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A Wolverine war movie is what everyone really wanted to see.
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00:00Gauging audience interest can be a tricky beast at the best of times, but in the cases of these
00:0510 movies, the focus was perhaps placed in the wrong direction, because the most appealing part
00:10of each film that we're going to discuss today was ultimately pushed to the periphery. So let's
00:14take a look at them, as I'm Jules, this is WhatCulture.com, and these are 10 better movies
00:18that were secretly hidden in films. Number 10. Arnold Schwarzenegger's Hamlet,
00:23Last Action Hero. There's a strong argument to be made that Arnold Schwarzenegger's cult action
00:28comedy, Last Action Hero is one of the most criminally underrated blockbusters of the
00:32last 30 years, an inventive ahead-of-its-time action flick that audiences of 1993 just weren't ready
00:38for. But co-writer Shane Black wrote a minute-long scene in the 131-minute tentpole that suggested
00:45something even more entertaining than the meta-deconstruction of Schwarzenegger's career
00:49that we actually ended up with, and that is, of course, Arnold Schwarzenegger's Hamlet.
00:54Early on in the film, Arnie mega-fan Danny is watching Laurence Olivier's 1948 adaptation of
01:00Hamlet when he suddenly daydreams about a more amped-up version starring Schwarzenegger.
01:05The brief but hilarious fake trailer shows Arnie chomping cigars, throwing bad guys through
01:10windows, mowing others down with a damn Uzi, and blowing up a castle while acting out the
01:15Bard's legendary play. As much as this scene is basically a joke about A-list movie stars being
01:20cast in projects that they're totally unsuited for, the gag is brilliantly crafted enough that
01:25fans have been wishing that they actually got to see the real deal ever since. But alas,
01:29it never came to be.
01:319. Marlo and Ikari survive on Skull Island
01:34Kong Skull Island
01:36Kong Skull Island is a serviceable blockbuster movie that sneakily hides a far more interesting
01:41piece of work within it. And literally, the film's opening scene teased this up by telling the story
01:46of two World War II fighter pilots who accidentally parachute onto Skull Island and whose attempts to
01:52kill each other are interrupted by the arrival of Kong. The story then skips forward almost three
01:56decades to 1973 and focuses on a totally different group of characters. However, we eventually learn
02:02that Marlo is still alive on the island, and that he and the Japanese pilot put aside their
02:07differences for their mutual survival until he was unfortunately killed by one of the island's
02:11monstrous skull crawlers.
02:12The story of two opposed soldiers coexisting on an island is clearly inspired by John Borman's
02:18similarly premised 1968 war film Hell in the Pacific, and with the added monster element makes
02:23for a way more compelling story than the fairly generic survival plot that we ended up with.
02:27Given that Marlo's tale is so much more interesting and entertaining than anything offered up by Brie
02:32Larson and Tom Hiddleston's protagonists, it would have made sense for Kong Skull Island to be a more
02:37modest film centred around this pair.
02:398. Beckett, A Star Wars Story
02:42Solo, A Star Wars Story
02:44Though Solo, A Star Wars Story failed to make much of a dent at the box office, it was a pretty good
02:50movie, despite the fact that few were clamouring for an origin story to demystify Han Solo's early
02:55life. By far the strongest aspect of Solo is its early vibe as a big-budget sci-fi heist film,
03:01where the focus is trained on a high-wire hold-up and the limelight is frequently stolen away from Han
03:06by his mentor Tobias Beckett, played with grim, gritty glee by Woody Harrelson.
03:11Ditching all of the desperation to tie the story to the wider Star Wars mythos, and just focusing on
03:16Beckett and his gang dealing with the galaxy's criminal underworld, namely the Crimson Dawn
03:21Syndicate, would have been plenty material for a nicely self-contained spin-off. Obviously,
03:26Disney would have never given Beckett A Star Wars Story a $300 million budget, but in purely artistic
03:31terms, Han Solo ended up perhaps being the least interesting and appealing part of his own movie.
03:37Number 7. Scrat's Adventures
03:39Any Ice Age Movie
03:41It's truly fascinating that, despite having barely 10 minutes of screen time throughout the five Ice Age
03:47movies, Scrat is surely the series' most popular and iconic character. Scrat is a saber-toothed squirrel
03:54who is absolutely obsessed with storing his precious acorn for the winter, a quest which becomes
03:59increasingly hilariously outlandish with each passing instalment, whereby he ends up responsible for
04:05the separation of the continents, amongst other things. The Scrat scenes are typically the most
04:09entertaining part of each film, effectively serving as a short film that is pigeonholed in the middle
04:14of the main story. And because Scrat can't speak, there's a universal charm to these vignettes,
04:19not unlike classic silent films. The producers clearly appreciated Scrat's popularity as he starred
04:24in a number of separate short films, but honestly, why not give him his own movie? I mean,
04:28you could certainly argue that 100 minutes of Scrat might be too much of a good thing,
04:32but a more modest 70-minute animation, perhaps direct-to-streaming, chronicling Scrat's
04:37continued adventures? That would definitely work.
04:39Number 6. Wenwu the Conqueror
04:42Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
04:44Marvel Studios' Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings was a rock-solid introduction to the title
04:50character. But you know what, let's be honest, wasn't he totally overshadowed by his villainous
04:54father Wenwu? This becomes apparent from the film's terrific prologue sequence, which quickly
04:59chronicles Wenwu's past, where he discovers the mysterious Ten Rings that give him basically
05:04god-like powers and allow him to become an unrivaled conqueror throughout human history.
05:09Though the prologue speeds through Wenwu's origin story, it's clear that there's a whole
05:13other movie's worth of material just waiting to be exploited here, of a man who unstoppably
05:18exerted his will upon any land he set foot upon. Tie this to his later discovery of the mythical land
05:23of Ta Lo, his romance with Ying Li, her murderer, and his subsequent attempts to bring her back to
05:29life, and you have got one hell of a story without even mentioning his son.
05:32Number 5. The Heroism of Dory Miller
05:35Pearl Harbor
05:36Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor may feature spectacularly crafted action sequences, but it's also a wildly
05:42bloated three-hour endurance trial, with far too much focus placed on a dull love triangle
05:47between Ben Affleck, Kate Beckinsale, and Josh Hartnett's fairly uninteresting characters.
05:52Now, the attack on Pearl Harbor is absolutely a story worthy of the big-screen blockbuster
05:56treatment, but when the film features so many actual people who were on the ground that day,
06:00why place the focus on three forgettable fictional characters? Perhaps the most interesting,
06:05inspired by True Event's story, is that of petty officer second-class Doris Dory Miller,
06:10a black messman who, without any training, took control of an anti-aircraft gun during the
06:15attack and shot down several Japanese planes. As a result, Miller was the first black American
06:20to be awarded the coveted Navy Cross, which, any way you cut it, is a far worthier and more
06:25potential-riddled story than three folks just having their romance torn apart by war.
06:29This disparity was so glaringly obvious that Matt Stone and Trey Parker even made fun of it
06:34in their puppet-actioner Team America World Police with the song The End of an Act, featuring the line,
06:39I need you like Cuba Gooding needed a bigger part, he's way better than Ben Affleck.
06:444. The Congo Ground War
06:47Independence Day Resurgence
06:48Despite being a sequel to one of the most iconic and commercially successful blockbusters
06:53ever made, Independence Day Resurgence largely came and went with a whisper,
06:57failing to make much of a dent at all with the general public. It probably didn't help that
07:01filmmaker Roland Emmerich set up a way, way, way more interesting movie with a single flippant line
07:07of dialogue, only to then dismiss it for the rest of the runtime.
07:10As we're introduced to Ubuntu, the Congolese warlord of the National Republic of Ubuntu,
07:15it's mentioned that the nation of Ubuntu fought a decade-long ground war against the
07:20pockets of alien resistance still residing on Earth following the events of the first film.
07:24Sadly, we don't get any sort of flashback to accompany this, which sounds like a far cooler
07:28concept than the scattered, unfocused mess of generic alien action that we ended up with.
07:33Watching the Ubuntu force take on the remaining aliens in an intense ground skirmish with limited
07:39weaponry, no less, could have made for a lean, no-nonsense standalone sequel or indeed spin-off
07:44that wouldn't have required such a grotesquely bloated budget. Sadly, due to resurgence
07:48colossally underperforming at the box office, it's safe to say that the franchise is pretty much dead now.
07:543. The Expansion of the ISS
07:56Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
07:59Luc Besson's Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets may have been a critical and commercial
08:04disappointment, but its incredible opening scene suggested the seeds of a far more interesting
08:09movie. The gorgeous, affecting introductory montage depicts the development of the International
08:14Space Station, which later became the Intergalactic Space Station, over the course of several centuries.
08:19Set to the inspired musical choice of David Bowie's space oddity, the scene begins in 1975 and
08:25quickly leaps forward, chronicling the meetings of astronauts from different countries aboard the
08:30space station. Later, humanity makes contact with many far-flung alien species on this station,
08:35optimistically suggesting the community-expanding possibilities of cooperation amongst intelligent
08:41life in the universe. Though the sequence sadly only lasts about three minutes, it clearly could
08:46have been fleshed out into a feature-length exploration of human progress throughout the centuries,
08:50rather than turning into the more messy, pulpy action-adventure movie that we ended up with.
08:552. Logan Goes to War
08:58X-Men Origins Wolverine
09:00Arguably, no superhero movie has so spectacularly thrown away its awesome potential quicker or more
09:06blatantly than X-Men Origins Wolverine. The film's unforgettable opening title sequence shows Logan and
09:12his half-brother Victor fighting together throughout a century of modern human history. We see the pair as
09:17soldiers in the American Civil War, both World Wars and the Vietnam War, with the added twist that
09:22they of course used their superhuman abilities to best their foes while being completely invulnerable
09:27to conventional weaponry. It's a terrifically assembled action sequence that snappily showcases
09:32the potential of a superhero war movie starring the duo, which would have been a far snazzier thing than
09:38the generic superhero origin story that we ended up with, and probably would have been less expensive as
09:42well. It's a textbook example of an awesome scene in a bad movie, and it's a shame that a director
09:47like Logan's James Mangold never ended up aligned with such an inspired idea. With an R rating,
09:53this would have been absolute dynamite.
09:561. Black Ops Priests Battle Demons
09:59Demonic
09:59It sure isn't surprising that District 9 director Neil Blomkamp's new film Demonic turned out to be an
10:04abject critical failure, but damn if its trailer didn't suggest a much more interesting film encased
10:10inside. Near the end of the trailer for the sci-fi horror film, a character says the Vatican has been
10:15funding a Black Ops unit using priests-like soldiers, accompanied by clips of badass priests
10:20kitting up to do battle with the primary demonic entity. Except this is a classic example of marketing
10:26bait and switch, as the advertised battle never takes place. When protagonist Carly arrives on the
10:32scene, the Black Ops priests have all been killed off-screen by the demon. It's one of the lousiest and
10:37most cynical anti-climaxes in any recent movie, though it was presumably a budgetary decision
10:41intended to keep costs down, and possibly due to the logistical challenges of shooting an involved
10:46set piece during the height of the pandemic. But those excuses don't make the end results sting
10:50much less, though, because Blomkamp directing an all-out war between geared-up super-soldier,
10:55priests, and supernatural beasties was so much cooler than the scarcely coherent mishmash of sci-fi
11:00and horror tropes that viewers ended up getting saddled with.
Recommended
9:11
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