Have you ever seen a movie that you feel has so much potential, but doesn’t quite reach it? I mean, when you look at when a film is announced to a final trailer and everything in between, you get the impression that the film could end up being something grand and spectacular. But we’ve all seen those movies that we want so badly to succeed that the final product, for one reason or another, doesn’t live up to those expectations. Regardless of the marketing campaign and all those interviews, sometimes a movie just comes up short for some people. To be fair, not every film that I mention is going to be a bad movie. They don’t have to be bad. In fact, some of them are really good, but they didn’t quite hit the mark. So…let’s take a look at some films that had good ideas and some good potential, but failed for certain reasons.
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
When it comes to the Star Trek films, the popular theory is that the even-numbered films are the best and the others are the worst. I don’t necessarily think that’s true, as Star Trek III was a pretty damned good movie, as was the original film. The one thing that everybody seems to agree on was that Star Trek V was a disaster. Objectively, mind you. Funnily enough, this was one of my favorite movies growing up. I loved it as a kid. However, as an adult, looking at the film as objectively as possible, there are so many things that went wrong. One of the most obvious things that was awful, were the visual effects. This was a film done on a budget and the visual effects reflected that. They were some of the worst in the entire series. Another issue was the tone of the film. Now, a lot of fingers were pointed at William Shatner, who directed the film. Fingers were also pointed at Paramount Pictures for interfering. The way the story goes is that William Shatner wanted to do another Star Trek film that was more in line with the original film. He wanted it to be more thought-provoking and intellectual as well being spiritual to a certain extent. Paramount, fresh of the success of Star Trek IV wanted a more comedic approach as that approach had worked in The Voyage Home. Shatner and Paramount apparently butted heads over the whole thing, but Paramount won out in the end. There are kernels of greatness in this film. There is a scene in which Sybock forces Spock, Kirk and McCoy to face their past and their pain. This is easily one of the greatest moments in Star Trek. We get to see another side of Dr. McCoy that we never saw before and it was a truly compelling scene. Some of the questions that the film asks are some pretty interesting: Is God real, and is he waiting for us beyond the stars? There are ideas here that make it a Star Trek film, but ideas alone don’t make for a good movie. There was a lot of potential for a great film here, but the overall construction of the film fell apart.
Justice League
This was a movie that was a long time coming. People had wanted a Justice League film for years, even long before the Superman reboot, Man of Steel. Unfortunately, because of some highly questionable decision-making at DC and Warner Bros., the overall quality of the film is all over the place. Now, one of the reasons why the film failed to ignite audiences, was because the tone of the film was incredibly inconsistent. It went from being a dark movie, to something much less serious. Now, what had happened, was the Zack Snyder, the original director of the film, had to leave the project to due a very personal tragedy, so Joss Whedon was brought on board to finish up and “fix” things. The final result was a complete mess of a film in terms of its narrative and overall structure. While I still found the film to be really fun and really cool, this was a film that needed more re-writes and a lot more time in the oven. I understand that DC was trying to catch up to Marvel and their Avengers films, but they had a ten year head start. DC/Warner should have focused on making the best film possible. The overall execution here is not terrible and a lot of fun at times, but there was so much that needed to be worked, especially with the main villain, Steppenwolf. He was supposed to be a build-up to a confrontation with Darkseid, the ultimate villain of the Justice League, but the film flopped so hard, that seeing a follow-up film involving Darkseid is almost out of the question at this point. Snyder’s departure and possible interference from the studio trashed what could have been one of the biggest movies of 2017.
Wyatt Earp
There were two westerns involving the legendary lawman Wyatt Earp that were released during the mid-90s: Tombstone and Wyatt Earp. One film tried to encompass a lot of Wyatt’s life before and after he became a lawman, but the other focused on one particular period in his life. When you focus on a particular historical figure, it is really important to narrow your view and focus on a particular event that really showed who and what that particular figure was about. While Tombstone focused on Earp’s time in Arizona with his confrontation with the Cowboy gang, Wyatt Earp took a much grander look at the lawman. One on hand, we get to see how Wyatt initially become a member of law enforcement but left after he killed someone. The film also looks at what he did before Arizona. The film shows that Wyatt was not the squeaky clean person that everybody hears about. Kevin Costner did a pretty good job as Wyatt Earp, but it was Dennis Quaid that stole the show as Doc Holiday. Unfortunately, the film was too ambitious for its own and regularly got side-tracked ending up with a film that lasted about three hours. Wyatt Earp is not a terrible movie, but Tombstone was definitely the superior film in nearly every way.
Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Nearly a year after the film’s release, The Last Jedi is still dividing audiences down the middle. You’ve got the people that absolutely hated the film and you’ve got people that loved it. I fell in with the crowd that loved the film, at least initially. Having seen the film multiple times, I still love it, but the cracks are already beginning to show. There were a lot of things that Rian Johnson did as a writer and director that I don’t get and I don’t really like. I don’t necessarily think that making Luke a cynical old man was the worst idea, but it pushed the film in a direction that I don’t think was really the best idea. I knew it had to be different from the previous film, but the film went WAY too far out of its way to be unpredictable. The stuff with Luke, Rey and Kylo Ren are some of the most interesting parts of the film, but they can be overshadowed by some of the lesser parts of the film. The whole casino planet sequence needed to be cut out of the film, it didn’t need to be there and it felt out of place. There’s a lot of great things about this film, but there were definitely some questionable decisions that were made behind the scenes. This could have easily been The Empire Strikes Back of the new trilogy, but I don’t think time will be that kind to it. I just hope Episode IX will wrap things up and explain things more clearly.
Alien: Covenant
This one you can chalk up to Ridley Scott’s enormous ego. Prometheus was a very different kind of film than what most people were expecting. People were expecting a prequel to the original Alien, but what they got instead was a bizarre science fiction film that really had nothing to do with Alien. I thought it was a great movie and had some really awesome ideas. So, after the film ended, people were wanting to see what the character of Elizabeth Shaw was up to when she and the android, David went off in search of the Engineers, the beings that created humanity. With Alien: Covenant you don’t get that at all. In fact, Shaw is actually killed in between movies because Ridley Scott wanted to actually bridge the gap between Prometheus and Alien. What we got instead was a sequel/prequel that ended up failing at both. Honestly, I wish Scott had jettisoned the whole idea of the xenomorph entirely to focus on Shaw’s potential relationship with humanity’s creators. This is also why the customer isn’t always right. People were clamoring for another true Alien film, but they didn’t really get that, either. Since Fox got bought up by Disney, I don’t know if we’ll ever see another entry into the series.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
The word “clusterfuck” doesn’t even begin to describe this monstrosity. I’ve been a huge fan of the X-Men films since the first film showed up way back in 2000. Even some of the lesser ones like Last Stand and Apocalypse were decent enough. X-Men Origins: Wolverine? Let me first state that I am a huge fan of the character of Wolverine. He doesn’t put with shit, has an adamantium-coated skeleton with razor sharp claws and an accelerated healing factor. One of the reasons that people liked the character, was that he was shrouded in mystery. Nobody really knew where he came from, how old he actually is, or what his real name was. Not even he knew. Now, these questions would be answered to one degree or another in the comics, but the movies had no real answer. That’s where X-Men Origins came in. I wasn’t opposed to that. I wasn’t even opposed to Sabretooth being Logan’s brother. Honestly, the two actors that make the movie watchable are Hugh Jackman and Liev Schreiber. They were fantastic. The problem with the movie is that it was rushed, under-cooked and pushed out before it was ready. The CGI was terrible, the writing and the story were amateurish and what they did with Deadpool was unforgivable. X-Men Origins was such a travesty that it was referenced not once but multiple times in the Deadpool movies, with the sequel basically doing what everybody wished they could do to Origins. This movie really could have been something special. Thankfully, the follow-up movies turned things around completely.
Those are some of the movies that really could’ve been something truly special, but were held back because of various reasons. There are a lot more out there, and I want to get to them, but my fingers are getting tired from all this typing, so I’m going to end Part 1 here. I’m still working on my Best of 2018, and I should have that wrapped up relatively soon. Stay tuned.