7. A Tortured Character Keeping News Clippings On A Wall About The Very Thing Haunting Them
Notable Offenders: Unbreakable, Iron Man 2 There she sits. Alone in a massive apartment, her half empty wine glass only telling a part of the story. Her one wall that is actually a massive window is streaked with rain resembling the tears trickling down her face at this very moment. She's tried so hard to forget but she can't. She's running away from that place every damn day of her life, but she can never outrun her thoughts. Never. And she's tried. But she just ended up out of breath and with her thoughts still intact. So she gets out the box. You know. The super-secret box that she hides under the coffee table. And she opens it. This is a ritual she's performed many times and her actions seem to be subconscious. She pulls out some tatty newspaper clippings and the headlines are in full view of the camera as we finally understand why she is the way she is. Now obviously, this is a much more dramatically interesting way of establishing a past for a protagonist. It's more preferable to two characters sitting at a table while one just witters on about why they're broken. But it's one we've seen countless times. And it's one we'll forgive because at that moment our sympathies are with them. Headlines like "Giant Hamster Kills Family Except The Youngest Daughter" are always going to do that. No matter how dumb it seems that the very thing that upsets these tortured souls is something they look at all the time. But saying that, isn't that just what checking an ex-partner out on Facebook has become?