20 Red Flags That Immediately Hint A Movie Is Going To Be Bad (Like, Real Bad)
Was there ever a time when you were incredibly excited to see a trailer for a movie and instantly realized the movie was going to be bad the minute you finished watching it? Well, when Reddit user u/Snoo_19146 asked: "What’s the first sign that a movie is going to be bad?", thousands of people replied with their own takes. Here's what a few of them had to say below.
NBC / Via giphy.com
1."If there are multiple trailers for a comedy movie, but they use the same joke in all of them."
"And then you sit in the movie theatre or watch on Netflix and you're like, 'Oh, the joke from the trailer, I think that's where the movie starts to get funny, but it just transitions into the serious end arc, and then is over."
2."It's advertised as one of the best movies of the year — and it's late January."
3."An exposition in which one character explains everything that's going on to another character that should already know what is going on."
NBC / Via giphy.com
“'Stacy, sweetie — you know I haven’t been the same since your brother disappeared four years ago at the creek and then we moved here to get away from the bad memories but it didn’t change anything and now you’re moving to college and I’ve been finding it hard to accept and I’m struggling to hold down my job at the diner and that new guy I’m seeing is acting really shady and disappears for days and completely unrelated to all that there are mysterious murders happening since he arrived in town. You know all this Stacy.' This is said whilst unpacking the shopping bags in the first scene."
4."The selling points are focused on celebrity names and visual effects."
5."This is not always the case, but when there are more than three writers, a movie tends to lack vision. It can also occur due to rewrites. Not A Bomb Podcast reviews movies that bombed financially or critically and this is a subject often discussed if anyone is interested."
6."It’s a remake of something that didn’t suck."
Universal Pictures / Via giphy.com
"I hate that there are so many remakes of decent/good movies. Feels like it’s just a safe money grab. It would be cool if movies that didn’t do so hot, get reworked into good movie remakes, but I guess that’s too much of a risk for studios to bother with."
7."Someone else put in the work to make the property popular in the first place, and the people in charge of making the movie put zero effort into making it look or feel like the property it's based on, relying on the name and special effects alone."
8."When the trailer already tells you the entire movie."
9."Every trailer has the exact same scenes...just played in a different order. These are the only good scenes in the movie."
NBC / Via giphy.com
10."You can tell the acting is awful even from the trailer."
"Cats, The Emoji Movie, and other examples that come to mind."
11."Characters think they are funny because they speak loudly."
12."When I wanna get up to get some snacks five minutes into the movie but I don't pause it because I feel like 'I'm probably not missing out on much.'"
NBC / Via giphy.com
13."If it's a non-modern piece with modern hair and makeup in it."
"I had a hard time watching True Grit (the John Wayne one) because the female lead's hairstyle was very clearly from the 1960s... and it was so distracting."
14."For animated movies, if the trailer really pushes the celebrity voice-cast, shows mainly the gags and action scenes, and has generic, modern pop songs, it's going to be bad."
15."Family moves in, and guess what? Someone got killed in their new home."
CBS / Via giphy.com
“'Hey, what happened to the last people who owned this place?'
'They were eaten alive by pirates, my dude.'
'I want to raise my kids here.'”
16."It’s advertised as sexy. Sex sells but it’s usually just a cheap way to get sales."
17."It's an adaptation and the director or the studio already discussed the changes they made, which makes it clear they don't understand the audience. Percy Jackson: 'We aged the characters and added in Romance.' Golden Compass: Take out the religious controversy to appeal to the American audience."
18."It's been in production for too long. There's always a reason. A recent example: Chaos Walking. It changed the screenwriter, director, and production company so many times over 10 years but was sold on it being 'A Charlie Kauffman movie starring Daisy Ridley and Tom Holland.' Kauffman left in 2013, and Ridley and Holland filmed it over years due to so many reshoots and failed screenings. Then Lionsgate said the negative reviews were shocking to them... Really?"
Liongate / Via giphy.com
19."You can look at the ad and already tell how the story will start and end."
20."A NONSTOP THRILL RIDE!"
NBC / Via giphy.com
