Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Movies that Missed
On The Great Debate thread about superpowers (specifically the superpower of flight), a comment by Carey J reminded me of the not-so-great superhero movie Hancock. I thought Hancock had real potential. The basic premise is an alcoholic superhero — but not a mostly functional alcoholic like Tony Stark; a real Skid Row-type alcoholic with Superman-like powers, who can’t fly straight because he’s blind drunk. He causes damage just taking off to fly, not to mention all the havoc he creates while flying, stopping crime, or saving people. Then a PR guy comes along who wants to reform Hancock and rehabilitate his image. The publicist is a loser and schmuck who is also unsuccessfully trying to get a charity campaign off the ground. If you haven’t seen Hancock, what follows is a spoiler alert.
The PR guy’s wife is actually another super-powered immortal like Hancock and is really Hancock’s wife.When the two of them are together, they start to lose their powers and become vulnerable (she is his Kryptonite and vice versa). she left him back in 1931 after he had suffered serious brain trauma so that he would be invulnerable again and could recover and serve the world. The movie just sort of falls apart from there. It’s a mess. The story has more loose ends than knots that come together.
But it could have been a great movie. It’s like they had this one great image in the beginning, and couldn’t figure out what to do with it. They had the start of the story and a general them (redemption), but had no idea where to take it. Maybe it was the editing of the movie, the rewrites, or a thousand other things besides the original script, but the movie that should have been made did not come together. It’s a terrific example of a film that could have been great but wound up mediocre.
Are there movies that you think were unnecessary misses? Movies with great premises, but poor execution? What’s your favorite movie that could have been?
Published in General
I didn’t find it all that bad in terms of politics and “morals”, other than some very cheesy dialogue every 30 minutes and the unnecessary sex scenes. The characters were supposed to be conflicted over what they did, but in Sword of Gideon you understood why, and the lengths they went to be different from the terrorists. In Munich, it made no sense as to why they were “conflicted”.
Rather, the acting was terrible and the characters were not developed.
They took a TV movie with a shoe-string budget and second-rate actors, which had characters which made sense, that you cared about and good dialogue, placed in “realistic” situations…and somehow made it much worst with a much bigger budget. I guess all that budget must have gone towards getting Ciaran Hinds to do a nude scene. Well worth it.
Iron Man: The first scene where it was Iron Man vs. terrorists was fantastic. I thought we were in for some retribution wrapped up in third world everyman justice. Then it became Iron Man vs. supped up evil Iron Man knockoff, and the whole superhero-defender-of-the-helpless theme dissapeared.
The Cider House Rules: I found out later that this was a Planned Parenthood propaganda film from the get go, but at the time I was unaware, and always thought that it had great potential to show the contrast between two individuals, both physicians, who held vastly different beliefs about abortion. It was a great film, that is until the end, when the younger doctor realizes that he was naive and ends up performing an abortion because it was the “right thing to do.” So frustrating.
The Cowboys: Two rules broken in this one. 1) Children should never be given swear words as dialogue, or get drunk on-screen. 2) Never kill off John Wayne. Otherwise I would have loved this movie.
Revenge of the Sith: I would have been much more satisfied had Palpatine deceived Anakin into believing that the Jedi had killed, or caused to be killed, Padme. Then Vader’s treachery, spawned of hatred and revenge over his lost love, might have been more palatable. And his turning on Palpatine in Return of the Jedi, out of love for his children would have been consistent.
“Cider House” was a frustrating mix. To be honest, fifteen years in I don’t remember some of the story details. It had some good life lessons and messages about self-discipline and responsibility, but wrapped in a plot similar to 1941’s “Boy’s Town”, except in this one instead of Spencer Tracy, Father Flanagan is an abortionist.
“True Crime.” The novel, by Andrew Klavan, is outstanding. In the movie, they changed the innocent man who was condemned to death from white to black…which completely wrecked one of the plot elements so that the story made no sense.
The Dark Knight Rises – an overlong tiresome blending of too many plotlines, too many twists, and too many overlong action sequences. I just could not wait for that film to just end so I could go home and go to bed. I liked Batman Begins, but then it is hard to mess up an origins story. However DKR turned me off of Nolan for good.
We saw this one after it came out on DVD. My wife had, I thought, rented it. After seeing it I said “I want my money back!” She said she got it from the library. I replied, “Then dangit I want my life back!”
In real life, John Wayne was conservative, of course, and Bruce Dern was a liberal. When it came time for the scene, before filming began, the conversation went something like this *
John Wayne, “You know that half of America will hate you for this scene?”
Bruce Dern, “Yes, but the other half will love me for it.”
* I’m too lazy to look this up to get the exact story, so am paraphrasing. It’s good enough for me. If it’s not good enough for you, feel free to correct it with all proper citations.
And to top it all off, cast Shia Labeouf as the protagonist, a terrible, utterly unlikable actor with zero charisma who looks like a tall 14-year-old boy. Also, make the movie 3 hours long because, hey, it worked for Lord of the Rings, right?
Not to mention that you could only understand maybe half the words that came out of Bane’s mouth. Seriously, I was wishing they’d give him subtitles. And it might have been more entertaining had the two best action sequences not been featured in every trailer of the movie.
IMO the Christopher Nolan Batman movies are all extremely overrated for two reasons. One, Heath Ledger died after the second one, so everyone felt obligated to make this movie into something more than it was, a superhero movie with tons of plot holes, and two, because Batman has become a saint in the wide world of geekdom (I know, I AM a geek) and for most Millenials these movies were the first time in their lives Batman wasn’t made campy.
Darn you. I have a deadline.
The thread will wait, unless they do a Ricothree on us.
I agree with Monuments Men but I liked District 9.
Thanks, Vince.
Yes, District 9 was a very good movie. South Africa has made a few really good movies recently.
Monuments Men…very forgettable. I have already forgotten that I watched it. But then again, it was obviously going to be a forgettable movie: every-time you get 2 dozen high-profile actors in the same movie, it will be a disaster. Especially if it involves Bill Murray.
Remember, this is about movies that should have been great, movies that had great ideas, but poor execution.
Good entry, but I think it depends on which version you’ve seen. The Director’s Cut — which I’ve seen — is actually slightly shorter than the theatrical release; from what I’ve been able to anecdotal gather, much better than it. The “Final” and then the “Ultimate” cuts are much longer than the theatrical release and are apparently worse for it.
You know, I’ve heard this from folks a thousand times but remain completely unconvinced. Putting aside the factual weirdness of the story, the simple fact is that Mossad agents are shown as being concerned and haunted by the collateral damage they caused while the PLO terrorists are shown to have no such scruples.
Django Unchained
There’s a lot that’s interesting in this movie, but pretty much everything involving Candie Land was patently absurd and/or dishonest: particularly, the mandingo fighting, which is largely a fiction and certainly made-up as depicted in the film.
American slavery was bad enough without having to invent atrocities.
Sure. My main problem was that in Sword of Gideon the concerns were well played out, and in a more realistic fashion. It explained why these people were conflicted, and it had much to do with the damage it did to their persons and their family life, rather than the moral equivalency between Israel and the Palestinians.
In Munich, some of that dialogue just jumped out of nowhere and seemed forced. Very fake. Especially since they kill a woman in their raid in Lebanon, and don’t seem to care at all. I thought they weren’t supposed to kill bystanders?
Had they done a scene by scene remake of Sword of Gideon, it would have been much better. Instead they decided to reinvent everything, and lost much of what made Sword of Gideon such a great movie: these were armatures trying their best, not hardened killers.
Yes, there is suspension of disbelief versus lazy filmmaking versus artistic license for good effect. I can handle all but the lazy filmmaking; if there’s no reason to be inaccurate then don’t be inaccurate.
A few spring to mind:
LOTR: The Return of the King – The green ghosty people that Aragorn uses to utterly wipe Sauron’s forces off the map in mere minutes render Frodo and Sam’s entire journey pointless. Talk about your deus ex machina. Couple that with 30 straight minutes of Elijah Wood looking strained and pensive while falling into every hole between the Shire and Mt. Doom (not to mention 17 false endings), and you’ve got a real stinker. How it won an Oscar is beyond me.
Star Wars: Episode I-III – Talk about having everything and squandering it for special effects. Terrible dialogue, wooden story-telling, and horrible direction ruined the perfect franchise.
The Passion of the Christ – Compelling idea, beautiful score and cinematography, great acting, what’s not to like? Maybe just the part where the director decided a compelling story wasn’t needed and half the film could be a grotesque, unbroken torture scene.
The two Hobbit films so far. Too bloody long, terrible camera work, excessive plot additions, sloppy story telling. Made it through the first, turned off the second midway through.
Well, I remember that stuff from the books. I remember a lot of other extraneous material from the books, too. But never would I say anything bad about Saint Tollers writing (and live through to tell the tale).
And don’t forget the bringing to life of stereotypes: The Trocharian, Jar-Jar Binks and co, etc.
How about the 2 Star Trek reboots? The last was particularly ghastly: internally inconsistent, ham-fisted story, bad acting, stilted dialog. Sure I understand the desire to distance the films from the old series, but this was a bad film on its own merits besides. Throw in yet another hackneyed plotline involving “military conspiracy” just to make it offensive as well.
Regardless, Jackson made the wise decision to cut the stupid stuff (e.g. Tom Bombadil) in Fellowship. Too bad he got religion in the end.
Into Darkness was a terrible film. So bad, I’m not sure it counts as a “miss.”
A Million Ways to die in the West had a clever premise about how treacherous life was in the old west. Some clever themes and bases for jokes that weren’t fleshed out very well. Also the story was clichéd and not well thought out. A bit too much for gross out humor. It’s a Seth Mcfarlane movie after all. Had all the potential to be a great satire of the old west ala Blazing Saddles but was just too disjointed and not very funny. Also they used modern dialogue instead of the old timey western dialogue.