Five terrible movies that could have been saved by one small change
Movies are a tricky business. Years of planning, casting, shooting, and promoting go into one film, and all that hard work can be undone by one tiny thing going wrong. A location gets rained out, the studio loses interest, and one of the actors goes on a drunken bender – tragedies, each and every one of them.
Every film requires all its moving parts to work in synchronicity to make it to the screen, regardless of whether the end result is greatness or embarrassment. Sometimes, both ends of that spectrum are present in the same picture, and in some cases, they were completely avoidable.
The following five films all had potential, but they were let down by circumstances that were entirely within the production’s control to fix. All it would have taken was one small change, and critics and audiences would have been treated to a vastly superior work of cinema.
There’s no guarantee that they would have turned out to be masterpieces had these tweaks been made, but they certainly would have turned out better. Grab those rear-view glasses – it’s time for a little hindsight.
Five bad movies one small change away from greatness:
5. Alien 3 (David Fincher, 1992)
Though not everyone’s cup of tea – a bit too action-heavy for some tastes – James Cameron’s Aliens certainly did its fair share of business at the box office. It also did a great job in moving the franchise forwards, teaming Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) up with three new friends; Colonial Marine Dwayne Hicks (Michael Biehn); humanoid robot Bishop (Lance Henriksen); and orphaned child Newt (Carrie Henn). Finally, the last survivor of the Nostromo had a new family… until she didn’t.
One of the first things David Fincher did when he took the reins of Alien 3 was brutally kill everyone except Ripley. Hicks, Bishop and even little Newt die in a horrible spaceship crash in the film’s opening few minutes, rendering their survival at the end of the last movie completely pointless and losing all sorts of goodwill with fans.
Even if Fincher wanted to start his film with tragedy, he could have left at least one of them alive. The prime candidate is Newt, firstly because she would have had the most jeopardy surrounding her in the threequel’s prison setting, and secondly, so audiences wouldn’t have to sit through the vulgar scene where her body undergoes an autopsy.
4. X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Gavin Hood, 2009)
Fresh off the success of its X-Men trilogy, 20th Century Fox looked to the past for another source of that sweet, sweet mutant moolah. The result was X-Men Origins: Wolverine, a prequel delving into the life of Hugh Jackman’s gruff, sideburn-sporting hero. There is a good movie in here somewhere; Wolverine’s interactions with mutants like Blob, Gambit, and his brother Sabretooth (Liev Schreiber) offer glimpses of greatness. Unfortunately, it’s bogged down by a lot of nonsense, particularly in the form of a loud-mouthed mercenary named Wade Wilson.
Seven years before he got his own movie, Ryan Reynolds (reluctantly) portrayed the man who would become Deadpool in this film. For some unknown reason, the studio completely gutted the Merc with a Mouth, taking away all of his recognisable traits and turning him into a hodgepodge of other characters instead.
This incensed comic book fans, who were furious that such an iconic creation had been humiliated in his big-screen debut. The fix here is simple – take Wilson out of the story. Even if he had been comic-accurate, there wouldn’t have been enough room for him here to satisfy fan demand. There are literally hundreds of mutants to put in his place, and any one of them would have been better than this
3. Grease 2 (Patricia Birch, 1982)
Set two years after the original trip to Rydell High, Grease 2 is widely acknowledged as one of the most ill-fated sequels of all time. There’s actually a lot to like about this film. Some of the songs are really fun – ‘Reproduction’, ‘Prowlin’’, and ‘Cool Rider’ stand out as highlights – and it features an early starring performance from Michelle Pfeiffer, who proves why she’s the only person from this movie who went on to have any sort of success. Even though it’s not as bad as most people think, it’s still not a patch on the iconic original.
One thing that would massively improve Grease 2 is having a different actor playing Michael Carrington. The supposed hero of the piece is a meek English transfer student who covets Pfeiffer’s Stephanie. He gets the girl in the end but fails to win over the audience.
Maxwell Caulfield, the actor behind Michael, is dreadful. He barely emotes, floundering as Pfeiffer acts in circles around him in every scene. He also cannot sing a note. It doesn’t bode well when the main character in a musical only has one song, and it’s one of the worst on the soundtrack.
2. In Time (Andrew Niccol, 2011)
Fronted by Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried, In Time is a sci-fi thriller with a terrific premise. The film is set in a world where time literally is money. Citizens pay for goods and services with minutes and hours of their lifespan; poor people must ration their time carefully, while the rich can effectively live forever. It’s not subtle social commentary, but it’s a fun idea. At least it would have been had the script not veered wildly off course in the third act.
The plot initially starts out with Will (Timberlake) attempting to clear his name after being framed for a murder. This gradually evolves into Will seeking revenge on a powerful businessman, kidnapping his daughter Sylvia (Seyfried) and recruiting her to his cause. If the story had remained a smaller, personal battle between Will and the elite, it might have fared better.
Instead, the two protagonists become vigilante bank robbers, liberating time capsules and distributing them amongst the poor. In the blink of an eye, In Time goes from an action romp to a pseudo-socialist Robin Hood allegory. Sadly, it doesn’t have the writing chops to pull off this more complex scenario, and it fizzles out as a result.
1. The Godfather Part III (Francis Ford Coppola, 1990)
It might be unfair to call The Godfather: Part III terrible, but when your siblings are two of the greatest films ever made, anything less than perfect has to be considered a failure.
An ageing Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) seeks forgiveness for his criminal ways and attempts to legitimise the family’s various enterprises. As you can imagine, this doesn’t go smoothly. There’s a prevailing sense with this film that nobody’s heart was truly in it, not Pacino, not Francis Ford Coppola, not any of the major players. It serves as a disappointing end to what could have been the most acclaimed film trilogy of all time.
It doesn’t help that so much screen time is devoted to Michael’s daughter, Mary, played by the director’s own daughter, Sofia Coppola. While she would go on to make some incredible films as a director — The Virgin Suicides, Marie Antoinette, Lost in Translation, etc — Coppola is not an actor. She stinks up every scene she’s in (which is a lot of them) and is easily the worst part of an already mediocre film. Had Winona Ryder been able to fulfil her original commitment to the role, then maybe things would have turned out very differently.
