Times when you overestimated the writer/director

[Yarglenurp]

I recently rewatched the Matrix and I recall the deep sense of disappointment with the later movies. Part of this disappointment stemmed from thinking that the Wachowskis were hinting that (1) the robots were secretly programmed to preserve human life at all costs and (2) human understanding of science had degraded. This all stemmed from the scene where Morpheus said that the machines were using human beings as living batteries, which makes ZERO SENSE if you know anything about the basic laws of thermodynamics. So, I thought there’d be this big reveal at some point that the machines were really just saving humanity from itself, and they just did it machine style (with zero concern for their own image or human morality).

And then I was thinking… sometimes we give authors and writers too much credit for what we think is a great setup or a hint of a great twist to come, only for it to turn out that they really, REALLY didn’t think that far ahead. Honorable mention for the “Lost” series.

Anyone have other disappointments they’d like to share?

 

[TheLobster]

This all stemmed from the scene where Morpheus said that the machines were using human beings as living batteries, which makes ZERO SENSE if you know anything about the basic laws of thermodynamics.

AFAIK the fan consensus is that this is really a bastardized, trimmed-down-for-Hollywood version of the idea that machines were using the neural processes of the human brain, which weren't replicable in silicon, to control the fine aspects of their finnicky nuclear fusion reactors. At least that's what I recall reading in the Take the Red Pill book. It still doesn't make much sense today but it was definitely more believable in 1999.

And then I was thinking… sometimes we give authors and writers too much credit for what we think is a great setup or a hint of a great twist to come, only for it to turn out that they really, REALLY didn’t think that far ahead.

The entire X-Files series is basically made of this.

 

[OffNSFW]

AFAIK the fan consensus is that this is really a bastardized, trimmed-down-for-Hollywood version of the idea that machines were using the neural processes of the human brain, which weren't replicable in silicon, to control the fine aspects of their finnicky nuclear fusion reactors. At least that's what I recall reading in the Take the Red Pill book. It still doesn't make much sense today but it was definitely more believable in 1999.

Their idea was indeed using linked human brains as a massive computer network, and someone (reading between the lines, probably Joel Silver) didn't understand it and made them change it.

 

[lovecraft68]

The most I have ever been disappointed was a series of horror novels by F. Paul Wilson.

The first three were stand alone, then the next three he tied everyone together and all six grouped as "The Adversary Cycle"

First three all great on their own, the next two were mind blowing with "Reprisal" being one of the best I'd read. Nightworld was the wrap up and for 90% of the book it was so damn good. Then we get to the end and he took the cheapest, laziest and most improbable ending possible.

I remember being so pissed (Think I was in my twenties when the last one came out) that I got up, went over to the trash and spiked the book into it, and left it there.

It was beyond a letdown. Like don't build yourself up to that degree when you can't deliver

 

[alohadave]

AFAIK the fan consensus is that this is really a bastardized, trimmed-down-for-Hollywood version of the idea that machines were using the neural processes of the human brain, which weren't replicable in silicon, to control the fine aspects of their finnicky nuclear fusion reactors. At least that's what I recall reading in the Take the Red Pill book. It still doesn't make much sense today but it was definitely more believable in 1999.

This comes from a story that Neil Gaiman wrote for the movie that was posted on the teaser site for the Matrix before the movie was released.

All the iterations of the script always had humans acting as an energy source, not as computing power.

 

[lovecraft68]

The entire X-Files series is basically made of this.

I was a fan of all the stand alone episodes of the show, but the whole conspiracy theory, Cigarette man, bored me. I consider myself lucky that wasn't my focus of the show or I would have been as bummed as many others were.

Home is still one of the flat out creepiest most fucked up things to ever air on regular television.

 

[NoTalentHack]

The Phantom Menace. When the trailer came out, I was working tech support alongside a cohort of mostly young men who, like me, were just the right age when the first Star Wars movie came out to have it leave an indelible imprint on our psyche. The trailer came out for the new movie, and we all clustered around our manager's machine, ignoring the phones for a bit while we watched it multiple times in a row. Everyone was excited. Everyone. Outside of work, it was the same; even the girlfriends of my friends who had little interest in Star Wars had a contact high.

There's been a sort of revisionism since that the original Star Wars, A New Hope, wasn't as good as we remembered, and that's.... it's not wrong, but it's not right, either. It was a sensation at the time, even if it was just Hidden Fortress repackaged for Western audiences. It wasn't just kids watching the original trilogy over and over again that turned it into a sensation, or George Lucas into a worldwide household name. Then he followed that up with the Indiana Jones trilogy, another touchstone of a generation.

People our age kind of ignored that Spielberg directed Indiana Jones. Most folks at the time didn't know how much Marcia Lucas had done behind the scenes on the first SW trilogy, curbing her husband's excesses, or that Lawrence Kasdan took Lucas's ideas in the following two scripts and turned them into something watchable before they even got to the editing phase. We might have had an inkling that Irvin Kershner made Empire the actually great movie it was, and not just the best film of the trilogy, but even knowing that, we were still excited. It was a new Star Wars! By George Lucas! Visionary director George Lucas!

At the same time, the world had moved on. The Matrix came out in March, ahead of The Phantom Menace by three months. We knew, intellectually, that Lucas couldn't use techniques like bullet time--there just wasn't time to integrate them--but surely he would have great action choreography. Innovative camerawork. Masterful storytelling. Surely. Surely?

And then we saw it.

The opening crawl about a trade dispute landed on us like a ton of bricks, but we tried to crawl our way out. "It's intended to be a little more grown-up, I guess, instead of a simple war between obviously good and evil forces," I remember thinking. Hah. Hahah. Hahahahahahah!

Vaguely racist alien caricatures as the first enemies.

Deeply racist alien caricatures with the Gungan.

Jar Jar Binks.

Jar. Jar. Binks.

"This is pod racing!"

The toyeticism of the first three films going from "how Lucas makes his money" to full-on weaponized lunacy.

Midi-fucking-chlorians!

People hated it. We all hated it. Everyone hated it, except the kids.

The kids loved it, because why wouldn't they? It was aimed at them. The prequel trilogy has gotten a bit of a reputation wash since, as the kids it was aimed at grew up and said, "hey, this isn't any worse than A New Hope and Return of the Jedi." Like the folks who said the original isn't as good as we thought at the time, they're not wrong, but they're not right, either. The first trilogy created a zeitgeist; the second tried to trade on nostalgia for the franchise and the affection we had for a director who, it turned out, needed to have someone hitting him on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper almost constantly.

In the aftermath, horrible shit happened. Poor Ahmed Best, the man that voice Jar Jar, is finally getting to ride the gravy train after going through depression that led to his near-suicide. Jake Lloyd, the boy who played Anakin, quit acting due to some combination of bullying, his parents divorcing, and previously undiagnosed schizophrenia that came to the fore as he entered adolescence; he's since written about it and re-entered the business somewhat, directing documentaries and the like.

Most of that didn't get reported on at the time, though. Instead, it was about fan backlash and leftover merchandise. Behold the Jar Jar tongue sucker, with bonus Mark Hamill shade:

View attachment 2367434



The Monday after the Phantom Menace came out, it was like a pall hung over the call center I worked at. We'd all seen it, and like a bachelor party wishing they really, really hadn't gone to that Tijuana donkey show, no one wanted to talk about it. When someone finally did, though? It was like a floodgate opened.

"What the fuck was that? How was it so bad? Midichlorians? What the hell is that?" The more honest of us admitted that the action was pretty decent; the lightsaber duel at the end, for example, was pretty great, and the pod race had some fun moments. The actors had clearly done what they could with the material given. Darth Maul, for a mostly mute character, made for a solid, menacing villain. But god, what an epic disappointment the end result had turned out to be, somehow even worse than the sum of its parts.

Years later, I saw the opening episode for the second season of Spaced, and it perfectly summed up our general reaction.

 

[NoTalentHack]

I was a fan of all the stand alone episodes of the show, but the whole conspiracy theory, Cigarette man, bored me. I consider myself lucky that wasn't my focus of the show or I would have been as bummed as many others were.

Home is still one of the flat out creepiest most fucked up things to ever air on regular television.

100% agree. The X-Files monster of the week episodes were almost always stronger than the ones focused on the boring-ass conspiracy.

Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose
Home
Jose Chung's From Outer Space
Darkness Falls
Beyond the Sea
The Hose
Postmodern Prometheus
Arcadia

It seemed like, much as with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the episodes where the showrunner was less involved created the best episodes.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Years later, I saw the opening episode for the second season of Spaced, and it perfectly summed up our general reaction.

...and then years later Pegg got a part in The Force Awakens.

 

[TomTeacher19]

Game of thrones.

 

[lovecraft68]

100% agree. The X-Files monster of the week episodes were almost always stronger than the ones focused on the boring-ass conspiracy.

Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose
Home
Jose Chung's From Outer Space
Darkness Falls
Beyond the Sea
The Hose
Postmodern Prometheus
Arcadia

It seemed like, much with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the episodes where the showrunner was less involved created the best episodes.

Tooms was another good one, think there were two with him

I don't recall the names as well as you, but the one with the 'Shaman' type character that rolled around on a dolly was creepy AF

 

[NoTalentHack]

Tooms was another good one, think there were two with him

I don't recall the names as well as you, but the one with the 'Shaman' type character that rolled around on a dolly was creepy AF

Oh, man, Tooms. Him and Flukeman.

 

[SimonDoom]

I can think of several examples.

The starkest example is George Lucas and the second Star Wars trilogy. To me, it was like he completely forgot how to make a good, fun movie. It felt weighted down by a perceived need by Lucas to make everything seem very important. To modern audiences, accustomed to total media saturation and Reddit and Wiki pages that feed an endless glut of background information about their favorite franchises, it probably doesn't seem as strange or as much of a come-down. But to somebody like me who saw the first movie when it came out, it always seemed obvious that it's supposed to be light-hearted fun, first and foremost. Lucas lost sight of that.

Stephen King is an example of an author that I often enjoy greatly but sometimes feel let down by, because he often doesn't know how to edit himself or how to handle endings.

I agree with the comment about The Matrix above. I thought the original Matrix was nearly perfect, for what it was. There was no need for a sequel, but you could tell one was coming. Each was successively worse, until the most recent one, which, to me, was jaw-droppingly bad.

The modern financial imperative to keep creating sequel after sequel and to milk every franchise of its financial potential sets up inevitable disappointment.

Another director I find "disappointing" is Tarantino. He's obviously extremely gifted and has a knack for creating memorable scenes and dialogue. But I feel like he gets in the way of his movies. Pulp Fiction was great, but most of the rest are too campy and phony for me. He has a tendency to stuff his movies with contrived, phony revenge set pieces that I guess are supposed to make the audience feel good but that diminish the effect for me. I can't recall ever being more disappointed in the last 20 minutes of a movie than I was with Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, which up to that point I thought was great. Django and Inglourious Basterds are also movies with great scenes, wonderful dialogue, and stupid, over the top endings.

 

[alohadave]

And then we saw it.

The opening crawl about a trade dispute landed on us like a tono of bricks, but we tried to crawl our way out. "It's intended to be a little more grown-up, I guess, instead of a simple war between obviously good and evil forces," I remember thinking. Hah. Hahah. Hahahahahahah!

To this day, I say "this is like trade negotiations" whenever something is tedious and boring.

I find it odd that for a series that was ostensibly for kids, he chose that to be the driving conflict.

 

[RetroFan]

I still can't believe Adam Sandler made the movie 'Jack and Jill', easily the worst movie I have ever seen and which often tops the lists of many people's most hated movies even 13 years after its release. Views on Sandler and his substantial body of work vary greatly from person to person - I mostly like Sandler and his movies - but in all of his other movies even if I didn't much care for them I could find at least some positives, or it was a simple case of the movie not being my thing. That wasn't the case with Jack and Jill, it is just flat out awful.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Lemony Snicket's "A Series of Unfortunate Events". The first few books were fine but as it went on it put more and more emphasis on a series arc that felt like it hadn't been planned out and the author was just hoping for inspiration to deliver a satisfying end to the story thirteen books down the line.

It's one thing to make vague allusions to a shadowy conspiracy that's never fully explained to the reader. It's another to leave the reader feeling like "vague allusions" was the only concept the author ever had for it.

 

[Yarglenurp]

Lemony Snicket's "A Series of Unfortunate Events". The first few books were fine but as it went on it put more and more emphasis on a series arc that felt like it hadn't been planned out and the author was just hoping for inspiration to deliver a satisfying end to the story thirteen books down the line.

It's one thing to make vague allusions to a shadowy conspiracy that's never fully explained to the reader. It's another to leave the reader feeling like "vague allusions" was the only concept the author ever had for it.

Ok, yes. This is another great example. Like… what a truly disappointing end. I suppose he could say the disappointment itself was the ultimate unfortunate event, but even that feels like a cop out.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Another director I find "disappointing" is Tarantino. He's obviously extremely gifted and has a knack for creating memorable scenes and dialogue. But I feel like he gets in the way of his movies. Pulp Fiction was great, but most of the rest are too campy and phony for me. He has a tendency to stuff his movies with contrived, phony revenge set pieces that I guess are supposed to make the audience feel good but that diminish the effect for me. I can't recall ever being more disappointed in the last 20 minutes of a movie than I was with Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, which up to that point I thought was great. Django and Inglourious Basterds are also movies with great scenes, wonderful dialogue, and stupid, over the top endings.

He's got pride of place as the only director I've ever walked out of a cinema. I find him astonishingly over-rated - I can't recall what shit movie it was (probably something that people here think is the greatest).

I quit "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" too (but hadn't paid good money for that one) - the guy goes re-writing the history of the Manson Family murders, wtf? Inglourious Basterds, the same - re-writing history? There'll be people who think his versions are what happened, which is depressing.

 

[Rustyoznail]

Blade Runner, because of the "WTF???" ending forced onto the original release. I know it's not the writer /producer's fault, but the HEA with Rachel just grated.

 

[Rob_Royale]

Ridley Scott. It seems for each amazing film he does, he throws a stinker. Very inconsistent.

 

[alohadave]

but the HEA with Rachel just grated.

Fun fact, the aerial scene with the car driving is unused footage from the Shining when they were driving to the Overlook Hotel.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Ridley Scott. It seems for each amazing film he does, he throws a stinker. Very inconsistent.

Saw shorts for Alien Romulus the other day - Scott produced, but didn't write or direct. The shorts suggested something similar to the original, a small group of exploring astronauts, and it was unclear how many creatures there were.

The catch line: "In space no-one can hear you...." cut to a silent scream.

 

[Yarglenurp]

Saw shorts for Alien Romulus the other day - Scott produced, but didn't write or direct. The shorts suggested something similar to the original, a small group of exploring astronauts, and it was unclear how many creatures there were.

The catch line: "In space no-one can hear you...." cut to a silent scream.

here’s a real question: why does Weyland Yutani even give a shit about the aliens? They can mass produce robot drones. Robot drones that they could realistically kill hives en masse without the dangers of being infested. Sure, the aliens are dangerous, but so is a robot with a gun. It’s always like, “these specimens are so precious, they must be valuable and experimented with,” but… why? They’re just big acidic bugs.

 

[ElectricBlue]

here’s a real question: why does Weyland Yutani even give a shit about the aliens? They can mass produce robot drones. Robot drones that they could realistically kill hives en masse without the dangers of being infested. Sure, the aliens are dangerous, but so is a robot with a gun. It’s always like, “these specimens are so precious, they must be valuable and experimented with,” but… why? They’re just big acidic bugs.

Suspend disbelief.

It's no less stupid than swords in Dune and light sabres in Star Wars.

 

[Yarglenurp]

Blade Runner, because of the "WTF???" ending forced onto the original release. I know it's not the writer /producer's fault, but the HEA with Rachel just grated.

I never saw the original theatrical release, only one of the director cut versions. So it seemed fine to me.

The Blade Runner movies as a whole don’t have the problem I described, I don’t think. There were some parts that didn’t make perfect sense, but as a whole it still “works” to convey some interesting ideas. Are they super-high-level? No. But better than 95% of the other big budget movies.