Let's Complain about how WE would have made things

[Shoggoth2588]

So apparently Fantastic Beasts and Where to find them (a book of such an astonishing width you would have to stack nearly 10 copies to equal the width of a standard SNES cartridge) is going to be the first in a series of 5 new Wizarding World films, presumably but hopefully not 5 new Fantastic Beasts films. Another interesting bit of news that came to my attention was the coming of Planet Earth 2 which is neither a contingency plan for a Trump Presidency or indeed a new DC Comics film but a continuation (or...sequel?) of the popular BBC documentary (teased below);


And do I even have to go on? I'm not as active here at the moment as I have been in the past but it seems like every time FBaWTFT news comes about I pop my head up from the undergrowth and croak about how, while the film doesn't look bad, it should have been a straight-up documentary. Well not a straight-up documentary considering the fictional nature of the titular Fantastic Beasts but you get my meaning. I was under the impression that films and TV events like March of the Penguins, Walking with Dinosaurs (no, not that one, the one from 2001 or so) and the previously mentioned Planet Earth were really well respected and popular. Wouldn't it follow that mixing high-end nature films with just-as-high-end CGI effects based on mythical creatures with a dash of The Wizarding World would lead to a massive amount of money for Warner Bros? Allegedly Fantastic Beasts was going to be a documentary but it would have focused on Newt himself which is close to what I'm envisioning but in my version of this adaptation I wouldn't have shown him at all. I would have given a British voice actor the job of narrating off screen and that would have been the end of it. Maybe the thought of emulating Planet Earth was just too much for WB though or maybe they looked at a similar project (like, The Mating Habits of the Earthbound Human) and saw that the profit margin was potentially a bit too thin.

I guess this can be considered a vent thread...I've done my bit of venting for now but I'll be back as soon as the next scrap of FBaWTFT news comes to light so I can, again, do my thing and shake my fist and slowly sink again into the muck. I am curious though about those times when you heard about an adaptation or a film or just a general idea being put into production. Those times when you let yourself get excited only to be annoyed or outright angered by the final product and of course, how you would have done it better. I put this thread here instead of the gaming section of the forums because, while I'm curious about those too, I'm mainly here to beat the Fantastic Beasts horse into gibblets and there hasn't been a video game tie-in announced yet.

...

Before Fantastic Beasts etc on the 360, PS4, Ouya, Xbone, PS4, PC, Mac, Android, iOS, Wii U, 3DS, and NX are announced though I'm going to preemptively come out and say "it should be Pokemon Snap". It won't be though, it'll probably be another shooter like Deathly Hollows part 2 was but it SHOULD be Pokemon Snap.

 

[Ryallen]

I liked the trailer of Fantastic Beasts, if only because it's going somewhere else other than Hogwarts for its setting. The whole "chosen one" thing that the original books bored me to tears and I'm looking forward to the take on 1920s America in the Harry Potter world. That being said, Fantastic Beasts should have been a documentary. It would have made more sense regarding the source material. I get why, though. Nobody is gonna spend money to watch a fictional documentary in theaters. Or, at least, that's what the studio thinks.

 

[DrownedAmmet]

The weird thing about Fantastic Beasts is that the book is so short and non-story-like that I don't think it would be much harder to make five movies out of it than it would to make one. You have to make a lot of shit up anyway, why not make up five movies worth

Trying to make three movies out of the Hobbit though is much harder without filling it with boring and pointless filler

 

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

How I would make the first Warcraft movie.

1. Make it all about the Humans and have the Orcs as one dimensional monsters (at first)

2. Develop the world and enviorments firsts, the movie went by way to fast in the first half with little to no breathing room for example they start at some Barricks in Elywynn Forest and than immidietly they mention Karazhan and the Guardian Medivh with no Build Up. The movie needed more build up for the enviornment like it could have kept us in Stormwind City longer and showed off more the City.

3. Gradually introduce the Fantasy Elements, the movie immidietly introduces Dwarves yet they did nothing in the whole movie.

4. Develop the characters please and hire better actors for the Human ones, what were they thinking casting the guy that plays Khadgar? The movie will go down in history as the prime example of casting Unknowns badly.

5. They should have ended with a Siege of Stormwind City and have the killing of the King there. It would have been like Helm's Deep/Jerusalem like epicness.

6 Hire the fuckin people that did the music for the games! Listen to these 2 music tracks from the franchise and tell me which sounded more memorable, and engages and immerses you?

The movies?


Or the Game?

 

[Legomaniac91_v1legacy]

The biggest one for me would have been Batman V Superman. There was so much they could have done better and more interesting about that movie.

1.) The Title. Their first mistake was follow the Frank Miller idea that Batman and Superman have to be enemies, except they're not. Their methodology on crime fighting may be different, but they're both heroes and will happily work together to stop evil. I would have gone with Batman/Superman: World's Finest or just World's Finest.

2.) Lex Luthor. I knew this movie was join to suck the second they announced that Jessie Eisenberg was going to be playing Lex. To pull off Lex you need someone who can be charismatic, but is also capable of a sinister, petty rage. They should have gone with Brian Cranston as Lex from the start, as his performance in Breaking Bad shows that he is more than capable of pulling that off.

3.) Lex's motive. One common complaint about Lex's motive in the movie was that it seemed to change whenever the writers felt like it. "He thinks Superman is a threat, Now he has daddy issues, now its a God complex, now he knows about the New Gods!" I would have had Lex (publicly at least) claim that constantly relying on Superman to save us would make humanity weak. Meanwhile, you build up that while Lex is in private he seems to be a bit pettier about his hatred about Superman. Finally, you reveal at the end when Superman confronts him that Lex hates Superman because he bruised his ego. Lex has always seen himself as the Lord and Master of Metropolis, he made Lexcorp Tower the biggest one in the city just to lord his power over everyone. When Superman comes along, Lex feels threatened and vows to utterly crush this upstart so he can reclaim his throne.

4.) The Frame Up. Framing Superman for an atrocity to paint him as a monster is a good idea, but it was executed in a really stupid manner. Lex has his goons massacre a village of innocents and has others claim Superman did it. The problem? The goons used bullets to try and frame a guy WHO NEVER USES (AND NEVER WILL USE) A GUN!!!!! I would have had Lex or Congress show video footage of a being burning the village down using heat vision. You never really get a good look at who it is, but you can see its a silhouette of a humanoid male wearing a cape and frying everything in sight. This puts serious doubt in everyone's mind about Superman's true motive and it gets the attention of a certain billionaire and an Amazon Princess...

5.) The Dark Knight. The whole "violent, unhinged, angrier" Batman can go right out the window. If I want to see a vigilante murder and torture criminals and thugs, I'll watch one of the Punisher movies. This Batman would have been active for about 2-3 years. He's an established presence in Gotham and has taken down a couple of super villains (maybe The Riddler, Scarecrow and/or The Penguin). However, he sees this alien being apparently massacre a village of innocent bystanders and starts working on a plan to take him down if the need arises. Alfred is there to help, but he has doubts about Superman's guilt. Batman shares his doubt, but wants a plan just in case it turns out to be true. After taking down some thugs who were smuggling in Kryptonite for an unknown party (Lex, obviously) he's attacked by an unseen for with super speed, flight, and invulnerability. This cements Superman's guilt in his mind and he begins putting his plan into motion.

6.) Wonder Woman. My only complaint about her was that she was severely underused in the movie. When she did show up to fight; utterly badass!!! Not too much to change, except she's in full public view as Themescyra's ambassador and champion in order for the Amazon's to rejoin the patriarch's world after centuries of isolation. She initially meets the others in civilian guise at a UN event (Clark Kent is there covering the event while Lex and Bruce Wayne are there as VIPs). She doesn't share Batman and Lex's concern about Superman's intentions, seeing him as a valuable ally. She certainly doesn't believe he attacked Batman as it shows her and Superman in their costumes at some other crisis hundreds of miles away in Metropolis (the two cities are NOT across the river from each other, it takes several hours by train to travel from Gotham to Metropolis).

7.) Superman. Enough with the grim and weary Man of Steel, he's supposed to be the shining hopeful optimist of the DCU! While this will take place after Man of Steel, Superman is still haunted by killing Zod. When he saves Lois and Jimmy Olson (who has more that a 5 second cameo and who Jessie Eisenber should have been playing) after they are kidnapped by some warlord; he's show raising his fist as if to kill him, but then he's heard muttering "never again" and simply knocks him out instead. Not much else to say other than he should be actively refuting the people who claim he's a god of try and worship him.

8.) The Battle. The fight between the two kind of sucked in hindsight. While Batman was pretty clever is his ideas to beat Superman, the resolution was just utterly stupid (not to mention the whole thing could have been avoided in the first place if Superman had just said "I don't want to fight you, but Lex is going to kill my Mom. Please help me save her"). While the two will duke it out for a bit, it will come quickly to a halt when the creature that was framing Superman appears; the corpse of General Zod reanimated and controlled by Lexcorp cybernetics and labeled as "Subject B-Zero" (Bizarro). The two heroes team up to fight this thing and, with Wonder Woman showing up later to help, eventually stop it. Bizarro starts to burn out as the fight goes on, eventually disintegrating and leaving behind the cybernetic implants which lead them to Lex.

9.) The Real Final Battle. Lex has not been idle while the proto JLA has been active. Bizarro was only meant to smear Superman's name so that he could defeat this "alien menace" and become the most celebrate man on Earth. To that end, he has been smuggling kryptonite (taken from the downed World Engine from MoS) and used it to power his famous Warsuit. When the three come looking for him, he attacks in the giant suit of power armor and the final battle begins. While Superman and Wonder Woman try to hold it off, Batman goes to the lab and tries to find a way to disable it. Eventually the three succeed, Lex is exposed for his crimes and goes to prison. Superman confronts him and thats where Lex reveals his true reason for hating Superman; "Theres only room in this world for one God, ME!!"

10.) The future of the DCCU. This whole sequence will be a post (or mid) credits stinger to show the future members of the JLA. After the battle, Superman and Wonder Woman get summoned by Batman. He reveals that while he was looking for the Warsuit schematics, he found files on other Meta humans that Lex considered using to fight Superman. He shows them surveillance files from Keystone City (Flash), the Atlantic Ocean (Aquaman), Denver (Martian Manhunter), New York City (John Stewart's Green Lantern), and San Francisco (Zatanna).

 

[baddude1337]

I've always been baffled that the only two Alien Vs Predator films we got were set in the modern day. I would have made one set in the Aliens timeline/era/whatever. Have Colonial marines and more futuristic elements to it, like the games.

 

[Thaluikhain]

I've always been baffled that the only two Alien Vs Predator films we got were set in the modern day. I would have made one set in the Aliens timeline/era/whatever. Have Colonial marines and more futuristic elements to it, like the games.

Huh...now that you mention it. You need Weyland-Yutani to be stupidly evil or it isn't right.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

So I was playing Elite Dangerous and I realized the game doesn't have any Eldrich Horror space monster Easter eggs. Not a one! No giant unidentified amorphous mass of tentacles and eyes, hanging out untargetable in some far corner of some distant system, that slowly whispers to the player as they get closer until the screen starts to shake, go red, you see faces in the dark, spiders in the cockpit, the voices are louder now, your hands are damp, there are cracks on the windshield, was it always this cramped, your heart is beating faster, faster and faster until you feel it'll burst and WHOMP!

Huge mouth of fangs eats the ship.

Never happens.

 

[WindKnight]

The Alien Vs Predator Movies.

Though honestly beyond 'set them in the Alien universe and feature/focus on colonial marines' I don't really have too much to contribute.

EDIT: Whoops, missed someone beat me to it.

 

[twistedmic]

I would have changed the Star Wars prequels in several ways.
1. Primarily, I would have made Anakin a good deal older. Having Anakin be in his mid to late teens (fifteen to eighteen) would have cleared up a few of the issues that I had with the first movie.
a. He would have a greater reason for his feelings of fear and anger.
b. Him being a skilled podracer (and possibly pilot) would be more believable.
c. His crush/infatuation with Amidala, and the future relationship, would have made more sense.
d. Yoda saying he was "too old" would make more sense, and would erase the feeling that the Jedi Order was brainwashing children.
2. I would have reduced the podracing segment by at least half.
3. I would have removed R2D2 and C3PO from the first movie, if not the entire trilogy (and would not have had Anakin build C3PO himself). I would also have removed Jar-jar, possibly replacing him with a less annoying sidekick.
4. Darth Maul would have been one of the main villains for the entire trilogy, not just the first movie.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

I've always been baffled that the only two Alien Vs Predator films we got were set in the modern day. I would have made one set in the Aliens timeline/era/whatever. Have Colonial marines and more futuristic elements to it, like the games.

Huh...now that you mention it. You need Weyland-Yutani to be stupidly evil or it isn't right.

I watched both movies...I've played the PS3 version of the game and Colonial Marines but it's not until now that you mention it that I can't help but agree how weird it is that the AVP movies take place in the modern day and on Earth instead of in space and the not-too-distant-future.

---

Who here is old enough to remember Batman Forever on the SNES? It was a lot like Mythologies Sub-Zero in that you were playing a 2D-side scrolling beat-em-up with Mortal Kombat combos and controls...but you were Batman. There were weird gadget puzzles and the controls were awful too. I would have changed it up by making Batman Forever on the SNES just a sequel to Batman Returns on the SNES. If you're like me in that you didn't realize Batman Returns was an SNES game, just imagine Streets of Rage but you play as Batman.

Spoiler: Batman Forever SNES vs Batman Returns SNES

Batman Returns is also on the original NES which is pretty cool...it's kinda like Double Dragon and both versions have Batmobile sections. They're good games and it's a shame Forever did the weird Mortal Kombat thing.