I was just watching the Neopoleon trailer and releasied I have hit my limit with these stripped back orchestra hit covers of modern songs that seem to want the audience to do the Leo.gif about halfway through
“You just don’t get it, do you?”
“As we all know” style conversations, where characters reiterate things that they all know for the audience’s benefit.
[A bunch of assassins sit in a smoke-filled room.]
Billy Cuththroat: Did you hear about Sneaky Sam? He betrayed The Organization.
Susan Slipknot: You never betray The Organization! The Organization is the most dangerous secret cabal in the world!
Pete Poisoner: What was he thinking?! Everyone knows that if you betray The Organization, they send their invincible team of Cleaners after you!
BC: The Cleaners! Everyone knows that they’ve never been defeated in a war of assassins!
SS: And as we all know, the Cleaners are led by the most fearsome Cleaner of all, Mr. Clean!
PP: Mr. Clean! He only ever kills using his left thumb, and he never leaves a trace, as as all know!
BC & SS [in unison]: As we all know!
That’s called exposition, and when it’s obvious it’s being done it can be really bad.
Incidentally, I was just reading book 2 of a trilogy and rather than try to casually mention the events of book 1 here and there as a reminder—which a lot of books do—the prologue was a complete summary of book 1 written as a holy book from 1000 years in the future. It was a really cool way of doing it. Book 1 had chapter intros from the same future holy book, too, but have it as a big infodump was a great reminder of the story.
A character suddenly gets a lot of emotional backstory indicating they are about to die.
Leave me alone I’m obnoxious/spoiled/grumpy/a loner.
Oh no wait, it’s 5 mins from the end of the movie, let me change my entire personality through the use of some grand gesture.
It’s OK the first couple of times but gets boring real fast.
Amd most recently seen in ‘No Hard Feelings’ which started out sooo strong, had me proper laughing, and then descended into mediocrity. Such a letdown.
Gahhh
Parallel worlds/multiverses. I hate them because it removes all stakes or consequences from the events of a story. Character died? Bring in a new version from another world. Inconvenient thing happened? Move to a world where it never happened. Nothing matters, nothing is canon, everything is reversible.
