10 Movie Cliches That Need To Die

Smartphones are a screenwriter's biggest enemy.

10 Cloverfield Lane
Paramount Pictures

Originality in Hollywood is overrated. For years filmmakers have been ripping each other off or, if you're being generous, 'paying homage' or 'being inspired' by previous works, and that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Filmmakers know what works and what doesn't, and the best directors and writers can take tried and tested narratives and genres to deliver something genuinely special within those frameworks, or use the familiarity to subvert audience expectations in jaw-dropping ways.

However, there are some tropes that seem to jump from film to film that have overstayed their welcome. For every filmmaker that can take an established idea and bend it into something new, there are ten more content to simply recreate it wholesale, lazily relying on cliches to craft a story.

Sometimes these can be little more than an annoyance and easily shrugged off, but other times they're so prevalent that they break the illusion entirely, even if it's just for a moment.

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Writer. Mumbler. Only person on the internet who liked Spider-Man 3