Cliches and How to Avoid Them

It's irritating to see the same scene, the same character, or the same moment in film after film, especially when so many superior and less-used alternative exist. When developing a movie script, there's no excuse for such blatant lack of effort and creative thought. Here are some examples of movie cliches I'm sick of seeing, along with viable alternatives:

'Who Got Shot?'
You've seen it a million times. Our hero and villain struggle with a gun and... BANG! The hero's (or heroine's) eyes bulge. We think they* have been shot. But then, the villain looks down to see his stomach bleeding. He crumples to the ground and dies. It was a somewhat cheap trick the first time, and an insult to the audience the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 387th time.

Alternative #1: Our hero and villain battle and a gunshot rings out. Our villain, suddenly realizing he may have killed our hero, rushes to hold him, apologizing: "I didn't want to shoot you! Are you alright?" The hero checks himself, and he's fine. Only then does the pain overtake the adrenaline in the villain's body, and he realizes he has been shot. It's still a cheap trick, but it's more interesting and revealing of character than the old eye bulge.

Alternative #2: Don't go for the cheap, momentary trick at all. Just let one of them shoot the other. Better yet, let them both get shot and continue fighting. And, if you're a director or cinematographer, use a wide shot, please. Close-up violence avoids all impact of the violence. Take notes on the greatest western gunfight ever filmed: the ending to the otherwise mediocre Open Range.

'Oops! Clumsy Me!'
This is one of my all time top pet peeves in film because it's so ridiculously simple to replace with something infinitely better. When one character is chasing another on foot, the one with the lead will trip over even terrain and struggle to get up (usually a woman). This is done to add tension by allowing the chaser to draw closer, but there are so many better ways of accomplishing this.

Alternative #1: Give the chaser a shortcut. Generally, chases are made dramatic by obstructing the chased. And usually, the chaser is the villain. So why can't our villain be more clever or quick-thinking than our hero for once? Let him come up with a clever shortcut that uses the environment realistically, whether it be a subway station, an apartment building, or a back alley.

Alternative #2: If you really have to obstruct the chased character, let it be something that ties in with the story. Perhaps the chased has been poisoned earlier and the toxin begins to take effect? Perhaps they have a weak heart and have run themselves to a heart attack? Perhaps they are unfamiliar with the area and simply run themselves in a circle (please, not another dead end, though).

'Silly Technology'
I am sick of movies that misrepresent today's technology. The most common subject of offense is a simple PC. While a film could get away with misrepresenting one two decades ago, today everyone owns a computer or two. We know what they look like and what they can do, so stop insulting us! One of the worst offenders is Swordfish, which displays a computer worm as an animated, 3D worm, wriggling about on the screen. How silly! Other examples are call-tracing programs that graphically trace a call from city to city across the world, or any hacking/phreaking/cracking tool that has a gorgeous and user-friendly interface. If your film is set in the distant future, I can't really complain. But if it is set in the present, don't try to get away with that nonsense, please.

Alternative #1: Give crackers/hackers/phreakers and the like their due credit. The tools they use are not user-friendly, require great expertise and experience, and are terribly cryptic to the layman. Represent them as such, and explain what is happening through another method (if you need to at all). For example, in The Matrix Reloaded, I was happily surprised to see a quick shot of Trinity firing up good old Nmap to start hacking the Matrix rather than some big graphical hacking tool. The auto-scrolling green characters are still pretty silly, though...

Alternative #2: Yes, audiences love how-to, but probably the one they love the least is technogeek how-to. Whether you graphically show someone hacking a computer or have a character say "I'm using remote keystroke simulator to mount a dictionary attack on the 256kb DES encryption system," it's all Greek to the audience. Instead, come up a situation that calls for how-to that is physical and visual (i.e. breaking a lock, cracking a safe, rewiring a camera system, etc.). This is both easier to follow and more visually exciting that purely software how-to shit.

So please, if you're writing a screenplay, follow my suggestions here. If you've seen a movie that commits a cliche faux-pas, annoy all your friends by complaining about it. Maybe we'll start a sufficient outcry to be heard by the people calling the shots in today's movies.

* Yes, I know that using 'they' in this case is grammatically incorrect. But I don't feel like saying 'he/she' every time. When there exists a popular, human but gender-neutral, singlular, third-person pronoun, I'll use it. Until then, realize that grammar is a means to an end. That end is the communication of meaning. If meaning has been successfully communicated, there is little reason to go back and check to see whether or not the grammar was correct. There, I just had to get that in. :-)