# Has a Movie ever Fallen Disastrously Short of your Expectations? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 10, 2018, 1:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-movie-ever-fallen-disastrously-short-of-your-expectations/806316 "2018-01-10T13:04:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**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:** [January 10, 2018, 1:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-movie-ever-fallen-disastrously-short-of-your-expectations/806316/1 "2018-01-10T13:04:54Z")
In response to threads like [https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=846068](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=846068) , has there ever been a case of a movie that has severely disappointed you? I’m sure there has been, for one reason or another. Maybe you really liked the book, and hoped the movie would be good. Or you liked the concept. Or you were familiar with the star/director/writer’s style and abilities and had high hopes for the movie. …and they you saw the film. 1.) **Man of la Mancha** – The producers of the Broadway show wanted to film this with much of the original cast. They were certainly available (they had appeared in one revival shortly before the film was released. A partial cast revival appeared after the film’s release). But the original producers lost control of the film and decided to go with a more “bankable” cast, which gave us Peter O’Toole and Sophia Loren, two actors not noted for their singing abilities, in the lead roles. James Coco, as Sancho Panza, arguably sang _too_ well. Most of the rest of the cast (aside from an oddly cast Brian Blessed, another non-singer) were pretty much unknown. Whose idea was this, anyway? 2.) Ralph Bakshi’s **Lord of the Rings**. Ralph Bakshi was the off-kilter non-Disney who could do technically good animation and didn’t mind sex and violence – heck, he’d done the X-rated **Fritz the Cat** , hadn’t he? But we should’ve paid less attention to the sex and violence and more to Robert Crumb’s complaining about how much the cartoon veered from his character. Bakshi had already shown that he could do edgy fantasy with **Wizards** , which had some disturbingly good scenes (mostly rotoscoped from _Alexander Nevsky_ and other films). We shoulda paid attention to al that rotoscoping, because Bakshi did it a LOT in LOTR, to the point where some scenes look like hand-colored postcards. When Bakshi is doing straight-out animation, his stuff shines. Treebeard, Gollum, and the flying Nazgul all look great. But too much of the film looks like a hand-tinted movie. What disappointed me the most was the Balrog. I had hoped for a great animated Blarog which obviously wasn’t even close to anything you could film. What did I get? A rotoscoped Guy I a Balrog Suit. And it wasn’t even creative rotoscoping – it looks like hand-tinted black and white footage of a guy wearing a Balrog Costume with clearly fake wings. 3.) Damned near any adaptation of Heinlein is going to show up here, but two stand out, because they show glimpses of what COULD have been done. Disney’s adaptation of **The Puppet Masters** had really good special effects work and visualization, especially of the “slugs”. They also had potentially great casting, especially with Donald Sutherland as The Old Man and Richard Belzer (who not only played characters who believed in UFOs and Conspiraciers, but believed in them himself – an inspired piece of casting). But they cut out a lot of the science fiction background, re-setting it in the present day (which thus required a lot of rewriting), and their script obviously wasn’t well-thought-out. It’s riddled with stupidities and inconsistencies. I once read a blog by one of the writers, and apparently they had to put up with a lot of studio executive meddling. But still… Of course, the other is **Starship Troopers**. I’d like Verhoeven’s over-the-top work on _Total Recall_ and _Robocop_, but I wasn’t prepared for the complete mismatch between source material and movie that ST was. Not only was the philosophy and tone completely wrong, but they dumbed down the science completely and made the characters’ actions insanely stupid. (the epitome of which has to be the soldiers killing “bug” by standing around them in a circle and firing nonstop bursts into the creatures. No possibility of deaths from friendly fire there!) at times they didn’t seem to pay attention to the indications of the book at ALL. (Not content with making the – obviously if you pay attention to the book – Filipino hero Johnny Rico an unbelievably WASP character, they then have the family living in Buenos Aires. The only suggestion for that in the book was that his mom was there when The Rock dropped. But the film was well-made and the effects were absolutely gorgeous, so you saw What Could Have Been. 3.) **Phantom of the Opera** – I’m not talking about the adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical (see below for a word about that), but a re-release of the 1925 silent film. Back when I first got my VCR, I was appalled at the completely inappropriate music they used for every version of the silent film I’d seen, and considered re-recording it with my own music. One of the chief elements planned to use was the piece _Judas Iscariot_ by Rick Wakeman, from his Criminal Record\* album. It SOUNDS like the work of a psychotic organist (no comments about Wakeman’s own mental state, thank you), starting out fairly conventionally before going off into weird flights of disturbed-sounding musical phrases. So imagine my surprise and delight to learn that Wakeman had written an entire score for the silent film, and that it was coming to the art cinema in Somerville, MA. I had to go. The film opened with an intro in the actual basement of the Paris Opera House, hosted by Christopher Lee. so far, excellent. Then the music started. And, my god, it was _awful_. And not in the good sense of that word. It was later released as a videotape, but I never considered getting it. The music was re-released this past year. It’s gotten good reviews by people who have clearly been driven mad by the music. ---
**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:** [January 10, 2018, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-movie-ever-fallen-disastrously-short-of-your-expectations/806316/2 "2018-01-10T14:30:32Z")
Book adaptions only? I can not say enough about how bad the\*\* Lightning Thief\*\* movie is compared to its book. Hugely, hugely disappointing. And a huge missed opportunity. In terms of non-books, **Phantom Menace** still takes the cake. I re-watched it in August and I can not overstate how much of a snoozefest it is. ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2018, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-movie-ever-fallen-disastrously-short-of-your-expectations/806316/3 "2018-01-10T14:54:03Z")
Star Trek I. After waiting for what seemed to be an eternity for the film to be made, (and then waiting on line for half a day), the movie was a pretty huge let-down. ---
**Author:** ![muldoonthief](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/muldoonthief/32/3188_2.png) [@muldoonthief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/muldoonthief)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2018, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-movie-ever-fallen-disastrously-short-of-your-expectations/806316/4 "2018-01-10T15:07:27Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > Filipino hero Johnny Rico an unbelievably WASP character, they then have the family living in Buenos Aires. The only suggestion for that in the book was that his mom was there when The Rock dropped. But the film was well-made and the effects were absolutely gorgeous, so you saw What Could Have Been. Just a nitpick - the book explicitly stated she was on a trip to Buenos Aires, so that’s the one place on Earth we’re sure his family _didn’t_ live. ---
**Author:** ![Don\_Draper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b2d939/32.png) [@Don\_Draper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Don_Draper)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2018, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-movie-ever-fallen-disastrously-short-of-your-expectations/806316/5 "2018-01-10T15:12:17Z")
**Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas** was a big disappointment. Directed by Terry Gilliam and starring Johnny Depp (when Depp was still bringing his A-game and not phoning it in), it should have been awesome. While I wouldn’t consider it an out-and-out disaster, it just felt…flat. ---
**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:** [January 10, 2018, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-movie-ever-fallen-disastrously-short-of-your-expectations/806316/6 "2018-01-10T15:18:48Z")
> [@muldoonthief](#): > > Just a nitpick - the book explicitly stated she was on a trip to Buenos Aires, so that’s the one place on Earth we’re sure his family _didn’t_ live. What are you nitpicking? I _said_ that the movie got it wrong – they didn’t live there. That, in fact, is exactly what I’m complaining about. Another film that disappointed – I loved _Day of the Jackal_, although I didn’t read the book until after I saw the film (otherwise it would have been one of my candidates for a Film I Was Satisfied With the Adaptation). The first Frederick Forsyth book adaptation I saw after I read the book was **The Odessa File**. I had “filmed” that book in my head over and over, and was anxious to see how the film went. They got a lot of it right (doing the flashbacks in black-and-white “documentary” style was absolutely perfect, and just as I’d imagined it). But they cut out a lot of what I thought essential stuff at the end, and had Voigt’s character acting in some ways unlike the way the book character did. Interesting casting – Derek Jacobi, who’d been Lebel’s assistant in _Day of the Jackal_ is here, too, as the forger. Maximilian Schell (who had been an attorney in _Judgment at Nuremburg_ as the Nazi war criminal Roschmann (a real Nazi war Criminal, buy the way – Forsyth used the names of real Nazis in his book). A year later, Schell would play a Nazi war Criminal on trial in the film adaptation of Robert Shaw’s _The Mann in the Glass Booth_. ---
**Author:** ![Arizona\_Mike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/7cd45c/32.png) [@Arizona\_Mike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arizona_Mike)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2018, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-movie-ever-fallen-disastrously-short-of-your-expectations/806316/7 "2018-01-10T15:29:47Z")
Well, **The Hobbit** trilogy of course. And I had loved the LOTR films. I have an odd affection for **The Puppet Masters**. It had been ripped off endlessly (the producers of one film settled out of court after Heinlein sued them), Star Trek, Outer Limits, etc., and as what was probably the most filmable of his adult novels, I was looking forward to it. I didn’t really mind the updating to the present time, as it was pretty close to the future Heinlein imagined. The cast was good, Donald Sutherland in particular (Although I had always pictured Burl Ives playing his character, for some reason). It would have been interesting to cast Keifer Sutherland as the protagonist. Significant plot elements like the nudity of the characters in the latter half of the novel would never have flown in a Disney film, of course, and would have made the film seem like more of a sex farce, were understandably dropped. There seemed to be a low-budget feel to much of the movie. I think it would have been far better if filmed in B&W as a noir-type film (I think Fritz Lang was mentioned as interested in filming it at one point, which would have been ideal, but I could have been wrong.) But I still liked it, overall, and didn’t feel like it was a complete failure. I think “The Invisibles” episode of The Outer Limits, although a rip-off of the material, was a better version of how it should have been done - dark, paranoiac, B&W. Burt Reynolds was good in it. Completely agree on \*\*Starship Troopers. \*\* It’s like Verhoeven wanted to satirize a source novel (and its political stance) that most of Hollywood and probably a majority of the film-going public had never heard of. ---
**Author:** ![Arizona\_Mike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/7cd45c/32.png) [@Arizona\_Mike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arizona_Mike)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2018, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-movie-ever-fallen-disastrously-short-of-your-expectations/806316/8 "2018-01-10T15:35:38Z")
I enjoyed Peter Straub’s novel **Ghost Story** but thought the film was awful. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2018, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-movie-ever-fallen-disastrously-short-of-your-expectations/806316/9 "2018-01-10T15:38:16Z")
The move adaptation of _Into Thin Air_ was terrible. The movie _Everest_ was much better, although I don’t know if it was based on that book or not. _The Hobbit_ was a disaster. I thought _The Force Awakens_ was about a D-. ---
**Author:** ![xizor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xizor/32/102_2.png) [@xizor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xizor)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2018, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-movie-ever-fallen-disastrously-short-of-your-expectations/806316/10 "2018-01-10T15:47:24Z")
**John Carter**. I love the book series. I was excited that a big budget movie was planned with the special effects expertise to do the film some justice even if the story strayed. What I saw was a mess on every front. Bumbling story, unknown actors, forgettable effects. The movie is not even worth a second viewing. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2018, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-movie-ever-fallen-disastrously-short-of-your-expectations/806316/11 "2018-01-10T15:52:39Z")
I am a big fan of the cartoon _Avatar: The Last Airbender_. I was very excited to see that a big-budget movie version was being made … I am a big fan of King’s _The Dark Tower_. I was very excited to see that a big-budget movie version was being made … … not sure which was the bigger disaster. ☹ To be fair, both had severe warning signs before the movies came out. ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2018, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-movie-ever-fallen-disastrously-short-of-your-expectations/806316/12 "2018-01-10T15:53:08Z")
The Rankin-Bass [version](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/hobbit) of **The Hobbit** , also in 1978. As someone who loved the books in the 60s, this was a huge disappointment. Don’t get me started on Stephen King movie adaptations. ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2018, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-movie-ever-fallen-disastrously-short-of-your-expectations/806316/13 "2018-01-10T15:54:28Z")
Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow. When I saw the trailer, I thought “this could be the greatest film EVER!” The trailer looked like the perfect example of retro-futurism. The sets, the tone, the P40s fighting giant robots, the whole pulp/comic feel. And it was so damn stupid! They screwed up everything _except_ for the look. The plot, the characters, crap. And of course that means no one will ever made a good movie using the same elements. And I liked the film\* RAH’s The Puppet Masters\*. Maybe I need to see it again, but I thought it was very clever. Note: I have never read the book. ---
**Author:** ![Arizona\_Mike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/7cd45c/32.png) [@Arizona\_Mike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arizona_Mike)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2018, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-movie-ever-fallen-disastrously-short-of-your-expectations/806316/14 "2018-01-10T15:59:06Z")
> [@Arizona\_Mike](#): > > Well, **The Hobbit** trilogy of course. And I had loved the LOTR films. > > I have an odd affection for **The Puppet Masters**. It had been ripped off endlessly (the producers of one film settled out of court after Heinlein sued them), Star Trek, Outer Limits, etc., and as what was probably the most filmable of his adult novels, I was looking forward to it. I didn’t really mind the updating to the present time, as it was pretty close to the future Heinlein imagined. The cast was good, Donald Sutherland in particular (Although I had always pictured Burl Ives playing his character, for some reason). It would have been interesting to cast Keifer Sutherland as the protagonist. Significant plot elements like the nudity of the characters in the latter half of the novel would never have flown in a Disney film, of course, and would have made the film seem like more of a sex farce, were understandably dropped. There seemed to be a low-budget feel to much of the movie. I think it would have been far better if filmed in B&W as a noir-type film (I think Fritz Lang was mentioned as interested in filming it at one point, which would have been ideal, but I could have been wrong.) But I still liked it, overall, and didn’t feel like it was a complete failure. > > I think “The Invisibles” episode of The Outer Limits, although a rip-off of the material, was a better version of how it should have been done - dark, paranoiac, B&W. Burt Reynolds was good in it. > > Completely agree on \*\*Starship Troopers. \*\* It’s like Verhoeven wanted to satirize a source novel (and its political stance) that most of Hollywood and probably a majority of the film-going public had never heard of. Brain fart - that was Don Gordon, not Burt Reynolds in “The Invisibles”. Sorry. ---
**Author:** ![control-z](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/eada6e/32.png) [@control-z](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/control-z)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2018, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-movie-ever-fallen-disastrously-short-of-your-expectations/806316/15 "2018-01-10T16:08:21Z")
> [@Don\_Draper](#): > > **Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas** was a big disappointment. Directed by Terry Gilliam and starring Johnny Depp (when Depp was still bringing his A-game and not phoning it in), it should have been awesome. While I wouldn’t consider it an out-and-out disaster, it just felt…flat. I wasn’t familiar with the book but thought it was a good movie, very surreal and amusing. My pick: **Star Wars: The Last Jedi** - There’s a big discussion elsewhere, but I thought it had a stupid main plot with a pointless OJ chase through space, plot holes, forced and too-frequent humor, and it shit on most everything episodes IV through VII had built on. It feels like the later seasons of Lost where they are just making it up as they go along. ---
**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:** [January 10, 2018, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-movie-ever-fallen-disastrously-short-of-your-expectations/806316/16 "2018-01-10T16:19:39Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > The move adaptation of _Into Thin Air_ was terrible. The movie _Everest_ was much better, although I don’t know if it was based on that book or not. _Everest_ was adapted from Beck Weathers’ memoir _Left for Dead: My Journey Home from Everest_, which I haven’t read. I liked the movies. I’ve read _Into Thin Air_ but haven’t seen the movie. ---
**Author:** ![cormac262](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f14d63/32.png) [@cormac262](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cormac262)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2018, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-movie-ever-fallen-disastrously-short-of-your-expectations/806316/17 "2018-01-10T16:20:17Z")
So many movies which I had great expectations for are disappointments. But those that I would consider to be “disastrously” short of my expectations: - “Star Trek - The Motion Picture.” After waiting so long, and all the excitement about a resurrection into a full length feature, such a let down. It seemed all the character dynamics that made TOS so beloved were just ignored/discarded. And then to add new, annoying characters only raised more questions than “freshness” to the story. I can remember being in conscious denial of how bad the movie was as I sat through it - I wanted SO much to like it. - “Conan The Barbarian”. I was a huge Robert E. Howard fan after becoming acquainted with the character from the comic books. So I knew there was this huge wealth of material to draw from to make a whole number of fantastic movies. We also heard that Milius (who wrote the screenplay) was also a big fan of the Howard books. So it seemed this movie had potential. Then…they cast Arnold. - “Game of Death”. Bruce Lee was in the process of filming this movie when the offer for “Enter the Dragon” came along. And shortly after finishing “Dragon”, Lee died. Many years later, the decision was made to incorporate the “Game” footage into a movie so that the world would finally get to see the scenes Lee had shot. But the powers that be decided 1) instead of just a “documentary” type film to present the footage, to make a full length feature, 2) to come up with a whacky story with the finale being the original “Game” footage, 3) hire 3 lame Bruce Lee look-a-likes for the other 80% of the movie, and 4) to actually “edit” clips of the real Bruce Lee into scenes to further the illusion (one such “edit” was a hardcopy photo of the real Lee taped onto a mirror aligned with the look-a-like’s neck !). So to see the original footage, you had to sit through this horrible, cobbled together hack of a movie. ---
**Author:** ![RikWriter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/49beb7/32.png) [@RikWriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RikWriter)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2018, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-movie-ever-fallen-disastrously-short-of-your-expectations/806316/18 "2018-01-10T16:21:58Z")
I’ve been disappointed almost as often as I’ve been pleasantly surprised. Alien 3, Highlander 2, Starship Troopers, Die Hard 2, The Phantom Menace, Predator 2, Wyatt Earp, Dungeons and Dragons…I could go on. ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2018, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-movie-ever-fallen-disastrously-short-of-your-expectations/806316/19 "2018-01-10T16:30:31Z")
Battle Field Earth. Though what the hell I was thinking in the first place I don’t know. ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2018, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-movie-ever-fallen-disastrously-short-of-your-expectations/806316/20 "2018-01-10T16:33:33Z")
> [@beowulff](#): > > Star Trek I. > > After waiting for what seemed to be an eternity for the film to be made, (and then waiting on line for half a day), the movie was a pretty huge let-down. I’d been following along the convoluted path to completed film in Starlog for years. One person working on the film noted that “this film is going to be a giant mindfuck!” So I’m all set to see the very first show on the very first day, but my best friend and fellow Star Trek fan couldn’t be bothered to get out of bed on time, so we made it to the second show ever. As we were standing in line, watching those lucky ones that saw the first show file out, I asked “do they look like they’ve been mindfucked”? Sadly the answer was no, and it was confirmed two-plus hours later after we finished our showing. The film’s oath of celibacy was intact. Fortunately, Wrath of Khan exceeded expectations by light years. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-movie-ever-fallen-disastrously-short-of-your-expectations/806316.md?page=2)