Recently, in a thread on the subreddit r/movies, redditor u/Advancedhell asked, "Which movie were you disappointed by because they had a good, interesting concept at the beginning, but they abandoned it halfway through?" and movie lovers really came through with some great responses!
So, with that in mind, here are just a few of the most popular responses shared:
1. In Time (2011)
"Really interesting sci-fi premise (time works like currency, so anyone can live forever if you are wealthy enough). But they didn't really do much with that initial concept, and it just turns into a fairly generic crime thriller."
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2. Hancock (2008)
"This is the first thing I thought of. The first half of the movie is really fun and has a real personality to it, then it all just sort of disintegrates into forgettable, contrived nonsense in the second half. As another commenter already pointed out, it really does feel like two movies awkwardly mashed together into one."
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3. Jumper (2008)
"It could have been a lot more interesting and developed."
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4. Last Night in Soho (2021)
"It ended up being a completely different movie than I thought at the beginning."
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5. The Island (2005)
"Starts as a dystopian type film where some residents of an island realize they are just clones of rich people to be used for spare parts as needed. Ends as generic action flick."
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6. Passengers (2016)
"So much potential, but the movie went off track. Still don’t see how it came out that way."
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7. Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)
"It had a promising beginning with some potentially interesting characters."
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8. Elysium (2013)
"I just felt like there were two incomplete ideas, so they rolled them both into one since they didn't have the time."
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9. The Matrix Resurrections (2021)
"The general core idea of the film is something that could have been incredible as part of the Matrix canon. But I was so disappointed that they couldn't give a fuck about what they were making to do it any justice."
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10. Bad Times at the El Royale (2018)
"They pulled the curtain back way too early, and it turned into generic schlock."
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11. Inception (2010)
"My super hot take here: The movie is good, but in the third act, really only the real creative use of the dream world is the hallway fight. The rest is kind of a James Bond pastiche. I wish the dream concept had been utilized a bit more."
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12. Taken 2 (2012)
"I really liked their beginning concept of them reversing the roles with the daughter doing the rescuing this time, but unfortunately, they quickly abandoned it so that Liam Neeson could be Liam Neeson."
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13. Snowpiercer (2013)
"It started so good and layered, but the more it went on, the more generic it got. It really felt like the writers changed hands somewhere after the food-making car. Not to mention the backstory reveal of one of the characters, which is a huge reason I feel like writers changed, because if you look back in the world that was built...why would that hold weight?"
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14. Yesterday (2019)
"The whole premise of how did people forget the Beatles. What happened? Is it going to be fixed? Are we on a different timeline or universe where the Beatles don’t exist? Just nothing, nothing is explained or ultimately solved."
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15. Old (2021)
"It started out well and fell off the rails quick."
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16. Barbarian (2022)
"I still enjoyed the movie, but the concept of them just going deeper and deeper into some unknown labyrinth finding more doors into some other place would’ve been amazing. The genre switch and ending monster really kind of lost some steam for me."
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17. The Purge (2013)
"The first film. Personally, I thought the second one was a LOT better. I was really excited about the concept, but the execution and storyline of the first one was quite dull."
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18. Sunshine (2007)
"And I actually do like it, but its sudden shift in genre from a sci-fi to a sci-fi/horror is jarring to say the least. It feels like they abandoned one movie and stitched together a completely different one."
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19. The Age of Adaline (2015)
"Out of all the possible existential, philosophical, and spiritual aspects of what not aging would do to a person, they chose to focus on a lame-ass love story."
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20. The Lobster (2015)
"The second act completely didn't work for me. The first 30-40 minutes were some of the best things I've seen in a movie. It felt like it ran out of things to say as the movie went on."
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21. Smile (2022)
"What an amazing first hour, and what a terrible ending."
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22. It Follows (2014)
"It never really uses its own amazing premise; we just get scene after scene of a scary, creepy person bursting through a doorway, and the main characters being like, 'Oh no, a monster!' while running off like Shaggy in Scooby-Doo."
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23. Flatliners (1990)
"It used a super interesting concept — med students using their access to medical equipment to try and see what’s beyond death — to tell an unsatisfying semi-thriller story about making peace with past traumas. Toward the end, I really did forget what the premise of this movie I was watching was."
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24. Spontaneous (2020)
"It starts out as basically what feels like an episode of The X-Files from the perspective of the civilians before the heroes show up and actually provide some evidence for forming pretty good theories about what's going on. That is, until sometime around the climax, after the feds show up and do their investigating, the love interest whose romance with the hero had been the b-plot of the entire movie thus far just up and dies, and the entire third act is spent not explaining anything in supposed service of some Aesop about living in the moment. Everyone who survives basically ends up in the same place they would have been life-wise had the events of the movie not happened at all."
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And finally:
25. Downsizing (2017)
"I really looked forward to that movie, and then felt like I was tricked into watching a completely different movie."
You can watch the trailer for the movie here:
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You've read their picks, but now it's your turn! What's a movie that had a great concept, but abandoned it halfway through? Share in the comments below!
Some responses were edited for length and/or clarity. H/T: Reddit.