Freakish superheroic characters, usually played by relatively unknown actors, are often introduced for the melodramatic effect of their premature deaths. This is especially true in movies that involve a lot of graphic battle scenes, since logic dictates that someone dies occasionally in violent conflicts.
Category: Action Movies
Cinematic Hacking
The protagonist must hack a computer with no recognizable OS but whose monitor displays text in a GIANT FONT.
Land Mine Drama
Whereas real land mines are designed to detonate on compression, land mines in the movies often allow for a dramatic situation to unfold while an actor’s foot is on the device. More often than not, protagonists are able to move objects similar to their body weight onto the device, giving them just enough time to…
Hand Cuffs
Although they are pretty hard to remove, heroes in action movies generally find ways to get them off without much trouble, often with a hair pin. Although women don’t use hair pins as much as in the past, people with handcuffs can usually find one quickly.
Sleeper Hold
In action movies, the sleeper hold is often applied to cause guards and sentries to collapse in a few seconds. The process never goes awry and it doesn’t lead to death, as sometimes happens when policemen use choke holds.
British Aniquity
For some reason gladiators and other soldiers of Greek and Roman antiquity speak English with a British accent. Extra fun ensues when American wrester-turned-actors attempt to conform to this dialect.
Vague Locations
Often it’s cheaper to shoot a movie in a location other than the one called for by the script. The ‘Spaghetti Western’ is a good example of this. Many urban stories are also shot in the wrong cities for financial reasons.
Cars and Cliffs
If a car reaches a cliff, you can be sure it will either fly off the edge and explode dramatically or it will teeter precariously on the edge for a while.
Car Keys on Visor
What action sequence would be complete without a stolen car that just happens to have its keys stashed on the visor?
Binocular vision
To convey what a character is seeing through binoculars, viewers are shown a figure-eight shaped frame, even though when you look through binoculars you don’t really experience this.