I hate so-called "cool, calm, and collected" characters being presented as superior beings that are shown being correct so often that the consumer take-away message is that being emotionally cold and abrasive makes them smart too. :reddit-logo: worshiped characters like that pretty much since Digg collapsed and also LARPed as being the same way in their own self-descriptions. The "misanthropic genius asshole flattered by the script and by total screen time" cliche is related to this too.
The one that's getting to me the most nowadays is "The Villain is completely justified but they're doing things the wrong way". :joker-che:
the leftist villain who wants to Improve Society Somewhat, but then suddenly does something random and extremely violent to show that actually all of their beliefs are bad and evil and you should just listen to The Billionaire Adults In The Room about everything..
It's one thing if the villain is cynically using a Bleeding Heart cause to gain power, like an evil billionaire funding a charity because they actually want the real-estate it's on or something cliche like that, if it's properly foreshadowed. But the LulRandom violence from an antagonist that has an otherwise completely justified cause just to get the audience to turn on them is just :agony-shivering:
Edit: and then at the same time they'll take a hatchet to the antagonists ideology to make it something incoherent like "restoring the balance" just to make sure their ostensibly political piece of art can't say anything coherent or meaningful about real politics :agony-consuming:
Also similarly, when you have the protagonist that wants to do good "the right way" and then you have a rival antihero/villain that wants to do the same thing, but he has no scruples about it and goes TOO FAR in achieving his goals and is therefore bad and must be stopped.
You can tell the politics of a Star Wars showrunner by seeing how they treat Saw Gerrera
I was also thinking about FF Tactics, which I hear so much about but then reading about it you have the pure noble-born main character who is the "real hero" and then his commoner childhood friend who uses skillful political manouvering and dishonest tactics to get into power and he also steals all the glory from our real hero, then he has the classic "Oh no was it worth it" shit cause he had to be mean to reach the top.
"I want to put an end to all the evils in the world! Now excuse me while i shoot this orphan in the face"
Well, you chose the same one I was going to say so I'll pick my close second:
A common trope in Japanese media for teens and kids, for lack of a better descriptor, is the "Irrational girl who thinks everyone is coming on to her."
You know, the type of girl character that totally misreads everything male characters say as pervy. To which the 'nicer' male character will shake their heads like "haha women be crazy" while the cool, calm and collected male characters might straight up just tell her to shut up and stop being stupid.
She's also very superficial and is the kind to declare she has cute charms and feminine wiles, and is often depicted as saying things like "You don't understand women, do you? Teehee!"
Basically a walking caricature of all the things incels accuse women of being.
This is a particularly bad trope when you consider how much sexual assault does happen, and how a lot of it is brushed aside because "she's lying and/or crazy"
Considering how many people can and do get their ideas about how other people are from their entertainment, that's fucked up and may partially explain their own romantic frustrations when they see feeemales that way as a presumption.
I'd love a reverse chosen one, where "Some Guy" who put in the work beats the lazy asshole magical prophecy team one by one. They're not secretly the chosen one after all, the gods are actually kind of pissed about it, they just did the readings.
This is more or less the appeal of preptime god Batman as a powerfantasy. There's the unlimited money and resources as a crutch to be sure...but everyone loves to see someone put in the work and mop up the top tiers.
Its good when Batman is shown doing the preptime(or assuming the preptime makes sense given the timeframe and history of a fight, like the classic Batman vs Superman one), but that takes up time and space for shit that isnt fighting so a lot of the time he seems to just make stuff appear or be prescient.
One Punch Man! Is about a random dude who trained and inexplicably became the strongest
Miss Tick sniffed. “You could say this advice is priceless,” she said, “Are you listening?”
“Yes,” said Tiffany.
“Good. Now...if you trust in yourself...”
“Yes?”
“...and believe in your dreams...”
“Yes?”
“...and follow your star...” Miss Tick went on.
“Yes?”
“...you’ll still be beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren’t so lazy. Goodbye.”
Wee Free Men, by Terry Pratchett
Fun quirky character stops being fun/ enjoying their own hobbies when they enter a relationship
A fucked up variant of that is "when innocent virginal single waifu finally is in relationship, GAME OVER." I forgot which of the farming simulators did that, but male married characters have a helpmeet after marriage and feeeemale ones get a game over. :lea-why:
this is mostly in anime/japanese light novels
when the main character is presented as an underdog because other people have magic powers/psychic abilities/whatever and the MC doesn't
then they get a power or some shit that is just objectively better than the thing they are supposedly an underdog for not having, usually in the first couple of episodes/chaptersAlso in addition to my text wall, I fucking hate the cliche of someone fights injustice but in the process grows "power hungry" or "ambitious" so they become "the thing they hated"/"just as bad".
Oh I really hate the “Annoying skeptic that doesn’t believe in magic” in worlds where magic is demonstrably real. Like, I understand the real life archetype you’re basing that on, but it doesn’t work because the real life version is a dick, but at the end of the day they’re also correct, magic isn’t real.
Constantly being the annoying skeptic makes no fucking sense when your friends can shoot fireballs from their hands
When tv shows contrast their Funny Cool Relaxed male lead with an Uptight Bossy Smart female lead. Shits just boring at this point.
"SyFy" channel movies are notorious for that, and they give the feeemale a posh le British accent. And she's skeptical about (pulpy sci fantasy thing) until Funny Cool Relaxed male lead proves it's real. And fucks her, probably.
Literally was watching a Syfy show when I wrote that :agony-shivering:
Posh British Accent Le Sexy Scientist, after being rescued from le monster: "I don't believe it!"
Cool Gunglasses Dudebro With Motorcycle: "Believe it." explosion and or gunfire and or fucking ensues
I think Futurama was a funny deconstruction of that. Fry is usually wrong and not portrayed as cool, but sometimes saves the day. Leela is uptight and bossy sometimes but it's informed by her backstory and if you dig a little deeper, she can be just as petty, selfish, or unprofessional.
The smart guy has to be a total snarky asshole to everyone around because he knows better and he's always right in the end. I know like 20 people in real life that think they're this guy.
Some of the most successful :brainworms: on :reddit-logo: come from the belief that being an asshole makes one Rich Sanchez, or Dr. House, or whatever.
The fucking good doctor show is so bad with this, cause its both autism as a superpower but also "autistic people are obnoxious awkward freaks we can barely stand" at the same time, so it just comes off like the show thinks this guy should be in some kinda supervised living if he wasnt a medical superhuman so people "have to" put up with him.
Or at least thats the impression ive gotten every single time Ive had to overhear that show when my family watches it.
One of the Predator movies did this and it was disturbing. :visible-disgust:
oh shit, i totally forgot about that. had the kid from Room.
I hate hate when conspiracy theorists are depicted as correct. It'll be something like one lone guy who is convinced there are aliens or swamp devils, the scientists brush him off, but then the town is overrun. I hate when scientists are depicted as these smug, unconvinced people who never believe in the monsters until the second they're getting eaten.
In every alien invasion or robot glitch apocalypse movie there's always one everyman who stands up to some pretentious scientist, and then the scientist is later brutally killed. Or if it's a lady scientist, she gets seduced by the muscular hot male everyman hero.
Similarly, I hate when movies portray exorcists as correct, or anything involving realistic portrayals of spiritualists or psychics. A ton of modern horror movie will have a psychic like you'd find in the yellow pages in real life, except instead of being a con artist, they're genuinely magical . I despise the Insidious movies for this. The Warrens were real people and blatant con artists.
Its probably not single-handedly responsible, but The Exorcist might actually have a body count by how much more popular exorcisms became after its release, several wiki pages specifically track exorcisms increasing starting the year after its came out.
Its a well made film still but knowing it had such an impact makes it a lot harder to watch and enjoy(Not to mention the very real abusive and negligent practices during filming).
Edit: Actually double checked on the filming stuff and no one fucking told me that both the actresses for Reagan as well as her mother suffered permanent spine injuries on set due to the shit that was pulled. The mom fractured her tailbone being thrown to the wall which left her unable to film for two whole weeks and on crutches for the rest of the filming, followed by unspecified lifelong problems. And Linda Blair developed scoliosis from filming scenes of her rocking back and forth in the bed when the rig for it fucked up and didnt secure her properly.
Ive heard both those stories told before but there was never a mention of lifelong injury, also the director has been accused of spreading the rumor of a "curse" because of these incidents and a bunch of other workers being injured or dying due to his negligence and extended shooting schedule.
Its probably not single-handedly responsible, but The Exorcist might actually have a body count by how much more popular exorcisms became after its release, several wiki pages specifically track exorcisms increasing starting the year after its came out.
It's for reasons like that that the common dogma of "culture is always downstream from politics" rings hollow for me. It may usually flow in that direction but the absolutist position about that is dubious to me. The belief that people killed by copycat exorcisms would be killed pretty much the same way with or without a movie telling chuds how cool exorcisms are seems like an after the fact unprovable defensive claim for the sake of defending entertainment from all criticism.
At the college I went to, proto-bazingas set up "fight clubs" and had an unprecedented number of serious injuries that made the local news and got the medical center on site kind of busy handling the increased workload of bazinga-for-Brad-Pitt types. I was told, on Hexbear, that such "fight clubbing" would have happened exactly the same way with or without the Fight Club movie because something something culture downstream something something material conditions. :doubt:
Well there's a case to be made that these movies had such an impact because of specific material conditions. There's a good reason these copycats were focused on abusing young women with illnesses or giving an excuse to dudebros who want to prove their masculinity, instead of perhaps examining Catholic abuses or examining self-destructive dudebro behavior.
Like Squid game and Parasite are huge cultural successes, and yet I haven't seen them instigate any mass uprisings against the rich. Instead I've seen them inspire rich idiots to create their own little Squid Games.
Jurassic Park didn't cause widespread skepticism of corporate authority over stuff like patents or encroaching into wildlife. Instead it caused a kind of benign interest in dinosaurs and the impact of computer graphics in films.
You're probably right that cultural forces do shape how people behave, but what particular messages they took from these movies and what they did about those messaes was very much informed by their material conditions.
i do like the opposite trope of charlatans being called in to solve actual supernatural stuff and get clowned on. that's hilarious
The scene at the beginning of the Casper movie is very funny. Where the ghosts run off a priest and a Ghostbuster (with Dan Akroyd cameo)
Also Whoopie Goldberg in Ghost being shocked she's actually a psychic after being a charlatan for years
Wow, the Guido Sarducci cameo in Casper. I almost forgot that one. I’ve never figured out the SNL connection to that movie.
I hate when the bad guy is able to easily sow mistrust between characters who are supposed to be lifelong friends. You know, making accusations without any evidence and then the heroes start to doubt each other. It's like don't you see that the bad guy has a reason to make you believe them and wants you to fail in your goal? They have every reason to lie and if anything, you should just talk it out.
Another is when the bad guy joins the party and still does a lot of their evil things like killing but it's okay now because they're on the good side now. Kinda takes away from the reality that certain actions are bad regardless of what side you're on.
I can't stand young-looking old or ancient characters who are just an excuse to make them look cool or worse, used as an excuse to sexualize someone who looks like a child. It's such a wasted trope sometimes. An ancient person could have stories about their experience of the world or contribute with their insight in some other way. I think Umbrella Academy has a lot of flaws but I thought 5 was a cool exploration of a character like that.
Another is when the bad guy joins the party and still does a lot of their evil things like killing but it’s okay now because they’re on the good side now. Kinda takes away from the reality that certain actions are bad regardless of what side you’re on.
Star Trek Discovery is loaded with this one, especially with having the mass murdering empress of the Terran Empire as a quirky quippy party member that everyone apparently likes and eventually misses. :scared-fash:
"as the prophecy foretold!" played straight. Good job, your actual script is now why the story happens, it's become entirely tautological.
The Comedy Relief Sidekick, especially in kids movies. This has been true since I was a child.
Characters I absolutely despised as a kid: Dory, Mater from Cars, Dug from Up, Olaf, Pumba, the firefly in Princess and the Frog, and both Flounder and the pelican from Little Mermaid. The main exception to this rule is Mushu from Mulan.
I think Mushu is a good exception. He's got a detailed backstory and has his own stakes in seeing Mulan succeed. He follows her and helps her at several points.
The cricket bothered me a little, but at least he didn't talk or have a musical number like the others you mentioned.
Also Eddie Murphy is like, actually funny unlike Ellen Degeneres and Josh Gad.
And yeah I don’t mind the mute animal sidekicks nearly as much, especially when they don’t do much. The chameleon in Tangled is fine, the horse is kind of annoying though because he’s plot important. If the comic relief character has their own song I’ll want to kill myself watching it (Olaf 👀)
That song bothered me on so many levels. It's so annoying and the anachronism bugs the nitpicking part of my brain. In my head I thought it would've been better for Anna to build a nonliving Olaf as a show that regardless of her amnesia, she loves Elsa and her powers.
Having Elsa make him and bring him to sentience just starts uncomfortable questions about Elsa and what she could do.
