In every sci-fi film ever

1. unguided hyperspace jumps

2. redirecting power from the thrusters to the shields

3. hexagons

4. rebels against the dystopian regime living underground, wearing armor made of garbage, grilling rats, etc.

5. minor character who's super into the stones/jazz/prince/whatever. just like someone who still listens to bach in 2013! but 500 years later!

6. suits with mandarin collars

7. robot or alien character ends up displaying/revealing more 'humanity' than the humans

8. strong female character

9. bad guys' spaceship will have unkempt loops of cable descending from ceiling; if they're a vile looking alien race, they'll also have puddles of water beneath these cables.

10. Space Romans

11. "...because all you of Earth are idiots!"

12. Humans are mere bugs to evil alien force

13. Scientist meddles with natural order and disaster ensues

14. All doors are automatic and make that whoosh noise whenever they open.

15. Hawkish army major despises aliens in a race hate way

16. mysterious/stoic badass who initially doesn't seem to acknowledge/trust/respect the protagonist

"hey... not bad, kid"

17. Barely explained violations of the laws of physics

18. Sexy alien

19. Future civilisations 100 percent heterosexual

20. Black crew member dies first

21. cocky young marine/astronaut who's revealed to be a coward as things gradually get worse

prone to lines like "Monsters? Just give ME a minute with 'em!", sexist wisecracks, and letting loose with a "WHOOOOHOOOOOO" during takeoff (towards a doomed mission)

22. Torrential rain

23. corporate weasel

24. Cars/motorbikes hover off the ground instead of using wheels.

25. White walls.

26. visual references to either the Wild West or Film Noir

27. Chinese merchants

28. Neon signs in Japanese, even though the film is set in a predominantly English speaking country.

flamethrowers as standard-issue gear

30. a diner

31. complete absence of institutional racism

32. Computers are controlled using some massively impractical interface involving hand gestures.

33. curved corridors

34. funny hair-dos

35. simple devices replaced with more complicated, energy-hungry devices

36. Shiny chrome android that can't pick anything up or do any kind of physical work, so it might as well have been a grey box on wheels.

37. Surveillance cameras everywhere.

38. escape pods

39. sleeping cubicles

38. All pop music a kitsch rehash of some genre from the 1950s thru 80s

41. Electronics surplus store owned by a shop keeper who seems to be actively trying to put people off from buying anything by being rude and unpleasant.

42. Robot that communicates with bleeps and bloops when it could just as easily have a proper voice.

43. Alien race that all dress like Earth Wind & Fire in the 70's.

^^^ wd watch a movie about an alien race that was Earth Wind & Fire tbh

44. Supposedly violent and dangerous street gang who look like a bunch of stage school kids going on a trip to the funfair.

45. aliens kill people in a rape-y way for some reason DO U SEE?

46. Bizarre future sport that's a cross between BMX, basketball, and paintballing.

47. Public videophone booths.

48. contract killer/drug smuggler with a heart of gold

49. The alien sidekick character has some bizarre allergy to water/orange juice/hummous, that turns out to be important at some critical point in the movie.

50. Small child who is a computer genius.

205. Newly discovered life form intuitively interfaces with human technology to communicate with humans

if they could make one directional shields in the future, some wise guy would just flip the polarity on the weapons.
also:

206. reversing polarities makes a gadget do the opposite and saves the day.

207. "It's quiet...TOO quiet." *see also "In every mystery/thriller/war film ever"*

208. Hairstyles that are remarkably similar to everyday hairstyles when the movie was made.

Ricardo Montalbán should be in every sci-fi movie ever

209. All in one bodysuits are fashion order of the day

210. asteroid fields/magnetic storms/quasar radiation shit and being forced to hide in them despite the danger

211. The planet we're standing on is actually a gigantic alien.

209a. Or modern business suits with weird metallic ties.

212. Despite incredibly advanced science and technology, some alien races still believe in prophecies about The Chosen One who is destined to either save or destroy them.

^ !! yes!

213. No garbage anywhere, or ... GARBAGE EVERYWHERE!

214. Every planet ventured to, no matter how remote, has oddly the same exact gravitational force as Earth's.

^^^ This is why I think "Mission of Gravity" could be a great movie, animated or CGI.

Plot: after thousands of years of travel, the surviving 1% of the ships crew (not killed in stasis from high-speed collisions with particles, radiation, equipment malfunction; etc) finally land on the destination planet and collapse upon disembarking due to poor health and high gravity. They are unable to move. They slowly starve to death.

215. Ships' artificial gravity works at right angles to the direction of thrust rather than with it, as would make far more sense.

if i'm getting what you mean i think that's a corollary of 216. despite there being no ground by which they need to orient themselves, large spaceships manoeuvre through space pretty much like boats, small spaceships like planes.

217. museums of the 20th century w CRT TVs, parts from automobiles, and copies of Playboy

217a. Characters watching grainy early C20th classic movies.

218. Holograms always kinda suck -- blue or green tint and sorta bendy and static-y.

219. impractical hats

220. Some hippies trippin in the desert riding a bike or a wind-powered vehicle designed to look like the spaceship

221. Completely implausible alien design that wouldn't fit into its own planets ecosystem at all. ie aliens with tentacles coming out of their face for no ecological reason whatsoever

222. Someone is having a game of chess (possibly with a future/space twist).

223. "Oh, my true form would be too strange for your human eyes. What you see now is mere illusion... I can take any form. Perhaps you might prefer ~this~ one. Or maybe ~this~... is more to your liking...?"

loved when South Park parodied that one in their Walmart episode, with that man they had embodying 'the Heart of Walmart' simply changing hats

BEMBTE

85. city of the future resembles 20th century community college campus designed in the brutalist style

― slugbuggy, Sunday, January 6, 2013 1:11 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

love love love this one, keep idly kicking it around as a pretense for a dissertation after watching "Warrior of the Lost World," shot largely in Rome's suburban Corviale housing complex which was still under construction at the time. (Plus some scattered office buildings and stuff.) Would love to know more of the story behind that. When they got permission, were the authorities like, "sure, we'd love to see our bright new social-democratic mega-project represented as a dystopian nightmare-scape occupied by faceless uniformed techno-fascists! And Donald Pleasance!"

Wasn't "Conquest of the Planet of the Apes"- the fourth one, I think- shot in a section of Century City, LA that looked like that?

137. A character cites three historical examples, two of which are from real history, followed by a made-up one from our hypothetical future.

― abanana, Monday, 7 January 2013 03:49 (5 hours ago) Permalink

^good one!

Classic example is the original Star Trek ep "Court Martial" where Kirk is on trial. His lawyer's closing statement goes on about human laws and rights throughout the ages: the Code of Hammurabi, the Magna Carta, the US constitution, the Martian declaration of independence and the "Statutes of Alpha 3"

"The Savage Curtain. " It was Colonel Green, and Kahless the Klingon, not Attila.

First episode of TOS I ever remember seeing.

Oh, good find on Conquest of the Planet of the Apes! UC Irvine campus, apparently.

http://ucisca.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/s01585_007.jpg

And didn't Logan's Run use the Dallas city hall as the above-ground world?

http://www.bluffton.edu/~sullivanm/texas/dallas/cityhall/angledistant.jpg

224. Atmospheric report deems planet's air conveniently Earth-like, breathable.

137. A character cites three historical examples, two of which are from real history, followed by a made-up one from our hypothetical future.

― abanana, Monday, 7 January 2013 03:49 (5 hours ago) Permalink

^good one!

Classic example is the original Star Trek ep "Court Martial" where Kirk is on trial. His lawyer's closing statement goes on about human laws and rights throughout the ages: the Code of Hammurabi, the Magna Carta, the US constitution, the Martian declaration of independence and the "Statutes of Alpha 3"

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FamousFamousFictional

225. Helmets and the taking off of them

Thought this thread revival was for this twitter:
https://twitter.com/HardSciFiMovies

(the SF film equivalent of Make a Song Title More Reasonable )

Classic example is the original Star Trek ep "Court Martial" where Kirk is on trial. His lawyer's closing statement goes on about human laws and rights throughout the ages: the Code of Hammurabi, the Magna Carta, the US constitution, the Martian declaration of independence and the "Statutes of Alpha 3"

Watching wing commander, came here to post "unguided hyperspace jumps" and it's the first post in the thread! What a terrible movie.

* heroes sentenced to work in hellish outer-space mines
* planet-overthrowing rebellion consists, as far as we can see, of eight (8) people in random mad-max getup living in one (1) cave
* life-sucking/parasitic/zombie creature that scientists gradually realize is composed of pure energy

A+

lol

Maybe also the triumph of humans vs said protean energy entity (HAL?) vis a vis man’s “humanity,” emotion, instincts, perseverance

Right. Also

Strategic location of and destruction of alien power supply unveils these pretentious, often toga-wearing interstellar intellectuals to be in fact some kind of puny, looked-down-upon life form, some sort of street pigeons of space.

Earlier tonight overheard my girlfriend, an addictive consumer of junk sci fi, angrily exclaim from the next room:

“Come ON! Why is it always a HIVE mind??”

You want maybe a Hadoop Mind?

226 alien looking exactly like a human except with e.g. blue or orange skin

227 puzzle, code, language or devastating situation barely solvable using current Earth technology within 1-24 hours

232. As plot is stalling out, supporting scientist character pops in to report that they've finished running some tests on the creature, comatose survivor, mysterious signal, or strange energy pulse they picked up from the spaceship earlier. They don't quite know what to make of it, but the heroes had better come take a look.
232a. The comatose survivor has finally woken up and is acting very strangely...

233. Breathless back-of-envelope calculations of how quickly a creature that multiplies at this rate could spread to cover the planet.

234 Female 'other' (alien, robot, whatever) turns out to be evil.

235. a robot/android that was created without the capacity for experiencing emotions experiences curiosity and confusion about human emotions, and progressively sadness and despair over the fact that he/she will never know what it is to experience emotions, being an emotionless robot/android, you see.