Roger Ebert thought that “It Could Happen to You” would have been much better had they kept the working title, “Cop Gives Waitress $2 Million Tip”.
I get jokes.
The book it’s based on is called All You Need Is Kill (translated from Japanese).
Why anyone would choose to NOT use that title is beyond my ability to comprehend.
The only reason I watched it the first time was because I found the title to be interesting. After watching it I found the title to be the most concisely descriptive title in movie history…and it is a good movie.
IMO, the worst Harry Potter movie title is Half-Blood Prince. I don’t remember how prominent it was in the book, but in the movie, the Half-Blood Prince subplot seemed kind of subdued. To the point that Snape’s revelation at the end was almost nonsensical. I don’t have a better title in mind, but learning about Horcruxes seems like a big enough plot point to get a title mention.
I felt this way about Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? It’s one of my favorite book titles of all time, but Blade Runner made it sound like one of a few hundred generic action pics. Of course, the movie essentially cut out two of the book’s three themes.
They could have just called it You Know, For Kids.
You do know that the title is actually a shorter version of the original Stephen King title? It was Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption And of course that referred to the series of posters?
The Conversation is a great suspense movie, but the title makes it sound like it’s about people sitting around talking to each other.
For the inverse, bad movies with great titles, I have to nominate Snakes On a Plane.
Complex story behind that. The Bladerunner was a medical science fiction novel by Alan E. Nourse (Who’s a physician, but who usually wrote Space Operas). It’s a great little novel, with a scarily plausible speculation about the future of medicine. The titular “bladerunner” was a supplier of black market medical supplies (like scalpels).
William S. Burroughs wrote a screenplay based on Nourse’s book in 1979 and published it under the title “Bladerunner: a Movie”. The guys working on the screenplay for Ridley Scott’s adaptation of Dick’s book knew they couldn’t go with Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, and were trying out other possibilities when the stumbled across Burroughs’ book and liked the title.
Since I’m a compulsive end-title reader (and had been since long before they started putting obvious “Easter Eggs” and afterscenes in them) I noticed the “special thanks to Alan E. Nourse and William S. Burroughs” credit line buried among the closing credits. Nourse’s book I knew about, but I’d never sen Burroughs’. I figured he must have also written a book with that title, not knowing it was an adaptation of Nourse’s.
It was pretty much a given they’d use a different title for the movie than for Dick’s book. They chose a catchy one.
There are lots of other cases when the adaptation of a science fiction novel or story gets a newer catchier title, although sometimes I think the original is better. I certainly prefer Robert Shoeckley’s Immortality Delivered* to the movie title Freejack. It didn’t help that the movie was awful.
*Also Immortality, Inc., which I don’t think is as good.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is another excellent title that inspired me to read the book (or watch the movie, etc.). It wasn’t until I was about 15% through that I made the Blade Runner connection…
Since this thread is starting wane I’ll throw out Hot Tub Time Machine as movie that is much MUCH better than it has any right to be based on it’s title.
Just nitpicking, but the title was not translated from Japanese. It was in transliterated (broken) English from the start - オール・ユー・ニード・イズ・キル. Transliterating that, rather than reversing the transliteration does make that less than obvious though - Ooru Yuu Niido Izu Kiru needs to be read aloud to even approach figuring it out.
I vote for I Heart Huckabees.
Am I the only one who thinks this is a really great title? It’s certainly memorable. I’m sure there are many bad monster movies I’ve never heard of because their titles were a lot blander than this.
I’m sure it’s a bad film, but I doubt it’s genuinely the worst ever. I expect there are worse films, but you’ve never heard of them. This one stands out from the crowd because of the title.
You are not. It’s ridiculous, but that’s a good thing for the kind of b-movie schlock it never really tried not to be.
Granted, the title is basically all the movie has going for it, but it’s a great title.
Romancing the Stone. Great movie. Stupid title. I would have called it “El Corazon” or “The Green Diamond” or something like that.
I think any title that is just a person’s name is a bad title. Unless it is some sort of exotic name that carries connotations and mystery. But just a name like “John Carter,” that doesn’t mean anything except to people who are already fans, is really a waste of a good marketing opportunity.
I’ve seen it. That’s what it’s about.
Office Space
Such a great movie. Such a meh title. They misfired with the marketing too. Bland bland bland. No wonder it flopped at the box office.
Though it does amuse me to think of a milquetoast type walking in expecting a lighthearted office comedy with that nice Jennifer Aniston and discovering something quite a bit darker. (But I think even that person would have appreciated the cathartic demise of the printer)