Minor Irritant #2 - The Brom

I hadn't intended to start a series of blogs about things in movies that irritate me. Lots of other things irritate me as well... but I'm not sure they're minor. So maybe this should be considered an addendum to Minor Irritant #1 - since it deals with lazy screenwriting as well.

This is something that my friends and I call The Brom after a major character in Eragon (the movie, not the book). In the movie, Eragon and Brom - his wise Jedi Knight like mentor - have just discovered the location of the Princess. Eragon, being young and foolish, hops on his dragon and flies off to rescue the Princess despite the fact that Brom warns him against a trap. The dragon covers the three day's distance in minutes and Eragon charges boldly into the trap to rescue the Princess. Sure enough, the bad guy is waiting for him. There is a fight. And then, despite the fact that the kid has been trained to defend himself and that his mentor is Jedi Knight wise, when the bad guy throws a spear at Eragon that will surely kill him, out of the clear blue leaps Brom - taking the spear in Eragon's place and, of course, dying. Nevermind the fact that Brom was three days behind Eragon, or that he could have simply knocked the spear aside, or thrown Eragon a shield, or... well, you get the idea, Brom decides to spare his pupils life by leaping in front of the "bullet" himself. He dies, so that Eragon might live.

This particular cliche is played out and often defies logic. In Spiderman 3, there is another Brom scene. In Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, another Brom scene. In Pirates 3: At World's End - there is like a half-Brom (not quite as dramatic as leaping in front of the bullet, but in effect, the exact same thing). This cliche has been used so many times in the last ten years, or so, that its a wonder that someone hasn't compiled all of the Brom moments into a single YouTube movie.

What happened to truly original ideas - like Spock sacrificing himself to save the Enterprise in The Wrath of Khan, or the way they killed of Wash in Serenity, or the sudden rescue of Ripley in Aliens 2? Surprises are only surprising when less than 10 percent of the audience hasn't already figured it out before you show it. When everybody knows what's coming and its supposed to be a surprise, that's called bad writing.

Just a minor irritant in life...