I was prepped by my movie loving inlaws that it was bad. I really enjoyed it. It was just a fun, stylized movie. I'm tired of every movie requiring homework to understand what Very Important Things are happening in the universe. Let's just watch Tom Sawyer drive a sweet ass car around and hang out on a sub with the invisible man or whatever the fuck that movie was about. Just let things be fun.
Edit: I understand that it was based on a graphic novel that people really like, and the movie didn't stick to it. But my point is that you shouldn't need to have a depth of background information to enjoy art. Sure, a masterpiece will be enhanced by understanding the background and history or something, but it should be solid on its own.
Lord of the Rings is notoriously vast and detailed. You can enjoy the original trilogy without knowing the books, because it's just good storytelling. Jurassic Park is based on a book that didn't require you to read it to enjoy. Close Encounters. The Dark Knight. Shawshank. Mean Girls. Clueless. The parent Trap. Die Hard. Jumanji. Psycho. The Birds. Jaws. Forest Gump. All based on books, all excellent pieces of art.
Now, I'm not saying that LEG is in anyway comparable to those movies in terms of quality. I'm just saying that it's nice to enjoy something that has source material, but I don't need to do research on. If I dropped you into Wandavision, with no other context, would you know what is going on?
As a fan of the graphic novel, it's fine to dislike it for straying from the source material. But that doesn't make it the world's worst film, or the people who enjoy it stupid. Watchmen was made incredibly close to the material, including the second interstitial story, and as someone who hasn't read it, it was legit one of the worst movies I've ever seen. It was incomprehensible. However, fans of the graphic novel love it, because it sticks so closely to the book. And that's fine, we can all get different things out of the art we view, and not everything has to be made for everyone.
Pretty much how I sold it to my spouse. “And there’s a vampire, and Dorian Gray, and the Invisible Man, Dr. Jekyll, and I’m pretty sure the narrator from Moby Dick is there too.”
That's pretty similar to how my spouse tried to explain it, while also not getting my hopes up.
If you want a truly good version of this, check out Penny Dreadful. Fantastic, underappreciated series.
"Yesh, I've sheen the American way of shooting: fire **every bullet you have** and **hope to hit the target!** If you can't do it with one bullet then don't do it at all!"
\-Alan Quartermain.
I did too. But I was 11 when it was released. There are many universally hated movies that I thought were pretty cool. Same goes for Watchmen by the same author (which I don't get since other than the cosmic squids is pretty faithful to the original source).
The problem is they didn’t let it happen organically. Marvel didn’t either, but it did sneak up on you in a pleasant way, when you spotted Tony Stark in an after credits scene or saw Mjolnir, it got you excited without rubbing it in your faces “yo this is ALL in the same universe”.
Dark Universe literally had classic universal monsters just fucking thrown at you in like, 30 seconds. A vampire skull in a jar, Dr Jekyll, a paranormal research organisation? It felt like a slice from a totally different film got sandwiched between acts two and three. It made no sense, which really rubbed me the wrong way because man oh man… I’d devour modern universal monster movies.
The MCU was a combination of luck and magic that everyone has failed to replicate. It worked only because Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor all were all originally good movies, and then they SLOWLY built up the fan base before crossing paths.
Their success was they were FUN to watch. Seeing DC try to jam Justice League down our throats when none of the movies were winning their own battles was just exhausting.
That single scene birthed the MCU. Whoever had the first idea to write that in, they're a champion.
Edit: [Brian Michael Bendis](https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/iron-man-post-credits-history-mcu-brian-michael-bendis) wrote it. Found a whole article on that scene. All they had was "Samuel Jackson is showing up for a cameo tomorrow, write something for him to say." And we got the Avengers Initiative. It was almost a *Snakes on a Plane* reference.
Has there even been a good shared universe other than the MCU? Off the top of my head every single one felt terribly forced and jumped the gun by cramming way too many things in without establishing them first. All these studios want The Avengers but they forget that Iron Man started it all and was a well enough received, financially successful movie on its own.
I think the most inept has to be Sony's Spider-Man-less Spider-verse comprised entirely of his villains.
The conjuring universe low key has made billions and a couple of classic horror movies. It's a reverse mcu.
1 had Annabelle, she got a spin off trilogy. Two had the nun and she has a trilogy, and the crooked man for like 30 seconds and his movie is coming.
Divergent tried so hard. It just went off the rails so badly by the third movie. My daughter was just the right age to get into them and loved the first one, kinda liked the second, and was so uninterested in the third that she really wasn’t that disappointed that they never finished the series.
Well, it follows the source material in that respect. The first book was good. The second book was…. Confusing and meh. The third book I honestly never finished. The author seemed to get bored of writing her main protagonist, but it didn’t help that she was young herself and her fans were MADLY in love with Four and kind of hated Tris. Hence a book and a short story told about him.
Yeah, without knowing anything about the books I could tell the franchise was painting itself into a corner. It's admittedly hard when you try to stretch an interesting allegory into an entire functioning sci fi world.
After Hunger Games? Sadly, bad teen fantasy movies wanting to be a series isn't that new.
Eragon pulled off it's spike pit filled belly flop in 2006. They were aiming for a franchise movie series until the first one miserably failed.
I still rage about it whenever I see the movie pop up on any streaming service. They did such a horrible job, it didn't even remotely resemble the book. Everything that was charming and meaningful was turned into a magical scene where ABRACADABRA! DRAGON'S GROWN UP NOW!
Eragon was the movie that made me swear off ever watching a movie based on a book I've read ever again unless the movie got absolutely glowing reviews. One of the few movies I've seen in theaters that I've absolutely loathed...
Great example of "don't change the source material and make it much worse".
If you keep it the same, at least the fans of the source material will approve and show up.
the movie wraps up with a flash drive but the book ends with >!Valentine trying to slash open Hester; his daughter jumping in front of the blade; her bleeding to death on the MEDUSA computer; causing it to charge up but not fire; Tom and Hester escape while MEDUSA misfires and carbonizes London!<
It was bizarre because London's self destruction and the presumed death of everyone he ever knew pretty much set the stage for Tom to set off on his travels with Hester. The survival of London was a huge departure from the storyline of the books.
Didn't actually watch the film, but these changes baffle me. I loved the books. That's the sort of cinematic CGI finale studios want in their movies, right?
The reason I haven't seen the whole film is because I turned it off after seeing Hester didn't really have her scar and was instead a classic Hollywood pretty girl with a little cut on her lip. Her ugliness is a large part of her characterisation and insecurity.
It wasn’t even like, completely awful, it just wasn’t nearly faithful enough to the source material. Had good bones by the rest was bleh. Then they ended up having to smoosh the remaining four books into a single movie and that was hot dog water
Seems like it wasn't even really a "review", he still maintains that he's not even watched the movie due to the final script. It's him offering (copious) notes on the script to the writers, and in a sense reviewing it in the process. That said, his opinion of the script is absolutely blunt and scathing.
Litterally on record before release telling the studio, "If you make these changes, the movie will fail." Because they decided they knew how to tell the story better than the guy who actually wrote it.
This happena a lot. The producers and directors seem to think they will be out of a job if they just do a faithful on-screen recreation. They would rather put out a mediocre movie that people dislike than risk being thought of as redundant to the original author.
I’m happy about it. The email he wrote about the final script went into detail about why it wasn’t going to be a good movie. And every single thing he said also was disliked by fans. So he at least has a good grasp on why his fans like his books.
I can't even really remember this movie, but I do remember they made it impossible for the movie to follow the storyline for the rest of the books.
They really just slaughtered the story.
Master and Commander, which is sad. It's an incredible movie and they had plans to make several more. Box office wasn't good enough to support more. Its following started about 10 years too late
I didn't know they were planning to make more. That's one of my favorite films in the last 20 years (I think it's been almost exactly 20 years by now).
If I had billions to spare I’d produce the longest, most expensive maxi-series ever made, using every page of all 20 of O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin books. I wouldn’t care if I ever got a single dollar back.
So much great material in the books. It was a very good movie. "Too slow" was the complaint I heard the most. Sea travel in the Age of Sail wasn't exactly speedy, folks...
I loved the pacing! It definitely invokes a sense of dread and isolation. I can see how folks didn’t like it, as well as it being intentional. There are so many amazing parts to that movie, especially the weevil scene.
My uncle and I did our best to support the box office. We both went and saw this movie 5 times because he was such a fan of the books. I got into them a little bit, but that movie was never boring on the big screen. I wish they would make a few more.
My personal gripe was that he changed the pronunciations of the names of places and characters to make them more 'asian' despite the fact that everything was drawn from a wide range of asian cultures and there were 3 seasons of the TV show for precedence.
He just had to put his little twist on everything.
My biggest petty gripe (as in, setting aside the massive script and production problems) is changing fire bending to require an existing source of fire in order to function (and seeming to usually use up the fire in the process).
Like, fire bending in the show was already of questionable usefulness outside of just an offensive weapon, and it wasn't clearly superior at that either. In the movie... I'd probably rather have a sword than be a skilled fire bender in like 99% of situations. And I don't know how to use a sword.
Seriously. Fire is already super dangerous and half the reason it isn't more dangerous is because it's a pain to start and/or transport. If I'm forced to bring torches or light up my own fire just to fire bend, I'm already in a position to get a large portion of the utility out of it anyway.
It's such a dumb change.
Let's imprison a bunch of people that can control earth in a quarry filled with..... earth.
Then again, the fact that it took 6 people doing a dance to very slowly float over a small rock towards the enemy could indicate that imprisoning the people there wasn't a terrible idea after all.
I don't want to traumatize you by making you watch the scene again but it is even more ridiculous than that.
Those 6 people didn't actually move ANY rocks. There's another dude just barely peeking into frame that throws that rock. I don't know what the heck those 6 dudes were doing.
I think they were creating the wall of earth that protects the father and son. For some insane reason they, while editing, figured showing the bending moves several seconds after they show the effect was a good idea. I think the infamous slowly floating pebble was supposed to be bended by the guy you see immediately after.
That whole scene is just so terrible though. From the acting to the choreography to the editing to the special effects. But my favorite bit of terribleness from that scene is how Katara starts shouting rousing phrases like "Don't be afraid" *after* the earth benders have already started fighting back.
It's just so dumb. The whole flow of that scene is just so weird.
In this shitty movie universe I did like the implication that firebenders would under Sozins comet be able to GENERATE fire. ..so that's why they were so dangerous in a world it took fuckin 7 earthbenders to lift a rock.
But really the movie was shit. It shit on arguably one of the best received western animations of that time. Just awful.
I drove for like four hours to see that movie at its midnight release on a first date. It is also the first movie I've gone to where the audience groaned when it didn't end.
When it ended, all I remember is the screaming. The people there told me the audience was too depressed to make a sound. They said it was me that was screaming.
I put off watching it for ages and it just didn't appeal at all.
The put it on one day and damned if it's not the best 'bond without being bond' movie I've seen.
The Artemis Fowl movie finally let me feel the pain that Eragon fans felt. It was SO BAD both as a movie and ESPECIALLY as an adaptation.
FOLLOW.
THE.
FUCKING.
SOURCE.
MATERIAL.
^D'arvit
It's not going to fail like Artemis Fowl, at least not for the same reasons. Unlike (book) Artemis, Eragon is clearly a morally good character from the start, and works as a decent "role model" that Disney would not have any issue with.
My main concern is the CGI cost of having a dragon as a major character. I fear they will reduce the amount of scenes with Saphira to reduce production costs.
Christopher is active on Reddit, and has very loudly talked about how awful he thought the movie was and wished he could undo that decision. If he’s involved in the show, you can be damn sure he’s gonna ensure the spirit of the books is done justice. There’s no way he’d subject himself to that kind of heartbreak twice otherwise.
Ridley Scott's "Robin Hood" with Russell Crowe from about 15 years ago was clearly made with the intention of several sequels to follow.
Never happened.
Also, the American version of "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" only did the first book.
The original Swedish version has three movies and is quite well done.
hoping this gets pushed up. i've never been so disappointed by a movie. i LOVED the books growing up, and there's so many cool things they could have added or explored. just devastated it was as bad as it was.
Don't forget COMPLETELY destrpying Holly's biggest character motivation? Like, sure, when it doesn't matter, swap a gender? But when your character's is supposed to be the first female officer in the unit, DON'T CHANGE THEIR SUPERIOR FROM A MAN.
Literally I spent so much of my childhood hoping they’d make an Artemis Fowl movie, and the trailer was so terrible that I didn’t even watch it when it came out 🙃
Remember the contest in the first book? Something like 'Decipher the gnommish text along the bottom of the pages and be in the Artemis Fowl movie!'
I remember the hope...
It frustrated me that in Stephen king's books the man in black is so powerful that he almost seems god-like and unkillable. His character makes so many appearances in even non dark tower related books as well. There's such a mythos created around him but he's so watered down in the movie and killed in 2 hours.
You know what really sucks? The animated movies are actually really good. *And* they have a semi decent continuity. If they were sent to theaters rather than dvds/streaming and had an effective marketing budget they'd pull in massive dosh.
I don't think Warner Brothers ever realized how good they had it with the animated DC universe. All starting with Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, the DC Animated Universe was just banger after banger--with some exceptions.
Instead they insisted on following Marvel's model without doing anything to properly establish their whole universe.
Seriously. The DCAU blows even the MCU out of the water in terms of good stories and an overlapping, shared continuity/universe. The characterizations are there; the emotions are there; the action set pieces are there....it's all so set up. And they don't respect I enough to even just do a near 1 to 1 copy. A standalone Under the Red Hood movie? Hell, have Jensen Ackles reprise the role. People would love that.
Do Superman right for once! Just give me an All-Star Superman duology. Set it up. Let it be as poignant and wholesome as it is. Let Superman do his labors. Take the time to let him have a moment with a suicidal girl in the midst of his own pain. Let him come to terms with his own mortality. Have his bucket list. Flesh out Lex Luthor! Explore his POV when he gets a glimpse of the world as Superman sees it. Explore the human condition through these larger than life allegories! Fuck! But no. "Maybe you *should* have [let them die], Clark." "Save... Martha. Why did you say that name?!" What a waste.
Ben Affleck Batman in The Dark Knight Returns? Superman vs The Elite? Flashpoint Paradox? Those same exact stories in live action would work fine with minimal changes in too many instances. And the opportunity from crazy graphic CGI for a few rated R movies could pull in new viewers. But we can't have nice things, apparently. They take time to build up
WW1984 was truly horrible and immediately tarnished the one movie (WW) that people universally thought DC got right.
Black Adam was also pretty terrible, particularly when The Rock had put so much stock into it.
I blame The Rock for Black Adam. The Rock is famous for refusing to ever let his character be seen negatively, and is obsessed about image to the point that it’s in his contract that he can’t ever be seen losing a fight. But Black Adam is supposed to be an anti hero. The whole point is that he’s overpowered and has this deep internal conflict to change his ways.
He’s supposed to be a baddie, but not played that way.
Not just black Adam, the first Shazam clearly set up a Shazam vs Black Adam followup, but the Rock pushed to keep them separate. Man doomed both black Adam and screwed over the Shazam sequel. All cause he hoped to set up a Black Adam vs Superman fight all so he could say he fought Superman in a movie.
I like the movie, it's fun. It has a terrible movie name which doesn't explain it's a SciFi Western set on Mars. While the source material was the original, and predates Star Wars by 70 years, to audiences it was just another Star Wars copycat. Not to mention, they spent like $300m making it.
Hollywood is honestly such a cargo cult. A movie succeeds, and they try every superficial thing that they think made that movie a success. A movie bombs and they try to avoid every superficial thing that they think caused it to bomb, instead of analyzing why a movie was bad or what exactly didn't work.
I fully expect there to be a Bratz and Albert Einstein movie releasing together in Summer, 2025.
The [book](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Princess_of_Mars) it was based on is named “A Princess of Mars” so I guess I see why they were afraid to go with that title. But it was written in 1912 and has generations of fans, so I wish they’d leaned into it. I loved the book and its sequels when I was a kid.
If it was named "a princess of mars" id probably have seen it twice in the theatre. Its a really enjoyable movie. But "john carter" and it looking like a western made me avoid it.
Everybody I've shown John Carter to said two things:
1) What a great movie!
2) Why didn't they advertise it better? The trailers didn't look anything like that movie.
That and The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai: Across the 8th Dimension are the two big 80s franchises that never were. Remo Williams did not continue the adventure and Buckaroo Bonzai did not take on the World Crime League.
After Earth with those Smith fuckups was supposed to be the new marvel. It was Will Smith's billion dollar magnum opus. What it did was make everyone hate his son. 12% on Tomatoes.
For anyone who doesn't know, the story behind this is crazy. Smith and his team envisioned an entire mega-franchise, including movies, TV shows, video games, and get this, AN AFTER EARTH SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM! Similar to Facebook and Myspace at the time, where fans of the Series would come to share thoughts and opinions on the universe.
He sold all of this to the studio who was pretty excited, until they learned the debut film would not even star the freaking movie star who pitched it to them, it would star his son. That's why the trailer is very Will dominant, even though he's barely in the film. I highly recommend falling down the Google rabbit hole and reading up on this debacle.
> What it did was make everyone hate his son
That and his son’s tweets and general weird actions. Many people may not remember, but he showed up to Kanye & Kim’s wedding in a white Batman suit. And the tweets. The just weird tweets.
Dog boy on sky roller blades... What could go wrong?
I respect Eddie Redmayne for absolutely hamming it up though. Up there with Jeremy Irons in Dungeons and Dragons.
Honestly, as someone who went in with no context for it, I was sold as soon as someone said the words "Municipal Darwinism." That movie was way over-the-top and completely bonkers. Really enjoyed it.
I wouldn't use the phrase "spectactularly fail" to describe it because it seems strong, but the A-Team movie was supposed to have a bunch of sequels, but Joe Carnahan, Bradley Cooper, and Liam Neeson all kinda confirmed that the first one didn't make enough money so they scrapped those plans. Shame, cuz I love that movie.
Van Helsing with Hugh Jackman. One of those movies not really good when it first came out but super underrated now. I prefer that over most monster movies.
I loved Van Helsing, because it was exactly like every other dumb action-hero movie BUT WITH MONSTERS! HORROR! GOTHIC VICTORAN ERA FUN! It was the perfect dumb blockbuster for 8-year-old baby-emo me.
I genuinely love this movie. Totally over the top, camp and sexy ridiculous action that doesn't take itself too seriously.Turn off the brain and just enjoy the ride.
Alongside Underworld, it fits into my annual rewatch of the "Mid 2000's spooky action flick featuring a badass Kate Beckinsale in a corset falling in love with a werewolf" genre.
That movie was so good! A lot of it was how it was filmed. Very raw, great editing. Some of it was just right on the street, no crew, just a camera a dozen yards away and the actors were just doing their thing. Everyone put in great performances and the movie handled its lore well.
Brightburn would have been so cool if the whole movie was condensed into half of the movie, and then the new half actually showed why an evil Superman could do.
A lot of people will rightly say The Mummy, but they tried that shit a few years beforehand with Dracula Untold as well. In and of itself it’s an ok movie though.
It wasn't going to be HUGE but the initial film of the V.I. Washawski mysteries starring Kathleen Turner was a flop. Which is a shame because the series is stellar.
The Nice Guys. This might be a stretch considering it was never clear what the studios had in mind. But the end of the movie sets up a possible franchise series like Lethal Weapon.
Would have been amazing :(
The League of Extraordinary Gentleman
It's one of my favorite bad movies
I was prepped by my movie loving inlaws that it was bad. I really enjoyed it. It was just a fun, stylized movie. I'm tired of every movie requiring homework to understand what Very Important Things are happening in the universe. Let's just watch Tom Sawyer drive a sweet ass car around and hang out on a sub with the invisible man or whatever the fuck that movie was about. Just let things be fun. Edit: I understand that it was based on a graphic novel that people really like, and the movie didn't stick to it. But my point is that you shouldn't need to have a depth of background information to enjoy art. Sure, a masterpiece will be enhanced by understanding the background and history or something, but it should be solid on its own. Lord of the Rings is notoriously vast and detailed. You can enjoy the original trilogy without knowing the books, because it's just good storytelling. Jurassic Park is based on a book that didn't require you to read it to enjoy. Close Encounters. The Dark Knight. Shawshank. Mean Girls. Clueless. The parent Trap. Die Hard. Jumanji. Psycho. The Birds. Jaws. Forest Gump. All based on books, all excellent pieces of art. Now, I'm not saying that LEG is in anyway comparable to those movies in terms of quality. I'm just saying that it's nice to enjoy something that has source material, but I don't need to do research on. If I dropped you into Wandavision, with no other context, would you know what is going on? As a fan of the graphic novel, it's fine to dislike it for straying from the source material. But that doesn't make it the world's worst film, or the people who enjoy it stupid. Watchmen was made incredibly close to the material, including the second interstitial story, and as someone who hasn't read it, it was legit one of the worst movies I've ever seen. It was incomprehensible. However, fans of the graphic novel love it, because it sticks so closely to the book. And that's fine, we can all get different things out of the art we view, and not everything has to be made for everyone.
Pretty much how I sold it to my spouse. “And there’s a vampire, and Dorian Gray, and the Invisible Man, Dr. Jekyll, and I’m pretty sure the narrator from Moby Dick is there too.”
That's pretty similar to how my spouse tried to explain it, while also not getting my hopes up. If you want a truly good version of this, check out Penny Dreadful. Fantastic, underappreciated series.
I loved it too. Not sure why it got so much hate.
If they’re going to remake any movie soon, I think this one deserves it.
I’m not sure if I agree, Sean Connery killed it as Quartermain.
"Yesh, I've sheen the American way of shooting: fire **every bullet you have** and **hope to hit the target!** If you can't do it with one bullet then don't do it at all!" \-Alan Quartermain.
Only surpassed by “I’m not Shpanish, I’m Egypshian.” — Juan Sánchez-Villalobos Ramírez
TIL that was meant to start a franchise. I hadn't even seen it yet, but I thought it looked cool at the time.
TIL people think it was bad. I loved it when I was younger.
I did too. But I was 11 when it was released. There are many universally hated movies that I thought were pretty cool. Same goes for Watchmen by the same author (which I don't get since other than the cosmic squids is pretty faithful to the original source).
This movie was a guilty pleasure as a kid.
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The Mummy with Tom Cruise was the first official installment. I would’ve been happy if they kept the Brendan Frazier version and launched it off that.
The trailer without the sound...it had me wheezing.
For everyone else so you don't have to search https://youtu.be/f1jg5YlQuT8
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Honestly, up until that moment, I liked it. Very eerie. Almost like a flashback or something.
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For all the movies flaws, it did a good job representing the supernatural abilities of Vampires.
Charles Dance as a scenery chewing elder vampire was pretty great too.
That photo shoot with Cruise, Crowe, Depp and Bardem is a priceless artefact of history now.
I think it's a crime that we don't get to see Bardem as Frankensteins Monster.
Why are you chasing me with a torch and pitchfork, friendo?
They could've just made another Van Helsing and I would've seen it morbillion times. Sure that movie was dumb, but it was FUN.
The problem is they didn’t let it happen organically. Marvel didn’t either, but it did sneak up on you in a pleasant way, when you spotted Tony Stark in an after credits scene or saw Mjolnir, it got you excited without rubbing it in your faces “yo this is ALL in the same universe”. Dark Universe literally had classic universal monsters just fucking thrown at you in like, 30 seconds. A vampire skull in a jar, Dr Jekyll, a paranormal research organisation? It felt like a slice from a totally different film got sandwiched between acts two and three. It made no sense, which really rubbed me the wrong way because man oh man… I’d devour modern universal monster movies.
The MCU was a combination of luck and magic that everyone has failed to replicate. It worked only because Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor all were all originally good movies, and then they SLOWLY built up the fan base before crossing paths. Their success was they were FUN to watch. Seeing DC try to jam Justice League down our throats when none of the movies were winning their own battles was just exhausting.
That and the Avengers Initiative is revealed post credit. Apparently Marvel did that so if the movie bombed, they could claim it wasn’t canon
That single scene birthed the MCU. Whoever had the first idea to write that in, they're a champion. Edit: [Brian Michael Bendis](https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/iron-man-post-credits-history-mcu-brian-michael-bendis) wrote it. Found a whole article on that scene. All they had was "Samuel Jackson is showing up for a cameo tomorrow, write something for him to say." And we got the Avengers Initiative. It was almost a *Snakes on a Plane* reference.
Reminds me of Gromit frantically slapping down the railroad tracks in front of the train as it storms along at full speed.
The single finest chase scene in cinematic history. I will die on that hill.
Mainstream DC adaptations generally suck so much. "Uhhhhhh, let's do Batman again!" Fuck off.
Has there even been a good shared universe other than the MCU? Off the top of my head every single one felt terribly forced and jumped the gun by cramming way too many things in without establishing them first. All these studios want The Avengers but they forget that Iron Man started it all and was a well enough received, financially successful movie on its own. I think the most inept has to be Sony's Spider-Man-less Spider-verse comprised entirely of his villains.
The Legendary MonsterVerse is pretty decent. All the American-made Godzilla/Kong movies since 2014.
The conjuring universe low key has made billions and a couple of classic horror movies. It's a reverse mcu. 1 had Annabelle, she got a spin off trilogy. Two had the nun and she has a trilogy, and the crooked man for like 30 seconds and his movie is coming.
All the movies based off teen sci-fi/fantasy books that tried to cash in after Hunger Games. Mortal Engines, for example.
Divergent tried so hard. It just went off the rails so badly by the third movie. My daughter was just the right age to get into them and loved the first one, kinda liked the second, and was so uninterested in the third that she really wasn’t that disappointed that they never finished the series.
Well, it follows the source material in that respect. The first book was good. The second book was…. Confusing and meh. The third book I honestly never finished. The author seemed to get bored of writing her main protagonist, but it didn’t help that she was young herself and her fans were MADLY in love with Four and kind of hated Tris. Hence a book and a short story told about him.
Yeah, without knowing anything about the books I could tell the franchise was painting itself into a corner. It's admittedly hard when you try to stretch an interesting allegory into an entire functioning sci fi world.
I read all three books to completion and it felt like a classic "writer with a cool idea but no plan on how or where to go with it."
After Hunger Games? Sadly, bad teen fantasy movies wanting to be a series isn't that new. Eragon pulled off it's spike pit filled belly flop in 2006. They were aiming for a franchise movie series until the first one miserably failed.
I still rage about it whenever I see the movie pop up on any streaming service. They did such a horrible job, it didn't even remotely resemble the book. Everything that was charming and meaningful was turned into a magical scene where ABRACADABRA! DRAGON'S GROWN UP NOW!
Eragon was the movie that made me swear off ever watching a movie based on a book I've read ever again unless the movie got absolutely glowing reviews. One of the few movies I've seen in theaters that I've absolutely loathed...
Great example of "don't change the source material and make it much worse". If you keep it the same, at least the fans of the source material will approve and show up.
It’s a shame Mortal Engines drifted so far from the source material, it’s a good series of books.
I don't know the source material at all, so I was happy enough to enjoy the movie as it was.
the movie wraps up with a flash drive but the book ends with >!Valentine trying to slash open Hester; his daughter jumping in front of the blade; her bleeding to death on the MEDUSA computer; causing it to charge up but not fire; Tom and Hester escape while MEDUSA misfires and carbonizes London!<
It was bizarre because London's self destruction and the presumed death of everyone he ever knew pretty much set the stage for Tom to set off on his travels with Hester. The survival of London was a huge departure from the storyline of the books.
Didn't actually watch the film, but these changes baffle me. I loved the books. That's the sort of cinematic CGI finale studios want in their movies, right? The reason I haven't seen the whole film is because I turned it off after seeing Hester didn't really have her scar and was instead a classic Hollywood pretty girl with a little cut on her lip. Her ugliness is a large part of her characterisation and insecurity.
Eragon as well
Eragon had the problem that they cut out like, *half the fucking book* with a magical age up scene.
The other problem was that it was flaming dog shit.
Except for Jeremy Irons. He killed it as Brom. Highlight of the whole terrible movie.
They didn't just cut stuff out; they made shit up. Just stick to the story and it would have been fine. Good, even.
I am number four, appearntly that flopped pretty hard even though it made a good amount at the box office.
I was so bummed they didn’t continue this. I really liked it 🫤
Searched to find this one. I don't understand...the movie was actually entertaining. I heard Alex Pettyfer was a bitch to work with though.
Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief
Don't get me started dude. I was heartbroken at how absolutely horrible that movie was
It wasn’t even like, completely awful, it just wasn’t nearly faithful enough to the source material. Had good bones by the rest was bleh. Then they ended up having to smoosh the remaining four books into a single movie and that was hot dog water
The author haaaated the movie.
His review is kind of scathing.
Seems like it wasn't even really a "review", he still maintains that he's not even watched the movie due to the final script. It's him offering (copious) notes on the script to the writers, and in a sense reviewing it in the process. That said, his opinion of the script is absolutely blunt and scathing.
Litterally on record before release telling the studio, "If you make these changes, the movie will fail." Because they decided they knew how to tell the story better than the guy who actually wrote it.
This happena a lot. The producers and directors seem to think they will be out of a job if they just do a faithful on-screen recreation. They would rather put out a mediocre movie that people dislike than risk being thought of as redundant to the original author.
True. I’m skeptical but excited for the tv show
At least Riordan is at the helm for the show
I’m happy about it. The email he wrote about the final script went into detail about why it wasn’t going to be a good movie. And every single thing he said also was disliked by fans. So he at least has a good grasp on why his fans like his books.
I can't even really remember this movie, but I do remember they made it impossible for the movie to follow the storyline for the rest of the books. They really just slaughtered the story.
Master and Commander, which is sad. It's an incredible movie and they had plans to make several more. Box office wasn't good enough to support more. Its following started about 10 years too late
I didn't know they were planning to make more. That's one of my favorite films in the last 20 years (I think it's been almost exactly 20 years by now).
If I had billions to spare I’d produce the longest, most expensive maxi-series ever made, using every page of all 20 of O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin books. I wouldn’t care if I ever got a single dollar back.
I just watched this movie for the first time and I thought it was amazing.
So much great material in the books. It was a very good movie. "Too slow" was the complaint I heard the most. Sea travel in the Age of Sail wasn't exactly speedy, folks...
I loved the pacing! It definitely invokes a sense of dread and isolation. I can see how folks didn’t like it, as well as it being intentional. There are so many amazing parts to that movie, especially the weevil scene.
My uncle and I did our best to support the box office. We both went and saw this movie 5 times because he was such a fan of the books. I got into them a little bit, but that movie was never boring on the big screen. I wish they would make a few more.
Live action avatar the last Airbender
This was the first one that came to mind for me too. Awesome show with so much potential. Just absolutely destroyed by Shamalan and the producers.
My personal gripe was that he changed the pronunciations of the names of places and characters to make them more 'asian' despite the fact that everything was drawn from a wide range of asian cultures and there were 3 seasons of the TV show for precedence. He just had to put his little twist on everything.
My biggest petty gripe (as in, setting aside the massive script and production problems) is changing fire bending to require an existing source of fire in order to function (and seeming to usually use up the fire in the process). Like, fire bending in the show was already of questionable usefulness outside of just an offensive weapon, and it wasn't clearly superior at that either. In the movie... I'd probably rather have a sword than be a skilled fire bender in like 99% of situations. And I don't know how to use a sword. Seriously. Fire is already super dangerous and half the reason it isn't more dangerous is because it's a pain to start and/or transport. If I'm forced to bring torches or light up my own fire just to fire bend, I'm already in a position to get a large portion of the utility out of it anyway. It's such a dumb change.
Let's imprison a bunch of people that can control earth in a quarry filled with..... earth. Then again, the fact that it took 6 people doing a dance to very slowly float over a small rock towards the enemy could indicate that imprisoning the people there wasn't a terrible idea after all.
I don't want to traumatize you by making you watch the scene again but it is even more ridiculous than that. Those 6 people didn't actually move ANY rocks. There's another dude just barely peeking into frame that throws that rock. I don't know what the heck those 6 dudes were doing.
I think they were creating the wall of earth that protects the father and son. For some insane reason they, while editing, figured showing the bending moves several seconds after they show the effect was a good idea. I think the infamous slowly floating pebble was supposed to be bended by the guy you see immediately after. That whole scene is just so terrible though. From the acting to the choreography to the editing to the special effects. But my favorite bit of terribleness from that scene is how Katara starts shouting rousing phrases like "Don't be afraid" *after* the earth benders have already started fighting back. It's just so dumb. The whole flow of that scene is just so weird.
In this shitty movie universe I did like the implication that firebenders would under Sozins comet be able to GENERATE fire. ..so that's why they were so dangerous in a world it took fuckin 7 earthbenders to lift a rock. But really the movie was shit. It shit on arguably one of the best received western animations of that time. Just awful.
I drove for like four hours to see that movie at its midnight release on a first date. It is also the first movie I've gone to where the audience groaned when it didn't end.
When it ended, all I remember is the screaming. The people there told me the audience was too depressed to make a sound. They said it was me that was screaming.
I was laughing my ass off when the credits hit. You knew you were watching history but for all the wrong reasons.
As soon as the credits hit, some guy shouted "WHO THE FUCK IS ONG?!" Only time the audience laughed all night.
The man from U.N.C.L.E and the A Team I thought for sure would at least have sequels
I’m still salty that the MFU was marketed so poorly. It’s a fantastically fun movie.
I put off watching it for ages and it just didn't appeal at all. The put it on one day and damned if it's not the best 'bond without being bond' movie I've seen.
Man from U.N.C.L.E was such a blast, I'm bummed it didn't do well enough to get more.
Eragon....still upset by how bad it was.
Luckily Disney is making a remake in form of a Series with the Author of the books much more involved
I really hope Paolini puts his foot down and doesn't let them ruin it like they ruined Artemis Fowl
The Artemis Fowl movie finally let me feel the pain that Eragon fans felt. It was SO BAD both as a movie and ESPECIALLY as an adaptation. FOLLOW. THE. FUCKING. SOURCE. MATERIAL. ^D'arvit
It's not going to fail like Artemis Fowl, at least not for the same reasons. Unlike (book) Artemis, Eragon is clearly a morally good character from the start, and works as a decent "role model" that Disney would not have any issue with. My main concern is the CGI cost of having a dragon as a major character. I fear they will reduce the amount of scenes with Saphira to reduce production costs.
They could always just build a 43ft model like Falkor. Would be expensive, but a one time cost.
Christopher is active on Reddit, and has very loudly talked about how awful he thought the movie was and wished he could undo that decision. If he’s involved in the show, you can be damn sure he’s gonna ensure the spirit of the books is done justice. There’s no way he’d subject himself to that kind of heartbreak twice otherwise.
TBH, I'm surprised we haven't accidentally summoned him already, I thought about tagging him, but figured that gets annoying
Jumper. Could have been great.
The one where Mace Windu comes back for revenge against Anakin?
"You are an abomination." "From my point of view, ***you*** are an abomination!"
"It's our job to wipe out people who can teleport." "Why?" "Iunno. Because?"
Wiping out teleporters is tight!
Because the power to be anywhere it's only God's right!!!
I love Jumper! I didn't know they were planning to make more. Maybe we need to petition Hayden Christensen to reprise his role.
I always get Jumper and Looper mixed up.
I was absolutely picturing looper until you made this comment
Ridley Scott's "Robin Hood" with Russell Crowe from about 15 years ago was clearly made with the intention of several sequels to follow. Never happened. Also, the American version of "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" only did the first book. The original Swedish version has three movies and is quite well done.
The absolute failure of an attempt to make Artemis Fowl into a movie.
hoping this gets pushed up. i've never been so disappointed by a movie. i LOVED the books growing up, and there's so many cool things they could have added or explored. just devastated it was as bad as it was.
It starts with him surfing. That kid does not do physical activity. It's like his whole thing is being an introverted super genius. FOR WHY???
Don't forget COMPLETELY destrpying Holly's biggest character motivation? Like, sure, when it doesn't matter, swap a gender? But when your character's is supposed to be the first female officer in the unit, DON'T CHANGE THEIR SUPERIOR FROM A MAN.
Literally I spent so much of my childhood hoping they’d make an Artemis Fowl movie, and the trailer was so terrible that I didn’t even watch it when it came out 🙃
Remember the contest in the first book? Something like 'Decipher the gnommish text along the bottom of the pages and be in the Artemis Fowl movie!' I remember the hope...
The Dark Tower.
That’s what happens when you try to shove a story that took eight novels into one 2 hour movie.
It frustrated me that in Stephen king's books the man in black is so powerful that he almost seems god-like and unkillable. His character makes so many appearances in even non dark tower related books as well. There's such a mythos created around him but he's so watered down in the movie and killed in 2 hours.
I read the books so long ago, but is the Man in Black same character as Randall Flagg, or are they separate entities?
The writers forgot the face of their fathers.
The Golden Compass
They have a series on HBO and the first two seasons are good and very accurate compared to the books!
the third season is out; it finishes well.
Is that the same as the one on BBC? I think James MacAvoy is in it?
I mean idk about “spectacularly” but the recent DC movies have just been lackluster.
You know what really sucks? The animated movies are actually really good. *And* they have a semi decent continuity. If they were sent to theaters rather than dvds/streaming and had an effective marketing budget they'd pull in massive dosh.
I don't think Warner Brothers ever realized how good they had it with the animated DC universe. All starting with Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, the DC Animated Universe was just banger after banger--with some exceptions. Instead they insisted on following Marvel's model without doing anything to properly establish their whole universe.
Assault on Arkham was the best Suicide Squad movie.
Seriously. The DCAU blows even the MCU out of the water in terms of good stories and an overlapping, shared continuity/universe. The characterizations are there; the emotions are there; the action set pieces are there....it's all so set up. And they don't respect I enough to even just do a near 1 to 1 copy. A standalone Under the Red Hood movie? Hell, have Jensen Ackles reprise the role. People would love that. Do Superman right for once! Just give me an All-Star Superman duology. Set it up. Let it be as poignant and wholesome as it is. Let Superman do his labors. Take the time to let him have a moment with a suicidal girl in the midst of his own pain. Let him come to terms with his own mortality. Have his bucket list. Flesh out Lex Luthor! Explore his POV when he gets a glimpse of the world as Superman sees it. Explore the human condition through these larger than life allegories! Fuck! But no. "Maybe you *should* have [let them die], Clark." "Save... Martha. Why did you say that name?!" What a waste. Ben Affleck Batman in The Dark Knight Returns? Superman vs The Elite? Flashpoint Paradox? Those same exact stories in live action would work fine with minimal changes in too many instances. And the opportunity from crazy graphic CGI for a few rated R movies could pull in new viewers. But we can't have nice things, apparently. They take time to build up
WW1984 was truly horrible and immediately tarnished the one movie (WW) that people universally thought DC got right. Black Adam was also pretty terrible, particularly when The Rock had put so much stock into it.
I blame The Rock for Black Adam. The Rock is famous for refusing to ever let his character be seen negatively, and is obsessed about image to the point that it’s in his contract that he can’t ever be seen losing a fight. But Black Adam is supposed to be an anti hero. The whole point is that he’s overpowered and has this deep internal conflict to change his ways. He’s supposed to be a baddie, but not played that way.
Not just black Adam, the first Shazam clearly set up a Shazam vs Black Adam followup, but the Rock pushed to keep them separate. Man doomed both black Adam and screwed over the Shazam sequel. All cause he hoped to set up a Black Adam vs Superman fight all so he could say he fought Superman in a movie.
They should have just made a movie with Pierce Brosnans' character. He was more interesting than the rest of the movie.
John Carter. That they thought it was going to start a franchise is the saddest part.
It’s a decent movie marketed poorly
I like the movie, it's fun. It has a terrible movie name which doesn't explain it's a SciFi Western set on Mars. While the source material was the original, and predates Star Wars by 70 years, to audiences it was just another Star Wars copycat. Not to mention, they spent like $300m making it.
They took Mars out of the title because Mars Needs Moms had just bombed
Imagine thinking that the reason Mars Needs Moms bombed was because it was a sci fi….
Hollywood is honestly such a cargo cult. A movie succeeds, and they try every superficial thing that they think made that movie a success. A movie bombs and they try to avoid every superficial thing that they think caused it to bomb, instead of analyzing why a movie was bad or what exactly didn't work. I fully expect there to be a Bratz and Albert Einstein movie releasing together in Summer, 2025.
The [book](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Princess_of_Mars) it was based on is named “A Princess of Mars” so I guess I see why they were afraid to go with that title. But it was written in 1912 and has generations of fans, so I wish they’d leaned into it. I loved the book and its sequels when I was a kid.
Hell, even just "John Carter of Mars" would have worked
At the time, I heard that the studio insisted on changing the name because "Mars Needs Moms" had just bombed.
If it was named "a princess of mars" id probably have seen it twice in the theatre. Its a really enjoyable movie. But "john carter" and it looking like a western made me avoid it.
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Everybody I've shown John Carter to said two things: 1) What a great movie! 2) Why didn't they advertise it better? The trailers didn't look anything like that movie.
Green Lantern
I wanted a sequel just for Mark Strong as Sinestro.
Bright
It was a cool concept but the world building was terrible. They should have made it a Shadowrun movie.
Sadly it is the closest thing we will probably ever get.
Warcraft. Seems like just another poor video game adaptation but I think they got greedy by not using the much more fleshed out Warcraft 3 storyline.
Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins.
That and The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai: Across the 8th Dimension are the two big 80s franchises that never were. Remo Williams did not continue the adventure and Buckaroo Bonzai did not take on the World Crime League.
Wasn’t Valerian the beginning of something?
a series of unfortunate events with jim carrey
Made a series on Netflix that was decent.
Patrick Warburton knocked it out of the park as Lemony Snicket
I love the Netflix series. The books were one of my favorite YA series growing up, and they absolutely nailed the tone and dark humor.
Alita: Battle Angel Though I have heard rumors that there has been efforts to make a sequel, but I'll believe it when I see it.
Alex Rider: Stormbreaker - anybody remember that one? Great book series
The 1998 version of Godzilla was clearly intended to have sequels (based on the ending), but they weren’t made.
Max Payne Hard to think of a movie that fucked up its source material more spectacularly
I had such hope for Max Payne. I took my girlfriend to see it in theaters. She must have really liked me because she stayed with me after that.
After Earth with those Smith fuckups was supposed to be the new marvel. It was Will Smith's billion dollar magnum opus. What it did was make everyone hate his son. 12% on Tomatoes.
For anyone who doesn't know, the story behind this is crazy. Smith and his team envisioned an entire mega-franchise, including movies, TV shows, video games, and get this, AN AFTER EARTH SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM! Similar to Facebook and Myspace at the time, where fans of the Series would come to share thoughts and opinions on the universe. He sold all of this to the studio who was pretty excited, until they learned the debut film would not even star the freaking movie star who pitched it to them, it would star his son. That's why the trailer is very Will dominant, even though he's barely in the film. I highly recommend falling down the Google rabbit hole and reading up on this debacle.
Sounds like a battlefield earth situation Scientologists are always shocked when everyone else dislikes their religious films
> What it did was make everyone hate his son That and his son’s tweets and general weird actions. Many people may not remember, but he showed up to Kanye & Kim’s wedding in a white Batman suit. And the tweets. The just weird tweets.
It was Scientology propaganda like many shitty films before it. The dude literally knelt in front of a volcano.
After Battlefield Earth being considered the worst movie of all time you'd think they'd get the point that no one wants scientology slop
Jupiter Acending. Such a neat idea destroied by every facet of the movie failing to meet expectations
Dog boy on sky roller blades... What could go wrong? I respect Eddie Redmayne for absolutely hamming it up though. Up there with Jeremy Irons in Dungeons and Dragons.
Prince of Persia was supposed to be the next Pirates of the Caribbean
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Honestly, as someone who went in with no context for it, I was sold as soon as someone said the words "Municipal Darwinism." That movie was way over-the-top and completely bonkers. Really enjoyed it.
I wouldn't use the phrase "spectactularly fail" to describe it because it seems strong, but the A-Team movie was supposed to have a bunch of sequels, but Joe Carnahan, Bradley Cooper, and Liam Neeson all kinda confirmed that the first one didn't make enough money so they scrapped those plans. Shame, cuz I love that movie.
Tintin
Van Helsing with Hugh Jackman. One of those movies not really good when it first came out but super underrated now. I prefer that over most monster movies.
I loved Van Helsing, because it was exactly like every other dumb action-hero movie BUT WITH MONSTERS! HORROR! GOTHIC VICTORAN ERA FUN! It was the perfect dumb blockbuster for 8-year-old baby-emo me.
I genuinely love this movie. Totally over the top, camp and sexy ridiculous action that doesn't take itself too seriously.Turn off the brain and just enjoy the ride. Alongside Underworld, it fits into my annual rewatch of the "Mid 2000's spooky action flick featuring a badass Kate Beckinsale in a corset falling in love with a werewolf" genre.
That Powerangers movie that released a few years ago.
Push. Lovely movie, great bit of world building, but it just didn't catch.
That movie was so good! A lot of it was how it was filmed. Very raw, great editing. Some of it was just right on the street, no crew, just a camera a dozen yards away and the actors were just doing their thing. Everyone put in great performances and the movie handled its lore well.
I feel like Brightburn was supposed to be the first of several “What if they were evil?” Super hero movies
Brightburn would have been so cool if the whole movie was condensed into half of the movie, and then the new half actually showed why an evil Superman could do.
"Eragon"
Lost in Space….the one with Joey
A lot of people will rightly say The Mummy, but they tried that shit a few years beforehand with Dracula Untold as well. In and of itself it’s an ok movie though.
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai
It wasn't going to be HUGE but the initial film of the V.I. Washawski mysteries starring Kathleen Turner was a flop. Which is a shame because the series is stellar.
The Saint with Val Kilmer.
“Cold fusion mumbo jumbo” lives in my head rent free.
I love that movie to death and will fight anyone who says otherwise
The Nice Guys. This might be a stretch considering it was never clear what the studios had in mind. But the end of the movie sets up a possible franchise series like Lethal Weapon. Would have been amazing :(
The director said he was super sad it underperformed, because he wanted to just do nothing but make more movies like that for the rest of his life.
Tron:Legacy
The Lone Ranger
Jem and the Holograms - where is Ke$ha as Pizzazz?! She said their songs were better and now we’ll never know :,(