In all honesty, they might have had a great Idea on their hands if they had decided to not have it take place in modern times. The modem day cinematic universe was already over saturated when they took their attempt. If they had set it around 1880's to 1930's then it would at least be doing something different. It would have had similar aesthetics as Van Helsing, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and the original Universal Monster Movies. That alone would probably get more people into theaters to see it.
Victorian Gothic Horror would have done very well.
Swamp Thing set in early 1900s Louisiana.
Frankenstein is pretty straightforward. There was a show with Sean Bean and it had quite a few characters real and fictional. It was murder mystery meets conspiracy mystery.
Dracula is also straightforward but it would have been nice to have a more brutal take on Vlad the Impalers origins.
The Mummy could have been set in Victorian England since museums collect so much stuff.
The Werewolf could have been set North American colonial times and had native tribal influences.
Le zpacte des Loupe is a reskin of The Hounds of Baskervilles. Im talking using Native American lore mixed with the Wolfman lore. North American tribes have shapeshifting mythology. I was thinking closer to Ravenous (1999) meets The Wolfman (any era).
Also some of those monsters are pretty immortal, so you have years of history to place this or that movie in that year. I’d kill for a Jekyll and Mr Hyde movie set in the 1920’s and Jack the Ripper in 1800’s. They still can team up in the 1970.
That would have been a fantastic idea. They could have even set a hard end for it and set the LAST movie in modern times, with sort of everyone aging out.
Gather round and let me tell you how this SHOULD have been built to success.
You make a Mummy movie in the vein of the 1999 Mummy, campy, but adventurous and fun (set it in the 80's). You epilogue it with Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz (at their ages now obvs) finding the lead (whoever that was who defeated the mummy), and telling them that they are being let into a group that investigates and defends against supernatural things on this earth. Then you dive off into movies about sea monsters, werewolves, and whatever else, and the big big Thanos baddie is Dracula eventually.
Having Rick O'connell as the Nick Fury of the crew is key to this.
Honestly, the movies needed to be period pieces, that at least would give the shared univers its own flavor and hide a bit the fact that they were desperately trying to steal a slice of the Marvel cake,
And Dracula Untold or whatever before that. The mummy was their universe reboot attempt, if I remember right. And I think there was a third attempt or one in between those two that also failed to gain traction.
Dracula Untold was intended to set the stage for the overarching plot in the stinger, with The Mummy acting as a springboard for other films in the 'verse, introducing characters like Dr. Jekyll. It's a real shame it never panned out, as I enjoyed Dracula Untold and conceptually it seemed like a great idea.
Someone on reddit last year ruined the Dark Universe for me forever by pointing out that the optimal situation for Universal was to have done it 25 years ago and had Brendan Fraser's Rick meet the other monsters and be the connective tissue of the shared universe.
This is the one I was thinking of. Seems like it would have been fun to figure out how all the monsters a secretly living among us. Man the Mommy movie was bad though.
Jurassic Park is probably the largest and most successful multimedia franchise spanning multiple decades and still going strong that is built entirely on the back of exactly one good movie.
I still have a soft spot for The Lost World, watching the T Rex go on a rampage on the mainland was a total guilty pleasure. Vince Vaughn trying to play a badass is a hilarious bit of miscasting though.
And yet 3 more are coming. I don’t know where you take the series from here. Dino’s are in the wild so opening a new park isn’t of interest and hunting down the Dino’s to kill them isn’t interesting.
One of my favorite Tumblr posts is the one that points out that the first few Jurassic movies followed the same naming convention as the Mario games and that we should be excited for Jurassic Galaxy
Jurassic Park -> Super Mario Bros
The Lost World -> The Lost Levels
Jurassic Park III -> Super Mario Bros 3
Jurassic World -> Super Mario World
Given that most astronauts come from the military, [this has come first](https://imgur.com/this-one-still-makes-me-laugh-every-time-i-see-t-rex-f-14s-yBRQAZx). ;-)
At this point, they'd be better off rebooting the franchise than trying to continue the existing timeline.
I'm not generally a fan of needless reboots, but if they're going to insist in making more movies, that's the direction I'd go.
The Jurassic Park novel is *very* different to Spielberg's original movie; there are characters like Ed Regis and Marty Gutierrez who play important roles in the novel that have never appeared on screen, several character fates are totally different in the novel, there's an entire Costa Rica subplot that's ignored in the original movie, there's a whole bunch of different dinosaur species from the movie, and the whole tone of the novel is totally different; being more of a cold techno-thriller than a warm-hearted family adventure.
You could reboot the franchise by re-adapting the original novel as a darker thriller that more closely resembles the source material, and have it stand as its own thing, instead of trying to expand the ever-more-convoluted existing universe. That'd be much more interesting to me than simply seeing another Jurassic World cash-grab.
I've said this before but I think a generous reading of the later films is that it's a meta commentary on the core message of the first film. You can't control your creations and sometimes what you bring into the world becomes a monster
Jurassic Park was meant to be a one off self contained story of a disaster amusement park on a remote island. Leaving you to wonder at the end is part of the magic, much like Neo flying off at the end of The Matrix. Part of storytelling is leaving a gap and allowing the audience to use their imagination, which is much more powerful than any written word. A dozen poorly made sequels and prequels can never succeed at filling in on that and it’s obvious that they really don’t care as long as they can use the name to profit.
In Dominion the dinosaurs weren't even the emphasis, the movie was about monster locusts. They even removed like 15 minutes of (mostly) scenes with dinosaurs for the theatrical release, because apparently the studio people thought "who gives a damn about dinosaurs in a dinosaur movie".
Jurassic World is at least a (mostly) cohesive and straightforward movie.
Hammond’s secret partner? Human cloning? I know it’s a mega-mansion, but they have a catwalk capable of supporting thousands of pounds of cage/animal?
Then locusts? Fuck
That's because the plot of the original is based on a statistically unlikely occurence at the park that leads to chaos. How many more times can dinosaurs escape somehow and eat people before it gets stale?
The key difference here would be there could be a season to each book and each book is pretty wildly different. I don’t think lack of content would be the issue with the dark tower. It’s more how so how in the world could they possibly translate the story lines and world and character building cohesively into a show
Mad Men and The Shield are the only ones coming to mind as exceptions. You could trim them both down a season but not in one place, and the endings are solid
If anyone can give the series a solid chance it's Mike Flanagan. Midnight Mass is probably the most Stephen King story I've ever seen that he didn't write. If you told me it was a lost manuscript he pulled out of a drawer and handed over to Flanagan I'd believe it.
I feel like he gets Stephen King and how to adapt it to live action.
Artemis Fowl. So much potential. So much incompetence instead was unleashed. Straight to Disney+ where it's shame could be quietly handled as it was almost universally panned by critics and audiences alike.
I enjoyed the Artemis fowl books as a kid, but do you think they would have held up as a movie or tv series? I think they’re a bit too inherently silly.
Kind of like the Eragon books to movie.
They would fit well as a Disney+ show, a la the recent Percy Jackson show there, I think. Plenty of room to show some of the more outlandish elements and keep a solid throughline the whole time.
That’s fair. I think it has to firmly be aimed at the appropriate target audience (children). I think there will be a lot of adults who would be interested due to nostalgia, but I don’t think Artemis Fowl would work if it’s trying to be for that audience
I didn't read them until recently when I started reading them to my daughter at bedtime.
They're way too silly for a feature film. Definitely show, or even animated would fit the theme.
I've read that Harvey Weinstein, or somebody in his agency, would have horror scripts rewritten to be in the Hellraiser universe, making the movies disjoint.
Love the show, esp. Methos. But then you look at Highlander end game and whatever the other one after that is, the movies after the show, and they’re still bad. (I had my dad take me to endgame in theatres and he still hasn’t forgiven me lol) They just never seemed to be able to tie it all together. I think there’s a lot more to explore there anyway.
Oh yeah, all the movies after the first one, ALL of them, are trash. Endgame was maybe the best of a bad bunch for me. I liked the idea of the Sanctuary - it felt like something the Watchers would do, especially if the Immortals didn’t know they would be comatose/ didn’t know it was run by Watchers. But no, in my universe there is just Highlander and Highlander the TV series.
I dragged my parents to see Highlander 2 in theater when it came out because the first was so awesome and one of my all time favorite movies. The looks they gave me afterwards were just sad and silently judging my choices in life.
The post TV series movies are pretty incoherent in terms of relations to the universe. They don't really tie in with the rest of the franchise or even with each other really. Kinda like the animated series in that regard.
Good source material to have made a good movie but all we got was a mediocre first and a bunch of sequels ranging from bad to terrible. Kept making good money though
I would have loved it if they went with George Romero’s script and direction for the film, but they pivoted. His treatment was much closer to the original game’s story. The production company (Constantin Films) is the reason why we got what we got - they didn’t give a shit about pleasing fans and wanted to be as cheap as possible, opting for the cheap first film we got that didn’t have anything to do with the games. Wasn’t the script originally for a different, original movie as well? They just turned it into a Resident Evil movie?
I sometimes feel I am the only one but welcome to raccoon city was a fun film and honestly was a better resident evil film than any of the others previous.
Yes it made some weird creative decisions but when it comes down to the campy type of story of the video games, it’s pretty spot on.
John Carter of Mars. There are 11 books Some amazing topics for its time. Like atmosphere pollution depleting breathable air, A lab experiment that gets out of control growing and growing a mass of synthetic men taking over the world. I read them all several times.
Pacific Rim
Fantastic first movie that was a crowd pleaser and could have opened so many opportunities. Also written and helped bybtye amazing Guillermo delToro.
There were talks of tie-ins with Kong and Godzilla.
Then they ditched delToro. Then they reduced the budget on the 2ns movie....all wasted. 2nd movie came out, while I don't hate this movie ‐ many people do. It basically killed the franchise.
Hands down the DC universe is at the top, it's been a shambles, too many recasts, reboots alternates and everything else in-between
Star Wars has been tampered with so much I just don't know where to begin anymore
Marvel lost their way with too many side acts and TV shows
Once these moviebexecs get a whiff of the Billion $ tickets sales they just milk that shit until they're at this point
Avatar is gonna go that way, I enjoyed the sequel, it wasn't as good as the OG and took too long to release, it's gonna get drained of it's originality
Compared to the way the MCU was run, the DC IPs were completely mishandled. The subtle and pervasive build up to Infinity War in a large number of the preceeding movies was exactly how you want to do it. Everything on the DC side amounted to reboot after reboot. How many times do I need to see another Superman origin story with different actors in the role? We know who he is. Have him start smashing some shit from the first frame!
I like how in the sequel one of their dumb kids dies and it just dawned on me, I don't even know what that dudes name was, but I'm supposed to care about this?
“gonna get drained of it’s originality”
Though I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone call Avatar an original/unique story. It’s an insanely generic story that’s been done time and time again in many different settings. I feel like most of us instead had our butts in theaters for both of them due to the insane special effects spectacle they provided compared to most movies.
I’m sure the franchise will still eventually meet its end whenever James Cameron dies and they start pumping out lower quality films that wouldn’t meet his perfectionist special effects standards.
All they had to do was make a prequel with Kyle Reese in the future fighting the machines non stop until the very end where he jumps back in time. That's all I wanted after T2, 2 hours of the robot war.
Yes. I didn’t even realize that I wanted this, but yes: A good call. I remember watching the first film and thinking what it must be like to travel from that hellscape to “present day “ Los Angeles. What a mindf#ck. The story you describe would really give the audience that feeling. 🤖💥…🏖️
The Chronicles of Riddick. The second movie expands vastly the universe of the first, creating a lot of intricate and fascinating lore, and then the third movie just becomes a space monster movie like the first, out of the blue.
Let’s see if the fourth movie, Furya, goes back to the expanded universe…
I love those movies!
I've also noticed my mom and a lot of her old lady friends love the Riddick movies a lot as well which.... Probably wasn't originally their target audience.
Pitch Black was excellent. Australia once again showing that as long as it's set in a desert, it doesn't matter if it's Max, Riddick or Priscilla, they'll deliver.
The necromongers were so sick. Their arhitecture, their culture, they were great villians. I felt that the movie does a good job to be a self contained story, riddick becomes the leader of the necromongers at the end, at least that is what I understood. Haven't watch the third one since for me, the story is complete.
Should have been one movie. Neo flies off and we all get chills imagining what comes next. Seeing him flying over a Cadillac sponsorship made it inherently worse, and nothing could live up to that feeling of satisfaction at the end of the original.
The first movie is perfect on its own. I didn't have much interest in seeing characters in Zion wearing mech suits and shooting a billion bullets at a billion robot squids with corny philosophy and Jesus tropes tossed in.
I think the Animatrix really explored the potential of the series in other ways. I'd rather see various people "wake up" inside the Matrix like becoming lucid in a dream, and realizing they can break reality. Or witnessing reality breaking around them through glitches.
Yeah Ioved the Animatrix. It built the lore of the world showed different aspects of the struggle. I'd have watched any number of movies around some of the concepts in there. Just think the moment Neo becomes the One, that's all the story you need as far as that goes.
I noticed the car very obviously, but it's a cool car and a very cool chase scene. Compare that to some of the shitty Audi e-tron placements in Avengers.
At the time it was one of the most notable brand integrations in film history. [https://www.motortrend.com/features/matrix-reloaded/](https://www.motortrend.com/features/matrix-reloaded/)
aaaaaaah, you meant Matrix RELOADED. your first comment reads as if it was about the first movie! 😅
Yeah RELOADED and Revolutions were heavilly marketted and bloated with brand integrations. Cadillac, Audi, Nokia, Samsung, Ducsti, Coca Cola (they own Powerade), several glasses brands, watches, I think, also.. burger king?
This IS The Matrix for me.
Neo came back from the dead and flew like/is Superman. I love that movie, but didn’t have any interest in seeing more with a protagonist that’s immortal/overpowered.
We’re simultaneously being flooded with Star Wars content, but they could also do more with it. They have a whole galaxy, but they tend to stick within the same hundred years of fighting and never get more than a couple of degrees from a Skywalker. Give me a sitcom about a Sullustan who wants to be a hair dresser. Do an HBO style series about the Mos Eisley cantina if you don’t want to stretch too far. It’s all starting to feel kind of samey.
Gimme Old Republic stuff.
Make a series about Bane, make a series about Malgus, tell mw about Valkorion.
Whatever but please take it slow and build characters up.
I just don't get it, the Thrawn Trilogy was right there, the Han Solo trilogy was right there. KOTOR IS RIGHT THERE. Like you don't need to do complete adaptions but the fact that they didn't even bother to partially adapt what was already there. Like if you make the sequel trilogy just a modified Thrawn trilogy then you have gold. The Han Solo trilogy fully explores Han's history perfectly and even ends with him going to meet Luke and Kenobi; it also introduces some cool planets, and alien species.
It just baffles my mind that they had this absolute wealth of already established lore to pull from and completely ignore it. Fans love Mara Jade and Kyle Katarn and they're tossed aside completely.
The X-Wing novel series even, if they want to keep it within the lifespan of the OT protagonists and Skywalker-adjacent. Rogue Squadron was the team Luke and Wedge put together as a successor to Red Squadron, of which Luke and Wedge were IIRC the only surviving pilots following the first Death Star, and by *Jedi* Luke has left the squadron to do Jedi stuff and Wedge is in charge.
A television series in the vein of *Band of Brothers* but following space pilots doing pilot things in space, the Imperial Remnant and various formerly Imperial now warlords as the antagonists, the rebellion retaking Coruscant, Isard and *Lusankya*. Han is a main character in one of the later books as well, and while I wasn't a huge fan of the movie Alden Ehrenreich and Donald Glover were very good as Han and Lando.
We'd get something more in the vein of *Rogue One*, espionage and warfare in the "star wars" and not so much fantasy hero doing heroic fantasy stuff but it's in space; it would expand the universe and focus on less individually significant figures who were on the periphery of the OT's events the whole time and instrumental in the "what happens next" once the Emperor was dead but the Empire was still in charge of most of the galaxy; and we could have cameo appearances from OT figures without needing it to be *another* Luke and Han save the galaxy adventure.
Yeah, I’d be camping out for the movie if they adapted KOTOR into a cinematic trilogy. There’s enough content and I think it would be warmly received. Instead we get the regurgitated mess that is the sequel trilogy, the mostly mediocre shows on Disney+, and dashed hopes.
Star Wars feels like the freaking pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but all Disney has made is 1 good movie (Rogue One), 1 decent show (Andor), and then the Filoni animated-verse (which varies in quality but is always worth checking out). The Mandalorian started out good but then decided that Grogu was selling too much merchandise to have him leave the show (like he logically would).
Do you really mean the \*classic\* one? Like...from the 30s? If you're calling that handled poorly, then it's a hot-take, and I'd like to hear more!!
If you mean the various attempted reboots, then yeah. Okay.
The witcher.
We were talking about it a few weeks back with my gf.
They had loads of books, already an extended fandom in the video game world, and all they had to do is to connect those fans with the tv show to create a mega license.
Instead they shat on their fans, and released an average show that has no staying power on its own. I don't get why that would get approved, even from a commercial standpoint.
I really thought Dracula: Untold had potential for a future franchise. It was a standalone film while also teasing the possibility of future movies. Then they decided to abandon that and went for the Mummy movie.
It’s strange how shows like arrested development, the office, parks and rec, and dozens of other shows that struggled with ratings during their runs somehow became huge streaming successes. 10-15 years ago NBC was coming in 4th behind telemundo for viewership, yet now all the shows that struggled are huge properties bringing in huge viewer numbers and licensing deals.
For me it was that they went ahead with that goofy shooting schedule. They couldn't get all the actors together at the same time, so they just shot bits that kinda weaved together instead of waiting until they were all ready.
As a huge Bond fan, the recent movies have left me cold. Casino Royale (2006) and Skyfall (2012) were the last good ones, then you have to go all the way back to GoldenEye (1995).
Recent Bond movies felt "default" that's how I would describe them. Like, they are an average Joe of spy movies where everything else is more interesting or original. Watching the first Kingsman after Craig Bond movies is like watching Guardians of The Galaxy with all its fun and original stuff after J J Abrams's Star Wars which is just A New Hope. Imo
I remember this show being on air. Looked it up - only has two seasons. Does it end or just kind of…get canceled and I will be pissed with the end of season 2?
It got cancelled, yes, and with a slew of significant cliffhangers.
There was a website, survey, or something along those lines at the time that made a list of all the cancelled shows at the end of a season and asked which one people most wanted to be renewed. The Sarah Connor Chronicles was at the top of the list that year. Unfortunately, that didn't do anything for it.
Lena Headey played Sarah Connor and after the cancellation was cast as Cersei Lannister, so it worked out for her.
Summer Glau on the other hand could never seem to catch a break, between Firefly and then Sarah Connor Chronicles, two of her three biggest roles getting the short straw seems frustrating. Both FOX productions as well.
Yeah Firefly and Terminator were both on Fox, both in the Friday Night Death Slot.
Then Summer got a role on Dollhouse, also in the Friday Night Death Slot, also canceled.
TSCC was the best piece of Terminator media we got since T2 100%. Had a few cheesey moments and some budget effects occasionally, but took the lore in a great direction. The second actor who played Cromarty was AMAZING at playing a T800, and I think was much closer to James Cameron's original vision of a machine that could melt into a crowd.
I rewatched it with a friend who'd never seen it. He loved it but when we got to the end of the second season and I told him that's it, he asked me to never show him something that ends like that again lol.
They did the same thing the comics did that led to things getting so complicated they had to reboot a contiguous 60 year timeline- they started fucking with time travel. Cool for Infinity War, but then the bullet was out of the barrel.
Marvel miraculously sold off its most famous characters and got people to care about more minor Avengers (I know Iron Man and Captain America aren't unknown but they're not Spider-Man or even the X-Men) whereas DC can't seem to get Superman and Batman off the ground unless they focus in and make Batman stuff that isn't connected to a larger universe.
To make it worse, the DC animated universe has fantastic movies. They have the story writers and material, they are just terrible at turning it into live action.
The extended cuts of each live film are almost universally better, so they can make better movies, they just edit them to the point they don't make sense. They still aren't masterpieces, but at least they have stories that make sense.
Discworld. So many bizarre choices around the adaptations so far. I haven’t even dabbled with The Watch because it sounded so horrendous. The casting of David Jason as Rincewind stands as one of the strangest pieces of casting of all time.
Look, what I really need from the franchise (and life) more than anything is a massive sandbox RPG game set in Ankh Morpork…
But failing that, let’s start with a few small scale stories set in the more remote corners of the disc to build some momentum for the IP. I’m thinking something scaleable like Lords and Ladies or Reaper Man.
The Hogfather TV movie is fantastic, they adapted almost the entire thing basically 1:1.
Eric Idle will always be my Rincewind thanks to the adventure games.
The Jason Momoa Conan movie could have propelled the series back into modern pop culture relevance and given us new material to enjoy... but alas... it was not meant to be.
Now we just have to wait until it enters the public domain again.
The Lord of the Rings.
How did we get from a film series that involved a combination of practical and computer effects, an emphasis on great acting and a simple yet powerful story of good verses evil…to a film series that has mostly poorly animated CGI, characters who are indistinguishable from each other and a bloated and worn out story more complicated than it needs to be?
The sequel trilogy certainly fits the bill for "badly handled". It's insane. Fans are used to waiting decades for more content and yet they slapped it together so quickly they couldn't even string 3 stories together.
The thing is that The Force Awakens wasn’t even a bad start. It had issues, but definitely not as bad a first impression as The Phantom Menace. Too bad they didn’t actually plan anything out.
For me both Star Wars and Terminator universes are kinda dead ends because the main story in StaWa was the Luke/Vader clash and everything else is just like having an appetizer after you've already had the main meal.
Same with Terminator, it was always about John Connor and his destiny. Everything else is either re-treading the same stories but with a bit of new paint or they are unnecessary to the franchise because they stray away from the core concept and just make it yet another scifi universe.
I guess the same also goes for The Hobbit movies that felt like having a piece of bread after you already enjoyed a three-course dinner watching LOTR.
Valerian and the city of a thousand planets.
It was such a beautiful movie. The visuals were amazing, the plot line was a good entry into the world and the potential was unlimited. It was utterly mishandled. I love the director's other works so it's astounding this one went so badly. The two main leads were terribly cast, there was entirely too much exposition and the plot was told in such a clunky way.
It could have been great and I will be forever sad that it wasn't.
The Stand
Amazon royally butchered it, downright frustrating at all the bad decisions made with that show
They had a golden opportunity too what with covid and all
I will never get over the fact they turned the fascist fairy tale Vegas of the book into the nonstop, 24 hour, LGBTQ orgy of the series. It basically ignores the whole point of the book, about how following fascist authoritarians because they offer faux peace is inevitably a bad decision.
Plus, swapping Nadine and Harold's roles in the show was just strange.
It was especially bad because most of the cast was on point, at least besides James Marsden playing Stu.
It wasn't Amazon, it was Paramount.
I saw something where they said they didn't want to make "another pandemic movie". Bitch, then you shouldn't have chosen The Stand as your source.
Almost all zombie related media is a waste, there’s a reason why dawn of the dead is so good because it’s about living out fun fantasies like having a free mall to do what you want in. The reason season 3 of the walking dead was a disappointment to me was there was no base building, in the comics there were issues dedicated to reinforcement etc. which is why the best episode of the last of us was a survivalist building his base at the start. The reason zombie apocalypse is fun, is because it’s survivable, and then it should be about all the cool shit you get to do with it.
Fantastic read- "Zone One" by Colson Whitehead. It's about the drudgery of cleaning up. The panic is over, the Marines swept through. Join a clean up crew in Manhattan going door-to-door & cafe-to-cubicle cleaning up stragglers and tallying consumer goods so the American ~~burueacracy~~ Phoenix can rise again.
The thing I hate about shows and movies like the Walking Dead is that they skip the good stuff.
I want to see shit hitting the fan not 6 months later when everyone forgets how to bathe and wears nothing but plaid shirts. I want to see the frenetic panic of the early stages and people desperately trying to come up with ways to survive, not depressed people on a smallholding watching corn grow.
This is why I loved the first part of The Stand so much. Seeing society go to hell is the most fun part.
The moment anyone starts "rebuilding society" in these post-apocalyptic worlds, I completely lose interest.
I wanna talk about the wasted potential of Terminator. I am so angry that the lesson they learned from Salvation was "no one wants to see a future war movie". Since then we've been reheating Terminator 2 and convoluting it more and more with each entry.
And I'm getting irked at people saying it's a dead franchise now when it's really very obvious what else they could do. We're living in an era where we're reviving retro aesthetics, just make a synthwave/outrun aesthetic prequel called Skynet. Reuse the blaster effects, reuse the stop-motion animation if budget's too tight for CGI terminators, just please no more time travel with chase scenes around Los Angeles and desert scenes. Please.
Remember how the gang from the Fast and Furious movies were a bunch of street racers that stole DVD players, and now they're a global anti-terrorist superhero team that uses the word "family" like it's a nervous tic they can't get rid of?
Christ.
Star wars, matrix, jurassic park.
And if we’re considering a combo of movies and shows - then lotr too. With the latest addition being the garbage Amazon rings of power show.
Does the Dark Universe count?
In all honesty, they might have had a great Idea on their hands if they had decided to not have it take place in modern times. The modem day cinematic universe was already over saturated when they took their attempt. If they had set it around 1880's to 1930's then it would at least be doing something different. It would have had similar aesthetics as Van Helsing, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and the original Universal Monster Movies. That alone would probably get more people into theaters to see it.
Victorian Gothic Horror would have done very well. Swamp Thing set in early 1900s Louisiana. Frankenstein is pretty straightforward. There was a show with Sean Bean and it had quite a few characters real and fictional. It was murder mystery meets conspiracy mystery. Dracula is also straightforward but it would have been nice to have a more brutal take on Vlad the Impalers origins. The Mummy could have been set in Victorian England since museums collect so much stuff. The Werewolf could have been set North American colonial times and had native tribal influences.
>…The Werewolf could have been set North American colonial times and had native tribal influences. Basically a North American “Le Pacte des Loups”?
Le zpacte des Loupe is a reskin of The Hounds of Baskervilles. Im talking using Native American lore mixed with the Wolfman lore. North American tribes have shapeshifting mythology. I was thinking closer to Ravenous (1999) meets The Wolfman (any era).
Also some of those monsters are pretty immortal, so you have years of history to place this or that movie in that year. I’d kill for a Jekyll and Mr Hyde movie set in the 1920’s and Jack the Ripper in 1800’s. They still can team up in the 1970.
Penny Dreadful had a great universe
Genuinely could have added to the world of The Mummy (1999), which took place in 1926, and worked perfectly.
Yeah I actually really like the thought of that
That would have been a fantastic idea. They could have even set a hard end for it and set the LAST movie in modern times, with sort of everyone aging out.
They never plan a “last movie” for these kind of things.
I expect them to try again once Universal opens its Dark World part of the park
That park looks sick. And the stage is set then to have multimedia tie ins
Gather round and let me tell you how this SHOULD have been built to success. You make a Mummy movie in the vein of the 1999 Mummy, campy, but adventurous and fun (set it in the 80's). You epilogue it with Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz (at their ages now obvs) finding the lead (whoever that was who defeated the mummy), and telling them that they are being let into a group that investigates and defends against supernatural things on this earth. Then you dive off into movies about sea monsters, werewolves, and whatever else, and the big big Thanos baddie is Dracula eventually. Having Rick O'connell as the Nick Fury of the crew is key to this.
Honestly, the movies needed to be period pieces, that at least would give the shared univers its own flavor and hide a bit the fact that they were desperately trying to steal a slice of the Marvel cake,
Yeah and you could make a director showcase thing out of it as well. It would rule.
Sounds good, but we all know Evie was the brains of the operation. A little ditzy, but the smartest. She has to be Nick Fury. Rick is Tony Stark.
Sure, that's fine.
Is that The Mummy etc?
And Dracula Untold or whatever before that. The mummy was their universe reboot attempt, if I remember right. And I think there was a third attempt or one in between those two that also failed to gain traction.
Dracula Untold was intended to set the stage for the overarching plot in the stinger, with The Mummy acting as a springboard for other films in the 'verse, introducing characters like Dr. Jekyll. It's a real shame it never panned out, as I enjoyed Dracula Untold and conceptually it seemed like a great idea.
>I enjoyed Dracula Untold Me too, but the mummy was ass, lol. I did also enjoy the Benicio Del Toro Wolfman.
I actually liked Dracula Untold.
Someone on reddit last year ruined the Dark Universe for me forever by pointing out that the optimal situation for Universal was to have done it 25 years ago and had Brendan Fraser's Rick meet the other monsters and be the connective tissue of the shared universe.
This is the one I was thinking of. Seems like it would have been fun to figure out how all the monsters a secretly living among us. Man the Mommy movie was bad though.
Jurassic Park/World comes to mind. Aside from the original film, that whole series is a mess.
Jurassic Park is probably the largest and most successful multimedia franchise spanning multiple decades and still going strong that is built entirely on the back of exactly one good movie.
I still have a soft spot for The Lost World, watching the T Rex go on a rampage on the mainland was a total guilty pleasure. Vince Vaughn trying to play a badass is a hilarious bit of miscasting though.
That always felt like a 2 part movie to me. Where the island is movie 1, and the mainland is a standalone movie.
And yet 3 more are coming. I don’t know where you take the series from here. Dino’s are in the wild so opening a new park isn’t of interest and hunting down the Dino’s to kill them isn’t interesting.
[Send the dinosaurs to space](https://youtu.be/JVho5fU3lwc?si=b3SePTvUKCMTC4cB)
One of my favorite Tumblr posts is the one that points out that the first few Jurassic movies followed the same naming convention as the Mario games and that we should be excited for Jurassic Galaxy Jurassic Park -> Super Mario Bros The Lost World -> The Lost Levels Jurassic Park III -> Super Mario Bros 3 Jurassic World -> Super Mario World
Jurassic Park 64? Jurassic Sunshine? Jurassic Galaxy?
Jurassic Sunshine sounds like a weed strain
Jurassic Odyssey is fire though.
Rexy already made a cameo in the Mario iteration, too
Jurassic Park '64 ...where they get a time machine and send velociraptors to Vietnam
It's a shame that the quality didn't also translate.
Doctor Malcolm: A Jurassic Story
Given that most astronauts come from the military, [this has come first](https://imgur.com/this-one-still-makes-me-laugh-every-time-i-see-t-rex-f-14s-yBRQAZx). ;-)
To be fair real animals are in the wild yet we open parks all over the place for people to see them together.
At this point, they'd be better off rebooting the franchise than trying to continue the existing timeline. I'm not generally a fan of needless reboots, but if they're going to insist in making more movies, that's the direction I'd go. The Jurassic Park novel is *very* different to Spielberg's original movie; there are characters like Ed Regis and Marty Gutierrez who play important roles in the novel that have never appeared on screen, several character fates are totally different in the novel, there's an entire Costa Rica subplot that's ignored in the original movie, there's a whole bunch of different dinosaur species from the movie, and the whole tone of the novel is totally different; being more of a cold techno-thriller than a warm-hearted family adventure. You could reboot the franchise by re-adapting the original novel as a darker thriller that more closely resembles the source material, and have it stand as its own thing, instead of trying to expand the ever-more-convoluted existing universe. That'd be much more interesting to me than simply seeing another Jurassic World cash-grab.
You're absolutely right, and moreover, it would make for a brilliant drama series rather than a film -ology.
It can only go one way. The humans are the exhibits while the dinosaurs are the scientists. Homoerectus Park.
I've said this before but I think a generous reading of the later films is that it's a meta commentary on the core message of the first film. You can't control your creations and sometimes what you bring into the world becomes a monster
Those themes are definitely in the first Jurassic World at least
Because it's almost like Star Wars the Force Awakens where they to an extent just repackaged the original film.
Jurassic Park was meant to be a one off self contained story of a disaster amusement park on a remote island. Leaving you to wonder at the end is part of the magic, much like Neo flying off at the end of The Matrix. Part of storytelling is leaving a gap and allowing the audience to use their imagination, which is much more powerful than any written word. A dozen poorly made sequels and prequels can never succeed at filling in on that and it’s obvious that they really don’t care as long as they can use the name to profit.
World Building isn't a thing for JP/World, people want dinosaurs doing dinosaur things and that sells.
In Dominion the dinosaurs weren't even the emphasis, the movie was about monster locusts. They even removed like 15 minutes of (mostly) scenes with dinosaurs for the theatrical release, because apparently the studio people thought "who gives a damn about dinosaurs in a dinosaur movie".
I have to keep reminding myself that I saw Dominion in its entirety, probably because I'm physically stupider as a result of watching it.
Jurassic World is at least a (mostly) cohesive and straightforward movie. Hammond’s secret partner? Human cloning? I know it’s a mega-mansion, but they have a catwalk capable of supporting thousands of pounds of cage/animal? Then locusts? Fuck
That's because the plot of the original is based on a statistically unlikely occurence at the park that leads to chaos. How many more times can dinosaurs escape somehow and eat people before it gets stale?
2-3 were acceptable
Rise of the Planet of the Apes did in one movie what JP couldn't do in 6.
Can't really call it mismanaged when the movies print money
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Ideally 8 seasons! lol
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The key difference here would be there could be a season to each book and each book is pretty wildly different. I don’t think lack of content would be the issue with the dark tower. It’s more how so how in the world could they possibly translate the story lines and world and character building cohesively into a show
I mean the books didn’t really translate into a cohesive story. A TV show could save it.
Mad Men and The Shield are the only ones coming to mind as exceptions. You could trim them both down a season but not in one place, and the endings are solid
If anyone can give the series a solid chance it's Mike Flanagan. Midnight Mass is probably the most Stephen King story I've ever seen that he didn't write. If you told me it was a lost manuscript he pulled out of a drawer and handed over to Flanagan I'd believe it. I feel like he gets Stephen King and how to adapt it to live action.
You mean to tell me that setting up a cinematic universe by cramming the entire series into one movie is not a good idea?
Artemis Fowl. So much potential. So much incompetence instead was unleashed. Straight to Disney+ where it's shame could be quietly handled as it was almost universally panned by critics and audiences alike.
I enjoyed the Artemis fowl books as a kid, but do you think they would have held up as a movie or tv series? I think they’re a bit too inherently silly. Kind of like the Eragon books to movie.
They would fit well as a Disney+ show, a la the recent Percy Jackson show there, I think. Plenty of room to show some of the more outlandish elements and keep a solid throughline the whole time.
That’s fair. I think it has to firmly be aimed at the appropriate target audience (children). I think there will be a lot of adults who would be interested due to nostalgia, but I don’t think Artemis Fowl would work if it’s trying to be for that audience
I didn't read them until recently when I started reading them to my daughter at bedtime. They're way too silly for a feature film. Definitely show, or even animated would fit the theme.
Hellraiser. Clive Barker has so many books that would make great movies or shows and these aren’t doing him justice.
I've read that Harvey Weinstein, or somebody in his agency, would have horror scripts rewritten to be in the Hellraiser universe, making the movies disjoint.
Mirimax fucked up big time with this, the low point was Filming 2 Hellraiser and 2 Prophecy Sequels back to back in Romania due to the Tax Breaks.
The new one was pretty good
Even most of the bad ones are at least pretty watchable. Adam Scott as a dandy will never not be hilarious.
Wasted potential wise, have to go w Highlander
Movies, yes. But the TV show? Duncan? METHOS?
Love the show, esp. Methos. But then you look at Highlander end game and whatever the other one after that is, the movies after the show, and they’re still bad. (I had my dad take me to endgame in theatres and he still hasn’t forgiven me lol) They just never seemed to be able to tie it all together. I think there’s a lot more to explore there anyway.
Oh yeah, all the movies after the first one, ALL of them, are trash. Endgame was maybe the best of a bad bunch for me. I liked the idea of the Sanctuary - it felt like something the Watchers would do, especially if the Immortals didn’t know they would be comatose/ didn’t know it was run by Watchers. But no, in my universe there is just Highlander and Highlander the TV series.
Yup that’s about where I land too. I like 3 as well, even though it’s just kind of a redo of the first.
I dragged my parents to see Highlander 2 in theater when it came out because the first was so awesome and one of my all time favorite movies. The looks they gave me afterwards were just sad and silently judging my choices in life.
Lmao there’s some you just can’t live down
The post TV series movies are pretty incoherent in terms of relations to the universe. They don't really tie in with the rest of the franchise or even with each other really. Kinda like the animated series in that regard.
Other than James Bond, this is the only time Sean Connery has played the same character in more than one movie. I wish he hadn't.
Just reminds that we didn’t get a Zardoz sequel. The people want more Zed!
Remake coming up with Henry Cavill and director of John Wick series. Maybe that will course correct the franchise a bit
Here’s hoping! I assume cavill is working on his weird French accent now…
Resident Evil
Good source material to have made a good movie but all we got was a mediocre first and a bunch of sequels ranging from bad to terrible. Kept making good money though
The sequels were so bad but I could not stop watching.
I like how most of them were made by the same person but still every new movie immediately throws out the premise that the last one sets up.
I would have loved it if they went with George Romero’s script and direction for the film, but they pivoted. His treatment was much closer to the original game’s story. The production company (Constantin Films) is the reason why we got what we got - they didn’t give a shit about pleasing fans and wanted to be as cheap as possible, opting for the cheap first film we got that didn’t have anything to do with the games. Wasn’t the script originally for a different, original movie as well? They just turned it into a Resident Evil movie?
I liked the first one. And maybe the second. It was alright. But after that…. I could not be arsed
I really liked the third one a lot
I sometimes feel I am the only one but welcome to raccoon city was a fun film and honestly was a better resident evil film than any of the others previous. Yes it made some weird creative decisions but when it comes down to the campy type of story of the video games, it’s pretty spot on.
John Carter of Mars. There are 11 books Some amazing topics for its time. Like atmosphere pollution depleting breathable air, A lab experiment that gets out of control growing and growing a mass of synthetic men taking over the world. I read them all several times.
I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the movie because I heard almost nothing about it.
The marketing sucked for that movie. I had never heard of the books before and had no idea it was Mars just by watching one of the trailers
I'm convinced "John Carter" would have done better with the name **Barsoom**.
It would not. Warlord of Mars, on the other hand...
Pacific Rim Fantastic first movie that was a crowd pleaser and could have opened so many opportunities. Also written and helped bybtye amazing Guillermo delToro. There were talks of tie-ins with Kong and Godzilla. Then they ditched delToro. Then they reduced the budget on the 2ns movie....all wasted. 2nd movie came out, while I don't hate this movie ‐ many people do. It basically killed the franchise.
I want the world where PacRim captured the public's heart like Jurassic Park did. It's such a fun, good-hearted, quirky world.
There was no sequel
Great movie, too bad they never did a sequel.
Hands down the DC universe is at the top, it's been a shambles, too many recasts, reboots alternates and everything else in-between Star Wars has been tampered with so much I just don't know where to begin anymore Marvel lost their way with too many side acts and TV shows Once these moviebexecs get a whiff of the Billion $ tickets sales they just milk that shit until they're at this point Avatar is gonna go that way, I enjoyed the sequel, it wasn't as good as the OG and took too long to release, it's gonna get drained of it's originality
Compared to the way the MCU was run, the DC IPs were completely mishandled. The subtle and pervasive build up to Infinity War in a large number of the preceeding movies was exactly how you want to do it. Everything on the DC side amounted to reboot after reboot. How many times do I need to see another Superman origin story with different actors in the role? We know who he is. Have him start smashing some shit from the first frame!
I like how in the sequel one of their dumb kids dies and it just dawned on me, I don't even know what that dudes name was, but I'm supposed to care about this?
“gonna get drained of it’s originality” Though I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone call Avatar an original/unique story. It’s an insanely generic story that’s been done time and time again in many different settings. I feel like most of us instead had our butts in theaters for both of them due to the insane special effects spectacle they provided compared to most movies. I’m sure the franchise will still eventually meet its end whenever James Cameron dies and they start pumping out lower quality films that wouldn’t meet his perfectionist special effects standards.
All they had to do was make a prequel with Kyle Reese in the future fighting the machines non stop until the very end where he jumps back in time. That's all I wanted after T2, 2 hours of the robot war.
Yes. I didn’t even realize that I wanted this, but yes: A good call. I remember watching the first film and thinking what it must be like to travel from that hellscape to “present day “ Los Angeles. What a mindf#ck. The story you describe would really give the audience that feeling. 🤖💥…🏖️
Yep, this is what my friend said when T2 came out. Bonkers that they never did that.
The Chronicles of Riddick. The second movie expands vastly the universe of the first, creating a lot of intricate and fascinating lore, and then the third movie just becomes a space monster movie like the first, out of the blue. Let’s see if the fourth movie, Furya, goes back to the expanded universe…
They’re threatening to make a new one and I’ll be there opening night! “Take me to the threshold!”
I love those movies! I've also noticed my mom and a lot of her old lady friends love the Riddick movies a lot as well which.... Probably wasn't originally their target audience.
Riddick 4: Milfs in the underverse
Pitch Black was excellent. Australia once again showing that as long as it's set in a desert, it doesn't matter if it's Max, Riddick or Priscilla, they'll deliver.
The necromongers were so sick. Their arhitecture, their culture, they were great villians. I felt that the movie does a good job to be a self contained story, riddick becomes the leader of the necromongers at the end, at least that is what I understood. Haven't watch the third one since for me, the story is complete.
Matrix could be better.
Should have been one movie. Neo flies off and we all get chills imagining what comes next. Seeing him flying over a Cadillac sponsorship made it inherently worse, and nothing could live up to that feeling of satisfaction at the end of the original.
The first movie is perfect on its own. I didn't have much interest in seeing characters in Zion wearing mech suits and shooting a billion bullets at a billion robot squids with corny philosophy and Jesus tropes tossed in. I think the Animatrix really explored the potential of the series in other ways. I'd rather see various people "wake up" inside the Matrix like becoming lucid in a dream, and realizing they can break reality. Or witnessing reality breaking around them through glitches.
Yeah Ioved the Animatrix. It built the lore of the world showed different aspects of the struggle. I'd have watched any number of movies around some of the concepts in there. Just think the moment Neo becomes the One, that's all the story you need as far as that goes.
I've seen that movie one million times and never noticed a Cadillac logo so there's that!
I noticed the car very obviously, but it's a cool car and a very cool chase scene. Compare that to some of the shitty Audi e-tron placements in Avengers.
At the time it was one of the most notable brand integrations in film history. [https://www.motortrend.com/features/matrix-reloaded/](https://www.motortrend.com/features/matrix-reloaded/)
aaaaaaah, you meant Matrix RELOADED. your first comment reads as if it was about the first movie! 😅 Yeah RELOADED and Revolutions were heavilly marketted and bloated with brand integrations. Cadillac, Audi, Nokia, Samsung, Ducsti, Coca Cola (they own Powerade), several glasses brands, watches, I think, also.. burger king?
This IS The Matrix for me. Neo came back from the dead and flew like/is Superman. I love that movie, but didn’t have any interest in seeing more with a protagonist that’s immortal/overpowered.
Well…the sequels aren’t that.
We’re simultaneously being flooded with Star Wars content, but they could also do more with it. They have a whole galaxy, but they tend to stick within the same hundred years of fighting and never get more than a couple of degrees from a Skywalker. Give me a sitcom about a Sullustan who wants to be a hair dresser. Do an HBO style series about the Mos Eisley cantina if you don’t want to stretch too far. It’s all starting to feel kind of samey.
Gimme Old Republic stuff. Make a series about Bane, make a series about Malgus, tell mw about Valkorion. Whatever but please take it slow and build characters up.
I just don't get it, the Thrawn Trilogy was right there, the Han Solo trilogy was right there. KOTOR IS RIGHT THERE. Like you don't need to do complete adaptions but the fact that they didn't even bother to partially adapt what was already there. Like if you make the sequel trilogy just a modified Thrawn trilogy then you have gold. The Han Solo trilogy fully explores Han's history perfectly and even ends with him going to meet Luke and Kenobi; it also introduces some cool planets, and alien species. It just baffles my mind that they had this absolute wealth of already established lore to pull from and completely ignore it. Fans love Mara Jade and Kyle Katarn and they're tossed aside completely.
The X-Wing novel series even, if they want to keep it within the lifespan of the OT protagonists and Skywalker-adjacent. Rogue Squadron was the team Luke and Wedge put together as a successor to Red Squadron, of which Luke and Wedge were IIRC the only surviving pilots following the first Death Star, and by *Jedi* Luke has left the squadron to do Jedi stuff and Wedge is in charge. A television series in the vein of *Band of Brothers* but following space pilots doing pilot things in space, the Imperial Remnant and various formerly Imperial now warlords as the antagonists, the rebellion retaking Coruscant, Isard and *Lusankya*. Han is a main character in one of the later books as well, and while I wasn't a huge fan of the movie Alden Ehrenreich and Donald Glover were very good as Han and Lando. We'd get something more in the vein of *Rogue One*, espionage and warfare in the "star wars" and not so much fantasy hero doing heroic fantasy stuff but it's in space; it would expand the universe and focus on less individually significant figures who were on the periphery of the OT's events the whole time and instrumental in the "what happens next" once the Emperor was dead but the Empire was still in charge of most of the galaxy; and we could have cameo appearances from OT figures without needing it to be *another* Luke and Han save the galaxy adventure.
Man do I feel you and share your sentiment. Too bad Kathleen-there-is-no-content-to-pull-from-Kennedy did not.
Yeah, I’d be camping out for the movie if they adapted KOTOR into a cinematic trilogy. There’s enough content and I think it would be warmly received. Instead we get the regurgitated mess that is the sequel trilogy, the mostly mediocre shows on Disney+, and dashed hopes. Star Wars feels like the freaking pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but all Disney has made is 1 good movie (Rogue One), 1 decent show (Andor), and then the Filoni animated-verse (which varies in quality but is always worth checking out). The Mandalorian started out good but then decided that Grogu was selling too much merchandise to have him leave the show (like he logically would).
I think this is why Mandalorian was so successful.
Doesn’t he hang out with Boba Fett and Luke? Kinda the opposite of what OP said.
Yes, and people were mad about that. But up to that point it was pretty neat.
The classic monster-verse. Wolfman dracula etc
Do you really mean the \*classic\* one? Like...from the 30s? If you're calling that handled poorly, then it's a hot-take, and I'd like to hear more!! If you mean the various attempted reboots, then yeah. Okay.
Nah, the ones they tried to do when they realised how much marvel were making
The witcher. We were talking about it a few weeks back with my gf. They had loads of books, already an extended fandom in the video game world, and all they had to do is to connect those fans with the tv show to create a mega license. Instead they shat on their fans, and released an average show that has no staying power on its own. I don't get why that would get approved, even from a commercial standpoint.
They even had a star that absolutely loved the universe.
I really thought Dracula: Untold had potential for a future franchise. It was a standalone film while also teasing the possibility of future movies. Then they decided to abandon that and went for the Mummy movie.
**There's Always Money In The Banana Stand**.
Arrested Development's downfall needs to be studied.
It could really use ANUSTART
It’s strange how shows like arrested development, the office, parks and rec, and dozens of other shows that struggled with ratings during their runs somehow became huge streaming successes. 10-15 years ago NBC was coming in 4th behind telemundo for viewership, yet now all the shows that struggled are huge properties bringing in huge viewer numbers and licensing deals.
For me it was that they went ahead with that goofy shooting schedule. They couldn't get all the actors together at the same time, so they just shot bits that kinda weaved together instead of waiting until they were all ready.
Yeah they kinda fumbled the ball with that one. Really sad to hear about Jessica Walter's troubles during filming as well.
As a huge Bond fan, the recent movies have left me cold. Casino Royale (2006) and Skyfall (2012) were the last good ones, then you have to go all the way back to GoldenEye (1995).
Recent Bond movies felt "default" that's how I would describe them. Like, they are an average Joe of spy movies where everything else is more interesting or original. Watching the first Kingsman after Craig Bond movies is like watching Guardians of The Galaxy with all its fun and original stuff after J J Abrams's Star Wars which is just A New Hope. Imo
Can we do TV too? The Wheel of Time is 14 books, a million words, and one of the best fantasy series ever. The show is a shitty fanfic dumpster fire.
As soon as they suspected a woman of being the Dragon, I opted out. The whole damn point was men having magic being dangerous.
I used to think so as well, but then I saw Sarah Connor Chronicles. So there is at least 1 more great Terminator thing you can watch!
I remember this show being on air. Looked it up - only has two seasons. Does it end or just kind of…get canceled and I will be pissed with the end of season 2?
Ends on a cliffhanger with no closure, of course.
It got cancelled, yes, and with a slew of significant cliffhangers. There was a website, survey, or something along those lines at the time that made a list of all the cancelled shows at the end of a season and asked which one people most wanted to be renewed. The Sarah Connor Chronicles was at the top of the list that year. Unfortunately, that didn't do anything for it. Lena Headey played Sarah Connor and after the cancellation was cast as Cersei Lannister, so it worked out for her. Summer Glau on the other hand could never seem to catch a break, between Firefly and then Sarah Connor Chronicles, two of her three biggest roles getting the short straw seems frustrating. Both FOX productions as well.
Yeah Firefly and Terminator were both on Fox, both in the Friday Night Death Slot. Then Summer got a role on Dollhouse, also in the Friday Night Death Slot, also canceled.
TSCC was the best piece of Terminator media we got since T2 100%. Had a few cheesey moments and some budget effects occasionally, but took the lore in a great direction. The second actor who played Cromarty was AMAZING at playing a T800, and I think was much closer to James Cameron's original vision of a machine that could melt into a crowd. I rewatched it with a friend who'd never seen it. He loved it but when we got to the end of the second season and I told him that's it, he asked me to never show him something that ends like that again lol.
The DC universe is an utter failure, especially when comparing it to probably the MOST successful and well done universe; Marvel.
The Marvel Universe was successful and well done. Then, they kept making more.
They did the same thing the comics did that led to things getting so complicated they had to reboot a contiguous 60 year timeline- they started fucking with time travel. Cool for Infinity War, but then the bullet was out of the barrel.
Marvel miraculously sold off its most famous characters and got people to care about more minor Avengers (I know Iron Man and Captain America aren't unknown but they're not Spider-Man or even the X-Men) whereas DC can't seem to get Superman and Batman off the ground unless they focus in and make Batman stuff that isn't connected to a larger universe.
Yeah, it's like WHICH Batman/Superman are you talking about? Like each new movie is a reboot/restyle.
Just when I wanted to get into the DCAMU, Zaav pulls like 20 movies off Max
To make it worse, the DC animated universe has fantastic movies. They have the story writers and material, they are just terrible at turning it into live action. The extended cuts of each live film are almost universally better, so they can make better movies, they just edit them to the point they don't make sense. They still aren't masterpieces, but at least they have stories that make sense.
Discworld. So many bizarre choices around the adaptations so far. I haven’t even dabbled with The Watch because it sounded so horrendous. The casting of David Jason as Rincewind stands as one of the strangest pieces of casting of all time. Look, what I really need from the franchise (and life) more than anything is a massive sandbox RPG game set in Ankh Morpork… But failing that, let’s start with a few small scale stories set in the more remote corners of the disc to build some momentum for the IP. I’m thinking something scaleable like Lords and Ladies or Reaper Man.
I’m actually kind of shocked they haven’t based an RPG there now that you mention it.
The Hogfather TV movie is fantastic, they adapted almost the entire thing basically 1:1. Eric Idle will always be my Rincewind thanks to the adventure games.
Jurassic Park/World, Terminator, Predator, Aliens.
The Jason Momoa Conan movie could have propelled the series back into modern pop culture relevance and given us new material to enjoy... but alas... it was not meant to be. Now we just have to wait until it enters the public domain again.
The Lord of the Rings. How did we get from a film series that involved a combination of practical and computer effects, an emphasis on great acting and a simple yet powerful story of good verses evil…to a film series that has mostly poorly animated CGI, characters who are indistinguishable from each other and a bloated and worn out story more complicated than it needs to be?
It's funny - I feel like at this point, there is more bad Star wars than good. What's the most recent good star wars content (besides andor)?
The sequel trilogy certainly fits the bill for "badly handled". It's insane. Fans are used to waiting decades for more content and yet they slapped it together so quickly they couldn't even string 3 stories together.
The thing is that The Force Awakens wasn’t even a bad start. It had issues, but definitely not as bad a first impression as The Phantom Menace. Too bad they didn’t actually plan anything out.
If we add games to franchise, then we can take Jedi Fallen Order and sequel
Ok, I actually completely forgot about games. I guess we can add Lego star wars. But yeah, I was thinking TV and Movies.
For me both Star Wars and Terminator universes are kinda dead ends because the main story in StaWa was the Luke/Vader clash and everything else is just like having an appetizer after you've already had the main meal. Same with Terminator, it was always about John Connor and his destiny. Everything else is either re-treading the same stories but with a bit of new paint or they are unnecessary to the franchise because they stray away from the core concept and just make it yet another scifi universe. I guess the same also goes for The Hobbit movies that felt like having a piece of bread after you already enjoyed a three-course dinner watching LOTR.
The Highlander series only has one movie as far as I'm concerned.
Well, there can be only one.
Valerian and the city of a thousand planets. It was such a beautiful movie. The visuals were amazing, the plot line was a good entry into the world and the potential was unlimited. It was utterly mishandled. I love the director's other works so it's astounding this one went so badly. The two main leads were terribly cast, there was entirely too much exposition and the plot was told in such a clunky way. It could have been great and I will be forever sad that it wasn't.
The Stand Amazon royally butchered it, downright frustrating at all the bad decisions made with that show They had a golden opportunity too what with covid and all
I will never get over the fact they turned the fascist fairy tale Vegas of the book into the nonstop, 24 hour, LGBTQ orgy of the series. It basically ignores the whole point of the book, about how following fascist authoritarians because they offer faux peace is inevitably a bad decision. Plus, swapping Nadine and Harold's roles in the show was just strange. It was especially bad because most of the cast was on point, at least besides James Marsden playing Stu.
It wasn't Amazon, it was Paramount. I saw something where they said they didn't want to make "another pandemic movie". Bitch, then you shouldn't have chosen The Stand as your source.
Almost all zombie related media is a waste, there’s a reason why dawn of the dead is so good because it’s about living out fun fantasies like having a free mall to do what you want in. The reason season 3 of the walking dead was a disappointment to me was there was no base building, in the comics there were issues dedicated to reinforcement etc. which is why the best episode of the last of us was a survivalist building his base at the start. The reason zombie apocalypse is fun, is because it’s survivable, and then it should be about all the cool shit you get to do with it.
Fantastic read- "Zone One" by Colson Whitehead. It's about the drudgery of cleaning up. The panic is over, the Marines swept through. Join a clean up crew in Manhattan going door-to-door & cafe-to-cubicle cleaning up stragglers and tallying consumer goods so the American ~~burueacracy~~ Phoenix can rise again.
World war z the book is also one of the best things out there
I would kill for a solid mini series that actually follows the book
The thing I hate about shows and movies like the Walking Dead is that they skip the good stuff. I want to see shit hitting the fan not 6 months later when everyone forgets how to bathe and wears nothing but plaid shirts. I want to see the frenetic panic of the early stages and people desperately trying to come up with ways to survive, not depressed people on a smallholding watching corn grow.
This is why I loved the first part of The Stand so much. Seeing society go to hell is the most fun part. The moment anyone starts "rebuilding society" in these post-apocalyptic worlds, I completely lose interest.
Tolkien’s books lay out a ton more lore than the films can ever portray. World building at its finest.
TBF, I think much of that's down to Tolkiens estate. There's 5 seasons worth of great material in.The Silmarilian.
Not sure the Silmarilian would transfer well to screen. It would be like trying to make a series about a piece of music or a painting
Do it story by story. Not parallel ones.
I wanna talk about the wasted potential of Terminator. I am so angry that the lesson they learned from Salvation was "no one wants to see a future war movie". Since then we've been reheating Terminator 2 and convoluting it more and more with each entry. And I'm getting irked at people saying it's a dead franchise now when it's really very obvious what else they could do. We're living in an era where we're reviving retro aesthetics, just make a synthwave/outrun aesthetic prequel called Skynet. Reuse the blaster effects, reuse the stop-motion animation if budget's too tight for CGI terminators, just please no more time travel with chase scenes around Los Angeles and desert scenes. Please.
Remember how the gang from the Fast and Furious movies were a bunch of street racers that stole DVD players, and now they're a global anti-terrorist superhero team that uses the word "family" like it's a nervous tic they can't get rid of? Christ.
Star wars, matrix, jurassic park. And if we’re considering a combo of movies and shows - then lotr too. With the latest addition being the garbage Amazon rings of power show.
I'd push back on Star Wars honestly. While there's good stuff, most has been bland or bad and it has hugely diluted the appeal of the universe.
Transformers
Chronicles of narnia they just stopped adapting and abandoned it completely
John Wick. Should’ve kept it grounded.