Let me tell you why 2012 was a terrible movie

[Amake]

It took a while to figure out, in between the useless spectacle of landmarks being destroyed dramatically, the flawed storytelling of trying to show an intimate story of one man trying to save his family and a large, sweeping portrait of a great number of characters that have nothing to do with each other both at the same time (did we really need to see ten minutes of president Murtaugh just so he could die bravely?), the bad science (supercharged neutrinos, what?) and the ham-handed attempts to deal with philosophical questions like should people get to know that the world is ending (no), what of our work do we need to preserve (really just the Mona Lisa) and who do you save, if you can only save a few (let's go with 40 000 of the most corrupt, selfish, cut-throat mercenary rich fuckers on the planet because obviously they'd be angry if we just took their money and left them to die).

No, there's something bigger than that, buried under the bullshit. It's the fact that the plot makes no sense; that the plan to save humanity should have failed and then humanity and the planet Earth are saved anyway for no Goddamn reason.

Look, we're told the bullshit neutrinos are superheating the planet's core. That Earth will become uninhabitable. The only thing to do is get away; take a core population, build a generational spaceship, set a course for Alpha Centauri and hope there's a planet to settle there somewhere. And for the first 3/4 of the movie this is the plan. When the tectonic plates start sliding around the Earth's crust like butter in a hot pan, mankind's last hope gets in the spaceships.

Except then the spaceships don't do anything. They're suddenly boats, that just happen to be able to float away on the monster tides.

And then the end of the world just stops. For no reason. This is the part that's bad; the part that's so terrible there's no point in discussing anything that happens after it. And no point in anything that happened before either, come to think of it.

I don't know if it was supposed to be a twist ending, if someone thought it would be too depressing to have the planet be destroyed in the movie that is about the planet being destroyed, or if the movie was just designed by committee to such a degree that they left this hole in it big enough to float an ark through. None of those options are acceptable. There's just no possible way for the Earth to be destroyed and then suddenly stop being destroyed. The movie doesn't even try to explain it a little bit; it just smiles sheepishly and asks us to forgive it. Let's not.

Now this thread is about stories that dropped the ball and how they would have been better.

2012 would have been better if the arks left for space, obviously. The smoking wreckage of the Earth left behind, the people of the three city-ships now have to struggle to get along as they come to realize none of them can get away from each other for the next several thousand years. Maybe one ship is wiped out in massive riots. The other two can then dock with it and get some extra space.

Fifteen thousand years later they find an inhabitable planet, and while they try to decide if they have any right to take this world or if they should keep flying, the credits roll.

[Arhra]

You're welcome!

[Krylo]

Originally Posted by Arhra

You're welcome!

Indeed.

Thank you.

[RobinStarwing]

I got quite a few....
*******
Chronicles of Riddick!

Seriously, this flick was horrible. I couldn't even BEGIN to explain what went wrong with this one. Zombies that aren't zombies. Planets that with their temps should of been so uninhabitable as to not have oxygen...

And than there was the ending. >_< Dear god! That was the worst ending EVER!!!!

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Howard The Duck...

I'll let the Nostalgia Critic handle this one.



DUCKTITS! WOOHOO!

I can not believe I wasted by Elementary School years on this piece of crap.
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Birds II: Land's End

....This movie wasn't even scary. I got more scare factor from the moth flying around at the time than this movie.

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Blair Witch II: Book of Secrets

Set back Wicca and Witchcraft in the popular perception for a rather long time.

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AvP: Requiem

I made the mistake of watching this right after the first AvP. The first one was fun! Rather good and did not portray the Predators as outright evil.

The second one....>_> The fact they killed the nerdy guy's love interest so brutally made it rather clear they were going for a gore fest. Throw on top the stupidity and the people trying to nuke a small town for the alien gun...and than the whole evil Predator...>_<

******

Well that does it for me.

[Magus]

I thought we had left behind the stupidity of this film. Can't the crimes of the past be forgotten, Amake? Must you dredge up Roland Emmerich's crimes against art again and again? What purpose does it serve to revisit this suffering and woe?

I suppose one could say that those who don't learn from the past are doomed to repeat it, but sometimes, ignorance is bliss.

[Amake]

Nothing is lost forever. We can't just bury the past; we have to find a way to live with it.

And I thought just the other day that the problem with Chronicles of Riddick is that Jack/Kyra is a wasted character. In devoting her life to emulating Riddick she's reduced to a sexy eye candy bad girl character, but the trouble is we already have a Riddick, and one is enough.

She would have been so much better if she had kept to calling herself Jack and not worried about confusing the horny young men watching the movie by being anything other than a wholesome female. Let them question their sexuality for being attracted to a girl with a boy's name.

And in the name of fuck, don't try to make her sexy. Don't tell us that she's survived being used as a sex slave since she was like thirteen and tell us that she doesn't like to be touched and then show us a completely different thing. Don't pretend the audience isn't supposed to enjoy the scene where a rapist runs his hand over her boobs and butts for several seconds in a flattering camera angle. You can't salvage that by just having her kill him a little while later.

Instead let her jump and stab him in panic the very moment he lays a hand on her. Let her continue to freak out and stab people every time anyone touches her. Let her show some resentment towards Riddick, the father figure who abandoned her when she felt that she needed him; let her resent herself because she still wants to impress him. Show, don't tell, that her various traumatic experiences have in fact scarred her.

And also we don't need another Fry - the woman in the first movie who ends up dying in order to save Riddick's life. So let Jack live. You can still have a sad ending by having her tell Riddick to go fuck himself, or something to that effect. It's sad for Riddick anyway, but that's right up his alley as a bitter anti-hero and just what he deserves.

[RickZarber]

The fact that they recast Jack with a "hotter" actress says everything about their intentions, really.

All I wanted out of the next Riddick movie was a scene where maybe the real Jack shows up and it turns out that Kyra was just someone who stole her identity after all. It looks like we're getting Pitch Black 2: Marooned on a Dark Planet with Monsters Again and Also Every Other Character is Basically Johns instead, which I am not opposed to, but it'll be interesting to see how that will cope with with the massive tonal changes of Chronicles. I'd say it probably just ignores them, but I know Karl Urban is reprising his role...

[Seil]

Isn't Ewe Boll doin' those that there Bloodrayne movies?

[RobinStarwing]

Originally Posted by Seil

Isn't Ewe Boll doin' those that there Bloodrayne movies?

Please...do not remind me he exists. I'd happily take him in a boxing match...and than proceed to whack him with a big aluminum bat for all the bad video game movies he has made.

[Magus]

Originally Posted by RobinStarwing

Please...do not remind me he exists. I'd happily take him in a boxing match...and than proceed to whack him with a big aluminum bat for all the bad video game movies he has made.

Seanbaby supposedly took him up on the challenge and he chickened out, since Seanbaby could actually beat the ever-loving snot out of him.