Tips For Movie Makers to Make Movies Suck Less

I watch a lot of major motion pictures. I consider it my duty as I have a degree in the entertainment industry. I've been thinking of a couple ways that movies could suck a little bit less. Some of these are based on current movies, others I came up with long ago.

Don't number sequels.

I think it has to do with the concept that everything has a beginning, a middle, and an end that if a move has one sequel, it must have a third. For some reason they insist on numbering the movies, so that you know that they are related. I understand the concept, but it causes the viewer to compare the movie very closely with the original. If the original was big because it was in fact "original" the sequel will bomb because they audience will be expecting it to be as cool as the original. It also suggests that the later movies have no reason to exist other than to continue the original story, which should have been wrapped up in the first movie.

Which brings me to my next point

Do not cliffhanger a movie.

The last thing anyone wants is to watch a movie or $10 only to discover that in six-twelve months he will have to shell out another $10 to find out how it ends. It's okay if the main story has been closed up and that it just implies that the journey continues, but it is rude and disgusting to actually treat a movie ending like a season finale, yes I'm looking at you Matrix Reloaded. They are cutting the last Harry Potter book into two movies but I'm allowing the exception after the atrocity it did to the sixth book.

I like how this is flowing to...

If you base it on something else (a book, a video game, etc.), actually base it on that material.

Every year at least a dozen books/video games/cartoons/comics/etc are made into movies. Three things I think of here:

1. Stay true to the original work
2. Update it to be current
3. Enhance the work to become a Major Motion Picture

Don't completely change the story and claim that it is still based of said work. Updating is fine, change the Nazis to terrorists, Soviets to aliens, US agency to UN agency. Add a black guy to the cast. Make the pseudoscience match better to real science.

Do not change the laws of the universe, such as was done in Eragon. Do not kill off all of the main characters, like in X-Men: The Last Stand.

Respect the original work and make sure that you raise it up to the right level. Just because it is based on a Saturday morning cartoon doesn't mean that you can't take it seriously. In fact, I know I've seen children's movies where they take the kids more seriously then they do super heroes.

If you are going to do it, do it awesome.

This is almost something you could live by. If you are going to do it as well as possible. It should feel real to the audience, there is no excuse for it not to be.

That took longer then I thought.

-X

Dungeons and Dragons: How Not to Play

I play Dungeons and Dragons. I generally like the group I play with, which sucks since I will be moving away soon. My group does not do stupid illogical things, like use magic to look up dresses or burn the houses of people who snub them. We try very hard not to metagame, that is to make use of outside knowledge in the game (I know the weakness of certain monsters or how some traps work, but my character might not. The best example was in a Call of Chuthlu game where my friend was offered a glass of sherry from the guy he suspected was the villain. He knew outside of the game that the sherry was poisoned, but he had no reason to know in game, therefore his character and the police inspector both died of poisoned sherry). Old style gaming actually encouraged metagaming to a degree, mostly because the players did so often it didn't matter anymore. Our Dungeon Master was using a older adventure book for our game a couple weeks ago and it had a puzzle involving a chess board, which wouldn't have been a problem except it's a Dragonlance game and Krynn chess boards are either hexagonal or octagonal, I don't remember, but my point is that our characters couldn't have solved the puzzle and since we don't metagame, we were struck by a lot of lighting (except for my character because I was very lucky).

We do do one thing wrong. We cannot plan. We hear about a dragon ravaging a city and poof - we are there in six seconds (the fastest you can do anything in D&D). We used to have a player who would insist that we wait outside and stake out the place for three weeks and know the name of the dragon, the dragons parents, and everyone the dragon has eaten in the last decade. Since he graduated we have done some foolish things. 

• We when after the most powerful of the dragon demigods first. Since we were so low level we actually helped him. He is currently ravaging the countryside.
• Yes, we did poof in. Then we smashed his birthday cake and poofed out. Technically, we should have died in that, uh, "battle".
• One of our allies hid the artifacts for two other dragon demigods in the sewers of a major city. We expect someone more devoted than us will eventually dig them up.
• And finally, we scryed on an enemy wizard, beat up his guards, scryed on him some more since he had escaped and then followed him into the enemy base because they said they were going to "muster the troops". They had a lot of troops. As well as five dragons and a wyvern.

The last one was the worst. We really had no reason to go there. We accomplished nothing other than killing a couple dozen men and two dragons. We have this inability to just stop and plan out an attack or even realize that while the one battle we were in was small, this one will be much bigger and more dangerous and they are already prepared for our attack because they are a military base.

Just had to get that out.

-X

P.S. Saw some tactical team guys while we playing. They were locking down the building. Really causes you to do a double take.