Bad film with amazing premise and mediocre execution that you can't stop thinking about?
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Highlander II
The Dark Tower
It's a long list but these two were painful.
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Christian Bale faking an actually decent London accent, Gerard Butler being a loveable scot, and Matthew McCaughnehey doing his best Norse/Spartan Warrior impression?
Horrible acting all around (except Bale at times), the lead female character was basically there to soothe/flirt with the lead (wish i was joking), you can barely understand anyone, and yet really impressive set/castle and overall atmosphere. You believe you are there, and that the world is gone.
Huge gaps in logic on the hunting patterns of dragons, helicopters seem to run on infinite fuel, and the final plan to take down the main dragon is just stupid at best.... but the execution of fighting dragons in the air with nets dropped by guys without parachutes was a phenomenal air sequence.
Also, the dragon CGI holds up. You never quite see it, but when you do, you believe it's there, and the CGI team did a great job with consistency in that the dragons are always depicted expelling fluid that they ignite, and you see it every time they cast fire.
Brilliant movie, and one of the best opening 5 minutes in terms of origin story. Just a lot of bad acting, and some questionable feats in logic plot-wise.
I remember being extremely well entertained by awesome dragons, and that's it. Which means you're probably correct.
What Bale's native accent?
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Christian Bale faking an actually decent London accent, Gerard Butler being a loveable scot, and Matthew McCaughnehey doing his best Norse/Spartan Warrior impression?
Horrible acting all around (except Bale at times), the lead female character was basically there to soothe/flirt with the lead (wish i was joking), you can barely understand anyone, and yet really impressive set/castle and overall atmosphere. You believe you are there, and that the world is gone.
Huge gaps in logic on the hunting patterns of dragons, helicopters seem to run on infinite fuel, and the final plan to take down the main dragon is just stupid at best.... but the execution of fighting dragons in the air with nets dropped by guys without parachutes was a phenomenal air sequence.
Also, the dragon CGI holds up. You never quite see it, but when you do, you believe it's there, and the CGI team did a great job with consistency in that the dragons are always depicted expelling fluid that they ignite, and you see it every time they cast fire.
Brilliant movie, and one of the best opening 5 minutes in terms of origin story. Just a lot of bad acting, and some questionable feats in logic plot-wise.
Christian Bale is English. His accent in Reign of Fire is not far off his normal accent.
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In Time (2011). Time is currency in the dystopia in the film - paying for something decreases your lifespan, earning wages increases it.
The movie sets up a really cool class structure, wherein there are rich people born with/inheriting hundreds of thousands of years of life, and poor people barely managing to scrape enough hours to stay alive until they can earn more the next day. There are segmented areas of the city that cost years to get into.
Overall incredible premise, but the story wasn't exceptional beyond a couple of the cool mechanics you might expect based on said premise.
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Idiocracy.
Loved the idea. Film itself... meh
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Christian Bale is English. His accent in Reign of Fire is not far off his normal accent.
You are shitting me!
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Mutant Chronicles, except i don't think about it normally, but immediately comes to mind when somebody asks similar question. Also it wasn't mediocre, it was incredibly bad and the second biggest disapointment movie ever for me (worst was Starship Troopers 2).
Premise seems pretty cool (mutant/zombie machine), and I guess it's kind of a cool but forgettable action flick?
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The Last Jedi was an amazing deconstruction of Star Wars. I don't think better execution would have helped it with a fan base that wants to be stuck in the past reliving the hero's journey ad nauseam but it had a lot more potential than you see on screen.
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Premise seems pretty cool (mutant/zombie machine), and I guess it's kind of a cool but forgettable action flick?
I played a lot of tabletop and card games in this universe in 90's so i was pretty excited for a movie, and while it was forgettable (but also bad) action flick its main fault was that it has basically nothing in common with the Mutant Chronicles universe.
It's like getting "Lord of the RIngs" movie, but about some gang war in a village southeast of Umbar.
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I played a lot of tabletop and card games in this universe in 90's so i was pretty excited for a movie, and while it was forgettable (but also bad) action flick its main fault was that it has basically nothing in common with the Mutant Chronicles universe.
It's like getting "Lord of the RIngs" movie, but about some gang war in a village southeast of Umbar.
It’s like getting “Lord of the RIngs” movie, but about some gang war in a village southeast of Umbar.
I mean. I would watch that.
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Never watched it, but am intrigued. How so?
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Jupiter Ascending
They seed the galaxy and harvest whole planets to create an immortality serum. Fantastic world concept ... but a subpar story to make a movie about within that world.
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It’s like getting “Lord of the RIngs” movie, but about some gang war in a village southeast of Umbar.
I mean. I would watch that.
In this case i would like to recommend some books for you:
- The Last Ringbearer by Kirill Yeskov
- Ring of Darkness series by Nik Perumov
Basically unlicenced Middleearth fanfics written by Russian authors but a good ones and getting officially published in multiple countries.
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Never watched it, but am intrigued. How so?
Rian Johnson is a master of deconstructing genres.
if you went this long without watching it I won't spoil it but to say the themes are not typical of the rest of the franchise and the fans hated it for that.
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The live action transformers movies.
Although I almost never think about it.
And I only saw the first thirty minutes of the first movie. -
In this case i would like to recommend some books for you:
- The Last Ringbearer by Kirill Yeskov
- Ring of Darkness series by Nik Perumov
Basically unlicenced Middleearth fanfics written by Russian authors but a good ones and getting officially published in multiple countries.
thanks, starred your comment!
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The live action transformers movies.
Although I almost never think about it.
And I only saw the first thirty minutes of the first movie.I watched it until the Megan Fox car breakdown scene and figured it wouldn't get better than that and stopped there. I don't remember anything else from the movie.
I admit that it surprised me it did well enough for sequels, when better films didn't, but I guess that's The Public for you.
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Just watched The Gorge (2025) recently. I wouldn't say it's a bad film, but it was really mediocre.
I love the premise of having the two guard towers, one on each side of a mysterious and foggy gorge, not supposed to communicate with each other, guarding us all from whatever is down there. People have previously gone in but never come out. Strange monsters sometimes attempt the climb up the cliff walls. Is it the gate to hell? What's the story behind it all? Chemistry slowly happens between the guards of the two towers.
(If you think you might enjoy this movie, don't read my spoilers. Just watch it. I liked it even though it was a bit disappointing.)
::: spoiler spoiler
But the good setup and world building is quickly over and then they both enter the gorge, and it's just an old evacuated biological lab that created super soldiers, and the whole thing instantly stops being mysterious.They could have kept it mysterious for longer and given us some kind of twist perhaps, like they might discover they're guarding the site of an old defunct biolab, but some things don't add up, and it turns out to be the actual gates of hell. I also don't think Drasa should have dived straight in to rescue Levi. Let her hesitate for a while. Create tension. Keep them separated, him somewhere below and her in her tower (perhaps she will need to get over to his tower to reactivate the auto-turrets or do something important, she believes he's gone), and cut between showing both their struggles. Perhaps he then manages to contact her, and then a rescue effort begins.
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You are shitting me!
He’s crazy good at assimilating accents so a lot of people don’t realise. Here’s his real accent (apologies for the YouTube link).
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I think I'm really unusual in that I dislike almost everything after IV. I think the first film was brilliant, back when Lucas was fighting for money and had to rely on vision and had Campbell to advise with. After that it was all introducing cutesy characters strictly for marketing, they all lacked the charm of the original.
I know I'm an exception. Nearly everyone liked V and/or VI more. Everyone dunks on Jar Jar, but I could not stand the Ewoks. It was so disgustingly blatant.
At the time I was dying for sequels, and when they finally came I was so disappointed. You know, I think I just realized that it was the Vader/Luke connection that sunk it for me. That all of the major characters had to be related somehow made the universe smaller, and more petty. They only got worse after that; I think I watched all of I-III, but I actively hated those.
Anyway, I think there might have been a path, and I'm no story teller so I couldn't fix it, but I think the while thing went off the rails after IV.
Good friends have told me the Mandelorian was good, but "Baby Yoda" represents everything I loathed about the series and I refuse to watch it.
Anyway, what were you saying about the Hero's Journey? Maybe I should watch The Last Jedi, because while the Campbell formula worked for the first film, it didn't improve any of the sequels, so maybe I'd like it. As long as there are no obviously pandering character designs that exist clearly because they can easily be marketed as toys. Looking at you, BB-8.
