For the purpose of this thread, I am retiring “Mother, May I Sleep With Danger?” and sticking it in the WTF Movie Title Hall Of Fame.
Movie titles only (tv movies included).
I was flicking through the free movies list this morning and came across “20.0 Megaquake” and I have to ask, “What the FF is a 20.0 quake??” The largest quake to date is a 9.5 on the Richter Scale of Magnitude, btw Richter scale - Wikipedia. Up until this morning I thought the dumbest movie title possible was “End Of The World-Part II”, but “20.0 Megaquake” is certainly up there.
You are correct. A magnitude 15 earthquake would end all life on earth and mostly wreck the whole planet. A magnitude 20 earthquake would probably pulverize the planet. Remember, it is a logarithmic scale so ten is waaaay more powerful than nine.
BTW, since we are dealing with movie titles alone, and not the movies themselves, I will not bring up the fact that the movie is so bad that having it star Stephen Baldwin cannot make it any worse. Nope.
Not gonna bring that up at all.
At least with those two, the titles make you want to at least check the synopsis to see what’s happening, whereas with mine the only thing going through your mind is “FFS, next!”
I think long dada-esqe titles like To Wong Fu.. and The Assassination of Jesse James.. (And going outside of the OP, “The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat…”) are the worst offenders. Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri would probably be fine except for the affectation of the one word not capitalized. Dr Strangelove… is OK because it was the 60s.
I think Faster, Pussycat! kill! Kill! is great. You know what you’re getting,
Most bad titles (and they are legion) are only bad in context of the film. Sharknado, I Dismember Mama, 20.0 Megaquake, Snakes On A Plane give you an idea of what you’re geting. The film may suck, but you were warned!
Ones that are bad titles are ones that give you not idea. Moon, Ghost, Room, Cocoon - you can tell nothing from those one word titles. Cocoon especially, as there were two concurrent trailers that focused on different parts of the film, and they didn’t even look like the same genre, let alone the same film.
That’s a great example! Are the names supposed to mean something to the audience? Why are they such weird names? And why do we care? It’s too clever by half.
Now consider
Who is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me?
It’s long, one could rightly ask “is Harry Kellerman supposed to be someone?” but I think it works, because we’ll find out together with the protagonist.
But long titles play havoc with small theaters that don’t have a lot of marquee letters. Leading to weird substitutions. Or as it might say, “W3IRD SUBZ1TUT10NS.”
