Movies Bad movies that should be given another try [Archive]

Celestia

2018-09-19, 03:09 AM

The DCEU movies, because of course the premise of another comic cinematic universe is nerdgasm.

^ Oh, gods, seconding LXG. Poor Sean Connery, to have that as his last movie.
What makes it even more tragic is the story behind it. Long before that movie, he was given the chance to play Morpheus in The Matrix but turned it down because he couldn't understand the script. Of course, that movie was a huge success. Then, he was given the chance to play Gandalf in Lord of the Rings but turned it down because he couldn't understand the script. That movie was an even bigger success. So then, unwilling to miss out again, he decided that the next time he was handed a script he couldn't understand, he'd take the role, regardless. That turned out to be LXG, which was so bad it made him quit acting forever. It kinda makes you wonder if maybe he was just an idiot who lucked his way into his previous success.

Of course, I am eternally grateful that he turned down LotR. Ian McKellen was a much better Gandalf then I'm sure Connery could have ever hoped to be.

Eldan

2018-09-19, 03:33 AM

Yeah, Connery doesn't fit as Gandalf. He might have made a decent Theoden, though. Or Denethor.

Celestia

2018-09-19, 03:39 AM

Yeah, Connery doesn't fit as Gandalf. He might have made a decent Theoden, though. Or Denethor.
Even worse alternate universe: They originally wanted Nicholas Cage to play Aragorn, but, thankfully, he turned them down.

Better alternate universe: David Bowie wanted to play Elrond, but, sadly, they turned him down.

Eldan

2018-09-19, 04:02 AM

Yeah, Agent Smith wasn't the best Elrond.

Celestia

2018-09-19, 04:07 AM

Yeah, Agent Smith wasn't the best Elrond.
True story: When I first watched LotR (having not read the books), I honestly thought that Elrond was a secret bad guy like Saruman, and I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. It made things rather confusing for me when it never did. I love Hugo Weaving and think he's a great actor, but his face, voice, and mannerisms make him unable to effectively play the good guy. He was just born to be a villain.

The Jack

2018-09-19, 04:59 AM

I'm pretty sure if you asked Hugo Weaving to not play Hugo Weaving he could play a decent seeming dude. Personally, I have more problems with Bruce Willis playing Bruce Willis.

Eragon.
Spiderman 3
Most of the DC cinematic universe.
All the Thor movies. All of them.
Aliens
Alien 3
The Hobbit.

Kato

2018-09-19, 05:22 AM

The Fantastic Four is another big one. We even got two tries on this one, and they both sucked. I really want to see a good FF film.

Obligatory : 'there is, it's called The Incredibles'.
But yes, it can't be that hard. Though, I will say, the movies (in my memory) aren't all bad, but seriously flawed.

Also, regarding casting in LOTR : I think that's kind of unfair towards Connery. McKellen did a great job but when I see Magneto I don't see Gandalf either. And Connery is a good actor, I think he could have pulled it off.
Also, regarding Weaving, in his defense, Elrond can be kind of a ****. I mean, Hugo's aura might have accentuated that a bit much but elr needs a bit of aloof jerkiness at times.

Aliens

Excuse me? I mean, the movie has flaws like any other but 'bad'?

For my part..
I'd like a decent D&D movie, but I guess you should start from scratch with that.
Also, I guess it's a surprise noone has nominated the SW prequels yet.

Kantaki

2018-09-19, 05:27 AM

Also, I guess it's a surprise noone has nominated the SW prequels yet.

The Star Wars Prequels being terrible is a constant of the multiverse.
If they exist they're bad.
Remaking them would only make things worse.

Celestia

2018-09-19, 05:32 AM

Obligatory : 'there is, it's called The Incredibles'.
But yes, it can't be that hard. Though, I will say, the movies (in my memory) aren't all bad, but seriously flawed.
Nah. The similar powers is just a superficial connection. The Incredibles wasn't Fantastic Four; it was kid-friendly Watchmen.

Also, regarding casting in LOTR : I think that's kind of unfair towards Connery. McKellen did a great job but when I see Magneto I don't see Gandalf either. And Connery is a good actor, I think he could have pulled it off.
Connery is a decent actor. He's most famous for his accent, not his acting.

Also, regarding Weaving, in his defense, Elrond can be kind of a ****. I mean, Hugo's aura might have accentuated that a bit much but elr needs a bit of aloof jerkiness at times.
Jerk? Sure. Aloof? Certainly. Sinister? Not so much. Like I said earlier, I do think Weaving is a great actor, but not everyone can play every role. Plus, the alternative is David Mother****ing Bowie. You can't honestly say that wouldn't have been better. Bowie even looked like an elf in real life.

Celestia

2018-09-19, 05:39 AM

The Star Wars Prequels being terrible is a constant of the multiverse.
If they exist they're bad.
Remaking them would only make things worse.
I think it could have been done. Cut out Phantom Menace as it's, honestly, kind of irrelevant. Split Attack of the Clones into two movies so that we can actually, you know, see the clone war. And finally, recast Anakin with someone who can actually act. I think with those three changes, the prequels could have been so much better.

factotum

2018-09-19, 05:56 AM

Eragon.

Eragon is a bad movie because the source material is bad. If you managed to put together a decent movie, it would no longer be Eragon, so you might as well just make a new unrelated dragon-based movie.

Bad movies that should be given another try? I'm not a big movie person, but I'll jump on the LXG bandwagon, definitely--it was a crying shame that they managed to produce that horror from the source material. I'll also say that decent conversions of V for Vendetta and Watchmen wouldn't go amiss, either.

Anonymouswizard

2018-09-19, 06:12 AM

The Hobbit. Make it with love, make it with care, tear out the fan fiction, and pay a little more attention to the tone of the source. I don't think the world's ready yet, but I think it could be done.

I've heard good things about the animated version.

I'd really like another take at the I, Robot film. As in not a proper adaptation of the book, but an attempt to do an original story in either the I, Robot or Elijah and Daneel* styles and make it properly Asimovian. No robot rebellion, but something where robots are important.

Eldan

2018-09-19, 06:49 AM

Nah. The similar powers is just a superficial connection. The Incredibles wasn't Fantastic Four; it was kid-friendly Watchmen.

Connery is a decent actor. He's most famous for his accent, not his acting.

Jerk? Sure. Aloof? Certainly. Sinister? Not so much. Like I said earlier, I do think Weaving is a great actor, but not everyone can play every role. Plus, the alternative is David Mother****ing Bowie. You can't honestly say that wouldn't have been better. Bowie even looked like an elf in real life.

Weird ideas that pop into my head out of nowhere: Ground control to Earendil...

Kitten Champion

2018-09-19, 06:49 AM

Spider-Man 3. The whole Spider-Man dark suit saga is one of my favourite Spider-Man stories, it's one of the best story-lines in the Spectacular Spider-Man cartoon as well, and you could somewhat see the potential within Raimi's movie. In a more focused narrative it can clearly work. Though given Sony it won't realistically happen with the current iteration.

Dune. I mean, I do love the original Lynch work for being impenetrably strange and Lynch as all hell, and they did do that television movie series which is... okay. I guess. Still, they could probably do a LotR-level trilogy with it, and ya'know how studios love their trilogies. Maybe they are? I dunno, I don't follow things. I don't even particularly like Dune as a novel, but I can appreciate it for what a cinematic spectacle it could be.

Prometheus. A film with awesome potential and visual splendour, ruined by dumb horror tropes, weak characterization, and pointless distractions from the central high-concept. I guess I don't want Prometheus per say, but a similar themed and styled movie which ejects those detracting elements.

I, Robot. I like Will Smith and Alan Tudyk together in a police procedural in Asimov's Robot universe, and following the novels super-closely isn't a big concern for me. They just needed a good script more in the spirit of those novels and a certain respect for the viewers intelligence which it lacked almost completely. Something like an utopic/idealistic inversion of Bladerunner.

Keltest

2018-09-19, 07:01 AM

Eragon is a bad movie because the source material is bad. If you managed to put together a decent movie, it would no longer be Eragon, so you might as well just make a new unrelated dragon-based movie.

Bad movies that should be given another try? I'm not a big movie person, but I'll jump on the LXG bandwagon, definitely--it was a crying shame that they managed to produce that horror from the source material. I'll also say that decent conversions of V for Vendetta and Watchmen wouldn't go amiss, either.

Eragon adhered very little to the source material. Regardless of how you think of the books, the movie was bad for its own, special reasons.

Wraith

2018-09-19, 07:37 AM

Superman Returns.

I'm going on record right now; I *liked* Superman Returns, because there's a lot to like about it. I thought that Brandon Routh was excellent in the lead role, that the story was appropriately silly for a Superman adventure, that the soundtrack stabbed me right in the nostalgia in just the right way, and that the huge budget was spent good effects with beautiful set-pieces.

We do, however, need to get rid of Kevin Spacey (for obvious reasons) and get rid of Kate Bosworth, who is supposed to be a hard-bitten reporter and mother of a 4 year old while also looking like she herself is about 14 years old. She's an excellent actress, but completely out of place with her tiny, petite, doe-eyed features.
In fact, get rid of the entire "Superkid" angle entirely, the time-scale doesn't work at all and it detracts from the rest of the movie by making Superman - the poster-boy for truth, justice and the American Way - look like a deadbeat and a damn creepy stalker.

Also, the title needs work. I get the distant DC tie-in with Batman Returns, but... we can do better.

Frankly, the current iterations of Superman and the Justice League - while they do have merit - are dark, gritty and generally taking themselves far too seriously. I genuinely prefer the older (speaking of a film from 2006...) version where superman was supposed to be fantastic and inspiring, not angsty and endlessly glum. :smallsmile:

The Jack

2018-09-19, 07:41 AM

In hindsight, the Eragon books aren't fantastic, they're riddled with cliches and I'm sure I'd find more issues with them if I read them at 23 rather than 13. But they start good, the last one has an ending more dragged out than return of the king. It's a 7/10 book that was made into a 2/10 movie. But I think it's something that could've been translated onto film (or Maybe a televised fantasy series) very well.

The star wars prequels gave us the clone war cartoons, for which I am most grateful. I think the prequel era has huge potential, far more than post-empire/new republic/first order eras.
The prequels are a cornucopia of great ideas, and the overarching plot of palpatine's rise to power and the concept of Anakin's fall is really, really nice stuff. If it weren't for crappy dialogue, politics made boring (you CAN make politics interesting) and a few terrible choices (Battle droids have an intimidating design but are too inept, wishy washy lightsaber battles, bad racial stereotype aliens,a Jar Jar that is clearly underutilized...)
The dude who played anakin (not the first film) is a competent actor, but that script was murder.

I'll hold my ground on Aliens. It's a bad film that aged like ****. Maybe I don't like Cameron, change my mind? the Terminator films are fine, and I don't have the most extensive viewing experience of his filmography, but the dude strikes me as an unimaginative man of poor vision. But hey, I don't like Christopher Nolan as a director because he's so consistent with mostly kind-of-good films and doesn't deviate much from his own (admittedly rather uncommon) formula, so I'm a picky bastard.
I still ask myself why anyone lets JJ Abrams do anything. Does he keep costs down? Man must deliberately aim for 6/10s.

But...
I think the Idea of Alien VS predator is not a bad one. The premise of Alien VS predator has made good comics and fantastic computer games; the big difference is that the successful stories were closer to the future of Alien/Aliens than the 80's of predator. The original AVP movie was dumb fun I loved when I was 11, the second was trash, but I'd really like to see someone redo the franchise. It's a shame that both franchises have more failures than successes.

Celestia

2018-09-19, 07:41 AM

Superman Returns.

I'm going on record right now; I *liked* Superman Returns, because there's a lot to like about it. I thought that Brandon Routh was excellent in the lead role, that the story was appropriately silly for a Superman adventure, that the soundtrack stabbed me right in the nostalgia in just the right way, and that the huge budget was spent good effects with beautiful set-pieces.

We do, however, need to get rid of Kevin Spacey (for obvious reasons) and get rid of Kate Bosworth, who is supposed to be a hard-bitten reporter and mother of a 4 year old while also looking like she herself is about 14 years old. She's an excellent actress, but completely out of place with her tiny, petite, doe-eyed features.
In fact, get rid of the entire "Superkid" angle entirely, the time-scale doesn't work at all and it detracts from the rest of the movie by making Superman - the poster-boy for truth, justice and the American Way - look like a deadbeat and a damn creepy stalker.

Frankly, the current iterations of Superman and the Justice League - while they do have merit - are dark, gritty and generally taking themselves far too seriously. I genuinely prefer the older (speaking of a film from 2002...) version where superman was supposed to be fantastic and inspiring, not angsty and endlessly glum. :smallsmile:
What are you talking about? Kevin Spacey was hamtastically awesome.

I agree with everything else you said, though.

ben-zayb

2018-09-19, 07:44 AM

What makes it even more tragic is the story behind it. Long before that movie, he was given the chance to play Morpheus in The Matrix but turned it down because he couldn't understand the script. Of course, that movie was a huge success. Then, he was given the chance to play Gandalf in Lord of the Rings but turned it down because he couldn't understand the script. That movie was an even bigger success. So then, unwilling to miss out again, he decided that the next time he was handed a script he couldn't understand, he'd take the role, regardless. That turned out to be LXG, which was so bad it made him quit acting forever. It kinda makes you wonder if maybe he was just an idiot who lucked his way into his previous success.

Of course, I am eternally grateful that he turned down LotR. Ian McKellen was a much better Gandalf then I'm sure Connery could have ever hoped to be.Yeah, I think I heard that from the Nostalgia Critic. As for Connery not acting anymore, wasn't there a Michael Caine interview where he said something like Connery just no longer wanting any role offer where he isn't the lead?

And say what you will about LXG being a terribly missed opportunity, IMO the Nautilus is one of the most badass looking vessel in all fiction.

Speaking of Will Smith and an "I _____" title, I'd probably also would prefer an I am Legend film that's more faithful to the book. Sure, we got the alternate ending, but that's still nowhere close to the original concept.

And since I already mentioned a bad "zombie" movie, how about another more faithful adaptation, this time of World War Z replacing thr titular-film-in-name-only trainwreck?

Wraith

2018-09-19, 07:51 AM

What are you talking about? Kevin Spacey was hamtastically awesome.

You're absolutely right, he was. Recent events, however, have somewhat tainted his performance and something as wholesome as Superman doesn't need that association, I feel.

====

Masters of the Universe should also get a remake, I think. Again, it's another stupid movie that I really, really enjoy but it's not aged well - it's really weird to watch Tom Paris and his girlfriend Monica-from-Friends saving the universe.

Also, He-Man in general was a pretty good franchise; there have been rumours of a remake going around for years, but with the upcoming reboot of She-Ra on Netflix, one might think that the project might get a kick start, and I think it's due.

Celestia

2018-09-19, 07:58 AM

You're absolutely right, he was. Recent events, however, have somewhat tainted his performance and something as wholesome as Superman doesn't need that association, I feel.
Huh? Did something happen?

LibraryOgre

2018-09-19, 07:59 AM

I've heard good things about the animated version.

Track down the animated version from the 70s. It is really good, though it doesn't include Beorn, it also means it doesn't mess up Beorn.

And, I'll add that Lindsay Ellis has a great twothree-part documentary (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTRUQ-RKfUs) on why the Hobbit was so badly done.

Huh? Did something happen?

Credibly charged with sexual assault. (https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/11/3/16602628/kevin-spacey-sexual-assault-allegations-house-of-cards) (There's been at least one more since then)

Celestia

2018-09-19, 08:05 AM

Credibly charged with sexual assault. (https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/11/3/16602628/kevin-spacey-sexual-assault-allegations-house-of-cards) (There's been at least one more since then)
Darn. That's unfortunate.

HandofShadows

2018-09-19, 09:21 AM

I'll hold my ground on Aliens. It's a bad film that aged like ****. Maybe I don't like Cameron, change my mind? the Terminator films are fine, and I don't have the most extensive viewing experience of his filmography, but the dude strikes me as an unimaginative man of poor vision. But hey, I don't like Christopher Nolan as a director because he's so consistent with mostly kind-of-good films and doesn't deviate much from his own (admittedly rather uncommon) formula, so I'm a picky bastard.

Aliens is rated at or above 90% in almost all the reviews I can find. So it was never a bad film to nearly everyone but you. Sorry.

Would like to see a proper Fantastic Four movie (3rd time's the charm?) I would say Judge Dredd, but we got one already.

factotum

2018-09-19, 09:43 AM

And say what you will about LXG being a terribly missed opportunity, IMO the Nautilus is one of the most badass looking vessel in all fiction.

Until you look at the Nautilus from the original graphic novels and realise the film version doesn't even come close. Missed opportunity there, as with everywhere else in the movie.

Rodin

2018-09-19, 09:44 AM

I think it could have been done. Cut out Phantom Menace as it's, honestly, kind of irrelevant. Split Attack of the Clones into two movies so that we can actually, you know, see the clone war. And finally, recast Anakin with someone who can actually act. I think with those three changes, the prequels could have been so much better.

I still think the timeline of the prequels is off. The appeal of the prequels was basically "more Darth Vader" in the first place, and Vader only appears in the last 30 seconds of the movie. The movies needed to start at Attack of the Clones, have him fall during Revenge, and then have a third movie showing the consequences of that fall. The narrative weight of the fallen hero is lost because we quit during Act 2.

--

For a movie I'd like to see re-done - Wing Commander. The premise is solid - a forever war against a honorable warrior race. There's plenty of good stories to be told in the universe, including some of the battles that were described in the manuals if adapting one of the games doesn't appeal. My personal pick would be the novel End Run, which is about a single carrier and her escorts going deep into Kilrathi space to act as a diversion and surviving against all odds. It's classic war movie fodder.

Pity what we actually got was a confused mess of a story that ignored ALL the lore of the universe and made little sense. Bad acting, bad special effects, just...ugh.

Anonymouswizard

2018-09-19, 09:52 AM

Speaking of Will Smith and an "I _____" title, I'd probably also would prefer an I am Legend film that's more faithful to the book. Sure, we got the alternate ending, but that's still nowhere close to the original concept.

I have to admit that I adored the book and grew to hate the film the more it went on.

I've heard The Last Man on Earth is the closest adaptation of the book, but I'm not sure if it still has the proper meaning as I've not seen it. The book has one of the best endings I've read, and makes the title have so much more meaning, that I just feel like any attempt to change the meaning of the title is a disservice.

Another one, I'd like to see a film of Stardust with the book's ending. I like most of the changes they made, and it's a great film in most respects, but they replaced the best ending I've ever seen with a generic all around happy ending. Bring back the bittersweet.

Peelee

2018-09-19, 09:57 AM

The Fantastic Four is another big one. We even got two tries on this one
Three.

You're absolutely right, he was. Recent events, however, have somewhat tainted his performance

I disagree. The entire purpose of an actor is to portray someone else. If they can do that, they've done an objectively good job. Later revelations do not retroactively make it worse (though I have no qualms about such revelations destroying their careers). Is the Cosby Show any less funny? Do you think that the Rolling Stones songs are unclean because the bassist groomed his wife from 13?

JoshL

2018-09-19, 09:58 AM

I like many of the movies mentioned, good and bad, for what they are (they are working on a new Dune adaptation, by the way). However, one I'd like to see another pass at is The Dark Tower. I loved the cast. The visuals and effects were great. And I have no idea who the movie was for. If you hadn't read the books, a full 40% of the movie will make no sense. And if you HAVE read the books, everything will enrage you. I tried to mentally distance it from the books and just take it as it is, but every time they'd throw in another reference to something they won't explain, drawing your attention back to the books and how badly they're messing it up.

I'd also like to see a film of Neverwhere with the cast of the BBC Radio adaptation (replacing Christopher Lee, of course, RIP). Mostly because Anthony Head was the perfect Mr Croup!

No brains

2018-09-19, 10:19 AM

Re: some random ideas in the thread
I'll find the strangest hill to die on fighting for Hugo Weaving in whatever role he's in. He can play anything. An elf lord. A mutant fascist. A burnt anarchist. A buggy antivirus software. A drag queen. The dude rocks. About as many props to Bowie, but I feel if he had played Elrond, it may have ended up too similar to Jareth.

Fantastic Four has actually had four shots at making a good movie: The Corman one most don't know about, the pair from the early 2000s, and Fan-Four-Stick. I'll also echo that The Incredibles are basically a reskinned FF, so technically they have had 6 chances and have only made one serviceable FF movie. (Maybe ~3, because I congratulate Michael Chiklis for wearing practical makeup.)

I actually appreciate Aliens for its tonal dissonance with Alien. I think it's a natural evolution of Dan O'Bannon's core idea that the Alien is just an animal, and without worrying about acid blood collateral damage, it's fair game to just shoot one. That aspect when taken with Alien 3 ends up giving a Moby **** vibe to the tragedy of Ripley, that vengeance on an animal, even if it's an awesome nuke and forklift vengeance, are ultimately fruitless. I will say that Resurrection could do with a remake/ continuation that builds off of it. The tradition in the Alien films of spitting all over the last director's vision (at least to the previous director) can make for some weird turns.

Building off of the above, I think it was a mistake to give Prometheus to some dude who wrote Lost and Ridley Scott. The first for obvious reasons, and the second because he already had a good turn at the wheel adding his weirdness to a story that gets progressively stranger with each installment. As it stands, Alien is now going to become a part of Ridley Scott's weird obsession with Christ and robots. I came to love how it was always unexpected to see the world build in unexpected and weirdly organic ways as new minds added their unique weirdness to the Alien universe. But Alien just being a part of Blade Runner? No thanks.
OH RIGHT! Crappy movies that deserve another try... um...

I have a soft spot for Dracula Untold. Some people will say that's just the soft spot in my skull never went away, but I dig the idea of a warrior-Dracula that plays into the moral ambiguity of his acts given cultural perspectives. Also that's going to be the closest I will see to anything being added to Legacy of Kain, so my fingers are crossed, but not perpendicularly as to ward off vampires.

I would like to see not a remake of Maleficent, but a director's cut/ extra scene that confirms my headcanon that the story was Maleficent attempting to lie to us. That would justify the plot holes and hokeyness so well it could actually turn that ripoff of Wicked into a decent movie.

Few specific examples are coming to me now, but I generally favor this idea. You could probably troll MST3K's list for films that have a kernel of goodness that can be enjoyed and maybe nurtured. I recall a couple in there that had decent concepts that could be reworked pretty well.

Celestia

2018-09-19, 10:25 AM

I still think the timeline of the prequels is off. The appeal of the prequels was basically "more Darth Vader" in the first place, and Vader only appears in the last 30 seconds of the movie. The movies needed to start at Attack of the Clones, have him fall during Revenge, and then have a third movie showing the consequences of that fall. The narrative weight of the fallen hero is lost because we quit during Act 2.
Hmm. Yeah, I can see that. Of course, by having the second movie be about the actual clone war, basically the entire first half of Revenge could be put in there, as well. So, the first movie deals with the intrigue and lead up to the clone war, ending as the current second one does in Geonosis (I think that was the planet?) The second movie would involve the clone war, itself, and end with Order 66 and Anakin invading the Jedi temple. Then the third would involve the rise of the Empire and end with the construction of the Death Star. That does seem to be a much more balanced plot progression.

No brains

2018-09-19, 10:39 AM

Do you think that the Rolling Stones songs are unclean because the bassist groomed his wife from 13?

Yes. In this particular case, it colors some implications of 'Under My Thumb'.

That is seriously terrible.

Willie the Duck

2018-09-19, 10:42 AM

Something I'd love to see given another shot is Waterworld. It's an awful movie, but post apocalyptic racing boats are a great idea. :smallbiggrin:

Waterworld was a perfectly fine action-adventure movie with a now-cringe-worthy ham-handed environmental message and perfectly fine effects that would fit perfectly fine amongst 80s and 90s action movies (although it would have been better if it was from before Jurassic Park raised the bar in terms of effects) if it hadn't been the most expensive movie ever made at the time. The movie (separate from IRL notoriety) itself isn't impressive enough to be impressively bad.

What makes it even more tragic is the story behind it. Long before that movie, he was given the chance to play Morpheus in The Matrix but turned it down because he couldn't understand the script. Of course, that movie was a huge success. Then, he was given the chance to play Gandalf in Lord of the Rings but turned it down because he couldn't understand the script. That movie was an even bigger success. So then, unwilling to miss out again, he decided that the next time he was handed a script he couldn't understand, he'd take the role, regardless. That turned out to be LXG, which was so bad it made him quit acting forever. It kinda makes you wonder if maybe he was just an idiot who lucked his way into his previous success.

I think this highlights that it's a lot easier for us with hindsight to know if a movie will be good or not than it is for an actor reading the initial treatment. Hell, before either existed, you were to hand any of us the scripts for The Matrix and The Mario Bothers movie, I doubt any of us would have much more than a 50% chance of guessing which would end up being a smash hit and the other being a total flop.

Masters of the Universe should also get a remake, I think. Again, it's another stupid movie that I really, really enjoy but it's not aged well - it's really weird to watch Tom Paris and his girlfriend Monica-from-Friends saving the universe.

With the help of the heroic Ivan Drago, I know, it was a weird movie. The How Did This Get Made? podcast did a wonderful review of this one.

And yes, MotU, along with Conan and John Carter, need new movies.

Peelee

2018-09-19, 10:47 AM

Yes. In this particular case, it colors some implications of 'Under My Thumb'.

It would if Wyman wrote it. The lyrics were Jagger's.

Celestia

2018-09-19, 11:10 AM

l think this highlights that it's a lot easier for us with hindsight to know if a movie will be good or not than it is for an actor reading the initial treatment. Hell, before either existed, you were to hand any of us the scripts for The Matrix and The Mario Bothers movie, I doubt any of us would have much more than a 50% chance of guessing which would end up being a smash hit and the other being a total flop.
No, I'm pretty sure most people knew that Mario Bros. was doomed from the start. :smalltongue:

Regardless, I do see your point. The success of The Matrix did come out of left field, but despite that, you'd expect an actor, an experienced actor with numerous successes under his belt no less, would know better than us simple laymen what makes a good script. I mean, it's kinda part of the job.

Peelee

2018-09-19, 11:16 AM

No, I'm pretty sure most people knew that Mario Bros. was doomed from the start.

Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo ensured that no matter how bad it was, it was still awesome.

Callos_DeTerran

2018-09-19, 11:38 AM

And yes, MotU, along with Conan and John Carter, need new movies.

Conan has had two good movies to his name, same with John Carter. There just need to be more of them now. :smallbiggrin:

Rogar Demonblud

2018-09-19, 11:45 AM

No, I'm pretty sure most people knew that Mario Bros. was doomed from the start. :smalltongue:

Regardless, I do see your point. The success of The Matrix did come out of left field, but despite that, you'd expect an actor, an experienced actor with numerous successes under his belt no less, would know better than us simple laymen what makes a good script. I mean, it's kinda part of the job.

The script Connery saw included a lot of info on previsualizing the VFX, stuff that shouldn't have been there in an actor's copy. As he said, it was way too tricksy. I wonder if the LOTR script had the same issue. The LXG script was notoriously barebones, which may be why he chose that one for his finale.

For a movie to be redone, the last Mummy movie. Start by firing Tom Cruise out of a cannon.

Corlindale

2018-09-19, 01:16 PM

The Golden Compass. One of my favourite fantasy stories from my childhood - read it over and over again.

Then came the movie. I watched it, and...well, I don't even actually remember it being bad. Or good. Or anything. In fact, I cannot conjure up a single mental image from that entire movie, despite having watched the whole thing just a couple of years ago. It was so utterly, utterly bland that it left absolutely no impression on me - it's actually an impressive feat, in some bizarre way.

I still don't understand how they could mess it up. Armored bears, witches, shapeshifting animal companions, complex heroes and villains, and a deeply fascinating world. It could have been amazing! The Subtle Knife could also have been great, I'd argue, though The Amber Spyglass might have been tricky to pull off, being widely (and rightly) considered the weakest book of the series.

Tvtyrant

2018-09-19, 01:34 PM

I think Fantastic Four should really be set in the past instead of the modern day. Make them the original astronauts on the moon, focus on a madmen style 1950s/60s world of martinis and shady capitalism.

I would love for them to do a Nick Fury and the Fantastic Four setting, maybe throw in Antman and Namor.

tomandtish

2018-09-19, 01:44 PM

Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo ensured that no matter how bad it was, it was still awesome.

Hoskins himself would disagree with you. He despises (https://www.indiewire.com/2011/06/bob-hoskins-would-like-to-forget-he-ever-made-super-mario-bros-117920/) that movie.

I'd like to see Mortal Kombat redone well. Mortal Kombat: Rebirth looked like it would have been awesome if it had gotten made.

Peelee

2018-09-19, 01:48 PM

Hoskins himself would disagree with you. He despises (https://www.indiewire.com/2011/06/bob-hoskins-would-like-to-forget-he-ever-made-super-mario-bros-117920/) that movie.

Let me rephrase. The worst Hoskins movie is still gonna be damned good for me.

oudeis

2018-09-19, 02:03 PM

Conan has had two good movies to his name, same with John Carter. There just need to be more of them now. :smallbiggrin:

There were two John Carter movies???

Willie the Duck

2018-09-19, 02:04 PM

No, I'm pretty sure most people knew that Mario Bros. was doomed from the start. :smalltongue:

My point is that they are bizarre sci fi movies about virtual worlds and alternate realities and both scripts had bizarre stuff that it's impossible to know would work (or in fact worked or didn't because of stuff that happened well after people agreed to do the movie).

Regardless, I do see your point. The success of The Matrix did come out of left field, but despite that, you'd expect an actor, an experienced actor with numerous successes under his belt no less, would know better than us simple laymen what makes a good script. I mean, it's kinda part of the job.

Well then you should make the same criticism of Will Smith, since he passed on being Neo for the exact same reasons. I think this process might be a lot more blind shooting that we are giving credit for (also a reason why studios can sink hundreds of millions into movies which end up tanking).

Conan has had two good movies to his name, same with John Carter. There just need to be more of them now. :smallbiggrin:

I'm not going to go toe-to-toe on which of those movies are good or not. The point is that outlandish sword and sorcery (and sometimes rayguns) epic pulp fantasies are the genre fiction that ought to always be ripe for the big screen. I mean, I get it, westerns don't sell like they used to, and noir goes in and out of style, but cliffhangers, gladiator flicks, and Brian Blessed yelling 'Gordon's alive!' are the kind of things that should find every generation, and are perfect fits for the big screen. They should be evergreen (or at least any time except right after a period of oversaturation, much like superhero movies).

Callos_DeTerran

2018-09-19, 02:28 PM

There were two John Carter movies???

Mis-spoke on that one, meant that John Carter's movie was good.

I'm not going to go toe-to-toe on which of those movies are good or not. The point is that outlandish sword and sorcery (and sometimes rayguns) epic pulp fantasies are the genre fiction that ought to always be ripe for the big screen. I mean, I get it, westerns don't sell like they used to, and noir goes in and out of style, but cliffhangers, gladiator flicks, and Brian Blessed yelling 'Gordon's alive!' are the kind of things that should find every generation, and are perfect fits for the big screen. They should be evergreen (or at least any time except right after a period of oversaturation, much like superhero movies).

You don't need to, its pretty obvious, Conan the Barbarian, the Momoa Conan, and John Carter are all fine movies. The Destroyer is just...bad.

Agreed that Sword and Sorcery and so on should have a thriving industry and just..doesn't for some reason.

Lvl 2 Expert

2018-09-19, 02:54 PM

oudeis

2018-09-19, 03:10 PM

factotum

2018-09-19, 03:12 PM

My point is that they are bizarre sci fi movies about virtual worlds and alternate realities and both scripts had bizarre stuff that it's impossible to know would work (or in fact worked or didn't because of stuff that happened well after people agreed to do the movie).

Yeah, but one of them was based on a video game and the other wasn't, so we can automatically assume one is going to be better than the other just from looking at history. :smallbiggrin:

(Speaking of which, let's have someone do another Doom movie, only this time, make it slightly more interesting than watching someone do their taxes? Pretty please...).

Mordar

2018-09-19, 03:49 PM

Dune. I mean, I do love the original Lynch work for being impenetrably strange and Lynch as all hell, and they did do that television movie series which is... okay. I guess. Still, they could probably do a LotR-level trilogy with it, and ya'know how studios love their trilogies. Maybe they are? I dunno, I don't follow things. I don't even particularly like Dune as a novel, but I can appreciate it for what a cinematic spectacle it could be.

I just don't know how they could make a good Dune movie. Much like Cujo, so much of what is important can't easily be presented to the audience of a movie. I really do think the world-building and plotting in Dune (even in just the first book) are fantastic as well as vital and it is perhaps too much to "show, not tell" in a single feature film...and probably too slow to stretch over a trilogy or series. I wish...but I think the fulfillment would be less than desired.

Re: some random ideas in the thread
I actually appreciate Aliens for its tonal dissonance with Alien. I think it's a natural evolution of Dan O'Bannon's core idea that the Alien is just an animal, and without worrying about acid blood collateral damage, it's fair game to just shoot one. That aspect when taken with Alien 3 ends up giving a Moby **** vibe to the tragedy of Ripley, that vengeance on an animal, even if it's an awesome nuke and forklift vengeance, are ultimately fruitless. I will say that Resurrection could do with a remake/ continuation that builds off of it. The tradition in the Alien films of spitting all over the last director's vision (at least to the previous director) can make for some weird turns.

Building off of the above, I think it was a mistake to give Prometheus to some dude who wrote Lost and Ridley Scott. The first for obvious reasons, and the second because he already had a good turn at the wheel adding his weirdness to a story that gets progressively stranger with each installment. As it stands, Alien is now going to become a part of Ridley Scott's weird obsession with Christ and robots. I came to love how it was always unexpected to see the world build in unexpected and weirdly organic ways as new minds added their unique weirdness to the Alien universe. But Alien just being a part of Blade Runner? No thanks.

I loved Aliens and watch it every time it is on. I give it genre-spawning credit (Sci-fi action horror as distinguished from slasher, horror, or straight sci-fi...Alien to me was great too, but straight suspense/slasher), and think it solidified Ripley as one of the Holy Trinity of Female Action Heroes. Everything after Aliens though (that doesn't also have Predator in the title) should be remade though. Particularly Covenant. Beyond terrible.

OH RIGHT! Crappy movies that deserve another try... um...

I have a soft spot for Dracula Untold. Some people will say that's just the soft spot in my skull never went away, but I dig the idea of a warrior-Dracula that plays into the moral ambiguity of his acts given cultural perspectives. Also that's going to be the closest I will see to anything being added to Legacy of Kain, so my fingers are crossed, but not perpendicularly as to ward off vampires.

I wanted to like Untold (and I Frankenstein) but they didn't quite make it. Redoing those might help. Similarly, I would like to see some attempts on the Universal monster movies that weren't trying to be action films, or star vehicles...we don't need a $100M Mummy, much less a $350M Mummy featuring a megastar.

Few specific examples are coming to me now, but I generally favor this idea. You could probably troll MST3K's list for films that have a kernel of goodness that can be enjoyed and maybe nurtured. I recall a couple in there that had decent concepts that could be reworked pretty well.

I agree - I always think of movies that "If only they had done this it would have been better" or "If they had called the movie Title instead of Sequel and let it stand on its own it would have been good".

Conan has had two good movies to his name, same with John Carter. There just need to be more of them now. :smallbiggrin:

Conan has 1.25 good movies, in my opinion. But, Hooray! Another John Carter fan. Only downside to that movie is they spent way too much to make it.

- M

Ravens_cry

2018-09-19, 08:05 PM

I've heard good things about the animated version.
It was pretty good, though there was odd character design choices for the wood elves. They looked like goblins almost.

I'd really like another take at the I, Robot film. As in not a proper adaptation of the book, but an attempt to do an original story in either the I, Robot or Elijah and Daneel* styles and make it properly Asimovian. No robot rebellion, but something where robots are important.
Yeah, from what I heard, it wasn't a super bad movie, just completely flubbed the tone and ideas of the short stories.

Rodin

2018-09-19, 10:59 PM

Yeah, but one of them was based on a video game and the other wasn't, so we can automatically assume one is going to be better than the other just from looking at history. :smallbiggrin:

(Speaking of which, let's have someone do another Doom movie, only this time, make it slightly more interesting than watching someone do their taxes? Pretty please...).

Doom is always going to be problematic to shift from game to film. The original games are essentially plotless. The third game has a barebones plot that I've long since forgotten, and it still boiled down to "oh dear, a hell portal opened, lets kill demons". Haven't played the new one so maybe there's more there?

Beyond the lack of an existing story there's the difficulty of characters. All of the games are solo affairs where one badass chews his way through the forces of hell. There's nobody about for him to talk to, and the demons themselves don't do much talking either. Doom 3 had to corrupt that one military dude to give the game a proper antagonist.

When I think about what a Doom movie would look like with those requirements, I get...Aliens. No, really. All hell breaks loose, eldritch looking creatures murder the hell out of a facility, group of marines try to fight their way out with most of them getting killed off apart from our one badass.

It's just really difficult to come up with a movie that is recognizable as Doom. Which was pretty much where the last Doom movie fell down (among many other things).

Kitten Champion

2018-09-19, 11:27 PM

I, Robot aspired to mediocrity. If it wasn't an I, Robot adaptation I'd never have remembered it. It didn't even have the camp goofiness of a Wild Wild West, and certainly no Men in Black. I mean, it was an original script for a Sci-Fi action movie that just got merged into Asimov's famous work at some point in its development. The strengths of Asimov's works could've elevated it into something actually interesting, but they didn't want to really move out of the comfort zone for that.

As to John Carter, while the movie has flaws specific to it, the general issue is... time. As in, everything there has been picked clean by more prominent genre works since, leaving a very familiar-looking skeleton. For anyone not passionate about Carter or care about his place in literary history it'll just look derivative regardless.

I mostly enjoyed it - I think it was visually quite appealing in particularly - but I can understand why it flopped.

RossN

2018-09-20, 06:19 AM

True story: When I first watched LotR (having not read the books), I honestly thought that Elrond was a secret bad guy like Saruman, and I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. It made things rather confusing for me when it never did. I love Hugo Weaving and think he's a great actor, but his face, voice, and mannerisms make him unable to effectively play the good guy. He was just born to be a villain.

Oddly that's the same reason (or inverted reason) I've slowly fallen out of love with Ian McKellan's version of Magneto. Sir Ian is a wonderful actor, but having re-watched the films relatively recently, filmverse Magneto is actually kind of a weasel - a coward and hypocrite who hides behind children and is never the one personally risking himself. He talks a good game yes, but I think casting someone as charming and dignified as Sir Ian made the character come across as too likable.

(Note I am only talking about the filmverse Magneto here - who is an asshat played by a lovable actor - rather than the more morally ambiguous, as written comics version.)

Saph

2018-09-20, 07:07 AM

Reign of Fire (2002) - The movie poster shows an army of dragons fighting Apache gunships in the skies above London. Sounds awesome, right? That should be a great hook, right? Except that scene never happens. The movie's set in a post-apocaplytic gray world with minimal technology, you never see a helicopter, and you don't even see an army of dragons – the movie is about a couple of guys trying to kill one big dragon with a crossbow. Once they succeed, the entire race of dragons goes extinct because that was the only male. Yes, it's as disappointing as it sounds.

The Dresden Files (2007) - TV series rather than a movie, but this is another instalment in the Hollywood screenwriter tradition of "let's take a really popular book and change everything about it". Turns out the fanbase weren't really in love with having every single plot and character rewritten, which you wouldn't have thought would have come as a surprise, but apparently did.

Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010) - Okay, technically this wasn't a bad movie, but it's a disappointing one. Voyage is one of the most-loved Narnia books partly because of how unique it is. There's no big climactic battle, no evil archvillain, and there isn't even really an antagonist. The crew just sail their ship westwards and explore, getting into strange adventures on the various weird places they discover – it's almost like a fantasy version of Star Trek. The writers who did the adaption clearly had absolutely no idea how to handle this, so they threw in a nonsensical and arbitrary villain just to give the heroes something to fight. A faithful adaption would have been so much more interesting because it would have forced the writers to do something different.

Eldan

2018-09-20, 07:09 AM

To be fair, the Dresden Files TV series looked like it was written when only the first book or two was out, so they mostly filled in setting details that Butcher himself later changed.

Not well, of course. The series sucked.

Celestia

2018-09-20, 07:44 AM

Oddly that's the same reason (or inverted reason) I've slowly fallen out of love with Ian McKellan's version of Magneto. Sir Ian is a wonderful actor, but having re-watched the films relatively recently, filmverse Magneto is actually kind of a weasel - a coward and hypocrite who hides behind children and is never the one personally risking himself. He talks a good game yes, but I think casting someone as charming and dignified as Sir Ian made the character come across as too likable.

(Note I am only talking about the filmverse Magneto here - who is an asshat played by a lovable actor - rather than the more morally ambiguous, as written comics version.)
I did like his Magneto, myself, but I do think Fassbender's Magneto is better. He can do both the sympathetic side and the villain side well and can switch between them easily.

Leewei

2018-09-20, 09:35 AM

Better alternate universe: David Bowie wanted to play Elrond, but, sadly, they turned him down."Frodo Baggins, ...

... you remind me of the babe."

Willie the Duck

2018-09-20, 09:57 AM

Yeah, but one of them was based on a video game and the other wasn't, so we can automatically assume one is going to be better than the other just from looking at history. :smallbiggrin:

Yes, but it was the first, and the one that burned into out brains the idea the video game adaptations would be awful. At the time, it was still an open question. Besides, one of the biggest complaints about SMBMovie was that it was really someone's bizarre sci fi Matrix-like script they really wanted to make shoehorned into a movie about the Mario Bros. characters instead of a purpose-built video game movie.

As to John Carter, while the movie has flaws specific to it, the general issue is... time. As in, everything there has been picked clean by more prominent genre works since, leaving a very familiar-looking skeleton. For anyone not passionate about Carter or care about his place in literary history it'll just look derivative regardless.

I mostly enjoyed it - I think it was visually quite appealing in particularly - but I can understand why it flopped.

Very much so. "Seinfeld isn't funny" (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SeinfeldIsUnfunny)-syndrome at work in droves. Those who have grown up with the derivative works won't see the inspiring piece as being the true initiator of those tropes (emotionally, even if intellectually they know that the original was the first to the well).

Rodin

2018-09-20, 10:20 AM

Yes, but it was the first, and the one that burned into out brains the idea the video game adaptations would be awful. At the time, it was still an open question. Besides, one of the biggest complaints about SMBMovie was that it was really someone's bizarre sci fi Matrix-like script they really wanted to make shoehorned into a movie about the Mario Bros. characters instead of a purpose-built video game movie.

It still leaves the question of what an actual Mario live-action movie would look like. The games are about a guy who runs around breaking open blocks with his head and beating turtles up by stomping on them. The idea of trying to make a movie out of the plot of any of the games gives me a headache.

RossN

2018-09-20, 10:31 AM

I did like his Magneto, myself, but I do think Fassbender's Magneto is better. He can do both the sympathetic side and the villain side well and can switch between them easily.

I think my problem was more that in the original trilogy Magneto isn't a remotely sympathetic character even if you part way buy his philosophy. He constantly uses other mutants, including actual kidnapped children and brainwashed victims as expendable pawns while he stays safely back. When his most loyal follower jumps in front of a 'bullet' to save him he disdainfully kicks her aside now that she is no longer pure. Fassbender's version isn't much better - leaping at the chance to manipulate Mystique into a weapon.

Movie Magneto isn't just a villain, he's a jerk. The actors playing him manage to make him seem much grander and more tragic than the grubby little weasel he really is. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, if only be was called on it a lot more.

Peelee

2018-09-20, 10:49 AM

I think my problem was more that in the original trilogy Magneto isn't a remotely sympathetic character even if you part way buy his philosophy. He constantly uses other mutants, including actual kidnapped children and brainwashed victims as expendable pawns while he stays safely back. When his most loyal follower jumps in front of a 'bullet' to save him he disdainfully kicks her aside now that she is no longer pure. Fassbender's version isn't much better - leaping at the chance to manipulate Mystique into a weapon.

Movie Magneto isn't just a villain, he's a jerk. The actors playing him manage to make him seem much grander and more tragic than the grubby little weasel he really is. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, if only be was called on it a lot more.

Yeah, I was wanting to say something along these lines. McKellen did a great job being villainous, but he wasn't sympathetic at all; the concentration camp backstory sure as hell did a fantastic job explaining why his beliefs and convictions were what they were, but his actions firmly removed him from the sympathetic field.

Tvtyrant

2018-09-20, 11:45 AM

I think my problem was more that in the original trilogy Magneto isn't a remotely sympathetic character even if you part way buy his philosophy. He constantly uses other mutants, including actual kidnapped children and brainwashed victims as expendable pawns while he stays safely back. When his most loyal follower jumps in front of a 'bullet' to save him he disdainfully kicks her aside now that she is no longer pure. Fassbender's version isn't much better - leaping at the chance to manipulate Mystique into a weapon.

Movie Magneto isn't just a villain, he's a jerk. The actors playing him manage to make him seem much grander and more tragic than the grubby little weasel he really is. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, if only be was called on it a lot more.

That was what made it great IMO. It mirrors real life where cult and terrorist leads rely on charisma to cover for their agendas.

In the books Magneto is often misanthropic to the point of madness, he goes looking for ways to stick knives in as many people's backs as he can. Case in point he once joined an alliance Loki made so he could murder red skull.

Alabenson

2018-09-20, 11:55 AM

Honestly, I think if we're talking about truly bad films that could be remade I think Howard the Duck would be a decent candidate. The original film was so awful it would be hard for a remake not to be an improvement, and I think there is actually potential there to make an entertaining film if you really embrace the absurdity of the comics.

Willie the Duck

2018-09-20, 12:29 PM

It still leaves the question of what an actual Mario live-action movie would look like. The games are about a guy who runs around breaking open blocks with his head and beating turtles up by stomping on them. The idea of trying to make a movie out of the plot of any of the games gives me a headache.

I guess. We weren't really talking about SMB at all (it was more simply a comparator to the Matrix to discuss how hard it is to know up front if a movie will turn out well), but it is a property that got a bad movie that theoretically could get another go at it.

Honestly, I think what the series needed was a 'movie version' of the 80s cartoon it had, in the same manner as GI Joe and a few other cartoons got movies after the animated Transformers movie tanked. It really doesn't need a full theatrical release movie.

Peelee

2018-09-20, 12:34 PM

Jothki

2018-09-20, 12:37 PM

The Matrix films, all three of them. Cut out like half the action, coherently say the things that the original movies said incoherently, and add some obvious fixes like making it so that the Architect reveals that the Matrix is actually a massive energy sink, and all of the electricity generation stuff is necessary to keep it running at all.

The Jack

2018-09-20, 01:20 PM

Ravens_cry

2018-09-20, 01:37 PM

Fantastic Four as a movie should just be written off at this point. At some point audiences go from "maybe the next try will get it right" to "they will never get it right". F4 is somewhere past Howard the Duck on that scale.
I think a Howard the Duck movie could work. Yes, it would carry a lot of the stink of the first, and that don't wash off easy, but the concept is sound in a silly but sincere kind of way, something that fits fairly well among other fare like Guardians of the Galaxy. It was appropriate that that sub-series was where the Duck trapped in a world he never made made a cameo appearance. I think even at the time they could have done it if they'd gone the Roger Rabbit route and not had George Lucas as the director.

Telonius

2018-09-20, 01:39 PM

Tyndmyr

2018-09-20, 02:22 PM

World War Z. That film had everything you liked about the book....'s title. It could use an actual movie based on it.

Waterworld would be a great remake. I enjoyed it as a kid, but it's aged a bit, and would benefit from a modern day take on it.

Johnny Mnemonic. Basically a precursor to the Matrix from back before cyberpunk became big and successful. Could be pretty solid if done right today.

Valerian. The film had some potential. That intro mission was delightfully sci-fi, and some of the world setting was incredibly pretty. Unfortunately, the plot was about as smart as a brick to the head, and actor chemistry was painfully lacking.

Agreed 100% on Dresden Files. Love the books, hate the TV series. It could be cinematic as all hell if only one wasn't fixated on making it look like a sci-fi channel original.

Mordar

2018-09-20, 02:28 PM

I think a Howard the Duck movie could work. Yes, it would carry a lot of the stink of the first, and that don't wash off easy, but the concept is sound in a silly but sincere kind of way, something that fits fairly well among other fare like Guardians of the Galaxy. It was appropriate that that sub-series was where the Duck trapped in a world he never made made a cameo appearance. I think even at the time they could have done it if they'd gone the Roger Rabbit route and not had George Lucas as the director.

I really liked Howard in the theaters when it came out. My friends and I quoted and referenced it for a long while. "She took my eggs!" Good times. I think remaking it would take away the innocent fun feel...but I was never a Howard-in-comics-fan, so I might be way off base.

I'd like to see Robot Jox done as a serious(ly fun) Mechwarrior kind of movie. Sadly it is my go to damning-with-faint-praise referent. "At least Waterworld wasn't as bad as Robot Jox" kind of thing. Pacific Rim was cool, but it wasn't a Mech movie for me. It was a nice pastiche. I want hordes of recognizable mechs slugging it out and to hell with the economics of giant fighting robots.

- M

Legato Endless

2018-09-20, 02:41 PM

Doom is always going to be problematic to shift from game to film. The original games are essentially plotless. The third game has a barebones plot that I've long since forgotten, and it still boiled down to "oh dear, a hell portal opened, lets kill demons". Haven't played the new one so maybe there's more there?

Beyond the lack of an existing story there's the difficulty of characters. All of the games are solo affairs where one badass chews his way through the forces of hell. There's nobody about for him to talk to, and the demons themselves don't do much talking either. Doom 3 had to corrupt that one military dude to give the game a proper antagonist.

When I think about what a Doom movie would look like with those requirements, I get...Aliens. No, really. All hell breaks loose, eldritch looking creatures murder the hell out of a facility, group of marines try to fight their way out with most of them getting killed off apart from our one badass.

Yeah. My first thought was the original Predator. Where it's a slasher movie stashed inside an action flick. Except where the tweak in Predator was the hyper masculine soldiers being mercilessly stalked, here the protagonist turns out to be the slasher to the demons. It's a really simple concept with a smooth execution.

Doom is largely plotless carnage and adolescent nonsense. That should be leaned into, not compensated for. I shouldn't be hearing about how the human genome is still unmapped, or about how there's a retrovirus transforming people, or having someone exposit to me over ancient martian archeology.

It's about some guys. There's a base. Suddenly demons appear. Why are there demons here? Irrelevant. Maybe there's a portal. You don't even tell us it comes from hell. All we need to know is its spewing monsters. Why is there a base on Mars? Go read the wiki. All that matters is it's used for gloriously chaotic set pieces. If a screen starts talking about argent energy, it should immediately explode.

Beyond some efficient character work, the only world building you need is to give the audience a good sense of the physical space all hell is breaking loose in.

DataNinja

2018-09-20, 03:00 PM

The idea of trying to make a movie out of the plot of any of the [Mario] games gives me a headache.
Hey, there're the RPG games. Clearly, we need big-screen Fawful.And even if not, the Galaxy games give at least some semblance of a plot, even if it boils down to "get the princess back" in the end. So, not impossible. Just... probably still not a good idea. :smalltongue:

2D8HP

2018-09-20, 03:13 PM

There were two John Carter movies???

Indeed there was,
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nsawq3PBMms and it came out in 2009, a few years before "John Carter".

factotum

2018-09-20, 03:25 PM

The Matrix films, all three of them.

The first one really doesn't need remaking. It's not perfect, of course, but it's a country mile away from being so bad it needs a remake. Heck, you could even keep most of the second movie--just get rid of the ruddy Architect and his nonsense, and cut down the dialogue by about two-thirds, and you've got something decent. It's the third movie that really needs a remake. When 90% of the fan theories you read online about what the third movie would be about are better than what we actually got, there's definitely something gone wrong somewhere.

Tyndmyr

2018-09-20, 04:33 PM

Oh, sure, the films got progressively worse as they went, and a reshoot would want to modify them accordingly, you'd probably want to do all three at once to ensure you keep a consistent style and feel. Just, yknow, take a lot of care to be faithful with the original.

Eldan

2018-09-20, 04:43 PM

Indeed there was,
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nsawq3PBMms and it came out in 2009, a few years before "John Carter".

Huh. And by Asylum, too.

Willie the Duck

2018-09-20, 07:14 PM

Forum filter won't let me post the name, but (Richard) Tracy tops the list for me. The character occupies an important place in comic history, being introduced 8 years before Batman and really establishing the Rogues' Gallery concept. The movie should have been awesome. You got your Film Noir detective story, a character everybody knows about, a boatload of super-talented actors, a big budget to play around with... and a mediocre result. Something about all those ingredients just didn't combine well. (It did get a couple of Oscars that year, but for things like Best Art Direction, Best Makeup, and Best Song). It wasn't bad, exactly. Just really disappointing. I would love to see somebody else give it another try.

Financially, however, it did quite well. People think it flopped because no sequel was made, but that was because the instant it did make money, a bunch of people started contesting rights to it. I hear there are some new graphic novels in the pipeline (as well as the newspaper strip), but I think anything on screen is still a long way off.

Telonius

2018-09-20, 09:21 PM

Hey, there're the RPG games. Clearly, we need big-screen Fawful.And even if not, the Galaxy games give at least some semblance of a plot, even if it boils down to "get the princess back" in the end. So, not impossible. Just... probably still not a good idea. :smalltongue:

I never looked to see if Rampage was worth anybody's time. Apparently they tried to make a go of wringing a movie out of a video game where you stomped various cities.

Rodin

2018-09-20, 10:25 PM

I never looked to see if Rampage was worth anybody's time. Apparently they tried to make a go of wringing a movie out of a video game where you stomped various cities.

Apparently, the movie is extremely dumb. As in, your brain climbs down your throat to throttle your heart to escape the pain level of dumb. However, the monsters stomping the city is lots of fun, and the Rock is, well, the Rock. Your mileage will vary on whether that works out to a good movie or a terrible one.

Yeah. My first thought was the original Predator. Where it's a slasher movie stashed inside an action flick. Except where the tweak in Predator was the hyper masculine soldiers being mercilessly stalked, here the protagonist turns out to be the slasher to the demons. It's a really simple concept with a smooth execution.

Doom is largely plotless carnage and adolescent nonsense. That should be leaned into, not compensated for. I shouldn't be hearing about how the human genome is still unmapped, or about how there's a retrovirus transforming people, or having someone exposit to me over ancient martian archeology.

It's about some guys. There's a base. Suddenly demons appear. Why are there demons here? Irrelevant. Maybe there's a portal. You don't even tell us it comes from hell. All we need to know is its spewing monsters. Why is there a base on Mars? Go read the wiki. All that matters is it's used for gloriously chaotic set pieces. If a screen starts talking about argent energy, it should immediately explode.

Beyond some efficient character work, the only world building you need is to give the audience a good sense of the physical space all hell is breaking loose in.

I think that sort of thing could work. You need to have at least a barebones plot to hang the movie on, but it doesn't take all that much exposition to explain things. 15 minutes of "here's a bunch of marines on a research station for technobabble", then we see the base getting ripped apart by demons. Marines team up, go on a rampage through the demons, some of the marines get brutally murdered as new types of demon appear. They make their way to the main portal, go through, and heroic action set piece to close the portal. Roll credits.

...Come to think of it, I just described Battle for L.A. So the plot structure does work, in a B-movie kind of way.

Wraith

2018-09-21, 05:10 AM

...Come to think of it, I just described Battle for L.A. So the plot structure does work, in a B-movie kind of way.

That also sounds like Resident Evil to me - bunch of Marines sneak into a secure facility for *reasons*, trip an alarm and then have to fight their way out through all the monsters that have been unleashed - and that's another film that could stand for a remake.

The first Resident Evil movie had precious little to do with the Resident Evil game, which was pretty dated and cliched anyway. I feel that a remake starting with the premise of Resident Evil 7 would make a genuinely entertaining thriller/horror while retaining enough of the silly sci-fi elements to still look like a ResEv movie. The fact that Resi 7 uses goo-monsters instead of the done-to-death shambling corpses would also set it apart from the Walking Dead crowd.

No brains

2018-09-21, 07:14 AM

I never looked to see if Rampage was worth anybody's time. Apparently they tried to make a go of wringing a movie out of a video game where you stomped various cities.

If you go in anticipating dumb and WANTING dumb, it's a perfectly suitable movie that will meet all your expectations. It is 'good' for what it is.

Mordar

2018-09-21, 12:40 PM

I never looked to see if Rampage was worth anybody's time. Apparently they tried to make a go of wringing a movie out of a video game where you stomped various cities.

Nope, they decided to make a Rock movie and since he'd already been part of San Francisco being destroyed they decided Chicago was a good next choice. Since earthquakes don't work there, and aliens is more a Will Smith thing...giant mutated animals like in that one video game was the way to go. And they were right. :smallbiggrin: Toss is Neagan for spice.

A million times better than Battleship. Not as good as Resident Evil. I liked Doom, I know a lot of people didn't, or I'd have used that instead. And yes, lots of people liked RE.

If you go in anticipating dumb and WANTING dumb, it's a perfectly suitable movie that will meet all your expectations. It is 'good' for what it is.

I prefer "shallow" to "dumb".

- M

factotum

2018-09-21, 02:49 PM

A million times better than Battleship.

Which isn't as high a bar to set as it sounds, really. :smallsmile:

Mordar

2018-09-21, 03:49 PM

Which isn't as high a bar to set as it sounds, really. :smallsmile:

That was kind of intentionally faint praise :smallwink:

Dilvish

2018-09-21, 08:51 PM

I never looked to see if Rampage was worth anybody's time. Apparently they tried to make a go of wringing a movie out of a video game where you stomped various cities.

Stomping cities can work as a movie, like Godzilla. Godzilla wasn't just about stomping cities though. (Now how about a Godzilla musical, where he actually does tap dance on Tokyo?) Giant animals rampaging through a city could be good. It could also make a cool miniatures game at a convention.

Dilvish

2018-09-21, 09:01 PM

John Carter is one of my favorite movies of recent(ish) years and will always rank high on my list of 'promising properties ruined by studio ****ups'. It had a first-rate cast, appealing characters, brilliant art and mechanical design, and an exotic world begging for exploration. If Disney hadn't ran such a **** promotional campaign- starting with truncating the title- I think they could have had a franchise.

I enjoyed John Carter as well. It was a dumb idea to not have "Of Mars" as part of the title.

From what I remember of the marketing, there was no real sense of what the source material was, and of its significance.

I did love the one billboard from the reading campaign with the movie's Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Lvl 2 Expert

2018-09-22, 02:43 AM

Indeed there was,
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nsawq3PBMms and it came out in 2009, a few years before "John Carter".

Huh. And by Asylum, too.

Yeah. By that point the rights and the script had been going around Hollywood for long enough that the Asylum either felt it was really going to get made now or it was just going to fade away and never get done.

What's more, parts of the movie legitimately work. I didn't see the big plot twist coming because I didn't expect writing like that in a movie like this. It's actually enjoyable. I also think the update of the main character (I don't remember if he was called John Carter) to a modern soldier works pretty well (even though "this is another planet called Mars" is weaksauce).

I didn't see the real movie when it finally came out. It didn't get the greatest reviews, and I figured the story had now been spoiled to me. I'll gladly believe it's better than this pre-emptive knockoff. But the knockoff still stands together with American Warships, their Battleship knockoff, as movies that actually sort of work and are enjoyable for the good bits in them. The Battleship one for instance straight up ignores the idea of trying to squeeze a movie out of a classic pen and paper/board game and just makes the whole thing about a battleship, instead of about a whiny loser who somehow has everything going for him in life and whines about it. Yes, I enjoyed the knockoff more than the real movie on that one.

Their Hobbit knockoff is a cool and promising idea made into a huge mess of unenjoyableness.

Eldan

2018-09-24, 03:14 AM

Disney's John Carter was... fine. The original novels are very straightforward in that pulpy way and don't feature much in the way of twists. There's the bad guy, he has the princess, here's a good guy, he has a sword, watch him kill everyone. The characters are not particularly deep, either. John Carter spends some time getting used to Mars and his powers and some time learning the language, and then it turns out that he really, really loves Mars and thinks it's better than Earth in almost every way. No moping and he never gets much backstory.

comicshorse

2018-09-24, 05:18 AM

I thought 'Snow White and the Huntsman' had great promise some of the imagery was gorgeous (the Knights charging into a army that disintegrates at the slightest blow, the queen transforming into a flock of ravens) and Charlize Theron makes a great evil queen. Given a central couple with some chemistry and a re write of some of the Princesses appalling dialogue and it could be agreat fantasy movie

Mordar

2018-09-24, 11:53 AM

As it turns out, Predator (2018) should be given another try.

Seriously, an hour with the writers and I (and probably 90% of the Playground) could have made it a better movie. The other 10%? They don't like Predator and/or would have used it as an opportunity to "subvert expectations"1.

I knew going in I'd be cheering for the alien. I didn't expect it to be so justified though. Tropes are tropes for a reason, but at least try to employ them with intent instead of just cramming them together, people!

- M

1 - Strangely whenever I say that in such a fashion, or think of Rian Johnson, I think of Vector from Despicable Me, particularly his "Un-Pre-Dictable!" line. Funny, huh?

Telonius

2018-09-24, 12:09 PM

Financially, however, it did quite well. People think it flopped because no sequel was made, but that was because the instant it did make money, a bunch of people started contesting rights to it. I hear there are some new graphic novels in the pipeline (as well as the newspaper strip), but I think anything on screen is still a long way off.

I stopped over at my local comic book store this weekend and found that, yes indeed, there was a (censored) Tracy #1: Dead or Alive by the Allreds and Rich Tommaso. They're going with a modern-day interpretation. I'm interested to see where they take this, and if anybody mistakes his watch for a FitBit. :smallbiggrin:

Knaight

2018-09-24, 12:23 PM

Jerk? Sure. Aloof? Certainly. Sinister? Not so much. Like I said earlier, I do think Weaving is a great actor, but not everyone can play every role. Plus, the alternative is David Mother****ing Bowie. You can't honestly say that wouldn't have been better. Bowie even looked like an elf in real life.
Part of this is nerd heresy, but I watched LotR before The Matrix. Weaving did great at Elrond, and it works just fine if you don't have Agent Smith in your mind ahead of time. That said, having also watched The Matrix, it's not surprising that Agent Smith was in peoples' minds. Weaving nailed that role.

The nerd heresy part is that I downright dislike David Bowie as a performer. I don't like his music, and his acting is far worse. Labyrinth was garbage, and its only redeeming feature was people getting to see Pan's Labyrinth when they wouldn't otherwise have. That he wasn't brought in as Elrond is a beautiful thing.

The Golden Compass. One of my favourite fantasy stories from my childhood - read it over and over again.

Then came the movie. I watched it, and...well, I don't even actually remember it being bad. Or good. Or anything. In fact, I cannot conjure up a single mental image from that entire movie, despite having watched the whole thing just a couple of years ago. It was so utterly, utterly bland that it left absolutely no impression on me - it's actually an impressive feat, in some bizarre way.

I still don't understand how they could mess it up. Armored bears, witches, shapeshifting animal companions, complex heroes and villains, and a deeply fascinating world. It could have been amazing! The Subtle Knife could also have been great, I'd argue, though The Amber Spyglass might have been tricky to pull off, being widely (and rightly) considered the weakest book of the series.
It's also a story with some really obvious religious allegory going on, in this case to facilitate some very pointed criticism. In a fantasy novel that's not particularly remarkable. In a blockbuster movie with a large budget? That's going to be hard to push through, given market requirements, and it was only harder when it came out. So they took all that out, and left the movie a shell of what it should have been.

Tyndmyr

2018-09-24, 12:59 PM

I enjoyed John Carter as well. It was a dumb idea to not have "Of Mars" as part of the title.

From what I remember of the marketing, there was no real sense of what the source material was, and of its significance.

I did love the one billboard from the reading campaign with the movie's Edgar Rice Burroughs.

It might also have been better if it wasn't bookended within multiple layers of flashbacks. That ended up adding a lot of fairly pointless "let's get to the action already" for what ought to be a pretty action centric film.

Lord Torath

2018-09-24, 01:24 PM

Giant animals rampaging through a city could be good. It could also make a cool miniatures game at a convention.Ask and ye shall receive: King of Tokyo (http://boardgameit.com/board-game/king-of-tokyo). I've never played it, but it's got pretty good reviews.

Rynjin

2018-09-24, 01:30 PM

Yeah. My first thought was the original Predator. Where it's a slasher movie stashed inside an action flick. Except where the tweak in Predator was the hyper masculine soldiers being mercilessly stalked, here the protagonist turns out to be the slasher to the demons. It's a really simple concept with a smooth execution.

Doom is largely plotless carnage and adolescent nonsense. That should be leaned into, not compensated for. I shouldn't be hearing about how the human genome is still unmapped, or about how there's a retrovirus transforming people, or having someone exposit to me over ancient martian archeology.

It's about some guys. There's a base. Suddenly demons appear. Why are there demons here? Irrelevant. Maybe there's a portal. You don't even tell us it comes from hell. All we need to know is its spewing monsters. Why is there a base on Mars? Go read the wiki. All that matters is it's used for gloriously chaotic set pieces. If a screen starts talking about argent energy, it should immediately explode.

Beyond some efficient character work, the only world building you need is to give the audience a good sense of the physical space all hell is breaking loose in.

This is basically how the new Doom/Doom 4/Doom (2016)/Whatever you want to call it handles things. There's a plot, and deeper lore, but all of it is optional.

Any time a character starts to exposit for too long, Doom Guy just breaks their transmitter/viewscreen/other communication device or otherwise shuts them up and/or does the complete opposite of what they're asking him to do, seemingly out of spite. because he's the Doom Slayer, and he's here to kill demons, and who gives a **** what Optimus Prime thinks about it?

House Greyjoy

2018-09-24, 04:07 PM

Watch or re-watch "Lone Ranger" with Armie Hammer and Johnny Depp. Watch it with this in mind: It's Tonto telling the story, and he's an unreliable narrator (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/unreliable_narrator). It's even hinted at in the script, where the chief explains that Tonto's mind is broken. If you take the entire film as him recounting these adventures to the young boy, the whole scene between the Ranger and the Chief becomes Tonto's confession.

I like this movie a lot.

HandofShadows

2018-09-24, 04:49 PM

Stomping cities can work as a movie, like Godzilla. Godzilla wasn't just about stomping cities though. (Now how about a Godzilla musical, where he actually does tap dance on Tokyo?) Giant animals rampaging through a city could be good. It could also make a cool miniatures game at a convention.

I know they have Godzilla video games... (does a search) Well they got bunch of them actually. :smalleek::smallcool:

Velaryon

2018-09-25, 01:10 AM

I second Jesus Christ: Vampire Hunter.

With regard to LXG, I think I am the only person in the world who liked it more than the source material. However, I think that says less about the film (which I thought was not particularly good, but not especially bad either) and more about how much I disliked the comic (which takes an interesting premise and IMO completely fails to do anything interesting with it). Still, I would be up for another adaptation of the idea, so long as they take plenty of liberties with the comic.

Mightymosy

2018-09-25, 04:40 AM

I heard that originally, trapping humans in the Matrix allowed the machines to use their brains for proccessing power as part of a giant cpu or something, humanity was helping the machines think, but the producers thought it was too complicated and people were downgraded to batteries, which doesn't make sense because surely more energy is put into maintaining the humans than you'd get out of using them.

Cool! That's actually the headcannon I arrived at after thinking about the movies for a very long time. It just made the most sense to me that they needed the human brains for certain calculations - the "emotion-based calculations" if you so will. That's why they ultimately need the humans as much as we need them.

Nice to know that that was the original concept! :-)

Also, I really really didnt understand why John Carter flopped. Maybe because the Title didnt mean much to a lot of people? Personally I have a really really hard time even remembering now as I write it. To me it's always "that awesome movie with flying ships, exotic women and sword fighting". In other words, what's NOT to love about it? An undeniable lack of sequels, that is!

ETA: Ditto on Lone Ranger. Easily my favourite movie of that year it came out, and probably in my top ten all time list.

The Jack

2018-09-25, 06:07 AM

I remember watching John carter because someone had a DvD collection and I had a lot of time, and I ended up watching it because I'd watched everything that looked good and everything else looked worse, whilst the owner of the DvD collection gave me the vague suggestion that it was "good".

It was awesome, I felt it had a lot of potential. But it's flop was obvious; Terrible, terrible marketing.

Mightymosy

2018-09-25, 07:07 AM

Kitten Champion

2018-09-25, 08:10 AM

I haven't seen the Lone Ranger, but much of my disinterest for that movie stemmed from Disney clearly trying to make it into another Pirates of the Caribbean with a wacky Johnny Depp character across a bland straight man Arnie Hammer this time. It's kind of like a television series that's been on way too long that you've grown sick of it deciding to also do a spin-off, it's hard to garner much enthusiasm.

Mightymosy

2018-09-25, 09:00 AM

To be fair, Jonny Depp is basically Jack Sparrow as an Indian in that movie - luckily for me, I had only watched Pirates 1 and 2, maybe 3 once at that time, so oversaturation hadn't really been a problem for me.

Also, I'm not the type who needs new stuff all the time. For example, if I really like a movie, I prefer a good sequel with no new ideas to a drastically radically new reboot of the movie that takes it to new frontiers.

The Jack

2018-09-25, 11:00 AM

I too didn't like the dark night trilogy so much.

The first film was mostly forgetable.
The second film was good, but it wasn't great and parts of it felt contrived, and although I liked Ledger's joker I do wonder if his death had created a bias. The two face story, meanwhile... eh I could leave it. I really liked the end sequence.
Last film was utter trash.

Rogar Demonblud

2018-09-25, 11:19 AM

I don't know what the marketing of John Carter even was - but I think marketing can ruin a lot of stuff. Maybe that's my luck! I was simply asked by a friend whether I wanted to watch it, we watched it and I was happy! Similarly with Lone Ranger - didn't know it was a franchise, so went in completely open, and I was super happy.

I am sad both movies generally got a bad rep. Anyone can tell why? Too far from the source material? I genuinely can't think of anything wrong with these movies. It may sound like hypocrisy to some, but I'd for example watch them any day over the Dark Knight Trilogy, which many people consider the bestest movies ever - yet I find them "more" flawed (although they are ok).

Partly, it's an issue of studio politics. Both movies were greenlit by Executive A, he retired, Executive B came in and trashed them so that his projects would look better in comparison. So both movies got shafted in marketing, late re-writes twisted the story, it was summarily decided to chop "of Mars" off of the title of one, Johnny Depp was given far more freedom than originally intended, etc. So both movies started with a lot of negative buzz, didn't draw the box office they could've with a standard ad campaign, and got labeled bad/flop all because of Executive B's meddling.

And then to top it off, Executive B goes elsewhere and the whole process gets repeated by Executive C for the post-release timeframe.

Mordar

2018-09-25, 11:46 AM

With regard to LXG, I think I am the only person in the world who liked it more than the source material. However, I think that says less about the film (which I thought was not particularly good, but not especially bad either) and more about how much I disliked the comic (which takes an interesting premise and IMO completely fails to do anything interesting with it). Still, I would be up for another adaptation of the idea, so long as they take plenty of liberties with the comic.

Nope, I'm right there too. The comic was just another "let's see how shocking we can be" effort that started with a traditionally good comic team-up idea and ended in tripe.

I'd like another version featuring other characters - Tarzan, Doc Savage, Remo Williams...that kind of thing.

I remember watching John carter because someone had a DvD collection and I had a lot of time, and I ended up watching it because I'd watched everything that looked good and everything else looked worse, whilst the owner of the DvD collection gave me the vague suggestion that it was "good".

It was awesome, I felt it had a lot of potential. But it's flop was obvious; Terrible, terrible marketing.

I think it had quite the bloated budget - to the point it would have needed to make Titanic-like money to be considered a success - as well. Too bad, because we liked it quite a bit as well.

- M

sengmeng

2018-09-25, 11:56 AM

LibraryOgre

2018-09-25, 01:28 PM

I think it had quite the bloated budget - to the point it would have needed to make Titanic-like money to be considered a success - as well. Too bad, because we liked it quite a bit as well.

- M

According to Wikipedia, total cost of $350 million, production budget of $263 million. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Carter_(film))

I liked it, too, and though the changes made from Burroughs were good ones (leaving aside the idea he was astrally projecting, for one, and making the White Martians an early factor)

Mordar

2018-09-25, 02:47 PM

According to Wikipedia, total cost of $350 million, production budget of $263 million. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Carter_(film))

I liked it, too, and though the changes made from Burroughs were good ones (leaving aside the idea he was astrally projecting, for one, and making the White Martians an early factor)

So it would have had to make between $526M - 700M to be considered viable by the studio. Domestic take was $73M, foreign was $211M. Sad faces ensue.

I think they did reasonably on the changes, all things considered. It got a little more heady than it needed to, but that's okay.

- M

tyckspoon

2018-09-25, 03:37 PM

Bright

Needed better writing so the racial allegory wasn't jammed in your face and the tonal shifts didn't induce whiplash. I liked the setting and applaud the attempt. Decent enough if you only look at it as a buddy cop action flick with a twist, but it wanted to be more and fell shortalso, Will Smith learns a kill spell in seconds just by being told the words for it and defeats a wizard who had been studying magic longer than humans live. What?

Well, the default action for the wands is "blow stuff up" - it's what happens when non-wizards try to use it. "Blow up directed target" instead of "blow up everything" may well be the easiest spell to use for that kind of device. And given the displayed power of magical effects in the movie I don't think it's terribly strange for somebody to get beaten by a direct shot when they themselves are not currently holding a wand to respond with nor have displayed any persistent defensive spells. And while the ending 'twist' was telegraphed a billion miles away, I was kind of hoping it'd be the Orc that turned out to be the potential wizard, not Will Smith's character.

danzibr

2018-09-25, 09:08 PM

John Carter.

Psyren

2018-09-26, 12:51 AM

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen has to be my top pick. That movie had so much potential, but almost everything about it ended up sucking: the casting, the acting, the writing, the directing, the filmography. It was an 8-9 star idea with a 3-4 star execution.

The Fantastic Four is another big one. We even got two tries on this one, and they both sucked. I really want to see a good FF film.

I'm sure there are others, but I can't think of them right now. So, I'll just leave it at that.

Strong second to these two, and I would just add a Matrix reboot at the top of my wishlist. There was just so much potential there.

Something I'd love to see given another shot is Waterworld. It's an awful movie, but post apocalyptic racing boats are a great idea. :smallbiggrin:

I dunno about this one - these days, you'd have to put forth a ton of effort to avoid it just being "Pirates of the Mad Max" and I don't know that the end result would be worth it.

Wraith

2018-09-26, 02:31 AM

Bright

Needed better writing so the racial allegory wasn't jammed in your face and the tonal shifts didn't induce whiplash. I liked the setting and applaud the attempt. Decent enough if you only look at it as a buddy cop action flick with a twist, but it wanted to be more and fell short

I have to admit, I quite liked Bright - there was a lot about the setting and the lore that I enjoyed and I thought that the effects were worthy of a much higher budget production so for a Netflix Original ("made for TV") movie it was excellent.

That being said.

I still think it would have been even better as a series rather than a one-off. Even a short one, 6 episodes rather than 13, would have really given us time to see the edges of the story where magic came into play rather than it all being dumped in one big explosion at the end, and to explore the idea of race more subtly and in different situations. Hopefully it or something like it will be picked up in the future - Cyberpunk really seems to have come back into fashion at the moment, and I really hope that a Shadowrun-style "Fantasy-punk" genre gets a chance at the limelight too.

Lvl 2 Expert

2018-09-26, 03:18 AM

"Pirates of the Mad Max"

Sounds perfect, I'll take three. If nothing else I can always claim it's apocalypse training. Hey, at the very least it's more likely than zombies...

comicshorse

2018-09-26, 03:50 AM

I have to admit, I quite liked Bright - there was a lot about the setting and the lore that I enjoyed and I thought that the effects were worthy of a much higher budget production so for a Netflix Original ("made for TV") movie it was excellent.

That being said.

I still think it would have been even better as a series rather than a one-off. Even a short one, 6 episodes rather than 13, would have really given us time to see the edges of the story where magic came into play rather than it all being dumped in one big explosion at the end, and to explore the idea of race more subtly and in different situations. Hopefully it or something like it will be picked up in the future - Cyberpunk really seems to have come back into fashion at the moment, and I really hope that a Shadowrun-style "Fantasy-punk" genre gets a chance at the limelight too.

Netflix are doing a sequel but it will be another movie rather than a series (which I agree would have been better for more completely exploring the world)

Mightymosy

2018-09-26, 05:41 AM

Strong second to these two, and I would just add a Matrix reboot at the top of my wishlist. There was just so much potential there.

I dunno about this one - these days, you'd have to put forth a ton of effort to avoid it just being "Pirates of the Mad Max" and I don't know that the end result would be worth it.

Curious why you'd like a Matrix Reboot. For me, it's the most perfect movie trilogy I know. Really the only thing that bothers me is the "Why can Neo influence the robots outside the Matrix?" open question/plothole/mystery.

Do you want a complete reboot or just 2 and 3, like a lot of people seem to want?

Eldan

2018-09-26, 07:12 AM

Well, if you're redoing 2 and 3, might as well redo 1. Work in a more obvious hook for a sequel. The first one was a pretty complete movie, it could probably stand to be a more obvious first part. Maybe add in a few more things about what people can do in the Matrix other than gunplay, Kung Fu and flying.

Velaryon

2018-09-26, 09:06 AM

I always thought The Matrix needed prequels, not sequels. I agree that the first movie felt complete, like it wasn't really concerned about leaving room for a part 2 or 3. But it would have been nice to see how they got to that point, and flesh out the other characters a little more.

Eldan

2018-09-26, 09:16 AM

If anything, I would have wanted more things in the style of Animatrix. Just let some creators run absolutely wild over the setting.

Wookieetank

2018-09-26, 10:16 AM

Really the only thing that bothers me is the "Why can Neo influence the robots outside the Matrix?" open question/plothole/mystery.

My personal head-cannon for this was that after getting in touch with the source-code when meeting the Architect, Neo had all the shutdown codes for the drones and was able to transmit them via brain waves. The whole hand up thing was just to avoid using psychic nosebleeds I felt.

Ibrinar

2018-09-26, 10:53 AM

Tyndmyr

2018-09-26, 11:00 AM

Bright could indeed be a really nice remake/extended universe. The story was...fine. Not particularly bad or good, but serviceable. The world, however, looked to be far, far broader. I can easily envision other fascinating tales set within.

Curious why you'd like a Matrix Reboot. For me, it's the most perfect movie trilogy I know. Really the only thing that bothers me is the "Why can Neo influence the robots outside the Matrix?" open question/plothole/mystery.

Do you want a complete reboot or just 2 and 3, like a lot of people seem to want?

Well, you need to have some good there in the first place for there to be a desire for a reboot. And the first movie is indeed really good.

But there are some issues. Giant rave scene in 2, for instance, utterly kills the tempo of the film. And I agree that there's other interesting parts of the world/questions to explore. A big part of wanting a reboot or a sequel, for me, is thinking that a world has room in it for more story. Seeing a take that explores additional parts of that world is thus interesting.

For instance, I would not want a sequel to Ready Player One. The story's done, and the world is roughly sized for exactly that story.

Telonius

2018-09-26, 11:03 AM

theMycon

2018-09-26, 04:38 PM

Valerian & Laureline.

I thought the movie was decent enough, but everything about Valerian was off-putting- including his being the main character, while the comics stopped being subtle about Laureline being more important once the original audience stopped being teenagers. Casting aside, the biggest issue was that Besson wanted to make a mostly serious sci-fi/action cop drama. The world is meant for silly comic-book fantasy adventures with occasional reminders that they're sci-fi police.

Well, if you're redoing 2 and 3, might as well redo 1.

They did a remake (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1219827/) of the first one a year ago. It was not especially well received, going further from the source material to be more like #2 & 3.

Rynjin

2018-09-26, 07:12 PM

They did a remake (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1219827/) of the first one a year ago. It was not especially well received, going further from the source material to be more like #2 & 3.

Considering the Matrix ripped a lot of its inspiration from the original Ghost in the Shell, hearing the adaptation passed off as a Matrix rip-off makes me even sadder than that travesty already did.

Bohandas

2018-09-26, 08:32 PM

Having seen how great the Lord of The Rings trilogy was I would love to see Peter Jackson remake the rest of Ralph Bakshi's terrible movies. Wizards, Fritz the Cat, etc.

Lleban

2018-09-26, 08:38 PM

Earthsea because I liked the books and would like a movie that actually follows them instead of picking some keywords and character names to mix into a new plot. Honestly not even sure that it was a bad fantasy movie, since I just stopped watching partway and my view is colored by knowing the book..

Yes yes a thousand times Yes. The film while having a fairly interesting build up suffers in payoff because its trying to cram 4 books together.

factotum

2018-09-27, 02:04 AM

Having seen how great the Lord of The Rings trilogy was I would love to see Peter Jackson remake the rest of Ralph Bakshi's terrible movies. Wizards, Fritz the Cat, etc.

Peter Jackson was also responsible for the Hobbit movies, are you so sure about that? (Also, Wizards was awesome, don't know why you'd want a remake!).

Rodin

2018-09-27, 03:18 AM

Peter Jackson was also responsible for the Hobbit movies, are you so sure about that? (Also, Wizards was awesome, don't know why you'd want a remake!).

When wanting Peter Jackson to direct these days, I feel like there needs to be a built in caveat. You don't want Peter Jackson to direct, you want "Peter Jackson with a really strict editor". There's about 2 good movies worth of stuff in the Hobbit trilogy, but Jackson couldn't resist drawing it out to absurd lengths. I'm sure the studio/investors wanting the moolah that comes with a trilogy are also at fault, but even when given a single movie to work with like King Kong his tendency to drag scenes out to the point of parody came to the fore.

If I could try to save the Hobbit trilogy, here's what I would do. You cut it down to two movies, and do so by removing all the unneccssary crap.

First movie: Best of the bunch, but several sequences went on far too long. Scene with the three trolls needed to be shorter, the chase sequence through the goblin mines was too long. Biggest time saves would be to cut Radagast's time drastically and to remove almost all of the big confrontation with that one Orc who has a beef with Thorin. All of that fight was basically filler to add a climax to the first movie besides "they ran away". If you're not ending the movie there, don't need it. If necessary, you can also cut all the ominous "Sauron rising" stuff. I'm not against it per se, but if time becomes a factor it's the least important of the stuff I'd like to keep.

That should leave about 2/3 of a decent movie, which can be filled out with scenes from...

Second movie: Probably the worst padded of the three, there is so much inserted to fill time. Remove Tauriel and all of her nonsense, and cut Legolas as well. A bunch of the Lake-Town politics can be dumped. The big chase sequence with Smaug is probably the worst part of the whole trilogy, so scratch that. Removing a good bit (or all) of Gandalf's quest is once again advised if it becomes necessary. And of course, removing the Orcs from the river ride, although I can see them harassing Bilbo as he tries to shepherd the bare if the filmmakers feel a real need to keep the Orcs present in everyone's mind as antagonists for the big battle.

Now comes decision time. You want to split what remains of the second movie in two, but where to do so? To my mind, there's three good spots. The first is the spiders - you show them getting captured by the spiders, and Bilbo deciding to go rescue them. Good plot hook for the second movie. Alternately, you do so after Bilbo has freed the dwarves, then show the elves capturing them, and that's your dramatic exit after the climactic spider fight. Finally, the third option is after the barrel ride down the river. The Dwarves emerge from their barrels in Lake-Town, look up at Lonely Mountain, and Smaug roars. Cut to black.

All 3 work, I think, and it all depends on how long the first movie ends up being with Bjorn and Mirkwood bolted on the back end. I like the third ending the best, but it may be too much to fit in one film and so I would probably choose when the Elves show up.

Third movie: Pretty much all of this one was fanfiction, so you can remove almost all of it. Keep a little bit of the Lake Town politics to set up the confrontation with Thorin and the Elves later. First half of the movie is all the good Smaug stuff that used to be in the second movie. First big action sequence is Smaug chasing Bilbo and then flying straight off to Lake-Town to get killed by Bard. Keep all of the Arkenstone stuff - easily the best part of the movie and it deserves to stay in. The big battle happens as shown, but without the nonsense of Thorin and Co taking themselves off to an isolated location for the clash with Azog and Bolg (and without the stupid Fili/Tauriel tragic romance). There's certainly plenty of debate on how to portray the battle, but the battle itself is just a big action sequence - it just needs to be shortened dramatically, and most of that shortening happens by getting rid of the aforementioned battle with Azog and Bolg and sticking it in the main battle.

The Jack

2018-09-27, 03:56 AM

I'm pretty sure jackson was screwed into most of what's in the hobbit. He didn't want to do most of that.
I recall the actress who played tauriel talking about how her love scenes were reshoots demanded by the producers or something last minute.

Still, it's definitely something that needs to be redone.

LibraryOgre

2018-09-27, 09:07 AM

So it would have had to make between $526M - 700M to be considered viable by the studio. Domestic take was $73M, foreign was $211M. Sad faces ensue.

I think they did reasonably on the changes, all things considered. It got a little more heady than it needed to, but that's okay.

- M

Heady? Don't know the word in context.

LibraryOgre

2018-09-27, 09:09 AM

Bohandas

2018-09-27, 09:45 AM

(Also, Wizards was awesome, don't know why you'd want a remake!).

I haven't seen it in a long time but I remember really not being sold on the idea of the villain's secret weapon being the power of grainy old stock footage from the 1940's

Mordar

2018-09-27, 12:33 PM

Heady? Don't know the word in context.

I mostly mean that bit about the ninth ray and the Therns "master plans". They could have played it a bit more straight, saving the Therns for a sequel as well as the ninth ray, and given people a chance to get the straight pulpy introduction to Mars - the tharks, the red martians, some nice war scenes, saving the princess, etc - without quite so much Martian Mythology. Hint at the therns (even the movie style therns) a bit if you like, using them as a cliffhanger even...but don't muddy the water so soon.

So, I think they brought too much "deep state" plot to a sword-and-gun fight and didn't let the characters and setting stand up before knocking them down, if that makes any more sense.

- M

The Glyphstone

2018-09-27, 12:41 PM

I still maintain that Peter Jackson made the Hobbit movies as bloated garbage specifically to screw with the studio after he turned them down as director once and they kept bugging him.

Jothki

2018-09-27, 12:59 PM

Curious why you'd like a Matrix Reboot. For me, it's the most perfect movie trilogy I know. Really the only thing that bothers me is the "Why can Neo influence the robots outside the Matrix?" open question/plothole/mystery.

Do you want a complete reboot or just 2 and 3, like a lot of people seem to want?

My assumption after a ton of thought was that his brain wasn't actually human, just designed to make him think that he was human so that he could make human-like decisions. He's always had a connection to the wireless network used by the machines, he just didn't realize it before that point. He used it to shut down the robots (which were probably just unintelligent drones, no point in giving complex thought to something like that), but then accidentally uploaded his mind into the machine network. From there it somehow got shunted over to the connection to the Matrix that the machines use.

In a better movie, it would raise a bunch of questions about what it means to be human. If you look like a human, act like a human, and believe yourself to be a human, are you a human even if your mind is a computer rather than flesh? If you are, what does that say about the programs that enter the Matrix seeking to have more human experiences?

There's some really interesting possibilities buried in there if you connect a ton of dots and read between a ton of lines. The movies are just really, really terrible about coherently expressing them.

Kitten Champion

2018-09-27, 03:45 PM

My head-cannon for Neo mental hacking in the real-world AI is that the Machines have been breeding humanity to be better able to integrate with their technology for who-knows-how-many generations as part of their symbiotic relationship, which in turn has encouraged certain physiological changes which no one anticipated and Neo only became aware of by pure chance. So, Neo's a mutant, basically.

Though I'm much more inclined with The Matrix to not really worry about the logic of it anymore than with, say, Star Wars.

I don't really mind The Matrix sequels though, I do mostly get why a lot the audience and critics disliked them, I just don't think a reboot would improve things. Sure, scenes could be done better and logic problems could be ironed out, but it was the spirit of wanting to do this out-there genre-fusing extravaganza by up-and-coming creators that makes any of those movies interesting. Rebooting it now - presumably with a new creative team - would just be another nostalgic cash-grab.

Willie the Duck

2018-09-28, 08:23 AM

Lindsay Ellis goes extensively into what went wrong with the Hobbit movies.

Part 1/2 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTRUQ-RKfUs)

Part 2/2 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElPJr_tKkO4)

Part 3/2 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qi7t_g5QObs)

I like her take on it. It is interesting to see the viewpoint of someone for whom the LotR movies were her childhood action movies against which others are compared-- her 'Star Wars,' to keep everything in a from-my-perspective framing. Her LotR:Hobbit experience is a strong analog to my Star Wars:Prequels experience. I have to say, she can be a lot more detached and analytical about the Hobbit trilogy than I can about the SW prequels.

Other movie that could be given another try: I don't actually know that the movie Push (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Push_(2009_film)) needs a retry, but I certainly think that the world-building they did would be perfect for another, more well-written, script. For an alternate take on the same old 'subset of humanity develops superpowers, governments and extra-governmental bodies hope to take advantage of isolated individuals with said powers' trope, it is very well done. Now if they could have just made an adventure and set of protagonists we cared about within that universe...

factotum

2018-09-28, 10:04 AM

Here's a possibly controversial opinion: what about Jumper? The ideas in that were fine, it's just the execution was relentlessly awful.

ben-zayb

2018-09-28, 10:35 AM

Seconding Bright. And seconding as making it a series instead of feature-length. That world is just begging to be explored IMO.

Also, I'd love a do-over of the Chronicles of Narnia series. The movie series was an unfortunate product of its time, where the fantasy/epic genre was ruled by Rowling/Tolkien IP adaptation, which I feel forced the studio to change stuff just to steal/cater to the audience of those two dominant series. Someone upthread mentioned Voyage of the Dawn Treader as a good example of that.

Rogar Demonblud

2018-09-28, 10:56 AM

Other movie that could be given another try: I don't actually know that the movie Push (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Push_(2009_film)) needs a retry, but I certainly think that the world-building they did would be perfect for another, more well-written, script. For an alternate take on the same old 'subset of humanity develops superpowers, governments and extra-governmental bodies hope to take advantage of isolated individuals with said powers' trope, it is very well done. Now if they could have just made an adventure and set of protagonists we cared about within that universe...

They overegged the pudding with that one. They were trying to convey that these were people who weren't cared about in-world so as to make it more believable they could be victimized, but managed to make them too bland so we couldn't buy in.

It didn't help that Chris Evans had more chemistry with Dakota Fanning than with whoever it was that played his girlfriend. I have a head canon that they're half-siblings.

Velaryon

2018-09-28, 11:31 AM

Tyndmyr

2018-09-28, 11:38 AM

Here's a possibly controversial opinion: what about Jumper? The ideas in that were fine, it's just the execution was relentlessly awful.

I'm with it. It had a great schtick to explore, and a few brilliant moments of playing with that, just a rock to the head stupid, generic plot.

Given better characterization, opposition, and world detail, it could be truly great. As it is, it was just meh.

Rogar Demonblud

2018-09-28, 11:43 AM

I feel like Public Enemies could use another try. To this day I don't understand how you make a movie about John Dillinger starring Johnny Depp and Christian Bale, and come out with the end result being just... boring. Not even particularly bad, just a chore to sit through.

How does that even happen?

Make it a little too realistic, for starters. Crime really isn't that interesting, so the closer you stick to 'just the facts', the worse it'll be.

Plus, Johnny Depp isn't that good of an actor. I have a hard time remembering anything about one of his roles after the movie is done.

The Glyphstone

2018-09-28, 11:53 AM

Was it made before he turned all his characters into Jack Sparrow cosplaying as a Native American/candy mogul/vampire/crazy man in a hat/Jack Sparrow?

Pex

2018-09-28, 12:03 PM

Star Wars Episodes VII, VIII, and IX

BeerMug Paladin

2018-09-28, 12:30 PM

Rogar Demonblud

2018-09-28, 12:50 PM

Was it made before he turned all his characters into Jack Sparrow cosplaying as a Native American/candy mogul/vampire/crazy man in a hat/Jack Sparrow?

2009, so yes.

Psyren

2018-09-28, 01:12 PM

Sounds perfect, I'll take three. If nothing else I can always claim it's apocalypse training. Hey, at the very least it's more likely than zombies...

Heh. I acknowledge that there are folks that would find that setup appealing, just saying that I'm not one of them.

Curious why you'd like a Matrix Reboot. For me, it's the most perfect movie trilogy I know. Really the only thing that bothers me is the "Why can Neo influence the robots outside the Matrix?" open question/plothole/mystery.

Do you want a complete reboot or just 2 and 3, like a lot of people seem to want?

Complete reboot. We need a better justification for the fields than the "humans are batteries" thing. I personally love the idea that they need our cognition to aid their neural network, since it's a lot like how AI learn today, by interacting with us.

That's really the only big flaw with 1 though. 2 and 3... I'd rather not talk about those.

Jothki

2018-09-28, 01:49 PM

Complete reboot. We need a better justification for the fields than the "humans are batteries" thing. I personally love the idea that they need our cognition to aid their neural network, since it's a lot like how AI learn today, by interacting with us.

I prefer the idea that the Matrix is a genuinely altruistic attempt to keep humanity alive and happy, but built on the belief that if humans are given any real freedom they'll just screw up things even further. The Matrix protects the machines from humanity as a whole without requiring them to commit genocide on a bunch of innocents.

"The machines are using humans as batteries" does seem like the kind of thing that Morpheus would believe, though.

factotum

2018-09-28, 03:07 PM

It's been a long time since I've seen this one, and although I remember really liking it when I saw it, I'll just go ahead and assume that since it's not a huge ongoing-forever franchise and nobody really talks about it, it must have been a bad movie.

I nominate Enemy Mine.

The logic doesn't follow. There are plenty of really good movies that are single examples with no on-going franchise associated--just look at the IMDB top 250, for example; half the top 10 movies are one-offs (Shawshank Redemption, 12 Angry Men, Schindler's List, Pulp Fiction, and Fight Club). Enemy Mine was certainly not a *bad* movie by any light--I would put it on the border between average and good, myself, and while a remake would be nice, I'm not sure what it would bring that the original movie did not.

BeerMug Paladin

2018-09-28, 03:40 PM

The logic doesn't follow. There are plenty of really good movies that are single examples with no on-going franchise associated--just look at the IMDB top 250, for example; half the top 10 movies are one-offs (Shawshank Redemption, 12 Angry Men, Schindler's List, Pulp Fiction, and Fight Club). Enemy Mine was certainly not a *bad* movie by any light--I would put it on the border between average and good, myself, and while a remake would be nice, I'm not sure what it would bring that the original movie did not.
The 80's was a magical decade of sci-fi/fantasy franchises which will continue on until the end of time. These examples are neither from the 80's, nor fit into the appropriate genre. Like all sequels/remakes, the use of silly-CGI and ADHD-action-pacing is its own justification.

Although I suppose one-offs like Willow and The Last Starfighter don't have a lingering franchise nor much adoration either, but I at least hear people mention them from time to time. Like Enemy Mine, I don't really remember them well enough to say if they were good or bad movies, but I do remember enjoying them at the time I viewed them. I suppose I just want to express that Enemy Mine is a good idea for a movie. And I'd like to see another go at it.

Generally, I'm on board with the idea of remakes, regardless of whether or not the original movie was bad or good. The remake just has to do something interesting. Such as, in the movie I suggested, making the alien a bit more alien could strengthen the overall theme.

Mordar

2018-09-28, 04:50 PM

The 80's was a magical decade of sci-fi/fantasy franchises which will continue on until the end of time. These examples are neither from the 80's, nor fit into the appropriate genre. Like all sequels/remakes, the use of silly-CGI and ADHD-action-pacing is its own justification.

E.T. Princess Bride. Goonies. Roger Rabbit. Lost Boys. Beetlejuice.

No sequels. No, The Tribe doesn't count. That's a spin-off.

Enemy Mine was fine, and the lack of an Enemy Mine II doesn't mean anything.

Although I suppose one-offs like Willow and The Last Starfighter don't have a lingering franchise nor much adoration either, but I at least hear people mention them from time to time. Like Enemy Mine, I don't really remember them well enough to say if they were good or bad movies, but I do remember enjoying them at the time I viewed them. I suppose I just want to express that Enemy Mine is a good idea for a movie. And I'd like to see another go at it.

Generally, I'm on board with the idea of remakes, regardless of whether or not the original movie was bad or good. The remake just has to do something interesting. Such as, in the movie I suggested, making the alien a bit more alien could strengthen the overall theme.

Now that I can agree with - sometimes a re-visioning can do wonders. I love Yojimbo and Fistful of Dollars...but Last Man Standing was my favorite.

Still, I would generally root for more original efforts with a *dash* of remake sprinkled in instead of the other way around.

- M

Mightymosy

2018-09-28, 05:17 PM

Star Wars Episodes VII, VIII, and IX
QFT :smallcool:

Heh. I acknowledge that there are folks that would find that setup appealing, just saying that I'm not one of them.

Complete reboot. We need a better justification for the fields than the "humans are batteries" thing. I personally love the idea that they need our cognition to aid their neural network, since it's a lot like how AI learn today, by interacting with us.

That's really the only big flaw with 1 though. 2 and 3... I'd rather not talk about those.

Sad. I totally agree that the battery stuff was worse than the "we need human brains/souls/intelligence for specific tasks our AI can't do" and that this could be redone in a sequel, but what I am really interested is why people dislike 2 and 3 so much.
Everyone says 1 is a finished movie, and thus no sequel should have been made.
So, yeah, ok, but plenty of movies were "complete" and still people like their sequels.
Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Die Hard, Terminator, just to name the classics.

What is it about 2 and 3 that you don't even want to talk about it?

Honestly my favourite movie yet is probably Matrix 2. I get people cling to the original, but what about 2 and 3 do they hate so much?

The overlong rave scene is often noted. It is long, I guess. But is that the reason to hate not one, but two movies, with a passion?

Psyren

2018-09-28, 08:12 PM

What is it about 2 and 3 that you don't even want to talk about it?

It's less that I don't want to myself, and more that everything I'd want to say about them has been elaborated on elsewhere. Like here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TROA_0RxZmM) and here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27rhHfBugnc) for example

factotum

2018-09-28, 08:13 PM

Generally, I'm on board with the idea of remakes, regardless of whether or not the original movie was bad or good. The remake just has to do something interesting.

Oh, I can agree on that entirely, but it's a bit off-topic for this thread, which is supposed to specifically be *bad* movies that should be remade.

Bohandas

2018-09-28, 11:36 PM

Complete reboot. We need a better justification for the fields than the "humans are batteries" thing. I personally love the idea that they need our cognition to aid their neural network, since it's a lot like how AI learn today, by interacting with us.

That's really the only big flaw with 1 though.

What about "the mind makes it real". That part stuck in my craw as badly as the human batteries thing

BeerMug Paladin

2018-09-29, 12:21 AM

Sad. I totally agree that the battery stuff was worse than the "we need human brains/souls/intelligence for specific tasks our AI can't do" and that this could be redone in a sequel, but what I am really interested is why people dislike 2 and 3 so much.
Everyone says 1 is a finished movie, and thus no sequel should have been made.
So, yeah, ok, but plenty of movies were "complete" and still people like their sequels.
Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Die Hard, Terminator, just to name the classics.

What is it about 2 and 3 that you don't even want to talk about it?

Honestly my favourite movie yet is probably Matrix 2. I get people cling to the original, but what about 2 and 3 do they hate so much?

The overlong rave scene is often noted. It is long, I guess. But is that the reason to hate not one, but two movies, with a passion?
I can't really speak for Matrix 2 and 3, as I haven't seen them, but... The Matrix has Neo learn he's the chosen one and as the movie goes on accepts his role as the destined savior of mankind, then ends with his speech indicating he's now an invincible hacker who is determined to make his side win. I haven't even tried to watch the latter movies because the first one seemed complete to me. Plus I was fairly indifferent to it overall, believe it or not.

All those other movies you mention don't really feature characters (as far as I know) which attain a similar level of power by the end of the first movie.

Oh, I can agree on that entirely, but it's a bit off-topic for this thread, which is supposed to specifically be *bad* movies that should be remade.
I typically think forgettable/forgotten is a bad trait to be associated with a piece of media. Which is partly why I brought it up in the first place. It could be good enough to be memorable, at the very least. I just made my statement in a very jokey way.

But then, that just calls into question what qualifies as bad. Most things I see people talk about in glowing terms I end up disliking. So are those bad? Despite my judgements, most of the time I would say no, because if there was a remake of that piece of media I would still likely not care. Often, for the core concept presented, I'm just not within the target audience at all. Deleted example here, avert threat of derail.

Mightymosy

2018-09-29, 05:41 AM

It's less that I don't want to myself, and more that everything I'd want to say about them has been elaborated on elsewhere. Like here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TROA_0RxZmM) and here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27rhHfBugnc) for example

Ok thanks. I have now watched the first one - and it reminded me exactly of why i liked the movie.

The YT commentator basically makes the point that Matrix 2 sucks because Neo doesn't get to advance the plot, which sucks because the protagonist is supposed to advance the plot. I personally really liked it: He is in a constant struggle, questioning whether he CAN influence any outcome. If he CAN make relevant choices.

Particularily the part with Persephone. Wisecrack hated it, I loved it. Wisecrack says the hero has to come up with a solution. I say: Why? Why reinforce the idea in the audience that in the whole world there is only one person who counts (the protagonist). The scene from them entering the restaurant up to Neo kissing Persephone is my favourite scene in movie history, period. (Yeah, sex&death in a latex business suit helps! South European actresses just know best how to do sexy :-) )
But besides that I find it brilliant. The trio goes in there with no plan at all - so why do they even expect it is THEM driving the dramatic action forward? The scene clearly shows that they are pawns of greater forces - the oracle and the architect, maybe?
And this is their, especially Neo's struggle, which they have to master in the end.

We are all inconsequential parts of an immense universe. We could use more movies reminding us of that, and less movies suggesting that everyone is entitled to being Superman, and have all action center around them. Basically, this movie is the counterpoint to the Harry Potter movies if you get what I am saying?

We are all toys of universal forces which we cannot fully comprehend. We should consider ourselves lucky if the universe uses latex-clad femmes to toy with us, I'd say 8-)

So, thanks for the link. At least now I have an idea what about the movie disturbs some people.

On to the next one. I assume it's about Matrix 3 :-)

Rodin

2018-09-29, 06:46 AM

Ok thanks. I have now watched the first one - and it reminded me exactly of why i liked the movie.

The YT commentator basically makes the point that Matrix 2 sucks because Neo doesn't get to advance the plot, which sucks because the protagonist is supposed to advance the plot. I personally really liked it: He is in a constant struggle, questioning whether he CAN influence any outcome. If he CAN make relevant choices.

Particularily the part with Persephone. Wisecrack hated it, I loved it. Wisecrack says the hero has to come up with a solution. I say: Why? Why reinforce the idea in the audience that in the whole world there is only one person who counts (the protagonist). The scene from them entering the restaurant up to Neo kissing Persephone is my favourite scene in movie history, period. (Yeah, sex&death in a latex business suit helps! South European actresses just know best how to do sexy :-) )
But besides that I find it brilliant. The trio goes in there with no plan at all - so why do they even expect it is THEM driving the dramatic action forward? The scene clearly shows that they are pawns of greater forces - the oracle and the architect, maybe?
And this is their, especially Neo's struggle, which they have to master in the end.

We are all inconsequential parts of an immense universe. We could use more movies reminding us of that, and less movies suggesting that everyone is entitled to being Superman, and have all action center around them. Basically, this movie is the counterpoint to the Harry Potter movies if you get what I am saying?

We are all toys of universal forces which we cannot fully comprehend. We should consider ourselves lucky if the universe uses latex-clad femmes to toy with us, I'd say 8-)

So, thanks for the link. At least now I have an idea what about the movie disturbs some people.

On to the next one. I assume it's about Matrix 3 :-)

Reloaded wasn't bad, and generally gets crapped on a lot more than it deserves. The action sequences were excellent, especially the Burly Brawl (Smiths v. Neo) and the Chateau fight. The interstate chase was very exciting and the albino twins extremely cool. The Seraph fight is really the only letdown - it felt like there was nothing at stake and the fighting felt very slow and staged.

Plotwise, it's a mixed bag. Playing up Trinity and Neo's love as the most important thing ever just didn't work for me at all, and Neo bringing her back to life hammers in the "Neo is CyberJesus!" nail far too hard for my liking. It doesn't help that Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss have very little chemistry. I also found the human fleet of ships getting wiped out all at once to be Diabolus Ex Machina in the extreme. On the flip side, I really liked the idea that Neo isn't the Chosen One he thinks he is, but rather has been manipulated into believing that. The conversation with the Architect was very enjoyable to me, with the only downside being his decision to act out of "twue wuv" rather than rejecting his role in the interest of saving humanity. Pacing-wise, the movie is dragged down by a lot of navel-gazing and exposition by people sitting around in rooms.

Revolutions though....ye gods. The action in the Matrix itself is minimal, which is a problem when that's the reason we came. Neo becomes even MORE special by getting the ability to blow the machines up in the real world and he gets to do the whole "blind seer" bit to be even more "awesome". Trinity's death scene drags on for ages, and the movie is full of more of the same "their love is special" nonsense that would have fit better in Twilight. We spend most of the movie focused on the humans trying to defend Zion from the machines. This fight is conducted in the dumbest way possible, with the machines swarming in equipped only with melee weapons, the humans building power armor that strap the squishy human part to the OUTSIDE instead of the inside, and both sides generally conducting operations that had me banging my head on the back of the seat in front of me in the cinema. We spend an inordinate amount of time following human characters that they entirely fail to make us care about. Back in the Matrix, the big fight between Neo and Smith went beyond the previous "Wire Fu" into a full-on CGI fest, and they did NOT have the technology down for it yet. It looks poor and the fact that we know Neo is fighting one of an army of BILLIONS removes any narrative tension to the fight. The final sequence where the Oracle speaks through Smith and Neo's "Because I choose to" is the only good part of that whole sequence.

Reloaded was average-to-good, and could have been great with a few changes. Revolutions should not exist in the state it was released in. I'm not sure what Revolutions should have been replaced with, but I do know they shouldn't have done what they did.

Saph

2018-09-30, 07:46 PM

Reloaded wasn't bad, and generally gets crapped on a lot more than it deserves. The action sequences were excellent, especially the Burly Brawl (Smiths v. Neo) and the Chateau fight. The interstate chase was very exciting and the albino twins extremely cool. The Seraph fight is really the only letdown - it felt like there was nothing at stake and the fighting felt very slow and staged.

I think the Chateau fight into the highway chase pretty much justifies Reloaded all on its own. It's one of the best extended action sequences ever filmed. But all the parts outside of the action scenes were meh, and Revolutions was just an all-round disappointment.

Lvl 2 Expert

2018-10-01, 02:33 AM

I went to see both of them in cinema. There were certainly cool bits, but altogether neither of them blew me away in any way.

Trying to pin the fault is tricky. one factor is certainly the effects. The bigger you go, the harder it is to make things look real. The Trinity kick that opens the first movie is way more convincing than Neo poledancing a hundred agent Smith's to the floor because they managed to make it with a whole bunch of camera's and a real person kicking. Another factor is the lack of stakes, because Neo is overpowered and Smith is unkillable. The highway scene is great, but it's also the part of the movie where Neo is a thousand miles outside the city flying really fast so he can get there in time. He's out of the action so we get all these characters with smaller more easy to define powers duking it out. The scene before that in the mansion is probably the one action scene with Neo that really works, partly because of the restraints of the environment. Small indoors room full of opponents, easy to justify him not flying off and throwing supersonic bricks at them or some stuff he would totally be able to do. And still I call bull**** on him not getting to the door in time. (Granted, he didn't know the door closing was significant.) The extended scenes outside of the Matrix may be a factor as well. Viewing the first movie you probably made some sort of image in your head of what their society looked like, whether you knew it or not. If a sequel matches that image is then anybody's guess. But I'm pretty sure very few people imagined the APU's. I know it's meant to contrast the sleekness of the world inside the matrix, but it still looks silly with the exposed operator and all. The party is really cool, in my opinion, but then we cut from there to two people ****ing which doesn't add a lot in context.

But those are all details. You can find faults and pet peeves like that in any film. I think the main reasons why the movies don't grip me are different for both of them. Part two lacks in story. Like the theatrical cut of Alien3, the movie is almost entirely people failing to solve their problems. And the final victory they have is turned into another loss before the win even sinks in, and then into a big "to be continued" sign. It doesn't finish anything, like so many of these part 1 out of 2's. I just don't like those movies. I want a complete self contained story.

In part 3 it's probably mostly a lack of action. Or rather a lack of good action scenes that move along the plot as well. Take the hallway scene in movie 1. It's cool as hell and it brings our hero's closer to victory. The action in movie 3 is ones too often shoved aside for philosophical waxing, which would be fine if that added up to anything if the conclusion felt related to it. But to me it doesn't. Either they're not explaining it well enough (which is different from and often opposed to lengthy enough) or they don't have as good a point as they thought. When we do get a final battle it's boring because Neo is overpowered, Smith is unkillable and the final solution to 2 to 3 movies worth of problems is to stand still and absorb each other. The video game of the movie actually heavy handedly changed the ending to include more action. The movie also fails to follow up in a meaningful way to things that were supposed to be meaningful. Neo getting wifi and frying powers? Leads to nothing, except that completely separate machine vision. Smith getting downloaded? Okay, that one's actually cool, I'll give them that. I just don't remember if there was a logical way for him to end up on that ship, but I'll assume there was. The big battle in Zion? The big piece of action we do get? It's a conclusion-less tie, solved elsewhere, by the same disappointing fight scene mentioned earlier. So while pretty cool it's not a scene that advances the plot.

Overal they're not actually bad movies. They're cool. To me personally through all the means listed above they're just not as cool as part 1, which will from now on be referred to as the Pirates of the Caribbean problem.

Velaryon

2018-10-05, 03:10 PM

Make it a little too realistic, for starters. Crime really isn't that interesting, so the closer you stick to 'just the facts', the worse it'll be.

Plus, Johnny Depp isn't that good of an actor. I have a hard time remembering anything about one of his roles after the movie is done.

He used to be. Edward Scissorhands, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Sleepy Hollow, Corpse Bride... there was a time when it seemed like he could do no wrong. Even Sweeney Todd and the first couple Pirates of the Caribbean movies were pretty good. But then somewhere in the mid-2000s he started slipping, and it just kept getting worse.

Kinda like how in the days of Con Air, The Rock, and Face/Off, Nicolas Cage wasn't the joke of an actor he's commonly seen as today.

Mordar

2018-10-05, 03:28 PM

Kinda like how in the days of Con Air, The Rock, and Face/Off, Nicolas Cage wasn't the joke of an actor he's commonly seen as today.

Lies! He was always a joke, from Valley Girl forward.

Yes, this is a personal opinion oozing with personal bias.

- M

LibraryOgre

2018-10-05, 04:12 PM

Lies! He was always a joke, from Valley Girl forward.

Yes, this is a personal opinion oozing with personal bias.

- M

There's a meme floating around (usually political in full) of "Nicolas Cage won an Oscar... but a lot has changed since then."

Peelee

2018-10-05, 04:14 PM

There's a meme floating around (usually political in full) of "Nicolas Cage won an Oscar... but a lot has changed since then."

Haven't seen that one, but it sounds both amusing and incredibly versatile.

Also, he was far better than he had any business being in Lord of War.

BeerMug Paladin

2018-10-06, 01:04 AM

Haven't seen that one, but it sounds both amusing and incredibly versatile.

Also, he was far better than he had any business being in Lord of War.

He's really good in certain material. I suspect that his natural inclination is to ham it up if the director or other actors don't help to dial it back a bit.

That's probably a pretty sensible choice for an actor in all honesty. Because a single actor looking at a script and all the scenes they're in probably can't tell if the movie is going to end up being any good at all by the end. So the sensible thing is probably to at least give a memorable performance.

Draconi Redfir

2018-10-06, 01:31 AM

forgive me for not reading six pages to see if this has been added already buuut...

The Primary Harry Potter movies

love 'em or hate 'em, the existing eight movies have some problems. A tossup between inconsistent actors such as dumbledore, things being completely removed from the books (SPEW), strange, nonsensical alterings (Dumbledore shouting at Harry if he put his name in the goblet) (Nevil giving Harry the gillyweed rather then Dobby) and just the effects of age, i think it'd be nice to see the Harry Potter movies made again with better consistency and direction.

the main problems with the original films were that they were started before the books were finished, so a lot of the earlier movies glossed over or missed details that would be important later, and multiple directors caused for radical shifts in tone and feeling for every movie, like harry and Ron suddenly having long hair in goblet of fire.

if we can get a single consistent directer for all movies, that read and understood all the books, and a consistent cast that doesn't change around too much, then we could potentially have something even better then the originals.

heck, maybe see if you can get the original harry to play dumbledore, original Herminie to play Mcgonigle, and the origional Ron to play... i don't know. Hagrid or Mr.Weasly maybe?

Lvl 2 Expert

2018-10-07, 03:04 PM

then we could potentially have something even better then the originals.

But is that enough for a remake? Potentially even better? Maybe when the first attempt is a smaller production or is a foreign language film or is losing its relevance, like in the case of the BFG or Let The Right One In. But for a recently ended 8 movie series of superblockbusters everyone has seen? Is there money or even artistic value in trying to maybe do it a little better?

ChaosCowboy

2018-10-07, 03:18 PM

Venom. Oops, too soon?

Rogar Demonblud

2018-10-08, 12:04 AM

At least wait for the Director's Cut. Amazing how a studio can butcher a movie in the editing process (looks at Affleck-Devil).

theMycon

2018-10-08, 12:27 PM

Venom. Oops, too soon?
No, but is there a good reason it deserves another try?

Wookieetank

2018-10-08, 12:55 PM

No, but is there a good reason it deserves another try?

Maybe instead of re-doing Venom, just move on to Carnage for something new(ish)?

The Jack

2018-10-08, 06:45 PM

Carnage'd be a snuff film.

Man of Steel.

As a film on it's own, man of steel is mostly OK. It's a bit pretentious with it's plato and its tornado'd Kevin Cosner, but it's otherwise quite serviceable and the action is mostly pretty good. That shot where superman flies around the truck or something wowed me.

As a Superman film, it's an abomination.
The Kents are wrong
Louis is wrong
Clark is wrong
Superman is wrong
Zod is clearly not a general and where's that phantom zone?

Man of steel's plot is some non-fan getting a cursory glance of Superman and going 'Ha that's dumb I'm not interested in following this dumbness I will deconstruct it and do What would really happen if there were a superman"

which is kinda like when someone does a historical setting and they decide that to make it realistic they've got to cake everyone and everything in mud and make everyone either a wretch or a monster or a naive, too-good-for-this-world victim. (New additions to this thread: basically every movie that does this)

The Kents are utterly unreasonable and instill in him the precise opposite values he's supposed to have. They're not smart about it, and they're not portrayed as good people that he should listen too, so he wouldn't.
Louis lane is a prize winning reporter, yes, but superman is a superhuman master of disguise so no, she shouldn't work it out... Jesus half the fun is the CK>LL>S relationship and the absurd lengths the secret identity goes for.
We have CGI tech out the wazoo, we could ****ing sell the Idea that Superman and Clark Kent look different to people through muscle control and such.

Zod's terraforming plan was terrible. Could've lived like a god, wanted to twirl his mustache instead... what villain does that? It shouldn't be easy to deconstruct a deconstructionist work.

LibraryOgre

2018-10-09, 11:07 AM

I disagree with The Jack about Lois (she's that good; ferociously competent investigative reporter is her character since its inception), but, fundamentally, yeah. Man of Steel was a deeply flawed film by people who didn't understand Superman.

When I think of Superman, I think of asking a lot of my friends what they would do if they won the lottery. Most of them start with "Well, I'd pay off debt, and make myself financially stable..." but then go into a large list of ways they'd use that money to help people. They'd fund soup kitchens or low-cost housing or start companies that manufacture low-cost insulin.

Zach Snyder's Superman is someone who won the lottery then immediately goes into hiding, occasionally leaving large tips with his waitress but otherwise doing little to nothing until forced to. It's someone for whom power is a burden that he wants to be shed of, not someone for whom power is a gift he wants to share.

Lemmy

2018-10-09, 11:47 AM

Star Wars 7, 8 and 9 - Well... 9 is speculation of course, but it's like speculating Suicide Squad was going to suck before the movie was out: Technically, it's speculation, but it's so obviously it's going to happen that it might as well be prophecy.

Anything from DC - I guess they can keep WW... "Mediocre" technically isn't "bad".

Wolverine: Origins - I'd love to see a movie that followed either Origins or Weapon X comics without crapping all over the story and characters.

Most movies based on games - If they were actually treated seriously and respectfully. And I don't mean make all of them dark-and-edgy. I'm perfectly fine with silly-popcorn-fun movies. I just want the producers to respect the intelligence of the audience, instead of assuming it's made exclusively of kids and morons.

Imagine how fun "Doom" could've been if it was just The Rock punching, wrestling and shooting demons for 90 min! It'd be awesome!

The Glyphstone

2018-10-09, 11:51 AM

Doom, but take the Hardcore Henry route and make the entire dang thing 1st-person POV instead of just one tiny segment of fanservice.

Rodin

2018-10-09, 12:06 PM

Wolverine: Origins - I'd love to see a movie that followed either Origins or Weapon X comics without crapping all over the story and characters.

One review of Origins points out that there's a few minutes that show Wolverine and Sabertooth fighting in wars through the ages. Give me that movie - two immortals experiencing decades of war, and the effect it has on them.

CWater

2018-10-09, 01:31 PM

factotum

2018-10-09, 02:46 PM

I surprised how Avatar: The Last Airbender has not been mentioned yet. The story deserved so much and got... everything done wrong. Everything. (Well, Dev Patel wasn't wholly bad as Zuko, though I'm not sure it was really a role for him. Still, in comparison...):smallsigh::smallfrown:

Thing is--do we actually need a live action Avatar movie, even a good one? The animated version isn't going anywhere and is all sorts of awesome.

Peelee

2018-10-09, 02:48 PM

Thing is--do we actually need a live action Avatar movie, even a good one? The animated version isn't going anywhere and is all sorts of awesome.

Imean, there's tons we don't need but are still awesome to have. Hell, we didn't need In Bruges, but it sure as hell was great to have.

Lethologica

2018-10-09, 03:49 PM

We're getting one, regardless, so ATLA has already graduated from "should be given another try" to "is being given another try."

Slightly off-topic: Bridge to Terabithia. Don't remake the movie, no, that part's basically fine. Just release the same movie, and don't colossally screw up the marketing this time.

The Jack

2018-10-09, 04:56 PM

I disagree with The Jack about Lois (she's that good; ferociously competent investigative reporter is her character since its inception), but, fundamentally, yeah. Man of Steel was a deeply flawed film by people who didn't understand Superman.
.

You get me wrong
I want Lois to be good, real good. A spectacular, metaphorically trouser-wearing woman that'll probe right up luthor's shady stuff.
But superman aught to be better.

MoS thinks it's doing the right thing; "if she's that good, surely she can work out CK is SM in absolutely no time, silly comics". I mean if you look at it the other way, not working out who superman is would undermine her character's competency, given that Henry Cavil looks like Henry Cavil and sweet Christmas is that a distinctive look.

But it isn't how it should work. Clark Kent should not look like Henry Cavil, Superman should look like Henry Cavil, but certainly not Clark Kent. They've failed to make Clark Kent look like Clark Kent, so they've failed to understand why Lois wouldn't immediately know the two are one. The same is true for Luthor.

Also, I don't like the casting of LL (either of them). I don't think Amy Adams suits the roll, and she's got nearly ten years on cavil, and I think superman should be younger (although Henry Cavil is obviously Immortal and his aging won't be apparent for another hundred years)

LibraryOgre

2018-10-09, 05:12 PM

Also, I don't like the casting of LL (either of them). I don't think Amy Adams suits the roll, and she's got nearly ten years on cavil, and I think superman should be younger (although Henry Cavil is obviously Immortal and his aging won't be apparent for another hundred years)

I don't think Superman should necessarily be better at hiding than Lois is at finding... nor that she should necessarily be younger than him. She's not a new reporter... she's an experienced reporter, enough to be feared by others who hide secrets. I mean, the canonical Lois is better at finding secrets than Lex Luthor is at hiding them.

Why should Superman be better at hiding than she is at finding? Why shouldn't Lois be nearly 40, especially when is pushing 30? What can't Lois be someone a young Clark Kent, the reporter, looked up to?

The Jack

2018-10-09, 05:47 PM

Superman's super, he's got super powers, he's a genius, and in the comics he builds superman bots to fill in when he's Kenting sometimes. Lois lane has seen Clark Kent and "Superman" in the same room.
Lex Luthor does bad stuff for ****'s and giggles, plays with giant robots, and cuts corners. Most of what lois has on him is big stuff that you couldn't really hide, but of the legal and immoral kind, rather than the illegal kind. Lois Lane can be rather arrogant, so is Lex, neither would dare to imagine that CK would be Superman.

As for the 'ten years older woman'
Well, mass market appeal. She's his eternal non-platonic love interest, and cougars are a niche most people don't want to touch. You might be into it, that's fine, but I can go into a long list of reasons why most people aren't into it. If he was 20 and she were a good 30, they could maybe get away with it, but at 40 she shows her age, and she's 45 now. If you want to do a cinematic universe with half a dozen films with superman, you best be planning for the future.

Legato Endless

2018-10-09, 06:40 PM

Lois not knowing about Clark's identity just seems extremely dated to me. What does it add? The two person love triangle? That's been done better elsewhere.

I can accept that intelligent characters aren't omniscient. I don't think Buffy's mother is unrealistically ignorant for not knowing her daughter's the slayer. Teens keep secrets from erudite parents all the time. The issue is, the Lois doesn't know angle isn't exactly played for high drama. It's a farce. It bears much more in common with identity confusion in old fashioned melodramas and musicals. Lois comes across bumbling because I can't name an instance in live action or animated media where it wasn't played for, at best, perfunctory comedy. It's not some gripping drama about someone managing to fool their close friend Sherlock Holmes, or the loved one who actually knew but was secretly in denial. Those would be satisfying. Lois just comes across as situationally lacking in basic analytical reasoning.

Like, even if Superman isn't believed to have a secret identity, and is backed by an army of robots, that doesn't explain why Lois actively ignores all the strange activities she sees Clark get up to. Reasonably, she should think something bizarre is happening. Clark's some other super or something. Between the incongruities in his behavior with his facade and considering all the times his reporting doesn't seem to logistically add up. Like, if you want to play that card you can, but it tonally clashes when later we see Lois connect a bunch of dots no one else did when she's solving anything the plot hasn't mandated she can't.

It also lends itself to characterization oddities, as Clark has a habit of making jokes to himself and the viewer about his secret identity around Lois and others whenever the subject is broached. A smarmily condescending trait that feels out of a place for a guy usually depicted as a moral paragon.

Lethologica

2018-10-09, 07:07 PM

Superman is a superhuman master of disguise? That's not some Silver Age hand-wave "powers as the plot demands" one-off, but some kind of actual trait? Huh.

The Jack

2018-10-09, 08:42 PM

It also lends itself to characterization oddities, as Clark has a habit of making jokes to himself and the viewer about his secret identity around Lois and others whenever the subject is broached. A smarmily condescending trait that feels out of a place for a guy usually depicted as a moral paragon.

Not really, Lois isn't a flawless character, and moral paragons aren't divorced from the ability to criticise or lampoon, and many friendships practically revolve around humour that would seem mean to an outsider.
(plus, of course, the Clark Kent character superman plays isn't meant to be a paragon, and is deliberately imperfect)

Superman is a superhuman master of disguise? That's not some Silver Age hand-wave "powers as the plot demands" one-off, but some kind of actual trait? Huh.

https://youtu.be/5GDvVplPEqo?t=122
And this was a toned down version of the guy.

Nah but seriously, on one end of the scale, you've got Christopher Reeve, who's superman looks different enough from his Clark that he could fool his colleagues so long as they didn't get too close, to this wonder;
https://skoce.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/07.jpg
You could do that with CGI, It'd be a believable lie.

Fairy

2018-10-10, 05:47 AM

I agree with Man of Steel above - although for different reasons. I don't particularly mind the Lois Lane discovering Superman thing... Discovering secrets is Lois' whole thing, and in a stand-alone 2 hour film having her not discover the one obvious secret that's available just undermines her. I really think to get a good superman movie you'd have to focus a lot less on superman. Certainly worked for Dark Knight... Joker's a far more interesting character than Batman. Lex is more interesting than Superman, and I think some versions of Lois (when she's not X love interest) are more interesting too. Superman himself is rarely interesting, and I think having him be literally better than everyone else in more ways than just being super would just be boring.
Okay the Lois Clark Superman weird love triangle thing I admit is kind of fun but I think it's 100% justifiable to throw that away in the contained plot of a single movie. If you really want to keep it you could even show Lois figure it out but never say it or something? Point is not to waste Lois as a character here. Just do something interesting with her (frankly MoS doesn't really do anything with her anyway). Again, Dark Knight, having Rachel choose whats-his-(2)face over Bruce and the dramatic letter thing... It's just a good arc. There's something interesting happening with the character, Rachel's made an interesting decision and she's not just wasted.
MoS. most of the film's just silly... The villains feel like Power Rangers, and the scene of Superman destroying the terraformer is just ridiculous. 'Oh no, it's a machine that means he can't do the thing!.. Oh hooray, he did the thing!'
Only reason I think it 'could' be good is because I think it did do a good job of showing the scale of a superhero movie. A lot of people would have died in that film, and that makes sense. I think the movie does do a good job of getting the feeling of desperation across. Maybe this is a statement of ignorance, but I don't know of any other superhero movies that I think do this well.

For the sake of the discussion I'll add a controversial film to this list... Scarface. Kind-of-spoilers below.
I think of it as the ultimate 'could be better' film. I think its reputation comes from the fact that so much of it seems like it could or should be good. It has so many mini-arcs and ideas, a lot of which sounds good on paper... At the end I love the fact that he's this embittered drug-lord, my favourite part of the movie is him drunkenly crashing around a dinner party insulting the rich for being rich. The whole ending sequence is famous for obvious reasons.
I think the marketing or 'image' of the movie today says more about how the movie itself is bad rather than anything else. There are all these gritty images of 'Scarface', the ultimate mobster, the ultimate monster, pictures of the final scene of his rampage, everything's in black and white... Whereas honestly the movie barely takes itself seriously. It intentionally ruins dramatic scenes for cheap 80's laughs (end of the Frank scene), and a lot of Tony's successes (particularly in romance) come down to 'because he's Al Pacino - wow, big actor, so cool'.

CWater

2018-10-10, 08:32 AM

We're getting one, regardless, so ATLA has already graduated from "should be given another try" to "is being given another try".

Oh! Well that's good news! It's extremely unlikely that it can be worse than the first abomination, so even if it's not stellar, it'll still be an improvement.

Kato

2018-10-10, 09:26 AM

Thing is--do we actually need a live action Avatar movie, even a good one? The animated version isn't going anywhere and is all sorts of awesome.
I'm with factotum here.. I mean, I guess there is no harm in it but I'm very skeptical that anyone can turn a season long story into a decent movie. If any studio wants to spend a bunch of money trying to find out, go ahead. And if it works, awesome. But if it turns out to be only a little less disappointing than the last movie I won't be surprised.

Star Wars 7, 8 and 9 - Well... 9 is speculation of course, but it's like speculating Suicide Squad was going to suck before the movie was out: Technically, it's speculation, but it's so obviously it's going to happen that it might as well be prophecy.

And now to contradict what I just said. Being that negative about a movie that you know hardly anything about... Is there even the slightest chance for the movie not to disappoint you if two years in advance you're already : "yeah, this will suck, no matter what"?

factotum

2018-10-10, 09:53 AM

Imean, there's tons we don't need but are still awesome to have. Hell, we didn't need In Bruges, but it sure as hell was great to have.

I guess I'm just thinking that the effort should go first into remaking bad movies into good ones, then maybe bad series into good movies, before we start thinking about turning awesome series into any kind of movie.

Tyndmyr

2018-10-10, 10:07 AM

I agree with Man of Steel above - although for different reasons. I don't particularly mind the Lois Lane discovering Superman thing... Discovering secrets is Lois' whole thing, and in a stand-alone 2 hour film having her not discover the one obvious secret that's available just undermines her.

I can live with Lois discovering Superman.

I have trouble buying that framing Superman for murder by...using bullets....is a thing that makes sense to anyone. Superman isn't a gunman, and if he wanted to kill people, he would never need a gun.

I'd also prefer my Luthor to be actually Luthor, and not a discount Joker.

And now to contradict what I just said. Being that negative about a movie that you know hardly anything about... Is there even the slightest chance for the movie not to disappoint you if two years in advance you're already : "yeah, this will suck, no matter what"?

Of course not. That's the point of the prediction. He's not going to suddenly like the film if he just says nothing but happy things about it.

And a lot of films are predictable long, long before they come out. The idea of a Battleship movie, for instance. I made fun of that immediately. I still went and saw it, and it was dumber than I imagined it could be.

Look, let's peruse films coming out in 2019.

Captain Marvel/Avengers 4/Spidey Homecoming. Probably great, unless you hate the MCU. But I like the MCU films, so I have little reason to suspect anything bad from these.
Toy Story 4. One sequel too many. Probably fine for the kiddos and what not, but unlikely to be as iconic as the earlier takes.
Dark Phoenix. Like Apocalpyse, it will be awful. X-men films have a pretty straightforward way in which they work. Good movie. Good movie. Crap movies until they reboot it. We're past the good point on this iteration. It'll suck.
Star Wars 9. Part of a trilogy, with some of the same people behind it. You will almost certainly like or hate it as much as you liked or hated the other two.
Frozen 2. It's a cash grab. The story doesn't need a sequel. It probably will be fine enough to show the kids, but again, it's not going to be as good as the original story. This always happens when you push a story past the conclusion.
Shazam. DC film. Sorry if you like the character, but it's gonna suck.
How to Train Your Dragon 3. See previous statements about sequels going on too long.
The Secret Life of Pets 2. There's kind of a pattern here.
Happy Death Day 2U.
Yet Another Terminator Sequel.
Suicide Squad 2.

Look, I don't have to even comment at this point. You can already visualize the results.

DigoDragon

2018-10-10, 10:47 AM

Tron 2.0 is my response. Take away the visual effects and there's no substance left. We hardly get to see the titular character and the plot doesn't really go anywhere or do anything. Isomorphs? What?

Instead, why not focus on Clu already in the starting phases of waging a cyberwar against the "users" through the internet? To the real world there's a huge virus that's infecting every computer and attempts to stop it are difficult at best. Sam can still be the delinquent hacker and he grabs some friends to go into the Tron world to fight back.

Bright
Needed better writing so the racial allegory wasn't jammed in your face and the tonal shifts didn't induce whiplash. I liked the setting and applaud the attempt. Decent enough if you only look at it as a buddy cop action flick with a twist, but it wanted to be more and fell shortalso, Will Smith learns a kill spell in seconds just by being told the words for it and defeats a wizard who had been studying magic longer than humans live. What?

My opinion is to skip this movie and just do a Shadowrun buddy cop movie around two Lonestar officers on a night beat in Seattle. :smallbiggrin:

LibraryOgre

2018-10-10, 12:14 PM

I'd also prefer my Luthor to be actually Luthor, and not a discount Joker.

BvS makes more sense if you assume "Lex Luthor" is a pseudonym that Edward Nigma has chosen.

oudeis

2018-10-10, 01:45 PM

Krull:

I like this movie more than I should, even allowing for the 'guilty pleasure' factor. I love the almost classical feel of the mythology. The characters could have stepped out of some long-lost folklore: The Widow of the Web; The Girl with Ancient Name; The Blind Seer. The Beast. Prince Colwyn is kind of a stiff, but the rest of the characters are a lot of fun, especially Torquil the bandit chief, Ergo the Magnificent, and Freddy Jones as Ynyr. Even the kidnapped princess has some depth to her. Though she has been captured, she doesn't fall into a swoon and wait for the hero to rescue her. She never stops trying to outwit the Beast and in fact figures out how to finally defeat it. It has many forgettable scenes, true, but the battle in the swamp (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fv0IFvyvp4w) and the Widow's Web (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3w6TQHYHZc8)were awesome, not least because of James Horner's score (Krull is one of his earliest soundtracks and you can hear a lot of motifs that he reused in later works). If they had handled it properly they could have created something cool. Also, if they hadn't blown so much of their budget on the massive soundstage sets they might actually have been able to afford some special effects that weren't embarrassing.

The first thing you'd have to do is eliminate the moronic prologue. It just spoils the story and ruins what could be a great discovery scene. Move the revelation to when the heroes first enter the fortress of The Beast. Next, make the Slayers more intimidating. Copy freely from the Alien and Predator designs. Make them fast and inhuman- either sinuous and agile like cats or with darting movements like arthropods. Get rid of the stupid FX bolt they shoot and give them a mean-looking barbed javelin. When they are killed, the horrible tentacled slug that controls them tries to leap onto another host (that, or the Slayers are actually mech suits a la the Daleks, which would tie into the revelation of the Beast's extraterrestrial origins). Get better effects for the Beast. Turn the Glaive into a real weapon of power instead of an oversized self-propelled shuriken and show Colwyn kicking ass with it. Move the setting from a pseudo-medieval to pseudo-dark ages era. Hire a real fight choreographer and give the actors some weapons training. Come up with something better than 'fire mares'. Write an ending that allows for a sequel continuation of the story.

What's that? Why, yes, I have devoted a great deal of thought to this. What makes you ask?
:smallredface: :smallbiggrin:

Lemmy

2018-10-10, 02:06 PM

And now to contradict what I just said. Being that negative about a movie that you know hardly anything about... Is there even the slightest chance for the movie not to disappoint you if two years in advance you're already : "yeah, this will suck, no matter what"?
Of course. It happened quite a few times in the past.

I'm definitely not paying to watch SW9, in the same way that I didn't pay to see SW8 (my plan is to wait for it to come out in Netflix/Amazon Prime or for someone to bring it to movie night)... But I'll eventually watch it.

Hell! I might even give it a try in theaters if enough friends and critics whose opinion I trust speak well of it.

There are films that turn out to be much better (or worse) than expected, but most don't. It isn't difficult to have a reasonable idea of how good a film will be based on its trailler, production details ans predecessors. I see no reason to expect any one movie to be one of the relatively few exceptions... If SW9 turns out to be one, it'll be a nice surprise, but I highly doubt that will be the case.

Tvtyrant

2018-10-10, 02:11 PM

Of course. It happened quite a few times in the past.

I'm definitely not paying to watch SW9, in the same way that I didn't pay to see SW8 (my plan is to wait for it to come out in Netflix/Amazon Prime or for someone to bring it to movie night)... But I'll eventually watch it.

Hell! I might even give it a try in theaters if enough friends and critics whose opinion I trust speak well of it.

There are films that turn out to be much better (or worse) than expected, but most don't. It isn't difficult to have a reasonable idea of how good a film will be based on its trailler, production details ans predecessors. I see no reason to expect any one movie to be one of the relatively few exceptions... If SW9 turns out to be one, it'll be a nice surprise, but I highly doubt that will be the case.

I thought the new Blade Runner was going to be trash and loved it, same with Fury Road and a lot of other sequels.

I also thought Magic Beasts was going to be great and it was mediocre at best.

LibraryOgre

2018-10-10, 02:23 PM

Krull:

So, did you see it in Rifftrax live, like I did?

I agree with you... there's the core of a good movie in there, but it had some HORRIBLE direction and cinematography. Long sequences of just... dudes riding. No dialogue advancing the plot. No particular characterization. Just. Dudes riding.* Other scenes that are composed horribly... I'm thinking of the end of the movie where they have a very nice long shot of the destroyed castle and the triumphant party... but what is in focus is the thistle two feet from the camera.

Oh, and the Glaive? Why isn't he trying to use that the entire time? Why aren't we seeing him master it against the Slayers? It's a thingy that he gets... then forgets about... then uses... then turns out to not be the necessary weapon, because he has magic fire powers.

*And, in the opening scenes, you can see that one guy is REALLY pissing off his horse. He's in the lead and it keeps tossing its head and is so mad at him.

No brains

2018-10-10, 02:32 PM

I also thought Magic Beasts was going to be great and it was mediocre at best.

I remember seeing that and thinking, "Dang, that was a long episode of Dr. Who."

Similarly, Thor: The Dark World was my favorite Star Trek movie in recent years. It's evil cloaked elves (Romulans) getting beaten by technobabble.

Also Ghost in the Shell was a better Robocop remake than the Robocop remake.

Legato Endless

2018-10-10, 02:39 PM

BvS makes more sense if you assume "Lex Luthor" is a pseudonym that Edward Nigma has chosen.

It even explains his issues with his father.

Yet Another Terminator Sequel.

Wait, this was un-cancelled? Yuck.

Not really, Lois isn't a flawless character, and moral paragons aren't divorced from the ability to criticise or lampoon, and many friendships practically revolve around humour that would seem mean to an outsider.
(plus, of course, the Clark Kent character superman plays isn't meant to be a paragon, and is deliberately imperfect)

I don't really know what Lois having flaws has to do with anything. As for humor, the viewer isn't an outsider to the relationship. And those relationships that seem cruel to an outsider ride on the distinction the two people are mutually consenting to the exchange. That's not the dynamic since Lois doesn't get what's happening. That's the joke. This isn't some facade, which would be really strange for the Clark persona, it's just Supes secretly gloating. The viewer just doesn't notice because they're in on it.

Tvtyrant

2018-10-10, 02:42 PM

I remember seeing that and thinking, "Dang, that was a long episode of Dr. Who."

Similarly, Thor: The Dark World was my favorite Star Trek movie in recent years. It's evil cloaked elves (Romulans) getting beaten by technobabble.

Also Ghost in the Shell was a better Robocop remake than the Robocop remake.

I feel like any Stat Trek where you have to see to know what is going on has stepped wrong. The entire story should be perfectly comprehensible from dialogue alone.

Lemmy

2018-10-10, 03:01 PM

I thought the new Blade Runner was going to be trash and loved it, same with Fury Road and a lot of other sequels.

I also thought Magic Beasts was going to be great and it was mediocre at best.
- I thought Edge of Tomorrow was going to suck, but really enjoyed it.
- I thought Mad Max Fury Road was going to be mediocre-to-okayish and it's now one of my favorite movies ever.
- I thought the first Thor movie was going to be dumb, but fun... And it ended up being completely forgettable.
- Pretty much everyone expected Avengers 2 to be super great and left theaters rather disappointed to varying degrees.

Mistakes happen, of course. Sometimes the traillers don't do a good job of selling the film... Other times they do it too well... But most often, it isn't difficult to have a pretty good idea of how good/bad a movie is going to be. Was anyone surprised at Suicide Squad being complete garbage?

oudeis

2018-10-10, 03:44 PM

Thor:

Chris Hemsworth has a likable quality to him, but I really would have preferred the aloof, formal, even imperious thunder god from the comics. I'm not certain who I would have come up with in his place, though, so I can't say how [other actor] would have been much better in the role.

My biggest problem was that the scale and the scope of the movie was so much smaller than it should have been for a being of Thor's stature. Let's start with the frost giants. Or, more accurately, the 'frost basketball team'. Jotun's were titanic creatures, both in mythology and the comic books. The ones in the movie? I'm sure they would be be intimidating shot-blockers, but they weren't the awe-inspiring enemies they should have been. Loki's big plan is to destroy Jotunheim with Bifrost to prove he was the more worthy heir to the throne. Which we are of course supposed to care about because, well, genocide is just not nice. He sends the Destroyer to kill Thor, just to ensure his claim to kingship, and the fight between Thor and the Destroyer is one of the great cinematic oh forget it I can't even finish the sarcasm.

Thor is supposed to be a being of near-cosmic power. His foes and his battles should be equally legendary in scale. The showdown with the Destroyer was lame. The Destroyer shows up in some podunk New Mexico town, population 700 (during the Rodeo Days festival, of course), blows up Muriel's Dress Shop and Bob's Hardware, then gets vacuumed up by Bifrost after Thor's heroic sacrifice. Thor returns to Asgard, punches Loki around while Bifrost does a Death Star impersonation, then Loki falls off the edge of the world and drifts into oblivion. I appreciate that CGI is expensive, but couldn't we have gotten something more epic? I expect most of the forum has seen the classic 1953 version of 'War of the Worlds'. Remember the power of the martian death rays? The first battle with the army? The awesome scenes of them drifting through Los Angeles, obliterating everything in sight? Or for that matter, all the fights between Godzilla and conventional armies we've seen? That's what the battle with the Destroyer should have been like.

Actually, as bad as BvS:DoJ was, the big fight against Doomsday is almost exactly what we should have gotten in 'Thor'. Death ray eyebeams. Wholesale destruction. The fate of a major city in the balance. Now throw in tanks, cruise missiles, airstrikes, maybe even orbital bombardment, and you have a battle worth watching. Not to your taste? How about a heroic '300' moment, with Thor, Sif, and the Warriors Three holding the ramparts of Asgard against true frost giants (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNR4zQKNORU&feature=youtu.be&t=197)? The wasted potential for something awesome is what hurts the most.

Oh, and if you are going to have the nordic character look in a book of nordic mythology and see a red-headed Thor, you need to explain why we got a blond instead.

tomandtish

2018-10-10, 04:51 PM

...I have trouble buying that framing Superman for murder by...using bullets....is a thing that makes sense to anyone. Superman isn't a gunman, and if he wanted to kill people, he would never need a gun.

Yeah, they cover this in Injustice. If Superman wants to get rid of you? Your body is on another planet and no one ever knows what happened.

Unless he wanted to send a message, in which case he'd do it very publicly and messy.

The Jack

2018-10-10, 06:33 PM

SW episode 9 is basically doomed because, as bad as 7 was, 8 jumped the shark right into it's mouth and then that shark was victim to a series of sequentially bigger sharks. It's not just a point of 'nobody has faith in this series, most people'll wait till the illigal downloads aren't camcordings, so it's not really worth putting effort into"

The story is in Tatters.
everything that episode 7 set up has been torn down. tt
But episode 8 concluded all it's own stuff. The resistance allegedly got away and are in tatters. The first order are so muddled that you couldn't really make episode 9 about Kylo'n Hux, because the FO are so wonderfully undeveloped as anything other than evil, you'd need to set most of the film chronologically in the past and that's a poor way to do something episodic the way star wars is. Meanwhile you can't do anything with Finn or Poe or Rey because they've completed their arcs.

Only way I can see stuff working:
Rose is revealed as a spy
Finn and Poe are revealed as force sensitive and learn the ways of the force.
BB-8 Dies like a chump
Phasma survived episode 8 and becomes a Terminator. She's the real big bad of the movie.
Rey goes through an Arc and joins the First Order at the end of episode 9. FN then gets a surprise fourth movie or a trilogy in the future where he fights against the FO with Poe as his sidekick.

oudeis

2018-10-10, 06:44 PM

I hate the new trilogy, too, but let's try to keep this discussion on-topic instead of hijacking it to bitch about movies that haven't come out yet.

The Jack

2018-10-10, 07:07 PM

I watched Bright because people were bitching about it and I wanted to see what the problem was. I think one video (which I have yet to watch, but it kept coming up as recomended) called it the apotheosis of lazy worldbuilding.

It is. It really is. There's nothing worth salvaging from it.

Black,White,Hispanic... Utterly irrelevant in a world where elves and orcs live. The Triangular slave trade, and all the dehumanizing of blacks that came with it, would never have come to pass were there something so handy as Orcs around. The entirity of African-American culture wouldn't have happened, and while music might have converged to similar stuff through different means, ghetto culture wouldn't have had the development it did, at least with humans.

also the wand is bull**** and the elves are bull****. .1 percenters mostly hide how rich they are, conspicuos consumption is social suicide for old money, and there's a reason why they're that way. If an entire race were driving sports cars in their exclusive super-districts, we'd kill them off in jealousy. It's tacky and devoid of nuance.

Keltest

2018-10-10, 09:22 PM

My headcanon with Lois is that she does suspect something with Clark, she just legitimately respects him enough to recognize that if she's right, she's only going to be causing problems for somebody who neither needs nor deserves them, so she deliberately leaves it alone.

BeerMug Paladin

2018-10-11, 12:13 AM

And now to contradict what I just said. Being that negative about a movie that you know hardly anything about... Is there even the slightest chance for the movie not to disappoint you if two years in advance you're already : "yeah, this will suck, no matter what"?
This makes a degree of sense if you consider movies as brands. Which isn't too far off the mark as far as franchises go. Doritos releases a new flavor! Whether or not that statement means anything, it's probably pretty similar in impact to the reader as things like another DC movie's title has been announced, J'onn or Alien: Outbreak's trailer is going to drop on Monday.

Sometimes I get enough exposure to a movie's branding that I know that the franchise isn't for me. Typically I try to avoid such movies from then on, but I usually still get some exposure due to the sheer majority of people who seem to enjoy franchises.

For me, I generally expect movies franchises to be bad. It's quite rare that doesn't hold up, but then I don't typically watch them, so that opinion could be some form of selection bias. I ate a bag of Doritos once, it was okay but not particularly life-enhancing and ridiculously unhealthy.

AMFV

2018-10-11, 01:03 AM

I watched Bright because people were bitching about it and I wanted to see what the problem was. I think one video (which I have yet to watch, but it kept coming up as recomended) called it the apotheosis of lazy worldbuilding.

Not really any more than Shadowrun or most urban fantasy.

It is. It really is. There's nothing worth salvaging from it.

Black,White,Hispanic... Utterly irrelevant in a world where elves and orcs live. The Triangular slave trade, and all the dehumanizing of blacks that came with it, would never have come to pass were there something so handy as Orcs around. The entirity of African-American culture wouldn't have happened, and while music might have converged to similar stuff through different means, ghetto culture wouldn't have had the development it did, at least with humans.

I think that you may have never met a racist if you think that's true.

also the wand is bull**** and the elves are bull****. .1 percenters mostly hide how rich they are, conspicuos consumption is social suicide for old money, and there's a reason why they're that way. If an entire race were driving sports cars in their exclusive super-districts, we'd kill them off in jealousy. It's tacky and devoid of nuance.

You do realize that there are people who live in houses that cost more than I will make in my entire life and they don't get killed? Arnold Schwarzenegger wasted more of his money buying a jet than I will ever have, and he wasn't assassinated for it. There are plenty more examples.

Wanjigi

2018-10-11, 01:58 AM

some comments are just funny

Rodin

2018-10-11, 02:15 AM

There are plenty more examples.

For a start, the super-district where everybody drives their sports cars exists and is called "The Hamptons". And Dubai. And Malibu. And...

Knaight

2018-10-11, 02:44 AM

For a start, the super-district where everybody drives their sports cars exists and is called "The Hamptons". And Dubai. And Malibu. And...

Not so much Dubai - certain parts of Dubai, yes, but it's a whole city. More than that, it's a whole city where the wealth gap between the wealthier and poorer parts of the city is extremely large.

That said, the issue with Bright relative to something like Shadowrun is that they introduce changes far earlier to history, which then proceed to have no effect. Shadowrun has a dramatic change set in the future, which immediately has ramifications - it's a much better thought through setting. Comparing Bright to the buddy-cop standard though it's pretty unremarkable in terms of believability. It's a genre which lends itself to dumb, ridiculous fun, where even by action movie standards things get unusually ludicrous.

The Jack

2018-10-11, 07:14 AM

{Scrubbed}

GloatingSwine

2018-10-11, 07:26 AM

Thor:

Thor is supposed to be a being of near-cosmic power. His foes and his battles should be equally legendary in scale. The showdown with the Destroyer was lame. The Destroyer shows up in some podunk New Mexico town, population 700 (during the Rodeo Days festival, of course), blows up Muriel's Dress Shop and Bob's Hardware, then gets vacuumed up by Bifrost after Thor's heroic sacrifice. Thor returns to Asgard, punches Loki around while Bifrost does a Death Star impersonation, then Loki falls off the edge of the world and drifts into oblivion. I appreciate that CGI is expensive, but couldn't we have gotten something more epic?

No.

The point of the movie was Thor learning that worthwhile heroism isn't the epic stuff.

Being willing to sacrifice himself for people he barely knows in a podunk town in the middle of nowhere is what made him a hero.

How do you know the chosen ones? No greater love hath a man than he lay down his life for his brother. Not for millions, .. not for glory, not for fame. For one person, .. in the dark .. where no one will ever know .. or see.

Peelee

2018-10-11, 07:58 AM

{Scrubbed}

Yes, just like how in a world of black and native American people, nobody would be racist towards, say, the white Irish.

Kato

2018-10-11, 08:32 AM

Okay guys, before a moderator shows up you better put the breaks on anything related to politics. Because if you're not there yet, you'll be within the next few posts.

I think the general topic of video game movies has been mentioned, I feel for many of them it's hard to make a decent movie given the source material (RE seems the only franchise to satisfy both alleys)
But... How hard can it be to make a decent Doom action movie?! I feel almost like I could write a better plot than what happened there, and I'm a terrible writer!

The Jack

2018-10-11, 08:41 AM

Yes, just like how in a world of black and native American people, nobody would be racist towards, say, the white Irish.

Misguided and Irrelevant. There's a difference between casual and malicious racism, racism isn't a boolean value. (and your example world is nonsense)

The point is, the world of Bright doesn't work. It doesn't deserve a reboot, a sequel or anything. It's undermines it's own cause by being bad. People should just forget it. There are many other series that do fantasy racism or modern era fantasy better.

Can we get a good SPAWN movie sometime soon?

World of Darkness had a series called 'Kindred; the embraced' or something, which was unfaithful and trashy, but I think you could make a really good series out of doing it properly.

druid91

2018-10-11, 09:03 AM

I have to admit that I adored the book and grew to hate the film the more it went on.

I've heard The Last Man on Earth is the closest adaptation of the book, but I'm not sure if it still has the proper meaning as I've not seen it. The book has one of the best endings I've read, and makes the title have so much more meaning, that I just feel like any attempt to change the meaning of the title is a disservice.

Another one, I'd like to see a film of Stardust with the book's ending. I like most of the changes they made, and it's a great film in most respects, but they replaced the best ending I've ever seen with a generic all around happy ending. Bring back the bittersweet.

Omega Man.

Rodin

2018-10-11, 09:06 AM

To get away from the political aspect, the main reason not to re-make Bright is that Shadowrun already exists and has a better thought out setting.

Now, doing a movie in the same style as Bright following a Lone Star officer as he tries to investigate the murder of a demi-human where nobody will help, because who cares if a trog got themselves geeked...

I still remain surprised that we haven't had a movie set in the Shadowrun universe. Especially since Bladerunner 2049 has shown that they CAN do the cyberpunk setting convincingly.

druid91

2018-10-11, 09:11 AM

Eldan

2018-10-11, 09:45 AM

Not really any more than Shadowrun or most urban fantasy.

I think that you may have never met a racist if you think that's true.

You do realize that there are people who live in houses that cost more than I will make in my entire life and they don't get killed? Arnold Schwarzenegger wasted more of his money buying a jet than I will ever have, and he wasn't assassinated for it. There are plenty more examples.

The difference is that in Shadowrun, magic returned, all the magical races returned. History for the most part, was similar to ours and then changed massively.

In Bright, it's implied that orcs, dragons, centaurs, elves and magic have always been around and active. There was a dark lord 2000 years ago who waged war on humans with an army of orcs.

And yet, the world is still almost identical.

GloatingSwine

2018-10-11, 09:57 AM

If they DON'T play true to the setting, you alienate the very people you were trying to cash in on.

I do not think there are enough people who have even heard of Shadowrun to "cash in" on them.

Which is why there hasn't been a lot of stuff set in the universe. It can just about support an indie game studio making retro RPGs. Anything else is way beyond its cultural envelope.

druid91

2018-10-11, 10:04 AM

I do not think there are enough people who have even heard of Shadowrun to "cash in" on them.

Which is why there hasn't been a lot of stuff set in the universe. It can just about support an indie game studio making retro RPGs. Anything else is way beyond its cultural envelope.

I mean. 2 million people is hardly a small number. And that's only the people who bought Shadowrun returns.

Willie the Duck

2018-10-11, 10:26 AM

I mean. 2 million people is hardly a small number. And that's only the people who bought Shadowrun returns.

Not nearly enough for a modern movie. Certainly not one with a special effects budget.

Peelee

2018-10-11, 10:34 AM

Misguided and Irrelevant. There's a difference between casual and malicious racism, racism isn't a boolean value. (and your example world is nonsense)

My example world is the real world. And something isn't irrelevant just because it completely dismantles your point. That just means you made a poor point.

GloatingSwine

2018-10-11, 11:00 AM

I mean. 2 million people is hardly a small number. And that's only the people who bought Shadowrun returns.

2 million ticket sales for a movie would be about a what $30M take (even if they were all in the US and less from overseas sales gets back to the studio).

That means you'd be looking at about a $10M budget for the movie if you wanted to make any money back after production and distribution.

Which would not get you a lot. Netflix's Altered Carbon, which would probably be your minimum for visual quality, was $6-8M per episode just for the cyberpunk, then you need the monsters and magic.

Sapphire Guard

2018-10-11, 11:11 AM

Re: BVS. Superman wasn't being blamed for killing the rebels, he was being blamed for interfering in a civil war and provoking a massacre.

The Jack

2018-10-11, 12:03 PM

My example world is the real world. And something isn't irrelevant just because it completely dismantles your point. That just means you made a poor point.

I uh...

Yes, just like how in a world of black and native American people, nobody would be racist towards, say, the white Irish.

Alright, I've went through some gymnastics to make sense of what you meant here, and I think I can put myself on your page. However, I'd be talking politics way too much to really go into it.

Irish and Native americans suffer discrimination, but it's not on the same level as African Americans, as African american culture is seen as more powerful (there are more african americans than the other two groups) and antithetical than that of Native/Irish Americans.
In the circumstances of bright, this is still the case.
But in a hypothetical world where there have been Orcs and elves for two thousand years, this wouldn't be the case; African Americans, lacking the slavery/aparthied angle, would be in the same shoes as natives/irish americans, whilst orcs, being far more antithetical to the dominant 'white' culture than blacks in the fictional world (and the real one), would be the subject of far harsher racism. So whilst racism among humans would still exist, it would be far less divisive between humans. Black,Irish and native american cultures would better integrate into mainstream human society, as they would be seen as 'more like us than them (the orcs)'

Peelee

2018-10-11, 12:26 PM

I uh...

Alright, I've went through some gymnastics to make sense of what you meant here, and I think I can put myself on your page. However, I'd be talking politics way too much to really go into it.

Irish and Native americans suffer discrimination, but it's not on the same level as African Americans, as African american culture is seen as more powerful (there are more african americans than the other two groups) and antithetical than that of Native/Irish Americans.
In the circumstances of bright, this is still the case.
But in a hypothetical world where there have been Orcs and elves for two thousand years, this wouldn't be the case; African Americans, lacking the slavery/aparthied angle, would be in the same shoes as natives/irish americans, whilst orcs, being far more antithetical to the dominant 'white' culture than blacks in the fictional world (and the real one), would be the subject of far harsher racism. So whilst racism among humans would still exist, it would be far less divisive between humans. Black,Irish and native american cultures would better integrate into mainstream human society, as they would be seen as 'more like us than them (the orcs)'

So you take back your previous assertion:

Black,White,Hispanic... Utterly irrelevant in a world where elves and orcs live.
and admit that such discrimination would still exist?

Tyndmyr

2018-10-11, 12:33 PM

Scrubbed

The visual effects for the wand were cool, though. And it's probably the closest we've ever had to a Shadowrun movie.

There's potential there, it just fell a bit short. I could easily see it be done great if it were only thought out a little more, and the plot wasn't so stereotypical. Big bad from a thousand years ago....yawn. One in every gazillion people is a special chosen...oh, of course our protagonist is.

I don't really mind rich elves, that's a fun consequence of one race being extremely long lived. It just doesn't matter much to the actual plot.

However, we ARE having a Bright 2 coming out this year, so we'll get to see what they actually do with it. My bet is that it'll be a dumpster fire, but hey. Maybe I'm wrong.

Re: BVS. Superman wasn't being blamed for killing the rebels, he was being blamed for interfering in a civil war and provoking a massacre.

So, how did the planted bullets result in that?

The Glyphstone

2018-10-11, 12:35 PM

Let's not get overly combative here. The_Jack's original assertion isn't negated by his multi-paragraph explanation on a single-sentence comment. It was rather poorly phrased, but he seems to have made the intent of his point fairly clear. To paraphrase Sir Pratchett Himself, "white and black and yellow don't mean quite so much when all of them gang up on green". There's no end to examples of historical racism where Group A was racist towards Groups B and C, but still tolerated B more than C because they were less 'other'.

Also, I applaud the people trying desperate to avoid getting too deep into politics, and would encourage that to continue. Letting this entire thread become about Bright, and possibly end up getting it locked, would be a shame.

Peelee

2018-10-11, 12:39 PM

Rodin

2018-10-11, 12:51 PM

2 million ticket sales for a movie would be about a what $30M take (even if they were all in the US and less from overseas sales gets back to the studio).

That means you'd be looking at about a $10M budget for the movie if you wanted to make any money back after production and distribution.

Which would not get you a lot. Netflix's Altered Carbon, which would probably be your minimum for visual quality, was $6-8M per episode just for the cyberpunk, then you need the monsters and magic.

I certainly get the point that Shadowrun is a bit on the obscure side.

On the other hand, Bright exists. And somehow isn't Shadowrun, but a pale imitation.

On whether or not they would be boycotted for the setting:

Hmmm. That's a tricky one. You have stuff like the Native Americans collapsing the United States with a massive shamanic ritual and forcing the U.S. to basically cease to exist by giving back huge tracts of land. My knowledge on the history of Shadowrun is sketchy at best, but I would assume the existence of Aztechnology means that the Aztecs have emerged as a going concern again, with all that implies.

So there's certainly room for people to be upset.

However, we already have a show with a disturbing alternate timeline in Man in the High Castle. A series which features the USA getting taken over by Japan and the Nazis, and which features actual Nazis as protagonists*.

So...meh. I'm fairly sure you can go pretty dark with the source material and still avoid pissing people off.

*Smith actually kinda ping-pongs back and forth between this and antagonist, but I think he still counts.