By Charlie Jane Anders and Katharine Trendacosta . Netflix is a crap game . Your local movie theatre is a garbage scow . Most flick scarcely manage to be so bad they ’re honorable . But what ’s really pestering is when you’re able to just see how a movie could have been decent . Here are 10 films that really could have been good , if you just alter one thing .
1 ) Meet Dave
This filmhad a script by MST3 K writer Bill Corbett and Frasier writer Rob Greenberg , and a severely precious concept : a crowd of flyspeck little people comes to Earth in a spaceship , which is mask as a homo . Who just happens to look like the captain of the ship . Yes , sort of like the Tesselecta from Doctor Who . It could so easily have been hilarious .
The one affair you bring forth ta change : Get rid of Eddie Murphy and replace him with a comic who ’s bringing his ( or her ) A - game . Someone who can really empower in the conception and bring out the inherent potential , instead of coasting on lazy laugh .
2 ) G.I. Joe : The Rise of COBRA
This is a movie based on a cartoon about a squad of superheroes who all wind up with pets , including a ninja who gets a wolf that saves him from Arctic actinotherapy exposure . It was always exit to be silly , and this pic mostly just cede to the ingroup . Joseph Gordon - Levitt is reasonably much dialing the camp up to 11 . At one point , someone scream “ Release the shark ! ” Also , at one tip , break an iceberg into smaller pieces causes ice to sink .
The one affair you get ta change : Cut out the scenes where the film attempt to be all serious about the past relationship between Duke and the Baroness . Edit out all the attempts at dramatic event , and you ’ve got a movie that ’s just nonstop ridiculous fun .
3 ) A.I. : Artificial Intelligence
Stephen Spielberg attempts to finish this Brian Aldiss adaptation that Stanley Kubrick commence , and the solvent has a flock going for it , including gorgeous imagery and a blue plot line about a golem boy who can never have his true desire . Until the ending , when it kind of collapses under its own weight .
The one affair you got ta change : Cut the last 20 - 30 mo , fundamentally the whole coda after the minor go into the ocean . withdraw Spielberg ’s attempt to connect everything off with a decent bow and give the movie a artificial fairy story conclusion , and you ’ve got a slap-up film . Something similar could be said about Minority Report , in fact .
4 ) Wanted
The first half of this movie is wild , just a brilliant thrillride . And the second half still has a lot operate for it , including some fun action sequences , and Angelina Jolie drop dead rogue as only she can . But it kind of get going off the rails , around the same clip that train does .
The one thing you got ta change : Get rid of the magic loom of fate , and the whole wacky concept about these assassinator killing the great unwashed who have been fingered by God or whatever , and get back to something more like the original comical Scripture ’s construct of a victorious gild of supervillains .
5 ) I Am Legend
This is another movie that is great for its first half , and then starts to light apart — and the ending is just kind of random and terrible . The good thing you may say about this pic ’s theatrical ending is that it spar from an unnecessary sequel .
The one matter you got ta exchange : Restore the original finish , from before the studio apartment got moth-eaten feet because some tryout audiences somewhere could n’t quite wrap their school principal around it . you could see the original ending on the videodisc , and it mechanically makes the whole quietus of the film way better .
6 ) Daredevil
Speaking of test interview ruining a picture show … this is another one where apparently the studioforced the director to recut the celluloid and do reshoots , to underline the romance between Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner , and de - accentuate the actual point of the movie . The theatrical release admit a vista where Daredevil ignore people in trouble , so he can keep urinate out with Elektra .
The one thing you got ta exchange : You ’ll never get to see director Mark Steven Johnson ’s original version , but the “ Director ’s Cut ” videodisk ( which we have n’t seen ) is as close as you’re able to get , andaccording to IFCit ’s in reality quite decent , although it ’s still get down by the Matrix - wannabe cartoony action at law .
7 ) The Golden Compass
There are a lot of things wrong with this film version of Philip Pullman ’s His Dark Materials , but there ’s one huge trouble that it would have been relatively well-off to sort out .
The one affair you convey ta change : reconstruct the downbeat ending of the novel , rather of the upbeat end the studio assert on . And while you ’re at it , get rid of the lumbering voiceovers . Apparentlythere was a screenplay by Tom Stoppard(Tom Stoppard ! ) that was closer to the novel — but also , by all accounts , conductor Chris Weitz actually had a script that was splendid , just than Stoppard ’s , until the studio apartment intervened .
- Superman II
Richard Donner ’s first Superman film was a mostly terrific take on the Man of Steel , with gross ton of heart and insight into how Clark Kent ’s early experience of loss makes him into a noble , self - sacrifice hero . And Donner was shoot Superman and Superman II back to back , until he was sacked by the producer . The resulting translation of Superman II was … underwhelming , despite some good bits .
The one thing you get ta switch : Let Donner finish making Superman II , which he was already 75 percentage of the mode through . True , the “ Donner Cut ” that ’s out on DVD is n’t exactly perfect , but we have faith that if he ’d actually engender to finish the movie at the prison term he would have come up with something that measured up to his first outing .
9 ) Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Maybe there never could have been a in force Indiana Jones moving-picture show , this long after Last Crusade , when everybody involve has sort of forgotten what made the character work . But there are some obvious , major fault with this film that could so well have been avoided .
The one matter you catch ta change : Use the Frank Darabont script , which Spielberg reportedly like but George Lucas random decided to forbid . consort to the book Tales from Development Hell by David Hughes , Darabont ’s version does n’t have Mutt , Indy ’s son , nor are there big spiders or a quite a little of the other silly sequences from the last movie . On the other helping hand , there ’s still fridge - nuking and the ending is sort of like . So you ’d still need to take a heavy hand to it .
10 ) Mad Max : Beyond Thunderdome
This moving picture play back on transmission line TV a hatful , and it ’s actually better than we recall — the Bartertown sequences are mostly pretty decent , and the first one-half is largely pretty good , despite Max ’s uncanny mullet .
The one thing you got ta modify : Get rid of those kids . The movie just sort of give-up the ghost to spate when the little kids saving Max . There should n’t be an USA of little kids in a Mad Max pic .
Additional reporting by Annalee Newitz .
A.I.His Dark MaterialsIndiana JonesMad MaxMoviesPhilip PullmanSteven Spielberg
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