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Combat Cliches

This material is extracted from a compilation of many other categories found on The Movie Cliches List

FENCING/SWORDPLAY

• At some point in a duel, the hero and villain will cross swords at face level, allowing them to grip each other's weapon while making nasty/sarcastic comments before they break the clinch and continue fighting. (Why doesn't anyone just ram the sword guard into their opponent's face, stun him, and then finish him off?)
• If the hero and villain's swords cross at or below waist level, they will break the clinch, fall back, and pause -- despite the fact that a simple upthrust into the opponent's belly after the break would end the duel right there and then.
• If there is a candelabra, the villain will show how talented he is with a sword by cutting the candles and watching them fall over; the hero will do the same but the candles won't fall until _after_ the villain has made a comment about the hero's lack of fencing ability, at which point the hero will topple the cut candles, showing that he is more skilled than the villain because _his_ candles didn't fall over from the force of the cut.
• During a duel, the hero will jump or climb onto a table/bench/piano/platform that raises him above the villain. At that point, the villain will swipe at the hero's legs, which the hero avoids by jumping up in the air over the villain's blade. _Very_ rarely, the positions are reversed.
• Duels usually have one scene where the actors go out of frame and you watch their shadows fighting.
• If the villain wounds the hero in his sword arm, one of three things will happen:
  • hero becomes ambidextrous and fights with sword in other hand;
  • hero finds something else to defend himself with (tapestry, chain, Mossberg 12-gauge) that can be used with the other hand;
  • hero's girlfriend/sidekick comes up behind villain and impales him, thus saving hero.
• If hero is disarmed by villain, one of three things will happen:
  • villain will show a trace of honour and allow hero to get his sword;
  • hero will make mad dash/leap over or around villain to regain sword;
  • just when it looks like the end, hero's girlfriend/sidekick throws a sword to him, which he manages to grab easily (for the _best_ send-up of this concept, check out ARMY OF DARKNESS where Ash jumps in the air and his chainsaw magically clamps back onto his wrist -- it's beautifully shot and extremely funny!).
• If there are stairs, the hero will be forced up them backwards by the villain, at which point the hero will either leap to the ground or swing from a rope/chandelier/tapestry to get away.
• If there is a tapestry or chandelier, the hero will cut it loose and drop it on the villain's henchmen _unless_ the movie is a comedy, in which case the hero will drop it on his own men by accident.
• In a swordfight, you can always parry behind your back, and you must always find a set of stairs to fight on so that the loser can roll down them and die at the bottom.

FIGHTS

• If a character uses martial arts rather than a weapon, his opponents will always face him one-to-one. Spare bad guys may dance around the fight taunting our hero, but none will engage until his predecessor has been disposed of. And if it's an oriental martial arts film, they will fight in perfect one-two rhythm and form, hit-block-hit-block.
• Two guys or a bunch of guys go at it, repeatedly bashing each other in the face with massive blows, or hitting each other with chairs, sticks, refrigerators, whatever -- and they go one doing this, sometimes for minutes at a time.
• People can be rendered inoperative by bumping them on the head. Beware, though; after you have left the scene, this person will regain consciousness and be more determinted to attack you.
• Clasping your hands together and hitting the bad guy's back will also guarantee unconsciousness
• All fights taking place on the edge of a canyon, tall building, or other high place require at least one bad guy to get plugged by a bullet, arrow, or other missile weapon, causing to fall, but keeping him alive enough to hear his scream of terror echo as he plunges to his doom.
  Corollary: whenever someone falls off of a cliff or building, no matter how much damage they take beforehand, they scream, even if they were shot through the lungs twenty or thirty times, or were apparently unconscious.
• In the West, the favored hand-to-hand combat technique is to throw yourself prostrate on the other guy and hug him.
• When a villian is trying to murder someone with a knife, they'll often use just one hand. The victim meanwhile (usually a woman) is using both hands to restrain the villian's arm and keep the knife from stabbing her. But the murderer will NEVER simply use his other hand to take the knife and easily stab the victim. (see also Knives).

HEROES

• If the hero has a psychological/phsical problem which has prevented him from effectively dealing with problems, you can rest assured that this problem will disappear at an opportune time.
• The hero always misses the villan leaving the scene by seconds.
• Stripping to the waist makes the hero invulnerable.
• The hero will always be paired off with a female character. The sidekick never will.
• The hero's best friend/partner will usually be killed by the bad guys three days before retirement.
• The hero's new wife will be mowed down by 80 machine guns right after the wedding or during the honeymoon.
• Heroes can go without food or sleep, with no measurable drop in physical or mental faculties, for at least 72 hours.
• The hero will always have a small trickle of blood in the right corner of his mouth after a fight. His lip will never be split in the middle, and his upper lip will always be invulnerable. He will wipe the blood from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand, then look at it. If his face displays any other injury, it will usually be a small abrasion on his right cheekbone. He will wear a band-aid on this for one day, after which it will be miraculously healed.
• The hero will always refuse the assistance of friends or medical personnel after a fight.
• If the hero gets into a second fight, his most injured body part will always be punched or kicked.
• A hero will show no pain even during the most terrific beating, yet he will wince if a women attempts to clean a facial wound.
• When a hero is paired with a weak sidekick, that sidekick will invariably save the hero's life at a crucial moment, or show remarkable proficiency with weapons in a key scene.
• If the hero is a white male and has an assistant/sidekick who is either not white or not male the assistant/sidekick will die, preferably in an act of heroic sacrifice.
• If the movie hero has a sidekick and he mentiones his family in the first two minutes of the film, the sidekick will surely be killed.
• The movie hero is (almost) always divorced, but he still has some contact with his ex-wife who tells him that she could not stay married to him because she loves him too much.