.
The comments going along with it as so good.
Why?
Better yet, don’t use an explanation at all!
If you establish something as just being part of your setting that is accepted by the characters in it like it’s no big deal, you can just move on with the actual plot. If it’s not actually going to be relevant to anything plot wise, don’t waste time with useless technobabble!
Slap a “Zephyr FTL Communications” logo on the side of the terminal and call it a day. The audience doesn’t always need to know how, just what. And show, don’t tell.
You can have a character exposition dump about a piece of tech that should be as normal to the other characters as a telephone (so why would anyone talk about it existing casually outside of very specific circumstances), or just… have the character use the damn thing and add a little splash screen on the device “Thank you for using Cisco Intergalactic FTL calls”.
The fat funny character.
The “I can fix them” love interest.
Any situation that could have been resolved with any modicum of healthy communication.
Superheroes that cause more damage to the place they’re trying to “save”.
Villains who vocally support some unconventional ideology but whose evil acts are actually not related to that ideology. For example, I like Bioshock but the moral lesson which the game tried to teach about libertarianism is undermined by the fact that any place where the entire population used drugs that turned them into homicidal maniacs would have problems.
(One could say “Everyone used the drugs because of libertarianism.” I don’t find that convincing. I think the drugs could have been incorporated equally plausibly into a story about any ideology.)
It’s been a minute, but I thought the audio logs showed that it was just people fucking each other over and doing morally shitty things WAY before everyone went crazy.
Also, the lack of regulation allowed the drugs to be created and allowed it to be distributed to the level that it was. You could come up with different methods for the same disaster, but that doesn’t undermine it. It still caused this disaster and was seemingly preventable.
Also, you could argue that absolutism is the real evil. I think in the second one they tackle socialism. I didn’t play much of it and the timeline in comparison to the original confuses me. Buy it kinda implies that going to the extreme with no safeguards is problematic.
The second one was even worse, IMO. It was so heavy-handed with its moral lessons. I suppose it’s not entirely unrealistic since many IRL socialist movements ended up horrible to the point of absurdity, but I was still rolling my eyes often when I played that game.
I agree that a good lesson would be that absolute certainty in any ideology is what leads to disaster but my impression is that that lesson is more sophisticated than what the developers had in mind.
Cutting or stabbing through full plate armor with a sword. Why would anyone wear an armor that is easily cut or stabbed through?!
In real life it’s more like going after a man sized can of tuna, with the bastard child of an axe, a hammer, and a crowbar.
That, or dagger in the gaps!
A lot of that sort of armor is more designed to deflect hits off of it. If someone can get a solid hit in, it’s possible to cut through it.
Which leads to another pet peeve of mine, which is armor that’s clearly designed in a way that it wouldn’t be good at deflecting hits. Particularly anything for women that has cups for the breasts.
Chain mail, maybe. Plate armour? Not a chance.
You had to go around the plates.
I don’t think cutting clean through chainmail is realistic - thrusting is very much so though!
An axe could presumably split into chainmail. Although I suppose it’s just as likely to just break whatever is behind it. It’s not a great armour for large blunt impacts.
Oh yeah, axe I can see. I was thinking swords.
Just like there were many forms of armour (plate was very expensive), there were many forms of hand weapons. And although the novels (3ven of the time) tended to romanticise the sword, it was mostly a secondary weapon, much like a handgun nowadays.
Well aware :) But since we werr talking movie tropes and swords, my mind was still there.
Would love to see some sources or testing that would supportnyour claim.
Star Trek is awful for this, but this conversation:
Subject Matter Expert: Oh no, the defences are down
Captain: How long do you need to fix them?
SME: Two hours
Captain: You have one
No, motherfucker, the person that you fucking PAY for their expertise on this very subject said it would take two hours!
Management is full of these cunts that think they can just dictate a timeline and have people that actually know their shit dance to their tune.
“Okay so the installer says it’s got nine minutes left, so this step should take about three or four minutes”
Honestly this happens a lot. Generally people give estimates reflecting other responsibilities when cutting time is possible
Cue Scotty, Mr “miracle worker”, quadrupling his estimates:
And later, Torres explicitely not doing that.
Hate to be that guy, but the federation exists in a post-money society. No one gets paid, they do what they do for prestige, pride, adventure, and the good of humanity. Maybe the management believe they can inspire their minions to do better, or maybe the SME’s are so used to that shit that they under promise and over deliver.
SME: “oh no, our defences are down” Captain: “How long do you need to fix them?” SME: (hmm, captain will cut the time in half, it takes about 15 minutes…fuck it…) “Two hours” Captain: “You have one” SME: (Like candy from a baby)
Scotty literally talks about under promising intentionally so he comes across as a miracle worker.
Software devs already do this IRL
But also if you know anything about engineering, it’s double your expected timeline just in case Shit Happens™️. I can fairly safely predict delivery in two hours. I might be able to deliver in one. Under-promise and over-deliver, or risk vice versa.
I always 7x. Especially if I’m dependent on others
When there’s a breakfast table full of food but the protagonist is running late so they only take a bite of toast and then leaves.
Yes, or people leaving a bar without finishing their drink. Like full glasses in front of them and they both stand up and leave without mentioning it.
The overloaded breakfast table is a trope so tired they were parodying it 30 years ago.
when they try to make you sympathize with an unredeemably evil character. like the mirror universe giorgieu in startrek discovery, who was literally “worse than hitler” but they decided they wanted upstanding dogooder characters to love her for some reason
Guns. Fuck me.
Guns don’t blow the user backwards, unless it’s a truly monster rifle fired from a standing position, and they certainly don’t blow the bullet recipient backwards. The first cowboy movies showed people dropping straight down when shot and audiences thought that unrealistic. Yes, that’s realistic and, I think, far more horrifying seeing someone’s strings cut. There’s a finality that showcases how deadly guns can be.
Rattly guns. Jesus. Guns don’t rattle you Nimrods. They might make tiny sounds here and there, but Hollywood guns sound like they left out some screws or pins after assembly. I have a Colt .45, a somewhat loosey-goosey design, can’t hardly get a sound even shaking the shit out of it. You can punt about any modern gun and not hear metal on metal.
Constantly cocking, racking, charging. Look! Here’s our super badass who’s been in danger the last 20-minutes, and he’s just now chambering a round?! Or, Mr. Badass has to charge his weapon, kicking out a perfectly good round, to show he means business! And if it didn’t eject an unspent round? Action hero was running around with an unloaded weapon. What’s funny is that a real badass would fire all but the last round and then swap magazines. No charging required! Yes, that’s way harder than it sounds.
I know very, very little about guns. If a mistake is bad enough for me to notice, it must be truly lazy and terrible writing/directing.
My pet peve is people who insist I know how to disassemble an M14 blindfolded before my opinion about shooting children is valid.
(I know how to unload most guns, which is the only useful thing to do with them)
We don’t have to know how to fly a plane to know flying one into the ground is bad technique.
Once the silencer is on nobody can hear the gunshot or the supersonic bullet or impact on a wall or the bloody wound. That John Wick scene was particularly bad.
Lazy villain characterization. Someone dresses in black or snarls a lot or is albino or has some physical marker that makes them different from others, therefore they are the villain.
It is almost impossible for a character in a Hollywood film to speak with a Slavic accent and smoke a cigarette without also being some sort of asshole.
I want villains with understandable goals. Evil for evil’s sake has struck me as stupid since adulthood.
That can be tricky, though. Done well and you get a villain like Gul Dukat. Done slightly less well, such as with Killmonger and the villains from both Incredibles movies, and you have to make them at least resort to “for the evulz” methods to prevent the audience from sympathizing with them, and even then you may be left with a broken Aesop at the end.
Meh, there are plenty of people in the real world who just want power and money for themselves, who will shit on anybody and anything to get it and teach others to hate on people for just being different in order to gain power. I don’t think it’s at all implausible that absurdly nasty and selfish people exist.
Thanos was a great villain by this standard. He had lived through the suffering and collapse of his homeworld due to overpopulation, so his motivations actually made sense.
Omg the Thanos thing drives me CRAZY and I don’t know why everyone else just gives it a pass.
There was no attempt at diplomacy with Thanos. If they just had a few diplomats talk about their needs, Thanos would have realized pretty quick that killing half of the humans wouldn’t be the best way to obtain his goal.
Here’s the proposition: how about you snap your fingers and make 99% of the population of overpopulated species sterile?
It would be wayyy more effective at meeting Thanos’ goal (of reducing suffering caused by overpopulation) and literally nobody has to die!
His plan was childishly idiotic which ruined any good will his motivation had
Funnily enough I watched Avengers yesterday and was reminded of the sheer stupidity of Thanos’ plan.
Kill half the living beings. Great. After a traumatic event, people typically nstart banging like bunnies and you’ll get a great amount of offspring and within 30 years things will be worse than before because of what you did.
Instead, bring the miracle of contraception and improve living standards for everyone and watch a miracle unfold with so much less resources required than maintaining huge armies to cause suffering
He could have just made half the people born ever again sterile
Idiotic, yeah, but at least it’s more thought out than “because fuck you, that’s why” which is all we get a lot of the time.
I would prefer an honest fuck you then an idea that doesn’t actually make sense and is pretty obviously flawed.
That’s not the taking into account hours much effort it took to pull off
“Here, I got you this gift.” Hands wrapped gift to the recipient. Recipient: “What is it?”
Motherfucker I swear every movie character does this. It’s like they’ve never received a gift before what the hell
I do this irl
When you do this, what do people say? Do they say “Open it!” or do they ever tell you what it is?
What is the point of wrapping the gift if you’re just going to tell the person what’s inside?
I don’t like the expectations around gifts in my culture, I don’t like surprises, i despise consumerism, I am a minimalist, and I don’t like gifts being wrapped. My friends know this.
Usually my response when someone hands me a wrapped gift is to frown and ask what it is and why they got it for me. The feeling is usually “damn it. How many wage slaves suffered for this thing?” And “ugh, now I have something else that I have to lug around and figure out how to find it a new home where it won’t end up in a landfill”
If they want to give me something nice (eg cook me dinner or hand me a flower), its appreciated. But not on some strange cultural expectation or wrapped in a dead tree or uncompostable plastic single use trash.
I think your writers are on strike
