Movies and TV Shows

I think monster should have rules. Zombies aren't fast, there's just so many they over take you. Dracula dies from a stake through the heart, and the Wolfman dies from a silver bullet

Nonsensical or thoroughly debunked technobabble. The most annoying for me is faster than light communication via quantum entangled particles. Yes entangled particles will change each other's state faster than light but this effect CANNOT be used to send information of any kind. At all. Ever. This has been known since engagement was first discovered but Hollywood is always like "I'm just going to ignore that second part." I don't even have anything against ftl comms or any other physics breaking things, just use an explanation that isn't literally impossible and well known why it's impossible for God's sake.

Guns. Fuck me.

Guns don't blow the user backwards, unless it's a truly monster rifle fired from a standing position, and they certainly don't blow the bullet recipient backwards. The first cowboy movies showed people dropping straight down when shot and audiences thought that unrealistic. Yes, that's realistic and, I think, far more horrifying seeing someone's strings cut. There's a finality that showcases how deadly guns can be.

Rattly guns. Jesus. Guns don't rattle you Nimrods. They might make tiny sounds here and there, but Hollywood guns sound like they left out some screws or pins after assembly. I have a Colt .45, a somewhat loosey-goosey design, can't hardly get a sound even shaking the shit out of it. You can punt about any modern gun and not hear metal on metal.

Constantly cocking, racking, charging. Look! Here's our super badass who's been in danger the last 20-minutes, and he's just now chambering a round?! Or, Mr. Badass has to charge his weapon, kicking out a perfectly good round, to show he means business! And if it didn't eject an unspent round? Action hero was running around with an unloaded weapon. What's funny is that a real badass would fire all but the last round and then swap magazines. No charging required! Yes, that's way harder than it sounds.

I have two.

When a woman's child is threatened she goes stupid and hysterical. Like in Lost when she just keeps screaming "my baby!". Yes parents get highly motivated when their child is in danger but they don't get stupid and lose agency.

In any setting where rope would be rare and expensive and they just cut the bonds instead of untying them. It's understandable when time is critical like a prisoner break or the building is on fire. But in a society where someone spent a week making that rope and you just cut it instead of taking 5 min to preserve the rope.

Picking a lock with just one pick. That's not how it works, you need one to apply a rotating force and another one to lift the individual pins. Sometimes shows even get it right in one season and then totally blow it in the next one.

How every injury requires blood to be spit up.

Coffee/drink cups that have nothing in them. At least put water in them so they don't look obviously empty. Lol

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

Not quite a pet peeve, but close. The whole "We're not in a (movie/show/game/whatever)!" type of dialogue.

That, or cliffhangers that will never be resolved due to the show/movie either being cancelled, discontinued, whatever. Looking at you, Sliders season 5 ending!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.)

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?

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.

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).