Biggest movie Disappointments

[paranoid marvin]

I remember being disappointed seeing MotU first time around. I think it was because the action mainly wasn't in Eternia. But having watched again, I think it's quite good fun.

Phantom Menace is by far and away the biggest disappointment I have ever felt after leaving the cinema. How could someone who created SW, ESB and RotJ have made that? Everything about the movie is awful from dialogue to script writing to acting. Actually the 'pod race' is awesome, but doesn't feel like part of a Star Wars movie. Imagine if Luke and Obi Wan had decided to go sand speeder racing to raise money for their trip to Alderaan? Oh, and Darth Maul was easily the best thing in the movie, so of course they killed him off.

I actually don't mind the sequels, and apart from a few silly bits I find them quite enjoyable.

The other movie that I didn't find disappointing so much as just plain awful was Highlander II. Take one of the best science fiction movies of all time, then complete dismiss it with a bunch of 'quickening' nonsense. I only watched it years later, and already knew it was garbage, so there was zero disappointment when this was confirmed.

 

[BAYLOR]

The Final Countdown 1980 with Kirk Douglas and Martin Sheen . If any film can be said to be a disappointment ,this one is it. In the story , the Modern Carrier USS Nimitz is sent back in time to Pearl Harbor just before the attack by Japan But what happens ? not enough to make this worth even watching . Just as Nimitz is getting ready to engage the Japnese , The Time Warp sends them back their own time . They didn't prevent the attack. What a cop out and waste of what could have been an interesting movie story premise .

 

[THX1138]

I agree. The Final Countdown was not worth my time or money. Not then and ironically, not now!

 

[Swank]

Jackman was the "romantic leading man" version of Wolverine. Dougray Scott was supposed to be cast but had to skip it due to Mission Impossible 2 reshoots so they had already planned to use someone different from the comic

I don't think either actor would have been wrong the role. But the problem was the way those characters were written.

Logan is about the most blasé superhero around. He is old, was active as a cold war agent, has experienced more pain than almost anyone and has seen almost everything. Having him shown as confused or emotional is just weird. But just like the live action Ghost in the Shell, Hollywood hates adult professionals - preferring man-children that have to "figure things out". All of the Wolverine movies are origin stories - he never grows up.

Same with all of these characters. Edward Norton's Banner was probably the closest to the kind of adult these stories are supposed to be about.

 

[Swank]

The Final Countdown 1980 with Kirk Douglas and Martin Sheen . If any film can be said to be a disappointment ,this one is it. In the story , the Modern Carrier USS Nimitz is sent back in time to Pearl Harbor just before the attack by Japan But what happens ? not enough to make this worth even watching . Just as Nimitz is getting ready to engage the Japnese , The Time Warp sends them back their own time . They didn't prevent the attack. What a cop out and waste of what could have been an interesting movie story premise .

That was the whole point - they decided to leave rather than alter world history by keeping the US out of the war.

 

[KGeo777]

The Final Countdown 1980 with Kirk Douglas and Martin Sheen . If any film can be said to be a disappointment ,this one is it. In the story , the Modern Carrier USS Nimitz is sent back in time to Pearl Harbor just before the attack by Japan But what happens ? not enough to make this worth even watching . Just as Nimitz is getting ready to engage the Japnese , The Time Warp sends them back their own time . They didn't prevent the attack. What a cop out and waste of what could have been an interesting movie story premise .

They shot on an actual aircraft carrier which made the budget seem so much higher. I liked the reaction of the Japanese pilot-he didn't freak out from it. That seemed realistic to me.

Charles Durning was interesting.
"And naming this ship after Chester Nimitz! An active duty admiral. What the hell's going on?"

It's really just an extended Twilight Zone episode.
But if they had actually interfered in the history, I don't know where the story would have gone unless they found a way to say it was all erased or some characters ended up in a parallel dimension.

 

[KGeo777]

Hollywood hates adult professionals - preferring man-children that have to "figure things out".

In The Towering Inferno, Steve McQueen was like that--his character was totally in charge and not presented as a learning goof.
But that was rare--most other movies that did have adult professionals had them failing in the 60s-70s. Once Luke came along--it was the man-child (Jaws had traces of that too with Brody's fear of water). In a superhero movie there is an expectation of success-and much of the time they do--but they are presented as unsure or neurotic or requiring a lot of help.
In X-men 2, Jackman is almost beaten by a woman mutant in a physical fight.
When Sean Connery faced Bambi and Thumper, they only got the best of him for about a minute and then he was shoving them under water, one in each hand. It wasn't realistic for them to be able to beat him. Physics.
That is what I noticed was wrong with Pierce Brosnan, he seemed weaker than his predecessors. Famke Janssen, I recall, was presented as a physical threat to him--she would not have been to Connery, Lazenby, or Moore (I haven't seen his last two films though--maybe they did something with Grace Jones in that vein) .

And in License to Kill, there's a scene where Bond comes across as a fool because he didn't have the right gun for the bar and the American agent, Carey Lowell has to show him the ropes.
That felt like a clumsy insert.

 

[Swank]

In The Towering Inferno, Steve McQueen was like that--his character was totally in charge and not presented as a learning goof.
But that was rare--most other movies that did have adult professionals had them failing in the 60s-70s. Once Luke came along--it was the man-child (Jaws had traces of that too with Brody's fear of water). In a superhero movie there is an expectation of success-and much of the time they do--but they are presented as unsure or neurotic or requiring a lot of help.
In X-men 2, Jackman is almost beaten by a woman mutant in a physical fight.
When Sean Connery faced Bambi and Thumper, they only got the best of him for about a minute and then he was shoving them under water, one in each hand. It wasn't realistic for them to be able to beat him. Physics.
That is what I noticed was wrong with Pierce Brosnan, he seemed weaker than his predecessors. Famke Janssen, I recall, was presented as a physical threat to him--she would not have been to Connery, Lazenby, or Moore (I haven't seen his last two films though--maybe they did something with Grace Jones in that vein) .

And in License to Kill, there's a scene where Bond comes across as a fool because he didn't have the right gun for the bar and the American agent, Carey Lowell has to show him the ropes.
That felt like a clumsy insert.

Luke Skywalker is a stone cold death machine - and a teenage one at that. Brody's fear of water and Jone's fear of snakes are like Bronson's fear of enclosed spaces in the Great Escape - they make the characters more interesting, not childish. They aren't confused or paralyzed by their phobias, and they know who they are as people.

Wolverine is nowhere near as strong or generally dangerous as Lady Deathstrike, if that's who you mean. She's all cybernetics.

Grace Jones is shown to be immensely strong. Famke is not in that class, but clearly another evil-fueled super villainess.

 

[paranoid marvin]

The Final Countdown 1980 with Kirk Douglas and Martin Sheen . If any film can be said to be a disappointment ,this one is it. In the story , the Modern Carrier USS Nimitz is sent back in time to Pearl Harbor just before the attack by Japan But what happens ? not enough to make this worth even watching . Just as Nimitz is getting ready to engage the Japnese , The Time Warp sends them back their own time . They didn't prevent the attack. What a cop out and waste of what could have been an interesting movie story premise .

But this is the twist ending. The Nimitz could have its day, blowing the Japanese navy out of the water, but then Hitler doesn't declare war on the US, Japan's military leaders stay in charge leaving it still a threat in the East; perhaps they turn their attention to attacking China or opening up a new front against Russia.

The premise of the movie is should you change the course of one battle, when you could end up changing the outcome of a war which you won?

I must admit, when I first watched I was disappointed that we didn't get to see a modern aircraft carrier go up against a fleet of WW2 era ships, but with consideration it was the only 'property outcome.

And yes it would have been much better suited to a 30 minute Twilighy Zone slot. It actually surprises me that a similar idea was never thought up for that series.

 

[THX1138]

@paranoid marvin Well, since you put it that way...true.

 

[KGeo777]

Luke Skywalker is a stone cold death machine - and a teenage one at that. Brody's fear of water and Jone's fear of snakes are like Bronson's fear of enclosed spaces in the Great Escape - they make the characters more interesting, not childish. They aren't confused or paralyzed by their phobias, and they know who they are as people.

Luke is definitely childish. The third movie ends with him pleading to his father to help him. He needs a spirit vision to cheer him up. Same with Indiana Jones in the Last Crusade-his father needs to tell him--at 50, not to throw his life away. That's a little old for a lesson from Ward Cleaver. So I agree with you that there is a man-child mentality that crept into movies--I think it started in the 70s.
Brody didn't need to be afraid of water though--it wasn't in the novel. The Great Escape was a ensemble so it is understandable they would feel a need to give each character some business. If they gave all the characters a phobia that would be different. In the case of Jaws, he is the main character and we already had him leaving New York because he found it so threatening.
He wasn't really that afraid of water since he went on the boat. It's a bit a of neurosis they like to do--because they can never leave the male character alone in Hollywood. They always have to do something to give the character a handicap or shackle. There was less of that in the independents and Europe.

 

[BAYLOR]

But this is the twist ending. The Nimitz could have its day, blowing the Japanese navy out of the water, but then Hitler doesn't declare war on the US, Japan's military leaders stay in charge leaving it still a threat in the East; perhaps they turn their attention to attacking China or opening up a new front against Russia.

The premise of the movie is should you change the course of one battle, when you could end up changing the outcome of a war which you won?

I must admit, when I first watched I was disappointed that we didn't get to see a modern aircraft carrier go up against a fleet of WW2 era ships, but with consideration it was the only 'property outcome.

And yes it would have been much better suited to a 30 minute Twilighy Zone slot. It actually surprises me that a similar idea was never thought up for that series.

I know, but. the silly movie goer in me still wanted to see the USS Nimitz kicked the snot out the Japanese Imperial Navy .



John Birmingham's Axis of Time novels took the concept a few steps step further and sent back an entire 21st century modern navel fleet. its pretty entertaining.

 

[BAYLOR]

They shot on an actual aircraft carrier which made the budget seem so much higher. I liked the reaction of the Japanese pilot-he didn't freak out from it. That seemed realistic to me.

Charles Durning was interesting.
"And naming this ship after Chester Nimitz! An active duty admiral. What the hell's going on?"

It's really just an extended Twilight Zone episode.
But if they had actually interfered in the history, I don't know where the story would have gone unless they found a way to say it was all erased or some characters ended up in a parallel dimension.

The there was the Philadelphia Experiment 1 and 2.

 

[BAYLOR]

That was the whole point - they decided to leave rather than alter world history by keeping the US out of the war.

Actually , the Warp didn't give them a choice in that matter.

 

[KGeo777]

The there was the Philadelphia Experiment 1 and 2.

I haven't seen those or can't remember them.
It involves sailors going back or forward right? Vaguely remember.

 

[paranoid marvin]

Luke is definitely childish. The third movie ends with him pleading to his father to help him. He needs a spirit vision to cheer him up. Same with Indiana Jones in the Last Crusade-his father needs to tell him--at 50, not to throw his life away. That's a little old for a lesson from Ward Cleaver. So I agree with you that there is a man-child mentality that crept into movies--I think it started in the 70s.
Brody didn't need to be afraid of water though--it wasn't in the novel. The Great Escape was a ensemble so it is understandable they would feel a need to give each character some business. If they gave all the characters a phobia that would be different. In the case of Jaws, he is the main character and we already had him leaving New York because he found it so threatening.
He wasn't really that afraid of water since he went on the boat. It's a bit a of neurosis they like to do--because they can never leave the male character alone in Hollywood. They always have to do something to give the character a handicap or shackle. There was less of that in the independents and Europe.

The 'hard man' or 'male alpha' character, often played by the likes of Sean Connery, Charlton Heston, Robert Mitchum etc kind of died out in the late 70s. They tended to be replaced by hard guys with vulnerabilities or a soft heart like Sylvester Stallone in Rocky or First Blood, or Indy in Raiders. They then morphed into largely comedic roles.

 

[KGeo777]

The 'hard man' or 'male alpha' character, often played by the likes of Sean Connery, Charlton Heston, Robert Mitchum etc kind of died out in the late 70s. They tended to be replaced by hard guys with vulnerabilities or a soft heart like Sylvester Stallone in Rocky or First Blood, or Indy in Raiders. They then morphed into largely comedic roles.

Yeah and I wouldn't want all characters to be like that (and even Connery and Heston had a far bit of "deconstruction" roles where there were vulnerable--The Hill and The Offence for Connery and Planet of the Apes, the War Lord, and a couple of others for Heston).
But they go overboard--and what I keep saying is that the lack of any kind of traditional alternative eventually just turns everything to mush.
It becomes totally dysfunctional. In one of the recent Jurassic films, Chris Pratt is literally getting instruction from a 7-year-old girl on where they should go to escape the dinosaurs.
That would never have happened 50 years ago to Doug McClure because it would be seen as utterly ludicrous.

 

[BAYLOR]

I haven't seen those or can't remember them.
It involves sailors going back or forward right? Vaguely remember.

Legend has it that the US Navy in 1943 was doing experiment on a ship to create cloaking field to redid the ship invisible on raider The USS Norfolk and what supposedly happened was the ship dispersed from a harbor in Philadelphia and re-materailzed at Norfolk Virginia . There are Crewman who had rematerialized up their wastes in decks or merged with walls , some burns on their bodies and some kept fading in reality. It's the stuff conspiracy legends . There are other detail but this is the gist of it.

 

[BAYLOR]

Meteor 1979 . The film had Sean Connery and Natalie Wood and a stellar cast . All wasted in this sh*t sandwich of a film .

 

[Guttersnipe]

The Blackening (2023): I was hoping for something funny or scary. If you ask me, it delivered neither laughs nor jolts.