Master cliches of the 21st century

I have been watching movies on Netflix and I've started to notice how the storytelling talents of mainstream movie makers are constricted by repeated returning to a rather small number of cliches.  This is particularly true of English-language films; films from other regions and linguistic cultures not so much.

I'm going to start my collection of master cliches here and add to the list as I come across others.

"It's all my fault."  followed by another character absolving the speaker of responsibility for some crime or mistake. "It's not your fault."

"He's a good man." This is repeatedly applied to some good guy, often for no apparent reason.  But at least you know where he stands in the moral universe of the movie.

It doesn't take much thought to see how the interaction between these cliches can and do restrict the potential stories available to the main characters.

More later.