Usually what happens with these movies is that someone on the money end at the studio get scared because the plot to the movie sounds too cerebral. All they want is something simple they can sell, so they chicken out.
X-Men Origins Wolverine. The opening sequence of Wolverine and brother Sabertooth soldering through historic battles throughout the last couple hundred years, was amazing! ...then the rest of the movie happened. 😖
Yea that was one of the oddest movies I have ever seen. Like the trailer made it seem like a romantic comedy and when I watched it. It was more serious than I thought it would be. Italso didn't make any sense
It was a cool idea but they only focused on the actual "downsizing" plot for like 10 minutes then it completely ignored what people wanted to see. In the trailer they made it seem like the entire movie was gonna be about being tiny and everything being big and unlimited
I haven't seen it and just going by the few clips shown here it looks amazing! Brilliant concept. I'm so bummed out knowing it doesn't deliver - I'm still going to go watch the trailer.
@@L_Martin it's a disappoint movie. It looks cool but here's what happens. Matt damon and his wife decide to shrink and downsize but Matt Damon's wife changes her mind at the last minute and only matt Damon downsizes. The movie focuses on being small for like 15 minutes but then matt Damon's character falls in love with another person who also got small. Then it turns into a romance movie and totally ignores what made the movie look interesting
Many sci-fi books suffer from the "high-concept" problem as well. It's one thing to write about a neat new concept with lots of complexities; it's another to write an engaging story with a good plot and characters.
not every studio feels comfortable with an R rating through. They want as many people buying tickets to see the film and that often means appealing to the lowest common nominator which wants explosions, easy to digest characters and a very simple plot. A lot of intelligent movies, do badly, not because they are bad stories but because the mainstream audience just *doesn't get it* so they rate it low.
I'm kinda glad that Yesterday is on a list of films that blows it's premise. I actually never saw the movie (though I have read synopses) because I felt that the whole premise and execution as advertised was in conflict with itself. On one hand, it's trying to say that the Beatles and their music are so brilliant and iconic that- even in a world in which they are absent- everyone would instantly recognize how brilliant and iconic they are as soon as they are introduced. But, at the same time, it shows a world in which the absence of this band and their music has no effect on the evolution of music, and, oh, by the way, insults the band even further by insinuating that they didn't even need to be the ones to introduce that music...any random schlub could have put that music out and become rich and famous. The lack of depth as advertised (and, as turns out to be how the movie is) just really turned me off to seeing it. I would have loved a movie with this premise that actually addressed how the culture changes with the absence of iconic art, though.
Not to mention the movie has no conflict! The MC spends the entire movie feeling guilty about passing the Beatles songs off as his own; when he could literally tell people the truth. "I got all these songs from a dream." Which would be poetically ironic because Paul McCartney claims to have written the titular "Yesterday" from a melody he dreamed.
Well, the Beatles weren't _that_ integral to the evolution of pop/rock music, as the Beach Boys were on that same path. Beach Boy Brian Wilson would have continued to experiment without the existence of the Beatles, albeit at a slower pace; and he wouldn't have suffered a nervous breakdown after hearing Strawberry Fields, which was similar to a song he was working on at the time. When Brian finally finished that song and the entire album he had shelved, Paul McCartney was one of the people at the debut concert, congratulating Brian because of the influence the Beach Boys had on the music the _Beatles_ wrote.
@@garyballard179 You make a fair point. As the Beatles were before my time, I was introduced to their music through my parents. So I find there music iconic because of personal bias, and in retrospect the band wasn't significantly better than their peers. If the Beatles never formed than another band of the time (possibly the Beach Boys) could have seen a similar level of success and pop culture would have ran close to our 'Canon' history.
@@sheridanroad2001 The Beach Boys _were_ temporarily "The Biggest Band In The World" at the height of the Beatles' popularity, as well. The Beatles took the title back around the same time as Brian's breakdown. The Beach Boys continued to have hits until the mid-eighties, and released a single as late as the early 2000s. Brian has since rejoined the group, despite the legal spat he had with member Mike Love, and the band is _still_ doing limited tours, stopping only briefly because of COVID.
Remember in Speed how the entire premise was a bus that couldn’t slow down because it would explode if it goes under a specific speed, but the last quarter of the movie takes place on an out of control subway car that nobody asked for, but it was still absolutely awesome? I feel like that’s what these filmmakers were going for..:
I feel like this premise deserves a 10 more movies video! One of the OG films not on this list, Last Action Hero. The time where the kid is in the movie is fantastic and all sorts of fun as Arnold sends up all the action movie cliches. Then the kid and Arnold go into the real world and it goes boring.
@michaelrogers2080Having just watched the Beatles Anthology series. Unlike childhood friend George Harris, Paul McCartney met John Lennon by chance. Without this meeting the members of the Beatles would have started other (apparently unsuccessful) bands.
When you find out that 'Yesterday' was just the story of the guy waking up with nobody but he remembering The Beatles, and that Richard Curtis bought the script then shoehorned in the love story and took full credit, you'll be even more annoyed at the waste of a good premise.
it's even worse! the original premise was about the guy *not* becoming successful with the beatle's music, because ultimately it wasn't just the songs that made the beatles famous, it was the timing, as well as the beatles themselves. curtis instead turned it into a tepid wish-fulfillment fantasy with a half-arsed romance between two characters who have less chemistry than a defunded public school in florida
@Michael Rogers maybe most people don't think of it as a multiverse movie because there's literally no indication in the movie that it has anything to do with multiple universes? and both richard curtis and the writer who sold the original script literally described it as the rest of the world having forgotten the beatles? you can throw accusations of the multiverse being involved in anything, from sliding doors to the fucking transformers movies, it doesn't make it anything other than your own headcanon
@michaelrogers2080 Ok boomer, how do you explain the other people in the story who didn't forget the Beatles? Did Sarah Lancaster and Justin Edwards both get transported at the exact same time too as he wasn't the only one impacted?
How about a 10 TV episodes That Abandoned Awesome Ideas Halfway Through, like the South Park Imaginationland Trilogy where terrorists try to destroy collective Imagination by starting a civil war between Imaginationland's 2 opposing factions of imaginary characters: one made of every Good imaginary character and the other made of every Evil one. But then, when the Evil characters are tricked into killing the terrorists and any chance to prove the terrorists started the war, thus continuing it, then the Evil characters go too far with their war crimes against the other half of Imaginationland, and the narrative shifts to fully supporting the Good half, who eventually prevail with the help of Butters.
Agree that "Hancock" took a dump halfway through, but "In Time" was pretty darn entertaining all the way through, and Justin Timberlake's acting was surprisingly good. Will return to edit this if I have further commentary. Edit: "Taken 2"? All I remember is I stopped watching it at some point, and that's after enjoying the first "Taken" quite a bit. I usually don't like movies like "Taken" so that's saying a lot. "Downsizing" also took a dump, but it did so very near the end.
I think "Yesterday" is the least poorly executed of those on this list. I thought it was good as it showed the idea and the consequences - hence the 2 halves of the film.
I would have to disagree on both fronts. It utterly missed the mark on the Idea, by disregarding the Ripple Effect of removing a major cultural milestone. Whether for better or worse, the Current music industry at least would be different without the Beatles. As for Consequences. MC sung some songs that came to him in a dream. He could literally tell everyone the truth and there would be no issues.
How would you go about telling the truth, I'm interested to know? 'So yeah I'm actually from a different dimension - sort of - where a band called the beatles exists and they wrote these songs and I'm doing my best to show their songs to this existence so everyone here can also enjoy it' I'm sure they will understand
@@Konker606 "I didn't write my new songs." (Shocked gasps) "I dreamed them. During that blackout a few months ago I was hit by a bus." (Nods of recognition) "While I was out I dreamed of band called the Beatles. A bunch of good old boys from Liverpool that created songs so impactful even decades later aspiring musicians like myself knew them by heart." "When I woke up to find no one remembered them, I felt something in the world was missing at this and sought to correct it." "Even though I have no legal obligation, I would still like to credit my songs to John, Paul, George, and Ringo."
See I feel like I still would have to disagree. Personally I'd feel that if your scenario played out people would think he was crazy. If an artist said the idea of a painting wasn't theirs but it came to them in a dream and they saw someone called sven painting it, then continued to say that they were going to sign this painting for this dream Sven guy, you'd think they were on acid. It'll be like a religious person preaching a brand new religion. That's a damn hard sell for anyone to make. But hey, maybe I'm wrong
'The Island' was Michael Bay setting out to remake 'Parts: The Clonus Horror' with a big budget. The prolonged chase was just expensive filler to stretch it out from the short-ish original. The best way to watch 'Parts: The Clonus Horror' is the MST3K version (S08E11) here on RU-vid.
I would argue that the new movie Renfield falls in this category. The best part of this movie--and the way it was sold--was mashing up the lore of Dracula with the therapy concepts. And indeed, those scenes with the support group members--and Dracula trying to gaslight Renfield--were the best parts of that movie. But instead of making Dracula the main bad guy, they largely relegated Nick Cage to the background and removed the support group from the second half of the movie. The movie then focused primarily on a crime family as the main villains -- an annoyingly written and acted set of cartoon characters that could've come from any other movie. It's like the writers didn't understand the best, most unique part of their own story premise.
One of the most disappointing examples that didn't make the list: Stargate. The intriguing setup about Egyptian gods actually being aliens, and a network of teleportation gates connecting distant planets devolves into a 3rd act that is basically a WW II trope of the American soldiers teaming up with natives to fight the Japanese. Particularly cringeworthy: A "North by Northwest" style running from a strafing fighter that sends up geysers of dirt on either side of the road, just missing the protagonists; and a likeable character blown up leaving his empty helmet rolling across the ground. The series many years later finally made good on the premise.
"I Am Legend" starring Will Smith. Great premise, set up, acting, etc... Then they abandoned the book and original movie plot halfway through to go with CGI anti-sun zombies, and he was legend because... he tried real hard?
Wall-E. This movie was a master class in animation for the first half, creating a love story between two robots that didn't even say 5 unique words to each other. Then the humans show up and the movie becomes far less unique and special.
I loved the start of Yesterday, became greatly annoyed with Kate McKinnon's character (intended result), but loved the two other fans, and Robert Carlyle's cameo character saved it.. Agree that Hancock turned for the worse. Liked Downsizing although it gave me big thinks until I decided I did like it. Absolutely loved 3000 years of longing. How else could it go?
I became increasingly annoyed with Yesterday's MC. I kept waiting for him to admit the situation; only for no one to care: "So, your new songs came to you a dream? We can totally use that to promote the album!"
The original Jeepers creepers was far more of a switch - the creeper was so much scarier when it seemed like a potential human serial killer instead of a freaky looking humanoid devil
Everyone should read fantastic four: road trip (2020) its an awesome one shot where human torch burned, the things rock skin peeled revealing soft bloody tissues inside, sue has organs slowly disappear, and reed kinda melts
I'm pretty sure 'Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom' started off as two movies. The glaring deficits of two stories jammed into a single movie are easily explained by this compression. The rescue the dinosaurs plot could easily have been on e goof movie, then the exploit the dinosaurs as weapons for auction plot combined with the following movie would have made a good third entry, if they did away with the stupid giant locusts plot line. It could have been a strong trilogy instead of the highly flawed set of movies we were offered instead.
"Colossal" Premise: A jobless, alcoholic American woman discovers that a monster is appearing in Seoul which mimics whatever she does. The fact that her drunken antics are literally getting people killed serves as a metaphor for how messing up your own life can hurt others. Halfway point: She's basically learned her lesson, but since there's no market for a 50 minute movie, her supportive friend is suddenly a sociopath and (since he also manifests a monster) murders people unless she works in his stupid bar or something. The other two who know about this situation do nothing to help her. The ending was kind of cool, though.
I'm always baffled that all the new hip young kids who hate capitalism so much don't absolutely *love* In Time, as it's basically a perfect metaphor for capitalism's worst aspects. Although, maybe it's because the movie makes the effort to distinguish who's actually guilty in the system and who is just a pawn of it and deserves to be forgiven. The cops are enforcers, but exploited and disposable to the system. The rich benefit, but usually obliviously so. The real monsters are the banks. Gosh, can't imagine why that message didn't catch on.
Because the new hip young kids who hate capitalism love banks? So you're saying that if you benefit from an evil system and enforce an evil system, you should get a pass because you didn't create the system?
@@Ceares >Because the new hip young kids who hate capitalism love banks? No, no; I wasn't trying to imply that. I was saying that they probably hated the part where you should understand and forgive people. One thing I've observed constantly is that, you ask an activist to show forgiveness to their enemies, and they'll hate you more than their enemy immediately. I remember talking with some feminists once about how the parable of the dog and the lizard did not actually imply that the lizard is doomed to suffer from the dog's blind priviledge forever, but that if both the dog and lizard worked together, they could both see their own blind privilege and benefit each other in a mutually beneficial and loving relationship. You would have thought from their reaction that I'd tossed a jar of piss at them. :3 >So you're saying that if you benefit from an evil system and enforce an evil system, you should get a pass because you didn't create the system? Not quite. You should get a pass because you are not knowingly *perpetuating* the system. Most cogs in a bad system are dupes. They're lied to. Given false promises. We should always forgive the victims of a lie, and only hate the actual liars.
Jeepers Creepers 2 abandoned the original premise of the creeper cpming become active for a short time every 26(?) years. No explanation in 2 as to how or why it is back when it is supposed to be sleeping.
No it didn't it literally shows him going into hibernation at the end of the movie lol its supposed to be taking place after the events in the first movie.
Awesome list! The only one I don't really agree with is Yesterday, I think it was fine the way they handled it. I loved that it didn't fall into cliché when he meets with the 2 stalkers
Dr. Strange is missing. Great movie until the halfway point. There it becomes just another crappy Marvel action movie =( The start of the movie was amazing though.
Hancock was good. I wouldn’t say the twist makes it a different movie. Just a shocking detail that helps Hancock become a better person as he realizes that he’s not alone and becomes less bitter
I liked Yesterday but i felt the biggest flaw was that the songs just dont hold up modern day. Yeah they are still okay, some songs are great while others are much weaker. If you ever saw the deleted gig scene where he actually preforms the song on stage its super cridge, the song just isn't good in comparison to more mordern jams. The crowd would definitely not enjoy it, especially an ed Sheeran audience, and watching the crowd pretending to enjoy it seemed so fake its no wonder it was removed. Music has changed too much and a mordern day beatles would never hit that kind of high in popularity, with the talent we have now.
It was kind of a move. It was Ascension. I may be weird but I loved that show. Then the twist pissed me off. Then nothing was ever resolved. Sorry, Ms Helfer...
I could see how it might end up on this list, but the switch midway was very much intentional. Most the films on this list started with their clever concepts and interesting stories only to take a left turn late in development of the scripts or filming. Tarantino and Rodriguez on the other hand, had planned to do a vampire flick from the beginning, they just decided to start it like a crime thriller and surprise twist the audience halfway through.
Django unchained, the trailers showed them going to many plantations until they can find the Brittle brothers, but in the movie, the first plantation they went too they found them.
the jurassic world actually was great. we got the doom and gloom of jurassic franchise, the volcano disaster.. and the fact they used the same tech to reserect humans without there memory
It seams like a bunch of these got worse because of unnecessary romance. Not every movie need to end with someone getting together. That’s what I like about newer Disney and Pixar movies. It’s actually a family movie and not just about how the main character got with their partner. But it would be nice with a more old school villain
In Die Hard 3 I was more interested in the cat and mouse game of John McClane solving Simon's riddles but then the latter half went back to the cliche shoot 'em ups.
Star Trek Into Darkness. Kirk and his crew are sent to track down a rogue agent from the secretive section 31. His knowledge and skills could bring down starfleet. Halfway through, just kidding, it's Khan. Now we are going to spend the rest of the film ripping off a better movie.
Ever seen What Keeps You Alive? You think it's going to be a cat-and-mouse survival movie about a woman who was pushed off a cliff by her wife and they're going to be chasing through the forest but no. The Killer wife catches up very easily and then it's just sucks from there. The protagonist gets away then goes back. I was like, damn, go get the police! It's a stupid movie with a very stupid ending.
So this is a list of movies that you wish did the same thing for the entirety of them. Plenty of those about and some are good and some get repetitive and boring.
I HATED YESTERDAY SO MUCH, THANK YOU FOR BRINGING IT UP BECAUSE NOT ENOUGH PEOPLE COMPLAIN ABOUT IT. It is literally a fan fiction of a guy who gets everything he wants for no reason and gets to be the decidedly biggest fan of a group that’s a big deal to a lot of people, and even the bad guys who are set up to remember the beatles and possibly go after the main guy to take him down somehow end up thanking him for bringing back the beatles songs like WHAT?!?!?! And then he gets the girl even though he’s the asshole and the guy she was with was WAY better for her-it’s a messy piece of trash no one should have bothered making
I've never hated a movie I've seen in theaters as much as Downsizing, worst movie I've ever seen... The Island HAD A BRILLIANT PREMISE....why on God's Earth would you put that amazing premise into the hands of MICHAEL "FUCKING IM AN IDIOT AND MAKE ATROCIOUS ACTIONS MOVIIES" BAY.....it's crazy how good the premise is because I still somewhat like the movie despite how bad BAY butchered it....
'Yesterday' is also plagued by the massive overuse of the cliché where someone is interrupted before they're able to get to the point of a conversation/exposition. Example: Girl: "I have to tell you something important!" Boy: "What is it? Let's talk." Girl: "Well, I lov...." (interrupted by something, usually someone knocking and demanding that Boy has to go/be someplace else) Boy: "Can we talk later?" Girl: "Sure." (When she should have said "No, this will take a literal minute. Sit down and listen.") Then Boy runs out, missing the opportunity to learn crucial information before a damaging mistake is made or a misunderstanding occurs. It's annoying and happens throughout the movie. It's a cheap trope to needlessly prolong a movie or unnaturally force a narrative outcome the writer wasn't clever enough to write into. Get on with it!
I heavily enjoyed “The Island” as is. I feel as though everything was natural. The clones know they are going to be killed, so the escape and obvious the business tries to get them back. Makes sense
I can agree with most of these but I dispute Taken 2. It was actually quite realistic. Kim was not her father, she was not trained and no real way to defend herself. She could only help her father so much to free him like she did in the movie. That's why I didn't mind the movie.
I'm not sure I dislike it but Sunshine (the Danny Boyle sci-fi horror one, not the Ralph Fiennes WW2 epic) was a movie that took a major pivot about halfway through.
Yes! I clicked on this expecting to hear more about how Sunshine turned from a smart and well-written sci-fi exploration, to a very disappointing and formulaic monster flick.
See what I was really expecting to happen and hoping would happen was actually teased multiple times. They kept watching video logs from pinbacker about how he was slowly losing his mind, I wanted to see Searle go down that path. He was get more and more enamoured with the sun and spending more time in the observation lounge losing himself to it. I really thought it should have gone with him taking over the ship the way pinbacker did, and just skipped the whole Icarus 1 plot, or lessened it a lot to show zero survivors.
The one that pissed me off the most was Colossal. And I think both halves had the potential to be solid ideas, but that they didn't play together well tonally and so the whole thing felt unpleasantly jarring--a problem compounded by the marketing, which pretty much ONLY played up the light-hearted comedy angle. I remember being rather upset by it for that reason. I don't want a trailer to give me every movie detail, but I do want to know what *type* of movie I'm in for. I'd had a really hard, lousy, long week (at home and at work) and I thought the trailers for that looked good and so I'd rent it and end the week with a relaxing kaiju comedy and instead I got an abusive, cruel, sadistic alcoholic murdering people by the thousands out of petty spite. I remember walking away from that movie feeling betrayed and pissed off by it.
maybe it was just me that was bothered but three thousand years of longing's third act begins with the lady wishing that the djinn loves her, violating consent. The entire third act only exists because she forces something to fall in love with her
From Dusk till Dawn has THE funniest tv edit. The bar goes from the Titty Twister to the Kitty Twister and the neon sign up top has a bikini that cover's up the figure in the neon.
From Dusk Till Dawn shifted genres halfway through but I wouldn't count it for this list because it moved from one awesome idea to another awesome idea. The shift didn't make the movie a disappointment like the movies referenced here.
If you took your advice for 10,000 years of longing, it wouldn’t have a third act, no resolution, and that’s where the drama of the movie came from. It was less stylish granted, but the arc worked well for me and the group I was with.
I was thinking of The Island when I clicked on this. The movie plagiarized Parts The Clonus Horror. And Yesterday was such a letdown. Downsizing had so many good social commentary it skips over.
Wonder how they would have told a save dinosaurs from volcano that could erupt at any minute story in 2 hours if they went that route plus for Dominion audience we’re hoping for the film to be about human and dinosaurs coexisting but instead half the film was about locusts
Not all volcanic eruptions are immediate. The eruption that eventually destroyed Pompeii lasted 18hours. If you've ever seen the movie Dante's Peak (a movie about a town near a dormant volcano that suddenly becomes active and threatens everyone), then you can see how they could have devoted an entire movie on the island with an active volcano threat for about a 2 hour run time.
The best film in the JW era remains to be Battle at Big Rock - had everything (wonder, scares, action) we wanted from the concept of dinosaurs and humans suddenly thrown together.
Batman vs Superman was also a good idea left behind, when the movie starts by showing the difficult and hard "reality" of being a superhero, and the moral dilemma between killing the villains or not, but halfway through the tone shifts and becomes a generic "let's kill the giant cgi monster", dropping the very good moral conflict between Clark and Bruce
Most people complained the opposite of 3k years of longing that I saw it with. All of us wished the third act was expanded into the second half as it felt too rushed despite being the most interesting part, still love the movie.
