RANT - Bad movie clichés

I don't mean "clichés in bad movies", nor do I mean "bad movie clichés like always having to have a happy ending". I mean "things that directors always overlook when putting a movie together". Read, and you'll see what I'm talking about.

Watch any random five movies (maybe fewer) and you're guaranteed to see 80% of these movie clichés:

1. Car accident (could be a mega pile-up on a bridge or in a tunnel) and no-one but the main character(s) get out of their car(s). Maybe it's cheaper that way - no additional players to direct.

2. Man tears out of an office, sprints across the street, jumps into his car and immediately drives off - no fumbling for keys, no need to unlock the door, no struggling to get the key into the ignition, no need even to turn the key and start the engine. It's like the car was there, already unlocked with the engine running, waiting for someone to jump in and drive.

3. Man in his office / home, asks guests if they'd like a drink, goes to cocktail bar handily in office / home, gets no awkward orders of course (like, I'll have a crème de menthe frappé, it's always a simple whisky), man grabs the first bottle, pours drink(s) and never, ever, ever puts the top back on bottle. It's like it's a painful, time-wasting detail, but following their lead will leave your house stinking of alcohol and your alcohol losing its taste.

3b. And who, ever says, "oh, whatever you're drinking". No-bloody-one.

4. Person in an obviously haunted house, steps into a room and never, ever, tries the light first; always ends up creeping around in the dark, in order to further enhance the scariness. Life's not like that people!

5. Couple start "getting it on", interruped, man jumps off the bed or couch to answer the door or phone and is always acceptably-for-the-big-screen un-aroused, if you know what I mean. Either life's not like that, or he's with the wrong woman.

6. Couple have successfully "got it on", and one or both immediately lights a cigarette. This cliché dates from Biblical times, or at least back to when ciggies were first invented. This is statistically unlikely, if not impossible. The percentage of cases where both got-it-onners smoke is probably very low, while the percentage of non-smoking partners who'd be happy for their smoking partner to smoke indoors, let alone in the bed they're both occupying, is so low it's un-measurable. This is just a movie cliché to have them continue a conversation or advance the plot while still in bed, rather than do what must be done (i.e. go to the bathroom to clean up). Let's be real.

7. Car or truck goes over a cliff and always, always lands on rocks below and blows up in a spectacular ball of flames. I need an engineer to help me out with the probabilities for and against this. But that doesn't stop me branding this a cliché.

8. Cops versus villains shoot out: the cops all have kevlar vests, but the villains never aim for their unprotected heads, arms or legs. Never.

9. Unless it's a road movie, or a driving-coast-to-coast-in-a-stolen-car movie, drivers never stop for gas. You might think it's because gassing up is a boring detail, unworthy of screen-time, yet many productions are made up entirely of boring details, and they don't have to be called Seinfeld or Friends.

10. Cruising / driving around town in a car, the driver never, ever uses turn signals. Wait, that's not a cliché, it's a freaking fact of life. Americans don't know what that sticky out thing is on the steering column, so never use it!

11. Featured vehicles (whether they're picking up drugs, dropping in on people who need leaning on, tailing a suspect, etc.) always find a parking spot right where they need one. 

12. Plenty o' ammo; this one can go either way, and either way is a directorial oversight. You've got your limitless shots per gun (someone lets off 35 successive shots without reloading, and you don't have to be a gun expert to know there's no gun made with more than 20 bullets in a magazine), or you've got protagonists that DO reload but don't seem to have any problem carrying around dozens of magazines.

13. This one rankles the most. Any featured computer application makes swishing noises as it performs it's searches, screen refreshes, or responses. Anyone who has ever used a computer - and that's basically everyone on the planet except my Dad - knows computer applications don't make noises when each screen is displayed, and if they did the volume control would be super-glued in the mute position.