# That premise deserved a better movie **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 26, 2006, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/that-premise-deserved-a-better-movie/362258 "2006-06-26T20:50:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![The\_Long\_Road](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b5a626/32.png) [@The\_Long\_Road](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Long_Road)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2006, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/that-premise-deserved-a-better-movie/362258/21 "2006-06-27T02:53:50Z")
[QUOTE=Scupper] **Underworld** - Now instead of a decent World of Darkness-inpsired movie, we have to settle for this piece of crap. **Lost In Space** - Dr. Smith is _comic relief_, dipshits! He’s not the _villain_! **Event Horizon** - All kinds of good movies could have been made with this premise. Sadly, none of them were. **Alien vs. Predator** - Any issue of the comic book, or even the plotline from one of the video games, would have made a better movie than this. [/QUOTE] **Event Horizon** really pissed me off. An exploration ship goes to another dimension and reappears years later. From clues and a short bit of log footage, the entire crew went mad. Go from this great premise to a typical kill one person at a time through various fucked up methods bullshit formula movie. Explore wherever the ship went or something, not a goddamn sci-fi horror movie along the lines of Alien where people are killed one by one during the film. It’s been done to death. ---
**Author:** ![Push\_You\_Down](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/push_you_down/32/9095_2.png) [@Push\_You\_Down](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Push_You_Down)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2006, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/that-premise-deserved-a-better-movie/362258/22 "2006-06-27T03:12:43Z")
[QUOTE=Diceman] But somewhere in the movie-making process, something went horribly awry. Somehow, they ended up making a movie about teens at a rave party which just happened to be held in a zombie-infested house. I’m guessing that the writers were infected with the zombie virus and had to be put down, and the only thing the producers had left to help them was _The Big Book of Horror Movie Cliches_. [/QUOTE] oh no my friend… The rave is on an island…in Puget Sound…where an ‘Age of Exlporation’ era SPAINARD mad scientist/black magician has been making zombies for centuries… the “House” of “House of the Dead” barely factors into it… ---
**Author:** ![Ferret\_Herder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e47774/32.png) [@Ferret\_Herder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferret_Herder)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2006, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/that-premise-deserved-a-better-movie/362258/23 "2006-06-27T03:33:53Z")
[QUOTE=The Long Road] **Event Horizon** really pissed me off. An exploration ship goes to another dimension and reappears years later. From clues and a short bit of log footage, the entire crew went mad. Go from this great premise to a typical kill one person at a time through various fucked up methods bullshit formula movie. Explore wherever the ship went or something, not a goddamn sci-fi horror movie along the lines of Alien where people are killed one by one during the film. It’s been done to death. [/QUOTE] Oh god, yes. My husband and I called his sci-fi-loving sister when we got home after seeing this opening night, trying to call her in case she was going to a late show. We were too late, but at least we got someone to bitch to about it. It was like halfway through the script, the writer died, and a producer said “Hey, I just saw Hellraiser again last weekend, I know how to finish this.” (Neill’s makeup really sucked when he was in Hellraiser mode, which was a pity considering how high-quality the SFX were earlier in the film.) I hated it so much because it had so much promise, then chucked it all out the window. ---
**Author:** ![Scissorjack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c67d28/32.png) [@Scissorjack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scissorjack)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2006, 3:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/that-premise-deserved-a-better-movie/362258/24 "2006-06-27T03:47:57Z")
[QUOTE=The Long Road] **Event Horizon** really pissed me off. An exploration ship goes to another dimension and reappears years later. From clues and a short bit of log footage, the entire crew went mad. [/QUOTE] Yeah, what a waste that was: a spaceship that’s been on a dimensional trip to hell by mistake and returned possessed by actual demons is a good SF/horror idea - crew all tooled up to fight alien horrors but powerless in the face of pure evil, dawning realisation that All Is Not As It Seems - you could even have Old Nick offer a robot crew member a soul {since that’s what all robot crew members seem to want} in exchange for the souls of the others. Shit, it’s a movie about a friggin’ _haunted spaceship_ - how hard could it be to screw that idea up? ---
**Author:** ![Omniscient](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/omniscient/32/3290_2.png) [@Omniscient](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omniscient)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2006, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/that-premise-deserved-a-better-movie/362258/25 "2006-06-27T03:55:40Z")
[QUOTE=LiveOnAPlane] Armageddon and ??what was that other one called?? The one with Tea Leone. You’ve got a classic premise dealing with all the techno-scientific stuff, the end of the world possibility, the political and social upheavals, and what do you wind up with? Urgh. [/QUOTE] The other one was _Deep Impact_. I don’t quite get why everyone hates on _Armageddon_ so much. It’s fashionable to bash it, and it’s by no means in the pantheon of great film making, but for a Michael Bay summer SFX blockbuster it delivered the goods. Personally, a premise that I’m itching to have done right is the Camelot/King Arthur mythos. So far we’ve have the recent Clive Owen/Kiera Knightly vehicle which was mildly entertaining and the utterly forgettable _First Knight_ as well as some other versions over the years but none that truly capture what I see as the potential of a good swords and armor testosterone fest. Something reaching the scope and quality of _Braveheart_. _Beowulf_ also might fit the bill, though it’s currently in production and it’s unclear if I should be optimistic or not. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Long\_Road](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b5a626/32.png) [@The\_Long\_Road](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Long_Road)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2006, 4:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/that-premise-deserved-a-better-movie/362258/26 "2006-06-27T04:00:02Z")
[QUOTE=Case Sensitive] Yeah, what a waste that was: a spaceship that’s been on a dimensional trip to hell by mistake and returned possessed by actual demons is a good SF/horror idea - crew all tooled up to fight alien horrors but powerless in the face of pure evil, dawning realisation that All Is Not As It Seems - you could even have Old Nick offer a robot crew member a soul {since that’s what all robot crew members seem to want} in exchange for the souls of the others. Shit, it’s a movie about a friggin’ _haunted spaceship_ - how hard could it be to screw that idea up? [/QUOTE] Read the IMDB trivia section about the movie. It had a lot of editing and reshooting done to it. Makes sense that it sucked after reading that. ---
**Author:** ![NDP](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ndp/32/55_2.png) [@NDP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NDP)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2006, 5:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/that-premise-deserved-a-better-movie/362258/27 "2006-06-27T05:50:03Z")
[QUOTE=Ferret Herder] … (Neill’s makeup really sucked when he was in Hellraiser mode, which was a pity considering how high-quality the SFX were earlier in the film.) … [/QUOTE] [OT]True. He looked like a giant 7-11 hot dog.[/OT] ---
**Author:** ![Capa84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8edcca/32.png) [@Capa84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capa84)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2006, 6:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/that-premise-deserved-a-better-movie/362258/28 "2006-06-27T06:54:08Z")
Marvel’s The Punisher has a great story line and origin…but 2 movies have managed to screw it up badly. ---
**Author:** ![EllisDee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ellisdee/32/4531_2.png) [@EllisDee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EllisDee)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2006, 6:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/that-premise-deserved-a-better-movie/362258/29 "2006-06-27T06:55:29Z")
[QUOTE=Omniscient] Personally, a premise that I’m itching to have done right is the Camelot/King Arthur mythos. [/QUOTE] It would be tough to improve upon [Excalibur](http://imdb.com/title/tt0082348/), which is probably why we haven’t seen an attempt to make a movie faithful to the material in the past 25 years. ---
**Author:** ![ianzin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/ed655f/32.png) [@ianzin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ianzin)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2006, 6:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/that-premise-deserved-a-better-movie/362258/30 "2006-06-27T06:56:54Z")
A live action rendering of _Thunderbirds_. Could have been _so_ much fun. Wasn’t. Degenerated into ‘Let’s recycle Spy Kids’. A live action rendering of _The Fantastic Four_. Could have been _so_ much fun. Wasn’t. Degenerated into… well, aimless rubbish with (Human Torch excepted) very unspecial FX. ---
**Author:** ![Rodgers01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b19c9b/32.png) [@Rodgers01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rodgers01)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2006, 7:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/that-premise-deserved-a-better-movie/362258/31 "2006-06-27T07:05:51Z")
**Flatliners** – What a great premise for a movie: what do people see when they go through a few seconds of medically induced death on an operating table before being resuscitated? The idea was wasted on a shlocky, hacky movie. I think this was what started my hatred of director Joel Shumacher. The guy has a talent of getting kinda interesting ideas and ruining them (the Batman series, A Time To Kill, 8MM, and Falling Down come to mind). ---
**Author:** ![aldiboronti](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9fc348/32.png) [@aldiboronti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aldiboronti)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2006, 10:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/that-premise-deserved-a-better-movie/362258/32 "2006-06-27T10:17:10Z")
I toyed with the idea of starting a sister thread: **That movie deserved a better premise** Then I figured, no, better not swamp the SDMB servers. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Happy\_Clam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3bc359/32.png) [@Happy\_Clam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Happy_Clam)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2006, 1:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/that-premise-deserved-a-better-movie/362258/33 "2006-06-27T13:31:32Z")
[QUOTE=Push You Down] Mr and Mrs. Smith could have been awesome… I don’t know if the original book is better. The multiple screenwriters show poorly in this. Its bizarre to me that one of the google ads is for Nightwatch, yet no one has yet mentioned it. …Y’know I’d say Nightwatch fits as well. The forces of good and evil keeps tabs on each other and try to keep humans out of it. [/QUOTE] I _liked_ Nightwatch. It was odd, surreal, illogical and had plot holes you could stick your arm through, but there was just something about it: maybe the amazing cinematoraphy (like that long falling shot with the nut from the plane) or the clever use of subtitles. Yeah, it could have used a couple more script runs, but I still enjoyed it. Yeah, and having a fat slob without any particular power as the hero was cool, too. ---
**Author:** ![UncleRojelio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/unclerojelio/32/3160_2.png) [@UncleRojelio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UncleRojelio)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2006, 1:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/that-premise-deserved-a-better-movie/362258/34 "2006-06-27T13:41:58Z")
_The Forgotten_ – Great premise. Kid disappears and every trace that the kid ever existed disappears too. Great mystery, very compelling and terrifing to every parent. What do we end up with? The aliens did it. 😕 WTF? ---
**Author:** ![cactus\_waltz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/74df32/32.png) [@cactus\_waltz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cactus_waltz)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2006, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/that-premise-deserved-a-better-movie/362258/35 "2006-06-27T13:44:30Z")
Time machine, the recent movie rendition of the classic Wells novel, started off fairly interesting but turned exponentially less interesting and intelligent and was actually pretty annoying at the end. But the element of time travel alone opens up for so many interesting possibilities that I’d want to see somebody put a lot of thought into the movie and make it better. ---
**Author:** ![badbadrubberpiggy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/57b2e6/32.png) [@badbadrubberpiggy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/badbadrubberpiggy)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2006, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/that-premise-deserved-a-better-movie/362258/36 "2006-06-27T13:45:49Z")
[QUOTE=Eleanor of Aquitaine] I thought that \*\*Windtalkers \*\*had a fascinating subject for a movie - the Navaho code talkers during WWII. I was so disappointed to find it was a mediocre war movie focused on Nicolas Cage’s angst and having very little to do with code talkers. [/QUOTE] I totally agree. I watched this w/ my father when it came out on DVD, and we were, for some odd reason, expecting it to be about windtalkers. It is, in fact, why we rented it in the first place. Very disappointing, and very forgettable. ---
**Author:** ![cactus\_waltz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/74df32/32.png) [@cactus\_waltz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cactus_waltz)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2006, 1:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/that-premise-deserved-a-better-movie/362258/37 "2006-06-27T13:50:31Z")
[QUOTE=UncleRojelio] _The Forgotten_ – Great premise. Kid disappears and every trace that the kid ever existed disappears too. Great mystery, very compelling and terrifing to every parent. What do we end up with? The aliens did it. 😕 WTF? [/QUOTE] Yes. There are a couple of images in that movie that still hit me sometimes, namely the car crash and seeing tjat person unexpectedly fly up into the horisont. Both surprising and horrifying. The latter was of course part of the horrible alien wrap-up, but I think I oculd’ve accepted it if wasn’t, you know, such lazy writing and so unsatisfying in comparison to the mystery that the first half of the movie was. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2006, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/that-premise-deserved-a-better-movie/362258/38 "2006-06-27T13:56:10Z")
[QUOTE=MaxTheVool] A few years back, there was **Sphere** , which featured both an awesome premise (a spaceship is found buried in millenia-old rock at the bottom of the ocean, and when explored, it appears to come from earth’s future) and a fantastic cast, yet blew goats. [/QUOTE] To be fair, we can’t say the storyline diverged much from Crichton’s novel. ---
**Author:** ![FriarTed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/friarted/32/1052_2.png) [@FriarTed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriarTed)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2006, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/that-premise-deserved-a-better-movie/362258/39 "2006-06-27T13:57:32Z")
[QUOTE=RikWriter] Actually, I thought it WAS great. One of my favorite movies. [/QUOTE] Not one of my faves, but I agree that Shadow of the Vampire was indeed great. ---
**Author:** ![Lord\_Ashtar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ea924/32.png) [@Lord\_Ashtar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lord_Ashtar)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2006, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/that-premise-deserved-a-better-movie/362258/40 "2006-06-27T14:00:28Z")
My vote is for The House on Haunted Hill. It started off interesting enough, with an eccentric rich guy offering a group of people $1,000,000 each to stay in a haunted house overnight. They later find out that it used to be an insane assylum and they all went mad and killed each other. There was also a psycho doctor who did all kinds of unnecessary surgery. Could’ve been a decent horror flick, right? Wrong. They completely cop out at the end and have the souls of the dead people in this big black inky ghost thing. Sigh…so much wasted potential. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/that-premise-deserved-a-better-movie/362258.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/that-premise-deserved-a-better-movie/362258.md?page=3)