Tropes I’m Comfortable With

[Hot Pepsi]

When the villain is a moment away from killing a hero, but then a hero we didn’t know was there or, perhaps, alive, comes up from behind and brains/shoots/decapitates the villain. It’s predictable, but it does it’s narrative job.

Whenever a leader has a surprising introduction to make. The person they are introducing isn’t in the room. They’re waiting just outside, ready to make a big entrance. That’s not how it is in real life. Instead, the newcomer has to sit awkwardly there while everyone wonders why they are there until the chair gets around to introducing them partway into the meeting.

The accuracy of any gun shooter and the lethality of any injury is dictated by the needs of the plot and never realism. But without that, most action stories couldn’t work.

Likewise, hitting somebody on the back of the head will safely knock them out. Without that trope, violence in films would be a lot more violent.

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

When the villain is a moment away from killing a hero, but then a hero we didn’t know was there or, perhaps, alive, comes up from behind and brains/shoots/decapitates the villain. It’s predictable, but it does it’s narrative job..

The realism of this is undermined whenever the villain is a moment away from killing a hero but then goes into a long monologue, explaining why he (cos it is usually a he) is killing the hero, and solving some plot points ("you thought it was X who hid that thing in that place didn't you, well it wasn't, it was me“) instead of just getting on with the job in hand, therefore allowing sufficient time for the third party to arrive / come back from apparently being dead or concussed, to save the hero. As Henry says in Goodfellas, "as soon as I heard them speak I knew it was the cops, if it was wiseguys they wouldn't have said a word".

[Hot Pepsi]

Yes, that is a trope I'm not as comfortable with because it often feels forced whereas the "somebody comes back from off screen and kills the villain" at least flows with the action.

I liked how The Incredibles made fun of that. "Oh, now he's monologuing!"
And, of course, in Austin Powers with the unnecessarily slow dipping mechanism.

[jwdd27]

When our hero(ine) is getting romantically involved with someone and it's looking promising... but wait! They've just been spotted out for dinner with an attractive girl or guy. Laughing it up, loving the company. All is lost!
But wait again! It turns out it's their brother or sister who is visiting from out of town, it was all innocent and of course the big romance is still on.

It's always obvious, but it's always nice to see it get resolved. Although it would still be refreshing if it actually was their side piece.

[Hot Pepsi]

When our hero(ine) is getting romantically involved with someone and it's looking promising... but wait! They've just been spotted out for dinner with an attractive girl or guy. Laughing it up, loving the company. All is lost!
But wait again! It turns out it's their brother or sister who is visiting from out of town, it was all innocent and of course the big romance is still on.

It's always obvious, but it's always nice to see it get resolved. Although it would still be refreshing if it actually was their side piece.

I may have mentioned this before, I recall Leslye Headland's interview about Sleeping With Other People and how she was criticized by "indy" people for having it end with the two anxious, flakey characters coming together in a standard, happy cis-het monogamous relationship. Her response was "because it's a fucking romantic comedy."

Sometimes the tropes are popular for a reason.

As you've observed, the rules - in film, at least - are that if the plot requires their to be actual infidelity/adultery, then the protagonist will find their significant other in bed with somebody else or, at least, passionately kissing the other person. Either way, there's can be no ambiguity for the audience and, hopefully, the protagonist. (even though they might blurt out "this isn't what it looks like.") That's rarely how it works in real life, but real life isn't trying to tell a whole story in under two hours/one season of episodes/less than 500 pages, etc.

For example, the entire series The Orville is built around the two highest ranking officers on the ship having once been married until he finds her in flagrante delicto with a guy of a different species played by Rob Lowe. The series starts with that scene. It's a very efficient way to get started. Another example is Sliding Doors. Her finding or not finding her boyfriend in bed with another woman is what causes the two timelines to branch off differently. If it were ambiguous, the story wouldn't happen.

Because if it is ambiguous, then it takes time in the story for the protagonist to find out what was really going on. And if after all that they found out that it was, in fact, as bad as it looked, then the story will have spent a bunch of minutes/episodes/pages to go, essentially, nowhere.

The author Jim Thompson said, “There is only one plot—things are not what they seem.” That's probably right. In real life, things are usually as they seem, but that's not an interesting story, is it? If nothing changes, it's not a story.

It's possible to have a story with a bummer or ambiguous ending - Chinatown, Godfather II, No Country For Old Men, Meeks Cutoff - but lots of stuff happens in those films and the characters change. And, in all of those cases, the stuff that happens is very foreign to 99.999% of the audience's lived experience so it's showing us something new (hopefully).

But I can't see how "I suspected he was cheating and he was" offers much chance for either a character arc or to show the audience something about the world that they aren't already familiar with.

Of course, if it's told from the unfaithful person's perspective. But that's something else and that's not what we're talking about here.

And there are stories where the audience can see what's happening but the protagonist is in denial. He's Just Not That Into You, etc. But that's something else too. In that case, the plot is the character's journey toward figuring out how not to want to be with somebody who doesn't want to be with them. But if neither the protagonist or the audience really knew what was going on, it would be hard to map out that arc.

[Hot Pepsi]

Everyone in spy movies, especially British ones, is dressed impeccably. That’s fine.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Nah. Almost none of Le Carré's characters are like that, neither is anyone at Slough House.

[Hot Pepsi]

Nah. Almost none of Le Carré's characters are like that, neither is anyone at Slough House.

Oh right. Not those.

Thats ok too.

[treibeis]

When our hero(ine) is getting romantically involved with someone and it's looking promising... but wait! They've just been spotted out for dinner with an attractive girl or guy. Laughing it up, loving the company. All is lost!
But wait again! It turns out it's their brother or sister who is visiting from out of town, it was all innocent and of course the big romance is still on.

It's always obvious, but it's always nice to see it get resolved. Although it would still be refreshing if it actually was their side piece.

Something similar actually happened to me, although my sister had been married for over ten years at the time.

I was In a pub with her in the area where we (and my brother-in-law) had grown up and where she was still living. Our conversation was interrupted by one of my brother-in-law's mates (whom she knew, but I didn't). He started asking me all sorts of questions about how long I'd known "the lady" and how well I knew her - all the while looking daggers at my sister.

I twigged relatively quickly what was going on, and my sister played along from the outset. It was only when this bloke looked like he might start a proper scene that my sister said, "Darren. Stop. He's my brother. Now fuck off."

We got a couple of apology drinks off him, though.

[Hot Pepsi]

I’m ok with certain needle drops being used over and over.

Scorsese has used “Gimme Shelter” at least four times, I think. It works.

Hendrix or The Zombies or Donovan is always dropped to show “this is the turbulent 60s.” That’s fine.

If you want to show “modernity is disorienting and alienating,” drop Talking Heads’ “Once in a Lifetime.” It always works.

[Lang Spoon]

Gimme Shelter in the Departed felt like too fucking much though.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Hendrix or The Zombies or Donovan is always dropped to show “this is the turbulent 60s.” That’s fine.

The incongruous thing is when they use the Zombies in a UK film. "She's not there" hit no.2 on the billboard charts in US, "Tell her no" made it to no. 6, and "Time of the season" made it to no.3 after about a year pottering about the bottom of the charts. Of those songs, only she's not there charted in the UK, making it to no.12. They had broken up for a year frustrated by their lack of success by the point "Time of the season" blew up in america.

[Hot Pepsi]

Gimme Shelter in the Departed felt like too fucking much though.

IIRC, it's in The Deparated twice.

I appreciated the chutzpah of Scorsese running it back again like that.

However, one Scorsese film that doesn't have it is the Stones’ concert film he directed.

[Hot Pepsi]

Most films have a score.

We all just accept that music - usually played by a fairly large orchestra - sits behind the dialogue and sound to reinforce the emotion of the scene.

And it’s remarkably effective. I think John Williams is actually the most important figure in American film of the last 50 years.