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Post by Ike on Jul 20, 2011 22:24:16 GMT -5
I prefer tropes played straight, and get irritated with constant trope subversion or "Lampshade hangings" of tropes ("Its always the red shirt who goes first.....*dies*") Are you serious or is this a lampshade of itself. Because god damn that is meta. |
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Post by robertagilmour on Jul 22, 2011 18:39:28 GMT -5
I hate it when certain characters have to die because they're the most expendable but still hold emotional weight for the audience. This is different to Red Shirts - I'm talking more when a semi-important character is killed off to prove the villain is a bad dude. Lazy writing to kill someone off just to poke the audience. I remember old interviews with 70s/80s DC/Marvel writers who said new writers would always kill off characters they had no personal fondness for, assuming everyone else would feel that way, often unaware of all the stories that made someone love those characters. Even though it is near impossible to keep up with all these characters, they could atleast move the character out the story instead of killing them. Kevin Smith killing Mysterio in Daredevil sparked off a huge argument that went strong a couple of years about killing off characters. |
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Post by ldorado on Jul 22, 2011 18:44:43 GMT -5
I also forgot: Long-lost relatives or lovers that conveniently pop up late into a story without any foreshadowing of their existence whatsoever. Soap operas pull off this one all the time.
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Post by derboo on Jul 31, 2011 13:19:17 GMT -5
-Girl falling for guy that she absolutely fucking hates at first glance (or vice versa) -Girl falling for guy after an initial rejection for incredibly asshole reason like guy being poor, a nerd, but now is popular, rich, etc. (This happened IRL with F. Scott Fitzgerald. True story.) This is part of the whole standard romance/comedy formula I absolutely loathe. Boy&Girl don't like each other but for some reason are forced to meet again/spend time together, something makes one like the other, wins the other's heart, relationship montage, one makes a mistake that disappoints the other, has to win back the other. Once had to watch two movies on a single day that were just like that. Almost made me wanna barf. -Going off the last point, horror plots that are completely explained away. The unknown bits are what make it scary, dammit! As decent as it was in most other regards, the big bad exposition dump at the end of Silent Hill completely ruined the film for me. I prefer tropes played straight, and get irritated with constant trope subversion or "Lampshade hangings" of tropes ("Its always the red shirt who goes first.....*dies*") No kidding, blunt lampshading has become so obnoxious these days. I also forgot: Long-lost relatives or lovers that conveniently pop up late into a story without any foreshadowing of their existence whatsoever. Soap operas pull off this one all the time. For ex-lovers, that kinda makes sense, especially if the established character is in a current relationship. |
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Post by TheGunheart on Aug 10, 2011 12:47:23 GMT -5
I can't believe I forgot this one:
The ever popular means to adapt a work by having the characters "leave" whatever medium they're from and enter the "real world". You know, like Fat Albert? The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle? The Ganbare Goemon anime?
That's like...the laziest plot you can possibly use for an "adaptation".
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Post by ldorado on Aug 10, 2011 14:15:22 GMT -5
Yeah, I'll have to agree. Back in the 1960s, a live TV series and several movies were made based on Go Nagai's Harenchi Gakuen. They didn't make an anime of it because when it was a manga, PTA groups got pissed off and held protests until Nagai wrote an issue where everybody just died. In that case though, the live-action thing was done for an actual reason.
Reminds me of travesty adaptions of favorite comics and anime, like Dragonball Evolution, the movies based on games back in the early 90s, and the Scott Pilgrim Movie. With that last one, everything would've been fine had they NOT cast Michael Cera as Scott.
That's another trope pet peeve I have: any movie where Michael Cera or that other weird skinny kid from Zombieland plays the protagonist or sidekick.
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Post by Revolver Ocelot on Aug 11, 2011 13:33:29 GMT -5
I'm tired of fighting games where the tournaments are secretly a shadow organization's plot to assemble fighters and collect battle data/DNA. This usually leads to a related trope where the main character gets cloned a few games in, which I'm also tired of.
I'm also tired of the early-on bad guy who sides with the good guy to achieve a common purpose and keeps promising that some day, when their common enemy is defeated, the early-on bad guy will finally kill the good guy. And of course, that day never comes. Dragon Ball Z sort've popularized this with Piccolo and Vegeta. Dinobot from Beast Wars is another example.
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Post by Feynman on Aug 13, 2011 0:19:09 GMT -5
I prefer tropes played straight, and get irritated with constant trope subversion or "Lampshade hangings" of tropes ("Its always the red shirt who goes first.....*dies*") It depends on how well it's done, really. I really like how they handled the "redshirt" character on Galaxy Quest. |
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Post by ldorado on Aug 13, 2011 5:17:28 GMT -5
I've noticed that a lot of American military sci-fi is often drab and cliched, with very few "grabbers". Often, the settings span entire galaxies and involve "intergalactic federations" and your typical colors are limited to gray, black, beige, tan, dirty white, dark green, and any loud color to use for glowing effects. Also, as with almost all American fiction, there's hardly a deep or insightful message to be learned after all the conflict. Then again, most of the 80s Gundam animes were guilty of some of the things I just mentioned.
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Post by Ike on Aug 13, 2011 10:43:01 GMT -5
That's because it's military sci fi. You'll notice that there are no real militaries in the world that wear white jumpsuits with teal trim like in the animus. It looks very silly.
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Post by ldorado on Aug 13, 2011 12:51:25 GMT -5
I think the 90s Gundam animes, UC era and G Gundam aside (only because it doesn't count as military sci-fi), were able to pull it off in the aesthetics department. Most of the Mobile Suits had a variety of different colors, sometimes very bright ones. Also, Front Mission and Front Mission: Gun Hazard are also exceptions to the trope.
Still, it wouldn't have killed Battle for L.A. to have been a little fabulous, if you catch my drift.
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Post by TheGunheart on Aug 13, 2011 13:13:31 GMT -5
Well, technically, the whole point of Battle for L.A. was to be a gritty war film that just happened to have aliens as the enemy.
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Post by ldorado on Aug 14, 2011 6:50:12 GMT -5
The only reason Battle for L.A. existed was because of a dispute between the special effects people and director of Skyline (which sucked just as bad due to its Irrelevant Pregnancy trope). In essence, it was nothing but a demonstration of special effects, much like every Michael Bay movie. Personally, I think what makes the coolest alien invaders are the ones that look semi-organic, like the Muge from Dancougar or the unnamed invaders in Gley Lancer. I've got a thing for cyborg monsters.
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Post by Ike on Aug 14, 2011 13:41:39 GMT -5
Skyline is one of the worst movies I have ever seen. Ever.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 14, 2011 13:52:04 GMT -5
Skyline is one of the worst movies I have ever seen. Ever. Birdemic is probably a worse movie on a technical scale, and Paranormal Activity made nearly $200 million, which is more insulting. But yeah, Skyline is goddamn awful. |
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