The 2024 horror movie ‘Out if Darkness’. I was really disappointed with where they decided to take it in the end. So many cool possibilities, and I felt they went with the most boring option.
A recent example is Conclave, which had an ending that felt very rushed and not really consistent with the tone of the rest of the film. I left feeling quite disappointed despite the majority of the film being one of the best I have seen. Another film I saw recently with almost the opposite problem was The Prestige, which I feel shows far too much of its big twist hand throughout the film and has an extremely predictable ending as a result. I think the thematic idea of the twist is very clever but it almost underestimates the ability of the audience to follow along. Although, having said that, there are seemingly a lot of very stupid or distracted people out there who had no idea what was coming and think it’s a masterpiece so maybe it was made for them and not me.
Battlefield Earth
Downsizing: It was a very interesting premise (people choose to shrink themselves in order to continue being able to afford living) but it is squandered on a pretty bland plot that wastes the premise to tell a mundane story.
I was so salty after watching that movie. All the trailers billed it as a comedy. Maybe the first 10 minutes had me laughing. Bored to tears after that.
Literally came in here to say Downsizing. Great premise ruined by being nothing but a not-so-good romcom.
Excellent premise: vampire post-epidemic society trying to deal with the scarcity of blood, ethical ramifications of keeping the remaining humans sedated for blood harvesting, technical challenges like adapting infrastructure and vehicles to be sun-proof, etc.
The only thing I clearly remember is the premise, cuz the plot, characters, dialogue, action, etc. was all dog trash
Actually, I do remember how badly it mangled the social commentary on the vampires who couldn’t afford blood. Perfect setup for depicting the inhumanity of artificial scarcity and they botched it.
Star Wars VII, VIII and IX
I deleted my previous replay because my brain is broken and roman numerals fuck me up, what I meant to say was Star Wars I, II, and III (not IV, V and VI, though Return has always been a lesser ran in my book)
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I thought In Time had a really cool premise and could have been a great commentary on wealth disparity, but it didn’t do much with it.
I loved Prometheus, I thought it was going deep canon on the Alien franchise, and even though it wasn’t perfect I so very much dug it, Ridley Scott saw some bad reviews, pussied out, and put Alien:Covenant out there to undo all the stuff he began with Prometheus. Covenant was such a garbage forgettable movie, followed by Romulus which was garage/fan service waste of time. Oh for the timeline we could have had, had they built upon the canon/story of Prometheus.
So true, Prometheus did a lot of the hard stuff right and then really made a mess of pretty basic things like dialogue and believable character motivations. Instead of tightening that stuff up in the sequel he just completely dumbed down the entire franchise again in Covenant to the extent that it is once again a complete waste of time (see Romulus).
A more recent one: The Gorge. Good premise and setting, but it becomes bland when the mystery is unraveled.
This was one that popped into my pre coffee morning mind as well.
Instead of exploring the mystery of the gorge and it’s workings and using it to maybe explore the sticky situation characters find themselves in, americans and russians just do their favourite pastime and genocide the local populace for fun.
Assassins Creed
For the uninitiated, this is based on a game series with the premise of people in the modern day using a simulation to relive the memories of their ancestors. And in every day, the modern day is the frame story that sucks and the real, cool story is the simulation.
So of course they made the crappy frame story like 90% of the movie and it sucked. Obviously it’s hard to capture the entire feel of a game on film, but what they could have done is had the entire movie in the past and actually focused on telling a good story, and then revealed it was a simulation right before the credits. Heck, they could have just stolen the ending from Assassins Creed 2 and then cut to modern day Callum with a setup for a sequel.
Instead we got an entirely forgettable film.
Matrix: Revolutions. I didn’t even see the fourth one.
I honestly never minded the matrix revolutions. It was fine. The 4th Matrix movie completely sucks though.
You should continue not seeing the fourth movie. I want my time back
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They_live
A very funny movie with good actors and everything, except for one major disappointment: at the end of the movie, you understand that some humans collaborates with aliens, they get magical watches, free money, and the aliens even have some kind of interplanetary door to teleport yourself to zombie-land. But they don’t go further in that explanation because the movie is already over.
They could have made a whole sequel with that new world, but instead we are left with a few pictures, and the ending credits of the movie. It felt like “Poochie died on the way back to his home planet. The End.”
How about instead we do close ups of the gun barrel over and over?
Recent one for me is Love Hurts.
Had a few things going right for it. The early fight scene between Ke Huy Quan and Marshawn Lynch’s characters was really fun and cool. You could see the bones of a really fun John Wick clone but with a bit of an 70’s/80’s kung fu twist to it. But then they completely ruin it with the love interest plot and the boring bad guy and boring later fights. Take that early part of the movie and expand on it, and drop the love interest crap, and it might have been pretty good.
Jupiter Ascending was doing some awesome stuff with worldbuilding that you can tell the studio just wimped out on. Can’t get too sci fi, might scare away audiences.
My theory is that Jupiter Ascending was supposed to be a trilogy, but the studio would only approve one movie with a wait-and-see approach to the second and third installments, and the Wachowskis just said “Fuck it,” and crammed 6+ hours of plot and world building into a two-hour movie.
I got that vibe too, and that vibe with a lot of movies now. Everything has to become a trilogy, nothing can just be good on it’s own
There was this alien invasion B-movie like 10 years or so ago that I don’t remember the title of. But it was your typical main character and a couple of friends trying to find a way out of the city. Very generic. Then in the last 10-15 mins of the movie, he gets abducted and it gets far more interesting. But it ends there as a cliffhanger. I would’ve loved to see a version where that happens in the middle of the movie instead and we see more.
That’s it! And I was off by 5 years lol.
There’s a whole trilogy with Skyline, and a fourth this year