Bad 21st century movies you want to be rewritten.

[King Green]

I just finished watching SYFY's channels shark movies and lava-lantualas and dear god, the plot is greasy and terrible! How can an amazing cgi company waste so much effort on great concepts but turn them into burning poos of plot.

I apologize if any of you can't recognize the films but that channel got one of the worst cgi films in box-office, Geostorm. Made with roughly 340 million bucks but only barely made 261 million dollars in shit-bags due to it amazing and dick-slapping ass-pulls of miracles. Now it became a brief meme on the web for 2 to 2.8 years for movie directors on how to NOT use cgi movies as a single concept to explore more opportunity's to the audience that ideas are cheap and more manipulative as we understand more of the movie industry.

[clearspira]

So many YA films during that bubble around 2010 has great potential but hammered by the demographic formulaic nature that they were aiming for. The 5th Wave with Chloe Moretz stands out in my memory as something that could have been cool but came to the party WAY TOO LATE. But even Divergent and Maze Runner could have been something, the first films in the series being kind of original, but both became generic as hell with the sequels.

Another YA movie, though a lot later, that fell on its ass was A Wrinkle In Time. I think most people when they saw Super Saiyan Oprah in the trailer were not hoping for much, but I was not prepared for just how painful that film was going to be.

[Kinky Vorlon]

All of them. It seems every movie released suffers from generic, formulaic, cookie-cutter approach to film making. Stories are always the same. There are no risks taken. No innovations made. Hollywood needs to invest in mid-budget movies instead of putting all their eggs in these mega franchise movies that play it safe. They need to let writers actually write and directors actually direct. Hollywood needs to learn from the 70s, the greatest decade of american filmmaking.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

The Matrix

[Rocketboy1313]

"Prometheus" is an absolute mess.
A plot that is propelled by characters making an endless parade of decisions that are so obviously incorrect that it is sickens me. A mythology so jumbled, nonsensical, and self important as to be a parody of itself. The complete waste of talent for all involved.

The Matrix

I am guessing you mean the sequels?
As the first one came out in 1999.

[Madner Kami]

Star Trek 2009 and onwards. Star Wars 7 and onwards. Literally every Terminator-movie that is not Terminator 1 or Terminator 2.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

As the first one came out in 1999.

FINE

Star Trek 2009 and onwards.

'09 was written fine really in terms of plot structure and rebooting.

[ChiggyvonRichthofen]

Good concepts ruined by bad plot/execution?

Prometheus would be a top choice for me. When it came out some fans swore that it was a brilliant film with layers of depth and meaning. It does feel like they were halfway to something profound and then just bungled it on a bunch of levels. I still wouldn't call Prometheus horrible, but if you combined better writing with the movie's strong performances and cinematography it could have been a real classic.

Otherwise, I feel like 21st century sci-fi generally has the opposite problem. Older sci-fi films were filled with awesome concepts and creativity, but they lacked the technical tools, expertise, and budget to execute them properly. While there are certainly still badly made movies, the bigger problem is that these movies are starting in the wrong conceptual space. The space of reboots and rehashes and cashing in off nostalgia at the expense of trying something, anything, different.

JJ-Trek is a prime example (so is the sequel trilogy). Trek '09 is full of blatantly dumb ideas that are mostly executed really well. So a person's tolerance for Trek '09 ends up depending on just how willing they are to just "go along for the ride." Terminator is similar in that it reached a natural narrative endpoint and turned it into a dead-end as they keep trying to force a story out of the same decades-old embers. The surprising thing would be if one of those actually turned out good.

That's the most frustrating part, to see so many franchises so predictably squander so much talent and so many resources on mediocre, derivative stories.

[Darth Wedgius]

Writing is the one artistic skill I wish I had talent at. I really doubt I have the skill to most films from scratch and have them end up better. As much as I wish they'd gone in a different direction for, say, the Disney sequel trilogy, if I actually had to churn out a decent script from my little ol' brain, odds are I might just try, repeatedly fail and know it, get drunk, and write in that all the characters just sit around making fart noises.

And that would really only be a significant improvement for Star Trek Into Darkness.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

JJ-Trek is a prime example (so is the sequel trilogy). Trek '09 is full of blatantly dumb ideas that are mostly executed really well. So a person's tolerance for Trek '09 ends up depending on just how willing they are to just "go along for the ride." Terminator is similar in that it reached a natural narrative endpoint and turned it into a dead-end as they keep trying to force a story out of the same decades-old embers. The surprising thing would be if one of those actually turned out good.

Is this based on the idea that potent allegory and themes of aging are requisite to Star Trek not being considered a shitty escapist piece?

Personally I'm starting to get frustrated with Abrams Star Wars, but Trek '09 so far is still just a refreshingly effective piece for universe building. Not every movie is good at that.

And sorry if it comes of as a strong statement there, I'm really more interested in your take, and also just finding myself frustrated by the subject.