Oh yes! I agree!!! There is a channel on yt called soft white underbelly and there are some interviews with real killers and murdering someone affects a lot!
Its even worse sometimes when you look at it from an outside perspective and realize that the main character is wrong, but the other option is automatically labeled evil despite being the best method
That depends on story I'm sure, it being right because it's the hero doing it would be bad but we're forgetting about stories where that character IS the hero *because* they're the ones following that specific morality and fighting against the world around them
I love the Hercule Poirot TV series but hated the Murder on the Orient Express episode. There, he treats the killers as if they were evil scumbags when they had very good reasons to kill their victim (who was the only true evil scumbag in the story). He's a lot more reasonable in the book and in the 2017 movie.
I always hate when an ordinary character with no prior fighting skills and no experience murdering, becomes an unfazed badass killing machine out of no where or in a brief time
@@Here_is_Waldo humor helps, putting lots of humor in the narrative and dialogue can help a bad plot progression. It's because in bad times, people just want to be entertained. Kind of like Michael bay's explosions, but less empty. Plus if the humor is smart enough, and people get it, they feel smart too and get dopamine from that. Lots of smart jokes in Kungfu Panda, even through the plot is average.
Because there's already two type of people. No judgment but just breaking it down. People who watch shows for the power fantasy, and those who watch the show as encouragement for their real life training. Do you know what's even better then the fantasy of all power? The fantasy of it coming easily. Not only is it in the fantasy world instead of the real world, but even in the fantasy world it's easy LOL
0:25 - Cliche #1: Dark Helmet: I am your father’s brother’s nephew’s cousin’s former roommate. Lone Star: So what does that make us? Dark Helmet: Absolutely nothing.
Or even the villain. In Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Voller is hit in the face and knocked off the train in the beginning. That should definitely not been a survivable event. But he shows up later with barely a scar. Probably should have come up with a different method of removing him as a threat.
John Wick comes chapter 4 comes to mind.The fall on that Jeep or from those stairs in Berlin should have broken many (if not most) of his bones. But somehow, it only seemed to hurt a lot.
I think the worst ever example of everyone is connected to the hero is the Fast and the Furious, every single villain has to be from Doms past for no reason
I think the worst/funniest character development from F&F is how Jason Statham goes from being a bad guy to a good guy in about 5 minutes. It seems like it was the result of some studio head saying "hey, wouldn't it be great if The Stath and The Rock teamed up?"
Yeah, agreed. Captain America is such a good example, especially in Civil War. We the audience are supposed to get behind what he did, but it never feels right. It's loaded with entitlement, refusal to accept consequences for his actions, and the inability to listen to and hear the perspectives of others. Basically, Captain America is supposed to be this righteous and just character worthy of wielding Mjolnir later on, but what he does in Civil War is behave like a spoiled white kid.
@@AlexIsModded Are you really team Iron Man? :) You're a rare bunch. I think the absolute opposite. Captain is my favourite classical hero and I actually like how they managed to pull off both teams in Civil War. You can pick a side and no one can say you chose "the wrong one". What I find the most moving is how Cap was always pro-establishment (Tony was the rebel, then they switched xD), a soldier fighting bad guys, serving his country. Back when problems were black and white. Now, he pretty much abandons all that in his arc and learns not to blatantly accept orders from others, but instead rely solely on his moral compass. He fights for people he cares about (and greater good in the process) and that's everything that matters. Especially since he can't truly trust the modern government. Honestly, I would want a loyal friend like Cap. What you've described feels more like Alphonso Mackenzie than Steve Rogers. Mack was really acting righteous too many times (even though he has some of the most iconic one-liners). And in my book, the absolute best moral compass of all TV show characters I've seen belongs to Phil Coulson and Harold Finch (if they ring a bell). Lovely day!!💙
@@petrastein2531 Yeah. What I like the most though is how brutal Tony was with him in Endgame. Citing Steve's own words at him when he comes to him to beg for help. "Then we will lose together" (I don't know if it's exactly that in the English version, but this is what was in Polish one). And that Steve does not really know how to respond, because Tony is absolutely right. They came a slight push short of defeating Thanos. Without that Civil War, Thanos would have been stopped and the Universe spared. That's also why I strongly dislike the ending of Endgame - not only is the enitre plot focused on undoing consequences, isntead of dealing with them, but also it's fucking Tony who has to die for Steve's mistakes, while he gets to live his dream life and is not even particularly phased about it. That's why Infinity war is 9,5/10 movie and Endgame is 6/10 at most.
The one I really hate is "I can't kill this villain because that would make me evil too, even though I know the second I let him out of my sight he's going to blow up an entire city." Moral codes are good because they create tough choices, but at some point when confronted with unreasonable evil it becomes absurd and comes across as valuing one's own self righteousness above their duty to protect, making the hero look weak and unwilling to make tough choices.
@@KanieX "Killing Joker is the first in a long list of sane acts that you refuse to commit." Jason Todd, rightfully calling Batman out in the comic version of UNDER THE HOOD
@@KanieXBatman won't kill no matter what because if he does, he doesn't believe he could stop. "A perfect batman never kills" is a saying because all batmen who do either fall to madness or stop taking other people's lives into account. But not every writer who made a batman thinks the same way, which is why we have some batmen who stand by when a citizen has a gun at a criminals head while some would save a criminal from their own bomb.
I hate when the hero makes an obviously terrible decision, like sparing a villain who has no business being spared, because "it's not the right thing".
KENOBI! Obi-wan just watched Vader walk down a street, wantonly slaughtering innocent civilians for no reason. But I can't kill him. Later: "Luke, you have to kill your father."
I’m pretty sure the cliche in the spider man movies are intentional and are part of the message of with great power comes great responsibility and how most of them are made by decisions Peter made.
@@squadhoodie8895 Nah, it's just bad writing. Ever since Keaton's "Batman" '89 where a young Joker-to-be inadvertently created his most hated nemesis by murdering Bruce's parents, hack writer after hack writer has tried to infuse their scripts with this level of drama by copy-pasting it. Yeah, we got the message from what happened to Peter, (we don't need to be hit over the head with it), the rest is just lack of imagination.
A great inversion of the "resurrected hero" trope is in Megamind. That whole movie is a masterpiece, but I love how metroman's "return" to stop the bad guy at the end is the trope that happened so much that Megamind was able to play off of it and make it a fun twist
Similar to the first one: Everyone loves the hero. The supporting cast and even NPCs get along with the hero a little TOO well, a lot of times despite just meeting them, and anyone who doesn't like them is very obviously a villain. It makes the character dynamics feel very shallow and it completely defangs any potential conflict or rivalry between the hero and the rest of the cast.
I'm making a subversion on this trope, where all the nameless townsfolk love the heroes but the minor and side characters bicker about how they're the ones that actually saved the town and the heroes are a bunch of frauds and no one ever looks at them or gives them their their respect.
Cool thing is, the tangled cartoon challenged this with the character Monty, who hates Rapunzel but isn't evil. And Rapunzel grows in learning that not everyone is gonna like her and that's okay. And also that she doesn't need to like everybody either.
Harry Potter is a great example of that; every single person in Hogwarts love him because he is the baby who defeated Voldemort, and the only ones who dislike him are obviously from Slytherin, so all of them are evil or minor antagonists.
That's what I really like about the Witcher franchise. Geralt is pretty much hated everywhere he goes, no matter if the people know about his great accomplishments. Of course he is loved by his friends and companions, but that only makes sense because he is a very likeable dude.
Opposite trope: When everyone straight up despises or hates the protagonist for no other reason than to just hate him. An example of this is in Chicken Little. Yeah, he's insufferable, yeah he's dumb, yeah the movie sucks, but why is everyone such an insufferable asshole towards this little kid??? Even his own dad dislikes him and regrets the day he was born except obviously the supporting cast who are his unconditional besties.
That part where Rey thought she killed Chewie with force lightning is honestly what ALMOST saved the RoS for me. Then Chewie shows up on the next scene alive and well, and I finally almost checked out of the movie entirely.
@@DanCoder-h2u yeah fake deaths are good for the plot and all but if they show up a coupla minutes later saying "heya fellas, I live still! Suprised? well, you never got time to process what happened so actually you're confused!"
@@orangeshirtguy01spoiler alert if you didnt saw the movie, a good exemple of fake deaths is Gardian of the galaxie volume 3. Drax get shot, rocket emotionnal flatline, star lord in space etc
Your Ant-Man example is ALSO an example of one of my most hated tropes: Trinity Syndrome: where the obviously-more-competent female character only exists to train the hero, and once the hero has been trained she suddenly has no role in the movie anymore except to be the love interest.
Alas in Ant-man there has been a good explanation for that writer's choice with her father fearing her loss and thus chosing an expandable nobody for undertaking tha suicide mission. After regaining his beloved wife that he thought had lost he changes his judgement and makes his daughter a super-heroine, too. That's still a cliche, but not one to hate I'd say ...
@@Rezzatoni I agree, but also you know that if Hope (the daughter) had been Harper (a son), the fact that Daddy didn't want him to do the mission because "it was too dangerous," wouldn't have stopped him from doing the mission anyway. It would have been one of those times where Harper slips away, puts on the suit, and does what needs to be done, because he's a hero, damnit! And he can tell that he's better than this expendable dweeb that his dad brought in to do the important mission!
@@juliegolickWow, you’re right! It’s always the girls that are somehow kept from doing anything by their dads in order to “protect” them cause their mom died or something. I’d like to see a movie where the mom won’t let her son do stuff because she’s afraid of losing him after his dad died AND she isn’t treated like a manipulative villain but just as a lovely mother who cares endearingly much about her son (cause that’s how they portray those dads), but I have a feeling that won’t happen so soon.
@@JustanotherRUclipsr771 What about "The Kingsmen"? In the pub scene Eggsy tells that Colin-Firth-character his mother stopped him from joining the army because of his father's death and still she is portrayed througout the movie as only caring for her children the best she can ...
Another major problem with Jon Snow's resurrection is that it doesn't have anywhere near the same effects on him as it did for other characters in the story. In the books, anyone who is resurrected in this way loses a part of themselves in the process. Beric becomes more hollow and soulless with each time he's resurrected, and Catelyn becomes Lady Stoneheart (mostly due to the length of time that passed between her corpse being found and the resurrection ritual taking place.) Jon didn't seem to 'lose' anything at all - it was literally as if someone had just hit 'Respawn' on him in a video game.
I didn't watch the show (I'm waiting for the books to be finished hahahaha!) but in the books, Jon Snow's death doesn't have any weight behind it because it's written in a way that screams "not permadeath". By then the readers have witnessed about a dozen key characters killed off for real and they can tell the difference.
@@federicogianaThat’s fair but he also hasn’t been brought back to life in the books yet. (I’m not arguing that he won’t be as it’s pretty much a given that he will) but I’m willing to bet in the books his resurrection will have more consequences which if done well will give the weight his actual death lacked.
@@obwolf You are, of course right, but I don't think he is going to die in the first place (still a 'resurrection' given the situation he's in). I agree with you that Martin would probably make him a lot more bitter and hard after the attempt on his life: "kill the child" was already a mantra in the previous chapters, after all.
Unearned skills is EASILY my most hated. I see it all the time and I hate it. It’s just such a cop out for the writer to force a strong character on people, and unfortunately I see this happen the most with strong female characters which is why I think they receive a lot of hate
I hate it because I've practiced martial arts for years and know what it's like to put on the wraps, put in my mouthguard and then stand across from someone for a spar. I can understand it not bothering other people who haven't done any athletic competition, or sports, or played video games competitively, or martial arts, but it bothers me something *FIERCE* and can very easily take me out of a story I would have liked otherwise. It's traditionally why when I watch movies, I'd prefer the action hero already be skilled rather than train on-screen. One of the only times I don't really mind it is Karate Kid, but that's just because the story is good and I watched it when I was young, so I have a bias that I'm willing to acknowledge.
I've seen it a lot, especially fantasy fiction -- young woman (teens to early 20s) who has never held a weapon in her life, picks up a sword, and is shown one fighting stance. Suddenly she's fantastic, a master swordswoman, able to beat her new mentors and sparring partners, men who've trained and fought for 20-30 years, with the ultimate ease, not even breaking a sweat. They inevitably have every other skill, power, knowledge, and trait you'd ever want. They're drop dead gorgeous, but are 'omg totally humble about it', great magic casters or healers, everyone loves them, especially animals and children, every man wants to win her heart (bonus if they all fight each other over her), they know random obscure ancient languages that only a handful of long studied wizened scholars know, and so on.
Those writers seem to want to empower the minority they're writing about but they showcase the wrong things for it. Instead of showing what should be the end point of a character's training right away, they should focus more on the journey to get there. Not only does it add more realism, but it also achieves the goal they were trying to do. It inspires, not only their chosen minority but every reader and listener, to undergo the journey that the hero took and become a better version of their own selves just like the hero. Rather than putting all your stock in "what could be", pay more attention on "how could it be".
i'm reading all y'alls comments and tryig to see how i can better my character. she has some physical aptitude and does rise through the ranks a bit faster than most, but she does go through 3 yrs warrior bootcamp and several more years in the military. So i think that bit is warranted. problem is now she's trying to learn dark magic to break a curse (everyone there has some level of magical ability, like musical ability here), and has been training for 3 months, but decides to try to break the curse before she's even close to having the ability because she's out of time. but she straight up accepts it's going to kill her since she's nowhere near prepared enough. it doesn't. the curse she's trying to break decides to just hitch a ride on her, needing to save her life to do so. So she DOES end up {{strong}}, but i guess the "earning" of the skill is her basically dying for it. does that work, do you think? Still feel like a cop out?
I remember thinking how insanely ballsy it would have been to kill Chewie like that and I was genuinely surprised (in a very good way), so handwaving it away almost immediately was so incredibly disappointing to me. For a quick second, I thought the story had some teeth. It may honestly be the most disappointing moment in Star Wars to me at this point, if only because I was fooled into thinking something actually dramatic might have happened.
Yep. Same with Leia’s near death experience in the last Jedi. I thought the death would’ve been perfect the way kylo had a strong internal struggle on whether or not he should shoot his mom and ultimately decided not to just for other fighters to shoot her out anyways. It was perfect until she started flying through space for some reason. That was the official moment for me I checked out on the sequels
Even if they kept his death permanent, I think the teeth had already lost their affect. Han and Luke had already died (I can’t remember if Leia had died yet but we all knew it was coming). At that point all I could think was “seriously. You’re gonna kill another OT character”. I was probably just as annoyed as I was shocked.
One of my most hated hero clichés is the hot blooded reckless hero, the guy who immediately jumps into action with a positive attitude but no discernible plan. Go guns blazing and hope for the best is not a plan. I think this is most often seen in shonen manga/anime and fantasy RPGs. My problem with this is that this often makes hero look incredibly stupid, and when his antics acually save the day it also makes his adversaries look incompetent by extension. I much prefer heroes who make plans, their plans fail, and then they have to keep a positive attitude and adapt to the situation.
I agree, this gets so bad in anime/manga lol. The only reason Luffy, Naruto, Goku, hasn't horribly died due to their hot headed stupidity is because they are the MC. Stories are still fun, but idiots never having to pay for being idiots is pretty annoying at times.
But at the same time, I think the opposite is true. I think that characters who have to plan for everything are _exceedingly_ irritating most times because they act like little smartasses who know everything and thus should always be seen as being in the right about every single decision and choice that they make, like for example, the Privelaged Rival or Prodigy Rival Tropes. Just because someone is a genius fighter or planner or whatever, that isn't gonna stop me from seeing them as a whiny, angsty, prodigy _dick_ of a _know-it-all SMARTASS._
Mary Sue/Gary Stu types of heroes are the cliché I like the least. Innately good at everything they try, liked by everyone and winners of every argument. Even the villain secretly likes them and only fights them because they won't join them.
A slightly less known example, but I remember watching Eragon at the theatre and hating it because of how instantly good at everything he was. Wasn't he also "the chosen one" on top of everything?
That's not the definition of Mary Sue I'm familiar with. I thought MS was the author making the main character exactly like him/her self - same looks, same likes/dislikes, setting up the character to be the hero, and getting into bed with the hot character. Of course, that all requires some blindness to ones own character flaws. Bottom line, I always thought MS was self-insertion into a story.
What I hated most about the original Spider-man trilogy (though absolutely loved the first two movies) was how they retroactively changed the story of Uncle Ben's murder JUST to make Spiderman's fight with Sandman personal, and in the process completely cheapening and taking all the punch out of his encounter with the carjacker.
Agreed. Always hated that. I get the connections with Norman and Otto were great, but Marko could’ve just been morally challenging. They could’ve just made his daughter more important, and let Spidey believe he’s truly in the way of someone saving their child’s life.
That also highlights a major problem I have with stories like that. Not every villain has to have a personal connection to the hero somehow. It’s fine to have sometimes but it’s not always needed. The spider man 3 example is the one I use when explaining that trope. In making the Sandman Uncle Ben’s killer, not only is it a lazy tactic to make his and peter’s rivalry mean something or just to get Peter to be more angry and embrace his darker side, it almost disregards the reason Peter became spider-man in the first place. He chose not to stop that guy from taking the elevator and as a result his uncle was shot and killed. That’s always how it went in every other interpretation of the story because it was a pivotal moment in the franchise. The sandman’s story was fine as it was, a caring father who turned to a life of crime in order to pay the medical bills of his sick daughter. That alone could’ve been a great moral lesson for the audience as well as peter. Not every criminal is out for themself.
kinda agree. But when I think about it, Peter's decision to let the robber get away still indirectly caused Uncle Ben's death. If Peter stop him enter the elevator, Flint wont accidentally shoot Uncle Ben.
There is a wild problem with resurrections in Avatar 2. - Sigourney Weaver died? Nope, not really, she even gave birth to a child. - Norm Spelman's avatar died? Of course not, he's fine. - The Colonel died? No, he was resurrected. - The Colonel died again? No, his son saved him. I wouldn't be surprised if all the dead whales and the hero's son are resurrected in Avatar 3.
Cameron: We need a villain for the sequel. Writer: We already made a villain for the first movie, why not use him again? Cameron: We can't reuse the same villain you idiot, he's dead! Writer: But what if he wasn't? Cameron: Get this man a raise!
@@Senovitj Cloning IS a resurrection when it comes to sci-fi. Film that lasts 3 hours could spear 30 seconds on words about how Norm's avatar is alive.
Rey or just Rise of Skywalker alone could be an example for everything mentioned. Everyone is connected? Rise of Skywalker, though only kind of. Unearned Skills? Rey. Lightsabers, force, piloting, all of which she spent little time training for if any, and she excelled at all of them. Stolen decisions? Not sure on admittedly. Feel like there's something like this that happened on the sequel trilogy but I forget. No consequences? Rey and RoS obviously. Resurrected hero? IIRC,she dies the gets resurrected with no drawbacks. Also the stupid thing of Palpatine returning, sOMeHoW.
@@mechanwhal6590 I think Force Awakens was kind of okay for the most part. But some parts of the movie were just horrible (like that she has enough skill to fight Kylo). Also the movie itself is just a New Hope copy from Wish. The Last Jedi was so bad, I didn’t even bother watching the third sequel movie. Once I found out that this movie is as horrible, if not worse than The Last Jedi, I knew it was the right decision. The Last Jedi and the second Jurassic World Film are the main reasons why I basicly stopped watching hollywood movies (not saying that every Hollywood movie is bad, I am either not interested or I would be interested because of the franchise, but the movies are just so horrible). Also the second JW movie is just a bad copy of the second JP movie, just like the Star Wars sequel are basicly just a copy of the original Trilogy, especially the first two
About the "unearned skills" one, I really like what the Matrix movie did. They literally download knowledge in a matter of seconds (the "I know kung fu" scene) BUT even knowing *every* martial art is barely useful inside the Matrix with its agents. It's a good exposition scene of how the Matrix works, gives the character a ton of unearned skill, but it doesn't ruin anything about the hero's rise to power.
Also, even when Neo acquired all those new abilities, he still had to readjust his brain for his new discovery of how the matrix works AND train with Morpheus to get used to said abilities. He didn't just learn kung-fu, he had to learn to fight all over again.
Though... Let's all ask why the Matrix's heroes don't just use shotguns and Gatling guns, flamethrowers, etc. "Let's use the guns that Smith can dodge!" "Works for me!"
Neo failed and struggle multiples times though. He failed to beat Morpheus before Morpheus gave him that advice " Don't think you are, know you are " He need to learn and adjust.
Yep, it kinda sends a bad message to the audience. “The only way you can be a hero is that you have to be special since birth, not from having a good heart.”
Similiarly to the „unearned skill“ topic, another chliché is the hero‘s ability to solve unsolvable problems within seconds if he reeeally puts some effort into it. It usually goes like this: A: Have you found a way to deactivate the bomb? B: No, it can‘t be deactivated because it has been locked by . It cannot be done and no one has ever managed to deactivate bombs of that kind. A: But we‘ll explode within 30 seconds, so I‘m gonna put a gun to your head now. B: Oh now that you‘re doing this, I could try .
@@MrPleers I like it, too. Especially because James Bond has no plan how to stop the bomb. He opens the device's lid with all the wires and gears and lights and tic toc and goes like "Whaaat on earth is this?" There is even a hint of panic creeping up on him before somebody else clicks the switch and save's his behind. That's how it should be.
Swordfish's "wolverine" solving 8 monitor encryption comes to mind. Not only bad cliche, bad casting for that character imho. Seems out of character and cliche most of the time.
Jurassic Park "This is a linux system!" Independence Day virus. I probably need to see more movies generally, I'm betting there's a ton of examples and honestly, movie writing today is so bad, it's turned me off watching most of them.
My two most hated clichés are the "inverse ninja strength ratio" where the more enemies you face the less dangerous and powerful they are and the new phenomenon of the agenda fitting Mary Sue. Who, depending on what moral standpoint the writer wants to lecture the audience about, is the best at everything and anything.
And in reality, those 6 attackers don't wait their turn to get beaten up, they go at the hero single filed, after they slaughtered the victim together...
@@TheMasterQuests It IS possible to have a protagonist fight multiple foes and still prevail but it has to be done right. If they're constantly moving around so the opponents can't surround them, using the terrain to isolate their foes from one another, luring them to a confined space that FORCES them to go one at a time... That's plausible. Especially if the foes are not well-organized. Having a guy stand in the middle of a chamber while the enemy horde surrounds him then proceeds to attack one by one while the others wait their turn yeah, THAT'S dumb.
@@Wright805 yea it depends on the area but if you have the protagonist moving around like he's Jackie Chan that's more believable as to he hasn't been jumped yet.
One of my least favorite cliches is the "Yeah we get it" Resume. The hero was "top of his class at SEAL training and beat the base record in marksmanship," or "top of her class at Harvard, with dual degrees in neural microbiology and Egyptian history." Jeesh! Like even the worst Navy SEAL is still a badass. And sometimes people who had a 3.7 GPA at Cornell can be smart.
3:16 a similar trope that annoys me is when there is a genuinely morally gray situation, but then some twist suddenly makes one side/option the obviously right one and the other obviously wrong
My hated cliche is "the power of love," like in The Matrix. All is lost, then the love interest simply says I love you or kisses them and the hero becomes unstoppable.
I'm reading everyone's comments to try to avoid them in my characters. but.. i might be guilty of the one you mentioned. ok so there's a hero and a villain and the hero ends up becoming evil while the villain goes off on a redemption arc, but at the end the (former)villain is begging the (former)heroine to {get rid of a curse she took on herself to save him and} be good again and she's like, naw bro. so he, through the POWER OF LOVE {guitar riff} (and also dark magic), hugs her and blasts the curse out of her, killing himself in the process. so i guess technically he had {power} enough to do that anyway, but the "power of love" made him ...want to? i guess? is that still the cliche? 😟
I hated that part in the matrix. i'm sure neo should be the one without dying, and just by believing in himself especially when he saves Morpheus and still comes out alive with help
One of my least favorite hero cliches is the chosen one trope, and "fate" in general. I much prefer stories about normal people in interesting situations making their own decisions.
I don't know Avatar the last Airbender and she Ra and the princess of power reboot pulled this off extremely well while still being able to make the main character relatable realistic and have amazing growth
@@TotalAnalyst2 It's not the lack of character growth that I dislike - it's the idea that the only people who can make a difference in the world are those who are destined to save or destroy it. I much prefer stories that convey that anyone can make a difference no matter who they are.
I always felt that the cinematic Star Wars galaxy is no bigger than a tiny village. Every single event in the entire galaxy is connected to the same tiny group of people, many of which are blood related. The "Expanded universe" stoies of all kinds makes the galaxy feel so much bigger.
I like the rare occasions where heroes see #1 Type 2 happening around them and go "You know, I'm starting to think there's a pattern here, and it might be that _I'm_ the problem". The Dragon Ball series does a lot of things wrong (including almost everything on this list), but later in the series, Goku _notices_ that the threats his loved ones face come specifically for him, and that if he wasn't around, these villains wouldn't be showing up at all. Because of it, he repeatedly tries (in vain) to pass the torch in an attempt to keep everyone else safe. The execution of this character arc was repeatedly undermined by executive pressure, but I liked the idea at least.
meanwhile in detective conan he has villains around him every day or two idk how the author still managed to make good stories despite all the villains showing up right up conan's @ss
The series definitely isn’t perfect and does commit a few writing sins, but man, the writing can be strong when it wants to be. I can’t say much about DBZ yet since I only just started it, but for the original show I would say its biggest flaws were the slow pacing in the early seasons, the unnecessary exposition at times (it breaks the biggest rule of writing, which is show don’t tell), and the Main Character Effect that Goku has (there’s a lot of “It took me years to master this technique, but Goku did it in only two days” type situations in the show). I’d say seasons 4 and 5 is where the writing reached its peak, specifically during the Piccolo arc.
Another one I hate is when the Hero gets special privileges/exemptions from the plot. Magic system has different classes/castes? Hero will either be good at all of them or have a special ability that encompasses/trumps all the others. Hero must make a sacrifice or suffer extreme consequences? Usually bypassed by the Power of Friendship or something by the end of the plot. ie: Masters of the Universe Revelation, Teela accepts the role of Sorceress, which comes at the cost of being bound to a specific location... except when she decides to ignore that and continue on with her brand new powers and no consequences at all. Another is Fire Emblem Awakening, where one of the main characters comes back from being erased from existence by the actual power of friendship.
The Fire Emblem one honestly feels earned in a Harry Potter sort of way, but only if there's a significant number of people fighting besides the Avatar by that point. If you were going to change it, I wouldn't mind there being a threshold of different levels of connections with the other characters to be the requirement for Robin to be brought back to life with it increasing greatly if Robin has a spouse, a high connection with Chrom and potentially Lucina, high connections with their kid/kids, and friendships with others that they can. That way, it's a significant number of bonds that change what fate decrees, which goes with the themes of Fire Emblem Awakening.
Somewhere in the midst of S5 of GoT, Sam Tarly says 'John always comes back'. In the S5 episode Hardhome, Jon and the Night King have a meaningful stare down, and you just *know* they will meet again. Jon's death and resurrection, I suspect, was meant to have a larger role - one in which Jon's temporary death would actually matter - but once the writers ran out of GRR Martin's source material and had no direction, they forgot about all the foreshadowing and cheated the character and the audience out of that finale. Instead, Arya got the kill without having earned it and the series turned to shit. I don't blame Martin, just Benioff and Weiss for rushing to get the show over and bungling it.
In the books there's strong hints and build ups that Jon is supposed to have warged into Ghost before his death (the books show that he has a direct emotion connection to Ghost). And Melisandre at one point asks to see Azor Ahai (the prophesized hero that her god was supposed to have returned that she believes to be Stannis), and she keeps seeing a vision of Jon turning into a wolf, then turning into a human. So what was likely supposed to happen is that Jon would warg into Ghost when he dies, and then somehow Ghost would be transformed back into Jon (probably by Melisandre). I think the show just didn't want to get rid of Ghost, so they just resurrected Jon directly.
It's interesting that you show Luke's Jedi training, because many people have pointed to that as a genuine example of a hero who gained a skill too quickly. To be fair, I subscribe to the theory that Luke's training actually too several months, which is supported by the subplot of Han and Leia traveling to Bespin without a working hyperdrive, which gave them time to get a relationship upgrade. The timeline for this part of TESB is very vague, so there could have been a timeskip of weeks or even months without harming the narrative.
I remember when I saw it as a kid and it felt like a couple of days to me. They might have said it in the movie it was actually weeks or months but I found out in recent years that in the novel version of the movie it was a couple of weeks maybe like a month.
Luke also doesn't finish his training, and LOSES his fight with Vader because of it. It's not the same case at all. How can it be "rushed" when the entire point is that it was never finished?
Correct. Consequence of his decision to not complete his training: lose fight to Vader and his hand. Better example WOULD have been Rey 'Skywalker'... But she never even did any training! She was Ms. Perfect from the get go!
Honestly, I think Luke and Rey suffer from that same thing when you include the prequels and show that jedi trained their entire lives to be as good as they were. How can Luke possibly defeat Vader even if his training with Yoda took a few months? Rey grew up a scavenger and so you can assume she had some fighting skills she developed just to stay alive. Still, the only justification used for her getting skills so fast was that she was Palpatine's granddaughter. I do like Rey as a character, but much of that is probably due to Daisy Ridley, not the writing.
When I heard the Dexter example for the third one, I immediately thought of the opposite situation in Breaking Bad, where Walter White spends a good deal of time grappling with the fact he has to kill Krazy-8, and eventually has to strangle him with a bike lock.
That's literally a stolen decision too though, walt initially has to decide on whether to free crazy eight or not, but when Walt finds out eight's planning to kill him, this gives Walt an easy way out by killing crazy eight to save his own life instead of tackling the dilemma to free him or not. As good as breaking bad is it still falls into this cloche unfortunately.
@@treydryburgh7705it doesn't, what you are describing was the whole dilemma in the first place. Also it make sense as it's a grounded show so yeah krazy wants in fact to survive
@@hypeman1021 i don't think you understood what I mean. I was describing how the whole dilemma was stolen from walt, also krazy wanting to survive has nothing to do with anything. The entire point of Walt's dilemma was if he was willing to risk his life to let krazy go or for Walt to kill an unarmed man, but before he gets the chance to choose one of the options he finds the broken plate and then becomes 100% certain that krazy will kill him, forcing Walt to make the only feasible decision: to kill him. So the moral decision walt had to make was stolen in place of walt being forced to kill or be killed, which is an obvious and much easier choice to make.
@@treydryburgh7705 The choice was recontextualized, but it wasn't stolen. For Walt, letting Krazy 8 go was the "easy" choice, which is why it didn't take much to convince him. It was then by Walt's own observation that he noticed the missing plate piece. Even when killing him became the only rational choice, going through with it was still just as hard for Walt and no one else does the job for him. He even gets close and provokes the guy to force a direct self-defense situation, and cries to himself after. He contends with the fact that the choices he made led him to choking the life out of a man with his own hands. He fully suffers the consequences of that action and comes out a more hardened full-measures type of guy as a result. Compare that to a 3rd party finding Doakes by dumb luck, Dexter having no direct hand in what happens to him, and coming out a totally unchanged character after.
My favorite subversion of stolen choices, is to have the hero fully commit to making the wrong choice, then steal it from them, then never let them forget it.
I hope I am describing this correctly, but a hero cliche that bugs me is when a grounded character acquires extraordinary or superhuman abilities over time (often in sequels). For example, Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry starts as a highly capable, but believably realistic, police detective. As the sequels churned out he developed ridiculous marksmanship and personal combat abilities that transcend ordinary human ability. The same applies to Stallone's Rocky & Rambo characters, and Charles Bronson's character in the Death Wish movies. In the great originals, (we) can identify with the protagonists, but as sequels were added, they developed into unrealistic comic book meta-humans.
I don't see that as being a problem in this context. To me, this looks like the ' 10,000 hours' of time elapsed to master a skill. Over time, with constant application someone will get better at a skill. Now, if some noob character ended up depicted as being unrealistically highly skilled after a brief amount of time, that would bother me.
I agree about Rambo. But if we're being totally honest here, only the first Rambo is a real good movie. The rest is just a bunch of entertaining but meaningless actioners
Die Hard as well. McLane is pretty unbelievable to begin with admittedly, but in 3 it starts to get iffy (even though it’s my favorite) and after that, oh boy.
@Iron-Bridge It might look like that but the "superhumaness" really stands out to people with a good understanding of boxing, combat, etc. It's preferable to reward a viewer with more know-how on specific subjects than it is to take them out of the experience because Rocky and Drago are just trading power shots forever, even though Rocky could only go three rounds max with the previous movie's villain because of how hard he punched, yet Drago was established to be the strongest in-universe fighter...and Rocky was canonically 5 years older and still holding the title despite Mickey no longer being around to schedule fights with bums
The worst character resurrections I’ve ever see are in Arrow. I swear everyone dies at least once, some three or four times, but they always come back.
In the books George makes it pretty clear that through resurrection, Beric Dondarion is losing pieces of himself each time he comes back. His body is withering as well as his mind. He is less than what he was before. I do think George will resurrect Jon in the books as well, but perhaps it will be more clear that Jon has lost something in the process, maybe his skills as a warrior. That would be a pretty steep price to pay in Westeros. Although as mentioned, that would be pretty similar to Jaime’s arc.
I don't like the "speech" cliche, sometimes its a teenager saying things that ends or has a answer to complex questions like discrimination and just sounds wrong and unbealivable. Or convincing the bad guy that they can become good guys, after the genocide they did. The consequence is these "antagonists" not being held accountable to all the murderes they committed. And everyone accepts. About Jon Snow, maybe would be better if he was more agressive towards everyone, could make things unpredictable.
@@SilverLovesJesus it really depends on what the villain did. If the villain is a psychopath who enjoyed killing millions, then forgiving them is just stupid. But if the villain hasn't done the worst and has certain good moral values, then it would make more sense to forgive them. For example a criminal gang leader who is strictly against hurting innocents, r*pe, etc
@@obambagaming1467 But what if the characters redemption is them sacrificing himself/herself to help others? or to save the day? That qualifies in my book, especially if he/she truly wants to change and are willing to do whatever it takes to take things right. I do think it's a subjective topic though. Also, The hero forgiving the villain before the villain redeems himself is a sign of a GOOD hero. That's what a hero would do. Heros need to have kind hearts, not to destroy evil, but to preserve good. I do think when a character is redeemable is subjective tho.
An example of writers not allowing cliche #4 is in Avatar: The Last Airbender, when Aang tries fire bending for the first time and accidentally burns Katara.
Avatar: TLAB managed to avoid pretty much all of these cliches. No one is randomly related to Aaang somehow, and his stills and power is earned, as his main mission in the series is to learn how to bend all of the elements, and we see him struggle at times. *SPOILER* Maybe the one thing you could say is that they did avoid having him make the choice to kill the Fire Lord which had been a major personal conflict for him during the final season, by having him suddenly learn how to de-power him instead. But at the end of the day it's still a kids show, so you can't really expect them to have the hero murder someone. It was good that they addressed the idea of Aang needing to be prepared to kill him at all.
Oh the one I hate is inconsistent use of strength/abilities/skills according to plot needs. Also the "powered up-come back", mostly typical in anime and manga: almost dead hero goes through a psychological epiphany and gets up unscathed and stronger than ever.
What really makes those scenes annoying is that they could tie the power system into psychological state and mental power even emotions but although it might be more tough than the simple “I lift more, I more stronger” systems, it can allow for those moments and for them to not feel dumb
I don't know if is a hero cliche per se, but that always have to have a romantic interest through the story. Sometimes is well put together, sometimes it feels forced.
This a good one. I think I appreciate the role of romance in a story more now that I'm older and had more experience with writing, but as a young man I never understood why it had to be in everything.
Surprised you never mentioned Optimus Prime for the resurrection thing. Not only does he do it basically every five minutes, but for him, resurrection usually means he comes back _stronger_
Agreed. and I think that Optimus Prime from Transformers: Prime might be the worst offender. He's mortally wounded at the end of S2/beginning of S3 when decepticons blow up the autobots base, ends up being saved from the rubble by Smokescreen, a new arrival from the late part of S2 who was still going through a maturing-arc, and the two were stranded in a cave where Optimus was dying and preparing to hand over the Matrix to Smokescreen who clearly wasn't ready for it and the latter even voiced his concerns over this. Meanwhile, the rest of the autobots were rounded up by Ultra Magnus, another new arrival to Earth and a very seasoned warrior and leader who seemed like the logical fill-in for Optimus, despite his more rigid leadership. So there was a pretty clear set-up for passing the leadership, with either a veteran experienced soldier or a still-maturing rookie being the prime candidates for new leadership. Except Optimus gets a resurrection with power-up bonus and goes to save the day and then resumes his role as the leader. Then later he is forced to sacrifice himself so that Cybertron can start producing new cybertronians again, so he says his goodbyes to his comrades and passes the role of leadership over to them, allowing others, like Bumblebee, to step up and lead their own way to build a future for which he is giving his life. Except he comes back. Yet again. And from what I've gathered it only gets worse from there on. (I haven't seen the 2015 RID)
@@SKuusk95The second is more of a problem with robot in disguise in general, as an independent series it could work even with its problems, but by wanting to act as a sequel to prime, it ends up ruining it and itself, which at this point is more of a shared problem of transformer as a franchise by wanting to cover a lot with minimal effort.
Even Bumblebee is already part of this stupid cliché, in this new reboot of the films he died twice and was resurrected, and I was like: "am i supposed to be sad?" This is stupid because if you don't have the balls to make a character stay dead why are you killing him in the first place?
@@dagon1523yeah, especially in Rise of the Beasts. Most of the promos featuring Bumblebee used scenes that took place _after_ he gets killed in the movie. So you already know that he's gonna come back. And not even like at the very end of the movie they find a way to res him; he comes back during the final battle and starts kicking ass to tell us that he's the star of the franchise now. (let's be real, he is) All it means is that his death is really just mild shock but nothing too serious. At least in 2018's _Bumblebee_ they managed to make it more emotional thanks to Charlie being there. In ROTB I was literally like: "Oh no. Anyway..."
Anyone else find it hard to write side characters that aren’t entirely stereotypical and two dimensional? I often feel like my cast is either full of pointless characters or basically empty. How do you write characters that a main character interacts with naturally but may not be important overall?
Write about what you know Try modelling a character based on someone you know - maybe yourself - and see what are the core parts of the character, the main events in their life, what do they look like, what people are around the character and what relationships they share with them, what little details can make the picture complete Then try changing them up, see what sticks to the wall, add some flavourful extremes if you like and voila! You've got a character Yeah, it's a self-insert, try not to make it blatant and you'll end up with a normal fam Or just try to do the same to a character you know and who's character is clear, just remember the layers and how they always end up intertwining find something that would be enjoyable on many levels, throw that into a "character thingo" box, do that for a bit and then assemble your Bionicle
Mash them into one. You have a character with one plane gimmick, a character that exists for moving the plot and nothing more and a character that has a cool look that you don't know where to stuff into? Those three are now the same character.
(I have no official education in writing so this advice is entirely my own thoughts) Perhaps try and make a character without the main character in mind, make them have their own personality, likes, dislikes, traits, skills and most importantly their own reasons to be there. By then you will have two or more different characters and you will have to come up with a reason for how they start to connect and form a bond and perhaps you might even come up with new chemistries as you write.
I hate when people who have basic level human proficiency and are related to the hero think they can team up with the hero to figgt crime. Like, man... He's not fighting a bunch of pre-schoolers... These are SUPERVILLAINS.. They can end a life in a flash
I think an interesting example of resurrection working is Optimus Prime in the Transformers movies. After Optimus comes back from the dead, he gets considerably more aggressive/violent like he isn’t gonna take a chance again. It’s interesting how such a messy franchise pulls that off surprisingly well.
@@fdjtron1732 not really. In the first film he's just defending himself, he only considerers killing Megatron as a last resort. In the second film prior to his death, he kills Wheel-bot, which I think is pretty reasonable as he did prove to be a great threat, the forest battle is probably the best example of Optimus In the movies being sane, the scene makes it clear that Optimus is in a rough position, you can hear that he's scared for the life of Sam, his voice is shaking and then we have actual character development happening on-screen, with Optimus coming to realisation that the Decepticons won't just give up and that he has to kill them if he wants to keep humanity safe. Even in the Egypt fight you can kinda say that the stakes were extremely high so his violent response there is also justifiable. After the second film he just turned into a psycho for no reason. There is no excuse to justify him killing Megatron at the end.
A trope that I see done poorly a lot is a protagonist with abuse in their past. Like it can be very compelling if you're looking to create a sympathetic character, but the "I was abused and it made me stronger" is pretty gross. That's not how it works.
Often abuse makes you weaker until you learn resilience. It bothers me too. It took me many years to become a resilient person with okay coping skills. "My family super abused me, and I became a mad-man mega badass." Well, how nice for you. I became a shell of myself, and I still deal with strong anxiety when I'm in public.
The only thing I can think where this might apply is if someone got abused by their family, and becomes determined to be a good parent so their own kid won't have to go through the same thing.
I agree. I hate this trope because it often feels like its only done for cheap emotions. When I see the abused omega mate plot anywhere, I'm closing the book and moving on to the next one. It doesn't interest me at all.
Abuse doesn't make you stronger but surpassing it and acknowledging that the abuse doesn't have to define you for the rest of your life absoloutely does make you stronger, but yeah abuse is something horrible that does the opposite of "empowering".
Yes! This is actually why I am so tired of superhero movies. Endless facepunching of INDESTRUCTIBLE people is such a waste of time. There are no stakes and you are never worried that they will get hurt, because they physically can't be hurt. Unfortunately, this is somewhat the case in the otherwise great "John Wick" as well. He's SO good that you stop worrying about him surviving his endless revenge spree.
Number 3 aggravates me so fucking much. Like when the protag lets someone live but then they end up dying a few seconds later from someone else or the environment. Ugh 😒
It's easy to just avoid these cliches but I'd say go for it if you can really pull it off. A related character, a resurrection, spontaneous power all these things can be done well and have deep meaning in your story as long as you give the story and audience the proper respect. #3 and #4 are probably harder to make work (especially #4), but I can see how stealing a decision from the protagonist also could serve as a learning experience e.g. he learns that stalling too long will let the world play out in front of him without him being able to do anything. Maybe his indecision to break his moral code to save a friend ends up costing the friend's life and now he must live with his inaction. I struggle to see how actions having no consequences could work well but maybe if its to show some impotence in the protagonist e.g. the he does something but in the end we find out it wouldn't have changed anything anyway. Anyway, I just think these are always good heuristics to have in mind so you are at least careful and paying attention when you use these tropes.
Thank you man because im making a story and I have number one in my story but it serves a purpose and will be explored later in the story and I really like the concept but after reading these comments and watching the video ive become a little discouraged but more careful in my thinking process about these things. This comment is exactly what I needed to see, thank you man and have a God blessed day.
@@ilovecheese7281 Just keep writing! Once you are done take a good look at it again in light of the entire narrative and see if you still think it makes sense. If it doesn't and you can't revise it without changing the entire story then just leave it be. its okay for your stories not to be perfect, especially if they are some of the first stories you are writing. Better to just get something out there.
Worst cliche: The Hero always conveniently has a way out of every situation. I think of like how despite Superman being weak to kryptonite, he somehow has a way of beating it. Characters who feel unkillable, or unbeatable are boring, and frustrating because you know no matter what, they'll never truly lose a fight, or die. All characters, including the main character, should be vulnerable, and should be able to lose.
That's why I like characters who occasionally escape death only because they were rescued, got lucky or were spared. Seeing a character occasionally lose makes their victories more satisfying
can you make a video about potential solutions for these? because i find most of these clichés unavoidable. let's take the example of 'Everyone is Connected to the Hero' I understand the first type and its drawback, but about the second type I feel like its unavoidable. I say unavoidable because if I were to introduce a random villain out of nowhere then consequently, I will also have to explain his backstory, his motives, potentially a reason for him to hate the hero along with the city or the world, and if I don't do any of these then I will have a villain that's understandable and just bad. I am a new author so maybe I am just to dumb to actually understand, but that's what it felt like to me. That's all, thank you.
I get what he’s saying in that it shrinks the world if the hero is connected to everyone including the villains. In real life, there are thieves, bank robbers, cartels that are in no way connected. Even your friendly neighborhood weed man isn’t connected. It just looks strange when you unmask the kidnapper and it’s uncle Joe. Really, hero? You had no clue uncle Joe was into kidnapping??!! I can’t take him to jail! He’s my uncle Joe! Wait! I told him to explore all of his options for a second job. This is all MY fault! Uncle Joe!!!!
i hate the mis understanding moments in movies, like nomona they make the main character and nomona seem like they can't trust each anymore and he only sees her as monster and lier. the mc legit saw the bad guy kill his partner( nomona in disguise) and never even talks about how that villain legit killed someone to hide the evidence and they exposed them as nothing but corrupted and evil but he still has doubts on nomona who's done nothing that yells murder and lier.
I spent so long on my first-ever screenplay. At the end of it all, I was so proud to have created a hero that didn’t fall under these clichés. With what a lot of people are saying here, my story focused around a hero with selfish intent and a villain with selfless intent. The villain plays a major role in the story, more so than a traditional antagonist. The villain is a hero in his own eyes, because even though he commits horrible actions, he does so with the intent to cure his wife’s disease. To do so, he must steal technology from the hero. The hero, upon realizing his selfish ways in his pursuit of justice, turns a new leaf and saves the villain’s wife rather than killing the villain, only under the condition that he turns himself in for the atrocities he’s committed. I’m no published author/writer, but I celebrated as if I wrote a bestseller after that. I was so proud of how I established it.
Listening to this list makes me really happy that I don't have to worry about using these clichés in my work. Which hopefully I'll actually write someday.
😂 The only way to not have writing mistakes is to NOT WRITE!! 🤦♀ why didn't i think of that! Unfortunately for me, i scored a 3/5 on this and i'm not even done. will probably have 5/5 by the end! 😭🙌 Brb... gonna go figure out how not to make everyone related to the MC.
The worst cliche is when a female protagonist does something wrong but all accountability is removed from her. Like Wanda being told "They'll never know what you sacrificed." Or in the recent MWIII campaign when Laswell kills neutral Russian soldiers and someone on the radio says "Their blood is not on your hands; they are in Makarov's."
There's a name for that when it's for women specifically, but i'm blanking on it now. Something like "Innocent woman" or "pure" or some other nonsense. It's the "woman is supposed to do no wrong" idea. As a woman who knows many women, 😂😂😂😂😂 good gosh i find that such a funny concept. As the other comment here says, it's applied EXACTLY THE SAME WAY to all these cliche male heroes (lookin at YOU Cpt. Am), but there's i guess only a term for it when it's done for women. 🤷♀
I find the second point interesting, because that very cliche seems to be a part of what Marvel considers an essential ingredient for a Spider-Man villain. It's EVERYWHERE in his rogues gallery in most incarnations, and I think it is that way to make his secret identity more of a challenge for him in general. I agree that it gets ridiculous at times too, but considering that the Marvel universe can feel too big for its own good sometimes, I kind of like that Spider-Mans villains are closely connected to him and that it makes his corner of the universe feel more tightly knit. Depends on the version of the character of course. Those without the larger Marvel Universe in the background may or may not benefit from this.
It definitely raises the stakes when you have prior connection to the villain, but when it happens again and again and again, it can come off as silly, at least IMO. I think Mysterio and Electro are the only live action Spider-man villains who don’t have any connection to Peter himself (Rhino too from ASM2 but he was pretty minor)
In comic books it is the polar opposite, miniscule amounts of villains have actual personal connection to Peter besides Green Goblin, Eddie Brock and The Lizard.
Worst tropes: Main character has to do EVERYTHING (cant sit around, cuz bad for the plot) The world revolves around the main character (nothing happens to the 1-d side characters)
Why do i feel like most tropes that people hate have a positive effect on the character (eg. makes them happy, safe, understood), and the tropes that people like the most are like death of everyone the character knows, losing limbs, losing powers, losing, etc.
Honestly aside from the “gains skills in short time” the rest don’t sound bad and just nitpick borderline on cinema sins There’s so many good character with these tropes and if those tropes weren’t there we’d have short stories
My absolute worst clishee are passive heroes. Those who simply get dragged along by the plot without ever doing anything significant. There´s a book called The Depths of Time by Alexander Brandhorst, and the Protagonist spends every chapter he is in feeling sorry for himself without doing anything about it. Also, this might be an anime only problem but i hate it when the female lead is clearly supposed to be the main character but the author felt insecure and added a generic, bland guy the plot puts way too much focus on.
It also happens here (for example it happens a lot in novels and soap operas, and even in some animated ones like the legend of Korra), and a lot the other way around, but it is true that it happens a lot in anime from the 90s to 2000, but luckily with The passage of time, even if it is preserved, has changed over time, little but for the better.
@@eddyandresmartinezrodrigue7600 You have a point there, the trend is clearly shifting slowly to a better side. I think if writers become more confident in their leads, they stop over-correcting them with weaknesses, making their actual shortcomings feel more natural and relatable ^^
k i'm reading all 1,800 comments on here and trying to fix my characters. i have an MC hero who starts off fairly passive, following orders, trying to make the morally correct decisions, but she meets a villain who helped her when they were kids (i know, that's cliche #1. i'm working on it.) and she wants to save him. so she starts learning dark magic (morally grey) because it's the only thing that can break this curse he has on him. and then basically decides to die breaking it. (less passive) but then the curse jumps to her and doesn't let her die, but now she's (sort of) evil, and feels totes "unbound" and free to make any decision she wants. does that work, do you think? if she's kind of intentionally passive at the beginning, in order to make the transformation more striking at the end? 😟 still too cliche?
@@JhadeSagravEverything will depend on the effort you put into not only breaking the other party's curse, but also demonstrating that you are not just doing it out of an obsession, give valid reasons, whether the other party shows that you want or deserve to be redeemed or that there is more. people who need it, for example that she has allies who want the villain dead, although I recommend trying to avoid drama and focusing more on them and the viewer understanding that there is another way to do things. I also recommend in terms of his personality after the resurrection, that you focus less on his morals and more on his integrity, what things he can now do and what things he still can't do, my favorite example is Red Hood, the worst thing he ever did. How Jason (murdering the son of an ambassador who had committed abuses and murders) is almost his standard as a red hood, he went from vigilante to mercenary, but he still refused to attack civilians, on the contrary, many of his actions are thinking about the well-being of those who cannot defend themselves, death brought out the worst in him, but it also showed that his desire to help the city was genuine. Finally, even if you treat his resurrection as a tragedy, do not be afraid to touch on the idea that some of the changes are for the better, sometimes it is necessary to admit that humans are a complex being who can feel freed by a tragedy, comfortable in presence of a bad person with whom we get along or satisfied with doing something ethically incorrect, is not based on promoting an idea or opening a debate, it is based on generating a genuine scenario that one can encounter throughout one's own life or that he can at least conceive the idea of it happening.
Well, anime/manga are just two ways to tell a story (just like books or movies). It's just natural that not all its products are good products, just like it happens with books or movies. 🙂
similar to the mc learning skills really fast, i also hate it when theyre just born with them. it kind of feels like it undermines all the work actually needed to learn a skill and really annoys me
The Jon Snow resurrection on GoT is especially galling as, while we haven’t yet gotten to see it in the books, the foreshadowing in A Dance With Dragons strongly hints that he will be utterly transformed from his experience. With Beric Dondarrion and Cat Stark, they both became more primal and sullen, each with a morbid fixation on their purposes as they died (Dondarrion fighting for King Robert, Cat avenging her children’s death as Lady Stoneheart). What’s more is the likelihood that Jon’s soul is temporarily harboured with his direwolf Ghost (get it?). Martin is foreshadowing that Jon Snow will be resurrected with wolf-like ferocity abd and a fixation on protecting the Wall from the Others. He’ll also likely be a bit decomposed and probably sporting white hair. If you’re going to force a resurrection into a story, that’s the way to do it.
One hero cliche that I personally don’t like is the “chosen one” cliche. You know this kind of story, it’s the story where the hero is predestined to become the one that saves everyone. Now not to say that every example of one is bad, in some cases it can work. But it really makes us the audience question the need for suspense. Like we know the hero is gonna win regardless so there’s not much to get anxious about. One example of this comes from Tim Burton’s “Alice in wonderland” where there’s this scroll that says everything that’s gonna happen on a day by day basis. In the scroll is a picture of Alice slaying the big dragon like creature the jabberwocky. It eliminates all the suspense and reduces the roles of pretty much every other character to just spectators.
There is another type of this cliche which doesn't exactly rely on prophecy thing but rather having the protagonist possess/given the access to special power that makes him very unique compared to other characters.
The Percy Jackson books do an amazing job at subverting the Chosen One trope. Prophecies in fiction are usually unclear, especially in this series, but the reader is made well aware of that many times. Even so, when the prophecy comes true in a way that the reader couldn't have expected, it made perfect sense in hindsight.
I find the best subversion of this cliche to be the "oh, you're the Chosen One alright... the VILLAIN'S chosen." Turns the point of the story into a "fuck destiny" bit where finding a way out of the fate engineered for you by others.
My cliche that I'm slowly getting tired of, and its very difficult to not use this for heroes, is the Orphan Angle. Be it movies, novels, manga, anime and videogames, all or 90% have: no parents, just mom, aunts and uncles, family friend/former mentor, and kind or abusive adopted parents. Naming a few but not all because list would be too big: Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, Wolverine, King Arthur, Simba, Goku, James from James and the Giant Peach, Hogarth(no dad) from Iron Giant, Jon Snow(not knowing real birth parents), Geralt of Rivia, etc. My greatest challenge would be to make protagonist(s) who dont have the parent loss dynamic. *Edit: Don't get me wrong, and I love the constructive feedback, I'm saying it can be used properly for good story telling, but that's the trick. Also ALL protagonists are adopted and recognize them as their parent guardians. From Arthur's mentor Merlin and his Uncle to Hey Arnold's grandparents looking after him. Shows like One Punch Man and the new Delicious in Dungeon are great because they aren't motivated to help or be they're absolute best without the tragedy. But in the end, if it works it works. Hell, I'm still having one of my charcaters have his father return to Europe and his mother return to a different realm.
I am directly subverting this with the MC of my story, she very much has her adoptive parents in her life, they love her, she loves them, and sometimes she has problems she wants their advice about.
This is not going to go away any time soon, at least in Western writing, because modern writers are more and more commonly requiring young protagonists to follow proper child safeguarding when they have parents. So the options are a young person with no parents/parental figures who has adventures, or children who have parents/parental figures and then have to spend the whole book sneaking around and disobeying them in order to have adventures-which I find FAR more annoying. Seriously, can you imagine an American cartoon with a premise like Pokémon? Ash has a Mom who loves him, and yet she also lets him go off by himself into the world as a Pokémon trainer.
The thing that got old for me quickly was tying the origins of the hero and villain together. In the first Tim Burton Batman movie, having the Joker become the reason for Batman's creation was a cute twist, but after that it seems like that linked origin was the only way to do heroes and villains. Inspector Gadget was the worst offender, in my opinion. Sorry, they don't have to know each other to oppose each other.
#4 not just Rise of Skywalker, but really EVERYTHING Rey-- such a shame, cuz Rey had a good intro, some nice intrigue and surprises, but then is instantly secretly Franklin Richards, being the go-to do it all hero seemingly in her own GD pocket universe
One of the most impactful moments of any show or movie I can remember watching is when Walter White has to make that same choice (whether to kill a dangerous enemy that he captured), precisely because nobody rescues him from the decision. Seeing him grapple with it is brutal and desperate, and you can tell it changes him forever. Masterful!
When a romance feels rushed is usually my biggest problem. Because most of the time they feel like good friends or something not at all and then it’s just off when they’re lovers too suddenly. There’s also the unearned redemption
Just my two cents but rushed romances aren't that bad in my opinion. Kishimoto gave a perfect explanation for some couples in the Naruto's ending but some fans are still salty about it.
@@shrekkek9396 Brandon Sanderson said that most often when we feel like theres a deus ex machina or something feels forced, it's because there wasn't sufficient foreshadowing and build up. Which is what the OP seems to be referring to. Sanderson also accented this point by saying, you don't write a romance novel by writing a 200 page story and then sliding "and then they fell in love" at the end.
I think this is about how something is executed or if it is overdone. Probably to the most hated and overdone cliche is protagonist being "the chosen one", but watching it or reading for the first time was kinda cool for most people (or maybe we were children and that's why it was cool). I agree with #5 but I like it how it was done in GoT. #1 can be done very well and Attack on Titan is perfect example for it.
Number 2 can also perfectly fit with Rey throughout all of The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi. She always manages to do everything by herself without ever needing others to help her, a prime example being how she seemingly masters the force all within only DAYS of learning that it was even real to begin with, she’s pulling off crazy feats that normally only experienced Knights and Masters could do
3:15 This right here is why *24* is my favorite show of all-time. I will never forget some of the choices Jack Bauer had to make and *see through* on that show. Also, after the ending of season one, NO ONE was safe on that show. The screenwriters had the biggest balls in the industry, and no other series (not even Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead nor Breaking Bad) came close to *24* in regards to the "absolutely anything can happen on this show" thing.
24 is my all time favorite show as well. Jack and Kim were unkillable, but everyone else was in danger, and the show forced him to make some brutal choices (Ryan Chapelle in S3 comes to mind, as well as when he has to let CTU get attacked in S2)
I need to include more 24 examples in the future. I typically don’t because the show has kinda been forgotten and I try to pick popular/easily recognizable examples, but 24 needs some love
Dude, we're so on the same page. Ryan Chapelle's death was the first moment that came to mind when I wrote that comment, it was an absolute turning point for the show in regards to what they were willing to have Jack do ("I'm sorry we let you down, Ryan. God forgive me"). While I saw Kim as unkillable, I was 100% preparing myself for Jack to die in season 6, then season 7, and then season 8 (Here in Argentina, FOX added sort of an official sub-title to the promotional materials for season 6: "24: 'till death"). I only wish they hadn't ruined the great open ending of season 8, with an unresolved cliffhanger in Live Another DAy.@@WriterBrandonMcNulty
#1 - If you ever read the epic Japanese novel _Musashi,_ you get this one in DROVES. It's a great story about grit and perseverance and discipline, starkly contrasted with the opposites of all those things, BUT every character is connected with the main character from multiple angles. Examples - the primary antagonist has been worked into a murderous frenzy by his controlling mother and is chasing his ex-fiancée through the woods at night. The young woman gets trapped in a small ravine and the antagonist lunges in and hacks her body to pieces. But then turns out it was dark and he missed her, and ended up hacking to pieces a vagabond who was sleeping in the ravine. Who was this vagabond? A man who had cheated the main character out of money about 5 chapters earlier and we'd not heard from since. Then later in the book, some people who are set on killing the main character are discussing their plans to make their move during some kind of festival or fair in their town. They are unconcerned about the traveler sleeping in the next room overhearing them. But turns out who is this traveler sleeping in the next room who wasn't actually sleeping and heard their plans? It's a martial artist that the main character met like 10 chapters earlier at random and they dueled and the main character had won so this traveler has high respect for him, and he will now find and warn the main character. Honestly for as much as I liked that book, I was really irritated how it felt that early 1600's Japan was populated by like 57 people.
It definitely felt like: 1. Let's kill off a main character to show we can be big boys! 2. Audience response is negative because they love the pretty actor 3. Immediately undo the big boy thing Same with Rey "killing Chewbacca" and then not after all. The writers almost wanting to commit, but backing out is very annoying.
This is hitting deep how to create good parts to write an intriguing hero Edit: no.4 fits the Mary sue and Gary sue….especially the Miraculois Ladybug Marinette mc just woah
When it comes to everyone is connected, I understand why they do it. It's a good way to create emotional bonds quickly. It's also lazy as hell when overly used. They are after all clichés because they're used too much, and they're used so much because they're cheap ways to increase emotional impact. Until they're used too much, then it just deflates it, but lazy writing is lazy writing.
Django Unchained is another example of a hero earning a skill with no training. He was able to pick up a revolver for the 1st time and be deadly accurate. They could have done a training montage in the mountains of him learning how to shoot or Schultz giving a key piece of advice on the topic that he remembers and uses.
@Joeybsmooth I just rewatched the shooting the snowman scene. His very first shot was dead center in a bottle with Schultz saying "That's Accurate." Then he is able to shoot every part of the snowman without issue. He was an expert from the start and that to me felt unearned.
#1 made me yell out "Yes!" as soon as you said it. I HATE that one. I especially hate when they do prequels or flashbacks after the fact and all their villains and side characters are there in their childhood. I remember there was a planned Batman cartoon about Bruce Wayne in high school and like every single Batman villain was also a student there... so the billionaire kid is going to public school, the school produces an unbelievable number of future supervillains, and every Batman villain from Bane to Harley Quinn to Mr. Freeze are all around the same age? I can see why it was cancelled but I'm still a little angry it even got that far. I have never felt my intelligence more insulted by a story concept before.
I will say though that this didn't bother me in Lost because that was an important conceit of the story, that everyone's lives were connected in ways they didn't understand.
For Jon Snow, he died like everyone else. I don’t think his resurrection by itself contradicts the themes established in Game of Thrones, what does contradict them is how Jon deals with it afterwards and how he is given vast amount of plot armour and just contributes almost nothing for the rest of the show. The reason why Gandalf’s resurrection worked in The Lord of the Rings is because we see him fall, but we are not sure what really happened. We never see his dead body and in the opening of The Two Towers and in a later scene we are given a full disclosure of what happened during his fight with the Balrog before defeating the monster and collapsing until Galadriel appears and brings him back to life. She never uses it again at any time after that.
If Jon came back as a cold, ghoulish type creature like Lady Stoneheart, the ressurrection would have felt a lot better. I think this is probably what it will be like in the books.
Wow, that would have been perfect! What a brilliant idea! Just thinking through that - it’s interesting, but because he would have to accept the consequences of getting caught. However, he doesn’t have to suffer the consequences if his girlfriend kills him. So then, he needs to have some other kind of real consequence happen. And maybe that is that he has to kill his girlfriend, but is that enough? Killing her actually simplifies his life in many respects (not going to get into spoilers). I will say, the scenario as written still had an impact on me; there were his stakes, and the twist was decent. Your idea would have made it better, though. I think the rule of thumb is to write a scene, make it good, and then go back and make your character suffer to the point that makes you feel uncomfortable. That’s when you know it’s probably about right. 😂
My least favorite trope is a sudden burst of emotion allowing the protagonist to magically win a fight that they were just losing terribly a few minutes prior. An example is Rocky Balboa vs Ivan Drago; He was twice Rocky’s size, doped up on steroids, and had enough reach advantage to punch him from the other side of the ring. No amount of dead mentor figures should give Rocky even a small chance of beating him.
4:00 Dexter actually does this again in season 7. After laguerta finds out he's the bay harbor butcher, he has her in a shipping container ready to kill her when deb finds them. Deb says he can't kill her because it's wrong and blah blah blah and then in a sudden turn of events, takes it upon herself to kill laguerta. It makes no sense and only happens so that the audience can maintain the false illusion that dexter is still a "good serial killer". It's one of the MANY ridiculous things that's wrong with Dexter
I think well written resurrection is possible, but only in limited ways. 1. It should have consequences. a) Meaning, the Character cannot be at the same capability as before, or else we need a believable explanation why. b) And/Or, the character will serve another, greater purpose. The resurrection is meaningful. It is not only there to please the audience / reader. But more Importantly: 2. The death before needed to serve a purpose other than just a shocker for audience / reader.
it bothers me so bad when the hero went on a quest of revenge, killed dozens of mooks until they get to the big bad then decided to NOT kill the big bad because they realize killing/revenge is bad
@@Hann1balls I wouldn't because except by MAYBE one wasp that was done for in a moment of anguish, Aang didn't really killed anyone and he was never vengeful
I hate resurrecting characters because it makes t feel like everyone is perfectly safe. My least favorite example of this is Phil Coulson from Agents of Shield. Not being resurrected from Avengers because that had MAJOR impact, but being resurrected after his amazing death in season 5
I love your channel, Brandon, so glad I stumbled across it. I secretly think this channel is an excuse to tear apart everything sequel Star Wars trilogy 😂
@@Hann1balls atleast for Aang it plays a big part for his character near the end. He is a monk. He was raised to be as peaceful as possible and the thought of killing someone is horrible for him. In other stories the characters are just "killing is bad because it's bad. I gonna let you live *genocidal psychopath who wanted to kill everyone*" An example for this is Barry from the Flash TV series
Nobody is safe in the Marvel universe either but characters come back from the dead continually. Gotta be impressed with their recycling program, I guess.
Marvel LITERALLY lacks any tension or real jeopardy lol Like WHAAAAAAATTT? You can't possibly be serious. They are well known for repeated death fake-outs. Like we literally knew that all the characters would be resurrected at the snap cause they had individual movies in various stages of production
Agree 100% on unearned power/skill. I slightly disagree about choices, not being able to choose is a choice, and sometimes you want the character to seem weak and indecisive so they can turn around and make a decision later to establish growth, etc.
I hate it so much when they kill thousands upon thousands of the villain's henchman but refuses to kill the actual villain because "it's not correct"
And never have any psychological effects from that. Like PTSD or guilt or whatever.
Oh yes! I agree!!!
There is a channel on yt called soft white underbelly and there are some interviews with real killers and murdering someone affects a lot!
Tlou2 😂
Yeah, kill thousand of minions but let the main villain live/escape
“Revenge bad”😂😂😂😂
I hate protagonist-centered morality where everything the character does is treated as correct and good while anyone who disagrees with them is evil.
oh yeah the show Stargate Atlantis suffers from that problem. Especially in later seasons.
Its even worse sometimes when you look at it from an outside perspective and realize that the main character is wrong, but the other option is automatically labeled evil despite being the best method
That depends on story I'm sure, it being right because it's the hero doing it would be bad but we're forgetting about stories where that character IS the hero *because* they're the ones following that specific morality and fighting against the world around them
Phase 4 and 5 Marvel in a nutshell
I love the Hercule Poirot TV series but hated the Murder on the Orient Express episode. There, he treats the killers as if they were evil scumbags when they had very good reasons to kill their victim (who was the only true evil scumbag in the story). He's a lot more reasonable in the book and in the 2017 movie.
I always hate when an ordinary character with no prior fighting skills and no experience murdering, becomes an unfazed badass killing machine out of no where or in a brief time
Yeah, I never understood why so many people liked that about kung fu panda. Or most "chosen one" stories.
@@Here_is_Waldo humor helps, putting lots of humor in the narrative and dialogue can help a bad plot progression. It's because in bad times, people just want to be entertained. Kind of like Michael bay's explosions, but less empty. Plus if the humor is smart enough, and people get it, they feel smart too and get dopamine from that. Lots of smart jokes in Kungfu Panda, even through the plot is average.
@@angelito2144 Po did seem to at least have some understanding of Kung Fu though, and he beat Tai Lung not by skill but more by being a fat panda.
@@Farmynator True. It had something else to help it along.
Because there's already two type of people. No judgment but just breaking it down. People who watch shows for the power fantasy, and those who watch the show as encouragement for their real life training. Do you know what's even better then the fantasy of all power? The fantasy of it coming easily. Not only is it in the fantasy world instead of the real world, but even in the fantasy world it's easy LOL
0:25 - Cliche #1:
Dark Helmet: I am your father’s brother’s nephew’s cousin’s former roommate.
Lone Star: So what does that make us?
Dark Helmet: Absolutely nothing.
😄That's great!
Which is what you are about to become.
A Space Balls reference?!
Been quite a while since I seen one of those.
Bravo 👏
🏴☠️🤘😂Right‼️🎶 we're the space balls!🎶
Father’s brother = Uncle
Uncle’s nephew = The father’s son (Lone Star)
So Dark Helmet is Lone Star’s cousin’s roommate.
"So the main character dies, that will change things significantly."
"Not at all, actually it's barely an inconvenience."
This is the X-men comics right now.
Superhero's die. But they get over it like a flu.
Insignificant death scenes are TIGHT
"Killing main characters and immediately reviving them is tight"
I’m all here for unexpected Ryan George references
Worst hero cliche: normally significant wounds that barely phase the hero
Agreed, being inconsistent with how severe fatal and non-fatal wounds are between different characters makes it even worse.
It's called getting a John Wayne. Wayne was notorious for getting shot in the shoulder or arm and just brushing it off like nothing happened.
Or even the villain. In Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Voller is hit in the face and knocked off the train in the beginning. That should definitely not been a survivable event. But he shows up later with barely a scar. Probably should have come up with a different method of removing him as a threat.
oh yes! How did I forget that one.
John Wick comes chapter 4 comes to mind.The fall on that Jeep or from those stairs in Berlin should have broken many (if not most) of his bones. But somehow, it only seemed to hurt a lot.
I think the worst ever example of everyone is connected to the hero is the Fast and the Furious, every single villain has to be from Doms past for no reason
To be fair, the fast & furious series is full of examples for bad writing :D (hilariuously funny though)
For some reason it's not that bad in the F&F franchise, maybe because the movies are so goofy to begin with 😆
I think, Fast and Furious died after the Tokio Drift and is slowly rotting ever since.
I think the worst/funniest character development from F&F is how Jason Statham goes from being a bad guy to a good guy in about 5 minutes. It seems like it was the result of some studio head saying "hey, wouldn't it be great if The Stath and The Rock teamed up?"
@@siegfriedmordrake3229 can't expect good writing from Fast and Furious. They are not trying to win screenplay awards (or any other awards).
My most hated hero cliche is “Because the hero made that choice or took that stance, it is the right choice”
Yeah, agreed. Captain America is such a good example, especially in Civil War. We the audience are supposed to get behind what he did, but it never feels right. It's loaded with entitlement, refusal to accept consequences for his actions, and the inability to listen to and hear the perspectives of others. Basically, Captain America is supposed to be this righteous and just character worthy of wielding Mjolnir later on, but what he does in Civil War is behave like a spoiled white kid.
@@AlexIsModded Are you really team Iron Man? :) You're a rare bunch. I think the absolute opposite. Captain is my favourite classical hero and I actually like how they managed to pull off both teams in Civil War. You can pick a side and no one can say you chose "the wrong one". What I find the most moving is how Cap was always pro-establishment (Tony was the rebel, then they switched xD), a soldier fighting bad guys, serving his country. Back when problems were black and white. Now, he pretty much abandons all that in his arc and learns not to blatantly accept orders from others, but instead rely solely on his moral compass. He fights for people he cares about (and greater good in the process) and that's everything that matters. Especially since he can't truly trust the modern government.
Honestly, I would want a loyal friend like Cap. What you've described feels more like Alphonso Mackenzie than Steve Rogers. Mack was really acting righteous too many times (even though he has some of the most iconic one-liners). And in my book, the absolute best moral compass of all TV show characters I've seen belongs to Phil Coulson and Harold Finch (if they ring a bell).
Lovely day!!💙
@@AlexIsModdedhe literally acknowledges that he thinks he was wrong at the end of the movie, did you skip that part?
@@petrastein2531 Yeah. What I like the most though is how brutal Tony was with him in Endgame. Citing Steve's own words at him when he comes to him to beg for help. "Then we will lose together" (I don't know if it's exactly that in the English version, but this is what was in Polish one). And that Steve does not really know how to respond, because Tony is absolutely right. They came a slight push short of defeating Thanos. Without that Civil War, Thanos would have been stopped and the Universe spared. That's also why I strongly dislike the ending of Endgame - not only is the enitre plot focused on undoing consequences, isntead of dealing with them, but also it's fucking Tony who has to die for Steve's mistakes, while he gets to live his dream life and is not even particularly phased about it. That's why Infinity war is 9,5/10 movie and Endgame is 6/10 at most.
Thats exactly what batman is nowadays. Mr "im always right no matter what"
The one I really hate is "I can't kill this villain because that would make me evil too, even though I know the second I let him out of my sight he's going to blow up an entire city." Moral codes are good because they create tough choices, but at some point when confronted with unreasonable evil it becomes absurd and comes across as valuing one's own self righteousness above their duty to protect, making the hero look weak and unwilling to make tough choices.
basically batman, I don't know if there ever any other character that have the no-kill code as absurd as him
Or when they kill countless henchman but won’t kill the big bad because it’ll mess with their morals
@@KanieX "Killing Joker is the first in a long list of sane acts that you refuse to commit."
Jason Todd, rightfully calling Batman out in the comic version of UNDER THE HOOD
I really hate this one too. It ruined what was at one point my favorite manga of all time (Naoki Urasawa's MONSTER).
@@KanieXBatman won't kill no matter what because if he does, he doesn't believe he could stop. "A perfect batman never kills" is a saying because all batmen who do either fall to madness or stop taking other people's lives into account.
But not every writer who made a batman thinks the same way, which is why we have some batmen who stand by when a citizen has a gun at a criminals head while some would save a criminal from their own bomb.
I hate when the hero makes an obviously terrible decision, like sparing a villain who has no business being spared, because "it's not the right thing".
I agree, but they have killed many grunts over the course of the journey
After killing all his allies and grunts/minions without mercy lol
KENOBI!
Obi-wan just watched Vader walk down a street, wantonly slaughtering innocent civilians for no reason. But I can't kill him. Later: "Luke, you have to kill your father."
I have this problem with The Walking Dead.
Aragorn sparing Wormtongue from Theodin. It literally makes zero sense in the world they lived in
As a writer, I'm so glad that I'm not the only one who hates the second cliche.
I’m pretty sure the cliche in the spider man movies are intentional and are part of the message of with great power comes great responsibility and how most of them are made by decisions Peter made.
trust me everybody does
@@squadhoodie8895 Agreed
@@squadhoodie8895 Nah, it's just bad writing. Ever since Keaton's "Batman" '89 where a young Joker-to-be inadvertently created his most hated nemesis by murdering Bruce's parents, hack writer after hack writer has tried to infuse their scripts with this level of drama by copy-pasting it. Yeah, we got the message from what happened to Peter, (we don't need to be hit over the head with it), the rest is just lack of imagination.
@@varanid9Don't say stupid things.
A great inversion of the "resurrected hero" trope is in Megamind. That whole movie is a masterpiece, but I love how metroman's "return" to stop the bad guy at the end is the trope that happened so much that Megamind was able to play off of it and make it a fun twist
It has been so long since i heard someone talk about Megamind
Megamind is a great movie
That movie was so underrated
There is no Easter Bunny, there is no Tooth Fairy, and there is no Megamind vs. the Doom Syndicate
And metroman turned out to NOT be perfect. He had NO musical talent. That was hilarious. He didn't want to be Metroman: he wanted to be Elvis.
Similar to the first one: Everyone loves the hero.
The supporting cast and even NPCs get along with the hero a little TOO well, a lot of times despite just meeting them, and anyone who doesn't like them is very obviously a villain. It makes the character dynamics feel very shallow and it completely defangs any potential conflict or rivalry between the hero and the rest of the cast.
I'm making a subversion on this trope, where all the nameless townsfolk love the heroes but the minor and side characters bicker about how they're the ones that actually saved the town and the heroes are a bunch of frauds and no one ever looks at them or gives them their their respect.
Cool thing is, the tangled cartoon challenged this with the character Monty, who hates Rapunzel but isn't evil. And Rapunzel grows in learning that not everyone is gonna like her and that's okay. And also that she doesn't need to like everybody either.
Harry Potter is a great example of that; every single person in Hogwarts love him because he is the baby who defeated Voldemort, and the only ones who dislike him are obviously from Slytherin, so all of them are evil or minor antagonists.
That's what I really like about the Witcher franchise. Geralt is pretty much hated everywhere he goes, no matter if the people know about his great accomplishments. Of course he is loved by his friends and companions, but that only makes sense because he is a very likeable dude.
Opposite trope: When everyone straight up despises or hates the protagonist for no other reason than to just hate him. An example of this is in Chicken Little. Yeah, he's insufferable, yeah he's dumb, yeah the movie sucks, but why is everyone such an insufferable asshole towards this little kid??? Even his own dad dislikes him and regrets the day he was born except obviously the supporting cast who are his unconditional besties.
That part where Rey thought she killed Chewie with force lightning is honestly what ALMOST saved the RoS for me. Then Chewie shows up on the next scene alive and well, and I finally almost checked out of the movie entirely.
I’m not saying they should’ve killed Chewie but probably not show us immediately he’s alive, like let us mourn a little
@@DanCoder-h2u yeah fake deaths are good for the plot and all but if they show up a coupla minutes later saying "heya fellas, I live still! Suprised? well, you never got time to process what happened so actually you're confused!"
I thought it was copied from Indiana Jones.
This is almost the same for C3PO who lost his memory but get it back at the end
@@orangeshirtguy01spoiler alert if you didnt saw the movie, a good exemple of fake deaths is Gardian of the galaxie volume 3. Drax get shot, rocket emotionnal flatline, star lord in space etc
Your Ant-Man example is ALSO an example of one of my most hated tropes: Trinity Syndrome: where the obviously-more-competent female character only exists to train the hero, and once the hero has been trained she suddenly has no role in the movie anymore except to be the love interest.
Alas in Ant-man there has been a good explanation for that writer's choice with her father fearing her loss and thus chosing an expandable nobody for undertaking tha suicide mission. After regaining his beloved wife that he thought had lost he changes his judgement and makes his daughter a super-heroine, too. That's still a cliche, but not one to hate I'd say ...
I hear Edge of tomorrow
@@Rezzatoni I agree, but also you know that if Hope (the daughter) had been Harper (a son), the fact that Daddy didn't want him to do the mission because "it was too dangerous," wouldn't have stopped him from doing the mission anyway. It would have been one of those times where Harper slips away, puts on the suit, and does what needs to be done, because he's a hero, damnit! And he can tell that he's better than this expendable dweeb that his dad brought in to do the important mission!
@@juliegolickWow, you’re right! It’s always the girls that are somehow kept from doing anything by their dads in order to “protect” them cause their mom died or something. I’d like to see a movie where the mom won’t let her son do stuff because she’s afraid of losing him after his dad died AND she isn’t treated like a manipulative villain but just as a lovely mother who cares endearingly much about her son (cause that’s how they portray those dads), but I have a feeling that won’t happen so soon.
@@JustanotherRUclipsr771 What about "The Kingsmen"? In the pub scene Eggsy tells that Colin-Firth-character his mother stopped him from joining the army because of his father's death and still she is portrayed througout the movie as only caring for her children the best she can ...
Another major problem with Jon Snow's resurrection is that it doesn't have anywhere near the same effects on him as it did for other characters in the story. In the books, anyone who is resurrected in this way loses a part of themselves in the process. Beric becomes more hollow and soulless with each time he's resurrected, and Catelyn becomes Lady Stoneheart (mostly due to the length of time that passed between her corpse being found and the resurrection ritual taking place.) Jon didn't seem to 'lose' anything at all - it was literally as if someone had just hit 'Respawn' on him in a video game.
Ohhh but don’t you see he did change!?!! He got even SADDER than he was before
Sarcasm aside, you are accurate
I didn't watch the show (I'm waiting for the books to be finished hahahaha!) but in the books, Jon Snow's death doesn't have any weight behind it because it's written in a way that screams "not permadeath". By then the readers have witnessed about a dozen key characters killed off for real and they can tell the difference.
@@federicogianaThat’s fair but he also hasn’t been brought back to life in the books yet. (I’m not arguing that he won’t be as it’s pretty much a given that he will) but I’m willing to bet in the books his resurrection will have more consequences which if done well will give the weight his actual death lacked.
@@obwolf You are, of course right, but I don't think he is going to die in the first place (still a 'resurrection' given the situation he's in).
I agree with you that Martin would probably make him a lot more bitter and hard after the attempt on his life: "kill the child" was already a mantra in the previous chapters, after all.
@@AK-Drakoin Lol, there was a certain zombie-like quality to his endless repetition of "You are muh Queen" and "Ah durn wonnit," wasn't there? 😄
Unearned skills is EASILY my most hated. I see it all the time and I hate it. It’s just such a cop out for the writer to force a strong character on people, and unfortunately I see this happen the most with strong female characters which is why I think they receive a lot of hate
I hate it because I've practiced martial arts for years and know what it's like to put on the wraps, put in my mouthguard and then stand across from someone for a spar. I can understand it not bothering other people who haven't done any athletic competition, or sports, or played video games competitively, or martial arts, but it bothers me something *FIERCE* and can very easily take me out of a story I would have liked otherwise. It's traditionally why when I watch movies, I'd prefer the action hero already be skilled rather than train on-screen.
One of the only times I don't really mind it is Karate Kid, but that's just because the story is good and I watched it when I was young, so I have a bias that I'm willing to acknowledge.
Never read Manwhas my friend, like every character starts at their strongest and can one shot everything.
I've seen it a lot, especially fantasy fiction -- young woman (teens to early 20s) who has never held a weapon in her life, picks up a sword, and is shown one fighting stance. Suddenly she's fantastic, a master swordswoman, able to beat her new mentors and sparring partners, men who've trained and fought for 20-30 years, with the ultimate ease, not even breaking a sweat. They inevitably have every other skill, power, knowledge, and trait you'd ever want. They're drop dead gorgeous, but are 'omg totally humble about it', great magic casters or healers, everyone loves them, especially animals and children, every man wants to win her heart (bonus if they all fight each other over her), they know random obscure ancient languages that only a handful of long studied wizened scholars know, and so on.
Those writers seem to want to empower the minority they're writing about but they showcase the wrong things for it. Instead of showing what should be the end point of a character's training right away, they should focus more on the journey to get there. Not only does it add more realism, but it also achieves the goal they were trying to do. It inspires, not only their chosen minority but every reader and listener, to undergo the journey that the hero took and become a better version of their own selves just like the hero. Rather than putting all your stock in "what could be", pay more attention on "how could it be".
i'm reading all y'alls comments and tryig to see how i can better my character.
she has some physical aptitude and does rise through the ranks a bit faster than most, but she does go through 3 yrs warrior bootcamp and several more years in the military. So i think that bit is warranted.
problem is now she's trying to learn dark magic to break a curse (everyone there has some level of magical ability, like musical ability here), and has been training for 3 months, but decides to try to break the curse before she's even close to having the ability because she's out of time.
but she straight up accepts it's going to kill her since she's nowhere near prepared enough.
it doesn't. the curse she's trying to break decides to just hitch a ride on her, needing to save her life to do so.
So she DOES end up {{strong}}, but i guess the "earning" of the skill is her basically dying for it.
does that work, do you think?
Still feel like a cop out?
I remember thinking how insanely ballsy it would have been to kill Chewie like that and I was genuinely surprised (in a very good way), so handwaving it away almost immediately was so incredibly disappointing to me. For a quick second, I thought the story had some teeth. It may honestly be the most disappointing moment in Star Wars to me at this point, if only because I was fooled into thinking something actually dramatic might have happened.
That whole trilogy was just a commercial product, not a real story with meaning
Yep. Same with Leia’s near death experience in the last Jedi. I thought the death would’ve been perfect the way kylo had a strong internal struggle on whether or not he should shoot his mom and ultimately decided not to just for other fighters to shoot her out anyways. It was perfect until she started flying through space for some reason. That was the official moment for me I checked out on the sequels
Even if they kept his death permanent, I think the teeth had already lost their affect. Han and Luke had already died (I can’t remember if Leia had died yet but we all knew it was coming). At that point all I could think was “seriously. You’re gonna kill another OT character”. I was probably just as annoyed as I was shocked.
@@connorclark9767 I was confused by that choice. I didn't understand why professional writers would do that.
I agree with this. I felt the exact same way in the theater
One of my most hated hero clichés is the hot blooded reckless hero, the guy who immediately jumps into action with a positive attitude but no discernible plan. Go guns blazing and hope for the best is not a plan. I think this is most often seen in shonen manga/anime and fantasy RPGs. My problem with this is that this often makes hero look incredibly stupid, and when his antics acually save the day it also makes his adversaries look incompetent by extension. I much prefer heroes who make plans, their plans fail, and then they have to keep a positive attitude and adapt to the situation.
How about heroes who go in without a plan, and then fail, because they didn't have a plan?
@@emilia8706 That's also bad IF they don't learn anything from it.
I agree, this gets so bad in anime/manga lol. The only reason Luffy, Naruto, Goku, hasn't horribly died due to their hot headed stupidity is because they are the MC. Stories are still fun, but idiots never having to pay for being idiots is pretty annoying at times.
@@alex434343 Goku not dieing? Are you sure? He died twice in Z.
But at the same time, I think the opposite is true. I think that characters who have to plan for everything are _exceedingly_ irritating most times because they act like little smartasses who know everything and thus should always be seen as being in the right about every single decision and choice that they make, like for example, the Privelaged Rival or Prodigy Rival Tropes. Just because someone is a genius fighter or planner or whatever, that isn't gonna stop me from seeing them as a whiny, angsty, prodigy _dick_ of a _know-it-all SMARTASS._
Mary Sue/Gary Stu types of heroes are the cliché I like the least. Innately good at everything they try, liked by everyone and winners of every argument. Even the villain secretly likes them and only fights them because they won't join them.
I’m looking at you, Star Wars sequel trilogy…
Cof cof, Harry Potter...
Harry Stu Potter of course. Quidditch, dark arts *and* potions. cough cough
A slightly less known example, but I remember watching Eragon at the theatre and hating it because of how instantly good at everything he was. Wasn't he also "the chosen one" on top of everything?
That's not the definition of Mary Sue I'm familiar with. I thought MS was the author making the main character exactly like him/her self - same looks, same likes/dislikes, setting up the character to be the hero, and getting into bed with the hot character. Of course, that all requires some blindness to ones own character flaws. Bottom line, I always thought MS was self-insertion into a story.
What I hated most about the original Spider-man trilogy (though absolutely loved the first two movies) was how they retroactively changed the story of Uncle Ben's murder JUST to make Spiderman's fight with Sandman personal, and in the process completely cheapening and taking all the punch out of his encounter with the carjacker.
Agreed. Always hated that. I get the connections with Norman and Otto were great, but Marko could’ve just been morally challenging. They could’ve just made his daughter more important, and let Spidey believe he’s truly in the way of someone saving their child’s life.
I’ve warmed up to SM3 over the years, but this will always be something I hate.
That also highlights a major problem I have with stories like that. Not every villain has to have a personal connection to the hero somehow. It’s fine to have sometimes but it’s not always needed. The spider man 3 example is the one I use when explaining that trope. In making the Sandman Uncle Ben’s killer, not only is it a lazy tactic to make his and peter’s rivalry mean something or just to get Peter to be more angry and embrace his darker side, it almost disregards the reason Peter became spider-man in the first place. He chose not to stop that guy from taking the elevator and as a result his uncle was shot and killed. That’s always how it went in every other interpretation of the story because it was a pivotal moment in the franchise.
The sandman’s story was fine as it was, a caring father who turned to a life of crime in order to pay the medical bills of his sick daughter. That alone could’ve been a great moral lesson for the audience as well as peter. Not every criminal is out for themself.
kinda agree. But when I think about it, Peter's decision to let the robber get away still indirectly caused Uncle Ben's death. If Peter stop him enter the elevator, Flint wont accidentally shoot Uncle Ben.
@@ryzkymaulanahakim9910 ehhhh even looking at it that way, it's still watered down, and still leaves his second encounter with the robber kinda flat.
There is a wild problem with resurrections in Avatar 2.
- Sigourney Weaver died? Nope, not really, she even gave birth to a child.
- Norm Spelman's avatar died? Of course not, he's fine.
- The Colonel died? No, he was resurrected.
- The Colonel died again? No, his son saved him.
I wouldn't be surprised if all the dead whales and the hero's son are resurrected in Avatar 3.
Cameron: We need a villain for the sequel.
Writer: We already made a villain for the first movie, why not use him again?
Cameron: We can't reuse the same villain you idiot, he's dead!
Writer: But what if he wasn't?
Cameron: Get this man a raise!
The colonel is a clone, he wasn't resurrected.
Norm's avatar could just be a new avatar. They got access to the lab.
I still am in disbelief they gave Colonel Quaritch the Rise of Skywalker Palpatine treatment dude
@@Senovitj Cloning IS a resurrection when it comes to sci-fi.
Film that lasts 3 hours could spear 30 seconds on words about how Norm's avatar is alive.
Colonel: “I always come back”
Rey is such a bad character, she fullfills so many of the worst traits and cliches a character can have its just ridiculous.
Rey or just Rise of Skywalker alone could be an example for everything mentioned.
Everyone is connected? Rise of Skywalker, though only kind of.
Unearned Skills? Rey. Lightsabers, force, piloting, all of which she spent little time training for if any, and she excelled at all of them.
Stolen decisions? Not sure on admittedly. Feel like there's something like this that happened on the sequel trilogy but I forget.
No consequences? Rey and RoS obviously.
Resurrected hero? IIRC,she dies the gets resurrected with no drawbacks. Also the stupid thing of Palpatine returning, sOMeHoW.
I don’t think I’m exaggerating too much when I say that the “sequels” are the three worst movies in human history.
@@mechanwhal6590 I think Force Awakens was kind of okay for the most part. But some parts of the movie were just horrible (like that she has enough skill to fight Kylo).
Also the movie itself is just a New Hope copy from Wish.
The Last Jedi was so bad, I didn’t even bother watching the third sequel movie. Once I found out that this movie is as horrible, if not worse than The Last Jedi, I knew it was the right decision.
The Last Jedi and the second Jurassic World Film are the main reasons why I basicly stopped watching hollywood movies (not saying that every Hollywood movie is bad, I am either not interested or I would be interested because of the franchise, but the movies are just so horrible).
Also the second JW movie is just a bad copy of the second JP movie, just like the Star Wars sequel are basicly just a copy of the original Trilogy, especially the first two
About the "unearned skills" one, I really like what the Matrix movie did. They literally download knowledge in a matter of seconds (the "I know kung fu" scene) BUT even knowing *every* martial art is barely useful inside the Matrix with its agents. It's a good exposition scene of how the Matrix works, gives the character a ton of unearned skill, but it doesn't ruin anything about the hero's rise to power.
It just goes to show the power of Agent Smith that despite Neo gaining all of that power it initially wasn’t enough
Yeah, and even when he discovered that he could stop bullets and fly it felt VERY earned!!
Also, even when Neo acquired all those new abilities, he still had to readjust his brain for his new discovery of how the matrix works AND train with Morpheus to get used to said abilities. He didn't just learn kung-fu, he had to learn to fight all over again.
Though... Let's all ask why the Matrix's heroes don't just use shotguns and Gatling guns, flamethrowers, etc. "Let's use the guns that Smith can dodge!" "Works for me!"
Neo failed and struggle multiples times though. He failed to beat Morpheus before Morpheus gave him that advice " Don't think you are, know you are "
He need to learn and adjust.
My most hated Hero cliché is the prophecy/Destiny/chosen one trope.
I feel you there.
Yes! Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland is the biggest offender of this trope.
That thing has been milked to ruin. Whenever I hear/see the word Prophecy, I just stop watching. :D
Usually the chosen one is either a teenaged farmboy or a awkward student.
Yep, it kinda sends a bad message to the audience.
“The only way you can be a hero is that you have to be special since birth, not from having a good heart.”
The hero that does everything perfect. Drives me crazy.
Souji Tendou is that but done right tho
Similiarly to the „unearned skill“ topic, another chliché is the hero‘s ability to solve unsolvable problems within seconds if he reeeally puts some effort into it. It usually goes like this:
A: Have you found a way to deactivate the bomb?
B: No, it can‘t be deactivated because it has been locked by . It cannot be done and no one has ever managed to deactivate bombs of that kind.
A: But we‘ll explode within 30 seconds, so I‘m gonna put a gun to your head now.
B: Oh now that you‘re doing this, I could try .
I liked it when in Goldfinger, the bomb stopped at 007 seconds.
@@MrPleers I like it, too. Especially because James Bond has no plan how to stop the bomb. He opens the device's lid with all the wires and gears and lights and tic toc and goes like "Whaaat on earth is this?" There is even a hint of panic creeping up on him before somebody else clicks the switch and save's his behind. That's how it should be.
Not a Hero's Cliche, but this reminds me a bad movie where a character writes randoms text in Microsoft Excel to defuse a bomb
Swordfish's "wolverine" solving 8 monitor encryption comes to mind. Not only bad cliche, bad casting for that character imho. Seems out of character and cliche most of the time.
Jurassic Park "This is a linux system!"
Independence Day virus.
I probably need to see more movies generally, I'm betting there's a ton of examples and honestly, movie writing today is so bad, it's turned me off watching most of them.
My two most hated clichés are the "inverse ninja strength ratio" where the more enemies you face the less dangerous and powerful they are and the new phenomenon of the agenda fitting Mary Sue. Who, depending on what moral standpoint the writer wants to lecture the audience about, is the best at everything and anything.
In reality you’d get swarmed it’s more then four dudes
And in reality, those 6 attackers don't wait their turn to get beaten up, they go at the hero single filed, after they slaughtered the victim together...
@@TheMasterQuests It IS possible to have a protagonist fight multiple foes and still prevail but it has to be done right. If they're constantly moving around so the opponents can't surround them, using the terrain to isolate their foes from one another, luring them to a confined space that FORCES them to go one at a time... That's plausible. Especially if the foes are not well-organized.
Having a guy stand in the middle of a chamber while the enemy horde surrounds him then proceeds to attack one by one while the others wait their turn yeah, THAT'S dumb.
@@Wright805 yea it depends on the area but if you have the protagonist moving around like he's Jackie Chan that's more believable as to he hasn't been jumped yet.
@@TheMasterQuests That's true.
One of my least favorite cliches is the "Yeah we get it" Resume. The hero was "top of his class at SEAL training and beat the base record in marksmanship," or "top of her class at Harvard, with dual degrees in neural microbiology and Egyptian history." Jeesh! Like even the worst Navy SEAL is still a badass. And sometimes people who had a 3.7 GPA at Cornell can be smart.
You can call Steven Seagal by name, hahaha.
3:16 a similar trope that annoys me is when there is a genuinely morally gray situation, but then some twist suddenly makes one side/option the obviously right one and the other obviously wrong
My hated cliche is "the power of love," like in The Matrix. All is lost, then the love interest simply says I love you or kisses them and the hero becomes unstoppable.
I'm reading everyone's comments to try to avoid them in my characters.
but.. i might be guilty of the one you mentioned.
ok so there's a hero and a villain and the hero ends up becoming evil while the villain goes off on a redemption arc, but at the end the (former)villain is begging the (former)heroine to {get rid of a curse she took on herself to save him and} be good again and she's like, naw bro.
so he, through the POWER OF LOVE {guitar riff} (and also dark magic), hugs her and blasts the curse out of her, killing himself in the process.
so i guess technically he had {power} enough to do that anyway, but the "power of love" made him ...want to? i guess?
is that still the cliche? 😟
@@JhadeSagravNot at all! That's actually a very interesting storyline!
I hated that part in the matrix. i'm sure neo should be the one without dying, and just by believing in himself especially when he saves Morpheus and still comes out alive with help
@@JhadeSagrav I dig it.
I think that that one gets a pass from most people even though it’s dumb because everything else in the movie is awesome.
One of my least favorite hero cliches is the chosen one trope, and "fate" in general. I much prefer stories about normal people in interesting situations making their own decisions.
I don't know Avatar the last Airbender and she Ra and the princess of power reboot pulled this off extremely well while still being able to make the main character relatable realistic and have amazing growth
Yeah this was my problem with the end of Naruto
Retconning everything to "destiny"
@@TotalAnalyst2 It's not the lack of character growth that I dislike - it's the idea that the only people who can make a difference in the world are those who are destined to save or destroy it. I much prefer stories that convey that anyone can make a difference no matter who they are.
@@wezul fair enough
@@wezul What are your thoughts on Dreamworks's Kung Fu Panda when it comes to this?
"When everyone has special connections to the hero, no one does."
😂😂 Nice!
I always felt that the cinematic Star Wars galaxy is no bigger than a tiny village. Every single event in the entire galaxy is connected to the same tiny group of people, many of which are blood related.
The "Expanded universe" stoies of all kinds makes the galaxy feel so much bigger.
I like the rare occasions where heroes see #1 Type 2 happening around them and go "You know, I'm starting to think there's a pattern here, and it might be that _I'm_ the problem".
The Dragon Ball series does a lot of things wrong (including almost everything on this list), but later in the series, Goku _notices_ that the threats his loved ones face come specifically for him, and that if he wasn't around, these villains wouldn't be showing up at all. Because of it, he repeatedly tries (in vain) to pass the torch in an attempt to keep everyone else safe.
The execution of this character arc was repeatedly undermined by executive pressure, but I liked the idea at least.
meanwhile in detective conan he has villains around him every day or two
idk how the author still managed to make good stories despite all the villains showing up right up conan's @ss
The series definitely isn’t perfect and does commit a few writing sins, but man, the writing can be strong when it wants to be. I can’t say much about DBZ yet since I only just started it, but for the original show I would say its biggest flaws were the slow pacing in the early seasons, the unnecessary exposition at times (it breaks the biggest rule of writing, which is show don’t tell), and the Main Character Effect that Goku has (there’s a lot of “It took me years to master this technique, but Goku did it in only two days” type situations in the show). I’d say seasons 4 and 5 is where the writing reached its peak, specifically during the Piccolo arc.
Another one I hate is when the Hero gets special privileges/exemptions from the plot. Magic system has different classes/castes? Hero will either be good at all of them or have a special ability that encompasses/trumps all the others. Hero must make a sacrifice or suffer extreme consequences? Usually bypassed by the Power of Friendship or something by the end of the plot. ie: Masters of the Universe Revelation, Teela accepts the role of Sorceress, which comes at the cost of being bound to a specific location... except when she decides to ignore that and continue on with her brand new powers and no consequences at all. Another is Fire Emblem Awakening, where one of the main characters comes back from being erased from existence by the actual power of friendship.
The Fire Emblem one honestly feels earned in a Harry Potter sort of way, but only if there's a significant number of people fighting besides the Avatar by that point. If you were going to change it, I wouldn't mind there being a threshold of different levels of connections with the other characters to be the requirement for Robin to be brought back to life with it increasing greatly if Robin has a spouse, a high connection with Chrom and potentially Lucina, high connections with their kid/kids, and friendships with others that they can. That way, it's a significant number of bonds that change what fate decrees, which goes with the themes of Fire Emblem Awakening.
Somewhere in the midst of S5 of GoT, Sam Tarly says 'John always comes back'. In the S5 episode Hardhome, Jon and the Night King have a meaningful stare down, and you just *know* they will meet again. Jon's death and resurrection, I suspect, was meant to have a larger role - one in which Jon's temporary death would actually matter - but once the writers ran out of GRR Martin's source material and had no direction, they forgot about all the foreshadowing and cheated the character and the audience out of that finale. Instead, Arya got the kill without having earned it and the series turned to shit. I don't blame Martin, just Benioff and Weiss for rushing to get the show over and bungling it.
It still hurts all these years later...not the lasting impact I was expecting from the show! haha
After season 5, everyone's IQ went down about 20 points, except for Tyrion whose went down about 40
Because they passed the books in the story.
In the books there's strong hints and build ups that Jon is supposed to have warged into Ghost before his death (the books show that he has a direct emotion connection to Ghost). And Melisandre at one point asks to see Azor Ahai (the prophesized hero that her god was supposed to have returned that she believes to be Stannis), and she keeps seeing a vision of Jon turning into a wolf, then turning into a human. So what was likely supposed to happen is that Jon would warg into Ghost when he dies, and then somehow Ghost would be transformed back into Jon (probably by Melisandre). I think the show just didn't want to get rid of Ghost, so they just resurrected Jon directly.
@@bluefinMarga its driven fand like me to write GOT fan foiction on AO3
It's interesting that you show Luke's Jedi training, because many people have pointed to that as a genuine example of a hero who gained a skill too quickly. To be fair, I subscribe to the theory that Luke's training actually too several months, which is supported by the subplot of Han and Leia traveling to Bespin without a working hyperdrive, which gave them time to get a relationship upgrade. The timeline for this part of TESB is very vague, so there could have been a timeskip of weeks or even months without harming the narrative.
I remember when I saw it as a kid and it felt like a couple of days to me. They might have said it in the movie it was actually weeks or months but I found out in recent years that in the novel version of the movie it was a couple of weeks maybe like a month.
Luke also doesn't finish his training, and LOSES his fight with Vader because of it. It's not the same case at all. How can it be "rushed" when the entire point is that it was never finished?
Yeah it works because he loses the fight, he didn't gain the skill
Correct. Consequence of his decision to not complete his training: lose fight to Vader and his hand.
Better example WOULD have been Rey 'Skywalker'... But she never even did any training! She was Ms. Perfect from the get go!
Honestly, I think Luke and Rey suffer from that same thing when you include the prequels and show that jedi trained their entire lives to be as good as they were. How can Luke possibly defeat Vader even if his training with Yoda took a few months?
Rey grew up a scavenger and so you can assume she had some fighting skills she developed just to stay alive. Still, the only justification used for her getting skills so fast was that she was Palpatine's granddaughter. I do like Rey as a character, but much of that is probably due to Daisy Ridley, not the writing.
When I heard the Dexter example for the third one, I immediately thought of the opposite situation in Breaking Bad, where Walter White spends a good deal of time grappling with the fact he has to kill Krazy-8, and eventually has to strangle him with a bike lock.
Great moment in BB
That's literally a stolen decision too though, walt initially has to decide on whether to free crazy eight or not, but when Walt finds out eight's planning to kill him, this gives Walt an easy way out by killing crazy eight to save his own life instead of tackling the dilemma to free him or not. As good as breaking bad is it still falls into this cloche unfortunately.
@@treydryburgh7705it doesn't, what you are describing was the whole dilemma in the first place. Also it make sense as it's a grounded show so yeah krazy wants in fact to survive
@@hypeman1021 i don't think you understood what I mean. I was describing how the whole dilemma was stolen from walt, also krazy wanting to survive has nothing to do with anything. The entire point of Walt's dilemma was if he was willing to risk his life to let krazy go or for Walt to kill an unarmed man, but before he gets the chance to choose one of the options he finds the broken plate and then becomes 100% certain that krazy will kill him, forcing Walt to make the only feasible decision: to kill him. So the moral decision walt had to make was stolen in place of walt being forced to kill or be killed, which is an obvious and much easier choice to make.
@@treydryburgh7705 The choice was recontextualized, but it wasn't stolen. For Walt, letting Krazy 8 go was the "easy" choice, which is why it didn't take much to convince him. It was then by Walt's own observation that he noticed the missing plate piece. Even when killing him became the only rational choice, going through with it was still just as hard for Walt and no one else does the job for him. He even gets close and provokes the guy to force a direct self-defense situation, and cries to himself after. He contends with the fact that the choices he made led him to choking the life out of a man with his own hands. He fully suffers the consequences of that action and comes out a more hardened full-measures type of guy as a result. Compare that to a 3rd party finding Doakes by dumb luck, Dexter having no direct hand in what happens to him, and coming out a totally unchanged character after.
My favorite subversion of stolen choices, is to have the hero fully commit to making the wrong choice, then steal it from them, then never let them forget it.
Oh.. Oh dang.
I hope I am describing this correctly, but a hero cliche that bugs me is when a grounded character acquires extraordinary or superhuman abilities over time (often in sequels). For example, Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry starts as a highly capable, but believably realistic, police detective. As the sequels churned out he developed ridiculous marksmanship and personal combat abilities that transcend ordinary human ability. The same applies to Stallone's Rocky & Rambo characters, and Charles Bronson's character in the Death Wish movies. In the great originals, (we) can identify with the protagonists, but as sequels were added, they developed into unrealistic comic book meta-humans.
I don't see that as being a problem in this context. To me, this looks like the ' 10,000 hours' of time elapsed to master a skill. Over time, with constant application someone will get better at a skill.
Now, if some noob character ended up depicted as being unrealistically highly skilled after a brief amount of time, that would bother me.
I agree about Rambo. But if we're being totally honest here, only the first Rambo is a real good movie. The rest is just a bunch of entertaining but meaningless actioners
Die Hard as well. McLane is pretty unbelievable to begin with admittedly, but in 3 it starts to get iffy (even though it’s my favorite) and after that, oh boy.
I love the first Rambo. I dislike the 2. and 3.
I like the 4. again.
@Iron-Bridge It might look like that but the "superhumaness" really stands out to people with a good understanding of boxing, combat, etc. It's preferable to reward a viewer with more know-how on specific subjects than it is to take them out of the experience because Rocky and Drago are just trading power shots forever, even though Rocky could only go three rounds max with the previous movie's villain because of how hard he punched, yet Drago was established to be the strongest in-universe fighter...and Rocky was canonically 5 years older and still holding the title despite Mickey no longer being around to schedule fights with bums
The worst character resurrections I’ve ever see are in Arrow. I swear everyone dies at least once, some three or four times, but they always come back.
The pool became just a weekend trip
ugh Supernatural too
In the books George makes it pretty clear that through resurrection, Beric Dondarion is losing pieces of himself each time he comes back.
His body is withering as well as his mind. He is less than what he was before.
I do think George will resurrect Jon in the books as well, but perhaps it will be more clear that Jon has lost something in the process, maybe his skills as a warrior. That would be a pretty steep price to pay in Westeros.
Although as mentioned, that would be pretty similar to Jaime’s arc.
Maybe Jon will be become this cruel tyrannical asshole
I don't like the "speech" cliche, sometimes its a teenager saying things that ends or has a answer to complex questions like discrimination and just sounds wrong and unbealivable.
Or convincing the bad guy that they can become good guys, after the genocide they did. The consequence is these "antagonists" not being held accountable to all the murderes they committed. And everyone accepts.
About Jon Snow, maybe would be better if he was more agressive towards everyone, could make things unpredictable.
This!!
Thats where atleast Anakin is better. He really wants to kill some of his enemies like Dooku and often needs to be held back by Obi wan
Redemption arcs from villains turned heros can be good, but there should be consequences for their actions.
@@SilverLovesJesus it really depends on what the villain did. If the villain is a psychopath who enjoyed killing millions, then forgiving them is just stupid.
But if the villain hasn't done the worst and has certain good moral values, then it would make more sense to forgive them.
For example a criminal gang leader who is strictly against hurting innocents, r*pe, etc
@@obambagaming1467 But what if the characters redemption is them sacrificing himself/herself to help others? or to save the day? That qualifies in my book, especially if he/she truly wants to change and are willing to do whatever it takes to take things right. I do think it's a subjective topic though.
Also, The hero forgiving the villain before the villain redeems himself is a sign of a GOOD hero. That's what a hero would do. Heros need to have kind hearts, not to destroy evil, but to preserve good. I do think when a character is redeemable is subjective tho.
An example of writers not allowing cliche #4 is in Avatar: The Last Airbender, when Aang tries fire bending for the first time and accidentally burns Katara.
And he has problems with earth bending because to use it, you can not think like ab n air bender.
Avatar: TLAB managed to avoid pretty much all of these cliches. No one is randomly related to Aaang somehow, and his stills and power is earned, as his main mission in the series is to learn how to bend all of the elements, and we see him struggle at times.
*SPOILER*
Maybe the one thing you could say is that they did avoid having him make the choice to kill the Fire Lord which had been a major personal conflict for him during the final season, by having him suddenly learn how to de-power him instead. But at the end of the day it's still a kids show, so you can't really expect them to have the hero murder someone. It was good that they addressed the idea of Aang needing to be prepared to kill him at all.
Always a bummer when a character that you loved is brought back, but then by the end you wish they never were😂
Supernatural is guilty of this to an absurd degree.
big oof there.
Oh the one I hate is inconsistent use of strength/abilities/skills according to plot needs. Also the "powered up-come back", mostly typical in anime and manga: almost dead hero goes through a psychological epiphany and gets up unscathed and stronger than ever.
What really makes those scenes annoying is that they could tie the power system into psychological state and mental power even emotions but although it might be more tough than the simple “I lift more, I more stronger” systems, it can allow for those moments and for them to not feel dumb
@@fluppet2350 Sometimes you get a Hunter x Hunter, sometimes you get an Akame ga Kill. Just gotta pick and choose.
Demon Slayer
Only to get weaker and need a new way to power up later.
I don't know if is a hero cliche per se, but that always have to have a romantic interest through the story. Sometimes is well put together, sometimes it feels forced.
I think the problem is just that it's often badly executed and feels unnatural
This a good one. I think I appreciate the role of romance in a story more now that I'm older and had more experience with writing, but as a young man I never understood why it had to be in everything.
Romantic interests are a cliche, an annoying one too.
Most of the times, romantic interests are there to keep thinge from going stale or to simply have romance scenes.
If someone of you guys know BLACK MASK with Jet Li, there is a funny solution to this cliche…
Surprised you never mentioned Optimus Prime for the resurrection thing. Not only does he do it basically every five minutes, but for him, resurrection usually means he comes back _stronger_
Agreed. and I think that Optimus Prime from Transformers: Prime might be the worst offender. He's mortally wounded at the end of S2/beginning of S3 when decepticons blow up the autobots base, ends up being saved from the rubble by Smokescreen, a new arrival from the late part of S2 who was still going through a maturing-arc, and the two were stranded in a cave where Optimus was dying and preparing to hand over the Matrix to Smokescreen who clearly wasn't ready for it and the latter even voiced his concerns over this. Meanwhile, the rest of the autobots were rounded up by Ultra Magnus, another new arrival to Earth and a very seasoned warrior and leader who seemed like the logical fill-in for Optimus, despite his more rigid leadership. So there was a pretty clear set-up for passing the leadership, with either a veteran experienced soldier or a still-maturing rookie being the prime candidates for new leadership.
Except Optimus gets a resurrection with power-up bonus and goes to save the day and then resumes his role as the leader. Then later he is forced to sacrifice himself so that Cybertron can start producing new cybertronians again, so he says his goodbyes to his comrades and passes the role of leadership over to them, allowing others, like Bumblebee, to step up and lead their own way to build a future for which he is giving his life.
Except he comes back. Yet again. And from what I've gathered it only gets worse from there on. (I haven't seen the 2015 RID)
@@SKuusk95The second is more of a problem with robot in disguise in general, as an independent series it could work even with its problems, but by wanting to act as a sequel to prime, it ends up ruining it and itself, which at this point is more of a shared problem of transformer as a franchise by wanting to cover a lot with minimal effort.
Even Bumblebee is already part of this stupid cliché, in this new reboot of the films he died twice and was resurrected, and I was like: "am i supposed to be sad?"
This is stupid because if you don't have the balls to make a character stay dead why are you killing him in the first place?
@@dagon1523yeah, especially in Rise of the Beasts. Most of the promos featuring Bumblebee used scenes that took place _after_ he gets killed in the movie. So you already know that he's gonna come back. And not even like at the very end of the movie they find a way to res him; he comes back during the final battle and starts kicking ass to tell us that he's the star of the franchise now. (let's be real, he is)
All it means is that his death is really just mild shock but nothing too serious. At least in 2018's _Bumblebee_ they managed to make it more emotional thanks to Charlie being there. In ROTB I was literally like: "Oh no. Anyway..."
Anyone else find it hard to write side characters that aren’t entirely stereotypical and two dimensional? I often feel like my cast is either full of pointless characters or basically empty. How do you write characters that a main character interacts with naturally but may not be important overall?
Same here. Gonna leave a comment in case someone shares good advice.
Write about what you know
Try modelling a character based on someone you know - maybe yourself - and see what are the core parts of the character, the main events in their life, what do they look like, what people are around the character and what relationships they share with them, what little details can make the picture complete
Then try changing them up, see what sticks to the wall, add some flavourful extremes if you like and voila! You've got a character
Yeah, it's a self-insert, try not to make it blatant and you'll end up with a normal fam
Or just try to do the same to a character you know and who's character is clear, just remember the layers and how they always end up intertwining
find something that would be enjoyable on many levels, throw that into a "character thingo" box, do that for a bit and then assemble your Bionicle
Mash them into one. You have a character with one plane gimmick, a character that exists for moving the plot and nothing more and a character that has a cool look that you don't know where to stuff into? Those three are now the same character.
(I have no official education in writing so this advice is entirely my own thoughts)
Perhaps try and make a character without the main character in mind, make them have their own personality, likes, dislikes, traits, skills and most importantly their own reasons to be there. By then you will have two or more different characters and you will have to come up with a reason for how they start to connect and form a bond and perhaps you might even come up with new chemistries as you write.
Treat them as the hero of their own story. It also helps to envision them with their own spin-off series.
I hate when people who have basic level human proficiency and are related to the hero think they can team up with the hero to figgt crime. Like, man... He's not fighting a bunch of pre-schoolers... These are SUPERVILLAINS.. They can end a life in a flash
I think an interesting example of resurrection working is Optimus Prime in the Transformers movies. After Optimus comes back from the dead, he gets considerably more aggressive/violent like he isn’t gonna take a chance again. It’s interesting how such a messy franchise pulls that off surprisingly well.
He became aggressive and violent before resurrection.
@@fdjtron1732 not really. In the first film he's just defending himself, he only considerers killing Megatron as a last resort.
In the second film prior to his death, he kills Wheel-bot, which I think is pretty reasonable as he did prove to be a great threat, the forest battle is probably the best example of Optimus In the movies being sane, the scene makes it clear that Optimus is in a rough position, you can hear that he's scared for the life of Sam, his voice is shaking and then we have actual character development happening on-screen, with Optimus coming to realisation that the Decepticons won't just give up and that he has to kill them if he wants to keep humanity safe.
Even in the Egypt fight you can kinda say that the stakes were extremely high so his violent response there is also justifiable.
After the second film he just turned into a psycho for no reason. There is no excuse to justify him killing Megatron at the end.
@@friendlyneighborhoodkelbea7258 he was extremely aggressive and even cursed and insulted Megatron. Optimus is not like that at all
@@friendlyneighborhoodkelbea7258 the fight in the forest had "give me your face" so I wouldn't really say that Optimus's sane at the moment
@@The-jy3yq it's also the only scene in all 5 films scenes with actual character development, that one line definetely undermines it though.
A trope that I see done poorly a lot is a protagonist with abuse in their past. Like it can be very compelling if you're looking to create a sympathetic character, but the "I was abused and it made me stronger" is pretty gross. That's not how it works.
Often abuse makes you weaker until you learn resilience. It bothers me too. It took me many years to become a resilient person with okay coping skills.
"My family super abused me, and I became a mad-man mega badass." Well, how nice for you. I became a shell of myself, and I still deal with strong anxiety when I'm in public.
The only thing I can think where this might apply is if someone got abused by their family, and becomes determined to be a good parent so their own kid won't have to go through the same thing.
I agree. I hate this trope because it often feels like its only done for cheap emotions. When I see the abused omega mate plot anywhere, I'm closing the book and moving on to the next one. It doesn't interest me at all.
Abuse doesn't make you stronger but surpassing it and acknowledging that the abuse doesn't have to define you for the rest of your life absoloutely does make you stronger, but yeah abuse is something horrible that does the opposite of "empowering".
It is part and parcel of a larger narrative that everyone is traumatised.
Non lethal bullet wounds being a minor inconvenience. Surviving massive explosions with no side effects
Yes! This is actually why I am so tired of superhero movies. Endless facepunching of INDESTRUCTIBLE people is such a waste of time. There are no stakes and you are never worried that they will get hurt, because they physically can't be hurt.
Unfortunately, this is somewhat the case in the otherwise great "John Wick" as well. He's SO good that you stop worrying about him surviving his endless revenge spree.
Number 3 aggravates me so fucking much.
Like when the protag lets someone live but then they end up dying a few seconds later from someone else or the environment.
Ugh 😒
Here is another hero cliche to avoid: the tough policeman with an alcohol problem and a messed up marriage.
Yes! Policeman or former policeman turned private detective... so overdone.
It's easy to just avoid these cliches but I'd say go for it if you can really pull it off.
A related character, a resurrection, spontaneous power all these things can be done well and have deep meaning in your story as long as you give the story and audience the proper respect.
#3 and #4 are probably harder to make work (especially #4), but I can see how stealing a decision from the protagonist also could serve as a learning experience e.g. he learns that stalling too long will let the world play out in front of him without him being able to do anything. Maybe his indecision to break his moral code to save a friend ends up costing the friend's life and now he must live with his inaction.
I struggle to see how actions having no consequences could work well but maybe if its to show some impotence in the protagonist e.g. the he does something but in the end we find out it wouldn't have changed anything anyway.
Anyway, I just think these are always good heuristics to have in mind so you are at least careful and paying attention when you use these tropes.
Yeah pretty much anything can be pulled off if you do it right. It’s tricky but possible.
_> he does something but in the end we find out it wouldn't have changed anything anyway._
Indiana Jones pulled it off 😆
Thank you man because im making a story and I have number one in my story but it serves a purpose and will be explored later in the story and I really like the concept but after reading these comments and watching the video ive become a little discouraged but more careful in my thinking process about these things. This comment is exactly what I needed to see, thank you man and have a God blessed day.
@@ilovecheese7281 Just keep writing! Once you are done take a good look at it again in light of the entire narrative and see if you still think it makes sense. If it doesn't and you can't revise it without changing the entire story then just leave it be. its okay for your stories not to be perfect, especially if they are some of the first stories you are writing. Better to just get something out there.
@@denusklausen3685 Thanks man, will do
Worst cliche: The Hero always conveniently has a way out of every situation. I think of like how despite Superman being weak to kryptonite, he somehow has a way of beating it.
Characters who feel unkillable, or unbeatable are boring, and frustrating because you know no matter what, they'll never truly lose a fight, or die.
All characters, including the main character, should be vulnerable, and should be able to lose.
That's why I like characters who occasionally escape death only because they were rescued, got lucky or were spared.
Seeing a character occasionally lose makes their victories more satisfying
can you make a video about potential solutions for these? because i find most of these clichés unavoidable. let's take the example of 'Everyone is Connected to the Hero' I understand the first type and its drawback, but about the second type I feel like its unavoidable.
I say unavoidable because if I were to introduce a random villain out of nowhere then consequently, I will also have to explain his backstory, his motives, potentially a reason for him to hate the hero along with the city or the world, and if I don't do any of these then I will have a villain that's understandable and just bad.
I am a new author so maybe I am just to dumb to actually understand, but that's what it felt like to me. That's all, thank you.
I get what he’s saying in that it shrinks the world if the hero is connected to everyone including the villains. In real life, there are thieves, bank robbers, cartels that are in no way connected. Even your friendly neighborhood weed man isn’t connected. It just looks strange when you unmask the kidnapper and it’s uncle Joe. Really, hero? You had no clue uncle Joe was into kidnapping??!! I can’t take him to jail! He’s my uncle Joe! Wait! I told him to explore all of his options for a second job. This is all MY fault! Uncle Joe!!!!
i hate the mis understanding moments in movies, like nomona they make the main character and nomona seem like they can't trust each anymore and he only sees her as monster and lier.
the mc legit saw the bad guy kill his partner( nomona in disguise) and never even talks about how that villain legit killed someone to hide the evidence and they exposed them as nothing but corrupted and evil but he still has doubts on nomona who's done nothing that yells murder and lier.
I spent so long on my first-ever screenplay. At the end of it all, I was so proud to have created a hero that didn’t fall under these clichés. With what a lot of people are saying here, my story focused around a hero with selfish intent and a villain with selfless intent.
The villain plays a major role in the story, more so than a traditional antagonist. The villain is a hero in his own eyes, because even though he commits horrible actions, he does so with the intent to cure his wife’s disease. To do so, he must steal technology from the hero. The hero, upon realizing his selfish ways in his pursuit of justice, turns a new leaf and saves the villain’s wife rather than killing the villain, only under the condition that he turns himself in for the atrocities he’s committed.
I’m no published author/writer, but I celebrated as if I wrote a bestseller after that. I was so proud of how I established it.
Listening to this list makes me really happy that I don't have to worry about using these clichés in my work. Which hopefully I'll actually write someday.
Start now! If you keep procrastinating, you’ll keep procrastinating
@@WriterBrandonMcNulty Aye, aye!
😂 The only way to not have writing mistakes is to NOT WRITE!!
🤦♀ why didn't i think of that!
Unfortunately for me, i scored a 3/5 on this and i'm not even done. will probably have 5/5 by the end! 😭🙌
Brb... gonna go figure out how not to make everyone related to the MC.
The worst cliche is when a female protagonist does something wrong but all accountability is removed from her.
Like Wanda being told "They'll never know what you sacrificed." Or in the recent MWIII campaign when Laswell kills neutral Russian soldiers and someone on the radio says "Their blood is not on your hands; they are in Makarov's."
It applies to all characters, not just female protagonists.
Also in defense of Wv, SHIELD was terrified of her .
There's a name for that when it's for women specifically, but i'm blanking on it now. Something like "Innocent woman" or "pure" or some other nonsense. It's the "woman is supposed to do no wrong" idea.
As a woman who knows many women, 😂😂😂😂😂 good gosh i find that such a funny concept.
As the other comment here says, it's applied EXACTLY THE SAME WAY to all these cliche male heroes (lookin at YOU Cpt. Am), but there's i guess only a term for it when it's done for women. 🤷♀
I find the second point interesting, because that very cliche seems to be a part of what Marvel considers an essential ingredient for a Spider-Man villain. It's EVERYWHERE in his rogues gallery in most incarnations, and I think it is that way to make his secret identity more of a challenge for him in general. I agree that it gets ridiculous at times too, but considering that the Marvel universe can feel too big for its own good sometimes, I kind of like that Spider-Mans villains are closely connected to him and that it makes his corner of the universe feel more tightly knit. Depends on the version of the character of course. Those without the larger Marvel Universe in the background may or may not benefit from this.
It definitely raises the stakes when you have prior connection to the villain, but when it happens again and again and again, it can come off as silly, at least IMO.
I think Mysterio and Electro are the only live action Spider-man villains who don’t have any connection to Peter himself (Rhino too from ASM2 but he was pretty minor)
In comic books it is the polar opposite, miniscule amounts of villains have actual personal connection to Peter besides Green Goblin, Eddie Brock and The Lizard.
Worst tropes:
Main character has to do EVERYTHING (cant sit around, cuz bad for the plot)
The world revolves around the main character (nothing happens to the 1-d side characters)
Why do i feel like most tropes that people hate have a positive effect on the character (eg. makes them happy, safe, understood), and the tropes that people like the most are like death of everyone the character knows, losing limbs, losing powers, losing, etc.
It’s even more annoying when important character deaths don’t feel earned
Thanks so much for this! This is so beautiful 😍 I hate heroes are written in a way they are not allowed to do anythibg that upsets the audience
Honestly aside from the “gains skills in short time” the rest don’t sound bad and just nitpick borderline on cinema sins
There’s so many good character with these tropes and if those tropes weren’t there we’d have short stories
My absolute worst clishee are passive heroes. Those who simply get dragged along by the plot without ever doing anything significant.
There´s a book called The Depths of Time by Alexander Brandhorst, and the Protagonist spends every chapter he is in feeling sorry for himself without doing anything about it.
Also, this might be an anime only problem but i hate it when the female lead is clearly supposed to be the main character but the author felt insecure and added a generic, bland guy the plot puts way too much focus on.
It also happens here (for example it happens a lot in novels and soap operas, and even in some animated ones like the legend of Korra), and a lot the other way around, but it is true that it happens a lot in anime from the 90s to 2000, but luckily with The passage of time, even if it is preserved, has changed over time, little but for the better.
@@eddyandresmartinezrodrigue7600 You have a point there, the trend is clearly shifting slowly to a better side. I think if writers become more confident in their leads, they stop over-correcting them with weaknesses, making their actual shortcomings feel more natural and relatable ^^
k i'm reading all 1,800 comments on here and trying to fix my characters.
i have an MC hero who starts off fairly passive, following orders, trying to make the morally correct decisions, but she meets a villain who helped her when they were kids (i know, that's cliche #1. i'm working on it.) and she wants to save him.
so she starts learning dark magic (morally grey) because it's the only thing that can break this curse he has on him. and then basically decides to die breaking it. (less passive) but then the curse jumps to her and doesn't let her die, but now she's (sort of) evil, and feels totes "unbound" and free to make any decision she wants.
does that work, do you think?
if she's kind of intentionally passive at the beginning, in order to make the transformation more striking at the end?
😟 still too cliche?
@@JhadeSagravEverything will depend on the effort you put into not only breaking the other party's curse, but also demonstrating that you are not just doing it out of an obsession, give valid reasons, whether the other party shows that you want or deserve to be redeemed or that there is more. people who need it, for example that she has allies who want the villain dead, although I recommend trying to avoid drama and focusing more on them and the viewer understanding that there is another way to do things. I also recommend in terms of his personality after the resurrection, that you focus less on his morals and more on his integrity, what things he can now do and what things he still can't do, my favorite example is Red Hood, the worst thing he ever did. How Jason (murdering the son of an ambassador who had committed abuses and murders) is almost his standard as a red hood, he went from vigilante to mercenary, but he still refused to attack civilians, on the contrary, many of his actions are thinking about the well-being of those who cannot defend themselves, death brought out the worst in him, but it also showed that his desire to help the city was genuine. Finally, even if you treat his resurrection as a tragedy, do not be afraid to touch on the idea that some of the changes are for the better, sometimes it is necessary to admit that humans are a complex being who can feel freed by a tragedy, comfortable in presence of a bad person with whom we get along or satisfied with doing something ethically incorrect, is not based on promoting an idea or opening a debate, it is based on generating a genuine scenario that one can encounter throughout one's own life or that he can at least conceive the idea of it happening.
A lot of main stream Anime/ Manga series are also extremely guilty of those and plenty of other clichés.
Well, anime/manga are just two ways to tell a story (just like books or movies). It's just natural that not all its products are good products, just like it happens with books or movies. 🙂
similar to the mc learning skills really fast, i also hate it when theyre just born with them. it kind of feels like it undermines all the work actually needed to learn a skill and really annoys me
The Jon Snow resurrection on GoT is especially galling as, while we haven’t yet gotten to see it in the books, the foreshadowing in A Dance With Dragons strongly hints that he will be utterly transformed from his experience. With Beric Dondarrion and Cat Stark, they both became more primal and sullen, each with a morbid fixation on their purposes as they died (Dondarrion fighting for King Robert, Cat avenging her children’s death as Lady Stoneheart). What’s more is the likelihood that Jon’s soul is temporarily harboured with his direwolf Ghost (get it?). Martin is foreshadowing that Jon Snow will be resurrected with wolf-like ferocity abd and a fixation on protecting the Wall from the Others. He’ll also likely be a bit decomposed and probably sporting white hair. If you’re going to force a resurrection into a story, that’s the way to do it.
One hero cliche that I personally don’t like is the “chosen one” cliche. You know this kind of story, it’s the story where the hero is predestined to become the one that saves everyone. Now not to say that every example of one is bad, in some cases it can work. But it really makes us the audience question the need for suspense. Like we know the hero is gonna win regardless so there’s not much to get anxious about.
One example of this comes from Tim Burton’s “Alice in wonderland” where there’s this scroll that says everything that’s gonna happen on a day by day basis. In the scroll is a picture of Alice slaying the big dragon like creature the jabberwocky. It eliminates all the suspense and reduces the roles of pretty much every other character to just spectators.
There is another type of this cliche which doesn't exactly rely on prophecy thing but rather having the protagonist possess/given the access to special power that makes him very unique compared to other characters.
It's a cliché because it's one of the oldest stories in the world. It goes back to Romulus and Remus and Moses and maybe even further back in time.
The Percy Jackson books do an amazing job at subverting the Chosen One trope. Prophecies in fiction are usually unclear, especially in this series, but the reader is made well aware of that many times. Even so, when the prophecy comes true in a way that the reader couldn't have expected, it made perfect sense in hindsight.
@@zacharygilmore1075 yeah exactly. It is possible to do it and still be good. Just like many ideas, doing one and doing it well isn't off the table.
I find the best subversion of this cliche to be the "oh, you're the Chosen One alright... the VILLAIN'S chosen." Turns the point of the story into a "fuck destiny" bit where finding a way out of the fate engineered for you by others.
My cliche that I'm slowly getting tired of, and its very difficult to not use this for heroes, is the Orphan Angle. Be it movies, novels, manga, anime and videogames, all or 90% have: no parents, just mom, aunts and uncles, family friend/former mentor, and kind or abusive adopted parents.
Naming a few but not all because list would be too big: Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, Wolverine, King Arthur, Simba, Goku, James from James and the Giant Peach, Hogarth(no dad) from Iron Giant, Jon Snow(not knowing real birth parents), Geralt of Rivia, etc.
My greatest challenge would be to make protagonist(s) who dont have the parent loss dynamic.
*Edit: Don't get me wrong, and I love the constructive feedback, I'm saying it can be used properly for good story telling, but that's the trick. Also ALL protagonists are adopted and recognize them as their parent guardians. From Arthur's mentor Merlin and his Uncle to Hey Arnold's grandparents looking after him. Shows like One Punch Man and the new Delicious in Dungeon are great because they aren't motivated to help or be they're absolute best without the tragedy. But in the end, if it works it works. Hell, I'm still having one of my charcaters have his father return to Europe and his mother return to a different realm.
I am directly subverting this with the MC of my story, she very much has her adoptive parents in her life, they love her, she loves them, and sometimes she has problems she wants their advice about.
@@JoshuaRWorkmanSame
This is not going to go away any time soon, at least in Western writing, because modern writers are more and more commonly requiring young protagonists to follow proper child safeguarding when they have parents. So the options are a young person with no parents/parental figures who has adventures, or children who have parents/parental figures and then have to spend the whole book sneaking around and disobeying them in order to have adventures-which I find FAR more annoying.
Seriously, can you imagine an American cartoon with a premise like Pokémon? Ash has a Mom who loves him, and yet she also lets him go off by himself into the world as a Pokémon trainer.
So according to you Jonathan and Martha Kent don't exist? I get it, they weren't Kal-El's biological parents, but they were still his parents.
@@travisbishop782 kind adopted parents - stated in the comment
+ both dads are dead
The thing that got old for me quickly was tying the origins of the hero and villain together. In the first Tim Burton Batman movie, having the Joker become the reason for Batman's creation was a cute twist, but after that it seems like that linked origin was the only way to do heroes and villains. Inspector Gadget was the worst offender, in my opinion. Sorry, they don't have to know each other to oppose each other.
#4 not just Rise of Skywalker, but really EVERYTHING Rey-- such a shame, cuz Rey had a good intro, some nice intrigue and surprises, but then is instantly secretly Franklin Richards, being the go-to do it all hero seemingly in her own GD pocket universe
One of the most impactful moments of any show or movie I can remember watching is when Walter White has to make that same choice (whether to kill a dangerous enemy that he captured), precisely because nobody rescues him from the decision. Seeing him grapple with it is brutal and desperate, and you can tell it changes him forever. Masterful!
When a romance feels rushed is usually my biggest problem. Because most of the time they feel like good friends or something not at all and then it’s just off when they’re lovers too suddenly. There’s also the unearned redemption
might be a hot take, but naruto does both of these
The difference between friends and lovers is just the statement that they are in relationships. What kind of not rushed romance you'd expect?
Just my two cents but rushed romances aren't that bad in my opinion.
Kishimoto gave a perfect explanation for some couples in the Naruto's ending but some fans are still salty about it.
@@shrekkek9396 Brandon Sanderson said that most often when we feel like theres a deus ex machina or something feels forced, it's because there wasn't sufficient foreshadowing and build up. Which is what the OP seems to be referring to.
Sanderson also accented this point by saying, you don't write a romance novel by writing a 200 page story and then sliding "and then they fell in love" at the end.
I think this is about how something is executed or if it is overdone. Probably to the most hated and overdone cliche is protagonist being "the chosen one", but watching it or reading for the first time was kinda cool for most people (or maybe we were children and that's why it was cool).
I agree with #5 but I like it how it was done in GoT.
#1 can be done very well and Attack on Titan is perfect example for it.
To be honest "Everyones connected" and "Resurection" can be well written.
Number 2 can also perfectly fit with Rey throughout all of The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi. She always manages to do everything by herself without ever needing others to help her, a prime example being how she seemingly masters the force all within only DAYS of learning that it was even real to begin with, she’s pulling off crazy feats that normally only experienced Knights and Masters could do
3:15 This right here is why *24* is my favorite show of all-time. I will never forget some of the choices Jack Bauer had to make and *see through* on that show. Also, after the ending of season one, NO ONE was safe on that show. The screenwriters had the biggest balls in the industry, and no other series (not even Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead nor Breaking Bad) came close to *24* in regards to the "absolutely anything can happen on this show" thing.
24 is my all time favorite show as well. Jack and Kim were unkillable, but everyone else was in danger, and the show forced him to make some brutal choices (Ryan Chapelle in S3 comes to mind, as well as when he has to let CTU get attacked in S2)
I need to include more 24 examples in the future. I typically don’t because the show has kinda been forgotten and I try to pick popular/easily recognizable examples, but 24 needs some love
Dude, we're so on the same page. Ryan Chapelle's death was the first moment that came to mind when I wrote that comment, it was an absolute turning point for the show in regards to what they were willing to have Jack do ("I'm sorry we let you down, Ryan. God forgive me"). While I saw Kim as unkillable, I was 100% preparing myself for Jack to die in season 6, then season 7, and then season 8 (Here in Argentina, FOX added sort of an official sub-title to the promotional materials for season 6: "24: 'till death"). I only wish they hadn't ruined the great open ending of season 8, with an unresolved cliffhanger in Live Another DAy.@@WriterBrandonMcNulty
#1 - If you ever read the epic Japanese novel _Musashi,_ you get this one in DROVES. It's a great story about grit and perseverance and discipline, starkly contrasted with the opposites of all those things, BUT every character is connected with the main character from multiple angles.
Examples - the primary antagonist has been worked into a murderous frenzy by his controlling mother and is chasing his ex-fiancée through the woods at night. The young woman gets trapped in a small ravine and the antagonist lunges in and hacks her body to pieces. But then turns out it was dark and he missed her, and ended up hacking to pieces a vagabond who was sleeping in the ravine. Who was this vagabond? A man who had cheated the main character out of money about 5 chapters earlier and we'd not heard from since.
Then later in the book, some people who are set on killing the main character are discussing their plans to make their move during some kind of festival or fair in their town. They are unconcerned about the traveler sleeping in the next room overhearing them. But turns out who is this traveler sleeping in the next room who wasn't actually sleeping and heard their plans? It's a martial artist that the main character met like 10 chapters earlier at random and they dueled and the main character had won so this traveler has high respect for him, and he will now find and warn the main character.
Honestly for as much as I liked that book, I was really irritated how it felt that early 1600's Japan was populated by like 57 people.
Funny.
Reading this I realized I might have the exact same problem in one of my own drafts. Time to make some notes
Jon snow's resurrection was the moment GOT stopped being GOT.
It definitely felt like:
1. Let's kill off a main character to show we can be big boys!
2. Audience response is negative because they love the pretty actor
3. Immediately undo the big boy thing
Same with Rey "killing Chewbacca" and then not after all. The writers almost wanting to commit, but backing out is very annoying.
This is hitting deep how to create good parts to write an intriguing hero
Edit: no.4 fits the Mary sue and Gary sue….especially the Miraculois Ladybug Marinette mc just woah
When it comes to everyone is connected, I understand why they do it. It's a good way to create emotional bonds quickly. It's also lazy as hell when overly used. They are after all clichés because they're used too much, and they're used so much because they're cheap ways to increase emotional impact. Until they're used too much, then it just deflates it, but lazy writing is lazy writing.
Django Unchained is another example of a hero earning a skill with no training. He was able to pick up a revolver for the 1st time and be deadly accurate. They could have done a training montage in the mountains of him learning how to shoot or Schultz giving a key piece of advice on the topic that he remembers and uses.
They did show him training
@Joeybsmooth I just rewatched the shooting the snowman scene. His very first shot was dead center in a bottle with Schultz saying "That's Accurate." Then he is able to shoot every part of the snowman without issue. He was an expert from the start and that to me felt unearned.
That's not as unrealistic as you think, i've met several people who were naturals at putting bullets where their eyes went
#1 made me yell out "Yes!" as soon as you said it. I HATE that one. I especially hate when they do prequels or flashbacks after the fact and all their villains and side characters are there in their childhood.
I remember there was a planned Batman cartoon about Bruce Wayne in high school and like every single Batman villain was also a student there... so the billionaire kid is going to public school, the school produces an unbelievable number of future supervillains, and every Batman villain from Bane to Harley Quinn to Mr. Freeze are all around the same age? I can see why it was cancelled but I'm still a little angry it even got that far. I have never felt my intelligence more insulted by a story concept before.
I will say though that this didn't bother me in Lost because that was an important conceit of the story, that everyone's lives were connected in ways they didn't understand.
For Jon Snow, he died like everyone else. I don’t think his resurrection by itself contradicts the themes established in Game of Thrones, what does contradict them is how Jon deals with it afterwards and how he is given vast amount of plot armour and just contributes almost nothing for the rest of the show.
The reason why Gandalf’s resurrection worked in The Lord of the Rings is because we see him fall, but we are not sure what really happened. We never see his dead body and in the opening of The Two Towers and in a later scene we are given a full disclosure of what happened during his fight with the Balrog before defeating the monster and collapsing until Galadriel appears and brings him back to life. She never uses it again at any time after that.
The hero can only learn skills fast…with a montage!
Gotta have a Montage!
If Jon came back as a cold, ghoulish type creature like Lady Stoneheart, the ressurrection would have felt a lot better. I think this is probably what it will be like in the books.
I see you're in the camp of "He will finish the series some day. We just need to give him more time."
4:08 They could’ve just made it so that Dexter does let the other guy go, only for him to be killed by his girlfriend before he tells anyone.
Wow, that would have been perfect! What a brilliant idea!
Just thinking through that - it’s interesting, but because he would have to accept the consequences of getting caught. However, he doesn’t have to suffer the consequences if his girlfriend kills him. So then, he needs to have some other kind of real consequence happen.
And maybe that is that he has to kill his girlfriend, but is that enough? Killing her actually simplifies his life in many respects (not going to get into spoilers).
I will say, the scenario as written still had an impact on me; there were his stakes, and the twist was decent. Your idea would have made it better, though.
I think the rule of thumb is to write a scene, make it good, and then go back and make your character suffer to the point that makes you feel uncomfortable. That’s when you know it’s probably about right. 😂
My least favorite trope is a sudden burst of emotion allowing the protagonist to magically win a fight that they were just losing terribly a few minutes prior.
An example is Rocky Balboa vs Ivan Drago; He was twice Rocky’s size, doped up on steroids, and had enough reach advantage to punch him from the other side of the ring. No amount of dead mentor figures should give Rocky even a small chance of beating him.
4:00 Dexter actually does this again in season 7. After laguerta finds out he's the bay harbor butcher, he has her in a shipping container ready to kill her when deb finds them. Deb says he can't kill her because it's wrong and blah blah blah and then in a sudden turn of events, takes it upon herself to kill laguerta. It makes no sense and only happens so that the audience can maintain the false illusion that dexter is still a "good serial killer". It's one of the MANY ridiculous things that's wrong with Dexter
I think well written resurrection is possible, but only in limited ways.
1. It should have consequences.
a) Meaning, the Character cannot be at the same capability as before, or else we need a believable explanation why.
b) And/Or, the character will serve another, greater purpose. The resurrection is meaningful. It is not only there to please the audience / reader.
But more Importantly:
2. The death before needed to serve a purpose other than just a shocker for audience / reader.
What hero cliche do you hate most? Let us know!
it bothers me so bad when the hero went on a quest of revenge, killed dozens of mooks until they get to the big bad
then decided to NOT kill the big bad because they realize killing/revenge is bad
@@Hann1balls I wouldn't because except by MAYBE one wasp that was done for in a moment of anguish, Aang didn't really killed anyone and he was never vengeful
I hate resurrecting characters because it makes t feel like everyone is perfectly safe.
My least favorite example of this is Phil Coulson from Agents of Shield. Not being resurrected from Avengers because that had MAJOR impact, but being resurrected after his amazing death in season 5
I love your channel, Brandon, so glad I stumbled across it. I secretly think this channel is an excuse to tear apart everything sequel Star Wars trilogy 😂
@@Hann1balls atleast for Aang it plays a big part for his character near the end.
He is a monk. He was raised to be as peaceful as possible and the thought of killing someone is horrible for him.
In other stories the characters are just "killing is bad because it's bad. I gonna let you live *genocidal psychopath who wanted to kill everyone*"
An example for this is Barry from the Flash TV series
Nobody is safe in the Marvel universe either but characters come back from the dead continually. Gotta be impressed with their recycling program, I guess.
I imagine there are characters in the MCU that fear tax declarations more then death, because of the heightened stakes
Marvel LITERALLY lacks any tension or real jeopardy lol
Like WHAAAAAAATTT? You can't possibly be serious. They are well known for repeated death fake-outs.
Like we literally knew that all the characters would be resurrected at the snap cause they had individual movies in various stages of production
Thanks for these videos brandon, even just as entertainment they are fantastic and fun to watch
Thank you! Glad to hear they’re enjoyable. I try to keep them from being stuffy lessons
Every Craig bond film now loves these clichés! Especially spectre and no time to die!
Agree 100% on unearned power/skill. I slightly disagree about choices, not being able to choose is a choice, and sometimes you want the character to seem weak and indecisive so they can turn around and make a decision later to establish growth, etc.
In the end, James Bond is related to all the bad guys.