Main Tropes Index

Troperville

Editing

Tools

Narrative

• Universal
• Applied Phlebotinum
• Characterization
• Characters
• Characters As Device
• Dialogue
• Motifs
• Narrative Devices
• Paratext
• Plots
• Settings
• Spectacle

Genre

• Action Adventure
• Comedy
• Commercials
• Crime And Punishment
• Drama
• Horror
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• Speculative Fiction
• Sports Story
• War

Media

• Animation (Western)
• Anime
• Comic Book
• Fan Fics
• Film
• Game
• Literature
• Music And Sound Effects
• New Media
• Print Media
• Radio
• Sequential Art
• Tabletop Games
• Television
• Theater
• Videogame
• Webcomics

Topical Tropes

• Betrayal
• Censorship
• Combat
• Death
• Family
• Fate And Prophecy
• Food
• Holiday
• Memory
• Money
• Morality
• Politics
• Religion
• School
• Sex
• Training

Other Categories

• British Telly
• The Contributors
• Creator Speak
• Creators
• Derivative Works
• Did Not Do The Research
• Language
• Laws And Formulas
• Show Business
• Split Personality
• Stock Room
• Trope
• Truth And Lies
• Truth In Television
• Weirdness Isolation

There is a constant interchange of ideas between TV and film -- hit movies getting Spin Off series, popular TV series getting big screen outings -- so many tropes have entered TV from film, and vice versa.

Silent Film established all the basic Camera Tricks, and is the home of many a Discredited Trope.

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Influential and notable live-action films, by decade:

Before 1930

• Birth Of A Nation - One of the earliest feature-length films. Groundbreaking cinematography, but horrendously racist plot.
• The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari - This is when film Grew The Beard
• The Jazz Singer - First "talkie".
• The Little Rascals

1930-1939

• Gone With The Wind
• King Kong - The second-most-famous "giant monster" movie.
• The Little Rascals
• Stagecoach - Another good example of the typical western.
• Tarzan
• The Wizard Of Oz

1940-1949

• Arsenic And Old Lace
• Casablanca - Wartime romance, often considered one of the most romantic movies ever made.
• Citizen Kane - "Rosebud!"
• Its A Wonderful Life - Source of Wonderful Life.
• The Little Rascals
• Since You Went Away
• Song Of The South - Walt Disney's own personal Dis Continuity
• Tarzan

1950-1959

• Carry On . . .
  • . . . Sergeant
  • . . . Nurse
  • . . . Teacher
• Creature From The Black Lagoon - Grandfather of Jaws.
• Forbidden Planet
• Godzilla - Created the "kaiju" genre of Japanese film."
• High Noon - Possibly the most famous movie Western.
• Invasion Of The Body Snatchers
• The Night Of The Hunter
• North By Northwest - Classic thriller, by the master, Alfred Hitchcock.
• Plan Nine From Outer Space - the commonly cited "worst movie ever made".
• The Searchers - If you have been to film school, you have seen this. And vice versa.
• Seven Samurai
• Singing In The Rain - Classic musical that calls back to the first "talkies."

1960-1969

• Battle Of Britain
• Carry On - Fifteen films in the sixties alone.
• The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly - Famously deconstructs and revises The Western.
• The Great Escape
• The Italian Job- where the aim was only the removal of the doors.
• Its A Mad Mad Mad Mad World
• James Bond films:
  • Dr No
  • From Russia With Love
  • Goldfinger
  • Thunderball
  • You Only Live Twice
  • On Her Majestys Secret Service
• A Hard Days Night - One of the greatest Mockumentaries ever.
• Manos The Hands Of Fate - Plan Nine's rival for Worst Movie Ever.
• Mary Poppins
• Night Of The Living Dead - Introduced the Zombie Apocalypse.
• Planet Of The Apes - The original.
• The Pink Panther - The slapstick adventures of Inspector Clouseau.
• The Producers
• The Sound Of Music

1970-1979

• Alien - Combined horror and Sci Fi with one of the first Action Girl heroines.
• American Graffiti - "Where were you in '62?" (probably not born yet)
• Animal House - The quintessential "wacky college hijinks" comedy.
• Apocalypse Now - The most disturbing war movie ever. "The Horror...The Horror...The Horror..."
• Blazing Saddles - Spoof of The Western genre.
• Blues Brothers - "We're on a mission from God."
• Carry On - Twelve films in the seventies alone.
• Catch-22 - You'd be insane to watch it. Then again, trying to avoid it is a sign of rational thought and so you have no excuse not to watch it.
• Escape From New York
• Evil Dead
• The Godfather - The classic gangster epic, and the genesis for the modern media portrayal of The Mafia.
• Invasion Of The Body Snatchers
• James Bond films:
  • Diamonds Are Forever
  • Live And Let Die
  • The Man With The Golden Gun
  • The Spy Who Loved Me
  • Moonraker
• Jaws - Introduced the "animals on a rampage" movie, pushed Steven Spielberg into the limelight, and effectively created the Summer Blockbuster.
• King Kong - Ill-regarded remake.
• Let It Be--the classic, lost Beatles documentary.
• Monty Python And The Holy Grail - The Monty Python movie everyone can quote.
• The Muppet Movie - Film debut of everyone's favorite puppets from The Muppet Show, this family comedy shows how Kermit the Frog and his friends broke into showbiz.
• Rocky - The film that made Sylvester Stallone famous.
• The Rocky Horror Picture Show - A Cult Classic musical with an undying and crossdressing fanbase.
• Star Wars - Introduced many Space Opera tropes and, along with Jaws, the concept of the Summer Blockbuster.
• The Sting - Everything about The Con that other films have since attempted to capture.
• Taxi Driver - "Someday a real rain will come and wash the scum off the streets..."
• The Towering Inferno - The prototypical disaster-in-a-high-rise movie.
• Young Frankenstein - Mel Brooks does to Universal Horror what he did to the Western with Blazing Saddles.

1980-1989

• 3 Ninjas
• Airplane! - Set the standard for Affectionate Parodies.
• Alligator
• Altered States
• Back To The Future - Fun with Time Travel.
• Batman - Tim Burton's interpretation of Gotham City's protector, without the camp elements.
• Beetlejuice - Burton's iconic horror comedy.
• Big Trouble In Little China - John Carpenter's tribute to the Hong Kong action genre.
• Bill And Teds Excellent Adventure
• Blade Runner - A definitive, influential work of Cyber Punk.
• Brazil
• A Christmas Story
• Commando - So Bad Its Good Arnold Schwarzenegger film.
• Demolition Man
• Die Hard
• Donnie Darko
• Evil Dead
• Fatal Attraction - Top-grossing thriller about a married man who has an affair with a psychotic woman.
• Ferris Buellers Day Off
• A Fish Called Wanda
• Firefox - The Cool Plane.
• Ghost
• Ghostbusters - Who you gonna call?
• Give My Regards To Broad Street - Paul McCartney's live-action magnum opus.
• Heathers
• The Hunt For Red October
• Indiana Jones trilogy - Adventurer Archaeologist.
• James Bond films:
  • For Your Eyes Only
  • Octopussy
  • A View To A Kill
  • The Living Daylights
  • Licence To Kill
• Labyrinth
• Last Action Hero - More Subverted Tropes than you can shake a stick at.
• The Last Starfighter - Trope maker for the Ascended Fanboy
• Manhunter
• Mad Max
• Meet The Feebles
• Predator
• The Princess Bride - The best movie no one's heard of, it seems.
• The original Rambo/First Blood trilogy.
• Real Genius
• Re-Animator
• Scarface - Ultra-violent gangster movie of the 1980s and favorite of hip-hop culture.
• Spaceballs - Parody of Space Opera and straight-up fairy tale.
• Starman
• Terminator - The quintessential killer cyborg movie franchise.
• The Goonies
• Top Gun
• Tron
• The Wall (also known as Pink Floyd: The Wall)
• Who Framed Roger Rabbit - The first big fusion of live action and animation in a movie.
• Willow - A 1988 Tolkien-esque fantasy.

1990-1999

• Air Force One - "Get off my plane!"
• American Beauty
• Austin Powers trilogy - Spoofs of James Bond and the Spy Drama genre.
• Backbeat --the most critically acclaimed post-Beatles film about The Beatles in Hamburg --Or Is It?
• Batman Returns (by Tim Burton), Batman Forever and Batman and Robin (by Joel Schumacher)
• Battlefield Earth - How egos, Scientology and bad writing have unwatchable results.
• The Big Lebowski
• The Boondock Saints - Cult independent crime flick about vigilantes on a Mission From God.
• Broken Arrow
• Clueless - Influential 1990s Teen Movie.
• The Crow
• Dead Again - Mixes Crime And Punishment and Romance
• Die Hard 2 and 3
• Dogma
• Fight Club - Don't talk about it
• Forrest Gump
• Galaxy Quest - Affectionate Parody of Star Trek.
• Grosse Pointe Blank - One of the best romantic comedies featuring the Hitman With A Heart.
• Groundhog Day
• Half Baked - Very funny Stoner Flick with Dave Chappelle, Jim Breuer, Harland Williams and Guillermo Díaz.
• Hocus Pocus
• Independence Day
• James Bond films:
  • GoldenEye
  • Tomorrow Never Dies
  • The World Is Not Enough
• Jurassic Park
• The Little Rascals
• Lock Stock And Two Smoking Barrels
• The Matrix - Managed to add a veneer of philosophical thought to its action, and popularized Bullet Time.
• Men In Black - Based on a comic book series by Lowell Cunningham, it cemented Will Smith's status as a big box-office draw.
• Predator 2
• Pulp Fiction
• Saving Private Ryan
• Scream - A Post Modern Deconstruction of slasher films.
• The Silence Of The Lambs - Classic serial killer thriller and origin of the Hannibal Lecture.
• Sleepless In Seattle - Who knew romance and geography could go together?
• Sneakers
• Spice World
• Stargate - originated the Stargate Verse.
• Starship Troopers - the very meaning of Adaptation Decay (or perhaps deliberate Adaptation Sabotage)
• Time Changer - a Christian Time Travel film. Must be seen to be believed.
• Titanic
• Troll 2 - A 1990 In Name Only sequel to the 1986 B-Movie Troll. So Bad Its Good.
• The Usual Suspects - Who is Keyser Soze?

2000-present

• 300 - Only one quote may appear here: "Madness?! This Is SPARTA!"
• American Psycho - Christian Bale makes a homicidal maniac absolutely hilarious.
• The Ark Of Truth - See Stargate Verse.
• Babel
• The Bank Job
• Battle Royale - Ax Crazy high schoolers killing each other.
• The Bourne Series - Loose (very, very loose) adaptation of the Robert Ludlum novels.
• Bruce Almighty - Jim Carrey is God. Literally.
• Camp Rock - Endless parade of pop music. *shudder*
• Catch Me If You Can
• Cloverfield - A modern monster film from the creator of Lost.
• Crash - A Very Special Movie.
• Cry_Wolf - Only really here because Silent Hunter likes it.
• Curse Of The Golden Flower - Chinese cinema taking place in the Forbidden City with much backstabbing.
• Dark Knight Trilogy (Batman Begins, The Dark Knight)
• Date Movie - Noted strictly because it's So Bad It's Horrible. And yet it has two sequels.
• The Day After Tomorrow --in which global warming causes an instant ice age.
• The Devil Wears Prada
• Die Hard 4.0, or Live Free Or Die Hard
• Enchanted - Disney's Affectionate Parody of... a Disney movie.
• Equilibrium - Fahrenheit 451 meets lots and lots of gunplay. Introduced Gun Kata.
• The Fifth Element
• Friday Night Lights - Sports Story Tropes done right.
• The Golden Compass: a family film whose controversy could not be tamed.
• Gone Baby Gone
• Hancock
• The Happening
• Hard Candy
• Hellboy and its sequel
• High School Musical
• The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy
• Hot Fuzz
• How The Grinch Stole Christmas
• I Am Legend
• Idiocracy
• Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
• Inland Empire
• Iron Man
• James Bond films:
  • Die Another Day
  • Casino Royale - The first Bond novel, but the 21st film. Actually filmed a total of three times, but only the most recent is official.
  • Quantum Of Solace - the next film.
• Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter - aka "I Am Not Making This Up: The Movie".
• Kickin It Old School
• Kill Bill - Katanas Are Just Better in its purest form.
• King Kong - Well-regarded remake.
• A Knight's Tale
• Kukushka
• Little Miss Sunshine
• The Lost Skeleton Of Cadavra - Affectionate Parody of 1950's B movies
• Mean Girls
• A Mighty Wind
• Mulholland Drive - Utter Mind Screw, even for David Lynch.
• National Treasure
• Napoleon Dynamite
• No Country For Old Men
• Not Another Teen Movie
• The Orphanage - Spanish horror film filled to the brim with Nightmare Fuel Unleaded
• Pan's Labyrinth - Alice in Wonderland meets The Brothers Grimm.
• Pirates Of The Caribbean - Brought the pirate genre back into the mainstream.
• Planet Of The Apes - The Tim Burton remake.
• Primer - Either a brilliant deconstruction and/or The Parody of Time Travel, or played it straight; if you can figure it out feel free to choose one.
• The Proposition
• Rambo - Johnny comes back for a forth time to help out against a horrible genocide in Burma. And shockingly, it's good.
• The Ring
• Robots
• Saved
• Saw - Modern horror franchise.
• Scary Movie - This film franchise spoofs the tropes seen in most horror films.
• Shaun Of The Dead - Affectionate Parody of the zombie film with some laughs for good measure.
• Sky High
• Snakes On A Plane - A 2006 film almost custom made for Memetic Mutation.
• Spiderman trilogy
• Stranger Than Fiction
• There Will Be Blood
• Twenty Eight Days Later

Live-action films not yet sorted:

• College Saga - Pastiche of Japanese Role Playing Games.
• Escape From Alcatraz - Grants Truth In Television to the most unlikely tropes.
• Evil Dead trilogy.
• Hammer Horror - Defined vampire and gothic horror cinema of the 1950s and 1960s.
• Invasion Of The Body Snatchers
• Lawn Dogs - A very original drama that has its own unique set of tropes.
• Lone Wolf And Cub - Classic Samurai film series Bowdlerised as Shogun Assassin in the United States.
• Merlins Shop Of Mystical Wonders - a horror movie hastily re-edited into a family film that competes closely with Manos for sheer Narmery.
• Mirror Mask - Picture Labyrinth, but with Neil Gaiman and no David Bowie
• Mystery Men
• The Prisoner Of Zenda
• Shark Attack 3 Megalodon
• The Scorpion King
• Shoot Em Up
• Tarzan
• Time Cop
• The Witches
• Withnail And I
• The Wizard

Notable animated films:

• Akira
• All Dogs Go To Heaven
• An American Tail
• Anastasia
• Animalympics - "Sixteen Days of Glory" becomes "Sixteen Days of Furry" in this animated cult classic.
• The Aristocats
• The Brave Little Toaster
• A Bugs Life
• Cars
• Cats Don't Dance
• Finding Nemo
• The Flight Of Dragons
• Flushed Away
• Kikis Delivery Service
• Heavy Metal - A surreal Animated Anthology from Canada.
• The Incredibles
• The Iron Giant
• Kung Fu Panda
• The Land Before Time
• Meet The Robinsons
• Monsters Inc
• The Nightmare Before Christmas
• The Phantom Tollbooth
• Pocahontas
• Princess Mononoke
• Ratatouille
• Rock A Doodle
• The Secret Of NIMH
• Shrek - This CGI film series features wry parodies of European folklore and fairy tales.
• The Swan Princess
• The Thief And The Cobbler
• Titan AE
• Thumbelina
• Treasure Planet
• Toy Story
• WALL-E
• War Games
• Yellow Submarine

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