Have you ever liked a movie, but just had that one complaint? The easy-to-fix "Why would they do that?" plot element? How just one thing could have made a good movie great or made a bad one enjoyable.
It's fascinating, really. Most of these problems could be solved rather easily - remove one scene, a few lines of dialogue, and you have an infinitely better movie. Some of them are just the results of hasty post-production, and some of them are blatantly obvious plot holes.
So, while some of these may be pretty subjective, there are some non-negotiable ones mixed in. Welcome to the most clickbaity article I've ever written! Have fun!
Inside Out - Triple Dent Gum pothole
Pixar's 2015 flick Inside Out is universally acclaimed and beloved. People loved the unique story, animation, characters, plot, emotion, you name it. But there's one thing about it that's always stuck out to me - and apparently a few people online. Shoot, HISHE did an entire sketch about it.
The movie's premise revolves around Joy and Sadness trying to get the core memories back to headquarters, but halfway through they introduce a plot device that allows memory workers to send memories directly to HQ. They don't even bother attempting to put core memories in there, they just write it off as a joke and never speak of it again. It's the tiniest joke that resolves the movie instantly.
Soul - Ending monologue
There were a lot of things wrong with Soul. The human/cat swap was a big thing, trying to take on large existential questions such as "What gives us a spark?" without having a real answer, turning yet another African American protagonist into a green protagonist (If I had a nickel for every time that happened...), but my chief issue is how abruptly the movie ends.
Joe finally gets back to Earth and means to live his life to the fullest. Unlike other Pixar movies like Inside Out or Coco, we don't get a feel-good monologue or musical number to wrap the movie up and show everyone living life to the fullest, or even to wet the audience's eyes. It just... ends... we never know if Joe continues teaching, if he makes it in jazz, what 22's spark was... so many unanswered questions! You can say all you want about it being a metaphor or a stroke of genius, but Imma call it unsatisfying.
Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi - Tell them the plan
Here's a fun movie to talk about on the internet. Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi has, according to a lot of fans, several things wrong with it. And according to others, it has absolutely nothing wrong with it and is the greatest Star Wars movie of all time. But if there's one thing both sides can agree on, it's that Vice Admiral Holdo should've told the rebels the plan.
The movie subtly pits Laura Dern's Holdo as a tertiary protagonist by having her talk down to our main characters and not tell them the plan. It gives Poe Dameron the idea that she may not have their best intentions at heart and leads to a half-hour subplot that ultimately contributes nothing. At the end of the movie though, it's revealed she was just taking the Resistance to a secret base on a planet.
There was no need to not tell them the plan, especially former high-ranking people like Poe Dameron or Finn, the faces of the Resistance. That subplot mostly exists to pad the runtime and give the other main characters something to do, when it surely could have been filled with something more meaningful or less silly.
And speaking of The Last Jedi, I always thought it would've been nice to start the movie with an Order 66-type scene where Kylo wrecks the Jedi Academy. One of the biggest rules of movies is "Show, don't tell," and The Last Jedi takes one of cinema's most altruistic heroes and just tells us that they have no more optimism instead of showing us what happened.
Cars 3 - Use the alternate ending
I don't know where this came from. I don't know if it's fanmade. But this alternate ending for Cars 3 is miles ahead of the actual ending. This one has it all - McQueen utterly losing to a corporate villain who only wants to monetize his "product" (No wonder Disney cut this one) and then picking up Doc's number to do one last race with the Cars theme blasting and the audience cheering. If this was the theatrical ending, people would have been screaming.
As it stands, the actual ending is a bit more tame and convoluted. McQueen himself makes the decision to have Cruz replace him, and then winning on a clichéd "Are they allowed to do that?" "I don't know, but I don't think anyone cares!" and then have her picked up by Dinoco, Rust-Eze bought by Dinoco, and then Lightning and Cruz both racing for Tex... I don't know, it's a mess. The alternate ending was much cleaner.
Zack Snyder's Justice League - Less Wonder Woman theme
I absolutely loved Zack Snyder's Justice League, and for a four-hour movie it was paced fairly well, but the one thing I couldn't stand was the new Wonder Woman theme. Wonder Woman already had an iconic main theme, but for ZSJL they threw it out and gave her some random shriek that played any time Wonder Woman did anything. It interrupted the amazing musical score courtesy Junkie XL, detracted from every scene it was in and became a recurring joke where I would start laughing every time it would play.
This is a minute and a half of the theme. It was cool for the first two hours, but everything after that became an intrusion to the viewing experience. No reason for it to show up during the final battle with Steppenwolf. Good movie otherwise, but the theme was overused and unnecessary. 14 times! That's how many times it was used!
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice - Don't let Batman kill
Now, this one would get me a lot of flak if people actually cared/read my blog. While I really liked ZSJL, I wasn't a huge fan of Batman v Superman, partially because it starred the world's two biggest superheroes with personalities so different that they barely resemble them. And while the effects are decent, the plot muddled, the villain ineffective, and the lighting overly dark, the single biggest problem with the movie, one vehemently supported by Snyder's biggest fans and vehemently hated by most everyone else, is the decision to have Batman kill.
Batman killing, simply put, goes against everything Batman stands for. He doesn't like guns, either (In Batman Beyond, he literally retires from being Batman just because he had to use a gun to stave off a low-level thief). In my review, I went into it in a whole lot of depth, but here's the TL;DR:
The emotional climax to this mega-fight between Batman and Superman is that Superman blurts out "Save Martha," which Lois then tells Batman is his mother's name. Ideally, this would mean that Batman, who up until this point has been seeing Superman as a god, now sees him as a human with a mother. Batman once had a mother, and he now recognizes that Superman is still a life worth saving. It works.
But because Batman kills both before and after that moment, it means nothing. It means the only difference between Superman and all the other low-level thugs Batman has killed is that 1) He has the power to wipe out the planet and 2) Their moms have the same name.... the latter of which is the basis for the sudden change in position on a man who "...has the power to take out the entire human race and if we believe there is even a one percent chance that he is our enemy, we have to take it as an absolute certainty!" It doesn't work if Batman kills everyone indiscriminately.
Age of Ultron - Scary Ultron
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It all felt like a marketing ploy to ensure they could sell toys. I personally remember feeling pretty let down - shoot, as a kid I absolutely loved the cold and calculating robot that wanted to end humanity, as seen in Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes and Next Avengers: Heroes of Tomorrow. Cinematic Ultron may have an absolutely inspired James Spader casting, but his light and quippy personality doesn't suit him.
Black Panther, Wonder Woman - Better CGI
Black Panther and Wonder Woman were both critically acclaimed, groundbreaking, highly successful superhero movies. They would appear on several critic's "Best of" their respective years and would occasionally be called some of the best superhero movies of all time. But no matter where you went, one criticism always followed these two: Bad CGI.
Seriously, you have these two amazing movies that will both have long-lasting impacts on cinema and pop culture. Shoot, they both say so on Wikipedia! Wikipedia doesn't lie! But despite all that acclaim, it would appear neither DC or Marvel had enough budget or time to perfect the big CGI slog fest both movies claimed as a finale. It's a shame too, as that's the only criticism either ever seems to get.
Black Widow - Release it five years ago
The LEGO Ninjago Movie - Hire the original voice cast
I'm in the minority here, but I really, really like The LEGO Ninjago Movie. Despite all the changes it made to the Ninjago lore, throwing the plot of the show out the window, I still really, really liked it. But there's one major fault the movie couldn't overcome - by changing the plot to center on Lloyd, the other ninjas became minor background characters in their franchise.
But to make that a double whammy, they recast the entire show for the movie. It's a stacked cast, but none of them are given much personality to work with. If they had hired the original cast, you could've at least had the comfort of familiar voices. But alas, they are left with bland comedians that, with masks covering their animated faces, are indiscernible from one another.
WW84 - Don't have Steve come back in someone else's body
Wonder Woman 1984 had such a weird plot point that it actually inspired this entire list. In that movie, Wonder Woman wishes for Steve Trevor to come back, which he does - but not in a magic "poof" sort of way, in a "He hijacked the mind of a random civilian who Diana would later sleep with and attack the White House with, all the while using the civilian's face."
It raised so many alarms and red flags for... what, exactly?
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