Dai
Pokémon Master
Movies aren't always all good or all bad. There are plenty of movies that are only worth watching for the action scenes, for example (I'm looking at you, Matrix Reloaded. You too, Sucker Punch). Sometimes though, a movie will start great, but fall off a cliff after the first act. There can be a bunch of reasons for this, but the net result is some movies that I've bought (in some cases on multiple formats), though I only watch the first half hour. Just wondering if anyone can think of other examples of movies that take a sudden nosedive in quality after the first act.
Sphere
This is always the first movie I think of when it comes to this problem. Sphere has one of my favourite first acts in any movie. It sets up an intriguing SF mystery and a collection of characters played by heavyweight Hollywood talent. The early tension and twists all work well, leading up to the reveal of the titular sphere. Then the plot abruptly goes off on a disappointing tangent and never recovers.
I think I just like this setup of a bunch of experts being assembled for a clandestine SF investigation. The remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still is the same, albeit with an even shorter window of good stuff before it descends into mediocrity. Annihilation has a similar problem, albeit with a more average first act paired with a stronger second act, culminating in a messy final act. Off the top of my head, the main movie in this vein that doesn't screw it up is Arrival.
Eureka Seven: Hi-Evolution 1
This one is in a league of its own for second act disappointment. After 25 minutes of astonishing animation acting as an excellent prequel to the TV series, the rest of the runtime is a sloppy, disjointed re-edit of a couple of episodes from the middle of the series. I can only assume this was a cynical exercise in padding out the runtime to feature length to benefit the cinema release.
Godzilla (1998)
I was so excited for the first western Godzilla movie, and what a disappointment it turned into. It gets off to a promising start with a dramatic opening montage set to a great main theme. The first act is pretty good in building up the tension, but even there it's apparent that most of the characters are going to be insufferable. The first attack on the city looks like it will redeem the bad acting, but then it becomes apparent that Roland Emmerich doesn't understand the first thing about Godzilla. This isn't a kaiju movie; it's a wild-animal-on-the-loose movie. Zilla (as Toho eventually renamed the creature in an attempt to distance it from the real Godzilla) is a thin-skinned, tuna-munching coward who fails to live up to the character's legacy. Soon the movie can't even figure out how to spin out a full length movie with it as the main antagonist, and descends into a disappointing climax that apes Jurassic Park.
Independence Day
Roland Emmerich again. This one doesn't suffer the problem to anywhere near the same magnitude as the others I've listed, but the first act has aged far better than the jingoistic excesses that follow. In fact, if someone managed to run across this movie on a streaming platform today without knowing anything about it, they might enjoy the first act even more than someone in 1996. Back in the mid-90s the promotion for this movie saturated everywhere. By the time I sat down at the cinema, I knew exactly what those giant spaceships were up to. The movie itself does a good job of ratcheting up that tension and dread slowly though, and the first attack on the cities remains one of the most iconic scenes to come out of Hollywood. There's plenty of good stuff after that, but it also descends into more basic flag-waving, 'Murica-saves-the-world drivel that was inevitable from a movie with that title.
Sphere
This is always the first movie I think of when it comes to this problem. Sphere has one of my favourite first acts in any movie. It sets up an intriguing SF mystery and a collection of characters played by heavyweight Hollywood talent. The early tension and twists all work well, leading up to the reveal of the titular sphere. Then the plot abruptly goes off on a disappointing tangent and never recovers.
I think I just like this setup of a bunch of experts being assembled for a clandestine SF investigation. The remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still is the same, albeit with an even shorter window of good stuff before it descends into mediocrity. Annihilation has a similar problem, albeit with a more average first act paired with a stronger second act, culminating in a messy final act. Off the top of my head, the main movie in this vein that doesn't screw it up is Arrival.
Eureka Seven: Hi-Evolution 1
This one is in a league of its own for second act disappointment. After 25 minutes of astonishing animation acting as an excellent prequel to the TV series, the rest of the runtime is a sloppy, disjointed re-edit of a couple of episodes from the middle of the series. I can only assume this was a cynical exercise in padding out the runtime to feature length to benefit the cinema release.
Godzilla (1998)
I was so excited for the first western Godzilla movie, and what a disappointment it turned into. It gets off to a promising start with a dramatic opening montage set to a great main theme. The first act is pretty good in building up the tension, but even there it's apparent that most of the characters are going to be insufferable. The first attack on the city looks like it will redeem the bad acting, but then it becomes apparent that Roland Emmerich doesn't understand the first thing about Godzilla. This isn't a kaiju movie; it's a wild-animal-on-the-loose movie. Zilla (as Toho eventually renamed the creature in an attempt to distance it from the real Godzilla) is a thin-skinned, tuna-munching coward who fails to live up to the character's legacy. Soon the movie can't even figure out how to spin out a full length movie with it as the main antagonist, and descends into a disappointing climax that apes Jurassic Park.
Independence Day
Roland Emmerich again. This one doesn't suffer the problem to anywhere near the same magnitude as the others I've listed, but the first act has aged far better than the jingoistic excesses that follow. In fact, if someone managed to run across this movie on a streaming platform today without knowing anything about it, they might enjoy the first act even more than someone in 1996. Back in the mid-90s the promotion for this movie saturated everywhere. By the time I sat down at the cinema, I knew exactly what those giant spaceships were up to. The movie itself does a good job of ratcheting up that tension and dread slowly though, and the first attack on the cities remains one of the most iconic scenes to come out of Hollywood. There's plenty of good stuff after that, but it also descends into more basic flag-waving, 'Murica-saves-the-world drivel that was inevitable from a movie with that title.
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