But that's a cliche, too, one I noticed in every action drama I watched as a kid (I'm guessing the common denominator was either Stephen Cannell or Aaron Spelling.) It was so obvious I came up with a catch phrase: Guest characters are too good to be good or too bad to be bad.

Case in point: If a stern-looking man watches the heroes menacingly from a distance in his car, then he will turn out to be an FBI agent. He will bust in at the last minute and rescue the heroes from the real bad guy, who turned out to be the grinning, helpful fellow introduced in the first act. For more, see every single episode of Scooby-Doo.

Another thought. I used to think I knew who the antagonists of the Star Wars universe were. Then I watched Return of the Jedi for the first time and found myself actually rooting for --ROOTING FOR!--Darth Vader. "C'mon! C'mon, save your son! Just DO IT!!!"

I used to think that stormtroopers were the bad guys, and that, unlike in the real world, you could kill them indiscriminately without suffering any remorse. Then I saw Attack of the Clones and learned that they were actually the good guys and I found myself rooting for them. "C'mon! C'mon, shoot the bad robots! Just DO IT!!!"

Actually, no, I didn't say that last line at all. Mostly I just sulked in the theater and wished I had my old Star Wars movies back.

Da hero will have a flashback (usually in blurred motion and high contrast) telling him exactly what he needs to remember at the right moment.

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The Devil offered me power. I told him I preferred aperture.

Something similar to that threw me in City of the Beasts by Isabel Allende.
SPOILERS WRITTEN IN LIGHT YELLOW
The doctor is the real bad guy, the assistant who the heroes caught by the radio is the undercover agent.
This is a doozy:
Everybody has gone missing or been killed, under mysterious circumstances. But The Hero happens to find a camera and the video/photos tell him everything. Uh, wouldn't the bad guys ever once think to destroy or take the camera?

__________________
Rovers forever! - ToSeek
"Carl Sagan sent a message to ET,
Neil Armstrong walked in the Sea of Tranquility
Steve Squyers built Spirit and Opportunity
Dan Haylen upchucked in zero gravity." -Brent Simon, The Space Camp Song
'Evolution and science are one thing, but you don’t mess with Yoko Ono. Everybody knows that. ' - 386sx

A monster, superhuman, or whatever, is always strong enough to break the bonds used to restrain them. Maybe invest in tougher restraints--hubristic morons.

__________________
If we don't play god, who will?-James Watson
I never think of the future, it comes soon enough.-Albert Einstein
The large print giveth and the small print taketh away.-Tom Waits
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a yo-yo.-Enoch Root, The Confusion
When I was a kid, if someone brandished a shrink gun he'd get a little bit of respect!-Myron Reducto, Harvey Birdman

Hmm. Why does the evil corporate guy always have to be evil? I mean, look at real life corporations. Most of them, the worst thing they'll try to do to you is sell you something. They don't give you charity, but that's because they have bills, salaries, and interest to pay.

Why not have a movie where the evil sludge factory of doom actually makes a useful wanted product, and actually employs people, pays the bills, sends people to college, and pushes interest at all those investors and retirement funds?

How about a movie where the CEO of a presumably publically traded company isn't a de-facto dictator that can do whatever the heck he wants, and is actually hauled up before the board of directors if he does something stupid and damaging to the company, employees, or public trust? Boards of directors are controlled by major investors, you know. People who don't want to see their company on CNN with a maniacally laughing president and a doomsday weapon in the flaming background.

Most people don't get up in the morning going "oh goody, off to work to swindle customers and **** in the commons". On the other hand, if you're looking for real evil organizations in the world, I can think of several right off the bat. They just don't usually end up on the news cause they shoot the reporters.

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http://amssolarempire.blogspot.com

I don't know. When I saw "The Usual Suspects", I knew exactly who was the bad guy once I saw all of the players. They told me at the very beginning who Keyser Soze was by being too clever. But then I knew the big secrets of "The Sixth Sense", and "Phenomenon" from the commercials.

David.
David.

Some actors get typecast so much that if you see them in something, you know they're playing the bad guy, or at least a bad guy.

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

I've been in two student movies, and I think I'm typecast, because I was a nerd in both of them... just like in real life!

__________________
Rovers forever! - ToSeek
"Carl Sagan sent a message to ET,
Neil Armstrong walked in the Sea of Tranquility
Steve Squyers built Spirit and Opportunity
Dan Haylen upchucked in zero gravity." -Brent Simon, The Space Camp Song
'Evolution and science are one thing, but you don’t mess with Yoko Ono. Everybody knows that. ' - 386sx

It's been done.

__________________
[Dr. Horrible]___________________________[Penny]
Listen close to everybody's heart________And you believe there's good in everybody's heart
And hear that breaking sound_____________Keep it safe and sound
Hopes and dreams are shattering apart____With hope you can do your part
And crashing to the ground_______________To turn a life around

Slimy aliens.

Outside water producing a lot of slime runs a risk of dehydration -- which is why there are so few slimy land animals. And even in water slime is metabolically expensive, so animals do not continuously leave it behind. Yet SF movies are full of clearly non-aquatic aliens which glisten with slime (caustic or not) and leave a trail wherever they go.

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Fiction has to be plausible. Reality is under no such constraint.

This is why I hated "Captain Planet" (Sorry, KaiYeves). That show blatantly teaches children that corporations are EVIL. Not just greedy and selfish, but actively out to poison Mother Earth. In one episode I remember, the Bad Guy had a pile of old refrigirators and was smashing them up in order to release CFC's into atmosphere. No reason, he was not getting anything out of it -- polluting the world just for the hell of it. Gah.

__________________
Fiction has to be plausible. Reality is under no such constraint.

Big museums that are nearly empty during peak daytime hours. There's the heroes, and fifty other people, tops.
Yeah, I was in a big museum with that many people in the galleries once... at a sleepover.

__________________
Rovers forever! - ToSeek
"Carl Sagan sent a message to ET,
Neil Armstrong walked in the Sea of Tranquility
Steve Squyers built Spirit and Opportunity
Dan Haylen upchucked in zero gravity." -Brent Simon, The Space Camp Song
'Evolution and science are one thing, but you don’t mess with Yoko Ono. Everybody knows that. ' - 386sx

That's why they have to eat so many people-- their bodies are constantly losing energy.

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

Yeah, Captain Preachy and the Preachateers had a lot of bad or misleading messages. Like Cap just using his magic to clean up a toxic spill, as if it were that easy.

There was an episode that had some brilliant and scathing self-parody, right before the show went off the air. It's presented as a dream sequence where the kids imagine 30-40 years in the future; the white boy and girl are married with several kids, all of the 'Teers are old and annoying, they've all pretty much abandoned their mission, the Bad Guys are either dead or elderly and innefectual, and even a ragged-looking Cap appears by saying "Don't burn fossil fuels and blah blah blah, why am I still saying this stuff? You aren't listening anyway!"

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

I kinda think the Planeteers were the most selfish of the bunch. Their aircraft, the "geocruiser" (IIRC), ran on solar power. Solar Power! Solar panels, the size of which, using conventional technology, you couldn't run a Prius on are powering a VTOL aircraft the size of a V-22 Osprey! Why didn't they share that technology with the world?!

__________________
If we don't play god, who will?-James Watson
I never think of the future, it comes soon enough.-Albert Einstein
The large print giveth and the small print taketh away.-Tom Waits
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a yo-yo.-Enoch Root, The Confusion
When I was a kid, if someone brandished a shrink gun he'd get a little bit of respect!-Myron Reducto, Harvey Birdman

I don't think it was technology, just the same magic that made the rings work. Plot device, limit one per customer.

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

Nope. It was said in show that it was solar powered.

__________________
If we don't play god, who will?-James Watson
I never think of the future, it comes soon enough.-Albert Einstein
The large print giveth and the small print taketh away.-Tom Waits
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a yo-yo.-Enoch Root, The Confusion
When I was a kid, if someone brandished a shrink gun he'd get a little bit of respect!-Myron Reducto, Harvey Birdman