• FartsWithAnAccent@fedia.io
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    4 days ago

    Downsizing: It was a very interesting premise (people choose to shrink themselves in order to continue being able to afford living) but it is squandered on a pretty bland plot that wastes the premise to tell a mundane story.

    • kilonova@lemm.ee
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      3 days ago

      It still absolutely baffles me that they bought the franchise for so much money, yet couldn’t even come up with a coherent story for the trilogy. Absolute tragedy.

    • shoulderoforion@fedia.io
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      4 days ago

      I deleted my previous replay because my brain is broken and roman numerals fuck me up, what I meant to say was Star Wars I, II, and III (not IV, V and VI, though Return has always been a lesser ran in my book)

      • 0ops@lemm.ee
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        3 days ago

        Haha, I figured that’s what you meant when I saw that comment the first time, but then I was just like “maybe it’s just that this guy’s got some bold-ass movie opinions. Respect”

  • Akasazh@feddit.nl
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    3 days ago

    League of extraordinary gentlemen.

    If they would have just stick to the awesome plot of the graphic novel, instead of sitting the budget on hiring Sean Connery, who understood less about the role than he did with Gandalf it could’ve been great.

  • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech
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    4 days ago

    Jupiter Ascending was doing some awesome stuff with worldbuilding that you can tell the studio just wimped out on. Can’t get too sci fi, might scare away audiences.

  • shoulderoforion@fedia.io
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    4 days ago

    I loved Prometheus, I thought it was going deep canon on the Alien franchise, and even though it wasn’t perfect I so very much dug it, Ridley Scott saw some bad reviews, pussied out, and put Alien:Covenant out there to undo all the stuff he began with Prometheus. Covenant was such a garbage forgettable movie, followed by Romulus which was garage/fan service waste of time. Oh for the timeline we could have had, had they built upon the canon/story of Prometheus.

    • Ilandar@lemm.ee
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      3 days ago

      So true, Prometheus did a lot of the hard stuff right and then really made a mess of pretty basic things like dialogue and believable character motivations. Instead of tightening that stuff up in the sequel he just completely dumbed down the entire franchise again in Covenant to the extent that it is once again a complete waste of time (see Romulus).

  • heavydust@sh.itjust.works
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    4 days ago

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They_live

    A very funny movie with good actors and everything, except for one major disappointment: at the end of the movie, you understand that some humans collaborates with aliens, they get magical watches, free money, and the aliens even have some kind of interplanetary door to teleport yourself to zombie-land. But they don’t go further in that explanation because the movie is already over.

    They could have made a whole sequel with that new world, but instead we are left with a few pictures, and the ending credits of the movie. It felt like “Poochie died on the way back to his home planet. The End.”

  • Moobythegoldensock@lemm.ee
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    4 days ago

    Assassins Creed

    For the uninitiated, this is based on a game series with the premise of people in the modern day using a simulation to relive the memories of their ancestors. And in every day, the modern day is the frame story that sucks and the real, cool story is the simulation.

    So of course they made the crappy frame story like 90% of the movie and it sucked. Obviously it’s hard to capture the entire feel of a game on film, but what they could have done is had the entire movie in the past and actually focused on telling a good story, and then revealed it was a simulation right before the credits. Heck, they could have just stolen the ending from Assassins Creed 2 and then cut to modern day Callum with a setup for a sequel.

    Instead we got an entirely forgettable film.

  • spicy pancake@lemmy.zip
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    4 days ago

    Daybreakers (2009)

    Excellent premise: vampire post-epidemic society trying to deal with the scarcity of blood, ethical ramifications of keeping the remaining humans sedated for blood harvesting, technical challenges like adapting infrastructure and vehicles to be sun-proof, etc.

    The only thing I clearly remember is the premise, cuz the plot, characters, dialogue, action, etc. was all dog trash

    Actually, I do remember how badly it mangled the social commentary on the vampires who couldn’t afford blood. Perfect setup for depicting the inhumanity of artificial scarcity and they botched it.

    • immutable@lemm.ee
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      3 days ago

      Agreed. I like the film but it feels like two movies stuck together.

      One about the vampire society which is really interesting and novel. And another which is just a run of the mill “rebel faction finds the cure and restores humanity story” that you could find in any zombie film.

      I sorta get it though because I think it’s a problem a lot of comments in this thread deals with. An interesting world is not an interesting story. You have this cool vampire society, but then what’s the story? I sorta get why it always ends up being the hero’s journey just in a cool world, because otherwise the comments here are “super cool world but nothing happens”

      • spicy pancake@lemmy.zip
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        3 days ago

        Yeah the only example I can think of that doesn’t fit that mold is American Mary

        the cool premise in which isn’t a world, but a hypothetically possible situation (desperately broke medical student turns to stripping, which leads to back alley surgery for gangsters, which leads to black market body modification surgery) and the letdown isn’t the characters or plot, it’s the hamfisted script and acting lol

  • edric@lemm.ee
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    4 days ago

    A more recent one: The Gorge. Good premise and setting, but it becomes bland when the mystery is unraveled.

    • endeavor@sopuli.xyz
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      3 days ago

      This was one that popped into my pre coffee morning mind as well.

      Instead of exploring the mystery of the gorge and it’s workings and using it to maybe explore the sticky situation characters find themselves in, americans and russians just do their favourite pastime and genocide the local populace for fun.

  • Ilandar@lemm.ee
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    3 days ago

    A recent example is Conclave, which had an ending that felt very rushed and not really consistent with the tone of the rest of the film. I left feeling quite disappointed despite the majority of the film being one of the best I have seen. Another film I saw recently with almost the opposite problem was The Prestige, which I feel shows far too much of its big twist hand throughout the film and has an extremely predictable ending as a result. I think the thematic idea of the twist is very clever but it almost underestimates the ability of the audience to follow along. Although, having said that, there are seemingly a lot of very stupid or distracted people out there who had no idea what was coming and think it’s a masterpiece so maybe it was made for them and not me.

  • edric@lemm.ee
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    4 days ago

    There was this alien invasion B-movie like 10 years or so ago that I don’t remember the title of. But it was your typical main character and a couple of friends trying to find a way out of the city. Very generic. Then in the last 10-15 mins of the movie, he gets abducted and it gets far more interesting. But it ends there as a cliffhanger. I would’ve loved to see a version where that happens in the middle of the movie instead and we see more.

  • Freshparsnip@lemm.ee
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    4 days ago

    65, a movie where humanoid aliens crash land on earth in the time of the dinosaurs and get out right before the asteroid hits. It’s a generic survival/monster movie where dinosaurs are just obstacles in the way of the heroes escaping the planet. The movie should have shown the beautiful parts of the Dinosaur world and we should have been sad when they’re wiped out at the end.