I didn’t know that, that’s interesting. I used to read TMHT (the ninja was replaced with hero in the UK) comics when I was a kid but they were the more kid friendly ones from the late 80s, early 90s.
Anyway, back to bad movie titles… What about…
Bad Lieutenant: Port of call New Orleans
Awful.
Just one more on that point: in the comic the container of goop that causes Matt Murdock’s blindness and hypersensitivity rolls into the sewers and causes their mutation.
Also, the blind sensei of Davedevil and Electra is called Stick. The rat (who belonged to Stick) who also escapes into the sewers, mutates and becomes the turtles’ sensei, is called Splinter.
There’s a lot of stuff like that.
Anyway - back to film titles.
I think it’s kinda lazy to name a movie after a place just because it’s set there. Like Philadelphia, Kansas City, Fargo, etc.
My mother translated from Russian to English, Czech and Slovak, as well as consulted with people translating from English to Russian. It is difficult, because there is a big cultural divide, and many things you think you could just say more or less as they are written, you can’t, because they will be understood very differently.
For example, any word like “fate,” or “destiny,” may need added context to be understood correctly by the Russian reader, or by the English reader of a text originally in Russian (especially an American reader) because the Russian conceptions of these things is highly unlike US ideas.
First of all, from English to Russian, there are two Russian words that both mean “fate,” and you have to pick the right one. Then once you do, you have to make sure that if a US source implies something about chance or randomness, it is made explicit. From Russian to English, you have to make explicit beliefs a character (fiction) holds, or an author (non-fiction) expects an audience to hold.
My mother also translated Czech and Slovak (from and to), as well as writing original articles in both languages. She spent a lot of time in both countries, which was easier even during communism than was spending time in Russia. Even after communism, but before 9/11, you could practically fly into Prague on a whim, but Moscow was still hard to access.
So knowing Russian culture was harder. My mother kept up correspondence with over a dozen friends in Russia, and a few in Georgia, Estonia, and Ukraine (in Russian), and read a lot of magazines and newspapers from Russia.
But even with the difficulty of knowing Russian culture in the first place, she said Czech and Slovak were much easier, and especially Czech, because both regions (speaking about Czechoslovakia at the time) were westernized, the Czech are moreso-- very Germanic, and worldly, while Slovakia was very Catholic, but not like Poland-- more like western Catholic countries.
Slovaks were perfectly happy to give lip service to whatever the government expected about religion, then go to church on Sunday. Russians never mastered that.
The original actually had better storylines than the books it parodied. Kinda like how Onion articles are often better-written than articles in regular newspapers.
This is before Archie comics took over TMNT, and made them cute.
ETA: Just posted and saw how long this is. If mods spin it off, I won’t complain, but I’d rather it stay here if it’s OK. If it does get spun off. Please at least leave the short comment about TMNT here.
Though Fargo mostly takes place in Minneapolis and Brainerd.
Preachin’ to the choir, here. I’ve lived in Czechoslovakia, Russia, and Latvia. I’ve also spent time in Finland, Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, Belarus, Ukraine, and Georgia.
I started working as a translator (English to German and Russian) while an undergrad. It took me two years of high school, four years of university, and three years of grad school at Middlebury College (with ten months in Moscow) to become proficient enough to land a job as a professional translator (Russian to English).
Since then, I’ve had to translate a lot of works on different topics in Russian. and occasional items in Czech and Ukrainian. They took a lot of effort, but I was able to produce passable texts that withstood editing by native speakers.
You never stop learning a language, and there’s always room for improvement, even after 50 years.
PS: I also taught English as a Foreign Language for many years, and I had to take a teachers’ training course to do it well.
I nominate Steal this Movie.
As long as we’re discussing translations, I’ll note that (allegedly) the Mandarin version of The Poseidon Adventure translates to The Exciting Story of the Terrible Journy of the Ship Calle “The Sea God”
My father spoke flawless Russian. The police even kicked him out of a hard currency store once because they did not believe he was American of all things, and were sure he was Russian, and had maybe stolen the dollars he had. I guess he had forgotten his passport that day.
It was one of his proudest moments.
He spent two years in grad school in Leningrad, and because he was ahead in school, and had a late fall birthday, he started college at 16, so that’s when he began studying Russian.
But he also got the idea to see a speech therapist in Russia who approached his accent like a speech impediment. He was like a child missing some of his sounds, or saying some “off,” and she used techniques similar to what she used with children to eliminate his American accent.
When he studied Czech in his 40s, he spoke it with a Russian accent. My mother told him he’d better try to learn to speak it with an American accent.
So far, it looks like there are three main factors that make a bad movie title:
-A title that has nothing to do with the movie.
-A title that is too long and/or complicated.
-A title that contains a name that means nothing to the typical moviegoer.
Good, but I would add these:
-Puns
-Films that don’t deliver on their titles
-Movies that diverge drastically from source material, but keep the title
For example, in the second case, a lot of people were very disappointed by Spike Lee’s Summer of Sam, because it wasn’t in any way about the Son of Sam case. Personally, I liked it, but I was familiar enough with Lee in the first place, and had also read some reviews, that I went in with different expectations, but I did think it wasn’t a great title.
For the third, I offer The Westing Game, which was eventually changed to Get a Clue. it is so fundmentally different from its (Newbery winning) source material that it seems the final insult to retain the title, and a sort of “bait & switch” to fans of the book. The negative reactions of people familiar with the book prompted the title change.
Tom Poston movie from 1962: Zotz! 
The candy was better.
@JohnnyEcks is… is that YOU, from Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever ?!
Re: Leonard, Part 6:
Why did you do that to me? I just HAD to google it. It’s a limp ad for Ponderosa Steakhouse, followed up with YouTube sadistically offering me Siskel & Ebert’s eviscerating review of “(one of) the worst movies of the year”.
Roger’s deadpan “HOW hilarious. How highly, highly humorous.” was more entertaining than Leonard Parts 1-6.
I think that is a great title for that particular film (one of my favorites).
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Geez, people, spoilers…!
Mr. Rilch was on the crew of that. One of his first gigs!
I saw the title Because of Winn-Dixie over the weekend. It seemed stupid to me, but I don’t know anything about the movie.
Malcolm McDowell’s first starring role was in a movie named “If…”
IF you haven’t seen it or look it up, do you have any idea of what the movie is about?
Small consolation, but at least the sequel’s title song (“O Lucky Man!”) starts with the word “If”…