In the final scene of Jaws, as Hooper and Brody are shown swimming to shore from behind, the shot should have gradually zoomed out to reveal a large dorsal fin trailing them, with a final da dum.—then fade to black.
I honestly thought you were gonna say “the camera pans under her bed to show two slippers.”
I want the same little change in:
Green Card
Groundhog Day
Four Weddings and a Funeral
And that little change is to replace Andie McDowell with Julia Roberts, or at least some suitable actress who can, you know, act.
For that matter, Signs should have been more explicit about the “aliens” actually being demons. So many of the “they have interstellar spaceships but they’re naked and they’re weak against WATER?” criticisms of that movie fall apart when you understand that the invaders aren’t literally extraterrestrials.
The end of Brainstorm is a sequence of what death looks like, via the recording of the final brainwaves of a dying person. Except it’s too linear and grid-like, and the ersatz angels don’t help. It should have just been a shimmering, glowing light show spectacle, with a final fade (?) to white.
True Lies should have omitted (or significantly toned down) the scene where Arnie anonymously humiliates his wife (Jamie Lee Curtis) as she tries to seduce an enemy agent. It is the cringe de la cringe and is simply not worthy of the movie as a whole. The whole movie stops as we watch dumbfounded at the misogynistic and cruel tendencies of a (supposedly) good-guy protagonist “getting even” with the woman he loves…his wife. It’s just a horrible scene.
In the penultimate scene of Galaxy Quest, as they exit the wrecked spacecraft and bow to the audience, Jason absolutely should’ve invited Brandon and his friends up on stage.
Their knowledge and willingness to help saved his ass! He faced failure and certain death otherwise; the crew and the Thermians would all be radioactive gas without Brandon et al. And all Jason gives them is a brief salute.
In the original Matrix movie, it made no sense for the humans to be used as batteries by the machines. I thought early on that it would have made more sense for the machines to be using the humans’ brains as parallel processors while using the Matrix virtual reality to distract their conscious minds.
Later on I believe I read somewhere that the Wachowskis and / or the other writers did want to use that plot idea as the reason for the humans’ subjugation, but didn’t think the audience would be knowledgeable enough to understand the concept.
They are all standins for the real people in dorthy’s life. The Scarecrow just happened to be played by an uncle(?) very close to her. I agree it’s strange in light of what they all went through for her to single him out like that, but he was the first to join and she consulted him on every other decision.
Contact. No Mathew!
Or any love interest. Jodie’s character didn’t need one.
In The Dark Knight, I’d change the bombs-on-ferries situation. It should be “If you don’t pull the trigger, then I’ll randomly select one of you to blow up.” Instead, the Joker said “If you don’t pull the trigger then I will blow BOTH up,” which then makes the whole prisoner’s dilemma thing meaningless.
If we’re going to fix that movie, I also want the dueling dialogue between Harry and Voldemort to better match the book. Harry taunting Voldy by calling him “Tom” over and over is important.
Almost all action movies feature a ruthless villain who causes numerous deaths and extensive suffering, and in the end, the villain is just killed off. My favorite ending is in the original “Cape Fear,” where Bowden taunts Cady with “You’re gonna live a long life… in a cage!” Another good example of Just Desserts is the rapist in “The Shawshank Redemption” who never walked again, and ate through a straw for the rest of his life.
I wish more movies could show some imagination when terminating a real bad villain.
Interestingly, you remind me of another that might (now) fit this thread.
In the OG Max Max, the Toecutter, the main villain, gets run over and dies (IIRC) with no ceremony. He’s not even the last person killed by Max.
The last person killed is some toadie, who gets an elaborate “you can cut through the handcuffs in ten minutes or your hand in five” tense death.
They should have been reversed.
just like in real life!..oh, wait
That is an artifact of her and Huck having a thing in Kansas , a plot point which was quietly dropped at some point during pre-production. While he looks like he could be in his early-mid 20’s, Ray Bolger was in fact in his late 30’s, potentially making it rather squicky.
For me the obvious change would be this (Coke to Waldo):
AUNTIE EM: Now Dorothy you just lie there and get your strength back. I’ll bring you some soup a bit later. [leaves]
DOROTHY: While there is indeed no place like home, in some ways I do miss Oz already a little bit. You don’t suppose we’ll ever go back there, do you Toto?
TOTO: Bark! [seems rather focused on the foot of the bed where Dorothy’s feet are under the blanket, then starts scratching at her toes]
DOROTHY: What is it, TOTO?
[she dramatically whips the blanket off the bed, revealing the RUBY SLIPPERS, still on her feet, in all their red technicolor glory. DOROTHY emits a loud gasp as the camera slowly zooms in on the slippers and lingers for a few seconds. Slowly fade to black.]
They didn’t do that (Oz being a real place in the books) because they didn’t think a “sophisticated” late 30’s audience would buy it.
The studio missed out on a huge ‘OCU’ tent-pole franchise, with multiple sequels and spinoffs, because of that. What a lost opportunity.
How about simply stripping the word from the entire film. It doesn’t add enough to be worth the unpleasantness that it brings.
I feel the same way about deleting it from Pulp Fiction but not Blazing Saddles and it bugs me that I can’t justify that hypocrisy. I will note that Tarentino authorized a recent pinball machine that has call outs that retain all of the original expletives from Pulp Fiction except for that one, which indicates to me that he might regret its use in the film.
To me, the usage in Pulp Fiction normalizes the word, but in Blazing Saddles it doesn’t, in part because BS is set in the past and they’re making fun of the racist common clay of the new West.
In PF as well, Tarantino says the word over and over in one short segment, and we all know he directed it and wrote it. It’s as if he put it in just so he could say it a bunch of times without getting in trouble. Even when he has a movie set in the past, it always sounds as if he likes the word, blech.