Cinema clichés: Five subverted movie tropes we’d love to see
I remember it like it was yesterday, sitting in front of the TV as a boy watching the new Transformers movie with my sister and her boyfriend. “How unrealistic,” he scoffed as Optimus Prime plucked a helicopter from the sky and used the rotary blade to shave a villain’s beard or some other evident impossibility. I lost a lot of respect for him that day. I questioned his brain function and capacity for wonder as he jeered at the science in a Hollywood film about cars turning into superpowered animatronic aliens.
Since then, however, aside from living a David Gandy lifestyle on a Mahatma Gandhi budget (copyright Alan Partridge), I have come to hold the man in high regard, including his opinion on the boundaries of feasibility in cinema. That is not to say that I think any far-fetched fiction should be brought down from fanciful heights to turn Transformers into a sort of Ken Loach film about the obsolescence of man at the hands of machines. But it can’t be denied that avoiding clichés seems to provide certain unrealised possibilities for fun and originality. It seems to me that it would often be far more entertaining to subvert tired tropes into explorations of quirky realism.
For the sake of relatability and exploration of fresh ideas, there are certain daft recurring movie platitudes that ought to be cast into the ash heap of history and joyously subverted into something fresh. Thus, we’ve conjured up five movie maxims that we would like to see subverted. From actually seeing an onscreen hangover to an action star not simply recovering from a concussion in three mildly dazed seconds, these are the new rules that break the unrealistic nature of corny clichés.
Five subverted movie tropes we’d love to see:
A character actually getting a hangover
There are no two ways about it, James Bond has an alcohol problem. He’s forever drinking on the job, and it’s not like he’s a security guard having a quick half on his lunch break, either. He’s getting bladdered while trying to prevent terrorists from deleting the internet or some other impending calamity. Why, then, is he never hungover? He’s not alone in this treasured, instantly sober sweet spot. Outside of the comedy genre, I can count the number of times I have seen a character struggle with a hangover on screen with one hand.
The hangover is the greatest unrepresented human condition in the history of the arts. Incredibly few films have ever depicted one, and yet I can guarantee, as I write this, countless hours of life are currently being splattered down toilet bowls, endless tasks are being put off in favour of ceiling gazing, and a million mistakes have unfurled through bleary eyes.
All I’m saying is that I’d find it very refreshing if a cop investigating a homicidal maniac was briefly blindsided by a night on the booze. This, after all, surely happens all the time. Or maybe Bond, James Bond, wakes up next to some model. For a change, he checks his watch and has to hurriedly throw his suit back on to go and race his way towards an appointment with a fellow he intends to toss off of a viaduct.
A character having to overcome an injury
Once more, we’re staying with the action genre. Naturally, you can’t have Tom Cruise out of fighting action five minutes into a film and placed on desk duties for the rest of the duration. However, you could have him struggling with a bit of ankle ligament damage sustained while jumping off of a skyscraper or continually forgetting crucial passwords as he suffers from the effects of a concussion.
I mean, surely, we’ve all seen enough fights on top of trains (a bizarre recurring cliché) to pursue a fresh take? As Quentin Tarantino said of There Will be Blood: when Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) lies at the bottom of a shaft with a shattered ankle, miles from civilisation, his survival story is a film in itself. While we don’t get to see him hurl himself back to terra firma and crawl into town, he does at least have a limp for the rest of the film, and there is a sense that the incident had a huge bearing on the rest of his life.
However, most of the time, a character can haul themselves out of a helicopter crash and by the next scene, all we have to show for it is a few scuffs—they don’t even develop a mild fear of flight. We’re missing out on a world of nuance, perseverance and character development by ignoring the human side of battle scars.
Phone problems
No character in movie history has ever ended a phone call with a goodbye or even started with a hello, let alone something like ‘Can you hear me alright?’ or ‘Well, with traffic, it’ll probably take me maybe 25 minutes to get to the vault so I’ll probably see you there at like three-ish’. But worse than that is the fact that every appliance’s battery life and signal quality is Nokia-level.
As normal humans, we all know that some of the most dramatic times in life befall us when we’ve lost our phones or run out of battery. You suddenly seem severed, lost and alone—it is pure theatre. And yet, very few films have ever picked up on this relatable plot point. Granted, a spy may well take a spare battery pack and have a signal booster, but what about someone setting off for a date with the dreaded 10% battery remaining warning flashing?
While the hackneyed phone conversation of pure business and no formalities is clichéd enough, the avoidance of free titbits of phone-based drama seems equally daft. A dead battery or no signal is simply an open goal for a tiny bit of added drama.
The loquacious Native American
It’s far from woke to say that Hollywood is one of the few places left where racial tropes not only survive but flourish. Eastern Europeans will still always be stern and villainous, Native Americans will be stern and nearly mute, Asians will be stern and inscrutable and so on and so forth. This is not only tiring but also very troublesome.
In fact, it is a reflection of subconscious racism, and it always has been. These clichés are how the west subliminally manifests its own wrongdoings in character and settings. For instance, aside from race, any dystopian future will always look a bit like Tokyo. This is the result of a phenomenon called the Yellow Peril, whereby Americans feared retribution for their atomic actions against Japan. Thus, in all depictions of the future where things haven’t panned out, an undercurrent suggests Japan must’ve gotten some revenge and taken over.
Subverting these tropes is essential to try and prevent the perpetuation of racial stereotypes, no matter how subliminal and unintended they might be. This can start with satire that helps to level the playing field and show just how absurd the current typecasting farce proves to be.
The cop with a day off
While the brilliant John Michael McDonagh film The Guard comically offered a police officer in the midst of an investigation a day off, it is something that has never been utilised elsewhere. Moreover, even if it is not deployed as a skit, a day off is actually an essential practice in law enforcement—it allows investigators to avoid dogged confirmation bias and reapproach the case with fresh eyes.
Naturally, this doesn’t have to play out in cinema with a jarring break from a grisly plot to see Sandra Bullock taking a trip to the fairground to have a bash on the dodgems. But a simple acknowledgement that it’s unhealthy to spend every waking second for months or years on end trying to solve a case might be refreshing. It would even help to convey their inner turmoil in a humanised way.
In fact, it would be right up Hollywood’s alley to depict a cop trying to unwind in a café, pulling themselves away from the case for a couple of days, and discovering a vital clue the second they unwind. Perhaps a nephew drops an innocuous hint at a barbecue, and suddenly they wonder whether the blood on some tongs wasn’t from a steak.
