About
Supercut Movie Clichés, also referred to as the “pop culture megamix”, are video montages of overused movie (or TV) platitudes. Very often, they are meant to highlight how certain hackneyed lines have lost all meaning due to their continuous employment by lazy screenwriters.
Origin
The term “supercut” was coined by blogger Andy Baio on April 11th 2008 on his blog Waxy.org. In the original post, which can be read here, Baio described a supercuts as:
(A) genre of video meme, where some obsessive-compulsive superfan collects every phrase/action/cliche from an episode (or entire series) of their favorite show/film/game into a single massive video montage.
The first popular supercut to deal specifically with clichés was compiled by Rich Juzwiak (an entertainment blogger who goes by the You Tube name Richfofo) on July 2nd 2008. The video, titled “I’m Not Here To Make Friends”, is a 3 minute 20 second video of reality TV contestants exclaiming how they’re “not here to make friend”, they’re “here to win”. It was a hit across the internet, and has spawned several sequels.
On December 13th 2009, You Tube user dunk3d posted the earliest known Movie Cliché Supercut: a collection of people looking at an image on a computer screen and mindlessly saying “enhance” – a highly inaccurate depiction of what computer imaging software is capable of, which had infuriated nerds for years.
This was followed by the “We’ve Got Company” montage by Guy Bauer on April 10th 2010.
Other Examples
“It’s Gonna Blow” by Jesperc20 – May 4th 2010
“Get Out Of There!” by hh1edits – May 4th 2010
“I Could Tell You But I’d Have To Kill You” by Bartoscar – August 6th 2010
“You Look Like Shit” by The Hufftington Post – November 12th 2010
“Not In Kansas Anymore” by Richfofo on December 15th 2010
“He Didn’t Make It” by The Huffington Post – December 16th 2010
“It’s Showtime” by hh1edits – January 26th 2011
Variations
Not all Movie Cliché Supercuts focus on quotes. Some, such as “Mirror Scare” (posted on February 7th 2010 by Richfofo) deal with the familiar visual clichés in horror films.
Similarly, this video of action movie clichés, posted to Vimeo by Jacob Britta on May 29th 2010, highlights how many action films Are made up of the same visual components.
Even comedies are guilty of resorting to familiar visual territory, as this “Spit-Take Supercut”, posted to The Huffington Post on January 21st 2011, shows.
Further Variations
Although not clichés, per se, some supercuts focus on familiar themes in one actors repertoire, such as Arnold Schwarzenegger Screaming by FilmDrunk.Com (which can be seen below) or this detailed study of “Nicholas Cage Loosing His Shit” by hh1edits.
Further Reading
Read an interview with Rich Juzwiak (maker of “I’m Not Here To Make Friends”) on This American Life here
