The Top Ten Movie Concepts So Preposterously Awful They Should Never Have Gotten Out of Development
10. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (Jonathan Mostow, 2003)Terrible movie sequels that completely miss the point are nothing new, of course. But there's something especially wrongheaded about this 12-years-later follow-up to James Cameron's Terminator 2: Judgment Day, one of the most beloved action movies ever made. That film ended without resolution in the classical sense, but there was still a marked finality to it. So how do you continue the story? By invalidating everything that was won through blood and tears in the second film, and along the way crapping all over its theme about the ability of people to rise above whatever future fate has planned. Apparently the correct way to pitch a sequel is by leading with your flat-out contempt for fans of the original.
9. Trail of the Pink Panther (Blake Edwards, 1982)With series star Peter Sellers dead at a young age, the only thing to do was quietly, respectfully retire his character and the franchise with it. Or, you could use outtake footage from the earlier movies and crudely edit them into a newly-shot narrative that features, among other things, 72-year-old David Niven looking like he's about to drop dead on set. The fact that we're here talking about this movie probably gives away which of those choices Blake Edwards went with.
8. Treasure Planet (Ron Clements & John Musker, 2002)What makes this all the sadder is that Clements and Musker spent literally years trying to get their sci-fi adaptation of Treasure Island off the ground. But their dream project was perhaps the most ill-advised, unwatchable film released by Disney Animation in a decade where they made quite a few lousy insults to the legacy of Mickey Mouse & Co. But only Treasure Planet has so many unimaginably weird conceits - spaceships with masts, and open-air decks? - that it feels more like a nightmare you had while flipping between a pirate movie and Forbidden Planet one night on cable, than something that actually exists in the world, for anyone to watch at their leisure.
7. The Conqueror (Dick Powell, 1956)Starring John Wayne as Genghis Khan.
6. Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (Willam Shatner, 1989)It's not that there was a fifth Star Trek - a forgone conclusion - nor that they gave creative reigns to one of the series' actors - that had worked out well twice with Leonard Nimoy in the driver's seat - nor that the plot hinges around Spock's surprise half-brother taking a Mad Max-style shithole planet hostage, and then stealing the Enterprise to go to the center of the galaxy to find the planet where God lives, a series of events so unhinged that Gene Roddenberry (no stranger to wigged-out narrative concepts) suggested that it was best to regard it all as apocryphal within the larger Star Trek canon. No, the idea that really makes me wonder how any studio executive possibly saw fit to give one red cent to this insanely bad film was that in the original draft, the one that got funding, the crew didn't meet an evil alien pretending to be God; they met God Himself.
5. Psycho (Gus Van Sant, 1998)-"Here's my idea: I want to remake Hitchcock's Psycho."
-"Um, not to be rude, Gus, but everybody pretty much agrees that the original is just about perfect already."
-"Yes, I know. You couldn't improve upon it in any way. Which is why I'm going to remake it shot for shot."
-"Brilliant! Here's a barrel full of money. Come back when you run out."
4. Jack (Francis Ford Coppola, 1996)A heartwarming tale about a child whose body is growing up too fast, which means that we get to have Robin Williams play a fifth-grader. It's charming and funny, and a sweet delight for the whole family. Oh, did we mention that Jack will probably be dead before his fifteenth birthday? Yeah, well, hopefully nobody in the audience will think of that.
3.The Baby Geniuses series (Bob Clark, 1999/2004)Kathleen Turner (WHY?) and Christopher Lloyd play two evil scientists trying to unlock the secrets of infant communication, because all babies know everything there is to know about the universe, until they become verbal and the knowledge is lost. The smartest of all the babies escapes due to a comedy of errors-style mix-up with his long-lost twin, and leads a baby army to fight the scientists. Correctly perceiving that there was only one way to top all of this, the writers of SuperBabies: Baby Geniuses 2 made the villain a Nazi.
2.The Day the Clown Cried (Jerry Lewis, 1972)And on the subject of Nazis: Jerry Lewis plays a clown thrown in a concentration camp, and given a job leading little Jewish children into the death chambers. Or something along those lines. I'm not one of the very elite company of viewers to have ever seen this never-released film, but I know that no combination of "Jerry Lewis", "Clown", and "Holocaust" can possibly end well.
1.Night of the Lepus (William F. Claxton, 1972)The Lepus! A deadly foe if ever mankind has faced death from some monster unknown to nature! Giant, pulsating eyes staring out from the darkness, promising bloody vengeance on the human race! And what is the Lepus?
...
The bunny rabbit.
Yes, sir, in the "nature gone amok" craze of the early seventies, someone actually got the money to film a screenplay about rabbits used in a scientific experiment, accidentally released into the wild, where they grow to the size of Volkswagens and become carnivorous. To realise this effect, normal size rabbits were let loose on scale models, and had red paint splattered on their faces ( in once infamous scene, it was a thoroughly-embarassed stuntman in a rabbit suit). And not for one second does the film have any sense of humor about all of this: it is a Serious and Thoughtful look at Scientists Tampering in God's Domain. It just happens to also be funnier than the killer rabbit scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Not only is this the worst idea for a film I've ever heard of, I have to assume that it's the worst idea that will ever be thought up.
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18 comments:
Yes, Psycho was indeed the second worst remake of 1998.
The movie may have been awful, but Terminator 3: Redemption for the PS2 is one of those "better than the movie" tie-ins, much like Animatrix (for some) and so on. Honestly, the CG cutscenes from the game are better than most of the movie.
Will: I couldn't think of what you were talking about, so I Googled it, and Good Lord, I'd completely forgotten that it existed. Thanks for ruining my life by reminding me.
I ruin my life every time I think about that movie too. Glad to be spreading the feeling around.
Will, Tim: You don't mean ...?!?
you're right, The Parent Trap was totally the worst remake of 1998 ;-)
If Will means the film I'm thinking of, it was a summer movie remake of a Japanese film. I don't know that it would have made this list, necessarily, though if I ever do a "Ten Worst Remakes", it'll be damn near the top.
Oh come on, that was a classic!
I had to Google it, too, and I really regret it. Good Lord, that movie was awful. I wish I could say I'd forgotten it existed, rather than simply the year in which it was released.
Sad to say, but the ending of Psycho, where the psychologist dude solemnly explains Norman Bates' pathology, is far from "perfect." I suppose that may be where the "just about" comes in, but that's a pretty darned massive "just about."
"If Will means the film I'm thinking of, it was a summer movie remake of a Japanese film."
You are correct sir. My favorite film of all time, I die a little inside every time I see the remake on TV or for sale at the flea market or what have you.
At least Michael Bay did one thing right in his career, with the dog biting the Godzilla toy at the beginning of Armageddon. Yes, that second movie is on Criterion. (shivers)
A frightening movie concept is the following: a biopic about a Roman emperor that mixes Gore Vidal with Penthouse playmates. Caligula or Gore Vidal's Caligula, however you want to call it, is shocking: in how anyone could believe Bob Guccione could, in his words, mix the artistic with the erotic.
I never cared for Terminator 2, so I guess I'm not a fan and couldn't feel the conptemt directed towards me, so I like Terminator 3 a lot.
I also like Treasure planet, although it has some story problems, character wise. But why can't they breathe in outer space? It's an alternate universe, not ours.
Terminator 3 ruins the entire franchise. By trying to update Skynet to fit the Internet Age, it just doesn't work. If Skynet is a virus that can exist on any computer, it has no reason to nuke mankind to protect itself. And if a virus is limited in power only by how many computers it can infect, then using nukes (which also emit EMP blasts) would hurt it as much as the humans. Not to mention the fact that the writing is awful and none of the new actors is right for the parts.
I'm so tired of people piling on Gus Van Sant's Psycho. At least he was trying something different in terms of a "remake". If you're willing to give it just an ounce of your attention rather than go into it hateful there's so much of interest to think about it, the way a movie, even shot for shot, is totally altered by even tiny deviations, the way a character with the same name and same motivations and same dialogue can feel like a different character altogether because you've replaced an actor.
i think it was an interesting experiment and the original is one of my all time favorites.
lol why does everyone hate godzilla (1998) so much
Nathaniel, there are but a few people who could get me to consider giving serious thought to Van Sant's Psycho, and you are one of them. Notice that I do say, "consider", which is enough to put it on my Netflix queue.
In other words, damn you, sir.
Jake, I think there are things you can judge in a movie that are closer to being subject to objectivity, and others are quite subjective, closer to personal taste.
The actors, for example, unless you come up with some terrible and clear reasons why they're so wrong, I think they're an issue closer to personal taste, since they all do a competent job and look their parts, and personally I like them all.
About Skynet and the plot, I guess you're completely right. Personally I have never even come close to giving it so much thought, it's just a fun dumb action movie for me. I can understand that fans who are emotionally attached to this story and care about legacy and such things, would think quite differently.
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