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.
“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
I think your writers are on strike
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.
Cliffhangers are getting out of control. It used to be that a movie or season would end by wrapping up the story and maybe throw a little teaser in at the end for next season. That’s fine. But it seems like now they just try to stretch out a story or plot for as long as humanly possible.
It has gotten to the point where I will not watch a show until I either know it doesn’t end in a major cliffhanger or the next season is being filmed. Not confirmed, but actively in production.
A good example is Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. I’m still mad about that ending, even more so with the next movie being delayed.
Not to mention that you really can’t trust the producers to provide a consistently good product. You create a cliffhanger for an otherwise good movie and the sequel just turns out to be garbage. If the show is garbage, at least have the decency to make it garbage from start to finish, Don’t betray long time fans.
Netflix reality competition shows are awful for this. Especially the Korean ones where they cut back to show like every single person’s reaction to the thing before either showing it or ending the episode.
I’m already watching this shit, you don’t have to manipulate me into continuing to watch it and dramatize every mundane thing. Or pad the time out.
Also Dan Brown.
Used right, it can be effective, but some shitty writers lean way to much on them.
Oh man, I was so disappointed with the show Siren: Survive the Island. I thought it had an awesome premise and was hopeful since it was Korean that it won’t be your typical “reality show manufacturer drama”. I was so disappointed.
Hard to be mad. It was sooo fucking good
I agree with you! Also unhappy to say that cliffhangers might get more common. Movie makers learn they get more sales / rentals / subscriptions with cliffhangers: because then you’re invested & curious & HAVE to see the next one :/ hate it, but that’s capitalism
When they are kissing right after waking up with that morning breath.
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”.
Not quite a pet peeve, but close. The whole “We’re not in a (movie/show/game/whatever)!” type of dialogue.
That, or cliffhangers that will never be resolved due to the show/movie either being cancelled, discontinued, whatever. Looking at you, Sliders season 5 ending!
I see Sliders mentioned, I cry.
Ever try holding your breath for as long as a TV or movie character is getting smothered to death? It’s not even uncomfortable.
YES, another one of mine. To be fair though, most TV shows and movies don’t have the time to dedicate to an actual strangling or suffocation. Those things take a while.
Funny story. I took my dad to Saving Private Ryan. After the movie was over and we’re walking away he turned to me and said…
“You know the actual D-Day took a lot longer than that.”
The comic relief only character.
No they’re not funny, you can’t write.That’s something I appreciated about the extended version of Lord of the Rings. Gimli was still used as comic relief a lot, but in the extended version he’s a fuller, more rounded out character. Better character development just made the comic relief bits funnier.
Cutting or stabbing through full plate armor with a sword. Why would anyone wear an armor that is easily cut or stabbed through?!
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.
Would love to see some sources or testing that would supportnyour claim.
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.
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!
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.
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”
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.
Die off-screen? Definitely alive and will show up the next act.
The problem with this one is that, as a reader/watcher/whatever, it affects your experience even when it doesn’t happen. I was so convinced that Dumbledore was alive at the end of book six. Fell off a balcony? Point of view character gets dragged to the infirmary so we can’t see what happens after that? There’s a phoenix, a bird associated with healing and rebirth, conspicuously singing? That guy is pulling a Gandalf in the next book for sure.
So I spent the whole next book waiting for the dramatic reveal that never came…
For that matter, when someone gets shot center mass and they collapse like Cypher just pulled them from the matrix
It’s preferable to people getting shot and flying across the room, like in a John Woo film.
Normalization of the protagonist using violence before any attempt of diplomacy, without the narrative condemning this action
You’ve clearly never been affected by an instant knock-out drug!
When the driver of a car is looking more at the passenger they’re talking to than the road. Probably a dead giveaway that the scene is shot with green screen or the car being towed on the back of a truck.
I used to hate it when people kept wobbling the steering wheel around when driving in a clearly straight road but then Top Gear had an episode featuring some American cars from the 1980s and constantly correcting the steering was necessary because there was so much loose play in the system!
Leaf spring suspension probably doesn’t help either…
My friend’s mom when I was a kid used to look at us in the back seat for minutes at a time while driving. She said she used the lines behind the car to stay in the lane. It scared the shit out of us, but somehow she never got into an accident. Granted, these were long, straight, country roads, not NYC streets.
What the hell 😳
For realz.
I’m glad there wasn’t any casualties. Right?
Nope. No accidents… somehow.
Yes, so much this, so hard to watch 😬 (And probablysetting a really bad example for the real world.)
I mean with the complexity of shooting in a moving car I have to wonder if it’s ever done now (in all but the most extreme necessity).
All they need to do to solve the problem is make sure to focus on the road. They don’t need to actually be driving, just act like they are driving by looking at the road more than their passenger.
Well that’s to solve the appearance, but I’m commenting with an actual physical car, on a closed road, being towed or not, etc. Don’t need the bother when you can green screen it.
Filmed in a real setting always looks less distracting than a green screen.
I agree, I’m just saying that I doubt many will go through the trouble unless it’s really necessary.
On any union tv show or movie in the United States, all driving sequences are either in a studio shot with a green screen or a virtual stage, or they are shot with a “process trailer” where somebody else pulls the car.
It is very much illegal to have an actor “act” while driving, though in the low budget indie world you might find productions or cast willing to risk it in some way.
Indie movies and small budget movies, perhaps?
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.
