Watchmen – despite the apparent impossibility of condensing it all into a single movie, the trailers looked impressive. I just had to see how it looked. I don’t think I was disappointed.
Winter’s Tale, my favorite novel. I should have known it would be just about impossible to turn this long hypnotic poem of a book into a film.
…and indeed, the movie sucked on toast!
I think Prometheus is definitely the most disappointing movie I’ve ever seen. And the one I was most excited about.
Remember when we were expecting Matrix Reloaded to blow our collective minds?
Yeah.
Probably Chicken Run. As soon as I saw the first trailer and the words “Aardman Animation,” I immediately thought “Nick Park!” and had to see it.
And it was worth it. Aardman still hasn’t made a movie that could be rated below “very good.”
Return of the Jedi.
I loved it and so did my brother. I remember we tried to imagine what was going to happen based on what we remembered from The Empire Strikes Back when we were in the garage, waiting to go to the cinema.
“The Black Hole.” Good SF movies were extremely rare when it came out, and I was DESPERATE for a good SF movie when it came out. And the trailers looked pretty good. I knew it was Disney, but maybe Disney had picked up some pointers from Star Wars which had debuted a year or two earlier. I wanted to believe.
I went to the theater and was blown away by the opening scene. Simple, but powerful, a wireframe animation of a vortex with the camera at first lingering on the edge of the vortex but gradually being pulled into while sweeping orchestral music swelled in the background. This was it! Disney was gonna do it right!
Then the movie started. The cheesy dialogue. The shallow stock characters. The cutesy robots. Max von Sydow as Ahab The Mad Scientist. It was such a crusher. More Disney crap, wrapped up to look like good SF, but it was feeblebunny all the way.
Well Disney, you got me there, I paid to see a movie in the theater. But you never got me again. I didn’t trust John Carter of Mars to be good, and I don’t trust the new Star Wars movie to be good. There would have to be a preponderance of evidence to overcome my deep-seated disbelief about Disney films. Hope you enjoyed that five bucks I spent way back then.
Maximilian Schell, not Max von Sydow. Gotta keep your European Movie Star Max’s straight.
It wasn’t just that – it had a helluva cast, too. Besides Max, there was Roddy MacDowell, Ernest Borgnine, Anthony Perkins, and Yvette Mimieux (from The Time Machine!!!) Disney also had its own computer-controlled camera system, ACES, that was supposed to be really good. And some of the production sketches (like the original version of V.I.N.C.E.N.T.) looked awesome.
But, of course, they replaced high-tech VINCENT with Goofy-eyed VINCENT, and had a companion robot with a Texas drawl (voiced by Slim Pickens). The science was abysmal, the plot made no sense at all, and the ending was a quasi-mystical thing that wanted to be the Star Gate from 2001. Very disappointing, I agree.
2001 A Space Odyssey, which I had been anticipating ever since the Times Magazine’s article on Clarke in 1966. Read the reviews, read the Life Magazine feature, convinced a teacher to set up a class trip to see it - and it was even better than anticipated.
Biggest disappointment was Phantom Menace which we saw before its suckitude was well known.
The Phantom Menace, without question. And the first time I saw it I thought it was pretty cool. But in retrospect, it’s a below average movie with a couple pretty cool, gimmicky scenes.
I was really anticipating the Lord of the Rings movies, and they did not disappoint. I loved them all.
I looked forward eagerly to the Coen Brothers’ remake of The Ladykillers. I loved the original Ealing Studios movie, and I loved almost every Coen Brothers movie. Also, the story of a crime gone pear-shaped is one of the Coen Brothers’ specialties. It just couldn’t fail! However, the movie pretty much bit. There were a few laugh-worthy scenes, but somehow it just didn’t work.
Therefore I was leery of their remake of True Grit. However, I loved this remake. Their Maddie Ross and LeBoeuf pretty much erased the memory of the original, irritating characters. Loved the bear man, too!
The only movie I can recall anticipating at all is The Martian, and not just because it’s the last movie I saw. I read the book and enjoyed it, and at the same time they announced it would be a movie this Fall. I started looking forward to the release. I enjoyed it.
Every other movie I’ve seen has been a last minute decision on the day we decided to go.
Ender’s Game, at least when it was first announced. Orson Scott Card’s homophobic rants somewhat tarnished the sheen. Still, the movie wound up being better than expected, though not as good as it could have been.
Also, Lord of the Rings. What an amazing achievement.
Another fan who was terribly let down by the first Star Trek movie.
Another was a re-release of Lawrence of Arabia at a big-screen theater. It was magnificent!
The first Star Trek movie for me, too. I had just seen Star Wars for the first time and was blown away with the strides that had been made in special effects. I firmly believed that Star Trek would blow Star Wars out of the water. Boy was I wrong. It was limp and tired and it made me sad. Agree, though, the Wrath of Khan was everything I’d hope a Star Trek movie would be.
The Mist - Is 25+ years long enough to wait for a movie? I was blown away, great fun, didn’t even mind the different ending. The B&W DVD version is just as fun.
Return Of The King- I had never read the books and had no idea what the story was about. After seeing FOTR I was immediately hooked and I was even more blown away by TTT. The impending doom at helm’s deep was captured perfectly as well as the physicality of men fighting monsters.
I was so looking forward to ROTK and avoided spoilers for that entire year leading up to it. I had no idea how it was going to end.
Then the ghost army showed up and ruined everything. “Really? That was really in the book? An army of ghosts? How does a ghost hold a sword? Is it a ghost sword or a real sword?”
The rest of the movie was great, but the ghost army was just stupid.
Jurassic Park. My son was 8 at the time and a huge dinosaur fan. We were both blown away by it.
Independence Day
Was NOT disappointed. It was everything I wanted.
While I agree with this I must admit I had shivers up and down my spine as the bridge of the Enterprise started to fill with familiar faces. When Spock finally came on board I was on pins and needles; it was momentous.