Wherein we go through the task of finding all of the cliches and screenwriterly conventions we can so we may better understand them and how they might be useful or useless.

I'll start with Rehab Scenes.

They appear in many movies (as they appear in the lives of many real people) and they tend toward one goal: allowing the rehab participant a moment of Quiet, Stark Drama. Good movies are just as likely to have them as bad.

They're used to give a character a particular context for behavior ("I made a spoon, a wooden spoon, for my mom to cook with... and she cooked, alright. She cooked meth.") without having to actually show anything other than Acting Challenge #4: Vulnerability. This isn't an inherent weakness--these scenes can be powerful and important--but it is usually a quick solution that's very obviously economical.

Now its your turn.

The Slow Clap

God, I hate that. It serves no purpose but to annoy me. Especially hated in Scent of a Woman (which I despise). you know the scene, full auditorium, someone makes pseudo-inspirational/uplifting speech, unexpected from the character. One person in the audience claps, then another, then a couple more until the whole audience is on their feet cheering wildly. I HATE that.

Could start listing movies, but would run out of space.

One movie in which I forgive the slow clap is Lucas. It's such a sweet film, I give it a break.

Cool Runnings is borderline.

Someone please defend it, if they can...

This one is probably too general, but most Sixth-Sense esque twists just irritate the hell out of me most of the time, most of those feel as though they're the result of a writer trying to make up for a half-assed script by throwing in the most ridiculous twist possible, and it's not just horror films that fall into this trap anymore.

Great thread idea. We can keep a running list of all things cliche!

Since I recently rewatched The Incredibles, I'll submit one they do a pretty good job of pointing out - monologuing. The hero has been left for dead and the villain starts explaining how clever his plan was, only to give the hero those precious extra few seconds to regain the upper hand.

One more: Showing intelligence within a character. Too many times the writers get lazy with this sort of characterization. The character is never smart because of what he/she says or does, but because he/she is great at chess, went to a prestigious college, or is a scientist. That's lazy writing and usually makes for a fairly two-dimensional character.

That’s a pet peeve of mine as well. I suppose it’s simply a difficult task to characterize someone as being intelligent. Films tend to get lazy and begin to just signify intelligence as opposed to portraying it.

Although sometimes acceptable, the Slow Clap is never really fully earned. It's almost entirely unnecessary; getting the peanut gallery to finally understand what the audience has known all along is an alliance the audience doesn't really need. Slow Clap must be destroyed.



This one is the most tired and hackneyed of all the still-popular conventions. Easily. Second to this is Child Wiser Than Adults, used in movies since Capra freely roamed the earth.

"Showing" intelligence is really just a convoluted way of "telling" the audience the character is intelligent. Good Will Hunting, with Damon solving the mysterious math problem, is a popular abuser of this one. It raises the question of how a screenwriter would actually show intelligence. Which raises the question of why intelligence is necessary in a character -- surely this is a commodity we don't require of everyone surrounding us and so don't need to require it of our movie characters.

There is one cliche in films that annoys me to no end: whenever the characters stare at a source of danger coming at them rather than doing the realistic thing and running the hell out of there. It happens in just about every Hollywood horror or thriller or adventure flick ever made. Good example: Raiders of the Lost Ark, where Indy stops to stare at the boulder coming at him, wasting time he could be using to run the fuck out of there. It's just annoying as hell.

Also commenting on the source of danger. Just plain stupid.

How about the fake scare?

Expecting something insane...and its not. But you know something else is coming right after. It's very obligatory nowadays.

The Slow Clap was used to good effect at the climax of the Chevy Chase film Foul Play...funny. Also to a lesser extent with the Joker in The Dark Knight from his cell after the Commissioner Gordon promotion. Both amusing uses of the Slow Clap. (Sounds like it could be a new strain of VD..."The Slow Clap". )

I don't have one that comes to mind right now, but I do enjoy when films go out of their way to point these out like The Incredibles example or Bob and Doug in Strange Brew going on about driving and talking in movies (not paying attention to the road) while driving and talking and not paying attention to the road.

Great comments thusfar. I'll add the venerable (and loathsome)

Which gun fired the shot cliche, which normally proceeds like this:

A character (usually a villain) points a gun at another character (usually a hero). A gunshot goes off on the soundtrack and the hero makes a sharp intake of breath. Has he been shot? Oh no, in fact the villain was shot by a third party who was offscreen at the time (this is normally revealed by a pan, sometimes a cut) and the hero merely gasped in surprise, not because he was shot.

Potential uses of cliche:

None. It serves no purpose other than to make anyone who has seen a film before roll his/her eyes. I'm sure the first time it was done it was way clever, but it's fucking hoary now.

It worked in High Noon.

Two one-word cliches:

Run! (Especially in trailers.)

Yes!!! (Perhaps with a clap of hands.)

My favorite slow clap is in Citizen Kane.

Romantic comedies usually have a Greek Chorus in the form of the hapless protagonist's friends. They're there to give information that both the audience and the protagonist needs and supply witty, light banter that will amuse us. See: every Judd Apatow movie and all of the clones. Apatow uses this shamelessly but it can work to generate a few laughs and, once in a while, create tension.

With the new Greek Chorus comes the potential for the nightmarish Karaoke Scene. That can be used to quickly express emotions or, more often, reveal hidden depths. It's lazy comedy that abuses it most but can sneak into straight dramas as well. Never a good idea, the Karaoke sequence is most effective when used in the absence of the new Greek Chorus. That is rare.

Oh come on Major. Since we're talking about cliches, do you know what's a huge cliche in filmwriting circles? Referring to any group of characters as a "Greek chorus." You know movie what has a Greek chorus? Mighty Aphrodite. But apart from that, and maybe Mamma Mia, it's a way overused/misapplied term.

Call it whatever you like. It's still a tired fallback.

How about movies where the actors just stand or sit there and talk, while the pace of the editing speeds up to make up for the lack of movement within the frame? It's a cheat to make up for the fact that nothing is actually happening in the scene other than an outpouring of dialogue.

Or action scenes when the scene is shot and cut without any attention to whether or not what we're seeing makes any visual sense? This problem is compounded ridiculously by the high speed of cutting and overuse of handheld camerawork in just about every movie nowadays.

Whenever someone falls from a building (or from very high up) in a movie, they always, always, always land on a parked car. See: The Untouchables, Lethal Weapon, several Schwarzenegger movies, etc.

Going out of the way to use the title in a film/novel. Two notable offenders of this are 1998's Snake Eyes (where, honestly, this use of the cliche was hardly the worst thing about it) "You've got snake eyes!", as well as the recent The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, where, at least in the novel, Larsson goes out of his way to use the novels Swedish title and forces Salander's character to say, "Just another man who hates women." I even liked that book and that line made me cringe.

Scorsese did away with this in The Departed, while it was used during the scene he recreated from Infernal Affairs.

Along the same lines, is when the director spins the camera around to either show intelligence or the character is thinking. Ron Howard loves to do this.

In sequels or a series of films like Alien 3 or Die Hard 2,3 and 4 or that fucking vomit Indiana Jones last film, where the star gets out of a really tough/impossible situation and the co star looks at them and says, "Have you done this before?" The star doesn't need to say anything, a sly look to the camera will suffice.