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
Man in the High Castle tv show. The premise was interesting, Nazis taking over the US and the population figting back. However, the show quickly devolved into a confusing mess.
Nazis are in charge of the US government, yet there's other Nazis on the run from the Nazis in charge? And they're hiding bibles? I was left scratching my head wondering if there were any characters that weren't Nazis. I guess it's a story about how bad guys always turn on each other?
Also The Witcher season 1 tv show. I've never played the games before and knew nothing about it. I was hoping the tv series would be my introduction to the games, but... what in the actual fuck. Was the director drunk? Is this a show about medieval fantasy time travel and I'm just not getting it?
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.
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 feel like the last 30 years of Star Wars movies could qualify here
The movie In Time (2011). The premise was interesting but I can't even remember the plot because it was so meh.
I also think Idiocracy could have been better. It had good moments, and that's what most people remember, but the overall cohesiveness falls flat. Great moments, iconic scenes, but could have been a better film.
In time, has such a awesome premise.
But what we got was a "poor little rich girl" story.
What we got was Bonnie and Clyde. I liked it though.
Not a film, but a TV series? It's called Jericho, and the synopsis in the Wikipedia reads:
Jericho is an American post-apocalyptic action drama television series, which centers on the residents of the fictional city of Jericho, Kansas, in the aftermath of a nuclear attack on 23 major cities in the contiguous United States.
But yeah, the execution is mediocre at best. Both the action and the drama are unbearably flimsy and cliche, even the argument flops as metal.
I remember starting watching that. I have no idea how far I got, but I don't remember a thing about it.
Oh man I haven't thought of Jericho in a minute. I used to watch that after The Unit.
I love Jericho. On my third watch right now actually. Would agree that it's frequently cliché, but overall I'd say it's very good. Skeet Ulrich is transfixing.
Twilight. My wife made me watch the first one and it's actually got a really interesting world and hints at a lot of decent lore and possible content.
Then they fill the film with close-ups of their eyes meeting across the room for minutes on end.
I actually liked the weird depressing grey vibe of the the first film. If it wasn't for all the vampire stuff, it'd be an interesting outsider story about boy-meets-girl with a slight supernatural vibe
There was this movie I saw once called Time Trap. I definitely would not call it good, but the premise was interesting.
Archaeology professor goes missing while exploring a cave which was once thought to be the location of the fountain of youth. His grad students go looking for him, find the cave, weird things start happening when they enter.
Spoilers below:
The cave is revealed to cause some sort of time distortion which grows in intensity the further in you go. The professor who had been missing for days was only in the cave for a few hours. By the time everyone realizes what is happening, months go by, then years. They exit the cave at one point only to find an apocalypse has occurred, with the cave becoming the only safe haven for them to exist in at this point. Without spoiling the rest of the movie, the story plays in to the fountain of youth legend by including a group of Spanish Conquistadors and a tribe of paleolithic cavemen living in a deeper part of the cave, all living as if only days have passed, but in reality centuries/millennia had gone by outside.
The kind of spoiler tag you used is the kind that doesn't work on every Lemmy app. Fortunately, that's not a problem, as I've already seen Time Trap, and despite forgetting its name, do sometimes think about it.
Thanks, I actually went out of my way to look up the native Lemmy markdown format for spoilers because I was worried the one I was used to using wasn't universal, but I guess the opposite ended up being the case. I'll try to fix it.
I believe this is what you're looking for:
Visible Text
hidden content goes here
Looks like:
Visible Text
hidden content
Thanks! Does that look any better now?
It doesn't, it still has some exclamation point action that might be the issue. If it helps, you should be able to copy and paste my example markdown. I gave it a try and it still works.
There, third time's the charm (or 10th, more accurately, since lemmy.world is shitting the bed right now).
I think I figured out what was going on, too. The app I use was automatically re-parsing spoiler formatting into its own syntax, but then was erroneously applying that same syntax to text when attempting to view source. So even the example you posted looked different to me when viewed in app versus on the actual site. I made the edit from the site this time and I think that should be good now.
Time trap was awesome. The scene when they realize the flickering lights are time passing and then they poke their heads out of the cave to see a complete departure of the old world.
The end got a lil weird tho.
Nonetheless it's a movie that will stick with you for a few days of conceptualizing.
*Time Trap was directed by Ben Foster, which I just discovered. It's also streaming for free (w ads of course) on YouTube.
Not a movie, but a TV Show. The Cape.
A former detective is forced into hiding where he is trained in stage magic, sleight of hand, circuscraft, and illusions. He uses them to fight crime.
I thought it was a really interesting concept, a more down-to-earth superhero like Batman, and stuff like this can plausibly happen in real life.
Unfortunately the show was so bad it was canceled mid season and the finale was only streamed on NBC's website.
Six seasons and a movie!
Basically every Terminator movie after T2. They have some great "what if" premises that could add so much depth to the world, but then struggle to see the vision through is a satisfying way.
T3: Let's actually show Judement Day
T4: Let's show the turning point in the war against the machines (edit: and why people follow John Connor as leader of the resistance)
T5: Exists
T6: What if all this time travel actually branched the timeline? What would it look like if one of Skynet's terminators succeeded?
The Sarah Connor chronicles was the only sequel media that ever made sense to me
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.
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.
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 market~~ ~~Marxist space aliens~~ ~~some scientists~~ ~~a famous shirtless hot actor guy~~ fuck 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
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.
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