Bad dialogue.

[PeytonMirabelle]

"From my point of view, the Jedi are evil!" - Anakin Skywalker, from Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith
(It's a pretty badass lightsaber duel, but this was serious cringe. Could do a whole post just with dialogue from the prequel films, really, but this particularly stands out for dropping with a clang in the midst of one of the better sequences.)

To be honest, I'm surprised you chose this over Anakin's, "I don't like sand," lines. I almost stopped watching the movie altogether at that one.

 

[JGittes]

Agreed. And I'm not sure how common 'cunt' was even for men until the 80s or so. Pussy would be much more likely. Women would use lots of euphemisms like 'down there' or 'tuppence' etc, until they got going.

But dialect is definitely something where less is more, and word choice and grammar are much better signals than loads of apostrophes and odd spelling. I recall someone said only one person can get away with transcribing dialects, and that was Mark Twain - everyone else should ditch 90% of the dialect indicators to produce something readable.

Huck Finn and Trainspotting are the only two books I've had to read aloud to comprehend. I'm not planning on doing it again.

Some nice people have complimented me on my dialogue and dialect recently - I think one thing that's helped with that is keeping lists of what endearments different characters use. If one guy says hen, pal, pet, and another uses darlin', love, sweetheart, you know they're not from the same end of the country. And the other character going 'sweetie' and 'babes' is going to be female, not one of them.

Eventually I've ended up with lists of words certain characters don't use, as the best way to to stop them falling out of character.

Agreed as well. I'll use "y'all" once or twice to establish a particular type of person from Texas, then plow ahead without it. If used too often, it becomes an annoying tick. Your suggestion to consistently have characters use specific and different endearments or turns of phrases is spot on.

In the 1940 W.C. Fields film "The Bank Dick," Egbert Souse frequents a bar called "The Black Pussy." It was not accidentally named.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

On the subject of bad dialogue, I'm watching Picard s3. The actors do valiantly with the lines, which are meant to sound deeply profound. And then get us yelling abuse at them, along the lines of "ooh, get you, Mr Deep and Meaningful!" "Do we think that's foreshadowing? Yeah, that's foreshadowing."

It's still fun, but in spite of the script.

 

[Emilymcplugger]

On the subject of bad dialogue, I'm watching Picard s3. The actors do valiantly with the lines, which are meant to sound deeply profound. And then get us yelling abuse at them, along the lines of "ooh, get you, Mr Deep and Meaningful!" "Do we think that's foreshadowing? Yeah, that's foreshadowing."

It's still fun, but in spite of the script.

Yeah, I stopped watching season 1 when I realised the only reason I was watching it was because I was watching it (which sounds like bad dialogue but it just means I was watching it because it was there rather than because of emotional investment).

 

[Kumquatqueen]

Yeah, I stopped watching season 1 when I realised the only reason I was watching it was because I was watching it (which sounds like bad dialogue but it just means I was watching it because it was there rather than because of emotional investment).

I admit I was watching it for Seven, Raffi and the cute goth boy... And Patrick Stewart could read the phone book and make it sound fascinating, though sadly his voice has got croaky.

Predicting the plot a mile off is also fun. "The infiltration goes up to the highest levels of Starfleet!" "You don't say!"

And amusement at seeing all the characters 20-30 years on.

 

[MetaBob]

To be honest, I'm surprised you chose this over Anakin's, "I don't like sand," lines. I almost stopped watching the movie altogether at that one.

Bad dialogue in Star Wars stretches back to the beginning. The actors rebelled:

The came the prequels, by which time George was above questioning ("I don't like sand" makes an appearance at the end of the vid).