# Great ideas horribly wasted in film and literature **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 19, 2008, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-ideas-horribly-wasted-in-film-and-literature/464334 "2008-09-19T17:15:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![appleciders](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85f322/32.png) [@appleciders](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/appleciders)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2008, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-ideas-horribly-wasted-in-film-and-literature/464334/41 "2008-09-20T21:31:25Z")
> [@Busy\_Scissors](#): > > you could basically take your pick of classic comic strips that have been abused in the cinema. League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, anyone? Come on- I know Americans don’t travel but we’re not stupid enough to think that you could really drive a five-hundred-foot-long submarine through the canals in Venice, right? Right? ---
**Author:** ![Bosstone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/22d042/32.png) [@Bosstone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosstone)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2008, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-ideas-horribly-wasted-in-film-and-literature/464334/42 "2008-09-20T21:42:12Z")
> [@De\_La\_Rue](#): > > I also think that while Underworld was exceedingly mindless, the idea of a vampire-werewolf conflict has potential if the vampires are characterized as “refined” and “civilized” (they often pose as aristocracy, right?) and werewolves are pure animal savagery, letting the beast in them come out. Underworld stole its premise almost entirely from the World of Darkness RPG, to the point where the studio had to defend itself from a lawsuit from White Wolf, IIRC. There’s definitely potential in the premise. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2008, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-ideas-horribly-wasted-in-film-and-literature/464334/43 "2008-09-20T21:57:15Z")
> [@RikWriter](#): > > Actually, it was a very good film as is. Yep! I think **Chuck** has some…_interesting_…ideas about how certain SF pieces are plotted. I disagree, however, about **The Matrix** : I think it’s exactly the opposite of the OP. That is, the premise–that computers are using humans as batteries–is completely stupid, so stupid that it almost ruined the movie for me. However, the movie is so freakin’ cool that it succeeds despite the horrible idea. Hmm, other examples…ooh, I know! _The Tin Man_ is a retelling of _The Wizard of Oz_, with a darker, grittier, low-magic feel to it. As part of the retelling, they got a bunch of developmentally delayed lemurs to write the script, and then held a “Worst Actor in America” contest as a casting call. It was **dreadful**. Daniel ---
**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2008, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-ideas-horribly-wasted-in-film-and-literature/464334/44 "2008-09-20T22:18:10Z")
> [@John\_DiFool](#): > > Alas that film has been tied up in knots (shorthand for various conflicts of interest) for so long that the chances of a DVD release currently seem very remote. Having seen the film recently (yes, its out there on teh internets if you know where to look), I can safely say that it not being on DVD is a _good_ thing. When the only interesting part of the film is the special effects used in one scene, you’ve got a sucky, sucky, movie. Ian McKellen defeats the bad guy using a flashlight with a piece of cardboard taped to it for Og’s sake! ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2008, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-ideas-horribly-wasted-in-film-and-literature/464334/45 "2008-09-21T00:07:58Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > Yep! I think **Chuck** has some…_interesting_…ideas about how certain SF pieces are plotted. > > I disagree, however, about **The Matrix** : I think it’s exactly the opposite of the OP. That is, the premise–that computers are using humans as batteries–is completely stupid, so stupid that it almost ruined the movie for me. However, the movie is so freakin’ cool that it succeeds despite the horrible idea. > > Hmm, other examples…ooh, I know! _The Tin Man_ is a retelling of _The Wizard of Oz_, with a darker, grittier, low-magic feel to it. As part of the retelling, they got a bunch of developmentally delayed lemurs to write the script, and then held a “Worst Actor in America” contest as a casting call. It was **dreadful**. > > Daniel I agree with you. It was an incredibly stupid idea that was turned into a tolerable movie. It also seemed there was almost no point to the human revolution. Since people over a certain (undefined but young) age can’t be freed because of some kind of unavoidable psychological issues, a successful revolution would result in the death of just about every human on the planet. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2008, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-ideas-horribly-wasted-in-film-and-literature/464334/46 "2008-09-21T00:42:57Z")
> [@John\_DiFool](#): > > I guess I could rag on **The Wizard of Oz** for copping out at the end with no Ruby Slippers on Kansas Dorothy (“It was all a dream”), but that’s for the Copout thread, not here, which is more about scripts with promise which were pretty much DOA after editing. I’ve always wished that, after convincing her that it was all a dream, they notice the ruby slippers . . . a color none of them had ever seen, in their sepia-and-white universe. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2008, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-ideas-horribly-wasted-in-film-and-literature/464334/47 "2008-09-21T01:38:45Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > **Gattaca** probably could have been a pretty good film if they ever bothered to think out their own concept. As it was, it made no sense and had no internal consistency, but it’s clearly an idea that has some excellent potential. You must have seen a different version. I saw the one with Uma Thurman, Jude Law and Ethan Hawke. It was possibly the best SF movie ever made, and certainly a contender for the title. ---
**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:** [September 21, 2008, 3:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-ideas-horribly-wasted-in-film-and-literature/464334/48 "2008-09-21T03:19:49Z")
> [@](#): > > I remember reading somewhere that in the original story, the twist was that the alien was disguised as a dog. An interesting idea, if true. Zicree’s book on The Twilight Zone doesn’t mention this. In any event, that idea had already been done (but with a donkey instead of a dog) br Fredric Brown in his short story “Puppet Show”. ---
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2008, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-ideas-horribly-wasted-in-film-and-literature/464334/49 "2008-09-21T04:25:33Z")
> [@RikWriter](#): > > Actually, it was a very good film as is. **Gattaca** was a pretty great movie, but Chuck is right, the “world” of the movie makes no sense at all. ---
**Author:** ![Dan\_Norder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4af34b/32.png) [@Dan\_Norder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dan_Norder)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2008, 5:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-ideas-horribly-wasted-in-film-and-literature/464334/50 "2008-09-21T05:31:37Z")
> [@The\_Second\_Stone](#): > > You must have seen a different version. I saw the one with Uma Thurman, Jude Law and Ethan Hawke. It was possibly the best SF movie ever made, and certainly a contender for the title. I saw those actors in a movie of the same name and it just sucked all around. Nowhere near best SF movie ever made. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2008, 5:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-ideas-horribly-wasted-in-film-and-literature/464334/51 "2008-09-21T05:34:09Z")
I happen to like books that turn out to have long, languidly slow and spectacularly powerful ultraplots that you don’t see moving in the background until you’re deeply immersed and entertained by the faster-moving foreground plots, and then you glimpse the shape of the vast strategy going on behind it and you almost tremble in awe. Unfortunately the works that attempt do to it seldom live up to the hints and promises… The _Da Vinci Code_… OK, many of the huge chunks that this book did blow were parts of the premise, but the general setup — that the entire history of the Christian church had a cover-up at its core that had the potential, at least in the opinions of some powerful folks within the church hierarchy of the Catholic chursh, to bring the entire religion down. Against the backdrop of rapid-fire skin-of-teeth escapes and unfoldings of a bit more of the mystery here, a bit more there, is this really _HUGE_ plot-trajectory. What will the secret be? How complicit will the church turn out to be? How will our protagonists get the secret out into the open against the concerted efforts of these folks to keep it hidden, and how will the world react when they do? Will the religion in its entirety go down in flames, or will it become a Good Elements vs Bad Elements battle for Christianity’s own soul? Will there be outpourings of anger, outrage? Contrarily, will people be angry at the truth-tellers for disturbing their predictable established world of belief with these revelations? (Well, no, actually, we’re just gonna wrap up the little mystery-stories and adventure-escape thriller shit and leave all that big stuff untouched) Steven King is guilty of it several times over. In _The Stand_, behind the foreground story of a world decimated by illness, we shift towards the ultimate confrontation between good and evil. But there’s not enough vision to the good and we go out with a nuclear fireball (yawn); In _It_, as in the far more successful _The Shining_, there’s a sense of double-exposure (is this even really about supernatural spookyshit, or is it really about the spookiness of entirely real and realistically told people-behavior?), the kids and what they had to face and have to come _back_ to face as adults, something creepy and just below the surface in the small town, a small town where the everyday nice-faced people like your neighbors and parents may disguise a rotten core… then it turns into a Brave Kids versus The Spider From Hell (oh please…) Philip Pullman is another offender. His _Dark Materials_ trilogy, story in the foreground of Lyra and her alethiometer and rescuing the kids from the oblation board and whatnot becomes more obviously a late and climactic chapter in a spiritual showdown between authority and freedom that harkens all the way back to the story of Adam and Eve, and she is Eve again & anew, no less… so with increasing excitement I read on, to see the gradual reveal of what the conflict in the original garden of eden will turn out to have been, and where Eve v.1 went wrong, … Pullman does this all better than most, with Lyra invading the world of the dead and upending the fate of the spirits there, but her accomplishments there slide through our fingers, leaving us a bit unsatisfied beyond the entertainment-fiction foreground level… then we move to the final conflict and the wheels fall off the trilogy as God the doddering old toothless Alzheimer’s patient falls out of his carriage and the long-wave plot just sort of disintegrates amidst a final shoot-em-up. Even Asimov could not write the Foundation in a way that lived up to initial setup, the unfolding of plots that would scale through millennia and throughout the galaxy. Ultimately he punted on a lot of it, leaving only a vague wave of the hand in the direction of a notion that ol’ Hari Seldon started something in motion that would steer the fate of the galactic civilization through the collapse of empire through the rise of its replacement and the final triumph of psychohistory in ensuring a more stable future. We’re told that it happens, but the psychohistory gets ghosted out where you can’t see it once Seldon himself is out of the picture. Just too thin on the ground. ---
**Author:** ![Wolfian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/7ea924/32.png) [@Wolfian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wolfian)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2008, 12:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-ideas-horribly-wasted-in-film-and-literature/464334/52 "2008-09-21T12:17:15Z")
A good deal of the movies on MST3K. Teenage Caveman had a decent idea (brave caveman goes against authority for the good of his people) and a cool twist ending The cavemen are the descendants of people who survived an atomic holocaust. but it was ruined by wooden acting, bad special effects, and bad, repetitious writing. Hobgoblins was about aliens who can make one’s wildest dreams come true. With a good writer, that could have been a great movie, intend we got a mediocre 80s teen movie. ---
**Author:** ![An\_Gadai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@An\_Gadai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Gadai)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2008, 1:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-ideas-horribly-wasted-in-film-and-literature/464334/53 "2008-09-21T13:25:21Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > Didn’t Red Dwarf do a parody of this? Lister and Rimmer think they’ve returned to Earth and found the perfect niches for themselves, only to discover that it’s an addictive VR game called Better Than Life? > > Tell me if you agree or disagree with this: the main premise behind 2000AD and Judge Dredd is that the human race screwed up so badly that God himself finally said “screw you”. The protagonists of the stories live in a literally God-forsaken Hell-universe which is **absurdly** inimical to humanity. Survival is only possible due to the Judges being as inhumanly merciless as the world they live in. To translate this into a movie would require someone who’s a genius at making the blackest of black comedies. Are you sure you’re thinking of the right series? I never picked this up from Judge Dredd. It is set in a post-apocalyptic conurbation wherein most of the populace is no longer in fruitful employment because of mass automation. Mega City 1 is a police state and the Judges are harsh but from their point of view, fair. What is interesting about the character IMHO is that he is somewhat of an anti-hero, pedantic, dour, oft-times vicious but also principled. Stallone’s rendition had none of the subtlety of the comic character. ---
**Author:** ![NDP](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ndp/32/55_2.png) [@NDP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NDP)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2008, 11:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-ideas-horribly-wasted-in-film-and-literature/464334/54 "2008-09-21T23:25:08Z")
> [@Wolfian](#): > > A good deal of the movies on MST3K. Teenage Caveman had a decent idea (brave caveman goes against authority for the good of his people) and a cool twist ending > > The cavemen are the descendants of people who survived an atomic holocaust. > > but it was ruined by wooden acting, bad special effects, and bad, repetitious writing. I don’t think Roger Corman even deserves credit for the twist ending. It’s a direct steal from “By the Waters of Babylon” by Stephen Vincent Benét. Incidentally, would this thread cover movies and stories with tired and cliché-ridden concepts that were ham-fistedly executed that somehow–perhaps inadvertently–stumble onto some intriguing ideas as a side development? I can think of a few movies I slogged through which from the onset seemingly didn’t have any ideas in their empty heads that suddenly came across something interesting only for it to be squandered because the filmmakers either didn’t know what they had or didn’t care enough to fully develop it. ---
**Author:** ![zenith](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/e19b73/32.png) [@zenith](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zenith)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2008, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-ideas-horribly-wasted-in-film-and-literature/464334/55 "2008-09-22T15:01:59Z")
If the movie “They Live!” had a little less trite dialog, a real actor instead of rassler Roddy Piper in the lead, and the stupid fistfight scene excised, it could have been great. ---
**Author:** ![Baldwin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baldwin/32/7264_2.png) [@Baldwin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baldwin)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2008, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-ideas-horribly-wasted-in-film-and-literature/464334/56 "2008-09-22T16:17:29Z")
> [@autz](#): > > ‘Dies the Fire’ and that whole series. > > I love the premise. How would society adapt if suddenly there were no more electricity or vehicles. Just over 100 years ago these things didn’t exist, but now our world is so totally dependant on them, that there would be a huge breakdown with mass starvation without them. > > But the books are so badly written, that I find myself skipping paragraphs and just skimming pages and chapters. > > Please, someone re-write these WELL. You might like _Ariel_, by Steven Boyett, written a couple of decades earlier. (A little rough, but pretty impressive considering he was 21.) ---
**Author:** ![Baldwin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baldwin/32/7264_2.png) [@Baldwin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baldwin)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2008, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-ideas-horribly-wasted-in-film-and-literature/464334/57 "2008-09-22T16:20:46Z")
> [@Scumpup](#): > > As I mentioned in a recent thread, \*\*World War Z \*\* was a great idea for a book. Alas, Brooks did a poor job of executing that idea. In the hands of a more competent writer, an oral history of the world after a plague of zombies could have been something wonderful. > One better way to handle the idea would have been to have the individual chapters penned by different authors. The various authors who contributed to **The Book of the Dead** back in the 90’s would have been my A-list. They would have turned out a World War Z much more worth reading. You’re in luck – some guy coincidentally _also_ named Brooks took that idea and wrote a pretty good book, _also_ titled _World War Z_. What you read must have been some weird knock-off. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2008, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-ideas-horribly-wasted-in-film-and-literature/464334/58 "2008-09-22T16:26:49Z")
Quote: Originally Posted by Busy Scissors you could basically take your pick of classic comic strips that have been abused in the cinema. > [@appleciders](#): > > League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, anyone? Except that it’s hardly “classic”. The author stole a bunch of other great authors characters and abused them, ending up in a just average comic. Yes, his take on this same idea with Watchman was quite well done, but LoEG was average and his last kiddie-porn treatment was just horrible. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2008, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-ideas-horribly-wasted-in-film-and-literature/464334/59 "2008-09-22T16:32:58Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > The Da Vinci Code… > (Well, no, actually, we’re just gonna wrap up the little mystery-stories and adventure-escape thriller shit and leave all that big stuff untouched) > > Philip Pullman is another offender. His _Dark Materials_ trilogy, story in the foreground of Lyra and her alethiometer and rescuing the kids from the oblation board and whatnot becomes more obviously a late and climactic chapter in a spiritual showdown between authority and freedom that harkens all the way back to the story of Adam and Eve, and she is Eve again & anew, no less… so with increasing excitement I read on, to see the gradual reveal of what the conflict in the original garden of eden will turn out to have been, and where Eve v.1 went wrong, … Pullman does this all better than most, with Lyra invading the world of the dead and upending the fate of the spirits there, but her accomplishments there slide through our fingers, leaving us a bit unsatisfied beyond the entertainment-fiction foreground level… then we move to the final conflict and the wheels fall off the trilogy as God the doddering old toothless Alzheimer’s patient falls out of his carriage and the long-wave plot just sort of disintegrates amidst a final shoot-em-up. > . True, the ending of The Da Vinci Code was one of the biggest anti-climaxes of all, but it had to be. I mean, really? Some crazy group comes out of nowhere with some “evidence” that Jesus was marrried and perhaps his bloodline survies. So? There’s been books and theories and dudes claiming even worse that that for a hundred years, with little or no effect. And, I disagree about Pullman. He can’t write. We liked the Golden Compass for his imaginings of a Steampunk world with Panzer-polar bears and everyone with their own familiars (kids loave that idea). Once we left that world, he had nuttin. ---
**Author:** ![RikWriter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/49beb7/32.png) [@RikWriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RikWriter)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2008, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-ideas-horribly-wasted-in-film-and-literature/464334/60 "2008-09-22T17:37:17Z")
> [@Baldwin](#): > > You might like _Ariel_, by Steven Boyett, written a couple of decades earlier. (A little rough, but pretty impressive considering he was 21.) That’s one of my favorite fantasy novels. Of course, I disagree totally with the other poster in that I think Dies the Fire is a very entertaining series. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-ideas-horribly-wasted-in-film-and-literature/464334.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-ideas-horribly-wasted-in-film-and-literature/464334.md?page=4)