10 Movie Cliches That Need To Die

7. Destroying The Queen To Defeat An Entire Army

When action movies graduated from climaxing with fights between tens of bad guys to literal armies, they ran into a bit of a problem. War is messy, and when it's a handful of heroes versus thousands of goons, the battle needs to end in a neat victory that isn't just every single bad guy getting killed one by one.

The first Independence Day came up with a rather savvy solution: the human race didn't have to fend off an entire alien invasion, but simply take down the main headquarters, which would eliminate the rest of the hive mind. It was the 2010s where this trope really become overdone though, partly thanks to The Avengers inspiring so many imitators.

Following superhero and action movies tried to ape the same sense of spectacle, but also directly cribbed the climax of destroying the queen bee to win the battle. Justice League, Avengers: Age of Ultron, even the final season of Game of Thrones all gave us variations on this idea, and it became increasingly groan-worthy.

Oh, and bonus points if there's a random sky beam thrown in as well, though that thankfully seems to be a feature exclusive to action movies from 2012 and 2013.