Movies and TV Shows

when they try to make you sympathize with an unredeemably evil character. like the mirror universe giorgieu in startrek discovery, who was literally "worse than hitler" but they decided they wanted upstanding dogooder characters to love her for some reason

People in zombie movies and shows that don't know what zombies are. I know it's so they can use cool descriptions like "the infected" or "walkers" or "the dead". The zombie word sounds kinda silly. But I still don't like it.

When they provide exposition about something that lead to the current story, but the exposition is about something way more interesting than what is happening in the current movie because the current movie is just generic whatever.

I don't know if this is a trope or not but I hate it when movies fail to live up to their potential.

The new Beetlejuice movie is like that.

(I'll try for no spoilers)

There's a couple of events that are shown as really big ordeals, huge events that you could base the entire movie around, and then the movie rug pulls your expectations and just kind of brushes those huge issues aside like it's nothing.

And part of me gets it that that's like a Beetlejuice thing, not complying with your expectations, but in this case I feel like the movie was made much worse for it and they should have really reconsidered doing the things they did.

It just made the entire movie feel like there were no actual risks, nothing bad can possibly happen, there's nothing scary or dangerous in the world.

It's like everybody in the movie was bored of living in that universe. It was ridiculous.

I watch movies for escapism and I don't want to see the people that I'm escaping from my life watching escaping from their lives in the same process, having everything handed to them without having to work for it, with no real risks and no real adventure and no real humanity in their story.

And I'm honestly kind of surprised at how many movies lately have failed to give real stakes, real risks to the main characters, real goals to achieve, a real character to operate with, or has attempted to elevate the genre in any way.

It's all same same and it's really sad.

Oxygen tanks are not bombs.

I think the worst example of this was a Robert Redford move I saw once where an oxygen tank was loaded in a tube, the stem was knocked off, and the tank flew into a guard tower and exploded like it was an RPG.

Whooshing rocket noise in space, people outrunning explosions, "hero"'s every shot a kill while "baddies" hit nothing.

Magic computers that can sharpen and enlarge a grainy CCTV frame enough that you can read what people are typing on their phone.

The American president that goes "gee-haw we really need to stop Voldemort so the people of Agrabad can enjoy democracy and human rights!"

The divorced single-parent cop who struggles to make family life work despite being good at solving big scary crime.

The "we just want to do senseless evil for no apparent reason" terrorists

Cutting or stabbing through full plate armor with a sword. Why would anyone wear an armor that is easily cut or stabbed through?!

The bad guy that is omniscient and omnipresent. Everywhere you go, oops! There's the bad guy and he totally kicks your ass and ruins your plans.

We call it Neganing. He's the reason I eventually stopped watching the Walking Dead.

Or like Sylar (from Heroes), where the writers find a baddie they just love too much to kill so the whole show becomes about them.

Villains who vocally support some unconventional ideology but whose evil acts are actually not related to that ideology. For example, I like Bioshock but the moral lesson which the game tried to teach about libertarianism is undermined by the fact that any place where the entire population used drugs that turned them into homicidal maniacs would have problems.

(One could say "Everyone used the drugs because of libertarianism." I don't find that convincing. I think the drugs could have been incorporated equally plausibly into a story about any ideology.)

The fat funny character.

The "I can fix them" love interest.

Any situation that could have been resolved with any modicum of healthy communication.

Superheroes that cause more damage to the place they're trying to "save".

Is that not how chloroform works?

My pet peeve is that screenwriters, directors, and producers know and recognize even more tropes than we do. Somewhere along the line, things were rushed and/or lazy. Someone just said “aw, fuck it.”

If the filmmakers don’t give a shit about the final product, why should I?

Talking head montages, especially at the beginning of a movie or TV show. I think directors try to ground some fiction in reality by having a bunch of news reporters comment on some event but as someone who tries to avoid that garbage it just feels like the movie is made for someone else and it's been used so many times it's irritating.

Also product placement seeing a soda can or car perfectly framed to see the brand name or logo cheapens any sense of artistic integrity and feels like watching an advertisement.

And if I can indulge in a meta trope of streaming service monetization since it's become so common these days having a subscription + ad tier. Sub no ads or ads no sub, mixing them is the same greed as cable TV and shouldn't be supported by subscribing (Disney, HBO Max, prime, Netflix, etc).

One shot and the bad guy drops dead. Ten shots and the good guy goes to the hospital and lives.

Also you don’t instantly die when you’re shot.