Man in the High Castle tv show. The premise was interesting, Nazis taking over the US and the population figting back. However, the show quickly devolved into a confusing mess.
Nazis are in charge of the US government, yet there’s other Nazis on the run from the Nazis in charge? And they’re hiding bibles? I was left scratching my head wondering if there were any characters that weren’t Nazis. I guess it’s a story about how bad guys always turn on each other?
Also The Witcher season 1 tv show. I’ve never played the games before and knew nothing about it. I was hoping the tv series would be my introduction to the games, but… what in the actual fuck. Was the director drunk? Is this a show about medieval fantasy time travel and I’m just not getting it?
Dark City (1998) could definitely fit the bill, it has so many unique ideas for that time in film and you can see there’s of all sorts of future sci-fi movies in it from the matrix to inception, it’s a very visually ugly movie and the acting is subpar but as a premise it’s super interesting. Generally I think remakes are a waste of time and money but I’d love to see this movie with a proper budget and modern technology
The Cube.
Most people saw it as an average horror movie where a bunch of people try to get out of a giant torture box. But there was a pivotal scene that stuck with me where one of the prisoners realizes he helped build part of it. The whole thing wasn’t some intentional torture device but just a bunch of people doing their day jobs that were lost in a bureaucracy not ever questioning what their work was creating.
A stark reflection of society and the systems we create and the dangers of not ever looking at the bigger picture.Of course they proceeded to shit all over this idea in Cube2 where it ended up being just another evil government experiment.
I actually liked Cube Zero for the backstory and set styles. I don’t remember much else so I’m assuming it was shit, but you can give it a try if you want.
I feel like the last 30 years of Star Wars movies could qualify here
I’ve always felt like Star Wars the original 3 (4,5 and 6) were a product of their time. They aren’t bad movies but they aren’t great movies either, but for whatever reason they struck a chord with the population in the late 70’s and early 80’s. George Lucas should have just let them be there really was no reason to make any more of them, but money.
Disneys stance is to be middle of the ground on everything. Writers or source material bring in a ton of actually interesting stuff, only to be snubbed and half assed. It happens so consistently in all their shows. It’s maddening!
The movie In Time (2011). The premise was interesting but I can’t even remember the plot because it was so meh.
I also think Idiocracy could have been better. It had good moments, and that’s what most people remember, but the overall cohesiveness falls flat. Great moments, iconic scenes, but could have been a better film.
In time, has such a awesome premise.
But what we got was a “poor little rich girl” story.
What we got was Bonnie and Clyde. I liked it though.
Not a film, but a TV series? It’s called Jericho, and the synopsis in the Wikipedia reads:
Jericho is an American post-apocalyptic action drama television series, which centers on the residents of the fictional city of Jericho, Kansas, in the aftermath of a nuclear attack on 23 major cities in the contiguous United States.
But yeah, the execution is mediocre at best. Both the action and the drama are unbearably flimsy and cliche, even the argument flops as metal.
Oh man I haven’t thought of Jericho in a minute. I used to watch that after The Unit.
I love Jericho. On my third watch right now actually. Would agree that it’s frequently cliché, but overall I’d say it’s very good. Skeet Ulrich is transfixing.
Twilight. My wife made me watch the first one and it’s actually got a really interesting world and hints at a lot of decent lore and possible content.
Then they fill the film with close-ups of their eyes meeting across the room for minutes on end.
I actually liked the weird depressing grey vibe of the the first film. If it wasn’t for all the vampire stuff, it’d be an interesting outsider story about boy-meets-girl with a slight supernatural vibe
There was this movie I saw once called Time Trap. I definitely would not call it good, but the premise was interesting.
Archaeology professor goes missing while exploring a cave which was once thought to be the location of the fountain of youth. His grad students go looking for him, find the cave, weird things start happening when they enter.
Spoilers below:
::: The cave is revealed to cause some sort of time distortion which grows in intensity the further in you go. The professor who had been missing for days was only in the cave for a few hours. By the time everyone realizes what is happening, months go by, then years. They exit the cave at one point only to find an apocalypse has occurred, with the cave becoming the only safe haven for them to exist in at this point. Without spoiling the rest of the movie, the story plays in to the fountain of youth legend by including a group of Spanish Conquistadors and a tribe of paleolithic cavemen living in a deeper part of the cave, all living as if only days have passed, but in reality centuries/millennia had gone by outside. :::
might give this one a watch!
I had a series of 3 stomach surgeries and I delved into some shows I wouldn’t watch. I stumbled on this one. I really loved the premise. It is one of those late night SyFy feeling movies. The end did get weird, but I like where they were going with it.
The kind of spoiler tag you used is the kind that doesn’t work on every Lemmy app. Fortunately, that’s not a problem, as I’ve already seen Time Trap, and despite forgetting its name, do sometimes think about it.
Thanks, I actually went out of my way to look up the native Lemmy markdown format for spoilers because I was worried the one I was used to using wasn’t universal, but I guess the opposite ended up being the case. I’ll try to fix it.
I believe this is what you’re looking for:
::: spoiler Visible Text
hidden content goes here
:::Looks like:
Visible Text
hidden content
Thanks! Does that look any better now?
It doesn’t, it still has some exclamation point action that might be the issue. If it helps, you should be able to copy and paste my example markdown. I gave it a try and it still works.
There, third time’s the charm (or 10th, more accurately, since lemmy.world is shitting the bed right now).
I think I figured out what was going on, too. The app I use was automatically re-parsing spoiler formatting into its own syntax, but then was erroneously applying that same syntax to text when attempting to view source. So even the example you posted looked different to me when viewed in app versus on the actual site. I made the edit from the site this time and I think that should be good now.
Time trap was awesome. The scene when they realize the flickering lights are time passing and then they poke their heads out of the cave to see a complete departure of the old world.
The end got a lil weird tho.
Nonetheless it’s a movie that will stick with you for a few days of conceptualizing.
*Time Trap was directed by Ben Foster, which I just discovered. It’s also streaming for free (w ads of course) on YouTube.
Not a movie, but a TV Show. The Cape.
A former detective is forced into hiding where he is trained in stage magic, sleight of hand, circuscraft, and illusions. He uses them to fight crime.
I thought it was a really interesting concept, a more down-to-earth superhero like Batman, and stuff like this can plausibly happen in real life.
Unfortunately the show was so bad it was canceled mid season and the finale was only streamed on NBC’s website.
Six seasons and a movie!
Quite a few MST3K films have a decent premise IMO, but lacked either the budget or the talent to make enough of them.
Eg Time Chasers (which isn’t really all that bad), The Skydivers, Moon Zero Two, Rocket Attack USA, Stranded in Space, and perhaps even Manos: The Hands of Fate.
With the right people, I think those and others could have been very decent movies.
Wanted (2008) - The comics are brilliant, sharp, funny and intelligent. By leaving out everything smart/interesting from the comics they managed to create a mediocre action movie.
The comics were ‘edgy’ and somewhat needlessly abrasive, but yeah they were enjoyable
Basically every Terminator movie after T2. They have some great “what if” premises that could add so much depth to the world, but then struggle to see the vision through is a satisfying way.
T3: Let’s actually show Judement Day
T4: Let’s show the turning point in the war against the machines
T5: Exists
T6: What if all this time travel actually branched the timeline? What would it look like if one of Skynet’s terminators succeeded?
The Sarah Connor chronicles was the only sequel media that ever made sense to me
I know, right? I was quite mad when l heard the show was cancelled after season two. I still want to know if she survived after taking a shotgun shot to this day.
I in no way call this “mediocre”; Its just a flat our terrible low budget bullshit film that the director made as an excuse to hang out with shirtless dudes.
But years ago the guys at Red Letter Media did a segment on “Bigfoot vs D.B. Cooper”, and that premise alone (what happened after D.B. Cooper landed) has lived in my brain ever since.
It legitimately angers me that such a great high concept idea was completely wasted on what basically amounts to gay porn.
Lmao, the reviews are somewhat illuminating
Yep. And therein lies my frustration.
David Decoteau (or he’ll sometimes use his alias “Richard Chasen”) stole the perfect premise for what could have been a great shlocky low-to-mid-budget action movie. And no NO ONE can ever make it without being compared with…that…whatever it is…
No Country For Old Men - a slice of life movie about living in Texas.
The Man from Earth
B4
Triangle
Time Lapse
Daybreakers
Evolution
Knowing
