Asklemmy

Lucy

It’s entertaining as all hell. It doesn’t pretend to be anything more, so I don’t understand the hate it gets. Just turn off your brain, and have some fun. It’s not supposed to be hard sci-fi.

Jurassic World. Just give me 90 minutes of dino mutants fighting, I don't give a shit about Chris Pratt nor some random kids.

The ideas behind They Live are fascinating and deserved better treatment than a 20-minute alley fight about sunglasses.

Downsizing

First 20 minutes (give or take) seemed like a solid start. But then they did absolutely nothing with the concept.

Equilibrium

The Cube.
Most people saw it as an average horror movie where a bunch of people try to get out of a giant torture box. But there was a pivotal scene that stuck with me where one of the prisoners realizes he helped build part of it. The whole thing wasn't some intentional torture device but just a bunch of people doing their day jobs that were lost in a bureaucracy not ever questioning what their work was creating.
A stark reflection of society and the systems we create and the dangers of not ever looking at the bigger picture.

Of course they proceeded to shit all over this idea in Cube2 where it ended up being just another evil government experiment.

The original Purge. I thought all the background stuff and setting were super interesting, but the film itself was a generic home invasion movie. The sequel expanded on all the stuff I was interested in, though.

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. Amazing world building and visuals that was destroyed by terrible casting and wooden acting.

I agree with all the other people in this thread mentioning 'In Time'. It had such a great premise, and I didn't even hate the execution, but it was mediocre. It was like they went 50% of the way to a flawless execution and just said "fuck it, that's good enough". The concept has a lot of elements to explore, like classism, labor exploitation, human rights, even free will to a point... A movie just isn't the right vehicle for that story. It needs to be a series. Done right, you could explore all that while having an overarching plotline, and still have your weekly subplots and B stories. That would give the story time to fully develop the romantic connection between the poor guy who comes into a bunch of time, and the rich girl who empathizes with him. That romance felt incredibly rushed in the movie, but you could build it up over a whole season in a show.

I also want to mention another movie that I'm not sure belongs here. It's not a bad movie, nor do I think the execution was mediocre, but for the life of me I can't figure out why it didn't do better. That movie is called 'Push', with Chris Evans and Dakota Fanning. I just watched it again the other night, and I freaking love it. The concept isn't that amazing or original, but the way they present it is great. There isn't a ton of exposition or world-building. They kinda just drop you in and let you figure it out, and I really like that. Evans and Fanning have great onscreen chemistry, and Djimon Honsou is a perfect bad guy. This is another one where I think it would make a great series, even though I think the movie was done really well. It's just kind of a perfect mid-budget sci-fi action movie, and we don't seem to get those anymore.

CATS

Cats is not a complicated musical. All they had to do was animate it and get actual voice actors/singers. I've seen sketches for what I think was a Tim Burton sketch, and that would have been a million times better. I don't know who looked at Cat's and was like, "Yup, we need CGI." It looks horrendous and sounds bad more often than not. The musical is already pretty out there, how much more fun would that movie had been if we had animators working on it. The creative visuals, colors, motifs. Not to mention a cat is a wonderfully complex animal to animate just because of how they move. That movie could have been a visual delight in part with the Spiderman movies if they let it, but noooooo. Let's make a nightmare.

The Last Jedi. Bombers in zero gravity but it's Star Wars, you continue to watch no matter what.

Reign of fire. Don't know if that's what you were referencing in the picture but it's immediately what came to mind when I saw the drawing.

Cabin in the woods

Terminator Genisys

First creative use of the time travel the series ever had... And totally botched about every other aspect of the movie that wasn't an action sequence.

That whole 30 second idea of a Terminator in the 70s with a young Sarah Connor was far more interesting than what the movie did with Kyle Reese.

Madam Web. The premise of your perception being un-stuck in time and the ramifications that has for your psyche is really cool. What's not cool is hiring bad writers and nepo baby actresses to portray that story

Mortal Engines

Not a film, but a novel:

Starflight 3000 by R.W. Mackelworth

If I remember, it was about this asteroid called "The Biosphere" that got hollowed out and sent on relativistic speeds through deep space to seed other solar systems with human colonies. The inside of it was set up like a giant rural town with massive skies, and a foot print the size of New York. And that's a cool ass premise.

But the book was so fucking milquetoast and bland. I could not tell you anything about the protagonist, their challenges, or anything.

Timeline! The movie was completely forgettable but the concept was pretty cool. I loved the book.

Mortal Kombat (2021) opened with a great "feudal China with elemental magic" clan story that could have been an amazing movie, but then they jumped forward in time and everything after that was a let down.