• Welcome to Autism Forums, a friendly forum to discuss Aspergers Syndrome, Autism, High Functioning Autism and related conditions.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
    • Private Member only forums for more serious discussions that you may wish to not have guests or search engines access to.
    • Your very own blog. Write about anything you like on your own individual blog.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon! Please also check us out @ https://www.twitter.com/aspiescentral

Movies/TV shows you thought had potential, but let you down...

AGXStarseed

AGXStarseed

Well-Known Member
A thread for you to talk about movies and TV shows you chose to watch because you thought they had some potential, but in one way or another they failed to achieve or exceed your expectations.

I'm going to throw in an example to start us off (spoiler alert).


Movie: Alien vs. Zombies (also known as Zombies vs. Joe Alien) - 2017
Don't get me wrong, I already had pretty low expectations going into this and with a title like that (along with the fact that it was meant to be a comedy), I had no intention of taking it seriously.
As a guy who often watches low budget movies and finds enjoyment from watching guys in rubber suits destroying model cities, I was willing to give this movie a go. Besides - if Vampires, Ninjas, Pro-Wrestlers, Cockneys and even Abraham Lincoln can go up against the hordes of zombies, why not an alien?

I watched it...and my low expectations fell even lower.
Here's the trailers (warning; some gore): Zombies vs. Joe Alien Trailer 1, Alien vs. Zombies Trailer 2

  1. While some of the actors do genuinely try, the acting and script are both pretty bad, with the characters ranging from forgettable to annoying to over-the-top. This got so bad with the over-the-top characters that I actually fast-forwarded past their scenes.
  2. 'Joe' - the Alien - looks exactly like a human (right down to using the "you look human, you look Time Lord" conversational exchange from Doctor Who as a lazy way to excuse it). Furthermore, its stated that he has a lot of love for Earth and has learned a lot about it including our music, movies, etc. (especially as he actually quotes from some movies and other aspects of pop culture). Despite this, he is naive, has no idea how to talk to humans to the point where he openly declares he's an alien, is horny (no joke) and has no idea what a zombie is.
  3. The CGI ranges from passable to awful, with some of it looking like the kind of thing you could make with Blender and some other special effects freeware. Granted the movie is low budget, but I've seen special and practical effects in other low budget movies like 1990's The Dark Side of the Moon and 2010's Monsters that looked better than this.
  4. If you're going in expecting at least one fight between Joe and the Zombies with Joe using either alien powers or alien weaponry (which would've been a good opportunity to be creative), you're going to be disappointed as Joe never fights the zombies and just has some tussles with them to use his time travel ability.
  5. The time travel element revolves around Joe 'possessing' a Zombies mind and moving his consciousness back in time within the zombies' body; arriving at that time period in that person's body before they became a zombie. All in all, not a bad idea but it means he spends the majority of the movie searching around in the past, which quickly gets boring and makes the film drag.
  6. I didn't find what comedy there was funny and every time Joe quoted another movie/show, I realized how much more I'd prefer to be watching that than this. Hell, he even referenced Earth Girls are Easy and I found myself wanting to watch that - despite the fact it too isn't that good a movie.
The only part of the movie I actually did like was the idea of aliens coming to Earth for a holiday, as usually in sci-fi aliens come to Earth for malevolent purposes (Independence Day, War of the Worlds, etc.), because they're stuck for some reason (E.T: The Extra-Terrestrial, Flight of the Navigator, etc.), they're looking for something/someone (Earth Warp, Something is Out There, etc.) or because they want to explore and learn/talk to us about our planet or about us (Starman, The Day the Earth Stood Still 1951, etc.).
The idea of them coming to Earth for a vacation in the same way we go to other countries on our holidays - for the purpose of exploring a new location, learning history and culture and enjoying ourselves away from home - is an idea I can easily accept and I think could be explored in more detail and across multiple genres. I could easily imagine a coming-of-age film where some people reminisce about how during one summer they encountered a group of aliens on holiday to Earth and spent the whole summer together with them; learning about each other and having fun.

That's just my opinion. Some of you guys might watch it and find something else you can take from it, but I've no intention of keeping this one in my movie collection.
 
Last edited:
The cartoon Freakazoid. I loved the theme song (and still do) and the premise has potential, but somewhere around Season 1 Episode 3 I found myself asking "when does this start getting funny or amusing?"
 
I thought I'd read somewhere that the character Abby Scuito in NCIS was supposed to be Autistic but I've watched nearly every episode now of all the series and can't find one where anyone mentions her autism or explains it to any new team member for example?
 
The television show "Parenthood."
I'd read there was an autistic boy.
The show was very dull and had too
many characters, for me.

I couldn't care about the boy, or
the plot. It never seemed alive.
 
Gritches said:
The cartoon Freakazoid. I loved the theme song (and still do) and the premise has potential, but somewhere around Season 1 Episode 3 I found myself asking "when does this start getting funny or amusing?"
Click to expand...

According to the shows co-creator and Freakazoid voice actor (who appeared in a Nostalgia Critic episode reviewing the show), they were literally throwing anything and everything at the wall to see what would stick because they weren't sure what kind of show they wanted and there was very little time and money to get it sorted. They even reference that in several episodes.
To be fair, I watched the show as a kid but I found it never left a lasting impression; I found Animaniacs to be a better show than Freakazoid!

 
AGXStarseed said:
According to the shows co-creator and Freakazoid voice actor (who appeared in a Nostalgia Critic episode reviewing the show), they were literally throwing anything and everything at the wall to see what would stick because they weren't sure what kind of show they wanted and there was very little time and money to get it sorted. They even reference that in several episodes.
To be fair, I watched the show as a kid but I found it never left a lasting impression; I found Animaniacs to be a better show than Freakazoid!

Click to expand...

Interesting. I might give the show a second chance. I'm getting the sense that I wouldn't get the show from watching 3 episodes. I think they summed it up well when they said that every episode is a complete waste of time - and I guess that's the appeal.
 
Star Trek Enterprise.

Started well, then by the end of the final series it turned out it was all a
Holodeck program on Picard's Enterprise!
.
 
Most recently I think it’s “call me by your name”, I have more expectation for that…but turned out just OK for me...
 
Sportster said:
"Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull." The only thing I liked about the movie was the motorcycle. They used a Harley Softail Springer. The rest of movie came off the stable floor:

Click to expand...
This is my least favorite Indiana Jones movie. I think the first one was the best...
 
Superbob (2015)

A story about Bob Kenner - a mild mannered and socially inept postman from Peckham, London - who develops superman-style powers after been hit by a meteor. After been trained up, he becomes a government sanctioned superhero. The movie follows him as he prepares to go on his first date in 6 years.

Again this was another low-budget comedy that I decided to give a go. All in all, it wasn't bad but after seeing other British comedies that got a good laugh out of me, the humour was lacking in this one.
Don't get me wrong, there were some funny moments, some sweet moments and the idea of having a socially awkward guy as the strongest man in the world (and one who is bossed around by everyone else no less) was a clever idea, but it still had moments were I was skipping ahead because I was getting bored.

Not bad and one I'm happy to watch when I'm in the right mood. That said, I think a show like My Hero was a better version of the idea.

Here's the first three minutes of SuperBob:
 
Black Panther, I almost fell for the "hype" surrounding it, but to be brutally honest I thought it sucked when we went to see it the other week.

And not because most of the characters were black, I'm NO racist despite what certain morons on Facebook think of me.
 
Rich Allen said:
Black Panther, I almost fell for the "hype" surrounding it, but to be brutally honest I thought it sucked when we went to see it the other week.

And not because most of the characters were black, I'm NO racist despite what certain morons on Facebook think of me.
Click to expand...

I've not yet seen it, so I'll make my own judgements for when I do.

What you said reminds me of the whole controversy regarding the 2016 Ghostbusters reboot, where regardless of whether you wanted to see it or not Facebook and social media hated you.
If you wanted to see the reboot, you were accused of 'betraying the original', while if you didn't want to see the reboot, you were accused of been a sexist pig; there was no inbetween.
(although as has been stated many times here, Facebook and many of the other 'mainstream' social networks are far from been the healthiest places to spend your time and energy).
 
The Matrix Reloaded

Well, I wasn't quite expecting it to be as good as the first one, but seriously, it was lame even by sequel standards.
 
"Bladerunner 2049"

Despite being a Ridley Scott production and well received by many critics, I wasn't as thrilled with this sequel. While the storyline seemed well enough, the movie just dragged on at such a slow pace I found myself at times losing interest compared to the first film.
 
The last season of Fringe. I loved the show, and was really excited for the fourth season, but I disliked the story so much I stopped watching halfway through.
 
St Elmo's Fire
Despite having a really anthemic-sounding theme song,
the film is little more than the adventures of a bunch of spoilt rich recent graduates.
 
Last edited:
Not noticed this thread before - good topic :)

"Quantico" was a hell of a let down after the first series. Series 1 - quite good escapist fun, well worth a watch despite some dodgy acting and WAY too loud music. Series 2 - utter balderdash and the worst performance by Brit actor Russel Tovey I have ever seen from him. What a let down.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

New Threads

Top Bottom