Mortal Engines
Downsizing
First 20 minutes (give or take) seemed like a solid start. But then they did absolutely nothing with the concept.
Mortal Kombat (2021) opened with a great “feudal China with elemental magic” clan story that could have been an amazing movie, but then they jumped forward in time and everything after that was a let down.
The ideas behind They Live are fascinating and deserved better treatment than a 20-minute alley fight about sunglasses.
Lucy
It’s entertaining as all hell. It doesn’t pretend to be anything more, so I don’t understand the hate it gets. Just turn off your brain, and have some fun. It’s not supposed to be hard sci-fi.
“turn off your brain” is a pretty ironic requirement.
LoL. Totally. Gotta use 0% of your brain in order to enjoy a movie about using 100% of your brain.
But anyway, it’s just code for ‘get stoned as fuck before watching this.’
and it’s only 89 minutes, it doesn’t get stale or repetitive!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_(2014_film)
The audience for Lucy was split evenly between men and women, with 65 percent being over age 25.[54] Nikki Rocco, president for domestic distribution at Universal Studios, said, “To have a female lead in an original property absolutely made a difference. Scarlett is a star, and her presence [in the film] made it a lot more appealing for women.”[55] Michael Bodey of The Australian commented that women having comprised half the audience is “a seemingly new precedent for an action film” and that, because of its box office performance, Lucy is the film out of all of Besson’s film work “likely to have the greatest cultural impact.”[18]
It seems like it definitely resonated with a lot of people, will check it out. Luc Besson can be hit and miss, but his films are always memorable
Jurassic World. Just give me 90 minutes of dino mutants fighting, I don’t give a shit about Chris Pratt nor some random kids.
+1 for I do not give a shit about Chris Pratt
CATS
Cats is not a complicated musical. All they had to do was animate it and get actual voice actors/singers. I’ve seen sketches for what I think was a Tim Burton sketch, and that would have been a million times better. I don’t know who looked at Cat’s and was like, “Yup, we need CGI.” It looks horrendous and sounds bad more often than not. The musical is already pretty out there, how much more fun would that movie had been if we had animators working on it. The creative visuals, colors, motifs. Not to mention a cat is a wonderfully complex animal to animate just because of how they move. That movie could have been a visual delight in part with the Spiderman movies if they let it, but noooooo. Let’s make a nightmare.
I still feel obliged to post it, so that the memories don’t fade.
Beautiful.
Cabin in the woods
Cabin in the Woods is fine art.
10/10 Premise 10/10 Execution
I’m helping my teenager get through all the horror tropes so we can watch Cabin in the Woods together.
Hot take.
I loved cabin in the woods!
Yeah, I don’t think anybody actually thought it was a bad movie. The real hot take is saying it was.
everyone and their mother did
Yeah, so much more there, they set up a very good universe to explore a tiny sand grain of it.
you shut your bastard mouth!
100% agree. It’s a fine twist on the subgenre, but the twist introduces an idea that begs to be expanded upon as part of a larger, cross-subgenre arc. And yet we only get a sliver and then it’s done.
My hot take is that Joss Whedon’s writing is like JJ Abrams’: perfect premises with bad sense of follow-thru, so all their work gets the Netflix “over before it’s satisfyingly concluded” treatment
That’s a great point. It would be fun to see a G rated fantasy film that happens to exactly follow the rules to be a Cabin in the Woods prequel.
(Same enforcement of common tropes from much happier genres, but implying that the underlying reason is the same…)
I feel like everything was explained. I’m not left with any lingering questions about why or how any of it happened
The original Purge. I thought all the background stuff and setting were super interesting, but the film itself was a generic home invasion movie. The sequel expanded on all the stuff I was interested in, though.
The sequels really explored the idea with impressive worldbuilding. I admit the first one was more a horror flick, but the others were definitely digging deep into social commentary
Yeah, it wasn’t even that the first one was bad, it’s just that all the things they mentioned in passing, like the New Founding Fathers and the exemptions for Level 10 Government Officials, were building a world that sounded super interesting. Then we got saddle with some boring rich family for 90 minutes. I only got around to seeing the first sequel, but it delivered on all the stuff I wanted to see after I heard that first announcement.
NostalgiaCritic did a pretty decent analysis on the Purge series a few years ago, and it touches on a lot of this:
I agree with all the other people in this thread mentioning ‘In Time’. It had such a great premise, and I didn’t even hate the execution, but it was mediocre. It was like they went 50% of the way to a flawless execution and just said “fuck it, that’s good enough”. The concept has a lot of elements to explore, like classism, labor exploitation, human rights, even free will to a point… A movie just isn’t the right vehicle for that story. It needs to be a series. Done right, you could explore all that while having an overarching plotline, and still have your weekly subplots and B stories. That would give the story time to fully develop the romantic connection between the poor guy who comes into a bunch of time, and the rich girl who empathizes with him. That romance felt incredibly rushed in the movie, but you could build it up over a whole season in a show.
I also want to mention another movie that I’m not sure belongs here. It’s not a bad movie, nor do I think the execution was mediocre, but for the life of me I can’t figure out why it didn’t do better. That movie is called ‘Push’, with Chris Evans and Dakota Fanning. I just watched it again the other night, and I freaking love it. The concept isn’t that amazing or original, but the way they present it is great. There isn’t a ton of exposition or world-building. They kinda just drop you in and let you figure it out, and I really like that. Evans and Fanning have great onscreen chemistry, and Djimon Honsou is a perfect bad guy. This is another one where I think it would make a great series, even though I think the movie was done really well. It’s just kind of a perfect mid-budget sci-fi action movie, and we don’t seem to get those anymore.
I thought “In Time” was a good movie. I agree that there is a lot that could be done with it, however only so much can be done in a movie. This sort of concept really lends itself to multiple movies or a series (just don’t drag it out too long).
Will check out both, thanks for this
Timeline! The movie was completely forgettable but the concept was pretty cool. I loved the book.
Madam Web. The premise of your perception being un-stuck in time and the ramifications that has for your psyche is really cool. What’s not cool is hiring bad writers and nepo baby actresses to portray that story
Slaughterhouse Five (the book) did this fairly well, though the movie isn’t much better than Madame Web.
nepo baby actresses
which ones
Terminator Genisys
First creative use of the time travel the series ever had… And totally botched about every other aspect of the movie that wasn’t an action sequence.
That whole 30 second idea of a Terminator in the 70s with a young Sarah Connor was far more interesting than what the movie did with Kyle Reese.
Oof yeah, what were they thinking with doing that to Kyle? He was the one pure aspect of the entire franchise (a friend, a lover, a father, a sacrificial pawn) and they cheapened his sacrifice with that nonsense
Tusk
Came here to say this. That movie showed me depths of fear I didn’t know I had yet, it could have had better production values.
this is a kevin smith movie tho
Eragon.
There is a reason that most fans pretend the film never happened
What film? as I look from my bed to my bookshelf with all 4 books
