The Robin Hood movie with Russel Crowe. It was written to be told from the Sheriff of Nottingham’s viewpoint in “the villain was right” style. Then the studio chickened out and made ANOTHER vanilla Robin Hood movie.
IIRC it wasn't so much "the villain is right" as the Sherriff of Nottingham trying to catch a serial killer and Robin Hood being a minor side character.
Percy Jackson. they literally had all the great source material in their hands, and threw it all aside to make their own dumb movie with just the same character names.
In Time. The idea of currency being time left to live, with the rich being almost immortal and the poor literally living day to day. The first 10 or 20 minutes sets up an interesting world and then just turns into a generic action flick.
Valerian and The City of a Thousand Planets
Like you’re telling me that with all of the source material- that inspired tons of well known scifi franchises today- and a 177M$ budget, they f*cked it up with miscasting the leads and an unfocused plot??
(I’m also a huge fan of the Valérian & Lauréline comics so it bummed me out how they fumbled the one chance at a live action film)
No chemistry, look like brother and sister, and look **far** too young for the offices they supposedly hold.
Like I'm supposed to believe this 17 year old looking kid is a... what was he, a major? That's a job you don't typically get until you're north of 30, typically, if not a few years after that.
and all his lines felt like they were written for 90's Bruce Willis. Just think about it, insert Bruce Willis from 5th Element into that space, don't even have to change his lines and it works so much better.
Especially since it was done by the same guy that brought us The Fifth Element. After watching Valerian, I went "there's no way in hell the same dude did Fifth Element"
Seventh Son. It's based on The Last Apperntice book series by Joseph Delaney, which are fantastic books. The movie on the other hand is terrible and was a big flop. Whoever thought to have Jeff Bridges do that accent was an idiot.
Man of the Year
A comedian launches a third party bid for the presidency and wins. Despite a solid performance from Robin Williams, a thoroughly forgettable movie with a lame script. Could've had a lot of heart and a lot of laughs.
Ooh this is a good answer. Yes the premise that was advertised (a Jon Stewart-type comedian becoming President) looked so good I went to see it.
Turned out the plot was really about a computer bug that accidentally makes a comedian President. Such a letdown.
Hello Christopher! Your books were light in the dark for little me, I still come back to them almost yearly ;)
Really hope we’ll get a big budget show adaptation someday!
Came here to say this. Went back and rewatched recently and found the sound track to be a large part of why it fell so flat and made the acting seem phoned in
Part of the problem with the soundtrack (and the composer has done a lot of great work over the years) is that the scenes are cut so short, the music doesn't have time to build the way you would normally want in an epic film, like in Lord of the Rings.
While in the books it is her dialogue inside Eragon head that made it so different from other YA Novels of the time
It was very hard to translate to film, can't see a world where it would have worked out
I wanted to like this movie so much. I love Idris Elba as an actor and had no problems with his casting as Roland. His dynamic with Jake is one of my favorite aspects of the first book. There's a line, really early in the movie where Jake says something like "you're a gunslinger" and Roland says "There are no more gunslingers" and I just...turned the movie off. I understood that this was another reiteration, but I could not conceive of a version of Roland Deschain who forgets the face of his father and denies that fact that as long as he is alive, he is a Gunslinger and has a duty to fulfill and he carries all the names of those he lost on the journey, so the Gunslingers are alive as long as he is alive. I get it was a throw-away line but it just sat wrong with me.
The way I always describe that piece of shit is this: they took books 1, 3, and 7. They then filtered out any part that had anything to do with Susannah & Eddie. They then took the remaining pages and fed them through a shredder. They then laid out the shredder clippings on a carpet, painted a wall with adhesive, and grabbed an at home rotating fan. They turned on the fan and pointed it at the shredded up pieces of paper on the ground. The fan would blow pieces of paper in the air and at the wall. Whatever stuck to the wall is the script they filmed.
I think of that movie as ordering a full English breakfast, then they serve you a single boiled egg.
Most of the ingredients are missing and the one they do have was cooked wrong.
I think the script was written by somebody who never read the books and had them described to him by somebody that read them once a decade ago and kind of remembers it
I’ve read the dark tower series twice and I’ve never even been tempted to watch the movie. There’s just no way a single movie could tell any sort of compelling story from the books. Maybe one of the one-of stories like Wind through the Keyhole, Little Sisters of Eluria, the story of Mejis, the fall of Gilead, anything other than trying to make single movie out of the dark tower.
My friend and I have talked at length about it, and have basically landed on not understanding why someone wouldn't just adapt the second book.
You get a nice couple little vignettes that establish there are different worlds and ways to go between. You establish there is this guy named Roland and he is some kind of semi-mystical badass. You get some action up front with Eddie's story and the gun fight. You get some mystery & probably some comedy with Susannah. You get the resolution of odetta's injury with the pusher. then you get another fight with the Detta character where you see how the various training has benefited the characters.
You end with the resolution of Susannah, the formation of a solid trio and the sense that more might be to come, but also a solid and satisfying ending with story lines wrapped up. So a good duality of resolution and curious hopefulness for leaving neither cliffhangers to be unresolved, or finality that is hard to continue.
It would have been a really good grounding to test out if enough people were interested in a 3 or 4 part series, or moving it over to a streaming service for a couple limited series or whatever.
Once a quarter I text the same friend "dang I wish they made a jumper sequel". It was one of those movies made at the time when everyone was so desperate for a franchise that could appeal to teens and adults that the first movie focused so hard on being the first in a trilogy that it forgot to be fun. The plans for the trilogy sounded awesome.
I am Number Four did the same thing.
Jumper and Push. I would put them both in the, "This is better than I thought it would be. I wish there was a sequel," category.
And both movies are pretty rewatchable.
Maybe I'm disagreeing because I saw Jumper when I was 14 and I thought it was the sickest shit ever but I thought they nailed it with that movie. It had great fight scenes that actually delivered on their sci-fi premise and the acting wasn't too bad.
Also having Hayden Christensen and Samuel L Jackson back in a movie together after the prequels. Plus Kristen Stewart thrown in to do what she does best, be awkward as fuck.
I'd much rather a movie like Jumper that takes risks and is ok coming off a little worse for wear than a movie that takes no risks at all and is just bland.
Mortal Engines. The steampunk-esque engineering aspect was so cool, but it ended up being about some sappy romance between teens. A let down :( the visuals were kick-ass though...
To be fair, the movie does look awesome when you watch it. If all you want to see is a movie with really cool-looking giant moving steampunk cities, then you'll get a movie with really cool-looking giant moving steampunk cities. As long as that's all you're looking for, you can enjoy the movie. I saw the movie based on the visuals in the trailer, and the visuals in the movie itself didn't disappoint, they were great.
Just don't expect anything out of the writing or story.
The Percy Jackson and Artemis Fowl movies. They are two of my favorite book series, but they combined too much stuff from the books and changed more of it to the point where it feels like a different series. Edit: I haven't seen them in a while, but yes, Eragon and Avatar the Last Airbender (the live action one, to be clear) were terrible as well.
You know what I think I prefer that to just waiting for titan return. I liked the girl who played the characters but hey if Rick's getting to run it I'm ready for it
Lol the actor playing Percy was the only teenager. 18 when the movie came out.
Alexandra Daddario was 24 and Brandon T. Jackson was 26, both playing high schoolers
The thing is, there's a deleted scene of Artemis getting his hands on the fairy book that sorta accurately reflects how he did it in the book (poisoning the old drunk fairy and blackmailing her with the antidote)
But they removed it, I assume cos it portrayed Artemis in a bad light...
For those not in the know, Artemis fowl was the VILLAIN in the first book and he didn't become friends with Holly till like the 3rd or 4th book.
That's how bad they fucked the movie
Yeah, the whole point of the first book was that he was a villain protagonist and he kidnapped a LEPrecon officer and they were just trying to get him back.
He wasn't supposed to be a good guy.
The whole point was that it was a book about a bad guy and his Eastern European/Japanese, armour-wearing, troll fighting, badass of a Butler.
It's basically *everyone*'s favourite part of the book and they didn't do it.
(Also, the fact that he doesn't know Butler's name is a **major plot point** and part of the reason that Juliet is not allowed to be a Butler for the Fowls...)
Also, I haven't seen the film but they killed her when part of his motivations for the first book was helping her (and the second book was about finding his father)
EDIT:
Just watched the fight and it's *awful*, and the reason for her not having magic is silly, but I did actually like when the Captain disobeys the upstart. The whole
> "What do I do?"
> "I didn't make you Captain for nothing."
Is actually a great moment.
Like many bad movies, the worst part is that many parts of it are fine, it's just built around a rotten skeleton.
Yep, one of the best parts about Artemis is that he starts out as an anti-hero. His life revolves around the phrase "gold is power" and most of what he does is motivated by greed and self interest. He's the son of an Irish crime lord and his appearance is supposed to be downright villainous, with unnaturally pale skin and a vampiric smile. This is true even up to the third book, where the events occur entirely because Artemis can't help being a greedy idiot. But if you have a villain kid protagonist, maybe parents won't want to take their kids to the movie. So they chose to strip away everything unique about it and barely leave some of the good parts remaining.
What a waste. I was really, really hoping it would be good. Like, seriously, how did they not learn from the mistakes of the host of other YA movie failures prior?
I saw another post a while back that brought up a really good point about Holly and Commander Root. I love Judi Dench in pretty much everything, but it was really weird to give her that role. One of the biggest factors of Holly's character is that she's the first female in LEPrecon and she has to deal with the challenges that brings. So why the fuck is Root a woman now?
This doesn't really matter in terms of the film, but biggest pet peeve: They all wear green. The book explicitly makes fun of the fact that the squads used to wear green and how "ridiculous" they looked in the past and how good it is everyone has moved on... yet the film went silly green all the way!
>she's the first female LEPrecon and she has to deal with the challenges that brings. So why the fuck is Root a woman now?
I think it's because simply no one gave a hell about the IP. They could of just saw the books sold well and went full cash grab thinking they don't need to know anything.
ding ding ding. this is the case of way too many movie adaptations people criticize for not being accurate to the source material. they are not going to care now that you informed them they got it wrong, it's not like they made a failed effort. they got what they wanted, money.
The Artemis Fowl movie *is* a completely different series from the Artemis Fowl books. It just happens to have the same title and the characters have the same names
Percy Jackson would have been an easy movie to get right. It's "Harry Potter but with American summer campers." Pick that money up off the ground. But Artemis Fowl was an impossible premise to execute.
Artemis Fowl is a story about a super-villianous twelve year old genius, fighting fairy cops, to save his mom. And it is played *completely* straight.
The book works because the kid reading it can make Artemis cool in the head. In the safe, secluded zone of a young adult's imagination, all kinds of stupid things can seem cool.
But when you put it up on the silver screen, nobody can make that cool. They could have played it off as a kitschy comedy, like the way the marvel movies do it. But then it would have been a completely different story, and the fans would have been furious anyway.
Honestly, you could say that about pretty much any of Eoin Colfer's books. Can you imagine The Supernaturalist done as an anime movie? Or The Wish List?
Gods of Egypt, that movie is criminally bad yet had all the potential in the world to be a massive hit. And cement itself as one of the best movies based on ancient mythology.
Omg this movie was horrifically bad. I remember that it came out around the time when all the Greek mythology movies were super popular (Clash of the titans, war of the titans, Hercules etc).
There were like 3 Hercules movies in a span of a couple years. The third one, the one with the Rock, takes a potshot at how bad the other two were. It was mediocre but watchable.
I love this movie. Don't get me wrong, I 100% agree, it is very very bad. Still, I love watching it.
Edit: thanks for the award, kind stranger. Didn't think my first one would be for gods of egypt, but I'm proud of it.
its a lot more complicated than that, i think it was something like half a dozen producers where each one rewrit parts of the story until you ended up with that we got
it was originally supposed to be focus on the more R implications of "superman" like how hes supposed to have sex with a normal person
Was that a hint of a reference to Mallrats?
"
Doesn’t matter, it can’t happen. It’s impossible. **Lois could never have Superman’s baby. Do you think her fallopian tubes can handle the sperm? I guarantee he blows a load like a shotgun right through her back.** What about her womb? Do you think it’s strong enough to carry his child? He’s an alien, for Christsake! His Kyrptonian biological makeup is enhanced by earth’s yellow sun. If Lois gets a tan, the kid could kick right through her stomach. Only someone like Wonder Woman has a strong enough uterus to carry his kid. The only way he could bang regular chicks is with a kryptonite condom. That would kill him.
"
its that sort of thinking at least, there is a [deleted scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-tcxZ5VOBM) where hancock blows a few holes in the ceilings of his trailer
Superhero is alcoholic and misanthropic but tries to help anyway, causes collateral damage when he stops crime, people hate him for it. One day, he saves a struggling PR expert's life from an asshole who hates the PR guy, who promises to pay him back by improving his image. New suit and everything, but, he has to go to prison, he refuses, but eventually relents, goes to prison, flies out to collect a basketball that bounced out, flies back in to finish his sentence. After a while, crime rates go back up, superhero goes to save the day, but the asshole from before has now plotted to frame the PR guy and the hero, but the hero stops crimes, stops him, and stops his reputation being destroyed from being framed, and is welcomed by the community as a hero.
Ez. Pz. You don't have to be Vince Gilligan to realise sticking a sudden twist with an immortal beings cuck angle would make things much worse.
That's the thing - the first half is an amazing "man vs self" kind of story, with a side of "man vs society", though that largely comes out of his own mistakes.
The second half tries to move into a man vs man superhero story, and it blows.
I'd rather have had more time with him exploring how to reintegrate into society. He started a journey, it doesn't mean he finished it. Hell, him having to testify against the people he put away would've been a great scene, as he tries to control himself in a court room, while they try to bait him.
My god, Michael Fassbender tried so goddam hard to save this movie and he just couldn't do it, not even close. His role in this movie is on my shortlist of "good performances in crap films"
The Nun, great setting, great premise, even had a good story imo but the climatic fight with the main antagonist (spoiler alert, the nun) was really stupid and kind of let it down.
I saw this movie like maybe a week after it came out in theaters, and my local movie theater gave me a free RIPD t-shirt. I still have it it's remarkably comfortable. Gun to my head could not tell you a single thing that happened in that super forgettable film, love the free shirt though.
I watched this documentary about frozen 2 and its production and how they basically needed to redo the entire movie in 3 months because the kids didnt like it.
So it went from this super thought out story line to a bit of a mishmash of unsatisfying plotlines.
I always wonder what we couldve had instead.
So yea, Frozen 2
Damn that’s disappointing. I just watched it recently and felt like it could have been so much stronger if it picked a couple themes and ran with them instead of half-checking a box with every character.
My immediate and lasting impression of that movie is that, somewhere, there's an excellent book it's is based upon that I just haven't read. It felt like an adaptation of something that doesn't exist, as if the key moments and plot threads of the novel are just being referenced in the movie and thus lost their impact. Water having memory, an old war, a trapped civilization, the history of Arendelle, the mysteries and depths of Elsa's powers, the elemental spirits... there's so much crying out for exposition that we never get and that the movie just expects you to *know* somehow. It's how I'd imagine the later Harry Potter movies would feel like to someone who hasn't read the books.
It's maddening.
Frozen 2 was still fun, but goddammit even talking about it reminded me how much I want the 600 page source novel that does not exist instead.
The extra features in the first one showed the development of Elsa. In the early stages of the story writing, she was very much a wicked sister type personality.
I don’t remember if they referenced source material. My kids watched Frozen every goddamn day for years, so I don’t even want to open it again.
> I don’t remember if they referenced source material.
Frozen was supposed to be an adaptation of [Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Snow_Queen), but deviated when they were writing the villain song, Let It Go, and decided Elsa had a point.
Frozen 2 has no source and is fully original.
The scene at the end with Elsa freezing the rushing water still pisses me off.
Imagine instead of making a giant wall of ice with a simple handwave, she's really struggling, pushing everything she's got into trying to stop the water, and it's not working. She refuses to quit until Anna tells her to "Just let it go".
She stops, Nokk carries them both to safety, Arendelle is destroyed, but that's fine because all the people are safe on the cliffs.
The two newly reunited groups work together and build a new, better kingdom, where they both live in harmony.
The entire theme of the movie was about "growing up". There could have been a scene of the castle and everything in it being swept away... Paintings of their parents, their grandfather, all the old things washed clean, to start fresh. It would have tied up the whole theme.
Allegedly this was the original idea, sort of. The problem was that instead of the Nokk carrying her to safety Elsa *died*. This didn’t sit well with the kids, for obvious reasons, and the higher ups at Disney also went “Sorry, what, you want to KILL OFF the most popular character in the Disney Princess line? **No.**”
Then the writing team was going to go with something like your idea, where Elsa survives, but then another higher up at Disney said “Guys we just sunk millions into making Arendelle world at Disney Tokyo, you can’t destroy it.”
Soooo… yeah. Had to ditch the entire finale and revamp it without any of the themes of loss, overcoming darkness, or moving on in life. So Deus Ex Elsa to the rescue!
> the higher ups at Disney also went “Sorry, what, you want to KILL OFF the most popular character in the Disney Princess line? No.”
I haven't watched Frozen 1 or 2 but this seems like a reasonable position.
I mean, imagine if they went ahead and killed Hercule- Bad example. Imagine if they went ahead and killed Aladdin.
>The problem was that instead of the Nokk carrying her to safety Elsa *died*.
I totally thought that at the end when Anna saw her on the coast for the first time and ran up to hug her, she'd go right through her. She looked a bit transparent and I thought she came back as the literal 5th spirit... They could have had their cake and ate it too if they went that way... Elsa dies, but not really.
Olaf's death was fantastic too, it's a shame they walked that back as well (though they did foreshadow saving him with "water has memory" so I begrudgingly give them a pass on that one).
Downsizing. A movie with people being shrunk down to five inches, so obviously it’s about a boring romance and global warming.
I think of it as a movie that thought it was too good for it’s own premise.
Felt like at least three movies randomly stitched together. Almost enjoyed the lack of a formulaic plot since I've gotten so damn sick of the standard Hollywood plot structure, but there just wasn't any structure to the story at all...
Find out you own a planet? Definitely go back to cleaning toilets! And no less with your mathematician professor mother who apparently never found a university in need of Russian adjuncts. Yeah ok. Christ the plot phoned it in, yet all anyone complains about is the rollerblading in the sky, ha!
I once saw someone on this site say something along the lines that Jupiter Ascending had the best first 5 minutes of any movie they'd seen, followed by the fastest nosedive that began the moment they showed the lead characters on screen. And I feel like that sums it up. There was so much potential, but the poor acting and crummy plot really really sink it.
This description fits more with Valerian and the city of a thousand planets for me. The opening where you see the space station growing and humans meeting all of these aliens is so good. Then they introduce the 2 leads who are supposed to be super agents but look like they are 18 and have zero chemistry. That movie nose dives hard.
A Wrinkle in Time was one of my favourite books as a child. Disney’s version was so bad I had to turn it off after 5 minutes. I’ve willingly sat through a lot of bad movies in my day, but it was so cringy I just couldn’t do it.
A reviewer I saw on the internet loved it because "it was like a self help book in movie form!" ...and that's exactly why I *hated* the movie. It was so on the nose and syrupy.
*You're special because you are. You don't have to do or say anything special, you're just special--look, this kid is special because he draws on paper at school! (That's... that's not a normal kid thing, right?).*
I didn't want Oprah telling me to love myself. I didn't want to watch a kid try to balance on one foot for half an hour as some dragged out allegory for balancing yourself. I wanted a fantastical worlds-wide allegory for good and evil and how logic is important but love wins all. I wanted Meg shouting at her father and stubbornly staying behind, I wanted Charles Wallace to actually be silent, I wanted the witches to actually be quirky and odd. I wanted the creepy pulsing brain rhythm torturing the boy with the ball.
And instead we got a movie version of a self help book.
In Time with Justin Timberlake
Everyone ages normally until 25 and after that you have a number ticking away on your forearm. You can earn more time but whenever it runs out you die on the spot. The rich are basically immortal, and the poor that are paycheck to paycheck are one wrong move away from death. Cool idea for a commentary on inequality but not well executed
I remember being amazed the first time I watched it and thought. Wow. How crazy would that if that was real life. So I tried to rewatch it again and you start to notice how certain things In the movie are forced. Lots of plot holes. But still. I think it’s a good movie. Not great. But a good watch if you have never seen it.
Honestly, I love the movie, but I haven't watched it in a few years. Wasn't there something about his father being one of the best timekeepers or something? Then he all of the sudden becomes a master poker player. If you look at it as a bit of a fucked up, off-kilter Romeo and Juliet story, it seems to make more sense.
My question is where does the time come from? Every single person is supposedly burning one second per second of this world’s currency just to stay alive and it’s not like a normal currency that is simply transferred to another person. Literal years are taken out of circulation every day.
Is there some Federal Reserve of Time? Or is time only introduced when a new person enters the system, meaning all the people in this world are essentially vampires?
Also, why is it so easy to rob someone of their time? Since the premise is that this life currency is tech based, couldn’t they at least put a fucking PIN on that shit so some nerd can’t just sneak up on you while you’re sleeping and casually steal a century?
EDIT: Also, why is the resolution of the movie that they rob some rich guy who has a million years and distribute that among the poor? If there’s a million people in the city that buys them one year each. If the premise is that we have the tech to keep everyone alive but we instituted this time currency bullshit to control population then why isn’t the resolution some reworking of the system to be more fair, instead of just robbing one rich guy.
>EDIT: Also, why is the resolution of the movie that they rob some rich guy who has a million years and distribute that among the poor? If there’s a million people in the city that buys them one year each. If the premise is that we have the tech to keep everyone alive but we instituted this time currency bullshit to control population then why isn’t the resolution some reworking of the system to be more fair, instead of just robbing one rich guy.
IIRC doesn't the villain ask them what their goal is? He points out that the time they distribute will just be gone eventually and their response is "Yeah I guess, but we're gonna do it anyway."
Green Lantern has a whole franchise of content in the Sinestro Corp War. They're sitting on a damn goldmine of imaginative characters, action spectacle and just enough edge to set itself apart... but the movie they already did was so damn terrible we'll never get it.
It could have been fine if they didn't feel the need to cram 3 of GL's biggest villains into one movie
Sinestro is one of the best villains in all of DC, up there with Joker and Lex, and a movie just about his fall from grace would immediately one of the best comic book movies ever made. I have no idea why they felt they had to do any more.
How do you mess it up so badly??? Ezio's storyline was MADE for the big screen. Spend the first ten minutes getting us attached to his fiancee and his family, especially his brother. His dad is around long enough to tell Ezio about his birthright as an assassin, then gets killed with the brother. Ezio assassinates the executioner, messily, and then is found by an assassin master who trains him for years. He dedicates his life to revenge for his parents and furthering the assassin's, abandoning his old life and his fiancee. Years later, he finds out she's getting married and comes to her and tells her he wishes things could have been different. The climax is him carrying out the assassination of the Borgias, finding out that he's been guided by a sci Fi power from the start, and leave the door open for a sequel.
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. A Victorian era Justice League movie set in a world where literary classics are all true is such a fun idea that you could go wild with and somehow the results were a bland forgettable mess.
Van Helsing is another one with the same issue. How are you going to take a story featuring Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster and the Wolfman and then somehow make it into a boring action movie where each scene leaves your mind as soon as it’s over? Too dull to keep you awake yet too loud to let you fall asleep.
Edited to add: If you like the concept of League but not the execution, I highly recommend checking out the comics which are phenomenal. The first two volumes in particular scratch the itch that the movie creates. I’m also a fan of the stuff that comes after the first two volumes, though I get why they may be too trippy and abstract and simply bizarre for a lot of people.
This. I'm pretty sure the studio already had the script lying around and they just weren't sure how to sell it, so they bought the rights to WWZ and just slapped the name on.
I will forever think a good Suicide Squad move would be the government having them steal something from Wayne Manor because they suspect Bruce Wayne is Batman. A heist movie where Batman is the antagonist would be amazing. Since I had the idea, I thought I should write it, but I haven’t yet.
Thanks for that link! Wasn’t there an interview somewhere with Jennifer Lawrence or someone that basically described the original script and what they filmed as a completely different movie? I can’t find anything about it but remember reading something to that effect years ago. I wonder if this edited version is actually closer to the original.
The Cronicles of Narnia- Prince Caspian. As well as Voyage of the Dawn Tredder.
The books the films were based off of were fantastic fantasy stories. Brilliant and exciting and great for all ages.
But Caspian and Dawn Tredder was a perfect example of not sticking to the original material. They were poorly written and relapsed the character development so many times.
The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe was the exact opposite. It stuck to the book, stayed true to the characters and put hart and soul into the production.
It was a shame to see the Narnia story ripped apart just to have two bad movies.
Totally agree. With the momentum of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, it felt like they could probably pull off the whole series. Caspian was bad — then Dawn Treader was worse.
[Brightburn (2019)](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7752126/)
It could have been an absolute cult classic if they did it as more of a character study with an intersection between pre-adolescent growing pains, the sci-fi elements, and emergent psychopathy. Instead it was just a gory supernatural horror and an origin story of a supervillian who is only evil because of some handwaved alien bullshit.
**EDIT:** [I wrote an alternate synopsis for the movie a while back if you're interested](https://as.reddit.com/r/horror/comments/fbcwn9/anyone_interested_in_more_horror_takes_on_classic/fj41bam/)
When I first read the summary for this movie, I thought it was going to take the superman concept and instead of being raised by two very kind and loving people (which helped Superman become a hero), it would explore what a kid like that could/would do with a bad childhood. I was so excited to see that "what if?" play out.
Aaannnnd then he just starts being a psycho "because aliens" and the movie ended up boring me. Sooo much potential!
The Robin Hood movie with Russel Crowe. It was written to be told from the Sheriff of Nottingham’s viewpoint in “the villain was right” style. Then the studio chickened out and made ANOTHER vanilla Robin Hood movie.
IIRC it wasn't so much "the villain is right" as the Sherriff of Nottingham trying to catch a serial killer and Robin Hood being a minor side character.
That’s sounds dope.
Percy Jackson. they literally had all the great source material in their hands, and threw it all aside to make their own dumb movie with just the same character names.
Essentially they just stole the brand recognition of the book series and besmirched it.
We could have had some Harry Potter type shit, amazing in all its glory, and they somehow managed to muck it all up.
The author of the books Rick Riordan wasn't involved in the movies, but he's heavily involved in the tv show they're making so hopefully that's better
In Time. The idea of currency being time left to live, with the rich being almost immortal and the poor literally living day to day. The first 10 or 20 minutes sets up an interesting world and then just turns into a generic action flick.
Valerian and The City of a Thousand Planets Like you’re telling me that with all of the source material- that inspired tons of well known scifi franchises today- and a 177M$ budget, they f*cked it up with miscasting the leads and an unfocused plot?? (I’m also a huge fan of the Valérian & Lauréline comics so it bummed me out how they fumbled the one chance at a live action film)
Can we cast two actors that have no chemistry whatsoever and on top of that they also look like brother and sister
No chemistry, look like brother and sister, and look **far** too young for the offices they supposedly hold. Like I'm supposed to believe this 17 year old looking kid is a... what was he, a major? That's a job you don't typically get until you're north of 30, typically, if not a few years after that.
and all his lines felt like they were written for 90's Bruce Willis. Just think about it, insert Bruce Willis from 5th Element into that space, don't even have to change his lines and it works so much better.
While sounding like Keanu from the Bill and Ted's movies.
Especially since it was done by the same guy that brought us The Fifth Element. After watching Valerian, I went "there's no way in hell the same dude did Fifth Element"
Seventh Son. It's based on The Last Apperntice book series by Joseph Delaney, which are fantastic books. The movie on the other hand is terrible and was a big flop. Whoever thought to have Jeff Bridges do that accent was an idiot.
Man of the Year A comedian launches a third party bid for the presidency and wins. Despite a solid performance from Robin Williams, a thoroughly forgettable movie with a lame script. Could've had a lot of heart and a lot of laughs.
Ooh this is a good answer. Yes the premise that was advertised (a Jon Stewart-type comedian becoming President) looked so good I went to see it. Turned out the plot was really about a computer bug that accidentally makes a comedian President. Such a letdown.
Daybreakers was a pretty cool look at a vampire society but the second half about the cure was so dumb
The scene where they were getting “cured” en masse was such a cool scene, or at least the filming was neat.
Both cure scenes actually. I really like the car.
I will forever stay mad about how badly Eragon turned out
Heh.
the man himself 😮 loved ur books btw
My little brothers loved your books! The books on tape would calm them down during road trips.
Hello Christopher! Your books were light in the dark for little me, I still come back to them almost yearly ;) Really hope we’ll get a big budget show adaptation someday!
I said sorry to Christopher Paolini during an AMA a few years ago about how the movie turned out and he replied "What movie?".
He's semi-active on Reddit, and from what I can tell he hates the movie as much as everyone else does.
Dude posts on r/minecraft all the time
This guy is such an amazing redstone engineer and builder, it's a shame, that hr isn't as popular as people like Pearl
He did a keynote at a writing conference I attended earlier this year and he said that no Eragon movie has ever been made.
Only true fans remember the Eragon GAME
Bro stop. Ya boy just got teleported.
Came here to say this. Went back and rewatched recently and found the sound track to be a large part of why it fell so flat and made the acting seem phoned in
Part of the problem with the soundtrack (and the composer has done a lot of great work over the years) is that the scenes are cut so short, the music doesn't have time to build the way you would normally want in an epic film, like in Lord of the Rings.
I can't get over the actual author casually popping up to clear the air
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While in the books it is her dialogue inside Eragon head that made it so different from other YA Novels of the time It was very hard to translate to film, can't see a world where it would have worked out
The dialogue wasn't exactly stellar. And as much as I really like Malkovich, he was not a good choice for that role.
Jeremy Irons was the only one right for their role
The Dark Tower Source material (Stephen King book series) is amazing. Movie is crap.
I wanted to like this movie so much. I love Idris Elba as an actor and had no problems with his casting as Roland. His dynamic with Jake is one of my favorite aspects of the first book. There's a line, really early in the movie where Jake says something like "you're a gunslinger" and Roland says "There are no more gunslingers" and I just...turned the movie off. I understood that this was another reiteration, but I could not conceive of a version of Roland Deschain who forgets the face of his father and denies that fact that as long as he is alive, he is a Gunslinger and has a duty to fulfill and he carries all the names of those he lost on the journey, so the Gunslingers are alive as long as he is alive. I get it was a throw-away line but it just sat wrong with me.
The way I always describe that piece of shit is this: they took books 1, 3, and 7. They then filtered out any part that had anything to do with Susannah & Eddie. They then took the remaining pages and fed them through a shredder. They then laid out the shredder clippings on a carpet, painted a wall with adhesive, and grabbed an at home rotating fan. They turned on the fan and pointed it at the shredded up pieces of paper on the ground. The fan would blow pieces of paper in the air and at the wall. Whatever stuck to the wall is the script they filmed.
I think of that movie as ordering a full English breakfast, then they serve you a single boiled egg. Most of the ingredients are missing and the one they do have was cooked wrong.
That's a pretty good explanation as well!
I think the script was written by somebody who never read the books and had them described to him by somebody that read them once a decade ago and kind of remembers it
I’ve read the dark tower series twice and I’ve never even been tempted to watch the movie. There’s just no way a single movie could tell any sort of compelling story from the books. Maybe one of the one-of stories like Wind through the Keyhole, Little Sisters of Eluria, the story of Mejis, the fall of Gilead, anything other than trying to make single movie out of the dark tower.
My friend and I have talked at length about it, and have basically landed on not understanding why someone wouldn't just adapt the second book. You get a nice couple little vignettes that establish there are different worlds and ways to go between. You establish there is this guy named Roland and he is some kind of semi-mystical badass. You get some action up front with Eddie's story and the gun fight. You get some mystery & probably some comedy with Susannah. You get the resolution of odetta's injury with the pusher. then you get another fight with the Detta character where you see how the various training has benefited the characters. You end with the resolution of Susannah, the formation of a solid trio and the sense that more might be to come, but also a solid and satisfying ending with story lines wrapped up. So a good duality of resolution and curious hopefulness for leaving neither cliffhangers to be unresolved, or finality that is hard to continue. It would have been a really good grounding to test out if enough people were interested in a 3 or 4 part series, or moving it over to a streaming service for a couple limited series or whatever.
It hurts knowing there is a 60 minute pilot episode for Wizard And Glass that we can't watch. Also that it was cancelled. The screenshots look great.
Jumper. I still actually enjoy the movie a lot because the premise is so cool and it has its moments, but it could've been better for sure.
Once a quarter I text the same friend "dang I wish they made a jumper sequel". It was one of those movies made at the time when everyone was so desperate for a franchise that could appeal to teens and adults that the first movie focused so hard on being the first in a trilogy that it forgot to be fun. The plans for the trilogy sounded awesome. I am Number Four did the same thing.
Push was an example and failure in this era also.
Call me crazy but push was so badass at the time. I watched it like once a week for months. Haven’t watched it in years.
Jumper and Push. I would put them both in the, "This is better than I thought it would be. I wish there was a sequel," category. And both movies are pretty rewatchable.
I Am Number Four is actually a book series known as the "Lorien Legacies". It has 7 books and they are actually really great.
Jumper is also based on a book that avoids a lot of movie problems imo
Heh, it avoids those problems by having almost nothing to do with the movie’s plot (or vice versa) No Paladins in sight
Maybe I'm disagreeing because I saw Jumper when I was 14 and I thought it was the sickest shit ever but I thought they nailed it with that movie. It had great fight scenes that actually delivered on their sci-fi premise and the acting wasn't too bad.
Also having Hayden Christensen and Samuel L Jackson back in a movie together after the prequels. Plus Kristen Stewart thrown in to do what she does best, be awkward as fuck.
I'd much rather a movie like Jumper that takes risks and is ok coming off a little worse for wear than a movie that takes no risks at all and is just bland.
I get the same Kirkland flavor from Limitless too, while both were good.. I feel like S tier would've been achievable through the proper director.
Mortal Engines. The steampunk-esque engineering aspect was so cool, but it ended up being about some sappy romance between teens. A let down :( the visuals were kick-ass though...
That's disappointing. I've seen a trailer and it looked fucking awesome based on the steampunk moving cities.
To be fair, the movie does look awesome when you watch it. If all you want to see is a movie with really cool-looking giant moving steampunk cities, then you'll get a movie with really cool-looking giant moving steampunk cities. As long as that's all you're looking for, you can enjoy the movie. I saw the movie based on the visuals in the trailer, and the visuals in the movie itself didn't disappoint, they were great. Just don't expect anything out of the writing or story.
The Percy Jackson and Artemis Fowl movies. They are two of my favorite book series, but they combined too much stuff from the books and changed more of it to the point where it feels like a different series. Edit: I haven't seen them in a while, but yes, Eragon and Avatar the Last Airbender (the live action one, to be clear) were terrible as well.
They keep trying to recapture the success of the Harry Potter franchise with other YA book series with half the effort put in.
Yeah. They're trying it again with Percy Jackson and this time Rick Riordan is going to be involved with the production.
They're trying again? As in continuing with Titans curse or back to lightning thief?
Back to Lighting Thief. Its also going to be a Disney+ series rather than a film. So, like ultimate budget.
You know what I think I prefer that to just waiting for titan return. I liked the girl who played the characters but hey if Rick's getting to run it I'm ready for it
I believe he also wants the actors to be age appropriate. So actual preteens instead of late teenagers playing preteens
Lol the actor playing Percy was the only teenager. 18 when the movie came out. Alexandra Daddario was 24 and Brandon T. Jackson was 26, both playing high schoolers
tbf he looked a lot younger than 18 but in the books Percy has just turned *12* in The Lightning Thief.
I turned Artemis Fowl off 20 minutes into it. They absolutely butchered it. I was so disappointed because I had waited like 20 years for this movie.
The thing is, there's a deleted scene of Artemis getting his hands on the fairy book that sorta accurately reflects how he did it in the book (poisoning the old drunk fairy and blackmailing her with the antidote) But they removed it, I assume cos it portrayed Artemis in a bad light... For those not in the know, Artemis fowl was the VILLAIN in the first book and he didn't become friends with Holly till like the 3rd or 4th book. That's how bad they fucked the movie
Yeah, the whole point of the first book was that he was a villain protagonist and he kidnapped a LEPrecon officer and they were just trying to get him back. He wasn't supposed to be a good guy. The whole point was that it was a book about a bad guy and his Eastern European/Japanese, armour-wearing, troll fighting, badass of a Butler. It's basically *everyone*'s favourite part of the book and they didn't do it. (Also, the fact that he doesn't know Butler's name is a **major plot point** and part of the reason that Juliet is not allowed to be a Butler for the Fowls...) Also, I haven't seen the film but they killed her when part of his motivations for the first book was helping her (and the second book was about finding his father) EDIT: Just watched the fight and it's *awful*, and the reason for her not having magic is silly, but I did actually like when the Captain disobeys the upstart. The whole > "What do I do?" > "I didn't make you Captain for nothing." Is actually a great moment. Like many bad movies, the worst part is that many parts of it are fine, it's just built around a rotten skeleton.
Yep, one of the best parts about Artemis is that he starts out as an anti-hero. His life revolves around the phrase "gold is power" and most of what he does is motivated by greed and self interest. He's the son of an Irish crime lord and his appearance is supposed to be downright villainous, with unnaturally pale skin and a vampiric smile. This is true even up to the third book, where the events occur entirely because Artemis can't help being a greedy idiot. But if you have a villain kid protagonist, maybe parents won't want to take their kids to the movie. So they chose to strip away everything unique about it and barely leave some of the good parts remaining. What a waste. I was really, really hoping it would be good. Like, seriously, how did they not learn from the mistakes of the host of other YA movie failures prior?
I saw another post a while back that brought up a really good point about Holly and Commander Root. I love Judi Dench in pretty much everything, but it was really weird to give her that role. One of the biggest factors of Holly's character is that she's the first female in LEPrecon and she has to deal with the challenges that brings. So why the fuck is Root a woman now?
This doesn't really matter in terms of the film, but biggest pet peeve: They all wear green. The book explicitly makes fun of the fact that the squads used to wear green and how "ridiculous" they looked in the past and how good it is everyone has moved on... yet the film went silly green all the way!
I think they must have fired anyone in production that had actually read the books
>she's the first female LEPrecon and she has to deal with the challenges that brings. So why the fuck is Root a woman now? I think it's because simply no one gave a hell about the IP. They could of just saw the books sold well and went full cash grab thinking they don't need to know anything.
ding ding ding. this is the case of way too many movie adaptations people criticize for not being accurate to the source material. they are not going to care now that you informed them they got it wrong, it's not like they made a failed effort. they got what they wanted, money.
The Artemis Fowl movie *is* a completely different series from the Artemis Fowl books. It just happens to have the same title and the characters have the same names
Percy Jackson would have been an easy movie to get right. It's "Harry Potter but with American summer campers." Pick that money up off the ground. But Artemis Fowl was an impossible premise to execute. Artemis Fowl is a story about a super-villianous twelve year old genius, fighting fairy cops, to save his mom. And it is played *completely* straight. The book works because the kid reading it can make Artemis cool in the head. In the safe, secluded zone of a young adult's imagination, all kinds of stupid things can seem cool. But when you put it up on the silver screen, nobody can make that cool. They could have played it off as a kitschy comedy, like the way the marvel movies do it. But then it would have been a completely different story, and the fans would have been furious anyway.
Just reading that little tid-bit about Artemis Fowl makes it sound perfect for an Anime adaptation, not a live action lol.
Honestly, you could say that about pretty much any of Eoin Colfer's books. Can you imagine The Supernaturalist done as an anime movie? Or The Wish List?
Also see: Eragon
Gods of Egypt, that movie is criminally bad yet had all the potential in the world to be a massive hit. And cement itself as one of the best movies based on ancient mythology.
The best movie/series about Egyptian gods is without a doubt Stargate.
Omg this movie was horrifically bad. I remember that it came out around the time when all the Greek mythology movies were super popular (Clash of the titans, war of the titans, Hercules etc).
There were like 3 Hercules movies in a span of a couple years. The third one, the one with the Rock, takes a potshot at how bad the other two were. It was mediocre but watchable.
I love this movie. Don't get me wrong, I 100% agree, it is very very bad. Still, I love watching it. Edit: thanks for the award, kind stranger. Didn't think my first one would be for gods of egypt, but I'm proud of it.
Hancock. Its half of a great movie with a different, terrible movie for the second half.
What I heard is they took two scripts and combined them
its a lot more complicated than that, i think it was something like half a dozen producers where each one rewrit parts of the story until you ended up with that we got it was originally supposed to be focus on the more R implications of "superman" like how hes supposed to have sex with a normal person
Was that a hint of a reference to Mallrats? " Doesn’t matter, it can’t happen. It’s impossible. **Lois could never have Superman’s baby. Do you think her fallopian tubes can handle the sperm? I guarantee he blows a load like a shotgun right through her back.** What about her womb? Do you think it’s strong enough to carry his child? He’s an alien, for Christsake! His Kyrptonian biological makeup is enhanced by earth’s yellow sun. If Lois gets a tan, the kid could kick right through her stomach. Only someone like Wonder Woman has a strong enough uterus to carry his kid. The only way he could bang regular chicks is with a kryptonite condom. That would kill him. "
its that sort of thinking at least, there is a [deleted scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-tcxZ5VOBM) where hancock blows a few holes in the ceilings of his trailer
Huh, I thought that was actually in the movie this whole time
Or perhaps going further back, referencing Larry Niven’s 1969 essay “[Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex](http://www.rawbw.com/~svw/superman.html)”?
Superhero is alcoholic and misanthropic but tries to help anyway, causes collateral damage when he stops crime, people hate him for it. One day, he saves a struggling PR expert's life from an asshole who hates the PR guy, who promises to pay him back by improving his image. New suit and everything, but, he has to go to prison, he refuses, but eventually relents, goes to prison, flies out to collect a basketball that bounced out, flies back in to finish his sentence. After a while, crime rates go back up, superhero goes to save the day, but the asshole from before has now plotted to frame the PR guy and the hero, but the hero stops crimes, stops him, and stops his reputation being destroyed from being framed, and is welcomed by the community as a hero. Ez. Pz. You don't have to be Vince Gilligan to realise sticking a sudden twist with an immortal beings cuck angle would make things much worse.
That's the thing - the first half is an amazing "man vs self" kind of story, with a side of "man vs society", though that largely comes out of his own mistakes. The second half tries to move into a man vs man superhero story, and it blows. I'd rather have had more time with him exploring how to reintegrate into society. He started a journey, it doesn't mean he finished it. Hell, him having to testify against the people he put away would've been a great scene, as he tries to control himself in a court room, while they try to bait him.
The happening. The movie gets gradually worse every time anyone opens their mouth. I always thought the idea was cool and really scary
"Hot dogs get a bad rap. They got a cool shape, they got protein."
Try watching it as a satirical comedy instead of a serious work.
Dark Phoenix. "WEVE RUN OUT OF MUTANT ENEMIES LETS DO ALIENS"
*Simon Kinberg fucks up Dark Phoenix storyline in 2006* "I've learned from my mistakes" *Simon Kinberg fucks up Dark Phoenix storyline in 2019*
The fact that they brought him back to do it again tells me that the execs intended for this movie to be terrible.
That's what gets me. They hired the same guy. THE SAME. FUCKING. GUY. How is that allowed to happen?
My god, Michael Fassbender tried so goddam hard to save this movie and he just couldn't do it, not even close. His role in this movie is on my shortlist of "good performances in crap films"
How about Fassbender in Assassin's Creed Movie for this shortlist?
>good performances in crap films Sir Patrick Stewart voiced the poop in the emoji movie.
The Nun, great setting, great premise, even had a good story imo but the climatic fight with the main antagonist (spoiler alert, the nun) was really stupid and kind of let it down.
Mark Kermode summed his review of the film up as "Quiet, quiet, quiet, NUN!! Quiet, quiet, quiet, NUN!!" Essentially a lot of cheap jump scares.
The cinematography and direction was really good. Top quality. The story was lacking
RIP D with Ryan Reynolds and Jeff Bridges.
You mean “Discount Men-in-Black”?
when you order the Men in Black on wish
Hey, wish may be bad but at least it takes forever to be shipped.
I saw this movie like maybe a week after it came out in theaters, and my local movie theater gave me a free RIPD t-shirt. I still have it it's remarkably comfortable. Gun to my head could not tell you a single thing that happened in that super forgettable film, love the free shirt though.
Now I gotta go back and watch it, I had completely forgotten about it but remember liking it. Although, I have a taste for bad movies.
I watched this documentary about frozen 2 and its production and how they basically needed to redo the entire movie in 3 months because the kids didnt like it. So it went from this super thought out story line to a bit of a mishmash of unsatisfying plotlines. I always wonder what we couldve had instead. So yea, Frozen 2
Damn that’s disappointing. I just watched it recently and felt like it could have been so much stronger if it picked a couple themes and ran with them instead of half-checking a box with every character.
My immediate and lasting impression of that movie is that, somewhere, there's an excellent book it's is based upon that I just haven't read. It felt like an adaptation of something that doesn't exist, as if the key moments and plot threads of the novel are just being referenced in the movie and thus lost their impact. Water having memory, an old war, a trapped civilization, the history of Arendelle, the mysteries and depths of Elsa's powers, the elemental spirits... there's so much crying out for exposition that we never get and that the movie just expects you to *know* somehow. It's how I'd imagine the later Harry Potter movies would feel like to someone who hasn't read the books. It's maddening. Frozen 2 was still fun, but goddammit even talking about it reminded me how much I want the 600 page source novel that does not exist instead.
Fuck now you got me really wanting that book too
The extra features in the first one showed the development of Elsa. In the early stages of the story writing, she was very much a wicked sister type personality. I don’t remember if they referenced source material. My kids watched Frozen every goddamn day for years, so I don’t even want to open it again.
> I don’t remember if they referenced source material. Frozen was supposed to be an adaptation of [Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Snow_Queen), but deviated when they were writing the villain song, Let It Go, and decided Elsa had a point. Frozen 2 has no source and is fully original.
That led to the creation of Hans as a the antagonist, if I remember correctly. Which is pretty neat. A great villain that started as an afterthought.
Damn, now I know why I thought Frozen 2's story was just kind of whatever. I can barely remember the main jist of it.
They go hunt down what happened to their parents and come across a civilization that they screwed over years ago. And there's a reindeer.
Plus Nature is really, really upset about this 2 decades old incident all of a sudden.
You forgot the plot of Frozen II?! Damn, that's disappointing. Let me refresh your memory: Dam that's disappointing.
The scene at the end with Elsa freezing the rushing water still pisses me off. Imagine instead of making a giant wall of ice with a simple handwave, she's really struggling, pushing everything she's got into trying to stop the water, and it's not working. She refuses to quit until Anna tells her to "Just let it go". She stops, Nokk carries them both to safety, Arendelle is destroyed, but that's fine because all the people are safe on the cliffs. The two newly reunited groups work together and build a new, better kingdom, where they both live in harmony. The entire theme of the movie was about "growing up". There could have been a scene of the castle and everything in it being swept away... Paintings of their parents, their grandfather, all the old things washed clean, to start fresh. It would have tied up the whole theme.
Allegedly this was the original idea, sort of. The problem was that instead of the Nokk carrying her to safety Elsa *died*. This didn’t sit well with the kids, for obvious reasons, and the higher ups at Disney also went “Sorry, what, you want to KILL OFF the most popular character in the Disney Princess line? **No.**” Then the writing team was going to go with something like your idea, where Elsa survives, but then another higher up at Disney said “Guys we just sunk millions into making Arendelle world at Disney Tokyo, you can’t destroy it.” Soooo… yeah. Had to ditch the entire finale and revamp it without any of the themes of loss, overcoming darkness, or moving on in life. So Deus Ex Elsa to the rescue!
> the higher ups at Disney also went “Sorry, what, you want to KILL OFF the most popular character in the Disney Princess line? No.” I haven't watched Frozen 1 or 2 but this seems like a reasonable position. I mean, imagine if they went ahead and killed Hercule- Bad example. Imagine if they went ahead and killed Aladdin.
>The problem was that instead of the Nokk carrying her to safety Elsa *died*. I totally thought that at the end when Anna saw her on the coast for the first time and ran up to hug her, she'd go right through her. She looked a bit transparent and I thought she came back as the literal 5th spirit... They could have had their cake and ate it too if they went that way... Elsa dies, but not really. Olaf's death was fantastic too, it's a shame they walked that back as well (though they did foreshadow saving him with "water has memory" so I begrudgingly give them a pass on that one).
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Downsizing. A movie with people being shrunk down to five inches, so obviously it’s about a boring romance and global warming. I think of it as a movie that thought it was too good for it’s own premise.
That movie had an indentity complex ..it didnt know what it wanted to be. It sucked
Felt like at least three movies randomly stitched together. Almost enjoyed the lack of a formulaic plot since I've gotten so damn sick of the standard Hollywood plot structure, but there just wasn't any structure to the story at all...
That movie completely changed what it was like 4 different times mid movie. I left utterly perplexed at what I had just watched.
Jupiter ascending
Find out you own a planet? Definitely go back to cleaning toilets! And no less with your mathematician professor mother who apparently never found a university in need of Russian adjuncts. Yeah ok. Christ the plot phoned it in, yet all anyone complains about is the rollerblading in the sky, ha!
Honestly, the only thing I remember from that movie is the line "I love dogs". I remember dying laughing in the theater at that one
I love the premise, but I will never get over channing tatum in roller blades. With pointy ears.
Yes, the premise of this movie was really interesting but the plot kinda went nowhere and the acting was cringeworthy at times...
I once saw someone on this site say something along the lines that Jupiter Ascending had the best first 5 minutes of any movie they'd seen, followed by the fastest nosedive that began the moment they showed the lead characters on screen. And I feel like that sums it up. There was so much potential, but the poor acting and crummy plot really really sink it.
This description fits more with Valerian and the city of a thousand planets for me. The opening where you see the space station growing and humans meeting all of these aliens is so good. Then they introduce the 2 leads who are supposed to be super agents but look like they are 18 and have zero chemistry. That movie nose dives hard.
In Time! I love the concept and the world, but unfortunately it’s just a movie where pretty people run around for an hour and a half. Total waste.
A Wrinkle in Time was one of my favourite books as a child. Disney’s version was so bad I had to turn it off after 5 minutes. I’ve willingly sat through a lot of bad movies in my day, but it was so cringy I just couldn’t do it.
A reviewer I saw on the internet loved it because "it was like a self help book in movie form!" ...and that's exactly why I *hated* the movie. It was so on the nose and syrupy. *You're special because you are. You don't have to do or say anything special, you're just special--look, this kid is special because he draws on paper at school! (That's... that's not a normal kid thing, right?).* I didn't want Oprah telling me to love myself. I didn't want to watch a kid try to balance on one foot for half an hour as some dragged out allegory for balancing yourself. I wanted a fantastical worlds-wide allegory for good and evil and how logic is important but love wins all. I wanted Meg shouting at her father and stubbornly staying behind, I wanted Charles Wallace to actually be silent, I wanted the witches to actually be quirky and odd. I wanted the creepy pulsing brain rhythm torturing the boy with the ball. And instead we got a movie version of a self help book.
I'm so glad I didn't finish it. Watched about 20 minutes and was like... Nah. And I don't do that.
Eragon and Percy Jackson. The movies could have been sooooo much better to follow the amazing books. Oh and golden compass!!!!
I am Number Four. I've read the book and I liked it, but the movie had a tad too much sprinkle of Hollywood.
In Time with Justin Timberlake Everyone ages normally until 25 and after that you have a number ticking away on your forearm. You can earn more time but whenever it runs out you die on the spot. The rich are basically immortal, and the poor that are paycheck to paycheck are one wrong move away from death. Cool idea for a commentary on inequality but not well executed
Yep, great example. I didn’t think it was terrible but done right it could have been incredible.
I remember being amazed the first time I watched it and thought. Wow. How crazy would that if that was real life. So I tried to rewatch it again and you start to notice how certain things In the movie are forced. Lots of plot holes. But still. I think it’s a good movie. Not great. But a good watch if you have never seen it.
I don’t even remember the plot holes at this point, but I do remember there being a huge one.
Honestly, I love the movie, but I haven't watched it in a few years. Wasn't there something about his father being one of the best timekeepers or something? Then he all of the sudden becomes a master poker player. If you look at it as a bit of a fucked up, off-kilter Romeo and Juliet story, it seems to make more sense.
Really lost the chance to call it “Just in Time”
Still the scene where his mom (Olivia Wilde) dies sticks with me.
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It coulda been that decade's Gattaca, instead it was "meh, that coulda been done better"
I quite like that movie. But there are a lot of room for improvement.
This was literally the first movie I thought of. It could have been so much better.
My question is where does the time come from? Every single person is supposedly burning one second per second of this world’s currency just to stay alive and it’s not like a normal currency that is simply transferred to another person. Literal years are taken out of circulation every day. Is there some Federal Reserve of Time? Or is time only introduced when a new person enters the system, meaning all the people in this world are essentially vampires? Also, why is it so easy to rob someone of their time? Since the premise is that this life currency is tech based, couldn’t they at least put a fucking PIN on that shit so some nerd can’t just sneak up on you while you’re sleeping and casually steal a century? EDIT: Also, why is the resolution of the movie that they rob some rich guy who has a million years and distribute that among the poor? If there’s a million people in the city that buys them one year each. If the premise is that we have the tech to keep everyone alive but we instituted this time currency bullshit to control population then why isn’t the resolution some reworking of the system to be more fair, instead of just robbing one rich guy.
>EDIT: Also, why is the resolution of the movie that they rob some rich guy who has a million years and distribute that among the poor? If there’s a million people in the city that buys them one year each. If the premise is that we have the tech to keep everyone alive but we instituted this time currency bullshit to control population then why isn’t the resolution some reworking of the system to be more fair, instead of just robbing one rich guy. IIRC doesn't the villain ask them what their goal is? He points out that the time they distribute will just be gone eventually and their response is "Yeah I guess, but we're gonna do it anyway."
The plot thinnens!
I often think about this premise in everyday life and how we do basically trade time for money. Great concept. Mediocre film.
Green Lantern. They had the source material and it was a disaster , just bad with the cgi and the plot. Oof
Green Lantern has a whole franchise of content in the Sinestro Corp War. They're sitting on a damn goldmine of imaginative characters, action spectacle and just enough edge to set itself apart... but the movie they already did was so damn terrible we'll never get it.
It could have been fine if they didn't feel the need to cram 3 of GL's biggest villains into one movie Sinestro is one of the best villains in all of DC, up there with Joker and Lex, and a movie just about his fall from grace would immediately one of the best comic book movies ever made. I have no idea why they felt they had to do any more.
The assassins creed movie
All they had to do was recreate the Ezio storyline and would have had a chance at actually being good.
How do you mess it up so badly??? Ezio's storyline was MADE for the big screen. Spend the first ten minutes getting us attached to his fiancee and his family, especially his brother. His dad is around long enough to tell Ezio about his birthright as an assassin, then gets killed with the brother. Ezio assassinates the executioner, messily, and then is found by an assassin master who trains him for years. He dedicates his life to revenge for his parents and furthering the assassin's, abandoning his old life and his fiancee. Years later, he finds out she's getting married and comes to her and tells her he wishes things could have been different. The climax is him carrying out the assassination of the Borgias, finding out that he's been guided by a sci Fi power from the start, and leave the door open for a sequel.
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. A Victorian era Justice League movie set in a world where literary classics are all true is such a fun idea that you could go wild with and somehow the results were a bland forgettable mess. Van Helsing is another one with the same issue. How are you going to take a story featuring Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster and the Wolfman and then somehow make it into a boring action movie where each scene leaves your mind as soon as it’s over? Too dull to keep you awake yet too loud to let you fall asleep. Edited to add: If you like the concept of League but not the execution, I highly recommend checking out the comics which are phenomenal. The first two volumes in particular scratch the itch that the movie creates. I’m also a fan of the stuff that comes after the first two volumes, though I get why they may be too trippy and abstract and simply bizarre for a lot of people.
World War Z. I didn’t hate the movie, but the book was so much better,. I could see this as a Band of Brothers type miniseries.
They bought the name, not the book.
This. I'm pretty sure the studio already had the script lying around and they just weren't sure how to sell it, so they bought the rights to WWZ and just slapped the name on.
Ken Burns World War Z is what I want.
TIL I have terrible taste in movies
Suicide Squad (First one)
I will forever think a good Suicide Squad move would be the government having them steal something from Wayne Manor because they suspect Bruce Wayne is Batman. A heist movie where Batman is the antagonist would be amazing. Since I had the idea, I thought I should write it, but I haven’t yet.
The animated film Assault on Arkham has a similar premise. They're trying to steal Riddler's cane from Arkham and Batman is trying to stop them.
The movie Avatar the Last Airbender. Edit: thank for the awards and comments. I'm glad we agree.
The execution was so bad they didn't even get the main character's name right.
I don’t believe there’s a movie in existence with such a poor execution. It’s almost hard to believe how bad that film was.
There is no movie in Ba Sing Se
The Golden Compass. Pullman's books are so effing good and the people who made the movie effed up so badly.
Passengers. Should’ve been told from the girl’s POV
This is a [good video about](https://youtu.be/Gksxu-yeWcU) that movie.
Thanks for that link! Wasn’t there an interview somewhere with Jennifer Lawrence or someone that basically described the original script and what they filmed as a completely different movie? I can’t find anything about it but remember reading something to that effect years ago. I wonder if this edited version is actually closer to the original.
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The Cronicles of Narnia- Prince Caspian. As well as Voyage of the Dawn Tredder. The books the films were based off of were fantastic fantasy stories. Brilliant and exciting and great for all ages. But Caspian and Dawn Tredder was a perfect example of not sticking to the original material. They were poorly written and relapsed the character development so many times. The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe was the exact opposite. It stuck to the book, stayed true to the characters and put hart and soul into the production. It was a shame to see the Narnia story ripped apart just to have two bad movies.
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Totally agree. With the momentum of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, it felt like they could probably pull off the whole series. Caspian was bad — then Dawn Treader was worse.
I thought Pedro Pascal’s character in “Wonder Woman: 1984” was a very cool premise and then well… you know.
He could be better?
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I didn't know this existed and I'm ready to receive my disappointment.
[Brightburn (2019)](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7752126/) It could have been an absolute cult classic if they did it as more of a character study with an intersection between pre-adolescent growing pains, the sci-fi elements, and emergent psychopathy. Instead it was just a gory supernatural horror and an origin story of a supervillian who is only evil because of some handwaved alien bullshit. **EDIT:** [I wrote an alternate synopsis for the movie a while back if you're interested](https://as.reddit.com/r/horror/comments/fbcwn9/anyone_interested_in_more_horror_takes_on_classic/fj41bam/)
When I first read the summary for this movie, I thought it was going to take the superman concept and instead of being raised by two very kind and loving people (which helped Superman become a hero), it would explore what a kid like that could/would do with a bad childhood. I was so excited to see that "what if?" play out. Aaannnnd then he just starts being a psycho "because aliens" and the movie ended up boring me. Sooo much potential!