1) How, in every gun fight, the villain / the hired bad guys can't seem to hit their target at all even though they have highlighted earlier how good & how many people they have to kill the hero(s) whereas the hero(s) find themselves in a position with only 1 shot left, tries something risky and with very little / no chance of being successful but successfully kills everyone.
2) In every American film that involves an English character, the English character always sounds too posh, whimpy and scared (Just look at the new Twisters film). Why is it that characteristics and stereotypes of other countries have been apologised for but they continue to do it with British people?
Most cringeworthy: when a villain has set the hero some kind of time-constrained task and finishes by saying "tick tock" in an ominous voice. So cheesy it is painful.
If you didn't have to suspend the feeling of disbelief you'd end up with some very short films otherwise.
As per every teens / 20s horror film where some ghoul / general menace picks them off one by one, having seen said group of hapless youths make absolutely bonkers decisions along the way.
People who hear noises in an isolated building at night and decide to investigate solo, armed only with a torch.
Son or daughter of FBI / Special Ops legend making a series of ridiculous decisions (‘Your mother has been kidnapped, stay indoors’. Two minutes later gets bored and decides to go clubbing in a seedy area of town) resulting in their capture by the key character’s nemesis (see Kim Bauer in 24)
People fighting outside in outer space before a spanner or suchlike pierces their spacesuit, resulting in an initial period of time where an oxygen percentage displayed on a screen drops really fast, before getting stuck on 2% for ages. All resolved when someone flies out of an airlock with some gaffer tape.
I hated Jeepers Creepers with a passion because of this. The main two characters get run off the road by a mysterious truck driven by a large shadowy figure. A bit down the road they see the truck parked off the road, and the large shadowy figure putting a body shaped package down a pipe. They then get chased by the large shadowy figure in his truck and get run off the road again.
So what do they do? Get to the nearest police/sheriff to report this? Even just take a different route and get the hell out of the area?
No, they head back to where they saw the large shadowy figure putting the body-shaped package into the pipe, to check it out.
As soon they made that decision the only motivation I had to continue watching was the hope both would die painfully.
It's not a plot thing, but something that annoys me in movies and TV: Actors drinking coffee from cups that clearly don't actually contain anything. It seems that being able to convincingly act like a cup contains something is the biggest acting challenge there is.
Here's one that is always dramatic (so I see why they do it) but makes no sense:
Hero is driving along on a main road, when he/she gets t-boned suddenly by a vehicle driven out of a side road. Again, it is always very dramatic, but timing that would almost be impossible in real life, even if you happened to know where the hero was going to drive so you could lie in wait. If you are parked up, there is no way you get up to speed, so how do they time it so perfectly?
I am obviously overthinking that one, and again, it does have dramatic effect, but it would be almost impossible to execute, let alone every other movie or TV show like it is an infallible move.
Furniture in the middle of rooms always gets me. And character delivering emotional monologue facing the camera but with back to other character. Because we all turn our back on someone if we have something important to say, right?
That's a good one. In a similar vein, characters will sometimes start a conversation about their emotional past by throwing out a random word to start the monologue.
"Sunset."
(Pause of five seconds while the other character looks appropriately attentive)
"It all started when we watched a sunset together, and I knew things would never be the same again."
Comments
Everything about Columbo.
You know who did it from the very beginning, watching Columbo plod through to reach the same conclusion is awful.
My annoyance with films are:
1) How, in every gun fight, the villain / the hired bad guys can't seem to hit their target at all even though they have highlighted earlier how good & how many people they have to kill the hero(s) whereas the hero(s) find themselves in a position with only 1 shot left, tries something risky and with very little / no chance of being successful but successfully kills everyone.
2) In every American film that involves an English character, the English character always sounds too posh, whimpy and scared (Just look at the new Twisters film). Why is it that characteristics and stereotypes of other countries have been apologised for but they continue to do it with British people?
Surely this is the opposite of the truth.
Most cringeworthy: when a villain has set the hero some kind of time-constrained task and finishes by saying "tick tock" in an ominous voice. So cheesy it is painful.
If you didn't have to suspend the feeling of disbelief you'd end up with some very short films otherwise.
As per every teens / 20s horror film where some ghoul / general menace picks them off one by one, having seen said group of hapless youths make absolutely bonkers decisions along the way.
People who hear noises in an isolated building at night and decide to investigate solo, armed only with a torch.
Son or daughter of FBI / Special Ops legend making a series of ridiculous decisions (‘Your mother has been kidnapped, stay indoors’. Two minutes later gets bored and decides to go clubbing in a seedy area of town) resulting in their capture by the key character’s nemesis (see Kim Bauer in 24)
People fighting outside in outer space before a spanner or suchlike pierces their spacesuit, resulting in an initial period of time where an oxygen percentage displayed on a screen drops really fast, before getting stuck on 2% for ages. All resolved when someone flies out of an airlock with some gaffer tape.
I hated Jeepers Creepers with a passion because of this. The main two characters get run off the road by a mysterious truck driven by a large shadowy figure. A bit down the road they see the truck parked off the road, and the large shadowy figure putting a body shaped package down a pipe. They then get chased by the large shadowy figure in his truck and get run off the road again.
So what do they do? Get to the nearest police/sheriff to report this? Even just take a different route and get the hell out of the area?
No, they head back to where they saw the large shadowy figure putting the body-shaped package into the pipe, to check it out.
As soon they made that decision the only motivation I had to continue watching was the hope both would die painfully.
It's not a plot thing, but something that annoys me in movies and TV: Actors drinking coffee from cups that clearly don't actually contain anything. It seems that being able to convincingly act like a cup contains something is the biggest acting challenge there is.
Brilliant! And I don't know why they don't just put water in the cups - or heck, coffee?
Here's one that is always dramatic (so I see why they do it) but makes no sense:
Hero is driving along on a main road, when he/she gets t-boned suddenly by a vehicle driven out of a side road. Again, it is always very dramatic, but timing that would almost be impossible in real life, even if you happened to know where the hero was going to drive so you could lie in wait. If you are parked up, there is no way you get up to speed, so how do they time it so perfectly?
I am obviously overthinking that one, and again, it does have dramatic effect, but it would be almost impossible to execute, let alone every other movie or TV show like it is an infallible move.
Furniture in the middle of rooms always gets me. And character delivering emotional monologue facing the camera but with back to other character. Because we all turn our back on someone if we have something important to say, right?
That's a good one. In a similar vein, characters will sometimes start a conversation about their emotional past by throwing out a random word to start the monologue.
"Sunset."
(Pause of five seconds while the other character looks appropriately attentive)
"It all started when we watched a sunset together, and I knew things would never be the same again."
They probably do at the start but by Take 326 nobody is probably bothered anymore
6 ft 6 , 20 stone man mountain gets knocked out by tiny Hero / Heroine (Tom Cruise) .