Disapointments in Great Movies
 

We've all had them, a game is going great until you hit an unimaginative something or other, or a stale plot hook. In this thread that's totally not stolen from the one in the video games forum, tell us what yours are.

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Dr. Stronglove or the long subtitle. I rented it last week and, while it was funny, wasn't as good as I thought it would be. Maybe the praise I've heard got my expectation too high. Maybe it'd be better if I were older than 3 when the Berlin Wall fell.

I would also suggest that Dr. Strangelove was not as good for you possibly because you haven't seen many of the films that it lampoons either.


Disappointment? Take your pick of Tom Clancy adaptations made after The Hunt for Red October and Patriot Games.

The Matrix sequels.

Seriously. I liked'em fine, but you know they will win this thread.

That is, if the Star Wars prequels don't beat them out. (NO FLAMING YOU GUYS. KEEP IT CIVIL!)

The Wandering God

Ballsy move, bashing Star Wars in an Internet forum

*george lucas voice*
"but they were really well written, and the character development was.....
*slap*

Talking about movie dissapointements though,
Every movie about a comic book character ever.
*Uwe Bohl you are a dead man

Based on the criterion outlined the Matrix movies, I think, win.

Cause, the first one was really amazingly classic, but then you got to the second one and it was so painfully almost-great, and then the third one just blew.

Whereas the Star Wars prequels just sucked from the word go. I mean come on, even the scroll-text at the start was shitty, you had no right being disappointed in anything that came after that. I mean yeah they came with the baggage of being connected to the original Star Wars movies, which were totally great (most annoying part of any online conversation about the Star Wars movies - when that one inevitable jackass turns up to pronounce that who cares that the prequels sucked because really the original Star Wars movies were so totally awful to begin with anyway), but addressing them on their own merits as a discrete series, I really don't see anyone having any business getting their interest up high enough for any kind of disappointment to register.

Also the X-Men movies were great up until I realize that they weren't actually making X-Men movies, just HOLY FUCK IT'S FUCKIN' WOLVERINE FUCKIN' FUCK KIDS LOOK ITS FUCKIN' WOLVERINE! (oh and some other people sort of over in the background I guess) movies.

Okay that's a lie, I thought they sucked right from the get-go. I just wanted an excuse to bitch about the X-Men movies.

You know what was a disappointment? Was Young Guns II. It was good but then Billy's gang never manages to kick any kind of ass, and then they all just get run down like jerks and killed. I mean come on, they totally owed you a blood-drenched blaze of glory somewhere in there.

Gandalf's transformation in LOtR:The Two Towers. In the books, Gandalf & the Balrog fall deep into ancient places deep within the mountain. Places with some ancient mystic import. Plus, the Lord of the Eagles takes him to a special place to heal afterwards.

Movie version? Extra life.

I thought this part of the trilogy was certainly the weakest, and least reflective of the books. Liked most of the rest however...

SWB
- As for Dr. Strangeglove. Yeah, it isn't necessarily on par with some of today's stuff, but for its day it was well ahead of the curve. The fact that you find any of it funny, is a testiment to how far ahead of its time the movie was. I mean, I think the Honeymooners was considered prime comedy at the time.

Doctor Strangelove isn't too bad, but I'm not sure it's one of Peter Sellers' best vehicles. For that, I'd go to the first two or three Pink Panther films, or maybe (once I get to see it) Being There. Anything Goons is also genius, but is off-topic 'cos most of the Goons is from radio.

Ahem: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and the entire horribly botched character of Zaphod "HUMMA KAVUUUULAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!eleventy!!!!" Beeblebrox. It's a pity, 'cos I lurved Mos Def, Bill Nighy and Alan Rickman in that film. Even John Malkovich wsn't so bad in it; I just can't stand Sam (what is it?) Rockwell and Zooey Deschanel (and to a lesser extent, that wotsisface who played Arthur, can't remember his name because he didn't bring much to the role) in that film.

To be fair to Arthur, he couldn't bring much to the role because, well, there wasn't much there.

Arthur really does just sit there and the story just kind of happens around him.

And you do know that Malkovich's character was written by Douglas for the movie, right?

Overall though, I agree with your points.

The Wandering God

I think I'd heard about DNA writing Mr. Malkovich's character; problem is, the script wasn't finished, and then it got tinkered around with Zarquon-only-knows how much by this Kirkpatrick fella, so it ends up that his character, while rather good, sort of comes out of nowhere and ends in nowhere. Even John Malkovich's powerful acting-mojo can't save that kind of role.

And somebody--I dunno who, so I'm not about to point fingers (**coffcoffKirkpatrickcoff**)--more or less destroyed the very core of Zaplhod's character, and to a lesser extent Trillian's. A Zaphod with rabid fits of rage and jealousy (see when his second head threatens Arthur) is simply not Zaphod, for his coolness is gone.

All of Hitchhiker's Guide failed. Whoever fiddled with the script after Adams died took away all of the unique flatness of the characters and incomprehensibleness of the plot and left them merely flat and incomprehensible. The BBC series is better in too many ways to count, so buy it if you can.

And I felt like all of the Two Towers was a flop. When someone takes a two sentence occurance in a book and blows it up to half an hour in a movie, something is horribly, horribly wrong. Warg attack, I'm looking at you.