movies

Daybreakers (2009)

Excellent premise: vampire post-epidemic society trying to deal with the scarcity of blood, ethical ramifications of keeping the remaining humans sedated for blood harvesting, technical challenges like adapting infrastructure and vehicles to be sun-proof, etc.

The only thing I clearly remember is the premise, cuz the plot, characters, dialogue, action, etc. was all dog trash

Actually, I do remember how badly it mangled the social commentary on the vampires who couldn't afford blood. Perfect setup for depicting the inhumanity of artificial scarcity and they botched it.

Downsizing: It was a very interesting premise (people choose to shrink themselves in order to continue being able to afford living) but it is squandered on a pretty bland plot that wastes the premise to tell a mundane story.

Recent one for me is Love Hurts.

Had a few things going right for it. The early fight scene between Ke Huy Quan and Marshawn Lynch's characters was really fun and cool. You could see the bones of a really fun John Wick clone but with a bit of an 70's/80's kung fu twist to it. But then they completely ruin it with the love interest plot and the boring bad guy and boring later fights. Take that early part of the movie and expand on it, and drop the love interest crap, and it might have been pretty good.

Assassins Creed

For the uninitiated, this is based on a game series with the premise of people in the modern day using a simulation to relive the memories of their ancestors. And in every day, the modern day is the frame story that sucks and the real, cool story is the simulation.

So of course they made the crappy frame story like 90% of the movie and it sucked. Obviously it’s hard to capture the entire feel of a game on film, but what they could have done is had the entire movie in the past and actually focused on telling a good story, and then revealed it was a simulation right before the credits. Heck, they could have just stolen the ending from Assassins Creed 2 and then cut to modern day Callum with a setup for a sequel.

Instead we got an entirely forgettable film.

A more recent one: The Gorge. Good premise and setting, but it becomes bland when the mystery is unraveled.

Star Wars VII, VIII and IX

I thought In Time had a really cool premise and could have been a great commentary on wealth disparity, but it didn’t do much with it.

Matrix: Revolutions. I didn't even see the fourth one.

Jupiter Ascending was doing some awesome stuff with worldbuilding that you can tell the studio just wimped out on. Can't get too sci fi, might scare away audiences.

I loved Prometheus, I thought it was going deep canon on the Alien franchise, and even though it wasn't perfect I so very much dug it, Ridley Scott saw some bad reviews, pussied out, and put Alien:Covenant out there to undo all the stuff he began with Prometheus. Covenant was such a garbage forgettable movie, followed by Romulus which was garage/fan service waste of time. Oh for the timeline we could have had, had they built upon the canon/story of Prometheus.

The Eternals - Could have been amazing if they weren't trying to tell like six origin stories AND THEN a team-up story in the same film

Honorably mentions:

The Marvels - The first act was some of the best post-Endgame stuff in the MCU, the bickering between the three leads really reminded me of how the Avengers fought in the first Avengers film. It really was a shame that they just said "sorry" in a cornfield and released all the tension right at the end of the first act.

The Substance - Had the potential to be a timeless classic but it forgoed poignancy for 40 extra minutes of absurdist, overindulgent and redundant body horror

The New Mutants - They should have never hired the director of The Fault In Our Stars for a movie like that

LEGO: The Adventures Of Clutch Powers - Too much setup without payoff

We’re All Going to the World’s Fair - HORRIBLE pacing really hurts this movie even though the story, atmosphere and worldbuilding were incredible

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They_live

A very funny movie with good actors and everything, except for one major disappointment: at the end of the movie, you understand that some humans collaborates with aliens, they get magical watches, free money, and the aliens even have some kind of interplanetary door to teleport yourself to zombie-land. But they don't go further in that explanation because the movie is already over.

They could have made a whole sequel with that new world, but instead we are left with a few pictures, and the ending credits of the movie. It felt like "Poochie died on the way back to his home planet. The End."

The Dark Tower (2017, dir Nikolaj Arcel)

There was this alien invasion B-movie like 10 years or so ago that I don’t remember the title of. But it was your typical main character and a couple of friends trying to find a way out of the city. Very generic. Then in the last 10-15 mins of the movie, he gets abducted and it gets far more interesting. But it ends there as a cliffhanger. I would’ve loved to see a version where that happens in the middle of the movie instead and we see more.

65, a movie where humanoid aliens crash land on earth in the time of the dinosaurs and get out right before the asteroid hits. It's a generic survival/monster movie where dinosaurs are just obstacles in the way of the heroes escaping the planet. The movie should have shown the beautiful parts of the Dinosaur world and we should have been sad when they're wiped out at the end.

Parallels (2015)was a pretty good movie, but was originally going to be a TV series. There was a lot of setup that was never paid off because of this, but it's still a pretty good Sci Fi movie, just ends on a cliff hanger. Wish they made the series.

Millennium, 1989.

Basically a terrible disaster movie with a time travel plot. But John Varley's short story and novelization were fantastic. They could have made a great movie, but...didn't.