# Films with somewhat misleading titles **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 20, 2016, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/films-with-somewhat-misleading-titles/755198 "2016-05-20T00:38:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![phantom\_lamb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/5f9b8f/32.png) [@phantom\_lamb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/phantom_lamb)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/films-with-somewhat-misleading-titles/755198/1 "2016-05-20T00:38:17Z")
You know, where the title doesn’t seem to fit the film. For example, there are no ghosts in “Ghost World”. Very often when I’d recommend it to someone I get a “I don’t like horror films” response. “Blade Runner” sounds like a film about ice skating… which used to put me off from watching it until I finally did and realized it’s nothing what I thought it would be. I’m still not completely sure where the title comes from. Name some more! 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 12:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/films-with-somewhat-misleading-titles/755198/2 "2016-05-20T00:41:13Z")
Naked Lunch. It’s just not. ---
**Author:** ![Sefton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/5daacb/32.png) [@Sefton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sefton)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/films-with-somewhat-misleading-titles/755198/3 "2016-05-20T00:50:22Z")
_Brazil_ has nothing to do with Brazil. ---
**Author:** ![buddha\_david](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ee7513/32.png) [@buddha\_david](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/buddha_david)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/films-with-somewhat-misleading-titles/755198/4 "2016-05-20T00:54:42Z")
**Pretty Woman** Starring Julia Roberts. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/films-with-somewhat-misleading-titles/755198/5 "2016-05-20T00:58:27Z")
**The Neverending Story** ---
**Author:** ![jz78817](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jz78817/32/1028_2.png) [@jz78817](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jz78817)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/films-with-somewhat-misleading-titles/755198/6 "2016-05-20T01:12:46Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > Naked Lunch. It’s just not. “I can think of two things wrong with that title.” - Nelson ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/films-with-somewhat-misleading-titles/755198/7 "2016-05-20T01:14:05Z")
The movie is titled _Blade Runner_ because someone owned the movie rights to both the novel _Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?_ by Philip K. Dick and a treatment (i.e., not a full-blown screenplay but an extended summary of one) written by William S. Burroughs which was called _Blade Runner_. This treatment was based on the novel _The Bladerunner_ by Alan E. Nourse. They decided they liked the plot of the first novel and the name of the second one. Hence the movie is based on the first novel and titled like the second one: > **[Blade Runner](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_Runner)** > > Blade Runner is a 1982 science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott, and written by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples. Starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, and Edward James Olmos, it is an adaptation of Philip K. Dick's 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? The film is set in a dystopian future Los Angeles of 2019, in which synthetic humans known as replicants are bio-engineered by the powerful Tyrell Corporation to work on space colonies. When a fugitive group of ad Bl... ---
**Author:** ![Mahaloth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mahaloth/32/1079_2.png) [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 1:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/films-with-somewhat-misleading-titles/755198/8 "2016-05-20T01:18:50Z")
[Antichrist](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antichrist_%28film%29) Well…it certainly was not a horror movie about a demonic villain. It was…something else. Something…very, very, very…else. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 1:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/films-with-somewhat-misleading-titles/755198/9 "2016-05-20T01:32:57Z")
One of my favorite movies is _Chungking Express_. It sounds like it’s a story set in one of an American chain of bad Chinese restaurants. In fact, it’s a very romantic film set in Hong Kong which has an 8.1 rating on the IMDb and 90% on Rotten Tomatoes. I think a better name for the movie would have been _California Dreamin’_ for reasons that you’ll realize if you see the film. ---
**Author:** ![Joey\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/919ad9/32.png) [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/films-with-somewhat-misleading-titles/755198/10 "2016-05-20T01:33:31Z")
While there is a fight club and some fighting in the movie Fight Club, that has so little to do with the plot I think a lot of people ending up missing out on a really great movie based on the “I don’t want to watch a movie about people fighting” misconception. spoiler for Black Swan Not really a spoiler, but same idea for Black Swan, I only put it here because a lot of people call Black Swan the female version of Fight Club. I know a lot of guys that won’t watch Black Swan because they don’t want to watch a ballerina movie. Even using the Fight Club analogy won’t sway them. Sometimes I can coax them into it by baiting them with the promise of the Natalie/Mila scenes, but even that often times won’t get them past the ‘chick flick’ stigma. For those that haven’t seen Black Swan…it’s not a ballerina movie, it’s not a chick flick. If that’s what’s stopping you, get over it and watch it. It’s not more a ballerina movie than Fight Club is a movie about fighting. ---
**Author:** ![snfaulkner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snfaulkner/32/433_2.png) [@snfaulkner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snfaulkner)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/films-with-somewhat-misleading-titles/755198/11 "2016-05-20T01:38:07Z")
> [@Joey\_P](#): > > While there is a fight club and some fighting in the movie Fight Club, that has so little to do with the plot I think a lot of people ending up missing out on a really great movie based on the “I don’t want to watch a movie about people fighting” misconception. > > spoiler for Black Swan > > Not really a spoiler, but same idea for Black Swan, I only put it here because a lot of people call Black Swan the female version of Fight Club. I know a lot of guys that won’t watch Black Swan because they don’t want to watch a ballerina movie. Even using the Fight Club analogy won’t sway them. Sometimes I can coax them into it by baiting them with the promise of the Natalie/Mila scenes, but even that often times won’t get them past the ‘chick flick’ stigma. > > For those that haven’t seen Black Swan…it’s not a ballerina movie, it’s not a chick flick. If that’s what’s stopping you, get over it and watch it. It’s not more a ballerina movie than Fight Club is a movie about fighting. I have seen it. But maybe I was drunk, because all I got out of it was ballerinas and the lesbian scene. Mayhaps I’ll give it another shot slightly less drunk… ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/films-with-somewhat-misleading-titles/755198/12 "2016-05-20T01:40:17Z")
_The World’s Fastest Indian_ _Happiness_ _I Love You, Phillip Morris_ _Watership Down_ ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/films-with-somewhat-misleading-titles/755198/13 "2016-05-20T02:00:17Z")
[Quick Change.](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100449/) The name doesn’t hint that it’s a comedy caper flick. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/films-with-somewhat-misleading-titles/755198/14 "2016-05-20T02:09:25Z")
_The Emperor of the North Pole_ is a movie about hobos. ---
**Author:** ![Joey\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/919ad9/32.png) [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/films-with-somewhat-misleading-titles/755198/15 "2016-05-20T02:17:44Z")
> [@snfaulkner](#): > > I have seen it. But maybe I was drunk, because all I got out of it was ballerinas and the lesbian scene. Mayhaps I’ll give it another shot slightly less drunk… If that’s all you got out of it, yes, you very much missed something. You must have been really drunk. I understood all of Fight Club the first time I saw it and I was on mushrooms. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/films-with-somewhat-misleading-titles/755198/16 "2016-05-20T02:20:01Z")
Howard’s End. He’s not even in the movie, nor his is demise, or his ass if that’s what they meant. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/films-with-somewhat-misleading-titles/755198/17 "2016-05-20T02:24:44Z")
_Reservoir Dogs_. No dogs, no reservoir. _Chinatown_ ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 2:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/films-with-somewhat-misleading-titles/755198/18 "2016-05-20T02:36:35Z")
_They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?_ has no horses. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/films-with-somewhat-misleading-titles/755198/19 "2016-05-20T02:44:50Z")
Bonfire of the Vanities. No burning bathroom cabinets. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 2:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/films-with-somewhat-misleading-titles/755198/20 "2016-05-20T02:48:34Z")
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