Take a look at some of the movies that Hollywood keeps making yet somehow they just can’t seem to get it right…
Sometimes there are movie concepts or source materials that studios just can’t seem to get right on the big screen. And we’re not talking so much about something like Cormac McCarthy’s ‘Blood Meridian,’ a breathtaking novel that’s famous in part because it’s famously unadaptable. Rather, we’re talking about overacting concepts, sets of characters, or franchises that seem like obvious cinematic gold mines and have just never made it in a satisfying manner. They’re the kinds of ideas that can keep a good movie nerd up at night, and just to get you thinking about some of them, we’re going over a few here.
Modern Movies About Famous Monsters
Monster movies go back quite literally 100 years. To be clear, we mean the famous ones: Dracula, Frankenstein, and their ilk. But there really isn’t an example of even one of these characters being brought to life on a modern screen. ‘Van Helsing’ took a shot at it but felt sort of silly, a few odd interpretations on Frankenstein have come out in recent years, and ‘Dracula Untold’ missed the mark. On a bigger level, Universal has more or less failed to introduce a whole cinematic universe with these characters (though there’s talk of bringing it back from the dead). It’s hard to pinpoint exactly why modern monster movies haven’t worked, but at least in these cases the tendency has been for studios to target too much action and not enough genuine intrigue.
The Chronicles Of Narnia
This may be an allegorical children’s series, but it’s one a lot of people grew up with, so one would imagine there’s a lot of demand for a film series. There have been attempts, but nothing has come to represent the series on the screen the same way the ‘Harry Potter’ or ‘Lord Of The Rings’ films do for their source material. Basically, they’ve been somewhat childish. This makes perfect sense, and yet one wonders what a more mature take on the series might look like on the big screen. Again, a lot of people grew up on this series, so there may actually be an appetite for a version geared toward adult viewers.
The Fantastic Four
This one is straightforward. There have been two attempts at a lasting ‘Fantastic Four’ series this century, and both have fizzled out – because neither was particularly good. Particularly in light of the almost ridiculous success of other Marvel characters in cinema, this is actually fairly surprising. Unfortunately, it also seems like a difficult problem to solve. The overarching problem has been that even a formulaic origin story about the Fantastic Four has to introduce four characters instead of one. This has led to the movies feeling a little rushed and a little chaotic, and it makes the characters somewhat less sympathetic, simply because we don’t know them as well.
Anything About The Greek Gods
It’s hard to know this for a fact, but the Greek gods seem about as trendy as ever. Just this year they’ve played a role in multiple hit video games. ‘Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey’ is one of the biggest console games of the year and revolves around a Greek hero with godly entanglements. And ‘Age Of The Gods’ has led the way in a series of mythology-related slot games that now boasts eight titles This is likely all built on the correct assumption that people simply seem to remember learning about ancient mythology fondly, and for whatever reason characters like Zeus, Apollo, and Aphrodite occupy lasting spaces in our memories. Yet the most prominent movies involving these characters have been ridiculous action tales like ‘Immortals’ and ‘Clash Of The Titans.’ It’s another example of the trend seen in some of the previous examples: the existing titles have just been a bit overdone.
Sherlock Holmes
Due respect to Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law, both of whom are outstanding actors, they’ve never felt quite right as Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. It hasn’t helped matters that Guy Ritchie has been at the helm of the series and has a tendency to over-imagine beloved properties (see his recent King Arthur debacle for another example). The version of Holmes that has meandered through cinemas for a decade has been more of an action franchise than a detective saga, and has left us wanting for something more authentic. Granted there have actually been multiple good television series based on the Arthur Conan Doyle stories in this time, but on the film front we just haven’t gotten there yet.
