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.
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.
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…
S Darko was interesting because at it’s core it’s about the fact that women have to deal with twice as much bullshit
The Man from Earth
B4
Triangle
Time Lapse
Daybreakers
Evolution
Knowing
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Knowing is soooo frustrating. Great premise, Nic Cage Nic Caging tha fuck out of everything. Then it seems like the writer hit a block and turned to a random word generator that spit out “space angels” and called it a day.
Still 2/3 of an interesting movie.
The Man From Earth is definitely one I think about. The things he must have seen, must have done, that over time shaped him into who he was. Is he the embodiment of mankind, as well as its own self-hatred? The religious stuff was a bit much. I still haven’t seen the sequel, with genuine anxiety to.
Daybreakers is also a good one. A bit deus-ex with the “solution” at the end, but very good thought experiment
The sequel’s plot is somehow weak with a couple of cringe moments. Given the twist is revealed in part one, the movie expresses one of many solutions to what should be free roaming of your own thoughts after the first film.
Sequels can be awful at destroying the ‘blew my mind’ effect in general by streamlining a great, open idea to a specific plot I guess.
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.
Damn sounded hilarious
Six seasons and a movie!
Cabin in the woods
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
Eragon.
There is a reason that most fans pretend the film never happened
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.
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I’ll take “Movies of the Current Decade” for $1000, Alex.
The Fall Guy. The show had a very simple premise (stunt crew moonlights as bounty hunters) that really couldn’t hold up after multiple seasons. The movie just floundered trying to do too much, and ended up far too inside baseball for normal viewers to really identify with.
I never watched the show, but I loved the movie. Almost every character feels competent and clever, so they do at least something that surprised me. There are a few points that hinge on details that feel a bit contrived, but I appreciated that the climax wasn’t just a physical fight between good guy and bad guy. The main characters have emotional problems that are believable and get resolved. Plus, it’s just a little campy.
I think the “inside baseball” that you mentioned gave the world more depth. It felt “lived in”.
I’ll give you that the movie does try to cram a lot into the time, though. It feels a little rushed.
Yeah, rushed is part of it as well for a full 120+min movie.
And, I should say, I also loved the movie and was disappointed to see mostly negative reviews afterward, but I get it. I initially loved the fact that 87North, the director’s own production company, is both listed in the opening credits and is the company making the movie in the movie. But as the final (contrived to look awesome, which is the point, not the actual plot points) moments wrap up, it felt like it was as much an industry commercial for the director’s own production company as it was a movie just being a movie. Maybe that’s a selling feature and I overthought it, but it sort of took me out of it.
I am 100% convinced they had a masterpiece and then test audiences didn’t get it and they went and changed everything around and added the prologue and gave away the entire twist at the start by explicitly telling the viewer where and when we are. Also made the dinosaurs weird for … reasons…?
Oof. Having the statue of liberty there on the opening credits of Planet of the Apes
Like that, yes.
Wow, I watched that on opening night and there were like three people in the whole room. I don’t remember much about it, but what really bugged me was the whole start of the film. A spaceship that is designed to travel fully automatically and immediately fails when there’s a small asteroid field in its path? Absolute BS.
