10 Sci-Fi Movie Clichés Everyone Secretly Loves

There is a very short list of technology that tells a movie audience that a film they are about to watch is set in the future. Flying cars, robotic limbs and holograms certainly make the list. But while the first two have been molded and presented in a variety of ways, holograms often come in one form.

For some reason, sci-fi mythology insists that a life-size display of a person (shoes included!) on a little platform is the way people in the future will be talking to one another. In the lore of each film, I'm curious to know why the characters need to see below the waist of the person they're talking to?

Holograms make sense when a character is shown a schematic of a fortress they intend to breach, or in explaining the outer-rim of a newly discovered planet. But when two characters are just talking, or being presented with a recorded memo, the necessity that the whole of a person be shown is a head-scratcher.

Pointless imagery aside, this cliche is loved because of the hilarious implications it brings. The idea that someone on the other end of the hologram telephone is gesturing while staying perfectly still beneath their holodeck spotlight is laughably silly.