6 Scenes in Movies (and books) That Drive Me Crazy

I love to read and I love movies. However, there are things that annoy me deeply about said forms of entertainment. Below are seven such things.

1 – Zip Line Scene

You know the one. The main characters are fleeing from their enemies and they reach a drop off. They grab a bit of rope and throw it over and then they zip line across. I see this is so many movies and it is such a cliché way to escape.

Half of the things that they throw wouldn’t hold and they’d fall down down down too their doom far before they reached the other side.

Or there isn’t an incline and they go right across when they should stop halfway in the middle and just be hanging there, waiting for the rope to unfasten and for them to fall.

Writers out there, take my advice and avoid the zip line scene.

2- Bully to Friend

Don’t get me wrong, there are several well done bullies-to-friends scenes in movies and books and I enjoy those. What I’m talking about here is where one character relentlessly hunts or makes life miserable for the other and then POOF at the end of the movie or book they’re hugging and saying what great friends they are…when nothing major happened to change the bully’s mind.

Come on.

People do not change in a heartbeat and one person who hated another isn’t going to just see them slay a dragon and then go, “OH I LOVE YOU SO MUCH, LET’S BE BEST FRIENDS FOREVER.”

3 – Death to Life

One character dies. The tragic music plays. Hope is lost. Sadness falls over the audience.

And then, a few minutes later, the heart starts to beat. The very dead character comes back to life and triumphant music plays, blah blah blah.

If done right, this scene if fine. But most of the time it’s just done as a sloppy way to get around working hard on a plot and story.

It’s been done in so many movies that when an important character dies, I just assume that they’ll magically revive by the end.

4 – Long Lost Relatives

Again, if done properly, this can be really good. What annoys me is when a character realizes, “Oh, this other person is actually my lost brother” and it has no further impact on the story. It’s just there to shock the readers. It gets old really fast.

In the Wingfeather Saga *major spoilers ahead, don’t continue if you haven’t read* tons people ended up being related: the main characters to Pete the Sock Man and even to the main antagonist. It did annoy me a little bit, but it had a point and a purpose for the story and it was well done. It wasn’t just thrown in there for the shock factor.

5 – Unneeded Romance

I don’t like romantic stories, I don’t read romances. It annoys me when the main characters of stories fall in love just to fall in love and it doesn’t really impact the story in any other way. It’s gross and disgusting and it lowers the characters in my esteem.

6 – Perfect Endings

*glares at Disney* I’m not against happy endings. I like “feel good”. But when everything goes perfectly – all of the people get un-dead, the boy and girl kiss, the lost siblings find each other and start living as if they had never been separated, the antagonists of the story become best friends and the whole thing ends with happy music…that’s majorly annoying. Rayla and the Last Dragon is a perfect example of endings that I do not appreciate (although it was better than several other Disney movies).

Because real life isn’t like that. Real stories don’t end that way. When we watch those perfect endings over and over and over, we start to believe that we are entitled to have them or that they really will happen to us and we set ourselves up for a lot of disappointment and heartbreak.

~Hattush

What annoys you about books or movies? Do you agree/disagree with my points above? What are your favorite books/movies?