10 Movies That Should Have Stayed In The Elevator

Selling a movie idea in a few words is tough. Hollywood often decides on movies based on a quick elevator pitch. Movie executives are busy, so they like pitches that sound like other successful movies.

Especially profitable movies.

Some movies are hard to describe in just a few words.

But for some films, those few words are the best part. These are usually big-budget action movies where the idea is more important than the plot, and the explosions are more important than what people say.

Some of these movies would have been better off if their pitches had stayed in the elevator.

Top Gun. With Aliens.

A giant alien spaceship orbits Earth and sends out more massive ships that hover over big cities. Then, they start counting down to destroy the planet. What does humanity do?

Independence Day was a typical alien invasion movie. It had cool alien ships, overwhelming odds, and brave pilots. It even had some funny parts.

But what makes it terrible is the writer who thought an alien shooting movie was the right way to show how important Independence Day is. You have to feel bad for Bill Pullman. He probably did his best, but his lines were awful.

Awful, and super cheesy.

The movie came out on Independence Day in 1996 in the US. It seemed to forget that Independence Day is only a thing in America. The rest of the world was like, ‘Huh?’ Even Americans cringed when the President misquoted poetry from the back of a truck to confused soldiers before flying off to shoot down aliens.

Uh-huh.

Earthquake. With a Helicopter. And The Rock.

A huge earthquake hits San Francisco, and a helicopter pilot races to save his family before the city is destroyed by flames or a tsunami.

The 2015 movie San Andreas seemed to have everything. It starred Dwayne Johnson. It had a big CGI budget. And it had a great elevator pitch.

But the movie was ridiculous. Johnson plays a helicopter rescue pilot. When he hears that the San Andreas fault is shifting and will cause a massive earthquake in San Francisco, he abandons his job and steals his helicopter, leaving many people to die. Then he flies around the collapsing city, ignoring people who need help, to find his wife and daughter.

He’s more of a jerk than a hero.

Maybe the producers hoped people wouldn’t care about the story if the explosions were big enough. The movie is full of action and effects. Some are impressive. But they barely connect to the plot.

There are many stupid moments, but Dwayne Johnson riding a tsunami in a small speedboat is probably the worst. But it’s okay because the American flag appears on the remains of the Golden Gate Bridge.

And a long shot shows that all the other rescue pilots are still working hard.

Die Hard. On a Plane.

A prison transport plane crashes on its way to a supermax prison. A drug lord, a rapist, and a criminal mastermind are on board, along with an informant, a diabetic, and One Good Man. When the inmates take over the plane, can the good man save the diabetic, protect the informant, and get back to his family alive?

Remember Con Air? It had everything. A great cast, a good idea, and a big budget. Things went wrong when Nicolas Cage got long hair. It waved in the breeze, which was distracting and disturbing. And then there was his accent. What kind of accent was it?

Definitely Southern.

Southern what? Who knows.

And then there was the toy bunny.

The movie wasn’t a total failure. Steve Buscemi was great, and John Malkovich seemed to be having fun. But the plot, like Cage’s accent, was all over the place. People were already questioning Cage’s hair, and it was about to get worse.

Maybe you can hide hijackers as guards. And maybe you can hide guards as inmates. Maybe you can take over the plane and land it. And write a message on a dead body before throwing it off the plane. And maybe that message will still be readable after falling through the air at a hundred miles an hour and landing on a truck.

But asking people to believe that after 2 hours of running, jumping, and killing people in a T-shirt, Nicolas Cage still has that bunny is too much.

Why couldn’t he just put the bunny back in the box?

Die Hard. In Space.

A meteoroid the size of Texas is heading towards Earth. The only people who can save the world are a group of oil drillers that the military wouldn’t trust with a potato gun.

In 1998, Armageddon was the highest-grossing movie of the year. It made more money than Deep Impact, which was also about a giant meteoroid hitting the earth. The makers of Deep Impact tried to make it scientifically accurate. Armageddon asked Aerosmith to write the theme song.

Deep Impact had meaningful stories about what people do when the world is ending. Armageddon went for laughs. So, is Deep Impact better than Armageddon?

No. They both suck.

Armageddon ignored all science. No matter how many times they were told you can’t have explosions in space, they kept blowing things up. Bruce Willis played John McClane in a spacesuit, and his crew was a mess.

Ben Affleck jumping his moon buggy over a canyon and almost floating into outer space is just one of the ridiculous moments.

But John McClane saved the world again. So there’s that.

Mad Max. On the Ocean.

The polar ice cap has melted, and the sea has risen by 25,000 feet. Which is pretty clever, since science says it could only rise a maximum of 230 feet.

But this is the movies, so anything is possible.

The last humans gather on man-made islands, trying to survive the hunger, the weather, and the pirates. The Mariner sails into their world. He’s not as cool as Mad Max, and his sailing boat isn’t a Ford Falcon XB GT. This road warrior is Kevin Costner. With gills.

Waterworld is known for 2 things. First, it lost the studio a lot of money, and second, it’s terrible. The director, Kevin Reynolds, even quit.

The sets are cool, and the action scenes are okay. The script was bad from the start, but the worst part is the acting. Kevin Costner isn’t Mad Max. He’s more like Mad Max’s boring dad.

And gills are never sexy.

My Fair Lady. With a Crocodile Wrestler. No Songs.

Back in 1986, it was okay to make fun of people from other countries, especially if they spoke with a ‘funny’ accent.

Crocodile Dundee is about an American reporter who goes to the Australian outback to meet a bushman who wrestles crocodiles and whispers with water buffalo. He is brave, rugged, and uncouth. He is also the comedian Paul Hogan. The reporter, played by Linda Kozlowski, brings him back to New York so we can all admire his bravery, ruggedness, and laugh at his lack of manners.

That’s the entire film. She falls for him, which proves that women prefer ‘real men’ and that Hollywood loves a stereotype.

Escape From Alcatraz. This Time, They’re Breaking In.

There have been many movies about escaping from Alcatraz. The Rock, however, had tough guys trying to sneak in without being noticed.

Why? Something about tourists being held hostage and a threatened nerve gas attack on San Francisco.

The usual.

But what matters is that there are Navy Seals, Sean Connery is a former SAS captain in a bad wig, and Nicolas Cage is an FBI agent/chemical super-freak. They are sent to disarm the nerve bomb. It’s just a bunch of men running around Alcatraz pretending to be Navy Seals.

They add some stuff about service members who died in combat missions whose families never got the compensation they deserved, but nobody cares about that. The studio got permission to film on The Rock and seemed so happy that they forgot to make an actual film with a plot.

Like Mission Impossible. But With Nukes.

When you have to make up a code name for when someone steals your nukes, something is very wrong. And that’s just the first wrong thing.

Broken Arrow has a plot so confusing that it’s almost impossible to understand. But it goes like this: There’s a good guy and a bad guy flying a stealth bomber with nukes. The bad guy releases the bombs and ejects. The special stolen nuke team, or Broken Arrow team, is sent to get it back, but one of the team is working for the bad guy who is threatening to nuke America.

The good guy, who also ejected, is arrested but then goes to find the bad guy, and then…

Oh, who cares. Stolen nukes. Everyone is lying. No one is who they say they are. Except the good guy, of course. There are lots of crashes, gunfire, and explosions, and no one worries about what will happen if the nuke goes off. The whole thing is stupid.

The movie starred John Travolta as the bad guy and Christian Slater as the other one. The film had lots of plot twists but no plot. Travolta is so clearly crazy that no one would even let him on a plane, let alone pilot the world’s deadliest stealth bomber.

Planet of the Apes. In The Jungle. On Steroids.

Deep in the rain forests of Congo is a lost city with a terrible secret. There is also an evil megalomaniac, some scientists, a primatologist, a blue diamond, and vicious talking gorillas that make Planet of the Apes look like a chimps tea party.

Plus, there are polystyrene ancient ruins, a volcano, a missing son/lover, a backpack that translates ape sign language into voice recordings, a corrupt local militia, hostile native tribes, rampant hippos, and the Eye of Providence.

Don’t ask.

The plot for Congo was ridiculous.

And the constant references to a ‘mythical grey gorilla’ were just silly. The grey gorilla wasn’t a silverback. It was just a regular black gorilla covered in talcum powder.

The film was panned and nominated for 7 Golden Raspberry awards.

Snakes. On a Plane.

Sometimes the elevator pitch is the entire movie. It’s the title. It’s the plot. It’s even most of the dialogue.

What’s it about? It’s about snakes. On a plane.

Do you need more information?

Oh, you do. Samuel L Jackson is in it. And there’s a thin storyline involving the FBI, a mob informant, and a crate of venomous snakes.

It’s hard to get a gun through airport security, but a crate of venomous snakes is easy.

To make sure the snakes don’t sleep through the movie, someone sprays them with a chemical that makes them extra aggressive and venomous.

Snakes aren’t good at facial recognition, so to kill the right snitch, they have to kill everyone else too.

Was it any good? Of course not. It stunk. Even Sam Jackson couldn’t save it. But the elevator pitch was great.

What movies do you think had a great premise but failed to deliver? Leave your comment below!