When it comes to movie adaptations of popular comic books, many fans are likely going to have strong opinions about, well, everything. From thoughts about costumes to critiques of special effects, devotees of the genre often aren’t shy to voice how they feel about a filmmaker’s interpretation of Marvel or DC source material. This also includes major casting decisions.
Sometimes, a studio’s choice to cast a certain actor creates a ripple of controversy throughout the franchise’s fanbase. People may be disgruntled that an actor doesn’t resemble the comic book version of a character closely enough — or, in some cases, an actor may be too recognizable from another project to convincingly play an iconic role. There are so many reasons fans may disagree with a casting decision, but more often than not, those decisions end up being the right ones in the long run.
While casting these actors in well-known superhero and villain roles was once considered risky, time has proven that the heads in charge ended up making the right choice. In fact, it’s pretty much impossible to think of anyone else in these roles now. It just goes to show that having a bit of faith in the creative forces behind a project usually pays off — and initial impressions can often be deceiving. An actor doesn’t get cast in a high-profile superhero movie by mistake, although it may take an audience actually watching their performance to win them over. Here are ten examples of superhero movie casting that were initially controversial — but paid off big time.
Controversial Superhero Casting That Paid Off
Fans were not into these actors playing these roles when they were first announced. But all was forgiven when they saw the finished product.
Actors Who Hated Their Superhero Movie Costumes
These actors looked great in their superhero outfits. But they were literally a pain in the butt (or other body parts) to wear.
Pretty much any job a person can take comes along with a uniform. Sometimes, it’s an actual required piece of clothing, such as a shirt with the business’ name on it. In other cases, it’s a general type of clothing — business casual, perhaps, or workwear. And, of course, there are the lucky few actors who get to collect a paycheck portraying iconic superheroes and villains on the big screen. But maybe they’re not as lucky as we think.
It’s important to remember that no matter how convincing an actor’s performance is, the truth is that they are a human being — not a supernatural one. And human beings sweat, get itchy, and experience discomfort. While it may be easy for the viewer to forget all of this when they’re caught up in watching the final product, it’s important to think about. Honestly, imagine spending up to 12 hours in a hot, skin-tight bodysuit without a convenient way to use the bathroom. That doesn’t really sound like a dream come true, does it?
The reality is, it takes a ton of work from the actors, costume design department, and makeup artists to create the larger-than-life superheroes we see on screen. There are even times when a VFX team has to get involved to create the desired result. The experience can be so taxing on the performer, that some actors have even gone so far as to make their costume nightmares known to the public. Here are ten actors who hated their superhero movie costumes — and weren’t afraid to say so.
Actors Who Hated Their Superhero Movie Costumes
These actors looked great in their superhero outfits. But they were literally a pain in the butt (or other body parts) to wear.
Unconventional Superhero Movies That Totally Missed The Mark
Sex and violence; they can be huge selling points for a film, but only to a point. If a movie contains too much adult language or content it can get slapped with the dreaded NC-17 rating, which many theater chains and home video outlets will not screen or carry. And if you can’t sell tickets to or copies of your movie, it’s awful hard to turn a profit.
But, again, sex and violence sell. Horror fans want to see shocking, scary imagery. Nobody goes to an erotic thriller hoping the lead actors share a pleasant, relaxing evening at home watching Four Weddings and a Funeral. It’s a fine, bloody, vulgar line that has to be walked.
Enter the unrated cut. When a movie gets trimmed in order to attain an R rating (or even occasionally a PG-13) from the MPAA, enterprising producers can recoup more of their investment — and appeal to a broader audience — by releasing multiple versions of their film on home video: The theatrical cut for audiences who want slightly safer thrills and the unrated version looking for edgier material. And the people selling the DVDs or digital copies get to profit off two movies instead of one. Everybody wins.
The 20 titles below are all mainstream Hollywood films that were released one way in theaters and then another way at home. A few are hard to find, but most of these films are still widely available in both their theatrical and unrated editions, depending on which you might prefer. We’re guessing if you’re reading this list, you’re looking for the uncut and uncensored stuff. You’ll find plenty of it below…
20 Movies With Unrated Cuts
These mainstream movies are available in very different — and sometimes way more graphic — versions.
The Best NC-17 Rated Movies Ever
The NC-17 rating has been all but abandoned these days, but once upon a time it was home to some of the most challenging films in history.
When it comes to filmmaking, inspiration can be found in so many different places. Some screenwriters choose to adapt books, musicals, or comics for the big screen. But still, others find everything they need for a compelling story in a newspaper or magazine article. You see, a finely crafted article can put a spotlight on a real event in a big way — drawing thousands of eyes to a story that would otherwise remain out of the headlines (both literally and figuratively).
From The New York Times to Vanity Fair, a number of major publications have run stories that have then led to feature films. And while there are plenty of iconic fictional stories that have come to life on screen, we’re going to be diving into the best ones based on real events. Life has a funny way of being stranger than fiction — and when a skilled journalist gets a piece just right, it can call the attention of screenwriters, directors, and producers. It’s no accident that these movies got made after the articles were published, as a journalist has the nose for sniffing out the type of story that grips the reader and takes them on a journey.
So, the next time you’re flipping through a magazine or newspaper — or, let’s be honest, scrolling through the electronic version on your phone — keep an eye out for the article that instantly draws you in. Before you know it, you might just see it coming to a theater near you. Here are the ten best movies that were based on a newspaper or magazine article.
The Best Movies Based On Newspaper Or Magazine Articles
These great movies were inspired by the hard work of journalists writing in newspapers or magazines.
The Best Movies That Are Based On The Director’s Own Life
These movies took their directors’ own lives, and turned them into amazing works of art.
“Big” is the operative word in most superhero movies. They’re blockbusters with epic stakes and budgets. But the original Shazam’s goal was not big but “Big” — as in the Tom Hanks bodyswap comedy about a boy who magically transforms into an adult. When Shazam!’s orphaned protagonist Billy Batson (Asher Angel) says a magic word, he becomes a swaggering superhero — while still maintaining his teenage brain and preoccupations like underage drinking and impressing girls.
Although there’s been a lot of upheaval behind the scenes of DC Studios since the last Shazam! movie — like a new pair of co-CEOs that includes Shazam! producer Peter Safran — the new sequel, Shazam! Fury of the Gods, was made by almost the exact same creative team as the first. That includes Safran, co-writer Henry Gayden, and director David F. Sandberg who did a stellar job turning 2019’s Shazam! into one of the most purely fun movies in the history of DC.
When I spoke to Sandberg about directing Fury of the Gods, I asked how his marching orders changed from the first movie to the second, and — because Billy Batson shares his powers with his adoptive siblings — about the challenges of directing a movie with six superheroes instead of one. He also revealed why Fury of the Gods didn’t build off the post-credits scene of the first Shazam and how DC’s original release calendar, which would have seen The Flashhit theaters well before Fury of the Gods, affected his film.
When I spoke to you about the first Shazam!, you’d said that the original pitch that Warner Bros. brought to you for the film was “Big with super powers.” What was the pitch for Fury of the Gods?
“We wanna go bigger.”
I see, so “Bigger with super powers.”
Yeah, Bigger with super powers. [laughs] No, I mean, that was kind of the thing. In the first movie, we got to see a little bit of the family, they all got powers. But in this one it’s like let’s see more of them. Let’s have a bigger threat, and have Shazam face something much bigger. This would be the movie where he has to grow up, you know? Become the adult superhero.
DSC00211.DNGWarner Bros.d parents. It’s like doing a little
You mentioned the whole family being involved, which was such a fun surprise at the end of the first movie. But here, they’re a much bigger part of the story. How much more complicated does it get making a movie with basically six superheroes instead of one?
Very complicated! Like you say, it’s six superheroes, and like three villains and monsters and parents. It is like doing a little Justice League or Avengers, but without those resources. So it’s a challenge. And it’s a practical challenge as well, just how you stage and block things when you have like 11, 12 people on screen at once. So it’s hard. And also story-wise; everyone needs to have their moment and their own little journey. So it’s hard, but it’s cool to get to do something so big.
When you say it’s challenging blocking a scene with 11 people, how do you solve that? Do you use storyboards?
Yeah, with the more complicated things, they’re storyboarded or pre-viz. But a lot of times, you kind of have to figure it out on set. Because we were working pretty fast.
But to be honest, there are a couple moments like a scene towards the end where they’re all in that house and they get a visitor. And I was like “I don’t even know how to fit the people into this room and how to do it in an interesting way.” So they all just bunched up or lined up. They’re all just standing there in a big clump of people. Because it’s like, I don’t even know what to do here.
Right. The other thing I was wondering regarding the family was whether it was tough to get all of these actors back. The first movie they had cameos; now they’re full supporting characters. Did they all have to agree to return for a potential sequel when they signed on for their roles in the original?
Yeah, you have to get them all to agree. But the good thing is that they really are like a Shazam family — or the “Shazamily” they call themselves. And they all really like each other. They hang out together when we’re not shooting. So it was like a big reunion that everyone was very eager to happen.
You tweaked Shazam’s costume a little for this film. What was the impetus behind changing it, and what were you going for with the new design?
To me, it was just about trying out some new things. We did the first movie, let’s do something different and not just do the same things. Let’s see what we can improve upon. Some things weren’t necessarily even about improvement; more just trying something different. Like in the first one, I did the version of the shorter cape with the hood.
Right.
The hood is from “The New 52.” For this one, it was like “Well, we did that. Let’s try and do more of a traditional cape and see how that feels.” The funny thing is that for me, I knew we were [originally] supposed to come out after The Flashand I knew that movie was gonna mess with timelines and multiverses and things like that. So I was like “Well, you know, we can get away with changing all this, because Barry messed with the timeline.” Now we’ve come out before The Flash, and I don’t have a good explanation for it beyond, like, “It’s magic!”
[laugh] That’s interesting that you made the movie assuming you’d be after The Flash but now it’s coming out months before that film. Tell me what it’s like making a movie like this in the midst of the DC Universe being in flux like that. From the outside, it seems like you’re not only a piece of bigger puzzle, but you’re a piece of a puzzle that’s changing as you solve it. I’m curious how that works.
The good thing is that Shazam! has always been in his own corner, doing his own thing. It hasn’t really been tied to the bigger [DC] story. We haven’t had to incorporate things, or not been able to use certain things; we’ve just been able to focus on our little Shazam! movies. I think that’s been beneficial, especially now with all the changes.
They’ve told us that there’s nothing in these movies that contradicts what they’re doing for the future. So nothing needed to change. If they want, they can do more Shazam! movies. That’s the good thing about being more of a separate thing.
I was going to ask whether all the changes behind the scenes had a tangible effect on the finished product. It sounds like maybe not, but you tell me.
No, no, the movie didn’t change. And the movie’s been finished since the end of October last year because we were originally coming out against Avatar. So we were on a much earlier schedule.
The first Shazam! ended with a post-credits scene teasing a team-up between Mark Strong’s Sivana and the classic Shazam bad guy Mister Mind. Fury of the Gods’ villains are the Daughters of Atlas. How did you decide on them as the antagonists in the sequel, and did you ever consider actually making Mister Mind and Sivana the focus instead?
They were never seen as sort of the main villains in this movie. But there was an early version before we wrote the full script, when it was still at the treatment stage, where Mr. Mind and Sivana were in it. And it was actually Mr. Mind who enabled the Daughters of Atlas to come to Earth as part of his bigger plan. But that turned into just being too much story to tell in the runtime, you know? So we had to lose that and just had the Daughters come here on their own. But that was the plan, to continue on with that, or at least show that he’s still in the background working his thing.
Tell me about working with Helen Mirren on this film. Is she an actor who comes with a lot of questions about her character or DC Comics?
Well, I don’t think she cares too much about the DC of it all. [laughs] But I know she loved the first movie, I think that’s why she wanted to do it. But she’s ready to do anything. She does her own stunts in this movie; we had to talk her out of doing certain stunts. And then, she’ll tell you, she actually broke her finger doing one of those stunts. She didn’t tell anyone; I didn’t find out until much later because she just kept going. She’s hardcore like that.
What did she want to do that you had to talk her out of?
Well, it was things like getting thrown into a wall, yanked into a wall, things like that. But we did put her in a harness and do all kinds of things with her. There’s that moment where Shazam lifts her up and holds her above his head. That’s actually Helen getting lifted up above his head. That’s why we have that camera angle from the top, just to show people that she did that. And she’s the one throwing Zach between the walls and all of that.
One character I was surprised was in the movie was Djimon Hounsou’s Wizard, who seemingly died in the first movie. And, I mean, foolish me, no one ever really “dies” in comics, but I thought he was dead after Shazam! And then not only is he in the sequel, he’s got a much bigger role this time.
Yeah, we just loved Djimon so much and, like you say, he didn’t have a big part in the first one. We wanted to do more with him. And I think the pairing up of him and Jack Dylan Grazer worked even better than I thought; like him as the straight man and Jack as the annoying kid. Djimon’s really funny! I love that we could use him more, and like you say, no one in comic books is ever really dead.
You mentioned Jack Dylan Grazer’s Freddy, and he was my favorite part of the first movie and he is really fun in this one as well. He’s so good, I could easily see him spun off into his own series or movie. Have there been any kinds of discussions like that? Because to me, he is the secret ace in the hole of Shazam!
There’s never been talks about it, but it’s certainly not a bad idea. I really like Freddy, and think he’s such a great character, which is why we wanted to have more of him in this movie. The tricky thing is since you have two actors playing the same part [Grazer plays Freddy in human form, Adam Brody plays his superhero form] and they’re both really good, it’s like “Ugh, we want Jack Dylan Grazer but we also want Adam Brody!” You have to pick and choose.
But we wanted to have a lot of Freddy in this one and give him an arc of finding out that there’s value to him as a human — that he isn’t just valuable as a superhero. He can be a hero all his own.
Yeah. What you’re talking about in terms of balancing both actors; that’s a problem you have five different times in this movie, because all the heroes except Mary are played by multiple people. That had to be very hard to balance.
Yeah. And also, if these people can be superheroes, then they would probably be superheroes a lot of the time. Which is why you have to do things like “Oh they lost their powers,” and things like that, just because we then get to see our great young actors as well.
You’ve managed to introduce some pretty wild ideas from the comics in the two movies, like Mr. Mind and so on. As someone who enjoys the outlandish side of comics, I would love to know if you think there will ever be a Tawky Tawny [Shazam’s friend from the comics who is a talking tiger] in a Shazam! movie. You’ve alluded to him, paid homage to him, but he hasn’t shown up.
I think there could be. When we first started talking about what this movie would be, and we were looking at what they were doing in the comics, we were like “If we do have these different lands you get to through these doors [in the Rock of Eternity, the Shazam Family’s lair] then we could have Tawky Tawny come from one of those doors and have that be the explanation. Because we have wanted to put him in the movies. We just think that you have to have a little bit of explanation for something like that. You can’t just have a tiger in a suit that’s talking right away.
Shazam! Fury of the Gods is scheduled to open in theaters on Friday, March, 17.
Every DC Comics Movie, Ranked From Worst to Best
From Superman and the Mole Men to The Suicide Squad, we ranked every movie based on DC comics.
I love Letterboxd, the social network site and app for movie lovers. I use it to log the movies I watch, keep lists of titles, and to see what my friends are up to (cinematically speaking, of course). And I also like to use its database to see what films are popular and unpopular with users.
For example, with just a couple clicks, it’s very easy to sort every single movie on Letterboxd — all 791,369 titles and counting — by year of release, their rating, popularity, genre, or even by streaming service availability. Want to know what’s highest-rated horror movie on Letterboxd? No problem. (It’s John Carpenter’s The Thing, by the way.) Wondering what comedy is the most-despised? You got it. (That would be Kirk Cameron’s Saving Christmas.) You could spend hours exploring this stuff.
I recently took a deep dive into ’80s movies on the site. According to Letterboxd, 49,330 films were released in the 1980s. The highest-rated title out of all of them is Elem Klimov’s Come and See, followed by Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, Eduardo Coutinho’s Twenty Years Later, Krzysztof Kieślowski’s The Decalogue, and the Talking Heads concert doc Stop Making Sense.
And then, at the opposite end of the spectrum, are the films below; the 15 lowest-rated movies on Letterboxd released during the 1980s, ranked from the best score (well, best relative to the rest of this disasters) to the worst. The titles include notorious sequels, bombs starring some of the 1980s’ biggest film and television stars, and some extremely obscure sci-fi films. This list is a useful tool when trying to figure out what ’80s films to avoid — or maybe to track down if you’re planning a bad movie night with friends.
The Worst ’80s Movies, According to Letterboxd
According to thousands of users on the movie website Letterboxd, these are the 15 worst movies released during the 1980s.
The Worst ’80s Movies, According to Letterboxd
According to thousands of users on the movie website Letterboxd, these are the 15 worst movies released during the 1980s.
Given the backlash to developments in the MCU and theStar Wars franchise, Bob Iger has good news. Both universes are going to be more measured in approach. Iger recently spoke Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom Conference, explaining how Disney intends to move forward. It’s a necessary bit of damage control when only a week prior, it was announced that two upcoming Star Wars projects were shelved. Both Patty Jenkins’ Rogue Squadron and a mysterious, untitled film from Kevin Feige have been canceled.
Iger said in clear terms that this isn’t an outright halt to upcoming projects. It’s just a way to make sure that the franchise is telling the right stories. He said: “We’re still developing Star Wars films, but we’re going to make sure when we make one, it’s the right one. So we’re being very careful there.”
He also cited the disappointing box office returns of Solo: A Star Wars Story, which seems to have been released right in the middle of a huge market flood for the shared universe. The film was also one of the most expensive ever made, costing a whopping $275–300 million dollars. It did break even, but after that much bankrolling, $393.2 million isn’t the prettiest number.
Iger also addressed the future approach to the MCU, which is also in the middle of a difficult time. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is also suffering some middling reviews and a less-than-stellar box office profit. In regards to this, Iger said: “I think we just have to look at what characters and stories we’re mining. If you look at the trajectory of Marvel in the next five years, there will be a lot of newness. We’re going to turn back to the Avengers franchise with a whole new set of Avengers, for example.”
Legendary Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini once said, “All art is autobiographical.” It’s true that every artist views the world through their own unique lens, but some pieces of work are simply more “autobiographical” than others. One of the amazing aspects of storytelling is being able to explore lives that aren’t your own — but there’s always some relatable truth at the center of it. For this reason, some directors find that their most honest work comes directly from their own past experiences.
Of course, not every single movie based on a director’s own journey is a home run. These movies are still subject to criticism, regardless of how personal they are — and one person’s life story can quickly become overwrought and too sentimental. That being said, there are quite a few directors who are able to turn their memories into cinematic gold. From Steven Spielberg to Greta Gerwig, these filmmakers prove that one’s own history can make for compelling fiction.
Now, these fantastic films aren’t pure documentaries. In fact, they’re far from it. They bend the truth, shaping characters and events into their most compelling form. They’re not so concerned with emulating straight facts as they are with capturing the essence of one’s own life, and the results are incredibly rewarding. After watching these movies, you’ll feel like you’ve gotten a taste of what the directors have lived through — and you may even see some of yourself in their stories, as well. Here are the 10 best movies that are based on their director’s own life.
The Best Movies That Are Based On The Director’s Own Life
These movies took their directors’ own lives, and turned them into amazing works of art.
Directors Who’ve Cast Their Own Kids in Their Movies
Hey, let’s play a game: What’s your favorite scary movie? Better yet: What’s your favorite Scream?
Since 1996, one franchise has dominated and defined the world of slashers. Written by Kevin Williamson, directed by the late, great Wes Craven, Scream reinvented the hackneyed horror genre for the 1990s with a metatextual twist. Unlike the usual bumbling victims-in-waiting, the characters in Scream were smart, and understood the rules and clichés of horror films (even if they didn’t always follow them, which led to their undoing). The first Scream became a surprise smash, launching careers and countless imitators. And every few years since then, its signature villain, Ghostface, has returned to terrorize Courteney Cox and Neve Campbell, and to tweak more formulaic movies.
(By the way, did you know Ghostface wasn’t created for Scream? It’s actually an existing real-world Halloween mask by the Fun World costume company that the filmmakers licensed for their franchise.)
Williamson wrote the first two Screams plus the fourth; Craven directed the first four. The more recent installments were directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, and written by James Vanderbilt and Guy Busick. Through the decades, the franchise has had its own ups and downs. Some installments weren’t much better than the crummy horror movies they were designed to mock. Others changed the course of horror history forever.
Here are all the Scream films ranked from worst to best. (You can probably guess the number one pick…)
Every Scream Movie Ranked
Ghostface has slashed his way through more than two decades of horror movies. Here‘s how they all stack up against each other.
There is something to be said for not knowing how films are made. It’s called movie magic for a reason; when the movies work, a trip to the theater can become an almost supernatural experience that defies rational explanation.
But odds are, if you truly love movies you’re also afflicted by an insatiable curiosity about them. Not just watching them, but understanding how they are made and whysome productions turn into classics while others result in legendary disasters. To find out, there are only a few places to turn, and the oldest and most reliable remains a good book — like the ten featured below, which should be considered essential reading for any true cinephile.
While the tomes on our list vary in style and subject, they’re all movies about the process of making movies in one way or another. These are not books of film criticism or appreciation; you won’t find anything by Manny Farber or Pauline Kael or Andrew Sarris on there. (Although if you’re interested in that sort of thing, you should definitely look into getting a copy of Negative Space, I Lost It at the Movies, or The American Cinema for yourself.) We also didn’t get into great books of film history, or biographies of notable directors either. (If that’s what you want, go check out Movie-Made America by Robert Sklar or Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination by Neal Gablerfor starters.)
These books are more how-tos, or sometimes how-not-tos. They will show you that it’s not magic that makes the movies; it’s people, who are brilliant and creative and sometimes deeply misguided or slightly crazy. But in a way, that makes their work all the more impressive.
The Best Books About Filmmaking
Every cinephile should read these ten books about the world of movies.
The 10 Worst Romantic Comedy Clichés Of All Time
Here are the most annoying tropes we’re tired of seeing in rom-coms.
Creed III marks a major turning point in the series. For the first time since 1976, there’s a Rocky or Creed movie without an appearance from Sylvester Stallone as Rocky Balboa. Rocky rode off into the proverbial sunset at the end of Creed II, symbolically passing the torch to Michael B. Jordan as the new lead of the saga.
But just because Stallone and Rocky do not appear onscreen in Creed III doesn’t mean that Creed III isn’t indebted, in ways both big and small, to the almost 50-year history of the Rocky franchise. Just like Creed II beforeit, Creed III is clearly made by Rocky fans for Rocky fans, and as such it features tons of references and Easter eggs from Rockys (and Creeds) past. Old storylines are repeated, vintage characters return for important supporting roles, and even a few locations get trotted out again — like the beaches of Southern California, where Rocky rediscovered the “eye of the tiger” in Rocky III and Jonathan Majors’ Dame Anderson prepares for his big fight with Adonis Creed in Creed III.
That’s one obvious homage to Rockys past — but here are 12 more examples from Creed III, some of which are not so easy to spot.
Rocky References in Creed III
Few franchises are more obsessed with their own past as the Rocky/Creed saga. Here is the proof, from Creed III.
The 10 Most Shocking Best Picture Winners In Oscar History
These movies shocked the film world on their way to winning Best Picture at the Academy Awards.
There is a lot of discussion and hand wringing these days (a lot of it quite deserved!) about the rise of artificial intelligence. And this ain’t the cute kind of A.I. that looks like Haley Joel Osment. This is the sort that can mimic human thinking, speech, and even writing, producing work in an instant that would take a real person hours or days. Ahead of its upcoming contract negotiations, the Writers Guild of America revealed is already concerned enough about A.I. to add “regulate use of material produced using artificial intelligence or similar technologies” as one of its demands.
It’s an alarming thought: Could artificial intelligence start writing movies? What would that look like?
I didn’t go so far as to ask the A.I. chatbot ChatGPT to write me a whole screenplay — but out of curiosity, I did ask it to pitch ideas for sequels to a variety of films.
Its responses were surprising. Sometimes they were good; good enough that you could see someone buying a ticket to the film. Other times, the pitches were boring or even bizarre.
A few were so deranged they might qualify as brilliant. (A time traveling, alternate dimension spanning sequel to It’s a Wonderful Life? Okay!)
The movies I offered up for sequels varied. Some are already getting sequels; a few are in the later stages of development right now. A few were decades old and will never get a sequel. Out of curiosity, I also asked it to come up with ideas for sequels to a couple movies people hate.
The A.I.’s responses ignored the feasibility of the projects — although in one case it did actually warn me that even attempting one of my proposed sequels was a really risky proposition. (Apparently robot brains already possess more discerning taste than some Hollywood studio executives.)
Once or twice, it even pitched ideas with “rogue artificial intelligence” as the villain, which definitely did not make me think twice about this whole endeavor.
Here are 20 A.I.-generated ideas for sequels to popular movies. (For the full experience, I recommend having Siri read the pitches out loud to you.)
An Artificial Intelligence Pitches Sequels to Classic Movies
We asked an A.I. chatbot to write the unmade sequels to popular movies. Here were its suggestions. Some are pretty good! Others are … really weird.
An AI Chatbot Reviews Classic Movies
We asked ChatGPT about 25 of the greatest movies ever made. Here are its reviews…
At this point, the story of the making of Rocky is almost as famous as the title character’s run up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Struggling actor Sylvester Stallone pours all of his self-doubts and frustrations into a script about a club boxer from Philly who gets a match against the heavyweight champion of the world, Apollo Creed. Stallone writes the entire script in less than a week, then refuses to sell it to anyone who won’t agree to let him star in it.
The film becomes a smash, then wins Best Picture at the Academy Awards. Stallone becomes a major star, but after his first two post-Rocky projects stumble at the box office, he returns to Rocky for a heartfelt sequel. He continued to bring back the character over and over all through the 1980s and into the early 1990s, then revived him again in 2006 when his career was at another low ebb. After he’d seemingly said farewell to the “Italian Stallion” for good, Rocky made yet another improbable resurgence when writer/director Ryan Coogler sold the studio on a spinoff film called Creed, about the son of Rocky’s rival, Adonis Creed, played by Michael B. Jordan. The spinoffs, featuring Rocky as Adonis’ shrewd trainer, have proven nearly as successful. To date, they’ve produced three movies of their own.
We’ll never know who’d win in a fight between Rocky and Adonis, but we can figure out which of their respective franchises is superior. The list below ranks every Rocky and Creed movie to find out which one is the undisputed champion. So cue up some Bill Conti, put on your best gray sweatsuit, chug a couple of raw eggs, and let’s go for it.
Every Rocky and Creed Movie Ranked From Worst to Best
It’s the best sports movie franchise in history — but the Rocky and Creed series have had their highs and lows. Here they are:
The Worst Billion-Dollar Blockbusters
All of these movies grossed more than $1 billion at the box office. And they all stink.
When we watch a TV show we love, it’s normal to feel emotionally invested in the characters. When something major happens to them — they find love, they experience loss, they have a moment of growth — we’re experiencing that with them. That’s why it’s such a big deal when a TV character dies. Even though we know that it’s just an actor playing a part on the screen, it’s still possible to feel totally devastated.
Of course, in the world of television, things are not always what they seem. Sometimes, a character is only presumed dead, but they’re actually still alive. Unless a character actually has a proper sendoff on camera — where you, as the viewer, can actually confirm they are dead — there’s always a chance that they’ll come back. Depending on the show, this can either be a wild, exciting plot twist, or a completely unrealistic turn of events.
It’s pretty obvious to tell when a character has been (temporarily) killed off for shock value. In some cases, a series just needs a good ratings boost — and nothing drives viewers to the screen like the potential of a fan-favorite character biting the dust. But if the character who dies also happens to be the show’s namesake — for example, Buffy from Buffy the Vampire Slayer — you really shouldn’t be surprised when they return unscathed.
Below, you’ll find 10 of the least convincing death fake-outs in TV history. All of these shows have been out for at least a year, so you shouldn’t have to worry too much about spoilers — unless you’re just now getting around to binge-watching Game of Thrones.
The 10 Least Convincing Fake TV Deaths
Did these “shocking” TV deaths actually fool anyone?
10 TV Actors Who Were Replaced For Controversial Reasons
These actors were replaced from hit shows under clouds of controversy.
This really should not need to be said but just in case. Yes, yes the piece on unanswered questions left by Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumaniacontains spoilers for Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Why I need to say this is a bit of an unanswered question in and of itself, but I digress…
Ant-Man and the Wasp Quantumania is the first movie in Phase Five of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. By design, it is meant to leave some mysteries for the audience to puzzle over, in order to keep them curious about what comes next (in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 this May, followed by The Marvels in November). But this is a movie about time travel, alternate realities, variants, miniature universes, and impossibly intelligent ants. It’s bound to get at least a little confusing.
So we here at ScreenCrush expect that most viewers will walk out of the theater after Quantumania with at least a few questions about Kang the Conqueror, about his plans, and about some specific elements of the plot. In the list below we’ve taken the ten biggest questions left by the movie and done our best to lay out potential answers for all of them.
(Note they are potential answers. These are just our best educated guesses based on the movie, and the accumulated dork knowledge of decades of reading Marvel comics. If you want to disagree with us over on our Twitter or Facebook pages, be our guest.)
Quantumania: All Our Unanswered Questions About the Movie
Here are the parts of the Ant-Man sequel that we are still puzzling over.
The Coolest Quantumania Easter Eggs
There are some really obscure comic and movie references in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania — here are the best ones.
Discerning moviegoers understand: A movie’s success at the box office is not indicative of (or even determined by) its artistic merit. Some of the greatest movies ever made became massive commercial flops. And every year, mediocre or flat-out awful movies attract massive crowds and generate millions upon millions of dollars in ticket sales.
Still, I think most cinephiles like to imagine that there is at least some connection between quality and popularity. After all, a movie has to attract millions of customers to become a true blockbuster. And it doesn’t seem like a bad movie should be able to attain the kind of word-of-mouth popularity you need to generate sell-out crowds.
But it happens. When you look at the list of the highest-grossing movies of all time, you see a shocking number of terrible films. To date, just 51 movies have grossed $1 billion at the worldwide box office, and in my subjective opinion at least a quarter of those are bad — and a few rank among the worst films Hollywood has produced in the last 50 years. For every Titanic or Top Gun: Maverick or The Dark Knight — blockbusters whose popularity speaks for itself — there are almost as many pieces of junk that, for one reason or another, still managed to catch on with audiences.
Below are the ten worst offenders. By any measure that Hollywood studios care about, these movies were hits — all-time, record-breaking hits, in fact. But that didn’t make them good movies. Not even close.
The Worst Billion-Dollar Blockbusters
All of these movies grossed more than $1 billion at the box office. And they all stink.
The Worst Movies Based On Good TV Shows
Sometimes horrible movies happen to bad television series. Here are the worst offenders.
When it comes to television, there seems to be the philosophy that a good thing must be kept going by all means necessary. If a show proves to be successful, it must run until it’s completely lost steam — whether that happens as the result of lower ratings or a lack of funding.
Nowadays, in the era of the limited series and streaming services, that isn’t the only option anymore. It is possible for a show to end on its own terms, without any external factors influencing its overall arc. But back in the days of cable, the mentality was to keep a show running, as long as it was proving to be popular with viewers. Some shows even warranted the rare second chance — the revival. Why revive a show that’s long-since gone off the air?
Sometimes, a network sees an opportunity to market a show to a new demographic of viewers, so the show is brought back on the air. Other times, a streaming service will pick up a cult favorite series that couldn’t survive on cable. Either way, launching a TV revival is always a risk — can a show recapture what fans loved about the original series, while also introducing something fresh and original? While there are plenty of reboots that get it right (think The Office, The Twilight Zone, and Doctor Who) there are more than a few that get it very, very wrong.
Here are 10 TV revivals that were so bad, they actually threatened to ruin the legacy of their original series.
10 TV Revivals That Were So Bad They Ruined Their Original Shows
TV Spinoffs That Are Better Than Their Original Shows
These 10 TV spinoffs from successful shows actually found a way to be better than the series that were based on.
The following post contains SPOILERS for Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Proceed with caution or be banished forever to the tiny universe known as the Quantum Realm.
I am trying to imagine a world where someone walks into Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania totally cold, having never read a Marvel comic or watched a Marvel Cinematic Universe movie. They would be utterly, totally, completely baffled. Somewhere out there in the multiverse, there must be a place where such a person exists. I feel bad for them.
Even Marvel veterans who have kept up with 15 years of MCU movies and TV shows and know their comic-book lore might be a little lost at times during Quantumania. This third Ant-Man movie is as much of a sequel to Avengers: Endgame and the Loki TV series as it is two the prior Ant-Man films. It continues the adventures of Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) and Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly) and introduces the world to Kang the Conqueror (Jonathan Majors), a Marvel villain with an impossibly complicated backstory who is set to become the Avengers’ next major adversary through Phase 5 and 6 of the MCU, including the upcoming Avengers: The Kang Dynasty film that’s due in theaters in 2025.
Quantumania not only references Kang’s comic book past, it also contains a ton of obscure references and hidden details from throughout the Ant-Man franchise and the rest of the MCU. If you missed any of them, here are 15 of the film’s coolest Easter eggs:
The Coolest Quantumania Easter Eggs
There are some really obscure comic and movie references in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania — here are the best ones.
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is in theaters now. Did you spot an Easter egg we missed? Let us know on Twitter or Facebook, or on our YouTube page. The next Marvel Cinematic Universe movie, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, opens in theaters on May 5.
Every Marvel Cinematic Universe Movie, Ranked From Worst to Best
It started with Iron Man and it’s continued and expanded ever since. It’s the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with 31 movies and counting. But what’s the best and the worst? We ranked them all.
“There was an idea to bring together a group of remarkable people to see if they could become something more. To see if they could work together when we needed them to. To fight the battles that we never could.”
That’s Nick Fury talking about the Avengers. But he could also be talking about the movie The Avengers and the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. After 15 years and dozens of movies, look at what became of this idea; bringing together all these remarkable people and seeing that, yes, they could be something more when they worked together, when their films were interwoven together until a giant meta-narrative. 15 years ago, the whole notion seemed crazy. An Iron Man movie? Who cares about Iron Man? Starring Robert Downey Jr.? Didn’t he have a drug problem? And then they’re going to make an Ant-Man movie? It’ll never work.
And yet here we sit more than a decade later and we can say, quite conclusively that it worked. Iron Man begat a sequel, plus The Incredible Hulk, Thor, Captain America, and The Avengers. Then six more movies. Then seven more after that. (Ant-Man showed up eventually, but it took a little while.) 14 years later, we’re at the start of Phase Five of the Marvel Cinematic Universe with Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. What better time than now to rank them all?
After watching Quantumania and rewatching the previous MCU movies, I have arrived at this guaranteed to be in-no-way controversial ranking, from the worst film Marvel has made so far (you know what it is) to the best. Again, these are my personal references. Come back in a few months when we do this all over again for … whatever Marvel releases next.
Every Marvel Cinematic Universe Movie, Ranked From Worst to Best
It started with Iron Man and it’s continued and expanded ever since. It’s the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with 30 movies and counting. But what’s the best and the worst? We ranked them all.
One good TV show deserves another, right? Well, this seems to be the logic when it comes down to which series get greenlit each year. As is the case with movies, it’s no surprise that viewers are naturally drawn to characters and fictional worlds that they’ve been acquainted with before. While there are quite a few original shows, and TV shows derived from movies, and TV shows based on books, there are also a surprising number of TV spinoffs — series whose characters come straight from a show already on the air.
The thing is, not all of these spinoff series are good. Some are, in fact, quite bizarre. But every now and then, there comes along a spinoff that’s just as good as the original series. Dare we say, in some ways, it’s actually better. That’s not to say anything about the quality of its predecessor. After all, a spinoff has a better chance of being great if its source material is well-written, directed, and acted. However, it’s no easy feat for a spinoff series to stand on its own, but it does happen.
Oftentimes, the show acts as a sequel to the events depicted in the original series. But instead of simply serving as a continuation of said series, a spinoff typically follows a new — or previously introduced — set of characters that exist within the same universe. Spinoff shows may attempt to recreate the tone of their original show, or they may branch out into new genre territory. Here are 10 TV spinoff series that are just as good — and even better — than the shows they’re based on.
TV Spinoffs That Are Better Than Their Original Shows
These 10 TV spinoffs from successful shows actually found a way to be better than the series that were based on.
10 Popular TV Shows That Were Almost Cancelled Too Soon
