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.
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.
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:
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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.
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.
Yep. Sounds like what happened with Jericho. Mystery and intrigue in the starting seasons, and then just weird petty soap-opera style squabbles towards the end
If the writers want to tell a story focused on inter-personal relationships, that's perfectly fine. There are PLENTY of people who enjoy that kind of thing. They just don't tend to be the same type of people who enjoy post-apocalyptic sci-fi puzzle-box shows. I don't know why you go through all the trouble of creating this expansive world and lore only to focus your show on character dynamics that aren't centered around the conceit of the show.
If you're going to build this complex world, let us explore that world!
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.
I have a feeling Chris Nolan goes into films with some specifically detailed poignant character moments in mind, and then he just hastily weaves a plot to tie them together. It's interesting to watch at least, but maybe too high brow(?) to call entertaining
For Interstellar, at least, I'd say it's incredibly low-brow. The resolution is just "the power of wuv saves humanity!", which is extremely simplistic and easily understood by the masses.
That would explain why his best films are based on books
Wanted (2008) - The comics are brilliant, sharp, funny and intelligent. By leaving out everything smart/interesting from the comics they managed to create a mediocre action movie.
Passengers had the possibility to be really creepy, I still liked it but without seeing Chris Pratts time alone first, we would have all been confused and on guard with Jennifer Lawrence.
Pandorum is, to me, what Passengers was trying for. The claustrophobic horror of hurting through the void, other humans being both your salvation and your tormentors, all that.
The execs ruined it to make a vehicle for some big names.
I love Pandorum. I have a huge FanTheory on it on reddit from years back if you want to check it out.
https://www.reddit.com/r/FanTheories/comments/gmlo53/pandorum_earth_took_serious_countermeasures/
Hot take, “Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy”. The radio play, books and 80s bbc show were not represented very well at all. They missed well over 75% of the jokes, Mos Def and Zooey Deschanel added nothing to it, and they added plots and scenes, I think just to get more “blockbuster actors” in, that ruin the original story of the radio play. Sam Rockwell, Alan Rickman/Warwick Davis and Bill Nightly were the highlights. One of the few movies I wish they would remake.
Agreed, it was a big letdown unfortunately, compared to any of the other versions (including the text adventure!)
Shame, because Martin Freeman was perfect for Arthur, and Stephen Fry as the voice of the Guide was a great choice too. Though Mos Def was ok as Ford, although not on a par with David Dickson (TV) or Geoffrey McGivern (radio).
Zaphod and Trillian weren't right at all though IMO.
Sam Rockwell as Zaphod was spot on. He was the only one who actually read the books, and had to even tell the director to add "Froody" to the script. What a shitshow it must have been for the director not to know that....
I in no way call this "mediocre"; Its just a flat our terrible low budget bullshit film that the director made as an excuse to hang out with shirtless dudes.
But years ago the guys at Red Letter Media did a segment on "Bigfoot vs D.B. Cooper", and that premise alone (what happened after D.B. Cooper landed) has lived in my brain ever since.
It legitimately angers me that such a great high concept idea was completely wasted on what basically amounts to gay porn.
As featured in the picture, Reign of Fire. I had forgotten about it. I truly don't think there is a film out there that has represented dragons as I see them better.
In Time (2011). Time is currency in the dystopia in the film - paying for something decreases your lifespan, earning wages increases it.
The movie sets up a really cool class structure, wherein there are rich people born with/inheriting hundreds of thousands of years of life, and poor people barely managing to scrape enough hours to stay alive until they can earn more the next day. There are segmented areas of the city that cost years to get into.
Overall incredible premise, but the story wasn't exceptional beyond a couple of the cool mechanics you might expect based on said premise.
Jupiter Ascending
They seed the galaxy and harvest whole planets to create an immortality serum. Fantastic world concept ... but a subpar story to make a movie about within that world.
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