I agree with all the other people in this thread mentioning ‘In Time’. It had such a great premise, and I didn’t even hate the execution, but it was mediocre. It was like they went 50% of the way to a flawless execution and just said “fuck it, that’s good enough”. The concept has a lot of elements to explore, like classism, labor exploitation, human rights, even free will to a point… A movie just isn’t the right vehicle for that story. It needs to be a series. Done right, you could explore all that while having an overarching plotline, and still have your weekly subplots and B stories. That would give the story time to fully develop the romantic connection between the poor guy who comes into a bunch of time, and the rich girl who empathizes with him. That romance felt incredibly rushed in the movie, but you could build it up over a whole season in a show.
I also want to mention another movie that I’m not sure belongs here. It’s not a bad movie, nor do I think the execution was mediocre, but for the life of me I can’t figure out why it didn’t do better. That movie is called ‘Push’, with Chris Evans and Dakota Fanning. I just watched it again the other night, and I freaking love it. The concept isn’t that amazing or original, but the way they present it is great. There isn’t a ton of exposition or world-building. They kinda just drop you in and let you figure it out, and I really like that. Evans and Fanning have great onscreen chemistry, and Djimon Honsou is a perfect bad guy. This is another one where I think it would make a great series, even though I think the movie was done really well. It’s just kind of a perfect mid-budget sci-fi action movie, and we don’t seem to get those anymore.
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Dark City (1998) could definitely fit the bill, it has so many unique ideas for that time in film and you can see there’s of all sorts of future sci-fi movies in it from the matrix to inception, it’s a very visually ugly movie and the acting is subpar but as a premise it’s super interesting. Generally I think remakes are a waste of time and money but I’d love to see this movie with a proper budget and modern technology
Just joking. I really liked the movie for its style and the frightening bad guys in all sizes. Also Kiefer Sutherland with a mad scientist touch.I just watched this! It felt like the director wanted to go real big with it but technology just wasn’t there with effects. It also tried very hard to be a mindfuck movie but also kept spoiling the twists somehow lol. Overall solid 7+ movie.
The city itself was interesting as hell
Jennifer Connelly is the best part of the movie
I really like that movie. But watch the directors cut, for the love of all that’s good! It removed the narration at the beginning that gave away the whole plot. Much better that way.
The Cube.
Most people saw it as an average horror movie where a bunch of people try to get out of a giant torture box. But there was a pivotal scene that stuck with me where one of the prisoners realizes he helped build part of it. The whole thing wasn’t some intentional torture device but just a bunch of people doing their day jobs that were lost in a bureaucracy not ever questioning what their work was creating.
A stark reflection of society and the systems we create and the dangers of not ever looking at the bigger picture.Of course they proceeded to shit all over this idea in Cube2 where it ended up being just another evil government experiment.
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I actually liked Cube Zero for the backstory and set styles. I don’t remember much else so I’m assuming it was shit, but you can give it a try if you want.
I think OP pretty much summed up Cube Zero. The first installment is really just a horror fiction also depicting the structure of human society.
Yeah, Cube 2 is shit. It’s a scientific concept show.
Just to ask, nobody understood the full picture of what they were making? Or was there someone who created the concept but intentional obfuscated it from everyone else via bureaucracy?
Granted it’s just the viewpoint of one of the prisoners but it’s the one I found most intriguing. To quote the movie: “Nobody knew what it was, nobody cared…there is no conspiracy, nobody is in charge. It’s a headless blunder operating under the illusion of a master plan…somebody might have known sometime before they got fired, voted out, or sold it…this is an accident, a forgotten perpetual public works project. You think anybody asked questions? All they want is a clear conscience and a fat paycheck.”
That’s awesome sci-fi right there. It’s a bit campy, but it’s campy in the same way that all great social commentary is, until it isn’t and it’s too late.
Ok the last time I watched it was well before being exposed to corporate culture. That’s awesome.
The thing that stuck with me was: “TWO!”
Not a movie, but a TV show. Revolution.
A sci-fi post-apocalypse show where the premise is that all of a sudden all technology (specifically anything that uses electricity) just stops working and nobody knows why. The show takes place 15 years into the apocalypse. The US has Balkanized into various regional states (although you don’t learn this until later). Some regions have devolved into chaos while others have basically reverted to a steam-punk type of society. Since all modern ships use electricity, they’ve begun to revive large ships from the age of sail. The remnants of the US military at Guantanamo Bay eventually return to the mainland and try to reestablish a much more explicitly authoritarian control over the US. You eventually learn that what caused the global blackout was the creation of a self-replication nanotech which rapidly spread across the planet and shut off all electricity.
Great premise, but it got too much into the soap-opera CW-style of writing and didn’t last more than 2 seasons.
Yeah really fun premise slathered in boring characters.
If I recall it devolved into some CW-flavor bullshit revolving around the girl, who is her real father, why is she special. Blah blah blah.
Yep. Sounds like what happened with Jericho. Mystery and intrigue in the starting seasons, and then just weird petty soap-opera style squabbles towards the end
If the writers want to tell a story focused on inter-personal relationships, that’s perfectly fine. There are PLENTY of people who enjoy that kind of thing. They just don’t tend to be the same type of people who enjoy post-apocalyptic sci-fi puzzle-box shows. I don’t know why you go through all the trouble of creating this expansive world and lore only to focus your show on character dynamics that aren’t centered around the conceit of the show.
If you’re going to build this complex world, let us explore that world!
Poor Jericho, I need to hunt down the graphic novels that supposedly gave it a proper ending.
Ah yes, the Lost-likes.
Manifest, Fast Forward, Continuum, Revolution, Terra Nova… loved them all. All of them canceled.
From isn’t canceled yet.
Haha fair, that fits the definition of Lost-like, but I was thinking of that narrow era of network mystery boxes that popped up in the immediate aftermath of Lost chasing its success.
No matter how good they were, none of them were Lost so they got canceled. (Except for Fringe thank god)
From at least gets to live outside that shadow.
It was such a good show, but man did they just keep pushing it
Interstellar is like Neo-Posadism minus Marxism. The premise was awesome. Climate apocalypse and space travel. But the movie doesn’t have humanity solve either of those problems. Instead it pops it’s collar and says *don’t worry bro,
the marketMarxist space alienssome scientistsa famous shirtless hot actor guyfuck you who cares the green guy behind a curtain made a worm hole or something".I thought the bigger issue was the premise. If earth is in a climate apocalypse, and we have extremely advanced technology that lets us bring life to far out planets, then why are we leaving earth? Can’t those same technologies be applied to saving the earth people?
The whole “we have to go space” feels like manifest destiny and the desperate urge of capitalism to expand.
The wormhole doesn’t feel that far out, the whole movie is already far out. Griping about the realism of a fictional space movie is a losing game
What I got out of it was that plant life got diseases that killed them/made them unedible and corn was the only one holding off until the start of the movie. Also in my extremely slim understanding of planetary modification you need to release gases (carbon dioxide, oxygen etc) on a planet to create an atmosphere and it’s way easier to release gases than remove them.
So their plan was to let the earth crops rot away and plant fresh ones where there is no diseases.
I also didn’t like the “I’m going to fuck off and let everyone else die” philosophy of not solving the climate issue at home.
It can be easier to start with a fresh slate than it is to salvage a mess.
Who is the mess? Going off world, to me, is the perfect opportunity for billionaire and bureaucratic assholes to try and create an ethno state. Who decides who gets to leave the planet? This planet isn’t a mess, that’s what eco-fascists want you to believe
There is no real response because we’re talking about a fictional future, with unknown ailments, established by maybe 20 minutes of film as a backdrop. They wanted to tell a story titled “interstellar”, not “terrestrial”.
Given all those unknowns, it stands that there are times when starting fresh is easier than undoing. Trying to unmix brown pigments comes to mind.
You asked:
If earth is in a climate apocalypse, and we have extremely advanced technology that lets us bring life to far out planets, then why are we leaving earth? Can’t those same technologies be applied to saving the earth people?
This is a potential answer, given the lack of established truths in this fictional universe.
Ion what you tryna say, it was honestly a whole lot of nothing. Wtf does “trying to unmix brown pigments” mean? That’s cryptic asf and doesn’t make any sense, wouldn’t it be impossible to unmix any pigment color combo? And wtf does that sort of metaphor even mean?
Look man, what I was saying in response to your comment was that I don’t think it’s acceptable to call the planet an unfixable mess. Maybe it’s easier to start fresh for some people, but that was literally the problem I was trying to point out to you.
I just hate how Interstellar tells the audience that in a climate apocalypse, the only solution is to leave the planet. It’s ecofascism
wouldn’t it be impossible to unmix any pigment color combo? And wtf does that sort of metaphor even mean?
It’s an example of a situation where it’s easier to start fresh than undo past actions, which by your point you show you understand.
I don’t think it’s acceptable to call the planet an unfixable mess.
Let’s differentiate between OUR planet, and the planet depicted in the movie. Are you saying that there are no ways in which a fictional future earth is unsalvageable?
Do you also rally against movies set in, for example, a dystopian cyberpunk setting due to not liking the scene it was set in?
I have a feeling Chris Nolan goes into films with some specifically detailed poignant character moments in mind, and then he just hastily weaves a plot to tie them together. It’s interesting to watch at least, but maybe too high brow(?) to call entertaining
For Interstellar, at least, I’d say it’s incredibly low-brow. The resolution is just “the power of wuv saves humanity!”, which is extremely simplistic and easily understood by the masses.
Well I meant mostly the talking parts which we were told to care about but most people forget
That would explain why his best films are based on books
Mortal Engines
Passengers had the possibility to be really creepy, I still liked it but without seeing Chris Pratts time alone first, we would have all been confused and on guard with Jennifer Lawrence.
Pandorum is, to me, what Passengers was trying for. The claustrophobic horror of hurting through the void, other humans being both your salvation and your tormentors, all that.
The execs ruined it to make a vehicle for some big names.
I love Pandorum. I have a huge FanTheory on it on reddit from years back if you want to check it out.
https://www.reddit.com/r/FanTheories/comments/gmlo53/pandorum_earth_took_serious_countermeasures/
Me, too.
Can you imagine the creation myths that would evolve in the society that developed from the survivors? There were just a handful who had survived and experienced that descent into hell. The others had blissfully slept.
I’ll check that out!
I think it would have been a much better film if the audience had also been kept in the dark about him opening her pod as well. That way we can also go through the range of emotions with her at the same time when she finds out.
Just start the movie from her perspective. Pod opening and Pratt is already there. He tells her his pod just opened and he’s confused too. Then we get the whole “wandering the shipn for the first time” montage where they could drop subtle hints that it’s not actually his first time doing any of those things.
His character is absolutely a bad person, but it’s a situation we can sympathize with because being truly completely alone for any amount of time fucks with people badly. She has every right to hate him for the rest of their lives, but it turns out that if he hadn’t done what he did they all would have died because of the damaged engine or whatever it was (I can’t remember).
They could have made the movie much harder hitting and/or creepy for the first half, but they opted to try and make you sympathetic to his situation from the start.
It’s the movie that always pops into my head when thinking about wasted potential.
Downsizing
First 20 minutes (give or take) seemed like a solid start. But then they did absolutely nothing with the concept.
Show, but LOST, I remember what could’ve been…
The eternal metric of a good show hitting a point in season 3 or 4 where every episode opens 20 more questions than it answers, making me wonder if its going to Do a Lost on me and just fall apart. (ahem-Yellowjackets&Severance-ahem)
I think it’s important when making a show to actually have an end in mind, yknow?
I really liked the Dharma Initiative aspect of it, was hoping that they’d go somewhere with it…
I think it’d be cool for someone to make a videogame based off it now
Telltale Games style, or something else?
Cabin in the woods
The original Purge. I thought all the background stuff and setting were super interesting, but the film itself was a generic home invasion movie. The sequel expanded on all the stuff I was interested in, though.
No Country For Old Men - a slice of life movie about living in Texas.
No way it’s mediocre 😆
I in no way call this “mediocre”; Its just a flat our terrible low budget bullshit film that the director made as an excuse to hang out with shirtless dudes.
But years ago the guys at Red Letter Media did a segment on “Bigfoot vs D.B. Cooper”, and that premise alone (what happened after D.B. Cooper landed) has lived in my brain ever since.
It legitimately angers me that such a great high concept idea was completely wasted on what basically amounts to gay porn.
Lmao, the reviews are somewhat illuminating
Yep. And therein lies my frustration.
David Decoteau (or he’ll sometimes use his alias “Richard Chasen”) stole the perfect premise for what could have been a great shlocky low-to-mid-budget action movie. And no NO ONE can ever make it without being compared with…that…whatever it is…
The Man from Earth
B4
Triangle
Time Lapse
Daybreakers
Evolution
Knowing
The Man From Earth is definitely one I think about. The things he must have seen, must have done, that over time shaped him into who he was. Is he the embodiment of mankind, as well as its own self-hatred? The religious stuff was a bit much. I still haven’t seen the sequel, with genuine anxiety to.
Daybreakers is also a good one. A bit deus-ex with the “solution” at the end, but very good thought experiment
The sequel’s plot is somehow weak with a couple of cringe moments. Given the twist is revealed in part one, the movie expresses one of many solutions to what should be free roaming of your own thoughts after the first film.
Sequels can be awful at destroying the ‘blew my mind’ effect in general by streamlining a great, open idea to a specific plot I guess.
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Knowing is soooo frustrating. Great premise, Nic Cage Nic Caging tha fuck out of everything. Then it seems like the writer hit a block and turned to a random word generator that spit out “space angels” and called it a day.
Still 2/3 of an interesting movie.
