It sounds kind of harsh to say, but there are movies out there that come off as something great in the trailers but once they’re watched they’re just a whole lot of, well, ‘meh’. These are the kind of movies that people walk into wanting to like, but end up shaking their heads at simply because there’s not enough of that special something that can sustain a person’s interest in a movie. Something about these features just didn’t keep the attention of the audience in the same way that other movies do, even though there are plenty of viewers that are ultimately more forgiving of such movies than others for their own reasons. It usually comes down to one or two things per movie that make it less than desirable since it could be that the movie didn’t follow the source material closely enough, or that it followed too close. There are simply too many ways to get into the idea of why a movie flops to really explain them all, but the point is that one or two things can happen that will make a person view a movie differently after watching.
Here are a few movies that people wanted to love but just couldn’t.
5. Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
To be honest, a lot of people were kind of leery about this movie since it looked like it was trying to include too much stuff in one movie which usually ends up causing a loss of interest. Had this been two or three movies it might have worked, but with the first bombing out in such a big way, it was hard to see a reason to return to it. Sometimes more is less, if that makes sense, considering that people want something to focus on, and introducing too much in too little of a time makes it nearly impossible to focus on the overall point of the movie. If not for that, this movie might have actually done quite well.
4. La La Land
Somehow the musical numbers just fell flat in this movie, as many people have said. The fact that Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone were both riding so high at this point didn’t make a lot of difference, other than to get the movie praised by critics. But apart from that, it was kind of a mess since there didn’t feel like enough cohesion between the different elements of the movie and as a result it really just kind of fell on its face. Plus, while musicals aren’t a huge detractor for a lot of movies, there are times when one has to wonder just why anything outside of a theater production or a Disney movie would be attempting to do this.
3. Passengers
The trailer made this movie look like it could be worth something, and there are moments in the movie that make it appear kind of enjoyable. But after we get past those and have the rest of the movie to deal with, well, things get kind of slow. The whole idea of Pratt’s character waking up and then getting lonely and needing to wake someone else up makes him the villain of this thing when he was supposed to be the hero. Plus, the idea that an anomaly that wakes up one person wouldn’t wake up another couple of people feels like a hard sell to any audience, since an anomaly can be singular, but over the decades it feels as though it could have happened again.
2. The Dark Tower
This movie was all kinds of messed up since those that have read the entire Dark Tower series by Stephen King would no doubt be first in line to say that not only was the dialogue horrible, but the fact that the story felt as though it had been tossed into a blender and then poured out into a script after hitting frappe was pretty accurate. The actors weren’t bad, since Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey were good picks. But the overall story, something that felt like it skimmed the top of a couple of the books that King came up with, was beyond frustrating. And the fact that King threw his support behind it was even worse.
1. X-Men: Dark Phoenix
Let’s be honest, people have been waiting for another great X-Men movie, and they were given Age of Apocalypse and then Dark Phoenix, and it felt as though both movies lost the point of what the characters were even about. The Dark Phoenix saga was one of the most world-changing events that the X-Men ever faced and it would have been better to use this to introduce them to the MCU since the worldwide implications of the Phoenix Force, which can consume entire planets, would have made for a great crossover movie at one point. But that would make sense, and apparently, that doesn’t get to happen.
Oh well, we tried to like them.
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