Ever get tired of seeing the same stupid movie moments over and over again? Not the big things, like major plot & character elements, but little clichés which are kinda dumb, and make you roll your eyes because you’ve seen it all before - and typically it wasn’t worth seeing in the first place. Like when two characters uncomfortable about starting a conversation both say “So” in succession -- what thrillingly introspective dialogue! Or even worse, they both start talking at the same time, then stop, then tell each other to go first…both of you, please; shut the fuck up. It’s also annoying when seemingly every movie uses the same familiar library of sound effects for babies crying, girls screaming, groups gasping, anyone farting...but that’s a tangential issue and we won’t get into it here.
This is about those small concepts of filmmaking there’s no reason should still exist, yet they keep happening all too often. I’m sick of them, and listing them here in hopes of inspiring a generation of moviemakers to stop doing them. Because they’re wrong, and cheap, and pathetic, and always will be. So knock it off.
Obscuring Characters Who Are The Focus
Of A Scene
If you’re over the age of ten (which most of you reading this likely are) you’ve seen this countless times, and probably never thought much about it -- but now that I’m pointing it out you’ll see it constantly, and it will surely irritate you as much as it does me (sorry about that): when a scene in a film or tv show is set in a public space, and the cameras are pointed at the actors, you will often see someone (or something) pass through the frame, briefly blocking your view of whatever you’re actually looking at. If you’re not paying much attention or don’t care, then good for you, but when you notice it, it’s incredibly disruptive. This is horrendously common for something so unnecessary and annoying. More so, it’s actually painful to the eye, as the bulk of the frame is temporarily occupied by an object out of focus. Then once that passes, and you readjust to looking at what’s in focus, something else eclipses your view.
I recall a movie in which four main characters were conversing at a table in an outdoor cafe, and the whole scene was shot with a long lens from across the street. So every two seconds, there’s a fucking car passing through the shot! Why are you paying these actors tons of money to be in your movie if you’re going to allow traffic to constantly drive over their pretty faces! Sometimes the vehicles would pass to reveal a different character, as if the movie used the car to mask an edit, and other times it would just be the same shot of the same person. So I guess whatever expression they made during the drive-through wasn’t important, huh? Why would you purposely prevent your audience from seeing an actor's entire performance?
And if it isn’t cars, it’s people. Extras walking through the frame, obstructing the carefully chosen angle of what we’re actually looking it. I just don’t get why this always happens; why it’s allowed to happen. We’re watching the movie or show for the actors & characters we know, not the people paid fifty bucks to walk around and pretend to be doing something all day. They’re called background performers for a reason, you know? They should be in the fucking background, not passing between the main actors and the camera. That’s the foreground. They don’t belong there.
This is mainly the fault of directors, but you know what? Editors, I’m callin’ you out on this too: if you’re cutting a scene with two characters in the middle of a room (often a restaurant) with two over-the-shoulder medium shots, and extras are walking through the line of fire...CUT AROUND THEM. Same deal when one person gets up to leave and crosses between the camera and the other actor. Nothing should be shot like this in the first place, but hey, it isn’t like you aren’t used to saving the picture from incompetent directors, right? So help us out and do away with this shit.
Using 555 Phone Numbers
We all know they’re fake, and we all know you can’t use actual phone numbers for legal reasons, but for fuck’s sake -- make an effort! Use something which doesn’t destroy the illusion of reality. We know we’re watching a movie, but do you have to remind us with this bullshit? Or hey, here’s an idea: DON’T SHOW OR SAY PHONE NUMBERS. Are writers this lazy they can’t figure a way around it? If so, do you have to use something everyone recognizes as made up?
You know what smart filmmakers do? Use an exchange starting with 1. No real phone numbers use this, but at least it seems like an an actual number. They don’t use 0, either; not for the first digit after the area code. That’s another way to avoid the familiar; use a fake area code. Some which aren’t used now may come into use in the future, but those numbers have rules, and there are always ways to choose something which will forever remain inaccessible. The point is, there are less obvious ways to use a fake phone number. Use your brains, people, and come up with one.
Drivers Looking At Passengers
Speaking of lazy writing: this fatuous foible should have been done away with over thirty years ago, when the brilliant and hilarious Strange Brew pointed it out and made it silly to even consider including. But it still happens in nearly every fucking scene in a car or moving vehicle. Seriously -- almost all of them. And I am so often tempted to look at something else and just listen to the dialogue, or skip the scene altogether. It’s absolutely enraging. Anyone in the real world who spends this much time not watching the road is guaranteed to cause or almost cause an accident.
Which a lot of the time is what actually fucking happens in the fucking show or movie! I cannot possibly proffer the preposterous number of instances in which I’ve seen a plot altered or set in motion due to this very thing. Really, writers and filmmakers? This is all you’ve got? Holy hellfire, halfwits...just don’t bother. You left your fucking imagination in the toilet and flushed without looking. I am distressingly disgruntled with this inanity.
People In A Desperate Hurry To Have Sex
Aside from how useless sex scenes are in general, this is often nothing but a dumb joke which reveals zilch about the characters -- only more of the actors, literally. This stupidity usually happens in order to show how excited they are about getting together, because action reveals character, right? Yeah, but not when it’s the same moronic thing time after time after time. They like each other, they’re horny, we get it...what about the movie?
Not only does this idiocy not tell us anything about the characters nor move the story along, we’ve seen it eight thousand times before. Unless there’s actually a good reason to hurry, like the Earth’s gonna explode any minute and they really wanna get it on before they die, this is just unfunny and pointless.
Oh, and regarding my initial statement about how useless sex scenes are in general? I could, and possibly will at some point, write an entire essay condemning all their terrible clichés, so we won’t get into it any further here...no pun intended. And, I’m sorry. About the unintended pun. These things happen.
“Joking” On DVD Commentaries
About Viewers Listening To It
Without First Watching The Movie By Itself
Obviously not an issue with the movies themselves, but DVD/Blu-Ray extras are a big deal these days; there’s no point in doing them if you’re gonna do it poorly.
So the problem here is multi-dimensional. They make this dumbass statement as if A: it’s a joke; B: it’s in any way funny; and C: the first time anyone has ever made such a clever fucking observation. Yet I hear it in ALMOST EVERY SINGLE COMMENTARY EVER. Not an exaggeration. I haven’t exactly kept track, but it’s definitely an overwhelming majority.
I could, and probably won’t at some point, write an entire essay condemning all the other stupid things often occurring in commentaries...so I’ll list them real quick:
- saying “I love this” about EVERYTHING
- reading names from the titles/credits aloud and/or applauding/cheering
- having multiple commenters with relatively indistinguishable voices
- having too many people in the room so no one gets a chance to say much
- having too many people talk at once and/or engage in multiple simultaneous conversations, making the whole thing an indecipherable cacophony
- saying something about “that line” of dialogue without recognizing the obvious fact they’re talking over it and we can’t hear whatever line they’re referring to (even with subtitles on this is stupid because “that” line could be any of them)
- talking about something other than what’s happening onscreen and is unrelated to the movie in practically any way
- describing exactly what’s happening onscreen without providing oh, I don’t know, commentary?
In other words: be interesting, not idiotic.
Non-American Actors Doing American Accents In Most Of Their Movies
(Or TV Shows)
What is with the fascination american films have for casting foreign actors to play american characters with american accents? Yes I purposely did not capitalize those words, because this absurd practice takes away the “proper” aspect of america as a proper noun. Why must these films force folks from elsewhere to pretend they’re not? Isn’t this the land to which all but its decimated and disrespected natives have emigrated? What’s wrong with an American Citizen having a foreign accent? And you’ll notice I did capitalize it there, because being a decent member of a decent group who invites any decent human being to join is very proper indeed, and respectable. But to deliberately discourage non-conformity? That’s unconscionable!
Some may think I take this too seriously; it’s a just a character, who cares -- but honestly? It’s symptomatic xenophobia. It’s exclusionary, and it ain’t what this country’s supposed to be about. Yet it’s become so common we hardly think anything of it. A lot of people don’t even know some of their favorite actors are not born americans. Take a look at this list, see if you can pick out who’s from the U.S. and who isn’t:
Christian Bale
Colin Farrell
Eric Bana
Gary Oldman
Hugh Jackman
Hugh Laurie
Idris Elba
Isla Fisher
Kate Beckinsale
Kate Winslet
Naomi Watts
Rebecca Hall
Rose Byrne
Simon Baker
Tom Wilkinson
Toni Collette
How’d you do? If you didn’t already realize, not a single one of these talented thespians originates stateside -- but all of them can, and quite often do, speak with an exemplary american accent. Surely you knew some of them are foreign to the U.S.; maybe you knew it of all of ‘em. Perhaps you’re also aware each of them has done well-known films with their natural accent, but a very large percentage of their widely-distributed performances are of them playing american...and even if you do know where they’re from, a whole lot of other people don’t. Many of these actors only get to do their natural accent once in a great while, when they’re playing a character specifically from the part of the world they themselves are from. They were likely cast in the role for precisely that purpose, and end up making lots of causal viewers think that’s the movie in which they’re putting on a pretend pronunciation!
Now, I’m not saying no actor should be allowed to play a character with a different accent; that’s silly...and there goes half Meryl Streep’s career. What I’m saying is, there’s no reason a performer from elsewhere in the world needs to consistently and repeatedly put on an american accent in an american-made movie. I’ve seen Sarah Snook, an Australian, in two movies; american accent both times. To their credit, both stories had her character growing up in specifically american surroundings, so it wouldn’t make sense to sound Australian, but I expect to see a lot more of her -- because she’s very good -- and I’ll be disappointed if she has to do this every time. Then there’s poor Gary Oldman, who’s done so many accents in so many films he actually LOST his original dialect and had to hire a speech therapist to get it back. That’s his heritage! And it got away from him. It’s sad. It’s wrong.
The thing is, we let some actors get away with never changing their manner of speech; why not others? In the last forty-five years, how many times has Arnold Schwarzenegger had a different accent? None! He either plays himself, Austrian, or Russian or German. Or it isn’t brought up at all. Sometimes they explained his accent by giving his character a backstory similar to his own, but at some point they gave up, because we get it: he’s Ah-nold. We don’t care how he sounds; we’ve even learned to appreciate it. How about Academy Award Winner Sir Anthony Hopkins? He never bothers to take on another dialect, and no one bothers to complain. People either don’t mind, don’t care, or don’t notice. So why don’t we just let people be people, let characters be characters, and forget about certain small details. Because when it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter. So let it not matter.
Lame-Ass Foreshadowing
When there's no immediately recognizable reason...
- someone coughing: will get sick and die.
- a woman throwing up: is pregnant.
- anyone stating a fear or phobia: will end up in a situation forcing them to face or otherwise encounter said fear.
- anyone stating they will absolutely definitely not ever do something: will immediately be shown doing this exact thing after a quick edit.
- someone in a one-shot speaking in a vulnerable or confessional manner: will be revealed as alone and rehearsing some kind of speech.
Maybe, once, a long long time ago, these were clever or effective...not any more. We all know how they work at this point. Retire them, please. Think of something new. Be original. That’s what gets viewers interested.
These seven stupidities are the big issues bugging me lately; got any others? Profess your perpetually pesky peeves in the comments below!
