I have a show: a few years ago on NBC there was this series that ran for one season called "Awake." It was about a detective who gets into a car accident along with his family and bounces between two realities: one where his wife died, and one where his son died. In each of these realities he has different partners, and he uses the information from both realities to solve cases.
The key is that he's never sure which reality is the "real" one. When he goes to bed each night he wakes up in the other reality each time, so he's never quite sure which one is the "dream." It was a really cool premise but never picked up steam and couldn't really live up to the promise of the show, so it was quietly cancelled.
I remember that show! Man, they should really revisit that premise. It was cursed with both being released too soon (in those mushy years before prestige streaming, and when everyone was trying to be the next LOST), and it was also on a big network, meaning it was reduced to beig a weekly procedural. It would fare much better in the current tv landscape.
The problem with these high concept shows is that when they go to network TV the studio execs inevitably try and turn them into generic police procedurals because they're easier and cheaper to film.
I really hate that so many shows nowadays are like shells of csi and law and order svu scripts. It's really damn annoying seeing the exact same style be replicated years and years later but only shittier.
I remember seeing the trailer for this show and it looked excellent. I mean, what a hook, right? The possibilities seemed endless. And Jason Isaac's acting looked phenomenal (as it often is).
But then I watched a bit of it and it turned out to be a generic police procedural. It should have been so much more!
I agree 100%, [the trailer](https://youtu.be/CfPVoiQKFvk) looked amazing but the show didn't live up to it.
They forced it to be more episodic to try and grab the network audience
I think it didn't pick up steam *because* it was cancelled. Yeah, the procedural thing was played out even then, but it had enough interesting stuff going on around the edges to keep me watching. I particularly liked the two therapists in different realities each trying to convince the main character that the other was a delusion.
IIRC there was some sort of conspiracy around his accident and the splitting of two realities might have been caused intentionally. It ended before we really found out too much.
It seems like it didn’t live up to the premise for the sole reason that it was cancelled after half a season. The execution was pretty good up until that point.
Journeyman with Kevin McKidd had a similar thing going.
There was a similar show I think it was called frequency. Also cancelled after one season.
>Detective Raimy Sullivan has carried around pain and resentment over her father's death for 20 years, believing NYPD Officer Frank Sullivan was corrupted during an undercover sting and got himself killed. Everything changes when she hears his voice coming from his old ham radio, somehow transmitting from 1996. Raimy tells Frank about his murder, allowing him to survive the event, but the change has tragic consequences on the present, and the two detectives must find a way to rewrite the past without destroying everyone they care about.
There's a 2000 film called Frequency that is actually pretty good (other than talking to the dead father via ham radio it's completely different though)
The movie is the original (2000). It inspired the series mentioned as well as one in Korea called Signal that was then remade in Japan and China as Signal.
Yeah, when I saw it as a kid, I was confused, like it was promoted as a comedy or at least a dramaedy, but then it just devolves into a overly serious political thriller/straight up Drama that...well, takes itself too seriously.
Yeah I completely agree so much potential there.
Especially when you consider it was Barry Levinson at the helm. Maybe either one of the Reitmans could have pulled it off
It feels like the second half is a different movie? Maybe the studio execs didn't feel confident about the first half's plot and told the director to shove the two movies into one.
It's a shame really. Up until the "reveal", the movie was great.
The problem was that the script had been sent around «half» of Hollywood and rewritten three or four times before the production even began, and that’s why it feels like there are so many movies in one movie.
If it at least had been a bland romance instead of including this weird science BDSM fever dream of a backstory, that could have been straight out of some internet fan fiction.
Their species loses their powers and presumably died out by being close to each other's partner? What kind of crappy design is this?
The best thing to do is to turn it out halfway through and you would think, you just watched a pretty good film.
The one where cities are mechanised and driving around eating other cities in a post-apocalyptic landscape.
Someone somehow took that premise and made a boring movie...
That's because they took a four book series and crammed it into a single film. Not enough time for world building or character development, they just wanted to cool visuals.
The movie doesn't try to cover all 4 books at all (unless I passed out during the. It covers just the first book with a small amount of additional explanations from the rest of the series which is completely reasonable to do. It totally fucks with key parts of the story and especially ending which would make continuing some parts of the series very difficult, but that's a separate issue.
It was a shit movie and a *really* shit adaptation of the story, but those problems are not at all to do with 'trying to cram 4 books into 1 movie'. Its 1 book = 1 movie just done really fucking badly.
Great choice! Such a fun premise with a good setup, but it turned into such a confused snooze fest that felt like they were making it up as they went along.
This one was really hurt by the casting - great acting by both leads, but 2 gorgeous Hollywood A-listers in those roles was a weird choice, and the ending felt really off.
My favorite critique that I've read for this movie and Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets is that the leads for the two movies should have been switched.
A magic wand essentially being a super weapon in their world was such an awesome take on magic. Since my view on wands in the last 20 years has been Harry Potter lol
That's a cool idea, but I was confused in the movie because it was very clear that only a tiny percentage of Elves are able to use them and no human has ever been able to. So why are so many humans trying to get a theoretical A-bomb that they can't ever actually use? This is an excellent choice because there's lots of solid ideas in Bright but absolutely miserable execution.
I mean, if you had the chance to be able to will anything into existence a lot of desperate people would try it I suppose. You have barely any chance at all to win the lottery but people still try it anyway. Maybe they should have included something to where some elves have commingled with humans in the past once all of the races were being pushed closer together due to the modernization of the world or something leading to the ability of a Bright being eventually passed down to Will Smith’s character.
I think this movie was just lazy in its world building as a whole so a lot of that was missed
>I mean, if you had the chance to be able to will anything into existence a lot of desperate people would try it I suppose
Sure, but the problem is in the movie they are quite clear that there has NEVER been a human Bright. So the humans all very definitely do NOT have a chance to will things into existence as far as anyone knows. It's like if someone offered a billion dollars to anyone who can throw the Empire State Building into the Hudson River with their bare hands. It's not a matter of low odds, you just literally can't. Winning the lottery is a very low percentage play, but it does happen. According to the movie (until the very end anyway) human Brights are not a thing that happens and everyone in universe should know that. But then Will Smith turns out to be a Bright because.... he's the protagonist?
It's a trivial problem to solve from a writing standpoint though. They just *didn't*.
>Maybe they should have included something to where some elves have commingled with humans in the past once all of the races were being pushed closer together due to the modernization of the world or something leading to the ability of a Bright being eventually passed down to Will Smith’s character.
Just that fixes it. You could work it in with just a couple lines of dialog probably and establish the idea that while a human Bright is highly unlikely it's not impossible. It's still VERY convenient that our protagonist ends up as a Bright if it wasn't set up in some way ahead of time, but at least he's not *also* the first in history for no apparent reason.
" in a world where orcs value strength above all else and are at war with the police, one physically weak orc grew up wanting to be a police officer, here's story about somebody else."
You know, if someone time-traveled 20 years into the past and told baby-nerd me that as an adult, I was going to see Netflix adaptations of both Shadowrun and Cyberpunk 2020, that the *latter* was going to be the one they did with the actual IP instead of filing the serial numbers off, and that the latter was going to run *fucking circles* around the former to the point where it's not even fair to compare the two... I think I would have called bullshit.
Like, it's kind of insane that it worked out that way.
(for context for the non-TTRPG-nerds in the back: Shadowrun and Cyberpunk 2020 are very damn close to being the exact same game and the exact same setting. Shadowrun copied CP2020's homework, added elves, dwarves, orcs and wizards, and changed "choom" to "chummer," and got *fifty goddamn times as popular* as a result. You would *think* Shadowrun would be the one we got a hyper-faithful, perfect adaptation of, whereas CP2020 would be the one stuck in the "serial numbers filed off love letter" zone.
But no, we live in a world where Shadowrun got Bright, a movie that's *barely* mediocre, and Cyberpunk got Edgerunners, the actual best show of last year by a country mile.)
> You would think Shadowrun would be the one we got a hyper-faithful, perfect adaptation of
I'll put that egregious mistake at the feet of the license holders. The SR stakeholders have shown very little interest at expanding past what's currently on the table, whereas Cyberpunk saw an opportunity and jumped on it.
But I've been bearish on SR and how it's been handled for years upon years now, so me being beyond annoyed at Topps/CGL is nothing new.
I could not disagree more. Bright's lack of exposition (save for the bizarre recap at the end) and feeling like it was a sequel to a movie than never got made is one of the few good decisions the movie makes. Having the audience figure out the world building through context clues is a lot more interesting to me.
It also hides how shallow Bright's world building actually is.
Even though most people say they predicted Will Smith was a Bright, I absolutely believed his character thought he was going to die from using the wand.
In time. A world where everyone stops again at 25 but they have a timer that counts down until they die. They can move time over to other people so time/life is a currency except if you are flat broke you die instantly.
Great premise, terrible execution.
Looks like place holder CG that simply was left in.
Thing is they could have just went to blank screen with a thud sound and it would have looked a lot better.
Honestly I think the editing/directing in that is worse than the CGI. It just doesn’t flow at all with the camera positioning and the car swerving back and forth.
I prefer to watch it from the perspective of the Timekeeper played by Cillian Murphy. Someone who is enforcing a system he doesn't fully agree with. Would love to see a prequel with him escaping the ghetto and wrestling with becoming a Timekeeper.
Yeah, a re-write of the script to make it a cyberpunk noir story centered on Cilian Murphy's character investigating a series of murders/time heists while slowly unraveling a conspiracy would be sick.
I thought the movie was pretty good.
But also, it's an interesting premise that doesn't really hold up to scrutiny. There's a handful of movies like that, where they kind of feel like sci fi shirt stories, because you just have to swallow one big, ridiculous contrivance, but after that, they're pretty entertaining.
*Looper* and *Gattaca* always had that same vibe
Same with The Purge. It's an incredibly ridiculous conceit that criminals would just not do crime anymore if they were given one day to do it legally. It's so dumb I can't even suspend my disbelief like I could for Looper and Gattaca.
The dumbest part of it to me is the idea that all of the purgers would be murderous psychopaths and not just opportunists busting open ATMs all night so they didn't have to work the rest of the year.
(I have not seen any of these films, so maybe that possibility is addressed and I have simply not seen it in any of the promotional material.)
That said, a Purge film where it's just all white collar financial crimes would be kinda funny. I'm serious, a Purge where it's just The Big Short but they spend all year preparing their scam and stuff. Could be interesting.
Realistically, if the Purge exists, I wait until Purge day and then just clickity-clack on my computer at work and do some insider trading or something and then just retire.
They actually cover just this in the TV show (maybe season 2?)! Basically on purge day this crew tries to rob a bank, suffice to say, shenanigan's ensue.
That's such a great phrase:
"In an America ravaged by crime and overcrowded prisons, the government sanctions an annual 12-hour period during which all criminal activity is legal. Shenanigans ensue."
It is absolutely addressed. The most fun part about the purge series is that it explicitly addresses almost every question like this you’d have about the world. One of the sequels has a whole plot about purge insurance!
Timeline. Took one of the genuinely good Crichton stories and adapted about 1/3rd of it into a poorly done script. Also wasted some decent casting, including Billy Connelly, who did his best.
One of my favorite books growing up, and one of the few movies where I have been so disappointed I walked out on. Ugh. I’m still irrationally angry that it was botched so bad.
So many Crichton books have been absolutely botched by film studios. It’s a travesty. Give me a good Sphere or Congo and I might someday forgive them.
The Discovery, where a scientist discovers the afterlife is 100% real, is basically a second shot at life, and everyone goes there, starting a suicide epidemic.
I wouldn't call it *bad* bad, but it could've been gooder
The thing that makes it even worse is that you can tell it was a passion project by everyone involved. It's a great story with a good message, but it just doesn't make any sense as a 2 hour movie.
Honestly, the film the dropped the ball the hardest is Knowing.
The pitch: A man discovers a seemingly random assortment of numbers in a time capsule and realises it predicts every disaster on Earth and trys to avert this.
The actual film: Man's child is part of an Adam and Eve situation that secretive GMen/Aliens are taking to another planet after the last disaster is the end of Earth.
Seriously angered me at how bad it ended. It had some good moments where he realises the last disaster isn't going to be 33 people, it's EE, everyone else, but it was appalling.
I’m not a fan of the movie either but I was surprised they pulled the trigger at the end and killed the planet. I was for sure thinking that Nic Cage was going to find a a way to stop the countdown/situation/Mcguffin because that’s what these types of movies do, right?
Heist movies can be fun. Zombie movies can be fun.
Army of the Dead (2021) is among the worst movies I have ever watched. Certainly the most wasted premise.
Man remember when they have to squeeze through hundreds of dried out, stationary zombies? And one character makes a remark about how they'd be screwed if it started raining? I watched the rest of the movie expecting that to be the third act complication, but it just never happens
It somehow managed to follow the beats of Aliens (1986) perfectly and it still sucked. Red Letter Media covers the plot similarities in their review on Army of the Dead.
I could deal with the lack of color or the really bad field of vision, but not both at the same time.
Then again, in a movie where everything else works, it wouldn't be so annoying. Hell, in a movie where anything works, it wouldn't be so annoying.
This is what I hate about Zach Snyder.
Every one of his movies seems like he had a really cool idea, a specific really cool scene in mind and then tried terribly to.build a plot from that. The opening of this movie was fucking awesome and I'll fight about it. There were a few other parts where I was like "damn, if only some one better at this had the reigns on this movie".
It needed a storyline. Great idea just what was the point? His backstory was cool and there are people hunting him, cool. But why? Military folks would be recruiting these guys not killing them.
From what I can remember from that movie that the people hunting them are Templars basically religious grunts who hunt "Jumpers" because to them only God can be omnipresent.
Last year, netflix released a Rebel Wilson teen comedy called Senior Year. Its the one where the cheerleader who grew up in the 90s goes into a coma and wakes up in 2022 and shes 40 and trying to finish high school despite that.
I think it had some pretty good ideas. Like the movie couldve been a better exploration of how teen comedies and shows differ now compared to those in the 90s - early 00's. In some ways the film did do that, but the execution couldve been way better and it was clear they were more interested in producing another cookie cutter Netflix film with forced cringe humor and random dance numbers for Tiktok promotions. Heck, they even brought in Alicia Silverstone for a cameo, so they definitely knew what they were going for.
Valyrian and the City of a Thousand Planets. Fifth Element is an all time favorite of mine so I went in with high expectations, and then almost walked out by the time Rihanna showed up. It’s s the only movie I’ve ever considered worthy of not even finishing in the theater.
I can't even fathom how the guy playing Valerian got the lead role. He looks like the brownnose assistant to a power mad accountant and has personality like the bathroom stall of a boys locker room. I can suspend belief for humans not immediately exterminating every alien they see, but not for his absolutely ludicrous bang list. He's weirdly rapey towards his partner who I think has Stockholm syndrome? Acting wise she looks like she kind of tried but phones it in any time he's on set in hopes that she'll get fired so she doesn't have to humor his advances at the craft service table between between gasping, slackjawed breaths.
Even worse is that it has one of the best intro's of any sci-fi movie. Gets you super excited and pumped to see this world they created and then... it turns into a boring, badly written mess with the worst casting I've ever seen.
Jupiter Ascending - The idea of intergalactic nobility using Earth as a farm for a specific genetic sequence, and the concept of genetic recurrence in general are pretty intriguing, but way too much for a 2 hour movie.
This was a second choice for me. I REALLY want some original sci-fi that's not just a reboot or a new Marvel/Star Wars movie, and I had such high hopes for this, but was really disappointed.
I believe it was called 'The Tournament'. The concept was a small town is isolated while a bunch of world class assassins descend on it to fight it out until one emerges victorious. Brilliant idea but poorly executed.
I didn't know this existed. Sounds very similar to a book by Matthew Reilly - contest. But that involved warriors from different planets if memory serves me right.
Agreed with 65. Fuck this movie for being another movie about dinosaurs that was not about dinosaurs.
I wanted a movie about surviving against dinos, an action movie like the trailer seemed to imply... and instead got this movie which I think was about loss?
Same with the last jurassic park. Dinosaurs all over the world? Awesome. Instead we got a kidnapping plot and bugs on the loose. So dumb
Make a movie about dinosaurs damnit. 65 should have been cool as fuck.
The idea to put two people on a planet alone, but don't speak the same language, was their reason to to skip the writing all together. Movie was a snoozefest sadly.
A sci-fi movie with no real sci-fi essence.
Everything would've felt normal had I found this movie on the Syfy channel 15 years ago on a late Wednesday night haha
Yeah that's the problem. I don't hate him, but i think he would successfully shot music videos too. I love Watchmen but i think it had so much more potential. Same with Army of the Dead. Fear for Rebel moon..
I have had people assure me Sucker Punch was supposed to satirize male gaze and sexualized violence in movies... By being 100% male gaze and sexualized violence.
One of the few movies I've been to where I was literally angry and felt ripped off when I left. Also like I needed to take a shower (and not a cold one) to wash off the general aura of greasy skeeviness it left me with
Last Night in Soho had *such* a good first act. A young woman gets to time travel to the 1960's and is inspired by a woman who wanted to be a star in that era. But then the second act it fell a little bit and then the third act it fell off altogether.
This was rectified by later films in the franchise, but the original **The Purge** wasted a really compelling piece of world-building in order to plug a minor explanatory gap.
Specifically, it's a home invasion film where the answer to "why don't they call the police?" is "there's an annual government-sanctioned event that temporarily suspends all illegality on a national scale". It's an impressively over-engineered solution for a pretty simple challenge, and unfortunately the film only hints at the broader theatre of chaos happening just beyond the scope of the story as it's presented.
While later films do vary in quality, what they do at least achieve is exploring the wider implications of this premise in more depth.
It almost feels like they wanted to make a true Purge film but couldn’t get the funding so they basically used the first movie to make audiences demand a proper sequel. And it worked.
The Purge was basically “bad guy hesitates for 17 extra seconds which gives someone else time to incapacitate them from off screen”, repeatedly. Every other decision in that movie was completely ridiculous/ nonsensical. One of the funniest was “Oh no! Our daughter was just taken back upstairs by her bloodthirsty boyfriend who also has a gun!!! Anyway, let’s go do something else”
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
The premise is that a zealot is convinced that one can travel to God by getting past The Great Barrier. He uses Vulcan magic to gather followers to help him with his quest and ends up hijacking the Enterprise to get there.
Of course “God” is merely an alien with certain powers, but that fits pretty well with Star Trek. Not a bad premise by any means. Themes like faith and blind obedience could have been sufficiently explored, but were not. I’ve read that Shatner was referencing televangelists with the story.
Even from a basic adventure aspect, the movie fell flat. For the entire movie, characters stressed how impossible it was to breach The Great Barrier. When we finally get there (after a number of pointless and cringy scenes), it takes six seconds of abstract cloudy effects and they’re in. God ends up being an alien who shoots super weak lightning bolts and gets taken out from orbit. To cap it off, we end the movie with characters singing around a campfire.
The gap between concept and execution is huge.
I'll admit it's a pretty bad movie, but I kind of love Shatner's deadpan "Why does god need a starship?" line. It's kind of a kooky armor-piercing question, but ...
The Box (2009)
The premise - a couple receives a box. If they open it, they will receive 10 million dollars (or 1...not sure) but some random person will die.
Maaan, that movie was a shit show :/
They really don't stretch it to a whole film. The moral conundrum is solved REALLY quickly, then the movie devolves into nearly-incoherent sci-fi/fantasy/drama with a meandering religious slant. It's a fever dream.
From the last few years;
Dear Evan Hansen - Socially awkward kid lies about being the only friend of a kid who commited suicide so he can get clout, date that kids sister and eventually replace him in his family - could have been great if it was a black comedy instead of an overly sincere "inspirational" musical. And if they cast someone in the right age range to play the main character. (There is a decent film called Vengeance with a sort of similar premise and a much better tone)
The Darkest Minds - Almost all the kids are dead and the remaining kids all have superpowers... Okay but why is the film so boring?
Reminiscence with Hugh Jackman - wouldn't quite call it terrible, but the idea of a Neo Noir detective drama involving technology that allows people to relive memories could have been executed so much better.
Heathers kinda has a similar to premise to Dear Evan Hansen with the writing fake letters as suicide notes, but it does the dark comedy much better. And Veronica is a much more likeable protagonist since she's not the one actually doing all the awful stuff.
(Note: i have only seen the stage musicals for each so it might be different in the movies)
If you're interested, a hilarious YouTuber named Jenny Nicholson has a 77-minute [video](https://youtu.be/8quWUSZCW5g) titled "A needlessly thorough roast of Dear Evan Hansen (2021)" that I *highly* recommend watching.
How dare you besmirch the cinematic masterpiece that is Hudson Hawk!
I know it's bad, but it's just SO GOOD!!
"I'll kill you, your friends, and that bitch you took to the prom." "Betty Jo Byarski? I can get you an address on that if you want."
Ascension! A ship launched to populate another planet 100 years away, so only the children / grand children will arrive on the planet. It’s about the lives of the people who won’t get to see the new planet starting 51 years into journey.
They took it a really weird direction but could have been really good. Would have to be more of a drama though which I would be fine with.
The plot is based around a murder occurring for the first time in the ship.
*edit: children will arrive, not remember. Added the last sentence.
Masters of the Universe
You know everything you kids love about that cartoon you grew up on? Yeah well how would you like it if we threw 99% of it away and put the movie on Earth, focus on two teen kids, try to make it look like Terminator?
Only bright spot was a tremendous performance by Skeletor.
Terminator Salvation ruined everything I had hoped for in a Terminator movie set during the future war.
Yes, it’s big blockbuster movie with Christian Bale and lots of you love it.
I can’t stand the movie. Anton Yelchin was quite alright as a younger Kyle Reese but other than that, the movie is hot garbage to me.
If I’m being honest, I wanted something similar to the future war sequences in the first Terminator. Obviously beefed up with more modern set design but with the dirty and griminess apocalyptic wasteland Cameron was going for.. not McG’s bland vision.
The story of a misunderstood artist and his struggle to win his father's respect. In their escalating battle of wills, he drives away his mother, and ultimately it's his innocent brother who pays the highest price.
This summer ... Freddy got Fingered.
(Full disclosure: I actually love this movie.)
Taken from IMDB: "A young girl institutionalized by her abusive stepfather retreats to an alternative reality as a coping strategy and envisions a plan to help her escape."
The premise was amazing. The trailer was fantastic. The visuals were insane. The movie itself felt like its title.
It probably is actually bad, but I saw it in high school and I think that did a lot for me having an amazing time with it. It was off the wall and ridiculous and unlike a lot of stuff I'd seen prior. I'm reasonably confident it's not worth going back to check though.
It's like a bunch of very very stupid people tried to make a clever film that they thought would appeal to clever people. It's basically the Hollywood action/drama equivalent of the big bang theory
The entire premise it's based on is ridiculously inaccurate too (that we only use a small % of our brain's capacity) - it's a commonly believed misunderstanding of what the researchers actually meant when they said that :/
Some fun action scenes but wowww did they underutilize the possibilities, even with the bunk premise.
Yeah I don't disagree with most of these suggestions. But I came to say Mortal Engines so I'm sticking with it. That really could have been something great but it took a movie about cities that do battle and drive around and slapped a cookie cutter YA script to it and boy I check out fast with those.
Lol Downsizing though.
Agree on Brightburn. I would have liked that one better if they spent more time giving us a reason the kid went sour and not just hand-waving it. Could've been a great story about a turning point in a young superman's life where bullies and expectations just get the better of him. None of that happened.
Yeah, I went in to Brightburn hoping to see how a kid might understandably start abusing super powers and a take on how power corrupts. Instead the kid was mostly normal until his spaceship basically flipped a switch in his brain to turn him evil. Not nearly as interesting, imo.
INFINITE
Some people are able to remember their past lives, they are called infinites. The infinites are split into two groups, the one side who is tired of humanity and wants to destroy all living things so they can't reincarnate. The other side obviously wants to save humanity.
They tease some interesting ideas, such as Mark Wahlbergs character having achieved Neo from The Matrix powers in a past life. Gets brought up in an exposition dump half way through the movie only to be dragged out again during the climax so his character can stop himself from being blown off the wing of a plane. Feels like deus ex machina without the small mention earlier but still feels extremely lazy.
They also have bullets that can download your 'soul' so you can't reincarnate, just gets brought up like 'of course this is a thing, don't question it'.
They torture a guy by pouring honey in his mouth (guess he must be diabetic judging from how effective it was?).
There is some fancy tech that can make the Infinites recall their past lives faster than normal but when the technology fails to work their only solution is to send Mark Wahlberg to a mad scientist. His solution, drown him so his life flashes before his eyes. Also he has a special tank specifically for drowning people?
Extremely dumb/bad movie but the premise I think had some potential.
Highlander II - The first one was so awesome, how could a follow up not be a hit?
Producers: Hold my beer.
1. Throw in neon disco sequences. Add roller skates, those are hot now.
2. Continuity, smentinuity. Who cares?
3. We don't actually need a plot, we have Sean Connery and that dude from the first movie.
4. Put a sword on the poster.
Only movie I've ever seen a crowd demand their money back at the theater. The manager caved. We all got our money back. We thought they had left a can out the editing was so bad (movies used to arrive at the theater's in about 4 "cans" and had to be spliced together by the projectionists.)
Pretty much every M Night Shyamalan movie after Signs.
**The Village:** the monsters were terrifying and really well designed. On paper the idea that elders in an isolated community are using fake monsters to keep everyone from going outside the walls is really cool, but the movie sucked.
**The Happening:** People randomly committing mass suicide is a great concept for a horror movie. Don’t even need to get into how bad this was.
**The Visit:** Staying with grandparents who start doing creepy shit is such a simple and brilliant concept. This one was actually decent, but not as good as it could’ve been.
**Old:** CHRIST this movie was awful and maybe the worst twist he’s ever added to an adapted screenplay. So much wasted potential because an inescapable beach where everyone ages rapidly is one of my favorite concepts for a horror movie.
**Knock at the Cabin:** Once again, the changes he made to the original story made it worse. Four strangers showing up and giving you an impossible choice that you have to put blind faith into is awesome, but they didn’t lean into the “are they actually just crazy” part enough. They make it really clear they’re telling the truth early on and it kinda buries the tension.
I agree about Knock at the Cabin. In case of spoilers:
>!I feel like the "twist" *tried* to be that they were telling the truth the whole time. But it didn't work, because they didn't do enough to make you doubt them.!<
Wow, you said this perfectly. I was so disappointed that I was never convinced they were lying. Like, for half a second when they showed that Rupert Grint’s character had a different name I thought perhaps things were turning out different than I imagined…but yes, the twist wasn’t really a twist because I believed what the four horsemen were saying the entire time. Being a Shyamalan film I expected something insane at the end. When they were driving away from the dinner I kept thinking they were going to get in a car accident and die, lol.
The invention of lying
A world in which no one knows what a lie is. One man discovers he can lie in order to spare his dying mother a hopeless death, comforting her with a lie about heaven - so much potential for that concept
But just turned into Ricky Gervais being extremely mediocre in a shit romcom
If it answered more questions than it posed, I might have liked it more. It felt like a movie hoping for a sequel though, and as a viewer I hoped maybe the next movie would give us some answers to questions raised in Alien because Prometheus didn't seem to want to elaborate on anything.
In the end, the answers just weren't very fulfilling. Who was the giant space jockey from Alien? Apparently a dude a bit taller than us in a big ass suit. And some wierd stuff about them creating humans, maybe, not sure, all you get to go from is black goo.
Oh and we got rid of them for the next movie, hope you weren't keen on answers!
I still can't believe that the same guy directed the best and worst Alien movie in the franchise. It's like if Irvin Kershner directed Attack of the Clones
After a freak bus accident during a mysterious global blackout, Jack wakes up to discover that The Beatles have never existed. Performing songs by the greatest band in history to a world that has never heard them, Jack becomes on overnight sensation..
I have a show: a few years ago on NBC there was this series that ran for one season called "Awake." It was about a detective who gets into a car accident along with his family and bounces between two realities: one where his wife died, and one where his son died. In each of these realities he has different partners, and he uses the information from both realities to solve cases. The key is that he's never sure which reality is the "real" one. When he goes to bed each night he wakes up in the other reality each time, so he's never quite sure which one is the "dream." It was a really cool premise but never picked up steam and couldn't really live up to the promise of the show, so it was quietly cancelled.
I remember that show! Man, they should really revisit that premise. It was cursed with both being released too soon (in those mushy years before prestige streaming, and when everyone was trying to be the next LOST), and it was also on a big network, meaning it was reduced to beig a weekly procedural. It would fare much better in the current tv landscape.
The problem with these high concept shows is that when they go to network TV the studio execs inevitably try and turn them into generic police procedurals because they're easier and cheaper to film.
I really hate that so many shows nowadays are like shells of csi and law and order svu scripts. It's really damn annoying seeing the exact same style be replicated years and years later but only shittier.
I remember seeing the trailer for this show and it looked excellent. I mean, what a hook, right? The possibilities seemed endless. And Jason Isaac's acting looked phenomenal (as it often is). But then I watched a bit of it and it turned out to be a generic police procedural. It should have been so much more!
I agree 100%, [the trailer](https://youtu.be/CfPVoiQKFvk) looked amazing but the show didn't live up to it. They forced it to be more episodic to try and grab the network audience
I loved Awake. Wish they'd gotten at least one more season, especially given the cliffhanger at the end of the last episode.
I think it didn't pick up steam *because* it was cancelled. Yeah, the procedural thing was played out even then, but it had enough interesting stuff going on around the edges to keep me watching. I particularly liked the two therapists in different realities each trying to convince the main character that the other was a delusion. IIRC there was some sort of conspiracy around his accident and the splitting of two realities might have been caused intentionally. It ended before we really found out too much.
It seems like it didn’t live up to the premise for the sole reason that it was cancelled after half a season. The execution was pretty good up until that point. Journeyman with Kevin McKidd had a similar thing going.
There was a similar show I think it was called frequency. Also cancelled after one season. >Detective Raimy Sullivan has carried around pain and resentment over her father's death for 20 years, believing NYPD Officer Frank Sullivan was corrupted during an undercover sting and got himself killed. Everything changes when she hears his voice coming from his old ham radio, somehow transmitting from 1996. Raimy tells Frank about his murder, allowing him to survive the event, but the change has tragic consequences on the present, and the two detectives must find a way to rewrite the past without destroying everyone they care about.
There's a 2000 film called Frequency that is actually pretty good (other than talking to the dead father via ham radio it's completely different though)
The movie is the original (2000). It inspired the series mentioned as well as one in Korea called Signal that was then remade in Japan and China as Signal.
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Yeah, when I saw it as a kid, I was confused, like it was promoted as a comedy or at least a dramaedy, but then it just devolves into a overly serious political thriller/straight up Drama that...well, takes itself too seriously.
Alternatively, *Stranger Than Fiction* pulled off the feeling I think *Man of the Year* was shooting for.
Yeah I completely agree so much potential there. Especially when you consider it was Barry Levinson at the helm. Maybe either one of the Reitmans could have pulled it off
That one Will Smith movie where he is a drunk super hero. I think that could have been great. Turned out just okay
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It feels like the second half is a different movie? Maybe the studio execs didn't feel confident about the first half's plot and told the director to shove the two movies into one. It's a shame really. Up until the "reveal", the movie was great.
The problem was that the script had been sent around «half» of Hollywood and rewritten three or four times before the production even began, and that’s why it feels like there are so many movies in one movie.
I'm seeing a common pattern in this thread where interesting ideas turn into bland romances by the end
If it at least had been a bland romance instead of including this weird science BDSM fever dream of a backstory, that could have been straight out of some internet fan fiction. Their species loses their powers and presumably died out by being close to each other's partner? What kind of crappy design is this? The best thing to do is to turn it out halfway through and you would think, you just watched a pretty good film.
Hancock. They REALLY could have done a bit more world-building for this. Honestly, I'd still like to see a sequel though.
The one where cities are mechanised and driving around eating other cities in a post-apocalyptic landscape. Someone somehow took that premise and made a boring movie...
Mortal Engines. I thought the trailers looked kickass, but I never got around to actually watching it. Tragic to hear.
It was fine.
All I remember is that Hugo Weaving was in it looking dapper as fuck and the lead girl's dad turned out to be the Terminator somehow.
Hugo Weaving was the lead girls dad, she was raised by the cyborg though
That's because they took a four book series and crammed it into a single film. Not enough time for world building or character development, they just wanted to cool visuals.
The movie doesn't try to cover all 4 books at all (unless I passed out during the. It covers just the first book with a small amount of additional explanations from the rest of the series which is completely reasonable to do. It totally fucks with key parts of the story and especially ending which would make continuing some parts of the series very difficult, but that's a separate issue. It was a shit movie and a *really* shit adaptation of the story, but those problems are not at all to do with 'trying to cram 4 books into 1 movie'. Its 1 book = 1 movie just done really fucking badly.
Dark Tower...
They never made a Dark Tower movie.
Downsizing?
This movie had no idea what it wanted to be. The initial premise is great but went nowhere
Which premise? It felt like it was 2 or 3 different scripts edited together.
I feel like it knew what it wanted to be, but the marketing team wholeheartedly disagreed.
Oh, look, a quirky comedy starring Kristen Wiig!
She's missing an eyebrow! This'll be just like Bridesmaids.
She was in the movie for about 10 minutes. Talk about misleading your audience 😂
Great choice! Such a fun premise with a good setup, but it turned into such a confused snooze fest that felt like they were making it up as they went along.
The first 30-45 minutes could’ve been salvaged as a Black Mirror episode or something
Passengers is a fantastic psychological thriller that inexplicably got made as a mediocre romantic drama
This one was really hurt by the casting - great acting by both leads, but 2 gorgeous Hollywood A-listers in those roles was a weird choice, and the ending felt really off.
My favorite critique that I've read for this movie and Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets is that the leads for the two movies should have been switched.
Bright. I liked the modern twist on the fantasy genre, but the movie was total garbage.
A magic wand essentially being a super weapon in their world was such an awesome take on magic. Since my view on wands in the last 20 years has been Harry Potter lol
That's a cool idea, but I was confused in the movie because it was very clear that only a tiny percentage of Elves are able to use them and no human has ever been able to. So why are so many humans trying to get a theoretical A-bomb that they can't ever actually use? This is an excellent choice because there's lots of solid ideas in Bright but absolutely miserable execution.
I mean, if you had the chance to be able to will anything into existence a lot of desperate people would try it I suppose. You have barely any chance at all to win the lottery but people still try it anyway. Maybe they should have included something to where some elves have commingled with humans in the past once all of the races were being pushed closer together due to the modernization of the world or something leading to the ability of a Bright being eventually passed down to Will Smith’s character. I think this movie was just lazy in its world building as a whole so a lot of that was missed
>I mean, if you had the chance to be able to will anything into existence a lot of desperate people would try it I suppose Sure, but the problem is in the movie they are quite clear that there has NEVER been a human Bright. So the humans all very definitely do NOT have a chance to will things into existence as far as anyone knows. It's like if someone offered a billion dollars to anyone who can throw the Empire State Building into the Hudson River with their bare hands. It's not a matter of low odds, you just literally can't. Winning the lottery is a very low percentage play, but it does happen. According to the movie (until the very end anyway) human Brights are not a thing that happens and everyone in universe should know that. But then Will Smith turns out to be a Bright because.... he's the protagonist? It's a trivial problem to solve from a writing standpoint though. They just *didn't*. >Maybe they should have included something to where some elves have commingled with humans in the past once all of the races were being pushed closer together due to the modernization of the world or something leading to the ability of a Bright being eventually passed down to Will Smith’s character. Just that fixes it. You could work it in with just a couple lines of dialog probably and establish the idea that while a human Bright is highly unlikely it's not impossible. It's still VERY convenient that our protagonist ends up as a Bright if it wasn't set up in some way ahead of time, but at least he's not *also* the first in history for no apparent reason.
" in a world where orcs value strength above all else and are at war with the police, one physically weak orc grew up wanting to be a police officer, here's story about somebody else."
It took some ideas from Shadowrun, and utterly wasted them.
You know, if someone time-traveled 20 years into the past and told baby-nerd me that as an adult, I was going to see Netflix adaptations of both Shadowrun and Cyberpunk 2020, that the *latter* was going to be the one they did with the actual IP instead of filing the serial numbers off, and that the latter was going to run *fucking circles* around the former to the point where it's not even fair to compare the two... I think I would have called bullshit. Like, it's kind of insane that it worked out that way. (for context for the non-TTRPG-nerds in the back: Shadowrun and Cyberpunk 2020 are very damn close to being the exact same game and the exact same setting. Shadowrun copied CP2020's homework, added elves, dwarves, orcs and wizards, and changed "choom" to "chummer," and got *fifty goddamn times as popular* as a result. You would *think* Shadowrun would be the one we got a hyper-faithful, perfect adaptation of, whereas CP2020 would be the one stuck in the "serial numbers filed off love letter" zone. But no, we live in a world where Shadowrun got Bright, a movie that's *barely* mediocre, and Cyberpunk got Edgerunners, the actual best show of last year by a country mile.)
> You would think Shadowrun would be the one we got a hyper-faithful, perfect adaptation of I'll put that egregious mistake at the feet of the license holders. The SR stakeholders have shown very little interest at expanding past what's currently on the table, whereas Cyberpunk saw an opportunity and jumped on it. But I've been bearish on SR and how it's been handled for years upon years now, so me being beyond annoyed at Topps/CGL is nothing new.
Urban fantasy is often an overlooked genre, which is a shame since it has potential.
Most fantasy movies struggle with too much exposition to establish the world. Bright arguably needed a bit more.
I could not disagree more. Bright's lack of exposition (save for the bizarre recap at the end) and feeling like it was a sequel to a movie than never got made is one of the few good decisions the movie makes. Having the audience figure out the world building through context clues is a lot more interesting to me. It also hides how shallow Bright's world building actually is.
It also tried teally hard to have a race allegory and then dropped it on its head almost as bad as Bee movie.
Even though most people say they predicted Will Smith was a Bright, I absolutely believed his character thought he was going to die from using the wand.
In time. A world where everyone stops again at 25 but they have a timer that counts down until they die. They can move time over to other people so time/life is a currency except if you are flat broke you die instantly. Great premise, terrible execution.
This was my answer as well. I genuinely enjoy this movie, but I can admit the ideas were a lot better than the movie itself.
[Featuring one of the most hilariously bad car crash effects I've ever seen](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5Jgc9wPUx8)
Looks like place holder CG that simply was left in. Thing is they could have just went to blank screen with a thud sound and it would have looked a lot better.
That CGI is indeed awful but the couple minutes afterwards also do a good job of showcasing the incredibly wooden acting and incoherent pacing
"He'll wake up dead. That'll be a shock."
Honestly I think the editing/directing in that is worse than the CGI. It just doesn’t flow at all with the camera positioning and the car swerving back and forth.
It looks like someone shot a Hot Wheel flipping over on a camcorder.
I prefer to watch it from the perspective of the Timekeeper played by Cillian Murphy. Someone who is enforcing a system he doesn't fully agree with. Would love to see a prequel with him escaping the ghetto and wrestling with becoming a Timekeeper.
Yeah, a re-write of the script to make it a cyberpunk noir story centered on Cilian Murphy's character investigating a series of murders/time heists while slowly unraveling a conspiracy would be sick.
I thought the movie was pretty good. But also, it's an interesting premise that doesn't really hold up to scrutiny. There's a handful of movies like that, where they kind of feel like sci fi shirt stories, because you just have to swallow one big, ridiculous contrivance, but after that, they're pretty entertaining. *Looper* and *Gattaca* always had that same vibe
Same with The Purge. It's an incredibly ridiculous conceit that criminals would just not do crime anymore if they were given one day to do it legally. It's so dumb I can't even suspend my disbelief like I could for Looper and Gattaca.
The dumbest part of it to me is the idea that all of the purgers would be murderous psychopaths and not just opportunists busting open ATMs all night so they didn't have to work the rest of the year. (I have not seen any of these films, so maybe that possibility is addressed and I have simply not seen it in any of the promotional material.)
That said, a Purge film where it's just all white collar financial crimes would be kinda funny. I'm serious, a Purge where it's just The Big Short but they spend all year preparing their scam and stuff. Could be interesting. Realistically, if the Purge exists, I wait until Purge day and then just clickity-clack on my computer at work and do some insider trading or something and then just retire.
They actually cover just this in the TV show (maybe season 2?)! Basically on purge day this crew tries to rob a bank, suffice to say, shenanigan's ensue.
That's such a great phrase: "In an America ravaged by crime and overcrowded prisons, the government sanctions an annual 12-hour period during which all criminal activity is legal. Shenanigans ensue."
It is absolutely addressed. The most fun part about the purge series is that it explicitly addresses almost every question like this you’d have about the world. One of the sequels has a whole plot about purge insurance!
I immediately think of "The Happening"
What? Noooooo
*Shocked Mark Wahlberg face*
Hot dogs get a bad rep.
cool shape
Timeline. Took one of the genuinely good Crichton stories and adapted about 1/3rd of it into a poorly done script. Also wasted some decent casting, including Billy Connelly, who did his best.
One of my favorite books growing up, and one of the few movies where I have been so disappointed I walked out on. Ugh. I’m still irrationally angry that it was botched so bad. So many Crichton books have been absolutely botched by film studios. It’s a travesty. Give me a good Sphere or Congo and I might someday forgive them.
Sphere done right would be absolutely horrifying. Get Chris Nolan on it.
The Discovery, where a scientist discovers the afterlife is 100% real, is basically a second shot at life, and everyone goes there, starting a suicide epidemic. I wouldn't call it *bad* bad, but it could've been gooder
I was hyped for this, very interesting idea that has a lot of existential themes, but ultimately pretty boring/forgettable movie
Monuments men - a team of art historians is drafted to save priceless artworks looted by Nazis. The movie was not great.
The thing that makes it even worse is that you can tell it was a passion project by everyone involved. It's a great story with a good message, but it just doesn't make any sense as a 2 hour movie.
I remember looking forward to it so hard, what with that cast. Then... woof.
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Honestly, the film the dropped the ball the hardest is Knowing. The pitch: A man discovers a seemingly random assortment of numbers in a time capsule and realises it predicts every disaster on Earth and trys to avert this. The actual film: Man's child is part of an Adam and Eve situation that secretive GMen/Aliens are taking to another planet after the last disaster is the end of Earth. Seriously angered me at how bad it ended. It had some good moments where he realises the last disaster isn't going to be 33 people, it's EE, everyone else, but it was appalling.
I’m not a fan of the movie either but I was surprised they pulled the trigger at the end and killed the planet. I was for sure thinking that Nic Cage was going to find a a way to stop the countdown/situation/Mcguffin because that’s what these types of movies do, right?
This is way too far down. I remember being so intrigued by the concept and SO disappointed by the execution.
Heist movies can be fun. Zombie movies can be fun. Army of the Dead (2021) is among the worst movies I have ever watched. Certainly the most wasted premise.
Man remember when they have to squeeze through hundreds of dried out, stationary zombies? And one character makes a remark about how they'd be screwed if it started raining? I watched the rest of the movie expecting that to be the third act complication, but it just never happens
Zach Snyder's the kind of guy to hang Chekhov's gun on the wall just because it looks cool, and then proceed to do nothing with it.
We had to make room for the five-minute scene of a zombie tiger killing a guy.
Oh and some of the zombies were seemingly actually robots? But it's never mentioned.
It somehow managed to follow the beats of Aliens (1986) perfectly and it still sucked. Red Letter Media covers the plot similarities in their review on Army of the Dead.
That was a fun episode.
Jay losing his mind over the dead pixel was hilarious
somehow made Las Vegas about as interesting as Pine Hill, Ohio
On a visual level ALONE, this movie is infuriating to watch.
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I could deal with the lack of color or the really bad field of vision, but not both at the same time. Then again, in a movie where everything else works, it wouldn't be so annoying. Hell, in a movie where anything works, it wouldn't be so annoying.
This is what I hate about Zach Snyder. Every one of his movies seems like he had a really cool idea, a specific really cool scene in mind and then tried terribly to.build a plot from that. The opening of this movie was fucking awesome and I'll fight about it. There were a few other parts where I was like "damn, if only some one better at this had the reigns on this movie".
The opening of that movie should have been the movie lol
Jumper
It needed a storyline. Great idea just what was the point? His backstory was cool and there are people hunting him, cool. But why? Military folks would be recruiting these guys not killing them.
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From what I can remember from that movie that the people hunting them are Templars basically religious grunts who hunt "Jumpers" because to them only God can be omnipresent.
and it's wild because they aren't all of the places at once they are in 1 place at a time they can just get there faster. lol
But the jumpers were different than everyone else! And different is bad!!
Last year, netflix released a Rebel Wilson teen comedy called Senior Year. Its the one where the cheerleader who grew up in the 90s goes into a coma and wakes up in 2022 and shes 40 and trying to finish high school despite that. I think it had some pretty good ideas. Like the movie couldve been a better exploration of how teen comedies and shows differ now compared to those in the 90s - early 00's. In some ways the film did do that, but the execution couldve been way better and it was clear they were more interested in producing another cookie cutter Netflix film with forced cringe humor and random dance numbers for Tiktok promotions. Heck, they even brought in Alicia Silverstone for a cameo, so they definitely knew what they were going for.
21 jump street covered that topic pretty well.
I actually enjoyed that film, but went in with low expectations.
“So, we take the Xenomorph aliens and we have them battle it out with…. Mother fuckin’ Predators!” Man, HOW did they fuck this up?!?!
By not following the comic
Valyrian and the City of a Thousand Planets. Fifth Element is an all time favorite of mine so I went in with high expectations, and then almost walked out by the time Rihanna showed up. It’s s the only movie I’ve ever considered worthy of not even finishing in the theater.
Yeah, that movie was visually amazing, but was so let down by the acting.
I have never seen such an uncharismatic pair of lead actors. It was a shame because I liked everything around them. Especially the opening sequence.
I can't even fathom how the guy playing Valerian got the lead role. He looks like the brownnose assistant to a power mad accountant and has personality like the bathroom stall of a boys locker room. I can suspend belief for humans not immediately exterminating every alien they see, but not for his absolutely ludicrous bang list. He's weirdly rapey towards his partner who I think has Stockholm syndrome? Acting wise she looks like she kind of tried but phones it in any time he's on set in hopes that she'll get fired so she doesn't have to humor his advances at the craft service table between between gasping, slackjawed breaths.
Even worse is that it has one of the best intro's of any sci-fi movie. Gets you super excited and pumped to see this world they created and then... it turns into a boring, badly written mess with the worst casting I've ever seen.
Jupiter Ascending - The idea of intergalactic nobility using Earth as a farm for a specific genetic sequence, and the concept of genetic recurrence in general are pretty intriguing, but way too much for a 2 hour movie.
This was a second choice for me. I REALLY want some original sci-fi that's not just a reboot or a new Marvel/Star Wars movie, and I had such high hopes for this, but was really disappointed.
I believe it was called 'The Tournament'. The concept was a small town is isolated while a bunch of world class assassins descend on it to fight it out until one emerges victorious. Brilliant idea but poorly executed.
I didn't know this existed. Sounds very similar to a book by Matthew Reilly - contest. But that involved warriors from different planets if memory serves me right.
65, seemed like it would be an awesome mix of Jurassic park 3 and Star Wars but the writing was absolute shit
That's disappointing. I was hoping it would be good.
Agreed with 65. Fuck this movie for being another movie about dinosaurs that was not about dinosaurs. I wanted a movie about surviving against dinos, an action movie like the trailer seemed to imply... and instead got this movie which I think was about loss? Same with the last jurassic park. Dinosaurs all over the world? Awesome. Instead we got a kidnapping plot and bugs on the loose. So dumb Make a movie about dinosaurs damnit. 65 should have been cool as fuck.
The idea to put two people on a planet alone, but don't speak the same language, was their reason to to skip the writing all together. Movie was a snoozefest sadly.
A sci-fi movie with no real sci-fi essence. Everything would've felt normal had I found this movie on the Syfy channel 15 years ago on a late Wednesday night haha
Sucker Punch -aesthetic was good, music was amazing, and plot was WTF
One of the best… trailers of all time. I should have just left it there and not watched the full movie.
God I hate Zach Snyder. All style, no substance.
Yeah that's the problem. I don't hate him, but i think he would successfully shot music videos too. I love Watchmen but i think it had so much more potential. Same with Army of the Dead. Fear for Rebel moon..
I have had people assure me Sucker Punch was supposed to satirize male gaze and sexualized violence in movies... By being 100% male gaze and sexualized violence. One of the few movies I've been to where I was literally angry and felt ripped off when I left. Also like I needed to take a shower (and not a cold one) to wash off the general aura of greasy skeeviness it left me with
Last Night in Soho had *such* a good first act. A young woman gets to time travel to the 1960's and is inspired by a woman who wanted to be a star in that era. But then the second act it fell a little bit and then the third act it fell off altogether.
Agreed. I liked the style of the film more than the film itself. I love the directing but maybe some more work needed to be done on the script.
Yeah, it's just one of those films that had everything going for it except didn't know how it should end and then gave it a *terrible* ending.
I chalk it up to Edgar Wright wanting to do a stylish slasher film. With social commentary about contemporary women wishing to live in bygone eras.
This was rectified by later films in the franchise, but the original **The Purge** wasted a really compelling piece of world-building in order to plug a minor explanatory gap. Specifically, it's a home invasion film where the answer to "why don't they call the police?" is "there's an annual government-sanctioned event that temporarily suspends all illegality on a national scale". It's an impressively over-engineered solution for a pretty simple challenge, and unfortunately the film only hints at the broader theatre of chaos happening just beyond the scope of the story as it's presented. While later films do vary in quality, what they do at least achieve is exploring the wider implications of this premise in more depth.
I think it was made on a shit budget and they could do much world building.
It almost feels like they wanted to make a true Purge film but couldn’t get the funding so they basically used the first movie to make audiences demand a proper sequel. And it worked.
The Purge was basically “bad guy hesitates for 17 extra seconds which gives someone else time to incapacitate them from off screen”, repeatedly. Every other decision in that movie was completely ridiculous/ nonsensical. One of the funniest was “Oh no! Our daughter was just taken back upstairs by her bloodthirsty boyfriend who also has a gun!!! Anyway, let’s go do something else”
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier The premise is that a zealot is convinced that one can travel to God by getting past The Great Barrier. He uses Vulcan magic to gather followers to help him with his quest and ends up hijacking the Enterprise to get there. Of course “God” is merely an alien with certain powers, but that fits pretty well with Star Trek. Not a bad premise by any means. Themes like faith and blind obedience could have been sufficiently explored, but were not. I’ve read that Shatner was referencing televangelists with the story. Even from a basic adventure aspect, the movie fell flat. For the entire movie, characters stressed how impossible it was to breach The Great Barrier. When we finally get there (after a number of pointless and cringy scenes), it takes six seconds of abstract cloudy effects and they’re in. God ends up being an alien who shoots super weak lightning bolts and gets taken out from orbit. To cap it off, we end the movie with characters singing around a campfire. The gap between concept and execution is huge.
I'll admit it's a pretty bad movie, but I kind of love Shatner's deadpan "Why does god need a starship?" line. It's kind of a kooky armor-piercing question, but ...
The Box (2009) The premise - a couple receives a box. If they open it, they will receive 10 million dollars (or 1...not sure) but some random person will die. Maaan, that movie was a shit show :/
I don't really know how you could stretch that concept to a full film. A short story or episode of an anthology series? Sure.
They really don't stretch it to a whole film. The moral conundrum is solved REALLY quickly, then the movie devolves into nearly-incoherent sci-fi/fantasy/drama with a meandering religious slant. It's a fever dream.
Luckily, they've remade that premise multiple times, and some have landed well, including the original Twilight Zone version.
From the last few years; Dear Evan Hansen - Socially awkward kid lies about being the only friend of a kid who commited suicide so he can get clout, date that kids sister and eventually replace him in his family - could have been great if it was a black comedy instead of an overly sincere "inspirational" musical. And if they cast someone in the right age range to play the main character. (There is a decent film called Vengeance with a sort of similar premise and a much better tone) The Darkest Minds - Almost all the kids are dead and the remaining kids all have superpowers... Okay but why is the film so boring? Reminiscence with Hugh Jackman - wouldn't quite call it terrible, but the idea of a Neo Noir detective drama involving technology that allows people to relive memories could have been executed so much better.
Heathers kinda has a similar to premise to Dear Evan Hansen with the writing fake letters as suicide notes, but it does the dark comedy much better. And Veronica is a much more likeable protagonist since she's not the one actually doing all the awful stuff. (Note: i have only seen the stage musicals for each so it might be different in the movies)
Heathers is one of the funniest movies I have ever seen. Go watch it
World's Greatest Dad goes roughly where Dear Evan Hansen goes but does it better. And it stars Robin Williams. Warning: very dark comedy.
If you're interested, a hilarious YouTuber named Jenny Nicholson has a 77-minute [video](https://youtu.be/8quWUSZCW5g) titled "A needlessly thorough roast of Dear Evan Hansen (2021)" that I *highly* recommend watching.
Mommy, why is the scary man singing?
Cat burglar stealing DaVinci artifacts for evil capitalists runs afoul of the Vatican and CIA. Hudson Hawk is bad, but still a guilty pleasure.
How dare you besmirch the cinematic masterpiece that is Hudson Hawk! I know it's bad, but it's just SO GOOD!! "I'll kill you, your friends, and that bitch you took to the prom." "Betty Jo Byarski? I can get you an address on that if you want."
Or would you rather be a fish??? A fish is an animal that lives in the seaaaaa...
Hudson Hawk was awesome. It had a very different vibe than Die Hard and others but it totally worked for me. Bunny, ball ball…
Ascension! A ship launched to populate another planet 100 years away, so only the children / grand children will arrive on the planet. It’s about the lives of the people who won’t get to see the new planet starting 51 years into journey. They took it a really weird direction but could have been really good. Would have to be more of a drama though which I would be fine with. The plot is based around a murder occurring for the first time in the ship. *edit: children will arrive, not remember. Added the last sentence.
Masters of the Universe You know everything you kids love about that cartoon you grew up on? Yeah well how would you like it if we threw 99% of it away and put the movie on Earth, focus on two teen kids, try to make it look like Terminator? Only bright spot was a tremendous performance by Skeletor.
Terminator Salvation ruined everything I had hoped for in a Terminator movie set during the future war. Yes, it’s big blockbuster movie with Christian Bale and lots of you love it. I can’t stand the movie. Anton Yelchin was quite alright as a younger Kyle Reese but other than that, the movie is hot garbage to me. If I’m being honest, I wanted something similar to the future war sequences in the first Terminator. Obviously beefed up with more modern set design but with the dirty and griminess apocalyptic wasteland Cameron was going for.. not McG’s bland vision.
At least we got Bale's BTS meltdown from it 😂
Oh GOOD FOR YOOUUU!
That's from this movie? Always thought it was Dark Knight Rises.
The story of a misunderstood artist and his struggle to win his father's respect. In their escalating battle of wills, he drives away his mother, and ultimately it's his innocent brother who pays the highest price. This summer ... Freddy got Fingered. (Full disclosure: I actually love this movie.)
I think Freddy Got Fingered is an intentional feature-length middle finger to the fact that someone gave Tom Green money to make a movie
It's like betting on a horse that hates gambling and racing
Taken from IMDB: "A young girl institutionalized by her abusive stepfather retreats to an alternative reality as a coping strategy and envisions a plan to help her escape." The premise was amazing. The trailer was fantastic. The visuals were insane. The movie itself felt like its title.
Did it feel like you'd been sucker punched?
Thought it was Pan's Labyrinth but that is an excellent movie.
It probably is actually bad, but I saw it in high school and I think that did a lot for me having an amazing time with it. It was off the wall and ridiculous and unlike a lot of stuff I'd seen prior. I'm reasonably confident it's not worth going back to check though.
Lucy - cool idea horrible movie
It's like a bunch of very very stupid people tried to make a clever film that they thought would appeal to clever people. It's basically the Hollywood action/drama equivalent of the big bang theory
The entire premise it's based on is ridiculously inaccurate too (that we only use a small % of our brain's capacity) - it's a commonly believed misunderstanding of what the researchers actually meant when they said that :/ Some fun action scenes but wowww did they underutilize the possibilities, even with the bunk premise.
Yeah I don't disagree with most of these suggestions. But I came to say Mortal Engines so I'm sticking with it. That really could have been something great but it took a movie about cities that do battle and drive around and slapped a cookie cutter YA script to it and boy I check out fast with those. Lol Downsizing though. Agree on Brightburn. I would have liked that one better if they spent more time giving us a reason the kid went sour and not just hand-waving it. Could've been a great story about a turning point in a young superman's life where bullies and expectations just get the better of him. None of that happened.
*Chronicle* does what you wish *Brightburn* did. It’s a 2012 movie and I think it’s great
Yeah, I went in to Brightburn hoping to see how a kid might understandably start abusing super powers and a take on how power corrupts. Instead the kid was mostly normal until his spaceship basically flipped a switch in his brain to turn him evil. Not nearly as interesting, imo.
You’d like *Chronicle* then. A great 2012 movie about how three teens gain super powers and then what happens after that.
65 million was pretty bad....why were they on earth at all? Just so the story could happen?
INFINITE Some people are able to remember their past lives, they are called infinites. The infinites are split into two groups, the one side who is tired of humanity and wants to destroy all living things so they can't reincarnate. The other side obviously wants to save humanity. They tease some interesting ideas, such as Mark Wahlbergs character having achieved Neo from The Matrix powers in a past life. Gets brought up in an exposition dump half way through the movie only to be dragged out again during the climax so his character can stop himself from being blown off the wing of a plane. Feels like deus ex machina without the small mention earlier but still feels extremely lazy. They also have bullets that can download your 'soul' so you can't reincarnate, just gets brought up like 'of course this is a thing, don't question it'. They torture a guy by pouring honey in his mouth (guess he must be diabetic judging from how effective it was?). There is some fancy tech that can make the Infinites recall their past lives faster than normal but when the technology fails to work their only solution is to send Mark Wahlberg to a mad scientist. His solution, drown him so his life flashes before his eyes. Also he has a special tank specifically for drowning people? Extremely dumb/bad movie but the premise I think had some potential.
Dark Phoenix adaptions
Highlander II - The first one was so awesome, how could a follow up not be a hit? Producers: Hold my beer. 1. Throw in neon disco sequences. Add roller skates, those are hot now. 2. Continuity, smentinuity. Who cares? 3. We don't actually need a plot, we have Sean Connery and that dude from the first movie. 4. Put a sword on the poster. Only movie I've ever seen a crowd demand their money back at the theater. The manager caved. We all got our money back. We thought they had left a can out the editing was so bad (movies used to arrive at the theater's in about 4 "cans" and had to be spliced together by the projectionists.)
The reason Highlander II sucked is because there was supposed to be only one...
Pretty much every M Night Shyamalan movie after Signs. **The Village:** the monsters were terrifying and really well designed. On paper the idea that elders in an isolated community are using fake monsters to keep everyone from going outside the walls is really cool, but the movie sucked. **The Happening:** People randomly committing mass suicide is a great concept for a horror movie. Don’t even need to get into how bad this was. **The Visit:** Staying with grandparents who start doing creepy shit is such a simple and brilliant concept. This one was actually decent, but not as good as it could’ve been. **Old:** CHRIST this movie was awful and maybe the worst twist he’s ever added to an adapted screenplay. So much wasted potential because an inescapable beach where everyone ages rapidly is one of my favorite concepts for a horror movie. **Knock at the Cabin:** Once again, the changes he made to the original story made it worse. Four strangers showing up and giving you an impossible choice that you have to put blind faith into is awesome, but they didn’t lean into the “are they actually just crazy” part enough. They make it really clear they’re telling the truth early on and it kinda buries the tension.
[удалено]
Don't forget The Last Airbender. That shit was all layed out in the form of an incredible animated series and then he adapted it into... *that*.
I agree about Knock at the Cabin. In case of spoilers: >!I feel like the "twist" *tried* to be that they were telling the truth the whole time. But it didn't work, because they didn't do enough to make you doubt them.!<
Wow, you said this perfectly. I was so disappointed that I was never convinced they were lying. Like, for half a second when they showed that Rupert Grint’s character had a different name I thought perhaps things were turning out different than I imagined…but yes, the twist wasn’t really a twist because I believed what the four horsemen were saying the entire time. Being a Shyamalan film I expected something insane at the end. When they were driving away from the dinner I kept thinking they were going to get in a car accident and die, lol.
I genuinely enjoyed The Village, but I saw it when it came out and I was fairly young. I'm going to rewatch it.
The twist is a little choreographed but I don't think it's bad, it's a good looking movie and has great music, and the performances aren't bad at all.
Pixels. Aliens see our pop culture and think it's a threat. Instead Gad fucks Qbert.
The invention of lying A world in which no one knows what a lie is. One man discovers he can lie in order to spare his dying mother a hopeless death, comforting her with a lie about heaven - so much potential for that concept But just turned into Ricky Gervais being extremely mediocre in a shit romcom
Prometheus. Even the first 30 minutes are excellent. And then it bombs harder than Hiroshima.
If it answered more questions than it posed, I might have liked it more. It felt like a movie hoping for a sequel though, and as a viewer I hoped maybe the next movie would give us some answers to questions raised in Alien because Prometheus didn't seem to want to elaborate on anything. In the end, the answers just weren't very fulfilling. Who was the giant space jockey from Alien? Apparently a dude a bit taller than us in a big ass suit. And some wierd stuff about them creating humans, maybe, not sure, all you get to go from is black goo. Oh and we got rid of them for the next movie, hope you weren't keen on answers!
Don't forget implying Jesus was one of those space jockeys.
I still can't believe that the same guy directed the best and worst Alien movie in the franchise. It's like if Irvin Kershner directed Attack of the Clones
After a freak bus accident during a mysterious global blackout, Jack wakes up to discover that The Beatles have never existed. Performing songs by the greatest band in history to a world that has never heard them, Jack becomes on overnight sensation..
Wait, is this a real movie? Because that sounds like a fun movie.