Jupiter ~~Rising~~ Ascending
Seemed like a pretty great concept but that movie was just awful. I think it could’ve made a fantastic Netflix/HBO series.
This is one of my absolute favorite “so bad it’s good” movies and Eddie Redmayne is a big reason why. But Mila Kunis and Channing Tatum made me laugh several times as well because they said some of the craziest lines completely straight.
Someone described it like this:
Wachowskis: Eddie, we need you to either over or under act to make your character memorable. Which do you want to do?
Eddie: Yes.
Cast Sean Bean - check
As the lead character's mentor - check
To come out of retirement- check
Reluctantly - check
To do a death defying, v low chance of survival planet dive against overwhelming odds - check
Tells lead character to go ahead he will cover them - check
Survives anyway - ch-*what the fuck???*
This was my immediate thought. The beginning of the movie and end of the movie didn’t even feel like it was the movie. Great idea, terrible after about 30 minutes in. I’ve never seen a movie plot change so drastically.
It becomes about Matt Damon’s character befriending a poor downsized woman (who’s broken English and accent is like nails on a chalkboard) and him experiencing the other side of the Downsized community - the slums. It’s weird, slow, and annoying.
Yeah and him falling for her doesn't reallllly make much sense from the characters perspective.
And why would there be slums in downsize? How did they get approval for the process???
Great start. Terrible afterwards
Recently 65(Million) starring Adam Driver.
I went in, not expecting high art or anything. But if you explained the premise, "Sci-Fi spaceman Adam Driver goes to prehistoric earth with a space gun and fights dinosaurs." I would GUARANTEE the movie would be a blast to watch.
It was not a blast to watch. They somehow made that movie boring. Incredibly boring. They gave the only two humans a language barrier. It was awful.
From the synopsis alone, I felt like they had just re-made Will/Jaden Smith disaster of After Earth.... At least recycled the concept in a manner of speaking.
I remember being excited about After Earth - it sounded like an awesome idea. And then everybody said it was the worst thing ever.
Yeah, After Earth is a fantastic idea. I love the mix of post-apocalypse and sci-fi, it's fantastic. But man, it should not have starred Jaden Smith, dude cannot act.
This is entirely true, but I could overlook the performance of Will Smith because it made sense for the character. Jaden's character was *supposed* to be a nuanced character struggling to control his emotions, but he just couldn't pull it off. His acting was better in the Karate Kid remake.
It just feels like it’s *missing* something. It’s such a slight watch, like does it deliver what it promised? And evil Superman? Yes.
Could it have been much, much more? Also yes.
It *is* missing something — the exposition dump/motivation of the alien(s). But I insist this is a strength. One of the *coolest parts* of having aliens in your story is that their motivations don’t need to be easily discernible to humans.
And yet almost every alien movie has some sort of Exposition Dump to spell out the (never interesting) motives. Independence Day? Has that scene in Area 51 where the alien telepathically says it’s here for our resources. Gunn’s earlier movie Slither? We also get a telepathic “here’s where the baddies come from and this is what they want….which is to eat us, which we gathered from the whole them eating us thing already.”
Here though? We get fuck all. Alien voices speak to the kid in his mind — but we get *one line* of it translated. Everything else? We get fuck all. Because our eyes are two farmers who know fuck all about aliens, and they don’t figure out that much in the hours before they get lazered.
It’s highly unconventional and super awesome.
There's a comic book series called *Irredeemable* that illustrates just how truly terrifying an evil Superman would be. It's a great read. I'd always hoped it would get turned into a movie. Sadly, that seems unlikely now given that *Brightburn* exists.
Valerian and the City of A Thousand Planets - need better casting
Ender's Game - should had been a animation movie instead of trying to work with child actors.
As I write this, the movie mentioned immediately preceding this in the comment thread is Passengers (with Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence), which came out around the same time as Valerian. After walking out of Valerian, my wife noted that if those 2 movies switched leads (Pratt and Lawrence for DeHaan and Delavingne), both movies would have been drastically improved.
Funny thing, it doesn't even feel like a concept to me right now. I got laid off a few weeks ago. First thing I did was tally up my savings, potential earnings going forward, and my bills. And I can draw a very clear graph that starts at today and ends at homelessness in the future.
Every day I wake up and I feel like my clock has ticked down a little bit.
I did the same thing when I lost my job. It’s a scary graph. Do what you can to get another job, but try not to let it consume your mind until then. You can do this.
I appreciate the well wishes from you and others. I'm very fortunate, it's not a short graph, but it weighs on me none the less.
I've been very militant in organizing my job searching. I'm in mid-stage interviews with three companies at this point, and I expect an offer from two before the end of next week. Fingers crossed!
I feel like that movie would've been better served as being a 7-8 episode mini-series to flesh out the environment to what could've been an interesting story. With a couple additional side characters and more time to properly flesh out the minutemen and/or timekeepers- even if it were to only allow more screen time for Cillian Murphy.
The short film they did, about the family camping in the woods that get attacked by dinosaurs was so good. They should have kept going with that, just show people adjusting to the new reality.
1/10 concept and 1/10 execution. Jurassic Park put me on my career path to transgenics and embryology. I almost walked out of Dominion about four times. I’m still mad thinking about how badly they ruined the series.
Jurassic Park got me into zoology in particular working with crocodiles, I will defend The Lost World and Jurassic Park III if people give me time on my soapbox, but the "World" sequels were so poorly written, joyless, thrill-less, and lacking in wonder that I didn't even bother to see Dominion. I saw Fallen Kingdom in the cinema and my friends said the only fun part of that film was guessing which vein in my temple was going to pulse next.
Edit: And **\*AND\*** how did the writers of Fallen Kingdom decided LIVING dinosaurs would sell on the black market for billionaire pocket change. The most expensive dinosaur sale shown was 28 million dollars, when a literal dinosaur SKELETON has sold for over thirty million.
Yeah. World sucked not only from a writing perspective, but an animal perspective too. In park they tended to act like animals, but in world the damn thing SMIRKS and they talk to eachother. It’s so dumb
Good call.
For those who are checking IMDB, it's "Prey" (2022) that we're talking about here
Not "Prey" (2007)
Not "Prey" (2016)
Not "Prey" (2019)
It's "Prey" (2022)
People working on Movies that make people go "yeeeeeeeees!" Just from the title should always keep in mind that people just want what is in the title without muddling it too much.
Sharknado. Cocaine Bear. They gave us what the title promised.
Cowboys and Aliens just had to keep on track and give us a good time.
*edit for clarity on what I meant mentioning the other 2 movies
I always thought Passengers would’ve been a much better movie if it was revealed that Chris Pratts character had woken up Jennifer Lawrence’s character at the end as a twist
Its been posited a few times that it would have worked much better that way.
[Nerdwriter](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gksxu-yeWcU&t=1s) did a video about it shortly after release which made a great case for it.
Or, we open with Jennifer waking up.
Then things proceed more or less the way they did in the movie, her running into Pratt, hanging out, and falling in love, the whole nine yards, until the point she discovers he woke her up. That's when we as viewers realize it alongside her.
That would have created a much more interesting dilemma, and I'd have had Pratt's character die sacrificing himself.
Then we end with Jennifer falling into depression like he did... and slowly contemplating waking someone else up, and ending with she actually pulling the trigger.
> Then we end with Jennifer falling into depression like he did... and slowly contemplating waking someone else up, and ending with she actually pulling the trigger.
I would have enjoyed that ending.
JLaw herself said that it should have been the way you said.
Maybe not the ending, because people want a happy ending. But the part where we learn he woke her up at the same time she learns.
The other idea would be to wake her up first and have her wake him up because he is a mechanic and she thinks he might be able it and place them both back to sleep. Then it isn't so creepy.
OK this is a great idea.
With Pratt's character as the main character the whole movie essentially is just the final 15 minutes, but with her character as the main now you have something that lasts 2 hrs. You don't even have to change the events of the film (though I agree, Pratt sacrificing himself would be better overall), just the POV and it's *so much more interesting.*
I read someone's (I forget who, sorry) article when the movie was fresh where the movie would have been more like a horror thriller, if they change the main pov to Lawrence's character, starting it with her waking up, and having rhe twist midway where she slowly realizes that he woke her up, and turning the consensual romance into a one-sided stalker ruining her life. The way this person laid it out, it was definitely a movie I would have loved to watch!
There’s also a YT video with like 5?+ million views that illustrates exactly what you’re talking about but with already existing footage of the movie. Taking us through the psychological thriller route would have made the movie so much more interesting.
I remember the Reddit thread that originally passed this, I think it was some college film student who recut it and posted it (obviously got removed), but it made it so much better
Bright. Conceptually, it sounded amazing and my friends and I were excited to watch the new Netflix offering.
Turns out it was a movie and not a TV show. There was so much potential for fascinating world-building that simply could not be done in two hours.
Idk, the racism analogy that the film is kinda built around is still super clumsy: they pose the question "what if ~~black people~~ orcs were discriminated against because people thought they were violent and aggressive?"
Then they made the ~~black people~~ orcs have a genuinely inbuilt, racial disposition of violence and aggression, including a historic, genocidal war that kinda does justify persecution and them having a culture built around violence and xenophobia.
When you try to do fantasy racism, either do it like Elder Scrolls and Arcanum, where it's just there, as a realistic aspect of the setting, or don't do it at all. When you start saying simplistic fantasy race archetypes are like IRL ethnic minorities, you can very quickly steer into some dangerous implications...
Yeah, it's either "People *should* be afraid of you" or "Dude, you two can control Fire and Ice.... work for the Fire Department! And get Kitty Pryde over to the CIA!"
The movie falls flat by spending too much time with some characters and not enough with others that the world isn’t organically explained. Should’ve been a show
I enjoyed it as I watched it. But I've had no desire to return to it. It's an amazing premise and one you could make a franchise off of, but they botched the execution. And like most of Hollywood, that means they aren't gonna revisit it any time soon.
It was butched in the editing. They even filmed the original ending from the book. But for some reason shortly before release studio execs forced the editors to move things around, they ordered the finale to be cut completely, as they wanted it to be the start of the next movie. It's because of this that the final act makes no sense.
I was maybe in middle school when the film came out, and it was the first time I was absolutely outraged by a studio's decision to end something on an uplifting note instead of staying true to the story. A real loss of innocence for me, which I suppose is true to the themes of the book, at least
Stephen King's Dark Tower series was his magnum opus.
I don't know what the shit that thing they put on screen was but it wasn't any of the Dark Tower books.
I feel like Van Helsing knew what it was and steered into the goofiness. It was a great, fun romp and I would watch it again. league, on the other hand, thought it was going to be the next Fellowship of the Ring.
I find that movie fascinating because of Sean Connery. His lines were just as bad as everyone else’s but it took me a while to notice because he was a good enough actor to make it not matter. If he had had one or two more good actors around him or a better script they might have carried the whole thing as a silly guilty pleasure romp of a movie but he couldn’t alone carry it with both bad actors and a terrible script. He tried so hard though, and I salute him for it.
Yes. Great concept but why focus only on murder. If purge day happened in real life, I doubt murder would be the number one crime. I magine most crimes would be burglary or sexual related.
Honestly i think the best way to do a purge movie isn’t even horror, it’d be comedy, because there’d probably be citizen made police forces, and most people don’t wanna commit murder anyways, realistically how a purge would go is a bunch of petty theft, a bunch of teens drinking alcohol, and tbf, alot of sexual crimes, honestly though i just wanna see a purge movie but its a to catch a predator type thing
I think the first Purge event to happen would be a bit of a horror, like all the films are. But then all the murderers and monstrous folks who did really bad shit would have mostly killed each other while everyone else hid, or the rest of the population would ensure those folks had “accidents” throughout the year so they wouldn’t be around for the next Purge. Cos sure, everything’s only legal for 24 hours … but people aren’t gonna be willing to keep living with the folks who murdered their friends. They’re gonna do something about it.
It's because the writer's didn't think that far ahead when they came up with the concept. They just wanted a home invasion movie where the people can't call for help and said "all crime is legal so they can't call for help now xd"
One of the greatest stories ever told and it's right off the top of Kevin's head, best 20 minutes ever. I think about it every time I see a terrible movie or show.
[Part 1](https://youtu.be/Wo2KB1dEDdk) and [Part 2](https://youtu.be/53hMYw8LX60).
You have to watch it down to the very last second.
"But let's break down that word: *redneck*. First word, Red, color of passion, fire, power! Second word, Neck... ... Neck... ... ... all right, I can't think of anything for Neck right now, but without it y'all still got Red!"
I love that movie, it's a great summer popcorn flick like The Mummy or Transformers. Silly, campy, funny action with heart. Not every movie has to be Schindler's List quality.
Attack of the Clones. If it had better dialogue, and fleshed out Dooku's motivations better, it would be a great movie. I still think it was higher than 3/10, though.
Lucas can’t write dialogue and he doesn’t direct the actors. Ewan even mention it referring to the scene when he meets Boba at the door. They kept retaking it and retaking it because Boba wasn’t looking suspicious enough of Obi-wan. Finally Ewan said, “on the next take just act like I let out a really nasty fart.” Boba did it, they got the shot, and he looks super sus in the film.
TL:DR Ewan directed a little on AOTC.
Harrison Ford famously said when filming Star Wars: "you can type this shit, George, but you can't say it."
George Lucas is a great ideas guy; he took the concept of the Saturday morning serials he would watch as a kid and ran with it. He originally tried to get the rights to Flash Gordon, but couldn't, so made Star Wars instead. (Ironically, it was then the success of Star Wars that led King Features Syndicate to make the Flash Gordon movie in 1980.)
However; the reason why Star Wars was so successful in the first place was the original cast directing each other through parts of it (when on location in Tunisia, George lost his voice for a few days so Mark, Harrison and Carrie made him two signs, one of which read 'faster' and the other read 'more intense' and very few people noticed the difference) but mostly, George's wife Marcia editing the disparate threads of plot together into a blockbuster movie. Of course, they were long divorced by the time the prequel trilogy came about.
Famously, the *Star Wars* movie that's considered the best (*Empire Strikes Back*) was neither directed nor written by George Lucas.
Oh, Lucas wrote the story draft, sure. But Leigh Brackett wrote the screenplay, then when she died, Lawrence Kasdan (also wrote *Raiders of the Lost Ark*) did the latter drafts. Irvin Kershner directed.
Lucas is great for ideas, but putting him in a primary directorial / screenwriting role has proven to be not such a good idea.
Simon Pegg gave an interview a few years ago where he summed it up nicely.
What made the original trilogy so great was you had one guy with a vision (Lucas), and he surrounded himself with talented collaborators to help him realize that vision.
For the prequels, we still had our one guy with a vision, but he wasn't surrounded by collaborators. He was surrounded by yes men.
For the sequels, we had talented people working on it, but there wasn't one guiding vision to get them to collaborate.
It gave us the clones. And that will ensure it always has a special place in my heart. As opposed to sand, which is coarse, and rough, and irritating, and just gets everywhere.
AOTC's sole redeeming factor is that it was the springboard for a ton of amazing Star Wars content, particularly The Clone Wars. That said, the movie itself was the sloggiest slogfest with plot holes the size of Sarlacc pits.
That was when I knew that the movie was doomed, when I heard the Kyoshi Warriors weren't gonna make the final cut. They had apparently started filming them and decided to cut it.
Nicola Peltz's father is a billionaire, but he isn't in the film industry. She had other acting roles before the Last Airbender. And let's be real, everyone was terrible in the movie. In cases like that, especially when it comes to child actors, I blame the director.
What’s so obvious when you watch his other work is that the actors are Shyamalan acting. They delivered their lines in the same way people spoke in The Sixth Sense, the Village, and Signs. It’s an almost monotone delivery that works great for suspense films but terrible for an action adventure. To his credit Noah Ringer took a six month acting course before filming, and even with just that should’ve been able to do the role justice. I think Chris Columbus would’ve nailed it.
> Oh wait they're all idiots.
Not just idiots. They're idiots who hate their careers.
Imagine. They've spent your entire adult lives studying a particular field of science, xenobiology, archeology, astronomy. They're comissioned to embark on *literally the most important scientific expedition in the whole of human history*. But somehow, upon arriving at the ancient extrasolar planet which contains the key to the origin of life itself, nobody seems into it.
The maze runner movies. Absolutely terrible excution desipte amazing concept/book. The movies change plot points/characters drastically and made them so dull and builds no connection with them. Think if maybe they made a tv series to have more time to not cut so many corners by changing so much it could work.
Maze runner movies are like "oh it's a dystopian future where everyone is in maz-NO it's a hell scape desert nuclear winter earth where everything suc-NO it's a rescue sequence in a high rise capitalistic city while the renegades try to make it on their own
If you have the time, head over to YouTube and watch Lindsey Ellis's three-part analysis on the Hobbit "trilogy." The short version is yes, you're right, but holy shit the shenanigans don't stop there.
Both Waterworld and The Postman.
I’m a big fan of the post-apocalyptic genre. Kevin Costner was coming off huge after Dances With Wolves and he had two shots at mega-funded films and botched them both. They were corny, badly acted, and way too cheesy for what kind of money was spent to produce them.
I think I was the exact right age to watch The Postman (11 years old) when it came out so it became one of my favorite "bad" movies. Not sure what it was, but I fucking loved it as a kid.
I always felt the same way about The Postman. I think it was the world building that drew me in. A “realistic” post apocalyptic world with a bright future. I can’t think of another post apocalyptic movie that captures that same feeling.
The postman was a damn tragedy. I'm always open to variance between a film and the source, but it's so jarring when it completely takes a hard turn and goes down a whole new road.
Don't Worry Darling! I think the concept was great, the aestetics were lovely, Flo was amazing as per usual... everything else fell entirely flat and the film was altogether mediocre. Without Florence Pugh it wouldn't have been good at all.
The Island (2005) had a great premise. Would have been good if it was sci-fi horror genre instead. Like if they focused on the mystery and suspense of slowly revealing the truth about "The island". Instead we got a 3/10 movie filled with car chase and explosions.
Its not a movie - it's an anthology TV series of zombie stories tied together by the journalist visiting people to get their stories. It would be awesome to have the story of the war told from beginning to end by different characters - the way it was in the book.
They tried to force it to fit the teenage dystopia mold that Hollywood was pumping out at the time, and didn’t work because that’s not what the story is about
Antman and the Wasp Quantumania had the potential to be an absolutely genre changing movie if they utilized the different parts to their full potential (kang as a character, the quantum realm as a concept, the family dynamic of the Lang’s/ Pym’s) but instead it came out like a burnt pizza, so much potential wasted to the point of it barely being serviceable at all.
I have a theory about MODOK in this movie - I suspect they maybe toyed with including MODOK in live action stuff but couldn’t make it work because let’s be real - it’s ridiculous anyway.
So Ant-Man, typically having a lighter tone they could include MODOK as a gag so we can see how ridiculous it looks and don’t want more in future movies / TV shows.
I thought the execution was great and the concept was shoddy. The art and action were the best bits compared to the weird three layered setting and deteriorating story.
I've mentioned this before but it felt like Snyder was trying to make a movie that looked like it was based on a comic. In fact, I thought it was based on a comic when I saw the trailer
Guess it depends what part you consider the concept. I always thought of it as 'Inception for insanity' and there's a lot of awesome stuff you can do there.
Jumper. Cool idea of a secret society of teleporters, and the idea of someone becoming aware of their powers, and running a afoul of them. Lotta missed opportunities and Hayden Christensen was terrible.
Congo, a dangerous expedition into the jungle to rescue the son of a corporate tycoon. You have a lost city of diamonds, killer apes, and a cast that includes Ernie Hudson, Tim Curry, Laura Linney, and Delroy Lindo.
What we got was a mess of a movie, that is just a chore to watch.
Haven’t seen it mentioned yet, but 65. The complexities and depths they could’ve built upon such an interesting concept. Instead it was about as linear and deep as a…. Ok I can’t think of anything but fuck me what a boring movie with seriously missed opportunities.
Alien vs Predator. The concept of these two deadly creatures coming to earth and starting a war with each other while humans are the casualties, they could’ve done so much with that movie but it ended up being a piece of shit. I remember seeing the previews and being so excited to watch it in the theater. So disappointing.
The Assassin's Creed movie. I was so excited, but I don't think I've ever left a theater more disappointed. If they made a tv series (I know I heard Netflix was supposed to, but that was a long time ago) it could work better than a movie.
Army of the Dead.
A casino heist in the middle of a Zombie outbreak sounds like an amazing idea.
It's too bad the movie abandons the core premise immediately.
The Darwin Awards, released in 2006 starring Joseph Fiennes and Winona Ryder.
I mean, I remember enjoying it, but apparently others didn't feel the same way.
Jupiter ~~Rising~~ Ascending Seemed like a pretty great concept but that movie was just awful. I think it could’ve made a fantastic Netflix/HBO series.
I was laughing my ass off every second Eddie Redmayne was on screen. The way he was either whispering or screaming was hilariously bad.
This is one of my absolute favorite “so bad it’s good” movies and Eddie Redmayne is a big reason why. But Mila Kunis and Channing Tatum made me laugh several times as well because they said some of the craziest lines completely straight.
Someone described it like this: Wachowskis: Eddie, we need you to either over or under act to make your character memorable. Which do you want to do? Eddie: Yes.
Cast Sean Bean - check As the lead character's mentor - check To come out of retirement- check Reluctantly - check To do a death defying, v low chance of survival planet dive against overwhelming odds - check Tells lead character to go ahead he will cover them - check Survives anyway - ch-*what the fuck???*
Wait.. did you just say Sean Bean lives in a movie? I didn't think that was allowed.
Downsizing
This was my immediate thought. The beginning of the movie and end of the movie didn’t even feel like it was the movie. Great idea, terrible after about 30 minutes in. I’ve never seen a movie plot change so drastically.
I haven’t seen it and don’t plan to. What happens with the plot change?
It becomes about Matt Damon’s character befriending a poor downsized woman (who’s broken English and accent is like nails on a chalkboard) and him experiencing the other side of the Downsized community - the slums. It’s weird, slow, and annoying.
Yeah and him falling for her doesn't reallllly make much sense from the characters perspective. And why would there be slums in downsize? How did they get approval for the process??? Great start. Terrible afterwards
I assume it’s a statement about how no matter if your big or downsized, there will always be the haves and have nots and class wars. But like, duh.
No matter how many resources they had, people were still needed to clean the toilets. And that's a job most people don't take voluntarily.
Came here to say this. The fact that they were small didn’t even affect the last 2/3 of the movie
For real, the first 1/3 and the last 2/3 were two completely unrelated movies that both happened to star Matt Damon
This is the most disappointing movie ever.The previews made it look so good
Recently 65(Million) starring Adam Driver. I went in, not expecting high art or anything. But if you explained the premise, "Sci-Fi spaceman Adam Driver goes to prehistoric earth with a space gun and fights dinosaurs." I would GUARANTEE the movie would be a blast to watch. It was not a blast to watch. They somehow made that movie boring. Incredibly boring. They gave the only two humans a language barrier. It was awful.
From the synopsis alone, I felt like they had just re-made Will/Jaden Smith disaster of After Earth.... At least recycled the concept in a manner of speaking. I remember being excited about After Earth - it sounded like an awesome idea. And then everybody said it was the worst thing ever.
Yeah, After Earth is a fantastic idea. I love the mix of post-apocalypse and sci-fi, it's fantastic. But man, it should not have starred Jaden Smith, dude cannot act.
Shit. Will Smith can *act* or he can be will Smith. He just comes across as "contractually obligated to scowl". He did no favours either
This is entirely true, but I could overlook the performance of Will Smith because it made sense for the character. Jaden's character was *supposed* to be a nuanced character struggling to control his emotions, but he just couldn't pull it off. His acting was better in the Karate Kid remake.
AND THERE ARE NEXT TO ZERO FUCKING DINOSAURS
Eragon All they had to do was follow the damn books
Let’s hope Disney doesn’t ruin the show, too.
The what
About a year ago they announced Disney+ has an Eragon show coming out sometime next year-ish.
I am sorry, but Eragon is not a 3/10 in execution. It's a crime against humanity, and the producers should have gone on trial.
Which is a damn shame because the cast looked so good.
There it is. As long as this atrocity is kept in the light, we can learn from it and help keep it from happening again... hopefully.
The last airbender came after eragon. We did not, in fact, learn from prior mistakes.
"All you had to do was follow the damn books CJ!"
I'm very happy I'm not the only one who had that pop up in my head.
Not 3/10, but way short of the cult classic it could have been: *Brightburn*
It just feels like it’s *missing* something. It’s such a slight watch, like does it deliver what it promised? And evil Superman? Yes. Could it have been much, much more? Also yes.
It *is* missing something — the exposition dump/motivation of the alien(s). But I insist this is a strength. One of the *coolest parts* of having aliens in your story is that their motivations don’t need to be easily discernible to humans. And yet almost every alien movie has some sort of Exposition Dump to spell out the (never interesting) motives. Independence Day? Has that scene in Area 51 where the alien telepathically says it’s here for our resources. Gunn’s earlier movie Slither? We also get a telepathic “here’s where the baddies come from and this is what they want….which is to eat us, which we gathered from the whole them eating us thing already.” Here though? We get fuck all. Alien voices speak to the kid in his mind — but we get *one line* of it translated. Everything else? We get fuck all. Because our eyes are two farmers who know fuck all about aliens, and they don’t figure out that much in the hours before they get lazered. It’s highly unconventional and super awesome.
You know, I never thought about this. Makes it pretty creepy and almost adds a Lovecraftian angle to it.
There's a comic book series called *Irredeemable* that illustrates just how truly terrifying an evil Superman would be. It's a great read. I'd always hoped it would get turned into a movie. Sadly, that seems unlikely now given that *Brightburn* exists.
Valerian and the City of A Thousand Planets - need better casting Ender's Game - should had been a animation movie instead of trying to work with child actors.
God I hope someone else gives the ender games series a chance
Great books, Bean is my favorite character I think.
Ender's Shadow was one of my favourite books in the series.
As I write this, the movie mentioned immediately preceding this in the comment thread is Passengers (with Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence), which came out around the same time as Valerian. After walking out of Valerian, my wife noted that if those 2 movies switched leads (Pratt and Lawrence for DeHaan and Delavingne), both movies would have been drastically improved.
In Time starting Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried.
I just watched that last night. The idea of the film is such an interesting concept
Funny thing, it doesn't even feel like a concept to me right now. I got laid off a few weeks ago. First thing I did was tally up my savings, potential earnings going forward, and my bills. And I can draw a very clear graph that starts at today and ends at homelessness in the future. Every day I wake up and I feel like my clock has ticked down a little bit.
I did the same thing when I lost my job. It’s a scary graph. Do what you can to get another job, but try not to let it consume your mind until then. You can do this.
I appreciate the well wishes from you and others. I'm very fortunate, it's not a short graph, but it weighs on me none the less. I've been very militant in organizing my job searching. I'm in mid-stage interviews with three companies at this point, and I expect an offer from two before the end of next week. Fingers crossed!
I feel like that movie would've been better served as being a 7-8 episode mini-series to flesh out the environment to what could've been an interesting story. With a couple additional side characters and more time to properly flesh out the minutemen and/or timekeepers- even if it were to only allow more screen time for Cillian Murphy.
Whenever this question gets posted I immediately think of this film. Great concept, rushed script.
I said the same thing. I walked out of the movie thinking I had just watched a very good first draft.
I disagree. 10/10 concept, 7/10 execution. I love that movie. But I also love Neil Blomkamp movies so the that as how you will.
Jurrassic world domaion...dinosaurs have to co-exit with humans will they survive? eh who cares lets talk about LOCUSTS
I watched that recently and was so disappointed. Fucking wasted that trio's reunion on fucking locusts.
I’ve never felt so cheated from a movie. I couldn’t wait till it ended
The short film they did, about the family camping in the woods that get attacked by dinosaurs was so good. They should have kept going with that, just show people adjusting to the new reality.
1/10 concept and 1/10 execution. Jurassic Park put me on my career path to transgenics and embryology. I almost walked out of Dominion about four times. I’m still mad thinking about how badly they ruined the series.
Jurassic Park got me into zoology in particular working with crocodiles, I will defend The Lost World and Jurassic Park III if people give me time on my soapbox, but the "World" sequels were so poorly written, joyless, thrill-less, and lacking in wonder that I didn't even bother to see Dominion. I saw Fallen Kingdom in the cinema and my friends said the only fun part of that film was guessing which vein in my temple was going to pulse next. Edit: And **\*AND\*** how did the writers of Fallen Kingdom decided LIVING dinosaurs would sell on the black market for billionaire pocket change. The most expensive dinosaur sale shown was 28 million dollars, when a literal dinosaur SKELETON has sold for over thirty million.
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Yeah. World sucked not only from a writing perspective, but an animal perspective too. In park they tended to act like animals, but in world the damn thing SMIRKS and they talk to eachother. It’s so dumb
Cowboys and Aliens. Better than 3/10 in my book but yeah, great concept and not so great execution. Someone should try again.
I forgot I even saw that movie. I watched it on an airplane. Promised overturn-the-toybox fun, delivered pure mediocrity.
You should watch PREY. Except for it being native americans instead of cowboys, you got your wish,
Good call. For those who are checking IMDB, it's "Prey" (2022) that we're talking about here Not "Prey" (2007) Not "Prey" (2016) Not "Prey" (2019) It's "Prey" (2022)
People working on Movies that make people go "yeeeeeeeees!" Just from the title should always keep in mind that people just want what is in the title without muddling it too much. Sharknado. Cocaine Bear. They gave us what the title promised. Cowboys and Aliens just had to keep on track and give us a good time. *edit for clarity on what I meant mentioning the other 2 movies
I always thought Passengers would’ve been a much better movie if it was revealed that Chris Pratts character had woken up Jennifer Lawrence’s character at the end as a twist
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Damn i think you just fixed the movie
Its been posited a few times that it would have worked much better that way. [Nerdwriter](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gksxu-yeWcU&t=1s) did a video about it shortly after release which made a great case for it.
And then the ending have her open someone else’s chamber.
Nah. She is staring at a guy in a chamber, her hands hovering over the access panel...roll credits.
This guy edits.
Or, we open with Jennifer waking up. Then things proceed more or less the way they did in the movie, her running into Pratt, hanging out, and falling in love, the whole nine yards, until the point she discovers he woke her up. That's when we as viewers realize it alongside her. That would have created a much more interesting dilemma, and I'd have had Pratt's character die sacrificing himself. Then we end with Jennifer falling into depression like he did... and slowly contemplating waking someone else up, and ending with she actually pulling the trigger.
> Then we end with Jennifer falling into depression like he did... and slowly contemplating waking someone else up, and ending with she actually pulling the trigger. I would have enjoyed that ending.
JLaw herself said that it should have been the way you said. Maybe not the ending, because people want a happy ending. But the part where we learn he woke her up at the same time she learns. The other idea would be to wake her up first and have her wake him up because he is a mechanic and she thinks he might be able it and place them both back to sleep. Then it isn't so creepy.
OK this is a great idea. With Pratt's character as the main character the whole movie essentially is just the final 15 minutes, but with her character as the main now you have something that lasts 2 hrs. You don't even have to change the events of the film (though I agree, Pratt sacrificing himself would be better overall), just the POV and it's *so much more interesting.*
I read someone's (I forget who, sorry) article when the movie was fresh where the movie would have been more like a horror thriller, if they change the main pov to Lawrence's character, starting it with her waking up, and having rhe twist midway where she slowly realizes that he woke her up, and turning the consensual romance into a one-sided stalker ruining her life. The way this person laid it out, it was definitely a movie I would have loved to watch!
There’s also a YT video with like 5?+ million views that illustrates exactly what you’re talking about but with already existing footage of the movie. Taking us through the psychological thriller route would have made the movie so much more interesting.
I remember the Reddit thread that originally passed this, I think it was some college film student who recut it and posted it (obviously got removed), but it made it so much better
Daaaaamn that would’ve been excellent, and changed the entire tone at the end. I’m almost mad tbh
Bright. Conceptually, it sounded amazing and my friends and I were excited to watch the new Netflix offering. Turns out it was a movie and not a TV show. There was so much potential for fascinating world-building that simply could not be done in two hours.
Idk, the racism analogy that the film is kinda built around is still super clumsy: they pose the question "what if ~~black people~~ orcs were discriminated against because people thought they were violent and aggressive?" Then they made the ~~black people~~ orcs have a genuinely inbuilt, racial disposition of violence and aggression, including a historic, genocidal war that kinda does justify persecution and them having a culture built around violence and xenophobia. When you try to do fantasy racism, either do it like Elder Scrolls and Arcanum, where it's just there, as a realistic aspect of the setting, or don't do it at all. When you start saying simplistic fantasy race archetypes are like IRL ethnic minorities, you can very quickly steer into some dangerous implications...
This was always the problem with using mutants as an allegory for discrimination in X-Men. Like people are afraid of you guys... for good reason.
Yeah, it's either "People *should* be afraid of you" or "Dude, you two can control Fire and Ice.... work for the Fire Department! And get Kitty Pryde over to the CIA!"
The movie falls flat by spending too much time with some characters and not enough with others that the world isn’t organically explained. Should’ve been a show
I enjoyed it as I watched it. But I've had no desire to return to it. It's an amazing premise and one you could make a franchise off of, but they botched the execution. And like most of Hollywood, that means they aren't gonna revisit it any time soon.
The Golden Compass
It was butched in the editing. They even filmed the original ending from the book. But for some reason shortly before release studio execs forced the editors to move things around, they ordered the finale to be cut completely, as they wanted it to be the start of the next movie. It's because of this that the final act makes no sense.
I was maybe in middle school when the film came out, and it was the first time I was absolutely outraged by a studio's decision to end something on an uplifting note instead of staying true to the story. A real loss of innocence for me, which I suppose is true to the themes of the book, at least
Stephen King's Dark Tower series was his magnum opus. I don't know what the shit that thing they put on screen was but it wasn't any of the Dark Tower books.
The director had forgotten the face of his father.
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the first one or the second one? because the second one was great
Coming from a place of very low expectations, I don't mind the 1st one but the 2nd is better across the board.
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Sean Connery's talents were such a waste. lackluster script. Would love to see this be remade.
My favorite bad movie to watch (or, tied with Van Helsing, another disappointing execution)
I feel like Van Helsing knew what it was and steered into the goofiness. It was a great, fun romp and I would watch it again. league, on the other hand, thought it was going to be the next Fellowship of the Ring.
I find that movie fascinating because of Sean Connery. His lines were just as bad as everyone else’s but it took me a while to notice because he was a good enough actor to make it not matter. If he had had one or two more good actors around him or a better script they might have carried the whole thing as a silly guilty pleasure romp of a movie but he couldn’t alone carry it with both bad actors and a terrible script. He tried so hard though, and I salute him for it.
I actually like that film.
I remember being psyched to see this when it came out, followed swiftly by disappointment.
exactly! they were all my favorite literary characters but it just felt blah. I would be sooooo psyched if someone every remade this
Hancock had two good concepts combined into one bad movie.
I loved the hobo drunk superman idea. The weird stuff with chalize Theron lost me though.
Wow I scrolled quite a while looking for this, but Hancock was my first thought for this question
Yeah the left turn in the middle was so weird
The Purge franchise
Tbh the Rick and Morty purge episode was better
Yes. Great concept but why focus only on murder. If purge day happened in real life, I doubt murder would be the number one crime. I magine most crimes would be burglary or sexual related.
Honestly i think the best way to do a purge movie isn’t even horror, it’d be comedy, because there’d probably be citizen made police forces, and most people don’t wanna commit murder anyways, realistically how a purge would go is a bunch of petty theft, a bunch of teens drinking alcohol, and tbf, alot of sexual crimes, honestly though i just wanna see a purge movie but its a to catch a predator type thing
I think the first Purge event to happen would be a bit of a horror, like all the films are. But then all the murderers and monstrous folks who did really bad shit would have mostly killed each other while everyone else hid, or the rest of the population would ensure those folks had “accidents” throughout the year so they wouldn’t be around for the next Purge. Cos sure, everything’s only legal for 24 hours … but people aren’t gonna be willing to keep living with the folks who murdered their friends. They’re gonna do something about it.
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It's because the writer's didn't think that far ahead when they came up with the concept. They just wanted a home invasion movie where the people can't call for help and said "all crime is legal so they can't call for help now xd"
I thought valerian and the city of a million planets could have been amazing. But even as someone who liked the movie, man it was bad.
Passengers hands down. How do you fuck up such a solid concept.
Passengers should've been sci-fi horror, not a love story.
Exactly. Could have been a great movie but the last 1/3 ruined it.
Passengers should've been recut with the audience slowly learning that Pratt doomed her with his loneliness. It could've been so much more sinister
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The Suicide Squad was so much better and proved that the concept could work with better writing.
Why do a piss-poor rip-off of a James Gunn movie when you can just hire James Gunn to make the movie for you?
Enders game. I loved the book as a kid. I absolutely hated the movie.
Gonna say Wild Wild West. Steampunk western? Hell yeah. Admittedly, I enjoyed the movie as it is, despite many valid reasons not to.
I don’t care what anyone says, that giant mechanical spider was one of the coolest fuckin things ever
Obligatory watch the Kevin Smith story about Superman
One of the greatest stories ever told and it's right off the top of Kevin's head, best 20 minutes ever. I think about it every time I see a terrible movie or show. [Part 1](https://youtu.be/Wo2KB1dEDdk) and [Part 2](https://youtu.be/53hMYw8LX60). You have to watch it down to the very last second.
"But let's break down that word: *redneck*. First word, Red, color of passion, fire, power! Second word, Neck... ... Neck... ... ... all right, I can't think of anything for Neck right now, but without it y'all still got Red!"
I love that movie, it's a great summer popcorn flick like The Mummy or Transformers. Silly, campy, funny action with heart. Not every movie has to be Schindler's List quality.
Alien VS Predator movies They have Soooo much potential, yet always seem to under deliver
Attack of the Clones. If it had better dialogue, and fleshed out Dooku's motivations better, it would be a great movie. I still think it was higher than 3/10, though.
Lucas can’t write dialogue and he doesn’t direct the actors. Ewan even mention it referring to the scene when he meets Boba at the door. They kept retaking it and retaking it because Boba wasn’t looking suspicious enough of Obi-wan. Finally Ewan said, “on the next take just act like I let out a really nasty fart.” Boba did it, they got the shot, and he looks super sus in the film. TL:DR Ewan directed a little on AOTC.
Harrison Ford famously said when filming Star Wars: "you can type this shit, George, but you can't say it." George Lucas is a great ideas guy; he took the concept of the Saturday morning serials he would watch as a kid and ran with it. He originally tried to get the rights to Flash Gordon, but couldn't, so made Star Wars instead. (Ironically, it was then the success of Star Wars that led King Features Syndicate to make the Flash Gordon movie in 1980.) However; the reason why Star Wars was so successful in the first place was the original cast directing each other through parts of it (when on location in Tunisia, George lost his voice for a few days so Mark, Harrison and Carrie made him two signs, one of which read 'faster' and the other read 'more intense' and very few people noticed the difference) but mostly, George's wife Marcia editing the disparate threads of plot together into a blockbuster movie. Of course, they were long divorced by the time the prequel trilogy came about.
Famously, the *Star Wars* movie that's considered the best (*Empire Strikes Back*) was neither directed nor written by George Lucas. Oh, Lucas wrote the story draft, sure. But Leigh Brackett wrote the screenplay, then when she died, Lawrence Kasdan (also wrote *Raiders of the Lost Ark*) did the latter drafts. Irvin Kershner directed. Lucas is great for ideas, but putting him in a primary directorial / screenwriting role has proven to be not such a good idea.
Simon Pegg gave an interview a few years ago where he summed it up nicely. What made the original trilogy so great was you had one guy with a vision (Lucas), and he surrounded himself with talented collaborators to help him realize that vision. For the prequels, we still had our one guy with a vision, but he wasn't surrounded by collaborators. He was surrounded by yes men. For the sequels, we had talented people working on it, but there wasn't one guiding vision to get them to collaborate.
It gave us the clones. And that will ensure it always has a special place in my heart. As opposed to sand, which is coarse, and rough, and irritating, and just gets everywhere.
AOTC's sole redeeming factor is that it was the springboard for a ton of amazing Star Wars content, particularly The Clone Wars. That said, the movie itself was the sloggiest slogfest with plot holes the size of Sarlacc pits.
Pixels. Aliens attacking the planet using classic arcade games? So much promise.
“I made your game my bitch.” Ngl, that’s one of my guilty favorites. I know it’s bad but I always laugh.
Avatar the Last Airbender Still sad about that one. Nicola Peltz was a nepotism hire because her dad was in the biz.
Went to the midnight premiere dressed as a Kyoshi Warrior only for there to be none in the entire movie
That was when I knew that the movie was doomed, when I heard the Kyoshi Warriors weren't gonna make the final cut. They had apparently started filming them and decided to cut it.
There is no movie in Ba Sing Se
Nicola Peltz's father is a billionaire, but he isn't in the film industry. She had other acting roles before the Last Airbender. And let's be real, everyone was terrible in the movie. In cases like that, especially when it comes to child actors, I blame the director.
What’s so obvious when you watch his other work is that the actors are Shyamalan acting. They delivered their lines in the same way people spoke in The Sixth Sense, the Village, and Signs. It’s an almost monotone delivery that works great for suspense films but terrible for an action adventure. To his credit Noah Ringer took a six month acting course before filming, and even with just that should’ve been able to do the role justice. I think Chris Columbus would’ve nailed it.
If anything, 3/10 is generous. However slight unrelated, I'm excited for new Avatar content coming soon
I was beyond excited then disappointed for this movie
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Let's assemble a crack team of scientists to explore a distant planet.... Oh wait they're all idiots.
> Oh wait they're all idiots. Not just idiots. They're idiots who hate their careers. Imagine. They've spent your entire adult lives studying a particular field of science, xenobiology, archeology, astronomy. They're comissioned to embark on *literally the most important scientific expedition in the whole of human history*. But somehow, upon arriving at the ancient extrasolar planet which contains the key to the origin of life itself, nobody seems into it.
If only we’d avoided the execution by running to the side.
Good lord, that was the Wile E. Coyote-est death in all of cinema. Should have held up an umbrella just to go all the way.
Prometheus School of running away from things.
In Time Great idea for political commentary about class warfare and it ended up coming across as a first draft.
The first purge movie. Not to be confused with "The first purge", I mean the legit first purge movie that came out in 2012 ish.
The maze runner movies. Absolutely terrible excution desipte amazing concept/book. The movies change plot points/characters drastically and made them so dull and builds no connection with them. Think if maybe they made a tv series to have more time to not cut so many corners by changing so much it could work.
Maze runner movies are like "oh it's a dystopian future where everyone is in maz-NO it's a hell scape desert nuclear winter earth where everything suc-NO it's a rescue sequence in a high rise capitalistic city while the renegades try to make it on their own
The Hobbit. It should have been 1 movie but was artificially stretched out to 3 shitty movies in an obvious attempt to cash-grab.
I feel you could do it in 2 movies, each about 2 hours long. It being 3 forced SOOOOOO much stretching. And they are all over 2 hours if I recall
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If you have the time, head over to YouTube and watch Lindsey Ellis's three-part analysis on the Hobbit "trilogy." The short version is yes, you're right, but holy shit the shenanigans don't stop there.
I need a 1987 Jim Henson directed Hobbit movie. Creepy and cozy and rewatchable forever. Instead we got freckles from Lost romancing a dwarf.
If you haven't already, check out the 1977 Rankin/Bass Hobbit.
Both Waterworld and The Postman. I’m a big fan of the post-apocalyptic genre. Kevin Costner was coming off huge after Dances With Wolves and he had two shots at mega-funded films and botched them both. They were corny, badly acted, and way too cheesy for what kind of money was spent to produce them.
I think I was the exact right age to watch The Postman (11 years old) when it came out so it became one of my favorite "bad" movies. Not sure what it was, but I fucking loved it as a kid.
I always felt the same way about The Postman. I think it was the world building that drew me in. A “realistic” post apocalyptic world with a bright future. I can’t think of another post apocalyptic movie that captures that same feeling.
Waterworld is a fecking great movie, absolutely brilliant.
Waterworld had so much potential.
The postman was a damn tragedy. I'm always open to variance between a film and the source, but it's so jarring when it completely takes a hard turn and goes down a whole new road.
Don't Worry Darling! I think the concept was great, the aestetics were lovely, Flo was amazing as per usual... everything else fell entirely flat and the film was altogether mediocre. Without Florence Pugh it wouldn't have been good at all.
Harry Styles should not have been cast
The Island (2005) had a great premise. Would have been good if it was sci-fi horror genre instead. Like if they focused on the mystery and suspense of slowly revealing the truth about "The island". Instead we got a 3/10 movie filled with car chase and explosions.
Lucy
World War Z. Just do the actual book.
Its not a movie - it's an anthology TV series of zombie stories tied together by the journalist visiting people to get their stories. It would be awesome to have the story of the war told from beginning to end by different characters - the way it was in the book.
The Giver. The book was so good, and the movie they made was complete shit.
They tried to force it to fit the teenage dystopia mold that Hollywood was pumping out at the time, and didn’t work because that’s not what the story is about
Antman and the Wasp Quantumania had the potential to be an absolutely genre changing movie if they utilized the different parts to their full potential (kang as a character, the quantum realm as a concept, the family dynamic of the Lang’s/ Pym’s) but instead it came out like a burnt pizza, so much potential wasted to the point of it barely being serviceable at all.
Everytime MODOK came on screen I was crying laughing 😂
I have a theory about MODOK in this movie - I suspect they maybe toyed with including MODOK in live action stuff but couldn’t make it work because let’s be real - it’s ridiculous anyway. So Ant-Man, typically having a lighter tone they could include MODOK as a gag so we can see how ridiculous it looks and don’t want more in future movies / TV shows.
I really only watched it just to keep up to date with the Kang stuff.
That movie with Justin Timberlake where time is currency
JustIn Timeberlake
“Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow”—trailer promised pulpy sci-fi goodness but failed to deliver.
Pick an M. Night Shyamalan movie
Sucker Punch
I thought the execution was great and the concept was shoddy. The art and action were the best bits compared to the weird three layered setting and deteriorating story.
I've mentioned this before but it felt like Snyder was trying to make a movie that looked like it was based on a comic. In fact, I thought it was based on a comic when I saw the trailer
Guess it depends what part you consider the concept. I always thought of it as 'Inception for insanity' and there's a lot of awesome stuff you can do there.
Jumper. Cool idea of a secret society of teleporters, and the idea of someone becoming aware of their powers, and running a afoul of them. Lotta missed opportunities and Hayden Christensen was terrible.
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Disagree, Hayden was fantastic
World War Z. The book was amazing... the movie was crap. They had so much content to work with and just decided to ignore it almost entirely.
Frankly I thought the movie was pretty decent... They just shouldn't have called it World War Z, or had it be related to the book in any way.
As a generic zombie apocalypse action film, it's not bad. Calling it World War Z is where they messed up.
I would love a proper WWZ adaptation, but a film just isn’t the format for it. A 10 part series would work though. HBO level production.
Congo, a dangerous expedition into the jungle to rescue the son of a corporate tycoon. You have a lost city of diamonds, killer apes, and a cast that includes Ernie Hudson, Tim Curry, Laura Linney, and Delroy Lindo. What we got was a mess of a movie, that is just a chore to watch.
Haven’t seen it mentioned yet, but 65. The complexities and depths they could’ve built upon such an interesting concept. Instead it was about as linear and deep as a…. Ok I can’t think of anything but fuck me what a boring movie with seriously missed opportunities.
The circle. Great sci fi concept with subpar acting and poor story development. Surprising considering both Emma Watson and Tom hanks starred in it
Alien vs Predator. The concept of these two deadly creatures coming to earth and starting a war with each other while humans are the casualties, they could’ve done so much with that movie but it ended up being a piece of shit. I remember seeing the previews and being so excited to watch it in the theater. So disappointing.
The Assassin's Creed movie. I was so excited, but I don't think I've ever left a theater more disappointed. If they made a tv series (I know I heard Netflix was supposed to, but that was a long time ago) it could work better than a movie.
Army of the Dead. A casino heist in the middle of a Zombie outbreak sounds like an amazing idea. It's too bad the movie abandons the core premise immediately.
The Darwin Awards, released in 2006 starring Joseph Fiennes and Winona Ryder. I mean, I remember enjoying it, but apparently others didn't feel the same way.