Fantastic Tropes and Where to Find Them

These are some of my favorite tropes and examples of them in movies. Gotta give credit to the website TV Tropes for doing a lot of the legwork.

Here are 3 of my favorite tropes:

1. Childhood Friends to Lovers: One of my favorite Tumblr text posts states: “i wish my life was a childhood sweethearts slowburn friends to lovers 200k fic”. Even though the “enemies to lovers” trope is far more common in popular media (à la Pride and Prejudice), I think we would all rather live the childhood friends to lovers experience (à la Emma), right? 

• Best examples: 13 Going on 30, Always Be My Maybe, Forrest Gump

• These arguably qualify: Moonlight, Spider-Man, Sweet Home Alabama

2. Unlikely friends / Family of choice: In this trope, people who have no business being in the same room together end up being a chosen family. 

• Best examples: The Breakfast Club, Sister Act, Zombieland, Guardians of the Galaxy (and probably more of the MCU but I haven’t seen any Avengers movies)

• These arguably qualify: Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings 

3. Women working hard montage: I like a good montage of women working hard to achieve their life/career goals. My favorite is of the “who needs men?” variety.

• Best examples: Legally Blonde, Little Women, Brittany Runs A Marathon

• These arguably qualify: Mulan, The Parent Trap 

As a bonus, here are three of my least favorite tropes: 

1. Love triangle: It’s a tale as old as time and it’s tired. I don’t know about you but I’m over all the Team This Guy and Team That Guy talk.

• Notable offenders: Too many to count but the recent biggies are Twilight and the Hunger Games. 

2. Unnecessary makeover: Nerdy/weird girl gets a makeover (read: takes off her glasses); turns out she was beautiful all along.

• Notable offenders: She’s All That, The Breakfast Club, The Princess Diaries
  
• These arguably qualify: Grease, Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire

3. The Chosen One: Only one person (usually a boy/man) can save the universe. The weight of the world is on this lone (wo)man’s shoulders. Sigh. As we all know, in reality no one can do anything meaningful alone. 

• Notable offenders: Harry Potter, Star Wars, The Hunger Games

An extra special bonus, b/c I'm trying to add more visual aids to punch up these posts:

Photo Source