Movies you adore (and the one thing you'd change in them)

[JamesStone]

No matter how much we love something, there's always that one tiny thing you personally would change. Maybe if she/he had just slightly longer hair, or if that nice car you'd always loved had just a single extra degree in the AC...

We're not talking about any of that here. Only movies. What would you change in a favorite of yours?

Just a simple rule: You're not allowed to change how the plot unfolds. The end result needs to still be the same.


For me it's Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. I'd add Dwarves in the Battle of Helm's Deep, arriving alongside the Elves. It'd be complete lore slaughter, but I'm sure if they added a scene or two before they'd have no problems pulling some reason out of their ass. It's not like the Elves were present in Tolkien's book.

I love the visual feeling of vastly different cultures and races coming together. The Dwarves and their heavy armor plus the elves with their agility would supplement the humans fine. Maybe one extra minute or somesuch showing off the elves and dwarves' skills before the battle unfolds as it does. Also a few elven and dwarven extras inside the King's room before their "suicide charge".

 

[tippy2k2]

Huh...I really dig this idea. The only issue I'm coming up with is pinpointing spots in movies I adore that could be changed...

Off the top of my head, the one part in Deadpool that I really was disappointed was missing (and something they put into the Deadpool 2 teaser trailer [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5ezsReZcxU] funny enough so maybe someone agreed with me) is that Deadpool didn't interact with Stan Lee.

Deadpool was one of my favorite movies period [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.934544-tippy2k2-tells-you-what-to-think-Deadpool] but Stan Lee doing a normal cameo was a touch disappointing. Not incredibly disappointing as I still love how they used Stan Lee's cameo in a pretty hilarious way but still...

 

[PainInTheAssInternet]

I think it can be worked around, so I'll put it forward.

Special Order 937 should not have been in the computer or should not have been accessible to the crew in Alien. Ash is a computer, so he wouldn't need to reference anything. Ripley also accessed it using the Captain's commands, which makes no sense as WY didn't want him to know either (unless you think he was in on it, which I don't).

If you think that changes things too much, I have a simpler one from the same movie. There's a shot when it's attacking Parker and Lambert that is one of the worst I've ever seen. The creature is standing awkwardly and slowly moving forward as if on a skateboard while closing it's arms in. It's such a terrible shot in an otherwise fantastic visual experience.

 

[Baffle]

The Crow. I wouldn't shoot Brandon Lee.

 

[BrawlMan]

The Crow. I wouldn't shoot Brandon Lee.

Now I am sad.

Me:

Dark City - Burn all copies of the theatrical cut, or at the very least go back in time and force the idiot producers to make the director's cut, the proper theatrical cut.

Ninja Assassin - Remove or focus less on Raizo's flashback scenes. That is the main problem of the movie, as we could have gotten more ninja action. The flashbacks are fine the first time, but on repeated watches, I fine myself skipping most of those scenes.

Pacific Rim - Have the other pilots, the Russian and Chinese mechs, survive longer or at least do more battles, as they didn't do nearly enough.

The Warriors - The Warriors fighting more gangs, as we only get brief glimpses of the rest of them. The video game on PS2/XBOX fixed this.

The Raid 2 - Give names to the characters Assassin, Bat Boy, and Hammer Girl. Those are their names in the script and actual credits. Come on Garth, you couldn't do an actual name for these people?

- Jigo being punished for destroying an ecosystem. Some people say Lady Eboshi got off easy, but at least she got her arm bitten off and lost Iron Town due helping Jigo kill the God of Life and Death. She even pulled the trigger. With one of her arms gone, she won't be able to fire a rifle again. For reference, this is a fantasy move that does take place in medieval Japan.

 

[Hawki]

Let's see (I could probably think of better points than these if I spent enough time thinking)

-Avatar: In the final battle scene, I'd make it a bit less one-sided on the ground. The na'vi/palalukans should do more damage against the RDA, and do more than just charge head-long into gunfire. End result should be the same, but some better tactics would be appreciated.

-Blade Runner: Alter Bryant's lines so that there isn't hypothetically another Replicant running around by the end of the film. Minor point, I know.

-The Hunger Games: Catching Fire: Part 2: Yeah, that's a mouthful, but whatever. The main thing I would change is how the advance on the Capitol is portrayed. There's the sense that after the loss of District 2, the war's lost for the Capitol, and Snow is just dragging it on. I'd alter things so that while the outcome is the same, there's less of a guarantee, that the Capitol actually has a chance of flinging the rebels back, at least initially.

-Jurassic Park: Have Grant take out at least one raptor with his rifle.

-The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King: Add more diversity to the Siege of Minas Tirith/Battle of the Peleanor. Specifically, show more of the Easterlings fighting Gondorians, and at least include reference to Gondor's fiefdoms, and have some soldiers that use different armour/heraldry than Gondor (per the book). You don't need to change the plot, since the sequence of events remains the same, but just establish that this is a war where the race of Men is on both sides.

-The Matrix Trilogy: There's actually a lot of little things I would suggest, but one thing that comes to mind is to amplify the difference between those born in the real world, and red pills. As in, people like Tank/Locke/Link can never access the Matrix, and can never fully understand what it's like to grow up in the Matrix, and/or what 20th century life is like for those born in Zion. It's not exactly prejudice per se, but a sort of 'cultural divide', and heck, maybe even mistrust. It could even factor into the Locke/Morpheus/Niobe love triangle, that even if Niobe is with Locke now, she's a red pill like Morpheus.

-Sonic the Hedgehog: The Movie: "Adore" is a bit too strong a word, but whatever, you want a change that doesn't change the plot? Okay, fine.

Knuckles? Lose the hat!

-Spider-Man 2: Tone down the scene where Doc Oc kills the doctors. It's a great scene in of itself, but it tonally jars with the rest of the film.

-Pacific Rim: Not a movie I "adore," but as it's been brought up already...here's one. Take away the guns from the security guards in the shatter dome, or at least tone them down. You're fighting kaiju. KAIJU. Guns aren't going to do jack, and if you need to subdue rowdy personnel, how about something less lethal?

 

[Asita]

Adore is strong for it but here's a small change for the Star Wars Prequels: Start with an older Anakin. Seriously, the prequels are mired in flaws, but that decision singlehandedly turned the romance arc from bland-to-bad to intolerable. Anakin starts off at the tender age of 9...and immediately starts crushing on Padme. At best that's cute and precocious, but the relationship between those two is one of the centerpieces of the prequel trilogy. Cut to Episode 2, where Anakin almost immediately comments on the fact that he hadn't seen Padme in 10 years (to bump him up to age 19 and thus past the common age of consent) and he was still smitten with her. He literally spent more than half his life pining for a girl he had no contact with. Cast him in mid-to-late teens in Episode 1 without changing anything else...congratulations, the time gap between episodes 1 and 2 has to be taken down to a year or so (probably 5 years tops), which makes the pacing of everything so much better. It's more reasonable that he'd be pining for Padme for that time period, it makes his and Obi-Wan's respective attitudes towards one another more natural, does a better job of suggesting the natural ability with the Force that Obi-Wan would later claim was amazing, and even means that Palpatine wouldn't have spent a good decade as Supreme Chancellor before the Clone Wars even started.

-Jurassic Park: Have Grant take out at least one raptor with his rifle.

Considering that there are only two raptors in the first film, I'm going to have to contest that. A single raptor still feels like a threat, but it feels like a fairly manageable one. A pair of them working together feels much more terrifying, because trying to deal with one gives the other one an opening.

 

[pookie101]

have dead pool do an after credit sequence for every film.. it would be glorious

 

[Sniper Team 4]

Pacific Rim - Have the other pilots, the Russian and Chinese mechs, survive longer or at least do more battles, as they didn't do nearly enough.

Too true. For being some of the best pilots around, those two crews got freaking stomped when we finally got to see them fight. Talk about a letdown.

-The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King: Add more diversity to the Siege of Minas Tirith/Battle of the Peleanor. Specifically, show more of the Easterlings fighting Gondorians, and at least include reference to Gondor's fiefdoms, and have some soldiers that use different armour/heraldry than Gondor (per the book). You don't need to change the plot, since the sequence of events remains the same, but just establish that this is a war where the race of Men is on both sides.

Fun fact: When the Orcs breach the gate with Grom and start pouring through, if you look behind them you can actually see Easterlings bringing up the rear, so at least there's that. But I agree with you. It would have been nice to see them actually doing something in the battle.

1) While we're on Lord of the Rings, since we added in Elves in The Two Towers, how about showing what happened to them after Helm's Deep? There is no way every single Elf was killed, and yet they just vanish when the retreat is called.

2) Return of the Jedi. B-wings. Ugh, I have wanted to see a B-wing in action ever since we got that quick glimpse of them at the start of the battle. And no, Rebels' B-wing does not count. Heck, I would have just added more space battle all around, but nothing cluttered and messy like Revenge of the Sight.

3) Speaking of Revenge of the Sith, bodies. When Order 66 went down, the Jedi went down like punks. The only one who managed to fight back was Ki Adi, and he only took out two Clones before he was taken down. I get that they were surprised. I get that Plo and Gallia didn't have a chance because they were in vehicles. But the steps leading up to the Jedi Temple should have been COVERED in Clone bodies. Yes Anakin was there, but even he isn't that good. There's an episode in Clone Wars where Krell cuts the Clones to ribbons. That's what should have happened in the movie. The Clones should have won because of sheer numbers and the Jedi were overwhelmed, but not before making the Clones pay for every inch dearly. Instead, when we see the inside of the Temple, there are more Jedi bodies than Clones. That's not right.

 

[PainInTheAssInternet]

Considering that there are only two raptors in the first film, I'm going to have to contest that. A single raptor still feels like a threat, but it feels like a fairly manageable one. A pair of them working together feels much more terrifying, because trying to deal with one gives the other one an opening.

There are three. When they go to the raptor enclosure, Muldoon states that the big one (alpha) killed all but two of the others.

When Muldoon was killed, he was aiming at one while another took him from the side (I presume this one is the alpha, maybe the same one watching the kids escape the kitchen?). The third was harassing Sadler in the bunker. Later on, the kids are chased by two in the kitchens and manage to lock one in the freezer. The first raptor meets up with the second raptor during the final confrontation and the third never escapes the freezer. I suspect they only made two raptors as they are never all shown together on camera.

-Jurassic Park: Have Grant take out at least one raptor with his rifle.

Grant was actually using a semi-automatic shotgun [http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Jurassic_Park#Franchi_SPAS-12] in a notable and rare case of it not being used as strictly a pump-action. You could say that being able to fire 4 shells rapidly should let even a novice hit something like a 6-foot-tall frog hybrid, but shotguns are actually harder to use than you'd think.

OT: Titanic. Not sure how acceptable this is as it changes the ending. It doesn't change the events at large, though.

Have it so Rose gives the expedition team the Heart of the Ocean. The reason Rose didn't use the money was to show she didn't need it. After all that she did on the ship, it would have meant her mother was right and Jack died for nothing. It took a lot of strength to refuse to take the easy way out when it was so readily presented to her, particularly when she ensured she had nothing left.

By offering the expedition the same choice, the theme of the movie can be driven home and have a more meaningful meta commentary on archaeological digs in general. What good is money at the cost of human life? What good is social and financial status in the end? Is it right to go through a mass grave for goods to sell or even to put in museums even after considerable financial investment?

My ending shot (before Rose dies/dreams (spoilers)) is having Bill Paxton's character surrounded by his team silently staring at the stone in his hands, pondering their choice and being at a loss.

 

[American Tanker]

I wouldn't say that I necessarily "adore" Real Steel, and I understand they had to cut it down to fit a standard theater feature length instead of let it run all day. But I'd have loved to have seen more of the robot boxing. I get that the story's more about the characters, especially Charlie and Max Kenton; but the reason anyone's going to watch that movie is going to be seeing robots beating the oil out of each other.

So an extended cut should have been made that showed off more of the boxing action. More metal on metal carnage. That would have helped that movie.[hr]Maybe I'm the only one here that watched Red Tails, but I'm going to mention it anyway. Like Real Steel, should have focused more on the dogfights. More on the good old fashioned Nazi killing.

And there should have been at least one scene where the Tuskegee Airmen got into a little kill count competition with a white squadron and kicked their asses. That would have been fun to see.

 

[Asita]

Considering that there are only two raptors in the first film, I'm going to have to contest that. A single raptor still feels like a threat, but it feels like a fairly manageable one. A pair of them working together feels much more terrifying, because trying to deal with one gives the other one an opening.

There are three. When they go to the raptor enclosure, Muldoon states that the big one (alpha) killed all but two of the others.

When Muldoon was killed, he was aiming at one while another took him from the side (I presume this one is the alpha, maybe the same one watching the kids escape the kitchen?). The third was harassing Sadler in the bunker. Later on, the kids are chased by two in the kitchens and manage to lock one in the freezer. The first raptor meets up with the second raptor during the final confrontation and the third never escapes the freezer. I suspect they only made two raptors as they are never all shown together on camera.

*vid-check*

...Huh, I stand corrected.

 

[Trunkage]

Donnie Darko - Going back in time doesn't prove that everything would have been bette. Swayze is still out there so that's bad...

Maybe make the ending longer to show that would have been a better world.

 

[happyninja42]

Pacific Rim - Have the other pilots, the Russian and Chinese mechs, survive longer or at least do more battles, as they didn't do nearly enough.

Yeah, same here. That REALLY annoyed me that they got punked so fast. It would've been better if they had to "hold the line" against several different fights back to back, while the other Jaeger's were doing the big finale thing. Have them decidedly spank the first Kaiju to show up, and then get the next one, which is just too much for their already damaged mechs, but they go out kicking ass and holding the line.

OT: Really hard to think of some non-important thing to change in most movies I enjoy. Of the ones I can think of offhand, it would change the plot in at least small ways, even if the final result is the same. So I can't really contribute with the one example I have in my head atm.

 

[Exley97_v1legacy]

Lethal Weapon: A sequence that's bothered me for years. Before the final fight scene between Joshua and Riggs, Joshua shows up at the Murtaugh family house, which is being guarded by two cops in a black & white police car. Joshua proceeds to shoot and kill both cops upon arrival. Then he enters the house and finds it's empty -- with Riggs and Murtaugh waiting. Well, if they were waiting there the whole time...why did they let Joshua shoot the two cops outside? Why did they have two cops sitting outside in the first place if the whole idea was to set a trap for Joshua? What sense does that make?

And here's another for good measure: The Hunt for Red October -- the cook enters the control room and shoots at Ramius, Ryan and the rest of the group, killing Borodin. THEN he backtracks to the nuclear missile bay to trigger one of the warheads and scuttle the ship. Well...why did he announce himself by shooting at the crew? Why not just go to the bay and blow up a missile? Makes ZERO sense.

 

[Majestic Manatee_v1legacy]

Equilibrium.
All the stupid taken out. Replaced with more exploration of the deeper effects on society and a higher focus on character interaction. Reboot please.

 

[happyninja42]

Equilibrium.
All the stupid taken out. Replaced with more exploration of the deeper effects on society and a higher focus on character interaction. Reboot please.

If they remove the stupid....that would remove the entire movie.

OT: Phantom Menace, remove the medichlorians. They served no explanatory function in the story, and ultimately made no sense.

 

[Zhukov]

Gallipoli

(Australian war movie from the 80s with very little actual war in it. Includes pre-famous, pre-crazy Mel Gibson.)

Change that fucking soundtrack. Mostly it's fine, but a few key scenes have this beepy boopy digital bullshit that was probably considered cutting edge in 1989 but now sounds painfully cheap and dated.

Oh hey, it's on Youtube.

Skip to 6:50 for beepy boopy bullshit.

[youtube=ojFxlULdEQo