OLD SCHOOL ACTION MOVIES:
- The hero always taps baddies if they're standing back to him, in order to fight honorably by avoiding to strike their backs.
GENERIC ACTION MOVIE THEMES
- There must be a spectacular explosion in the end of the movie.
- The final fight takes place in abandoned place: old harbor, factory, warehouse, ship interior, oil rig etc. with absolutely no innocent bystanders. This makes it ready for a spectacular explosion in the end of the movie.
GOOD GUYS
- The main (male) hero has an embarrassing middle name, which he reveals to his sidekick/woman only in the end of the movie.
- The hero often has some weakness, the only people who know about it is the hero him/herself and the chief bad guy.
- If the "good guys team" has at least one Afro-American guy, s/he will be first to take the bullet from the baddies.
- The male good guys usually have dark hair. Blonde women are usually good.
- The phrase "I'm too old for this sh*t" is repeated by good guys
Same for "I have a bad feeling about this".BAD GUYS
- If the male hero has dark hair, the chief bad guy will be blonde. Dark/Red haired women are usually evil.
- When the hero is almost vanquished, the bad guy will mention evil things he wants to do to hero's woman (or sister
), which makes the good guy to get back to combat with restored energy and vigor.- Bad guy often knows the hero, sometimes even from the childhood days.
- The butler is usually the murderer, Sherlock
WESTERNS
- XIXc. revolvers produce little to no smoke, while in reality after a couple of shots there would be so much smoke in the saloon, that noone would be able to target the opponent.
COMPUTERS
- The proces of hacking involves displaying colorful visual effects on screen or user friendly windows. No lines of code (lots of 'em), no need to code own tools. Often we see a "progress bar".
ARMY
- All sergeants are noisy moronic brutes.
COMBAT
- Hits in hand-to-hand combat, which would normally stun or at least throw off-balance real-life combatants, are leaving little or no effect on the hero or the chief bad guy. They both can withstand prolonged fistfights and often have the stamina to run later.
And now... a huge lists (few hundred lines!) of things not to do, if I ever became an Evil Overlord:
www.eviloverlord.com
You will LOVE this.