STRANGE DAYS. This film could have had it all. It came out when the Y2K fears really started to intensify. It showed soldiers patrolling the streets, it borrowed a device from the movie BRAIN STORM that allows one to experience what someone else has experienced previously.
And what’s it concerned with? Some stink ass rapper that the plot insists would have been the most important man of the 21’st century.:rolleyes: Spies Like Us. The main plot seems like something from Clancy, Forsyth, of Flemming: Under [illegal] orders of a rogue general intelligence agents infiltrate the Soviet Union ignorant that their actual mission is launching a missile at the United States. This has international intrigue written all over it. But Aykroyd had to ruin it by trying to make it funny.:mad:
I liked that Strange Days concerned itself with a fairly minor murder mystery. I think a lot of sci-fi films suffer due to Directors feeling they need to have each and every one be an epic battle to save the world/universe/multiverse.
I think you missed the point; it was a spoof/sendup of all the Cold War intrigue movies made in the past decade or so- James Bond, The Fourth Protocol, etc… And really, how bad can it be with Vanessa Angel ca. 1985 in underwear and a fur hat?
My choice for a movie that could have been so much better would be 300. Not because of the movie making or direction, but because of the graphic novel the movie’s based on. While I like Frank Miller, I think that if they wanted to do a Thermopylae movie, then “Gates of Fire” could have made a FAR better movie, with less cartoony stuff, and more character development and grit.
I’m sure you *could *make a great thriller with the same basic plot elements, but Spies Like Us is a straight up comedy spoof. As such, it works well. One of the funnier movies of it’s era, imho.
The recent Time Machine could have been great, except that they just didn’t pay attention to any of the details. Like in the sped-up time sequence, we see a skyscraper being built in seconds of movie-time, and then, in the same span of time, a jet flies its own length. Huh? And the “mathematical” symbols he was scrawling weren’t incomprehensible, as they should have been: Rather, their meaning could be comprehended, but that meaning just didn’t make any sense– They just randomly chose mathematical symbols and splattered them all over the place, when they could have had a college-student intern put together something better.
I hope is doesn’t derail this thread to comment on the Star Wars prequels. As a fan of the franchise, I ended up having to cut my own arm off merely to survive. Pity, too, because the visuals and the action sequences were first rate. The stories… those sucked.
I guess, though I think that has the same problem as saying “Spies Like Us” could be a better movie if it weren’t a spoof. The whole point of “Spies Like Us” was that it was a spoof, and the whole point of “300” was that it was based on Frank Miller’s comic.
I don’t think it makes a lot of sense to say film should have been better, except for the entire premise of the movie.
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow had two basic flaws. Gwyneth Paltrow played her role as far too indecisive; should have gone for that '30s, fast-talking, His Girl Friday kind of vibe. And the action sequences were too frantic and confusing. There were so many killer robots, or whatever, that killing one was like swatting a gnat; no wits or skill involved. (That’s a complaint I have about a lot of modern action movies.) It’s a shame, though; the movie was gorgeous to look at.
What was that dragon movie…Reign of Fire, or something? Yeah. Small ragtag band of humans trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic world, said apocalypse being the return of giant fire-breathing dragons who now rule what’s left of the world?
It takes a truly talented group of people to turn that premise into something so incredibly boring and stupid.
The details didn’t hurt the movie. The terrible plot did. The time traveler saves his love from being murdered, but sees her die from an accident. And he doesn’t think to go back to fix that? Ignoring all the points made in Wells’s book didn’t help much either.
It’s been a bit since I saw the movie, but didn’t he do just that, only to see her die again in a different accident? As I recall, the whole point was that, because her death inspired him to invent the time machine, he could never successfully save her, because if he did, he would never have been inspired to invent the time machine, thus creating a paradox.
I thought it was a pretty neat idea, given the general weakness of the movie overall. I felt the same way about the loophole in Asimov’s Three Laws in the otherwise regrettable I, Robot movie.
Event Horizon. It transpired admirably about halfway through the story, then quickly degenerated. I understand the studio made the director cut out 30 minutes of its initial 130 minute length, and that may account for the growing level of incomprehensibility.
Could be, but I’m not sure there’s a context that could make Sam Neil, naked, covered in Sharpie, and punching his way through a space ship not look ridiculous.
The stories didn’t even have to suck. In the cut scenes of the Ep. 1 there is a scene where Anakin freaks out and murders another kid. Concentrate on what a messed up kid Anakin really was vs what Qui-Gon hoped he would be, cut out all the extraneous throw backs (forwards?) about C3-P0 and make the McGuffin more believable and urgent.
I’m not sure if using a movie that got MST’d is cheating, but I’d nominate Future War. As it is, it’s a remarkable accomplishment: they managed to take a story featuring aliens, dinosaurs, robots, and nuns, and make it… boring. I’m not sure I could do that, no mater how many times I tried.