Recently, movies like Everything Everywhere All at Once have been universally praised for taking a novel concept and knocking it out of the park. But not every promising premise results in a great movie. Filmmakers can often botch an awesome idea on its way from the script to the screen as they expand the grabby logline into a cohesive narrative.
According to Redditors, movies like Batman v Superman had the potential to be terrific movies, but squandered their concepts with shaky execution.
The Island (2005)
Michael Bay’s dystopian sci-fi thriller The Island stars Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson as a pair of clones who go on the run after learning that the sole purpose of their existence is organ harvesting.
Redditor just a Michael Bay chase sequence.”
Tenet (2020)
Christopher Nolan’s time-bending spy-fi epic Tenet was the first major movie to hit theaters after the outbreak of the pandemic. Conceptually, it’s like a Nolan-helmed James Bond movie with a complicated time travel twist.
Tenet was notable for receiving mixed reviews from critics who usually adore Nolan’s work. Redditor u/Queasy-Celebration-2 felt that the movie “wasn’t terrible but could’ve been way better.”
Downsizing (2017)
Alexander Payne’s sci-fi comedy Downsizing takes place in a world where human shrinking has been perfected and people have started shrinking themselves down for the cheap real estate. But once this world has been established, it becomes a standard romance.
According to Redditor u/thepaulfitz, “There was so much potential and so much to be explored in a world where people volunteered to be shrunk for financial reasons, but the romantic direction it took was ludicrous. Like two different movies.”
In Time (2011)
Andrew Niccol’s In Time starts off with the juicy premise that every human is given 25 years to live and has to buy time if they want to live longer, so the rich become immortal and the poor die young. Redditor u/Danishroyalty “really liked the premise,” but felt that the execution was “not great.”
In Time had the potential to be a sharp commentary on capitalism as people trade minutes out of their lives for material goods, but it quickly devolves into a subpar sci-fi actioner.
Army Of The Dead (2021)
Zack Snyder’s love films set in Vegas,” and that piling “zombies on top” of that premise had them “hyped” for the movie.
However, when it dropped on Netflix, they found the end product to be “just awful” and “such a waste.” At two-and-a-half hours, it’s far too long for a high-concept horror actioner.
Hancock (2008)
What if Superman was a jerk? That’s the question posed by Hancock, about an alcoholic superhero who isn’t very nice to the civilians he reluctantly saves. According to Redditor u/GodFlintstone, “The first 30 minutes of that movie are amazing. But then when Jason Bateman’s character puts him through that image rehab program, it starts going south, and then when those relevations about his secret history take place, it goes off a cliff.”
The Redditor believes that if the titular superhuman had “just been a drunk a**hole through the whole movie,” then Hancock had the potential to be “the superhero version of Bad Santa.”
The Dark Tower (2017)
Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series is his magnum opus. It’s a mega-scale epic comprising elements of horror, western, and dark science fantasy. A comprehensive adaptation could fill several seasons of television. But the movie version had a brisk runtime and barely any substance.
According to Redditor Game of Thrones into a sub-90-minute teen movie” squandered this great source material.
The Book Of Eli (2010)
Set three decades after a nuclear holocaust, The Book of Eli stars Denzel Washington as a man who wanders across the post-apocalyptic remains of the United States, protecting a sacred book that contains the secrets to saving humanity.
Redditor u/MogollonBaldy “loved the twist” that Eli’s titular book is the last copy of the Bible and “thought the whole concept was really cool,” but felt that “the movie dragged past a point it needed to and sabotaged itself.”
Old (2021)
M. Night Shyamalan is the king of twisty high-concept horror movies. His 2021 effort Old centers on a family taking a tropical vacation who find themselves trapped on a secluded beach that inexplicably causes them to age rapidly.
Redditor u/GaryTheCabalGuy thought the movie didn’t live up to its promise: “It was basically just super depressing things happening for the entire runtime followed by an out-of-left-field explanation for everything in the end.” The Redditor surmised, “I thought it was entertaining enough, but felt like they could have done more with it.”
Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice (2016)
Army of the Dead isn’t the only Zack Snyder movie that Redditors were disappointed by. Redditor u/MovieBuff90 felt that Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice – a movie that only needed a fight between the Man of Steel and the Caped Crusader to satisfy fans – was “overly complicated.”
The Redditor writes that BvS “would have been so much better had they just focused on Batman and Superman” instead of overextending its reach to establish a whole universe of DC Comics heroes.
