Spit Takes: Six Things I Never Want to See in a Movie Again by Kyle DuVall

We knew Kyle in The Day.  He went to high school with me, Shawn, and others of note, and he was on the scene of more than one classic Icicle Thieves performance.  A fine magazine writer and a Shotgun and Newsarama veteran, Kyle has long pontificated on film and had his own Shotgun column, Spit Takes.

At what point does cliche cross the line and become a convention? Are conventions just cliches grown so omnipresent we simply lack the energy to bitch about them anymore? There are multitudes of ridiculous contrivances, narrative absurdities and scientific impossibilities on cinema and TV screens that we just accept without question, but there needs to be a statute of limitations on supension of dibelief. Lets call for a moratorium on some of these narrative place-holders. Then we can go about the business of building new cliches so our kids will have tropes to whine about when they’re beaming holo entertainment directly into their brain implants.

Air Ducts:
Contrary to popular belief, the greatest obstacle facing the forces of evil is not a wronged man with nothing to lose, or a mother protecting her child at any cost, or even the good will of honest men, it’s central air.

How many megalomaniacal cinematic schemes have been thwarted by a conveniently located air duct and a secret headquarters honecombed by labyrinth of ventilation shafts. Air ducts have screwed the eminent likes of Auric Goldfinger, Hans Gruber, and the Galactic Trade Federation. And since turnabout is fair play, air ducts have even screwed the space marines in Aliens. When screenwriters get their heroes confined in a jam they are not smart enough to write them out of, theres always the good ‘ol air duct gag to fall back on,

My favorite recent example of this tired convention showed up in the overcooked 2010 film Hanna, in which the film’s eponymous adolescent assassin escapes an underground base via air ducts so cavernous they put the Mines of Moria to shame. The only amusing thing about the sequence is picturing the massive, death-star size HVAC units the bad guys must have that require such cathedralesque ventilation shafts.

Every time I see this cliche I think of two things: first, that the villain of the piece has never seen any movie ever, and two, that when I take over the world my secret diabolical clubhouse will be climate controlled solely by baseboard heaters and window AC units.