Someone Asked “Lines In Movies That Make You Cringe?” And Got 30 Answers From Movie Fans
Interview With Expert
Creating realistic and natural-sounding dialogue for a movie isn't a simple job. If people spoke in movies the way they do in real life, it would be very hard to understand the movie and convey its message. At the same time, the conversations can't seem fake, as they might have the same effect. So, when writers are balancing this line, sometimes, they fail. This way, lines that make people cringe are born. And some of them quickly turn into cringy cult classics (we're looking at you "Spider-Monkey" from "Twilight").
Today, let's take a kind of cringy trip through many general or specific sayings that people find embarrassing while watching movies.
More info: Reddit
This post may include affiliate links.
(Young, slightly-built woman single-handedly beats up a squad of muscle-bound marines.)
"I had three brothers.".
I keep waiting for the “I had three sisters and we grew up in a sexist society” story.
I hate how any computer nerd can hack everything from the world's biggest banks, to missile silos, all with less than a dozen keystrokes on a Dell laptop.
There's a hush as all the military brass watches the nerd do his thing.
Then comes the line I hate...."We're in!".
“Turn on the news! You gotta see this!”
*Turns on the tv to the exact channel at exactly the right time to further an important plot point.*.
The word "cringe" is thrown around the internet quite a lot. Whenever you sign in to social media, you hear that this or that makes a person cringe. It might seem that this word is thrown around so much that it starts to lose its meaning.
Well, to say that, we have to learn what it means, don’t we? Well, according to Wikipedia (because where else is there to go when you don’t know something, right?), a cringe is an action or thing that brings out feelings of discomfort or embarrassment.
Others might describe cringe as a form of empathy, as a person puts themselves in the place of someone else and feels embarrassed for them. While the description doesn’t necessarily dub it as a form of empathy, it also includes a mention of embarrassment, which is basically what cringe is.
Sometimes, cringe can manifest as a physiological and emotional response to something a person did or said in the past, or it can be a reaction to someone else’s behavior or words. The latter might cause one to feel secondhand or vicarious embarrassment.
"I won't kill you because I'm not like you", any version of this line spoken by the protagonist to the big bad right after the epic battle where numerous foot soldiers have just been slaughtered.
Avatar the last airbender. There’s no way those guys survived being thrown into walls and being dropped into the middle of the ocean and all that
It's hard to be too annoyed because I understand why it's needed, but when characters use each other's names/relations way too often to establish it with the audience.
"Dan, Kelly is on the line for you."
"Thanks, Candice. You're the best assistant and ex-girlfriend a guy ever had....hi Kelly, how is my favorite sister-in-law?"
"Not great, Dan. My husband, Tom, told me you don't have the tickets. Now, I know he's your big brother and all...".
Fun fact: in an early cut of Lilo and Stitch test audiences didn't like the scene where Lilo and Nani get into a fight and said things like "I didn't like the way the mom yelled at her". So they went back and edited it so that the two repeatedly refer to each other as "sister", just to clarify that Nani isn't actually her mother and this is a sibling fight.
"We don't have any other choice."
"We have no choice"
"There's no other way"
Usually it is just lazy writing to justify doing something stupid. If there really was no other choice it would be apparent to the audience from your storytelling.
There’s a whole comedy subgenre based on the feeling of cringiness. Cringe comedy creates humor from social awkwardness, self-deprecation, guilty pleasures, and personal distress, which quite often is made in the form of TV shows. In it, the characters step out of and break social norms by basically acting in ways people might dub cringe.
Such popular TV shows like “The Office,” “Fleabag,” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm” are perfect examples of cringe comedy. And even though, theoretically, it might seem that people shouldn’t enjoy feeling cringe, the popularity of these shows tells a different story.
Basically, sometimes, people like to laugh at their own and other people's behavioral standards and witness what it would be like to not meet certain social norms.
When characters are introduced as siblings by calling each other “bro” or “sis”.
My brother would never call me sis. He usually refers to me as “stupid pig”
"Zoom and enhance.".
The line's not so bad, but when they then enhance a grainy image and get a crystal-clear closeup, that's the stupid part.
It's one thing to create cringe content on purpose and another thing to do it by accident. Today’s list of movie lines that make people cringe is full of examples of the latter. To talk a little bit more about that, Bored Panda reached out to film critic and host of the Girls On Film podcast, Anna Smith.
She said that typically cringy lines are overused in movies but are rarely used in real life: “It might feel so unlikely and clichéd that it jars the viewer.”
We can guess that the writers who wrote these lines likely didn’t intend to make viewers cringe – they maybe just wanted to joke a little bit or create a powerful saying.
Anna explained that these kinds of lines tend to take the audience out of a story and might even make them turn it off: “I have to watch films all the way through for my job as a film critic, but if I was watching a movie for fun, a cringy line might make me lose trust and interest in the film -- and it might make me wary that a whole lot more cringy lines were probably coming!”
"I can explain!" "Just listen to me!" And such, followed by copious amounts of not explaining and drama.
Really the whole "liar revealed" plotline in many a movie and series is a very tired thing, even if it might be necessary for a plotline. It's merciful when they don't make it last long, at least.
Ooooh I hate this as well. "I can explain!" THEN DO SO AT THE SPEED OF SOUND BEFORE THEY LEAVE
Lame Scientist: “Okay so water is a liquid, and when it freezes it becomes a solid, but get it hot enough and-“
Regular Joe: “*E N G L I S H, N E R D”
Also:
Regular Joe: ”Did you say *wormhole*?”
Cool Scientist: “[…] *Let me show you using this piece of paper*”
Bonus: not a *line*, but whenever a film or television series wants to communicate how sneaky a character is, and they do that thing where they instantly—and inexplicably—vanish as a car or crowd of people pass by.
edit: Bonus points whenever a sci-fi film does one of these demonstration scenes, and they grab something that the person listening is either actively using—i.e., a coffee mug, pen, etc.—or that makes them go “hey c’mon!”
Regular Joe: “Did you say, *wormhole*?”
Cool scientist: “Allow me to demonstrate, using only this pencil and your original birth certificate…”
The only time someone disappearing behind a moving thing is cool is when it's Dumbledore
The film critic thinks that people are now more attuned to cringy sexist talk in movies, like romantic gestures that are actually more patronizing to women: “These will probably leap out if you watch films from the 70s, 80s or even 90s.”
Anna said that she finds it cringe when movie characters overuse names, as it isn’t realistic. Well, as we said in the beginning, it’s hard to balance realism and fakeness. Sometimes, even the best effort to do that doesn’t work out as we anticipate, and the line you thought would be in a list of powerful cinema phrases ends up in a list of cringy ones.
After all, cringe is an inevitable part of life, as it’s simply a physiological reaction. So, as Taylor Swift said in her NYU commencement speech, we need to “learn to live alongside cringe,” as it’s way better than beating yourself up for the rest of your life.
Therefore, let’s embrace these cringy movie lines and turn them into something entertaining instead of embarrassing.
What movie lines make you cringe? Share them with us in the comments!
Neo, an accomplished hacker and presumably tech savvy person: "What's an EMP?".
“Do you know what happens to a toad when it's struck by lightning? The same thing that happens to everything else.”.
The wilhelm scream needs to die already. Unless it’s a comedic movie, Indiana Jones, or Starwars, it absolutely kills the mood for me in serious action scenes.
Pretty sure at this point it's an Easter egg to find haha it isn't even...a good sound. Of all the screams, it's pretty lousy
"I think you should take a look at this" in basically a million movies.
I used that line a year ago when we got an email saying our classmate had been shot. Since we were on a trip we were behind the gossip so I literally brought my phone to the teacher/chaperone and said, "I think you should take a look at this." Oh fyi the classmate ended up fine.
"We're the only species that makes war on itself"
WRONG!
I believe that once territory (and thus, food and such) is involved, almost any species will wage war on itself.
When someone is explaining something technical and they're told to speak in layman's terms to dumb it for the audience.
Bane “You came back to die with your city”
Batman “no, I came back to stop you”
Awful.
"He's/she's/it's/they're behind me, aren't they?"
"Who's there? [insert person's name] stop screwing around I know it's you!" / "HELLO? HELLLLOOOO? WHO'S THERE?"
"Hahaha, [insert name] you son of a b***h! I haven't seen you since...".
I loved it when Futurama subverted the first one. "She's right behind me, isn't she?" "No, I'm in front of you." "WAUGH!"
"I hate sand. It's rough, and coarse, and irritating, and it gets *eeeeverywhere*.".
Uma Thurman saying “entropy” when she should have said “atrophy” takes me out of Kill Bill every time.
Haha that gets me too. But I am usually already out of it thinking about how much Tarantino has rewatched that particular scene, because you know, feet.
Anything that uses internet speak, because they always overdo it for effect. It’s particularly bad when it’s one of those movies that shows the text being sent on the screen.
*So much* “srsly.”.
Ginny Weasley : Open up you.
Doesn't help that the movies portrayed Ginny as kind of boring when she's supposed to be cool and spunky.
Kitana: Mother! You're alive!
Sindel: Too bad YOU! will die!
To be fair, those two lines were merely the worst in an ocean of strong cringe.
Note: this post originally had 42 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.
Anytime an atheist character 'sees the light' or has a 'maybe there is a god' moment. It isn't going to happen. That isn't a typical thing. Honestly anytime there is an atheist character I cringe, because at some point someone of some religion is going to 'influence' them into some heart warming 'look at them believe' moment, and like no. in real life that atheist is going to look you in the face and tell you to knock it off. There are absolutely atheists in foxholes. Or they're atheist because of some ridiculous tragic backstory, as opposed to how it normally occurs. Or they make the atheist amoral, because apparently the only way you can be good is to be religious, which is just stupid. Like religion hasn't led to genocide, crusades, persecution.
"Or they're atheist because of some ridiculous tragic backstory, as opposed to how it normally occurs." You reminded me of the time a couple of years ago when a couple of middle-aged women came to my door. One had a Bible in her hand and asked the usual 'do you have a few minutes to talk about the Good News?'. I said yes, but added that they'd be wasting everyone's time because I'm atheist. The Bible-carrier put on a really fake sympathetic voice and said 'Oh, you poor thing; what happened to cause that'? I just smiled, pointed at her Bible and said 'I read that'. They left.
Load More Replies...
When someone notices something rolling down a hill behind them and them not move to the side to avoid it. Zombo-Droi...120537.jpg 
Being chased by a car, and running down the middle of the street.
Load More Replies...
When something huge and fast is coming straight for them and then they try to outrun it in a straight line instead of turning corners or zigzagging or whatever
Anytime an atheist character 'sees the light' or has a 'maybe there is a god' moment. It isn't going to happen. That isn't a typical thing. Honestly anytime there is an atheist character I cringe, because at some point someone of some religion is going to 'influence' them into some heart warming 'look at them believe' moment, and like no. in real life that atheist is going to look you in the face and tell you to knock it off. There are absolutely atheists in foxholes. Or they're atheist because of some ridiculous tragic backstory, as opposed to how it normally occurs. Or they make the atheist amoral, because apparently the only way you can be good is to be religious, which is just stupid. Like religion hasn't led to genocide, crusades, persecution.
"Or they're atheist because of some ridiculous tragic backstory, as opposed to how it normally occurs." You reminded me of the time a couple of years ago when a couple of middle-aged women came to my door. One had a Bible in her hand and asked the usual 'do you have a few minutes to talk about the Good News?'. I said yes, but added that they'd be wasting everyone's time because I'm atheist. The Bible-carrier put on a really fake sympathetic voice and said 'Oh, you poor thing; what happened to cause that'? I just smiled, pointed at her Bible and said 'I read that'. They left.
Load More Replies... When someone notices something rolling down a hill behind them and them not move to the side to avoid it. Zombo-Droi...120537.jpg
Being chased by a car, and running down the middle of the street.
Load More Replies... When something huge and fast is coming straight for them and then they try to outrun it in a straight line instead of turning corners or zigzagging or whatever
