The Fall Guy (2024)

[InvaderStych]

59 minutes ago, Ghost said:

Cant think of any others.

 

The Fugitive.

 

Dragnet.

 

The Blues Brothers.

 

Wayne's World.

 

some of the Muppets movies.

 

Star Trek I & II.

 

It's a formula that doesn't always work, but there are way better examples of it working than 21 Jumpstreet. 🤣

 

As to the Fall Guy ... I'll probably watch it streaming; which was always the plan. If I didn't make it to a theater for Dune (either one) - for reasons that have nothing to do with theaters or the movie itself - I'm certainly not going to for the Fall Guy.

[PeregrineFalcon]

43 minutes ago, ThaOGDreamWeaver said:

I think Tom Cruise might like a word with you.

Ah yes, Mission Impossible. I missed that one. And I guess I should also exclude cartoons and anime stuff from my otherwise sweeping declaration. Obviously Michael Bay's Transformers was financially successful even though I didn't care for it.

 

I admit that my memory isn't what it used to be so perhaps I should say that the vast majority of the reboots in the last 25 years have been garbage, in my opinion, and that the box usually, but not always, agrees with me on that.

[TTRPGWhiz]

3 hours ago, Ghost said:

What reboots of TV shows into movies have actually been successful?

 

21 Jumpstreet 

 

Cant think of any others.

 

If it's just 'proper reboots' (ie, different cast(s), setting(s), etc.): Addams Family; Charlie's Angels; George of the Jungle; Transformers*.

*we said successful not 'good', right?

Edited May 17 by TTRPGWhiz

[Techwright]

2 hours ago, InvaderStych said:

Star Trek I & II.

 

Don't forget VI, and the Next Generation's First Contact.  The 2009 reboot Star Trek was also a success, whether the new cast and new timeline were liked or not.

 

There's also Maverick, a movie take on the James Garner/Roger Moore TV series (actually two series, as Garner returned for a year to a new Maverick series before opting to exit the show due to over-saturation of his presence in the public at the time).  Wikipedia calls the movie a box office success and, as of a decade ago, the 6th highest grossing Western of all time.

 

Although it wasn't a reboot per se, or very successful in the first-run theater, I'd argue that Serenity, the movie continuing Firefly aged like fine wine and was ultimately successful for introducing a legion of fans, myself included, to the Browncoat fandom.  Fox's tinkering couldn't stop the signal.

 

 

[ThaOGDreamWeaver]

There have also been plenty of not-so-good ones over the years. Although they often provided some laughs (sometimes unintentional).

And at least a couple of good dance tunes...

 

 

 

[Hyperstrike]

4 hours ago, ThaOGDreamWeaver said:

• And I would like to present for your consideration/humiliation/obliteration one of the single worst, childhood-wrecking adaps known to man...

 

 

 

Dear sweet baby Jesus' crap napkin!
Who greenlit this epic turd?

Crap CGI.
Plot ripped from Spy Kids and its Nickeloden ilk.
Recycled Disney Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack.

 

[InvaderStych]

1 hour ago, Techwright said:

Don't forget VI, and the Next Generation's First Contact. 

 

Both solid, and iirc commercially successful. I stopped at the first two considering that VI was released after Next Gen had already started airing.  Either way, ST is sort of the poster child for how revisiting a TV series in movie format can re-launch a franchise. Of course it is also sort of a special case, in that we were all (figuratively speaking) watching TOS in syndication in the span between the original run and the first movie. Somewhere in there, after the first movie iirc, there was also TAS for those of us of the right age. I can't think of any other series with enough of an in-built fan base to have pulled the same trick: come back in movie form like 10ish years later and spawn multiple films, TV series, etc lasting several decades.

 

Edit: Ok, I suppose there is also Star Wars in its own way. 3 movies, then a long gap, then more movies, another gap, then some more movies and a bunch of streaming series.

 

Now, if we can just get 3+ more seasons of The Expanse covering the last 3 novels I can finally rest. 🤣

 

1 hour ago, Techwright said:

The 2009 reboot Star Trek was also a success, whether the new cast and new timeline were liked or not.

 

Solid call here though. ST:2009 was released in a period without an active TV series on air. I didn't mind the new cast or timeline, I somewhat-to-mostly enjoyed these entries. Biggest complaints for me were the dumb idea to try to "hide" Khan's identity in the second one and mostly that it was Star Trek:LENS FLARE EVERYWHERE in that cheap visual "style" that Abrams can't stop doing.

 

1 hour ago, Techwright said:

Although it wasn't a reboot per se, or very successful in the first-run theater, I'd argue that Serenity, the movie continuing Firefly aged like fine wine and was ultimately successful for introducing a legion of fans, myself included, to the Browncoat fandom.  Fox's tinkering couldn't stop the signal.

 

I always forget that there are people who saw the movie before the show. I almost listed it, but erred on not doing so because I forgot that particular detail.

Edited May 17 by InvaderStych

[Aracknight]

7 hours ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

I think this is a misconception.

 

No one asked for a reboot of the Fall Guy. Most people don't remember the series, have no idea who Lee Majors or Heather Locklear are, and are tired of the garbage that's been coming out of Hollyweird lately.

Shockingly few people seem to know who Heather Thomas is either.

[BrandX]

12 hours ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

I think this is a misconception.

 

No one asked for a reboot of the Fall Guy. Most people don't remember the series, have no idea who Lee Majors or Heather Locklear are, and are tired of the garbage that's been coming out of Hollyweird lately. All they really know is that it's a reboot and, for a lot of people, that's enough for them to decide to not see it. Humans are really good at pattern recognition, and for the last 20 years the pattern many people have seen is Reboot = Garbage.

 

Unfortunately until Hollywood regains their reputation for putting out good movies people are just going to stop watching movies. Which means that the occasional good movie is going to go unnoticed. It's unfortunate but, until Hollywood starts hiring new writers, that's the way it's probably going to continue to be. And Hollywood has no one to blame but themselves.

 

Other than the name of one of the main characters and the title of the film and being about stuntmen, I wouldn't call it much of a reboot.  If they changed the name to "The Stuntman" and didn't call Ryan's character Colt Seavers, you wouldn't think The Fall Guy.

[Ghost]

Forgot about MI - maybe it’s because I don’t like those movies.

 

Thought the C-Files movie was only a moderate success.  Could be wrong though.

 

Now that I’ve had time to think, I guess the original Charlie’s Angels movie didn’t do too bad

[ThaOGDreamWeaver]

1 minute ago, Ghost said:

Forgot about MI - maybe it’s because I don’t like those movies.

They're kinda... variable. First one was very decent and did some unexpected stuff - like teamwiping the A-List that Ethan/Cruise had been widely advertised with in all the publicity in the first ten minutes. (Does that make Cruise the Scrapper, Corruptor or Mastermind here?)

 

The sequels: if you quietly forget that these kinda movies need a plot, a halfway convincing antagonist, or a McGuffin that could or should be anything more than just a McGuffin, they're fun. MI:Dead Reckoning more or less did away with all three, and still came out as a perfectly popcorn-munchingly watchable flick. There's nothing wrong with that. (Though how the series survived past MI:2 or 3, I don't know).

 

CA:1, also decent: second one, not so much. Reboot: not perfect, but better than CA2, and much better than the box office bomb it turned out to be.

[Ghost]

1 hour ago, ThaOGDreamWeaver said:

They're kinda... variable. First one was very decent and did some unexpected stuff - like teamwiping the A-List that Ethan/Cruise had been widely advertised with in all the publicity in the first ten minutes. (Does that make Cruise the Scrapper, Corruptor or Mastermind here?)

 

The sequels: if you quietly forget that these kinda movies need a plot, a halfway convincing antagonist, or a McGuffin that could or should be anything more than just a McGuffin, they're fun. MI:Dead Reckoning more or less did away with all three, and still came out as a perfectly popcorn-munchingly watchable flick. There's nothing wrong with that. (Though how the series survived past MI:2 or 3, I don't know).

 

CA:1, also decent: second one, not so much. Reboot: not perfect, but better than CA2, and much better than the box office bomb it turned out to be.

Maybe I’m misremembering, but I seem to recall being turned off by all the twists in the early MI movies, so I stopped watching them.

 

Have to disagree with you on the CA reboot - imo, that was just a really bad movie.

Not MCU Eternals bad, where I had to turn it off.  But bad enough that I was upset that I wasted my time watching it (at home nonetheless)

[BrandX]

2 hours ago, ThaOGDreamWeaver said:

They're kinda... variable. First one was very decent and did some unexpected stuff - like teamwiping the A-List that Ethan/Cruise had been widely advertised with in all the publicity in the first ten minutes. (Does that make Cruise the Scrapper, Corruptor or Mastermind here?)

 

The sequels: if you quietly forget that these kinda movies need a plot, a halfway convincing antagonist, or a McGuffin that could or should be anything more than just a McGuffin, they're fun. MI:Dead Reckoning more or less did away with all three, and still came out as a perfectly popcorn-munchingly watchable flick. There's nothing wrong with that. (Though how the series survived past MI:2 or 3, I don't know).

 

CA:1, also decent: second one, not so much. Reboot: not perfect, but better than CA2, and much better than the box office bomb it turned out to be.

 

I'd argue MI:3 had one of the best villains in movies by Philip Seymour Hoffman.

 

 

[ThaOGDreamWeaver]

46 minutes ago, BrandX said:

Philip Seymour Hoffman.

Fantastic actor, gone way before time, and I can remember pretty much every one of his performances... except this one. 

(Oddly the only bit that's stuck with me was Simon Pegg channeling Spaced in his cameo as Benji, which then turned into a full-time sidekick role. Which he's done pretty well at).

 

It's very odd that 2 and 3 back-to-back didn't work out - maybe another one you can pin on JJ Abrams - whereas Brad Bird turned it around for Ghost Protocol.

[Techwright]

16 hours ago, InvaderStych said:

Edit: Ok, I suppose there is also Star Wars in its own way. 3 movies, then a long gap, then more movies, another gap, then some more movies and a bunch of streaming series.

 

,,,

Solid call here though. ST:2009 was released in a period without an active TV series on air. I didn't mind the new cast or timeline, I somewhat-to-mostly enjoyed these entries. Biggest complaints for me were the dumb idea to try to "hide" Khan's identity in the second one and mostly that it was Star Trek:LENS FLARE EVERYWHERE in that cheap visual "style" that Abrams can't stop doing.

 

...

I always forget that there are people who saw the movie before the show. I almost listed it, but erred on not doing so because I forgot that particular detail.

 

While I understand your Star Wars acknowledgement, I'd point out that the discussion was TV-to-movies and Star Wars went the opposite route, movies-to-TV.  The early TV works were sub-par, everything from live Ewok movies to Saturday morning droid cartoons, as well as a certain holiday special that was so abyssmal that it became curiously cool.  All of those early works were apocryphal to Lucas' canon vision.  It wasn't until the 2003 Genndy Tartakovsky Star Wars: Clone Wars that we started getting things considered partially canonical, and not until 2008's The Clone Wars 3D animated series that we got full-canon stories on TV and later streaming service.  Either of those would probably be where I'd start a comparison.

 

While I have a litany of issue with the Bad Robot Star Trek movies, I do find the first and third quite watchable, and I enjoyed the actors in the roles, especially Karl Urban fully channeling DeForrest Kelly.  The second film was abyssmal, and a disgraceful misuse of all actors involved. Really, magic blood and precision space-quadrant teleporters?  Did Abrams even understand how destructive just those two overly-fantastical elements are to anything fundamental to Star Trek? At very least, very very least, add a line from Khan saying the Admiral's group had him surgically altered to appear as a pale Anglo-Saxon in order to keep anyone with any knowledge of history from recognizing the great dictator of 1/4 of the late 20th century Earth.  Sorry. Rambling.  That film is a massive sore spot.

 

As to Firefly, yeah, I was in a tepid rainy-day mood when a pair of friends dragged me into a theater showing of Serenity, but was ecstatic by the end.  I still remember turning to the friend who pushed seeing the film and asking "Why did Fox cancel this thing???"

[BrandX]

2 hours ago, ThaOGDreamWeaver said:

Fantastic actor, gone way before time, and I can remember pretty much every one of his performances... except this one. 

(Oddly the only bit that's stuck with me was Simon Pegg channeling Spaced in his cameo as Benji, which then turned into a full-time sidekick role. Which he's done pretty well at).

 

It's very odd that 2 and 3 back-to-back didn't work out - maybe another one you can pin on JJ Abrams - whereas Brad Bird turned it around for Ghost Protocol.

 

Came off as the most evil of MI villains imo.

[Ghost]

Ooh I forgot about Star Trek - I love the reboot with Chris Pine (the first 2.  The 3rd doesn’t exist in my world)

[BrandX]

3 hours ago, Ghost said:

Ooh I forgot about Star Trek - I love the reboot with Chris Pine (the first 2.  The 3rd doesn’t exist in my world)

 

Whaaa?  Third one wasn't bad.  It did just feel like a high budget TV episode, but I will forever love the Beastie Boy scene.  In fact, them playing Beastie Boys in the new movies was pure ❤️ for me.  Not because I'm some big Beastie Boy fan (I'm not) but because the one thing I hate about Star Trek is always using classical music.

 

Gah.  At least we got some Jazz from Riker and one episode of TNG had some sort of metal played by a human kid taken in by aliens, but seriously, how is it everyone in the future only listens to classical?  😛

[InvaderStych]

9 hours ago, Techwright said:

While I understand your Star Wars acknowledgement, I'd point out that the discussion was TV-to-movies and Star Wars went the opposite route, movies-to-TV.

 

Totally agree with this, and the entire rest of the paragraph. I mostly tossed in that edit to preempt any sort of "But Star Wars had a fan base that also ... yadda, yadda, yadda ..." because of my attributing the some of the success of ST going from ancient TV show to movies that re-kindled interest to an existing dedicated fanbase.

 

Was probably overly cautious on my part as this is a nice little corner of the internet where we are largely devoid of such things. 😄 

 

9 hours ago, Techwright said:

The second film was abyssmal, and a disgraceful misuse of all actors involved. Really, magic blood and precision space-quadrant teleporters?

 

Oh, yeah, I forgot that those things were in there. I think I forgot on purpose. 🤣

 

Another thing that annoyed me about this film was in the first teaser trailer where they basically give away the whole Spock/Kirk hands on the glass gag and you can tell who's in the chamber and who isn't. The shot in the trailer was only a couple of seconds, but enough for me to have known exactly what was going to happen.

 

9 hours ago, Techwright said:

"Why did Fox cancel this thing???"

 

They botched the launch, and most of the casual audience had no idea what they were looking at. If memory serves, they aired "The Train Job" first before showing the actual pilot that introduced the setting, characters, and major points of the backstory. I was introduced to it by a former lady-friend who had copies of dubious origin and thus got to watch it in proper order, but still before the movie was released.

 

1 hour ago, BrandX said:

... but seriously, how is it everyone in the future only listens to classical?  😛

 

Yeah, make your way through The Expanse. The Belter cover version of Highway Star by Deep Purple is not to be missed. 😉 

 

There's also some pretty dark diegetic music made by Belters that would require spoilers to describe, and is also very good.

[Hyperstrike]

12 hours ago, Techwright said:

While I have a litany of issue with the Bad Robot Star Trek movies,

 

Bay-splosions and excessive lense-flare are no substitute for an actual movie...

[ThaOGDreamWeaver]

On 5/19/2024 at 2:16 AM, InvaderStych said:

Yeah, make your way through The Expanse. The Belter cover version of Highway Star by Deep Purple is not to be missed. 😉 

 

Just posted that to Jukebox. Little too clean on the mix for my Purple tastes, but for a sci-fi show... yeah.

 

Slightly worried that some kind of major cultural event erases all music before 1990 (perhaps the deadly Swiftie/Katycat wars of 2028). 

But good to know the good stuff still makes it to the future.

 

 

[InvaderStych]

5 hours ago, ThaOGDreamWeaver said:

Slightly worried that some kind of major cultural event erases all music before 1990

 

idk, there's quite a bit of the 1980s that the future would be fine without. 🤣

 

5 hours ago, ThaOGDreamWeaver said:

But good to know the good stuff still makes it to the future.

 

Fwiw, there is still a metric boat-load of great music being made out there, but one has to dig deep to find it. Of course I'm speaking as a (insert massive understatement here) music snob - if it gets mainstream radio play I've likely never heard it.

 

All that is to say that the future of music will be just fine. 🫡

[Techwright]

On 5/20/2024 at 7:44 AM, ThaOGDreamWeaver said:

 

Slightly worried that some kind of major cultural event erases all music before 1990 (perhaps the deadly Swiftie/Katycat wars of 2028). 

But good to know the good stuff still makes it to the future.

 

 

Oh, pre-1990 music makes it as well...