To begin, I haven't looked up if this common movie trope has already been noted anywhere. Partly, I want to avoid finding out that I am not the originator. It is mostly because I really like my term for it. If I learned of a better term for it I would be devastated.

The Hollywood Hop™ is when an actor adds a little extra something before they begin to run. You see this commonly in gymnastics. More often with the vault. Before take-off the athlete will do a high steppy sort of bounce. Some will then do a slight preemptive lunge. Then a hop as if they had misstepped and had just gotten back into sync.

Maybe this is part of the criteria for judging in gymnastics. There are a lot of things I do not understand in sport and it could be the same as the arms flapping on the horizontal bar. The fact this woman just did a triple back flip on the narrow beam without injury is more impressive that how graceful she waves her arm while balancing. This is one of the myriad reasons I am not athlete. Also, I'd look terrible in a leotard.

In moovies, however, this kind of Olympic styled lunge/bounce/skip is annoyingly common and wholy unnecessary. It has become a peeve because it happens so often.

Terminator 2: Judgement Day was the real clincher for me. Linda Hamilton's hop was so extreme that I knew it needed a name. (Maybe I should have called it the Hamilton Hop?)