10 Movies That Ruined Awesome Cinematic Tricks

Filmmaking is constantly changing and innovating, and that's generally a good thing. Due to the geometric rate at which technology moves forward, filmmakers are forever getting to grips with new toys and techniques which let them do new things with the medium.

And every so often a breakthrough will emerge that dares to change the industry entirely, whether introducing a creative aesthetic flourish that influences an entire generation of artists, or popularising technology which will be used for years or even decades thereafter.

But it's also fair to say that some cinematic tricks have become over-exposed through their blatant overuse in movies, and there came a point where a film used a flourish in such egregious, objectionable fashion as to basically ruin it.

In many cases these movies turned a neat cinematic trick into a laughing stock, while in others they inadvertently brought about the circumstances that saw a neat cinematic technique forced into retirement.

This doesn't mean we don't ever see these tricks used today, but for the most part they're deployed considerably more sparingly - and if not, they definitely should be...

Let's kick this list off with a pair of movies that simultaneously popularised a cinematic technique and inadvertently ruined it.

The Bourne Supremacy was directed by Paul Greengrass and received a lot of attention for its unconventional cinematography, combining shaky camera movements and quick-cut editing to bring a uniquely frantic energy to the action sequences.

And so, the term "shaky cam" was born, with Greengrass repeating the trick on sequel The Bourne Ultimatum.

Though Greengrass' use of artificial camera shake was criticised by some, it generally remains the most-praised instance of shaky cam in action cinema, due primarily to Greengrass' clear understanding of spatial geography while assembling these scenes. Basically, we still always know what's going on.

But Hollywood en masse took the wrong lessons away from Greengrass' pioneering use of shaky cam, with lazy and/or incompetent action filmmakers relying on the technique as a crutch.

From the mid 2000s onwards for around a decade, countless action films used shaky camerawork and frantic editing to artificially amplify the energy of scenes that felt sluggish during shooting, and also to ensure they didn't need to figure out complex fight choreography before filming. Looking at you, Taken 2.

While shaky cam certainly has its place in cinema, Hollywood's blatant, corner-cutting abuse of the technique has pretty much killed it off in recent years, as audiences have been drawn back towards smooth camerawork with longer shot lengths. It didn't have to be this way, though.