A cliche list of (crappy) Hollywoodian movies Compiled by RmM -------------------------- Dated 21.12.2000 or 12-21-00, have it your way. -------------------------- This list is a list of all those cliches you find (and hate) in Hollywood movies, written in no specific order. These rules don't ALWAYS apply, but I've noticed that SOME of them apply too damn many times. =) This document is somewhat centered on action-orientated movies. Also, it seems that the newest movies center on k3wl CG effects so this may or may not be true with all movies, dammit. -------------------------- Legend Main character : The 'hero' of the movie, or one of the main characters should there are several. Bad guy : A henchman of the 'boss' of the movie or just some evil guy. :) Boss : Just take a wild guess. -------------------------- 0) The main character is usually a man. 0.1) If the main character is an actiony :) woman the movie will probably succeed less (financially) even if the movie wouldn't really be any worse than the others. -------------------------- 1) (If :) the main character is a cop, 1.1) His chief hates him. 1.2) He hates partners. 1.2.1) He's semi-chauvinistic. (Y'know.. " CHRIST, A FEMALE PARTNER! ") 1.2.2) His partner will die, get a critical injury or something like that. 1.2.3) The partner might also get kidnapped, 'specially if it's a woman. 1.2.4) The partner is an overanxious novice that does everything by the book. 1.2.5) They become good friends by the end of the film. 1.3) He has a very.. uh, creative way of dealing with police rules. 1.3.1) see 1.6 1.4) His career is going / has gone over his wife/family in his priorities, or his wife/family has died.. preferably killed by the evil boss guy. 1.4.1) At the end of the movie the hero is reunited with his wife, assuming that she isn't sleeping with the fishes. 1.5) Nobody believes his theories on how a certain crime happened etc... 1.5.1) ...except maybe his partner. 1.6) He has some interesting ways of interrogating bad guys, like "Yeah, I'll just hold him out the window with one hand". 1.7) He never shoots an unarmed bad guy, the movie always has a scene where the bad guy goes for a gun etc, so that the hero can blow away the bad guy in a 'correct' manner. -------------------------- 2) Even if the main character was a janitor/cabbie/bum/whatever, 2.1) He always has a top rank milirary background and thus is able to use every weapon and to kill people with his thumb. 2.2) He's automatically capable of using any kind of an automobile, boat, tank, spaceship, Stealth fighter or an army übervehicle prototype. -------------------------- 3) Even if the hero was a 10 IQ-point block of wood, he has a magical ability to say something 'funny' in every situation. 3.1) As the hero kills the bad guy in the final scene of the movie, he always says something 'cool' like " Hasta la vista, baby", " Let go you motherfucker " or " You're terminated, fucker! ". 3.2) The hero, when doing something 'cool', says something to match, for example he yells " Freeze " as he pours nitrogen on a bad guy. -------------------------- 4) The main character has some friend that has fought in 'Nam with him and either one of 'em has saved the other guy's life. -------------------------- 5) The evil boss type guy 5.1) Is always mega-evil, he kicks puppy dogs, yells at little children, kills & mutilates people in cold blood, doesn't give $ to beggars and preferably kills one of his henchmen during the movie to make the point of being ultimately evil a guy. 5.2) (If) the bad guy is a foreigner 5.2.1) He's preferably British, German, Russian or Columbian. 5.2.2) He speaks with an overdone accent of his chosen nationality. 5.2.3) At some point, gives orders to his henchmen in an 'evil language' like German or Russian. 5.2.4) Sounds like he thinks everyone else is genetic leftovers. 5.3) Treats his sex partners painfully, and if the bad guy is male, the woman should emit some agony sounds to go with it, too. 5.4) The baddie boss is always acted by one of the 'malicious looking' actors because everyone would be shocked to see someone like Mel Gibson do terrible nasty things, now that would be just dreadful !!! !Chrissaken typecasting. 5.5) He doesn't necessary die the first time the hero 'kills' him, he'll probably suddenly return at some point, ten times stronger than he originally was, and he'll kick the good guy's ass for a good half an hour before dying even if the hero would've previously strangled him into chains and shot him in the head. 5.5.1) If the bad guy falls to his death, it's displayed in slow motion, with an extreme display of sheer horror on the baddie's face. 5.6) Is an obnoxious pig. 5.7) The bad guy either dies or goes to jail. He never 'survives'. 5.7.1) The odds of him dying are 9:10, and that of going to jail are 9:100. The odds of him escaping are infinitely improbable, not even the Heart of Gold itself can do anything about it. 5.8) It is preferred to have a mentally unstable bad guy boss. -------------------------- 6) The name of the hero should be a Good American Name like John or somesuch, either that or the name is something uncomprehensible like Klobohorowicz. 6.1) The name of the bad guy should be something that you can easily 1) make jokes from 2) laugh at. -------------------------- 7) The clothing and such of the main character is usually very very regular, 7.1) unless we're talking about something like Ace Ventura 7.2) or that typical Rambo-style no-shirt battle attire. :) -------------------------- 8) Hero never kills civilians or innocent bystanders, not even by accident, he never, for example, slaughters a playground full of little shitheads, and he never drives over any non-bad guys during _the_ car chase. The bad guy is an opposite, he's bad and he doesn't give a damn. 8.1) The hero never misses very badly in a hostage situation, he never shoots the hostage in the goddamn head. :) 8.2) Every hero has his marksman skills worthy of Robocop... 8.2.1) ..unless they have a true clear shot, in which case they miss. :) -------------------------- 9) If you are on the 'side' of the bad guy, you deserve to die, no matter whether you are something like his mailman or whatever.. 9.1) If someone kicks a puppy or yells at children, he deserves to die. 9.2) If someone does anything 'less nice', he deserves to die. 9.3) If someone is a communist, he deserves to die. 9.4) If someone is a nazi, he deserves to die. 9.5) If someone is ... -------------------------- 10) The nerds in the movies 10.1) The nerds always have glasses. Preferably super thick ones. 10.2) The nerds never 'have a life'. Way overdone. 10.3) Anyone who's a bit wiser is automatically also a big big chicken. 10.4) A nerd can _always_ hack into secret files, FBI or whatnot, he also finds every password and is capable of starting world wars, even if the computer he was hacking with was a Vic-20. 10.4.1) Preferably, the nerd is also about 12 years old. ARGH! 10.4.2) The chances of hacking into databases with certain machines in movies are inversely proportional to the chances of actually pulling it off in real life. 10.5) You can easily recognize a nerd from the typical nerd look cliche. 10.6) The nerds speak so weird things that the real nerds watching the movie probably just laugh at them. 10.7) The nerds always watch the typical 'nerd stuff' from TV, if it isn't The Planet of the Apes, it's probably Star Trek... 10.X) Otakon rocks ! -------------------------- 11) The movie computers 11.1) Are either Cray '666 grade or obscure pieces of shit that couldn't run PacMan. 11.2) Always have GUIs that have massive amounts of 'k3wl' SGI CG GFX (beat -THAT- acronymical streak! :). 11.3) Always have speech synthesizers, preferably female 11.3.1) The synth speaks flawless english, preferably with an accent too ! 11.4) When the hero needs to copy a file onto a disk, he just pushes any random button, and the data is copied. Pretty bloody handy. :) 11.5) Computer experts speak weird shit, like " I'll have to use the modem to format 54 megabytes of raw data and to scan them into my harddisk after that ". See 10.6 11.6) Computers use pretty bloody strange storage mediums. 11.7) When they play something with a computer, they usually play something odd, like Wolfenstein-3d on a 286... 11.8) Mainframe grade computers are rooms covered with millions of lights that flash in patterns, not to forget all those tape drives too.. ugh. 11.9) The main characters hates computers. 11.10) VRs are all the rage in movies. 11.10«) Internet equals VR =) 11.11) You are capable of doing the strangest things through the Internet, you can manipulate objects, kill someone, or whatever you will. -------------------------- 12) BLAM! " Argh, I'm severely wounded! Leave me, save yourself! " " NEVER! I'll save you! " The both survive. -------------------------- 13) The people always watch total CRAP from TV in movies, and they also laugh at them like there's no tomorrow, and if possible they also slap their knee with their hand while at it. 13.1) They find some " I'll buy that for a dollar " shit amusing, gah! 13.2) They actually find the Three Stooges funny too. Christ. -------------------------- 14) The main character has an incredible memory, in the end he remembers the 10-digit self-destruct disable code that he heard in the beginning, or notices that the cop is actually a bad guy in disguise from his badge number. 14.1) Alternatively, the hero forgets the ancient words of power, and that causes the undead to rise from the ground. :) -------------------------- 15) The russians are hairy big guys in trademark russian clothes (See 5.2 =) -------------------------- 16) Businessmen in movies are dry emotionless bastards who prioritize the Empire State Building over human life. Preferably, they are also god knows how old. -------------------------- 17) A badge, a medallion, a bible, a pocket watch or a flask of booze stops a bullet, an arrow or an other projectile of some sort. 17.1) We're talking about the good guys now. -------------------------- 18) Usually, if some person in the movie is gay, 18.1) He deserves to die or 18.2) He's the comedy relief of the movie. -------------------------- 19) The main character doesn't usually die 19.1) But if he does, it will be a long dramatic scene where he tells his entire life story, or finds out the Great Question, or slowly slips into ice-cold seawaters, making a billion sob-story-watching chicks cry, or is lowered slowly into molten steel, his thumb up. :) 19.2) The main character lives even if he has just been plugged full of 9MM holes with an uzi, or if he has been stabbed in the stomach and left to die in some hellhole.. especially if his name is Franklin. 19.3) Even when the main character DIES quite finalizingly in a movie, that doesn't stop the Hollywood jerk-offs from making a sequel that has the hero back alive, perhaps explained with some cloning shit. 19.4) Heroes and baddies have apx. 25.9 gallons of blood and 65535 hitpoints. -------------------------- 20) Charge in with guns blazing and kill a lot of people and you get a lot of chicks. Enough said. -------------------------- 21) The police 'profilers' and psychologists are idiots that draw wrong conclusions and they must be laughed at and picked on. 21.1) The intelligent people are usually wrong.. 21.1.1) ..especially if the other opinion is said by the hero. -------------------------- 22) FBI boys are always assholes. -------------------------- 23) A standard Hollywood movie usually contains at least one (1) gratuitious sex scene with someone running a tongue over breasts and somesuch. As if some military-mind really was that delicate. :) 23.1) The bad guy is lousy / cruel in bed. See 5.3 -------------------------- 24) Extraterrestrials are always _damned_ ugly and... 24.1) They are usually hellbent on killing everyone for some obscure reason. 24.3) They speak ENGLISH with a russian/german accent. (!!?) (See 5.2.2) -------------------------- 25) The movie has a weapon named 'magpulse' or 'phased plasma rifle' but no-one ever tries to explain its function in any depth, either that or the explanation is something sucky like 'it accelerates particles into light speed'. 25.1) The shooting effects are sad rendered CG shit. 25.2) Any and all 'SciFi-stic' things are left unexplained since they were thought up in 5 seconds in the first place... -------------------------- 26) If the movie is based on a game, comic, an old TV series or somesuch, 26.1) It usually sucks some serious ass, ESPECIALLY compared to the original. 26.2) It doesn't necessarily have ANYthing to do with the original. -------------------------- 27) If there's the name Jerry Bruckheimer somewhere in the movie, the movie is utter bullshit. -------------------------- 28) The main character gets out of some tight spot ½ a second before he would've been killed by a big rock, guillotine, big axe-thingy, nuclear explosion, bad dialogue, the Earth exploding, etcetracetra... -------------------------- That's it. Most of these things I noticed and typed up myself, but some of them were pointed out to me by a certain guy named Warma. Then again, everyone with an IQ higher than that of Tori Spelling's is bound to notice some sooner or later... -------------------------- Feel free to send any delicious cliche findings and stuff to me by EMail... ramiman@hotmail.com ! Feel free to send any Hollywood worship and Armageddon-admiring into the EMail address dog@yo.com, but since that address probably doesn't really exist, feel free to forget it and kill yourself instead, since if you seriously find ID4, Armageddon or The Matrix a _really_ GREAT movie, you should be denied the right to live. -------------------------- F*ck you everybody, good night! --------------------------