Movie terrorists lose out when it comes to negotiation

Posted Monday, November 25, 2013 at 4:16 PM Central

by John Couture

The movie terrorist has a rough life. All they want to do is to reach a mutually satisfactory resolution to whatever crisis has befallen them, but they are constantly struck down by one of film's most reliable movie cliché.

"We do not negotiate with terrorists."

To be fair, I wouldn't feel too bad for movie terrorists, I mean they almost always bring the pain onto themselves by initiating the conflict, hence why they are known as terrorists. While the term is starting to find traction again in film, it experienced a bit of a dark phase after the events of 9/11. But before then, and especially in any 1980s action film, you couldn't sit through a film without hearing it at least once, usually twice.

Of course, that phrase was usually followed by the extreme prejudice towards said terrorists that one has come to expect from protagonists since the dawn of film. With that in mind, our good buddy Travis Greenwood helped to create the following Supercut of various "We do not negotiate with terrorists" lines.

What can we say? We're a sucker for interesting and/or funny Supercuts. I guess that helps to explain why we've previously featured Travis ' work twice already this year with his Pizza Supercut and T-Shirt Supercut.

For some reason, this got me thinking. What I would love to see is a Super Supercut of the Wilhelm scream in film. If you're unfamiliar with the Wilhelm Scream, we previously featured it on the site in a story here. Or, you could simply check out this fun, but far from exhaustive list of Wilhelms.

Of course, once you get accustomed to the Wilhelm, you start hearing it everywhere. Part of that has to do that it's basically everywhere, including this fairly new Twix commercial.

You can thank George Lucas for that since it was insistence on using it in his films that started the Wilhelm renaissance. Interestingly, the Wilhelm could be the best part of a film as it was for me in last year's Rock of Ages.

Anyhow, the challenge has been thrown down. What will it take to create an exhaustive list of Wilhelms? I'd love to see it.