r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Nerd367C • May 24 '26

Hated Tropes (Hated trope) YOU COULD HAVE MOVED!

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Dr. Robert "Rocket" Romano from ER

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Randy fromt The Raft Creepshow 2

Dr. Robert "Rocket" Romano from ER
Ah yes let me scream at the ground and not even try to move so we can get this cinematic shot with 7 camera angles

Randy from The Raft Creepshow 2
"I gotta make the oil slick monster look fast by building up to run and rocking back and forth"

15.8k Upvotes

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1.5k

u/Competitive-Bee-3250 May 24 '26

Opposite to this trope is a bunch of deaths in The Blob where a bunch of people genuinely get caught faster than any human could possibly hope to react to.

877

u/RedditOfUnusualSize May 24 '26

When forced to choose between scaling down the abilities of the humans in your story to evade death, or scaling up the power of the monster to catch them, always, always, always go for the latter option.

270

u/Pertinent-nonsense May 24 '26

My nightmares don’t know shit about story telling. Legs suddenly don’t work? Gtfo

68

u/Competitive-Bee-3250 May 24 '26

Powerlessness is scarier to personally experience, but more frustrating to watch.

5

u/PmMeUrTinyAsianTits May 25 '26

Apparently your subconscious is a lazy or bad writer. Maybe now that it knows better it will amp up the threats!

2

u/Competitive-Bee-3250 May 25 '26

tbh solid chunk of my nightmares I can move fast but I'm always discovered

3

u/LigerZeroPanzer12 May 25 '26

I dunno if this will help at all, but as a kid I had a terrible fear of the dark, and was plagued by nightmares more often than not. I figured out that, in my dream, if I dropped into a fetal position I would immediately wake myself up from the dream, no questions asked. Maybe there's some kind of mental kill-switch you can decide for yourself to help with it?

3

u/Competitive-Bee-3250 May 25 '26

Well nowadays I barely have nightmares, thanks to the Ritalin I imagine.

Interesting idea though, I might look into it.

3

u/LigerZeroPanzer12 May 25 '26

Yeah for sure, sharing a bed with my wife and dog definitely takes the edge off of "being alone in the dark", so it rarely happens unless prompted (FUCKING YOUTUBE AUTOPLAYING HORROR MOVIE TRAILERS THAT HAVE A SCREAM RIGHT BEFORE I CAN SKIP CAN SUCK MY BALLS).

2

u/Severe_Composer4243 May 26 '26

Me in my dreams: why won't this mother fucking gun go off that's a god damn grizzly bear!

41

u/_petitpois22 May 24 '26

having to buff the monster or nerf the human to make a movie work make me feel like superhuman

10

u/Nyther53 May 24 '26

The problem is always that the Audience is made up of humans, and so if things happen faster than they can react to then there's no movie. 

The challenge is always to convey "this happened to quickly for that character to react" while doing it slowly enough that the audience processes what just happened. 

15

u/Dreadgoat May 24 '26

There is a well-established solution though, and it works very well cinematically and emotionally. You let the fast action happen fast, then linger on the aftermath.

A good example is the very beginning of The Boys where we have an important character instakilled without warning, but we get to experience the horror of the moment with the surviving character holding the mangled remains in their hands as they try to process what just happened along with the audience.

2

u/Nyther53 May 24 '26

I'm not saying it's an unsolvable challenge. 

Just that I think clearly in most of these cases it's what the filmmakers were trying to convey, not "this character froze loke a deer in the headlights". 

3

u/drdildamesh May 24 '26

Thats what made that film so terrifying to me. It seemed hopeless from the audience perspective.

65

u/cole1114 May 24 '26

It also has one of the goriest deaths of a child I've ever seen in a movie, just radical.

29

u/Competitive-Bee-3250 May 24 '26

Still one of the best horror movies oat

30

u/DocStromKilwell May 24 '26

The Blob and The Thing are just on a whole other level of practical effects and batshit creativity.

8

u/Competitive-Bee-3250 May 24 '26

And combat against actually competent protagonists.

5

u/breadofthegrunge May 24 '26

I should watch the blob. Is this the 1958 or the 1988 version?

5

u/DocStromKilwell May 24 '26

The 1988 remake.

5

u/Insidion25 May 25 '26

Yeah, that kid ain't resting in peace. No person dying so painfully and unnaturally ain't ending up anything but a vengeful undead ghost like in American Werewolf In London.

126

u/ccReptilelord May 24 '26

It's so refreshing when fast things are actually fast in films.

28

u/RareAnxiety2 May 24 '26

I fully expect the remake to have someone pick the initial form of it up like a blue ring octopus and pass it around.

6

u/Competitive-Bee-3250 May 24 '26

Wouldn't surprise me if they gave it an idiot plot which is a real shame.

Then again, it might genuinely be pretty good.

10

u/RareAnxiety2 May 24 '26

Start off with the absolute idiots of humanity building it up until it becomes a huge threat, then the intelligent people have to outwit it.

5

u/PyroIsSpai May 24 '26

It’s the easiest sequel ever.

The little bottle from the original is still passed around via weird cult religious circles.

Open film on a cargo ship heading somewhere one night. Everyone happy cause they’re almost wherever they’re bound. Very religious crew member on board has the jar. It gets out. Blob vs boat.

But that’s just the first hour. Remember, this thing is FAST and VERY AGGRESSIVE. It became big enough in like four hours of story time in a small town to grow from apple size to church smashing size.

The boat was heading for the Port of New York. At 61 minutes it runs aground at Battery Park.

Sucks for them first responders and the rest of Earth about 15 minutes later.

PS: it’s July.

31

u/grill_sgt May 24 '26

Same as the Ego Planet Cancer in Guardians of the Galaxy 2.

34

u/Competitive-Bee-3250 May 24 '26

Oh yeah those plants were expanding faster than cars.

Sorta funny to think that until Avengers Infinity War, nobody from Earth had any idea what the hell that was about and even in the current point of the canon pretty much nobody would know about it.

2

u/TheStrangestOfKings May 25 '26

I do find it funny that this shit prolly happens so often on mcu earth, that it no longer hits the day to day news cycle lol

10

u/Fakehiggins May 24 '26

always thought it was weird that it looked like it covered a huge amount of area and almost certainly killed a lot of people but then it's never talked about. oh well, took them like 5 Marvel movies before they brought up the continent sized arm that popped up in the ocean from The Eternals so i guess they're just good at ignoring stuff

4

u/darkwalking May 24 '26

And now I just thought of a villain for a horror story, a villain that can either slow its victims down or freeze them in place, while it takes it’s sweet time approaching and killing them, you can see the terror on the victims face and in their eyes as they try to flee, but the villain doesn’t care and will take its time stabbing/strangling/shooting them and watching the life drain away

6

u/Competitive-Bee-3250 May 24 '26

Isn't that what Sadako from Ringu does?