A lot of pieces have to come together just right to make a great movie, and a lot of them don’t get the credit they’re due. Lighting, cinematography, blocking, the list goes on. But it all starts on the page, and there are times that a great script is ruined by creative choices made after the writing is done just as there are times when creative choices made after the fact elevate an otherwise average script. Rarer still, though, is a script that starts out very well and then goes down an odd direction that no amount of excellent direction or acting can save.
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They’re scripts that have a brilliant core concept but, when it comes to execution throughout the remaining 90 or 120 pages, it all goes off the rails at some point. What follows are five examples that could have been classics, but instead ended up either wholly average or complete misfires.
5) In Time
The future world of In Time allows its people to only age up to 25. However, they have also been engineered to die a year after that, so the clock is ticking louder than it ever was before. But you can buy more time, which naturally only the super-rich in society can do.
That’s a concept that allows for plenty of commentary on the wealth disparity in the United States and how proper health care is all but inaccessible for an alarming portion of the population. Instead, we get two attractive leads on the run with guns and a budding romance that feels like it could have come out of just about any far less ambitious action-romance plot.
Stream In Time on HBO Max.
4) Jumper
Like In Time, Jumper has a neat core concept that was given a glossy overcoat to appeal to a mass audience. In this case, the core concept is that some in society have the ability to teleport, and there’s a lot the movie could have done with that.
What we get instead is an uninvolving romance and blandly murderous villains (the Paladins, who want all the Jumpers dead). If it had just been about a young Jumper learning about his power and trying to exploit it before using it for good, that good have been a nice character-focused piece.
3) Hancock
Hancock started off well enough but was sunk by a single twist. Yet even that twist could have been done well. It’s just, here, it results in a tonal departure and a latter half of the film that isn’t nearly as interesting as the first half (at least the first half’s narrative direction, if not its execution).
Having a superhero who doesn’t enjoy being a superhero? That’s great. Having that lazy, dispassionate superhero then find out he’s not alone and chase her around the city like two Supermen in the climax? Less so, though the concept of them losing their powers the longer they’re in the same vicinity is somewhat interesting.
Stream Hancock on Netflix.
2) Pixels
Pixels certainly had a high concept plot, but it’s consistently derailed by overly juvenile humor that, ironically, only serves to alienate the viewers who would actually be fans of the video games it incorporates, e.g. Pac-Man and Galaga. The result is a standard (but even more tamed down) Happy Madison movie that escapes the memory even before the credits have rolled.
A big part of the issue is that none of the characters are particularly interesting, and never as funny as the film seems to think they are. Even still, there is a good movie to be made about a video game coming to life and attacking a city, even if both Pixels and Tron: Ares failed to stick the landing.
Stream Pixels for free with ads on The Roku Channel.
1) The Happening
Some people have come around on M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening, but for a while there it was just seen as tied with The Last Airbender for the worst entry of his filmography. In short, people now recognize it as the B movie Shyamalan set out to make.
However, it’s a pretty boring B movie (especially in the latter half). The opening half with much of the population jumping off of bridges or leaping under lawnmowers sets up an interesting mystery. And, on paper, the film’s status as a “When nature strikes back” narrative is a decent payoff. However, the latter half of the movie has an awful lot of its protagonists just running through fields, then stopping to watch grass blow towards them, then running some more. If the movie didn’t take itself so seriously these scenes wouldn’t be so comedic. But it does and they are, and it never plays as intentional.
Stream The Happening on Hulu.
What movie do you think had an excellent concept with poor execution? Let us know in the comments.
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