Anyone who watches their fair share of movies is going to come across clichés. Certain conventions, tropes, and narrative beats have been used time and time again, and after they’re widespread enough, they can gradually come to feel clichéd if not appropriately spun, tweaked, or subverted. Plenty of great movies have used future clichés well, naturally using them at a point before they start feeling like clichés.
Of course, using a cliché here and there doesn’t automatically ruin a movie, and different people are going to be bothered by different ones, so compiling a ranking of bad or particularly overused ones is going to carry some subjectivity. The following clichés have certainly been abused at times, though, enough so that for many of them, they won’t be used anymore without a wink in the audience’s direction, or some sort of self-aware acknowledgment of how silly they are.
10 Deadly retirement plans
Found in: ‘The Expendables 2’ (2012), ‘To Live and Die in L.A.’ (1985), ‘Carlito’s Way’ (1993),
This one’s such a cliché that even parodying it feels overdone: the notorious instance of a character being just a few days from retirement, expressing that to another character, and then dying, usually minutes later. Perhaps the silliest example that’s (probably) not a parody comes from The Expendables 2, a series where a group of old men who make up the titular squad are essentially invincible… though it’s their youngest, a glorified red shirt played by Liam Hemsworth, who states he wants to start living a more peaceful life after one last mission, and then dies during that mission.
It’s shocking that a movie from 2012 seems to use it unironically, because even in the otherwise excellent To Live and Die in L.A., it feels a little silly, though there, it does ultimately motivate the protagonist’s entire revenge-fueled mission. A character being about to step away from a dangerous life before that dangerous life kills them was initially seen as being more dramatic, but nowadays, writers are probably better off just killing such a side character off without them having explicit retirement plans.
9 No manners while on the phone
Found in: ‘The Terminator’ (1984), ‘North by Northwest’ (1959), ‘Double Indemnity’ (1944)
The lack of etiquette movie characters have when on the phone never kills a film exactly, but it’s hard not to notice once you’ve had it pointed out to you (sorry for anyone who wasn’t aware until now). Specifically, it seems surprisingly common for characters to simply hang up the phone once the conversation is over instead of saying some kind of goodbye, likely due to it just taking up time or ruining pacing.
It can be seen in too many different movies to count, from older thrillers like North by Northwest and Double Indemnity to movies that even depict real-life people, like All the President’s Men. A good compilation of these sorts of instances can be found here, all the clips contained within showcasing ends to conversations that would be considered impolite or surprising in real life, but seem to happen fairly regularly in movie-land.
8 Coughing = death
Found in: ‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier’ (2014), ‘Midnight Cowboy’ (1969), ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ (2006)
This trope/cliché is a visual that can be used as a shortcut to demonstrating the immensity of a health condition a character’s battling, but it’s been overused and feels a little silly now. Coughing in real life can often be an indication of something like the common cold, after all, but attention being put on a film character coughing is often a sign that their days are numbered.
If the character coughs blood, then it’s especially over for them, but it can extend to just “regular” coughing (by everyday standards), too. The cough of death plagues characters in realistic dramas, like Dustin Hoffman’s in Midnight Cowboy, as well as also affecting characters from fantasy films (the protagonist’s mother in Pan’s Labyrinth) and superhero films (where it afflicts a soon-to-be-deceased elderly Peggy Carter in Captain America: The Winter Soldier).
7 The love triangle
Found in: ‘Pearl Harbor’ (2001), ‘The Twilight Saga’ (2008-2012), ‘The Hunger Games’ series (2012-2015)
Here’s the thing about the love triangle: more than most other well-worn conventions, the execution really matters, because a love triangle, when done poorly, can sink a movie. Look no further than something like the infamous war movie Pearl Harbor, or The Hunger Games, with that movie series still being good for the most part… but hampered by a shoehorned-in love triangle.
But then it’s sometimes done right, with a classic like Days of Heaven essentially being a love triangle movie, but also feeling like one of the best romance films of all time. And then there’s 2024’s Challengers, which had that kind of dynamic between three people driving much of the film’s story, and it didn’t feel hackneyed or clichéd there. Immense care needs to be taken when including such a thing in a movie… you don’t want your film being unfavorably compared to The Hobbit movies, after all.
6 The deadly family photo
Found in: ‘Platoon’ (1986), ‘Godzilla’ (2014), ‘Independence Day’ (1996)
As mentioned before, being someone who’s about to retire or someone with a cough is a sign of likely doom, at least as far as movies go. Another thing that seems to put people in danger is the act of showing another character a photo of a loved one, usually with a charming little anecdote about how loved they are, and oftentimes right before entering into a dangerous situation.
Like deaths following the announcement of retirement plans, the initial uses of a deadly family photo might’ve made a death scene more emotional, but it’s now been done enough that not only is it not surprising, but it can have the opposite effect. War movies seem largely responsible for making it a cliché, but it can be found in other genres, too; see sci-fi movies like 2014’s Godzilla and the original Independence Day.
5 Plot armor
Found in: ‘Live Free or Die Hard’ (2007), ‘Avengers: Endgame’ (2019), most ‘James Bond’ movies
If a character is important to the plot, they may find themselves gifted with plot armor, which effectively shields them from dangerous situations that would ordinarily kill most people in real-life, or obliterate less-important characters. Few sequences demonstrate the strength of plot armor better than Thanos decimating the Avengers HQ in Avengers: Endgame, but everyone inside the totally destroyed building survives. There’s a major death before this point, and another that ends the eventual climactic battle, but since everyone inside the building had to survive until that battle, they were gifted with plot armor.
It’s also something that shows up in the Die Hard sequels, which is a bit of a shame, considering one of the main appeals of the first movie was that John McClane was a pretty ordinary and vulnerable guy forced to become an action hero. The reverse happens in the James Bond series; most of the pre-Daniel Craig films see the protagonist equipped with plot armor alongside the other more literal gadgets, though Bond does ultimately feel more vulnerable and less indestructible in those Craig-starring entries.
4 Explaining an evil plan
Found in: ‘The Lion King’ (1994), ‘Iron Man’ (2008), ‘The Crow’ (1994)
The notion of a villain explaining their plan in detail to a (usually) restrained or injured hero has become such a well-known cliché that it seldom happens anymore without there being an element of parody to it. It’s easy to see why such a convention came to exist, especially if there’s some sort of twist to who the villain is, and gloating not only seems evil, but can establish how the newly-revealed bad guy deceived the other characters and, in turn, the audience.
Over-explaining an evil plan crosses a line into clichéd when it gives the hero enough time to gain the upper hand and fight back, ultimately defeating the villain. Kid’s movies kind of get away with it (see The Lion King with Scar gloating to Simba at the end), and so can movies where the villain is already well-established as being hammy and in-your-face (see The Crow), but it’s a bit of a dead trope nowadays, and with good reason.
3 Cat jump scares
Found in: ‘Friday the 13th Part 2’ (1981), ‘Alien’ (1979), ‘Night of the Demon’ (1957)
Whether a horror movie is good, bad, or somewhere in between/both at once, there’s a decent chance you’ll see a fake-out scare appear at least once, especially if it’s the kind of horror film that’s unafraid to feature some jump scares. A fake-out scare tends to take viewers/characters off-guard, with tension then being defused, often so an actual scare can land even harder.
There’s a fine art to doing these, and it’s admittedly become more difficult recently. To instantly tank a fake-out scare, though, one should make the source of the false alarm be a cat, which will pounce or dart out of the shadows, hiss, and then proceed to look adorable. Hey, it worked for a while, and it’s in line with real-life cat behavior for such a thing to happen (especially if it’s an orange cat), but it’s happened a few too many times in the movies for it to be anything but eye-roll-inducing to modern-day audiences.
2 The tiny bullet shield
Found in: ‘Hard Boiled’ (1992), ‘Batman’ (1989), ‘Glass Onion’ (2022)
A staple of action movies is the cliché that involves someone getting shot, oftentimes seemingly fatally, only for them to reveal that they had a tiny object on their person that ultimately ended up right in the way of a bullet. It’s a good way to deliver a temporary emotional wallop, with getting shot taking down a character, only to show moments later that they’re actually fine.
If the object is well-established beforehand, or if it’s genuinely compact in a way that could well absorb a bullet, this convention can sometimes work, and is something more believable in fantastical/heightened action flicks (like Jack Nicholson’s Joker failing to properly shoot/kill Bruce Wayne in 1989’s Batman). Glass Onion might be the most recent film to sort of get away with it, but only because twists, subversions, and sometimes subversions upon subversions are the name of the game when it comes to the Knives Out movies released so far.
1 Third-act misunderstandings/falling-outs
Found in: ‘Shrek’ (2001), ‘Avatar’ (2009), ‘Notting Hill’ (2009)
With a need to heighten drama around the beginning of a film’s final act, numerous movies – especially romantic comedies – fall back on the dreaded third-act misunderstanding. It’s something you’ve likely seen before, and are probably sick of, with someone’s behavior or words being interpreted in a way that drives a wedge between previously close characters. One character will usually go off and sulk for a while, and it often marks the point in any comedy where the jokes tend to go away for a few minutes, or even a few scenes.
If it’s more of a dramedy than a comedy, or if the misunderstanding is believable, it may be excusable, but more often than not, these falling-outs at this point in a story come across as contrived. James Cameron, a lover of tropes/conventions/clichés/water, even used it in the highest-grossing movie of all time, 2009’s Avatar, so you know it’s a powerful and prevalent narrative tool, even though it remains one of the most frustrating and overdone.
