10 Terrible Ideas That Became Great Movies

Movies are all about the execution, because no matter how good or bad a film might sound on paper

it's only an idea until it's actually gone before cameras and been edited into a releasable end product

The gulf between a film's basic premise and the final result can be massive

and often the simple details just don't do justice to a movie's finer details

Case in point, we have these ten great movies, each of which, nevertheless, seemed like frankly terrible ideas at a superficial conceptual level

but each ended up proving the many doubters riotously wrong, turning in a terrifically entertaining final movie that soared far above and beyond what anyone could have expected pre-release

And so, with that in mind, I'm Ellie with WhatCulture here with 10 terrible ideas that became great movies

Number 10. A movie based on Lego. The Lego Movie. The moment that a movie based on Lego was announced, many rolled their eyes and immediately dismissed it as a project doomed to be nothing more than a soulless 90-minute commercial for the plastic toy bricks

Despite appearing to epitomise Hollywood's creative bankruptcy on paper, the Lego movie had a secret weapon in hand

Filmmakers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller. Lord and Miller took an inherently cynical concept

and produced something startlingly creative, hilarious and beautifully animated. Thoroughly self-aware of its own torrid potential

while gamely poking fun at the state of modern blockbusters, the Lego movie was teeming with invention in every single scene

The biggest surprise, though, was the risky live-action divergence in the third act

which only deepened the movie's very earnest, genuine love for toys and play

To that end, Lord and Miller were able to have their cake and eat it too

producing a subversive, tongue-in-cheek animated adventure film that still worked as a giddy endorsement for its titular product

Everybody won, basically. Number 9. A film set almost entirely inside a phone booth

Phone booth. Movies where characters are trapped in a single location for basically the entire runtime are always a risk

But at least something like Ryan Reynolds' Buried could sell itself on the inherent anxiety of being buried alive

Joel Schumacher's phone booth, however, had the decidedly more pedestrian setting of a New York City phone booth

where protagonist Jew Shepard was held hostage by a sniper with a grudge

You can practically picture a studio executive shaking their head the moment somebody pitched this to them

because while a single location is an easy way to keep a movie's budget down

that location generally needs to be cinematically compelling. and a phone booth? Not so much

Thankfully, Phone Booth had a hell of a lot going for it. Schumacher's dynamic direction, which regularly deploys 24 style split screens

a tight, witty script, and a superb central performance from Colin Farrell

who dominates the screen in basically every single shot. And 20 years on, it remains one of the all-time best single location thrillers

proving how smart filmmaking and strong acting can make the most of an unassuming setting Number 8 A Jumanji sequel without Robin Williams Jumanji Welcome to the Jungle

It cannot be overstated just how much of a fuss Jumanji fans kicked up

when a sequel was announced less than a year after Robin Williams' tragic death

Beyond some deeming it too soon to mount a Jumanji sequel following Williams' passing

there was the obvious opposition to a new film which couldn't feature him at all

And by the time it was confirmed that the new Jumanji would switch out the board game for a video game

most had readily dismissed it as a soulless soft reboot nobody was asking for

But what a pleasant surprise Jumanji Welcome to the Jungle turned out to be

Largely due to its inspired central gimmick, the players being embodied by larger-than-life avatars within the game

crossed with a hilarious body swap element. The chemistry between the in-game cast was terrific

Jack Black genuinely gave one of the finest performances of his career. It was relentlessly fun and action-packed

and even circled back to the original Jumanji in a way that sincerely honoured it

And beyond that, despite releasing mere days after Star Wars The Last Jedi

it still grossed almost $1 billion globally. I mean, who could have seen any of that coming

Number 7. Keanu Reeves avenges his murdered dog, John Wick. Keanu Reeves' career may be back on top right now

but around the time of the first John Wick's release, he'd been in a serious slump for the better part of a decade

following the end of the original Matrix trilogy. The critical and or commercial duds were numerous

The Day the Earth Stood Still, Henry's Crime, and most infamously, the calamitous box office bomb 47 Ronan in 2013

And so when Reeves was announced to be starring in a new action thriller as an assassin seeking to avenge his murdered puppy

Of course, the knee-jerk response was to laugh. Many predicted it might score 0% on Rotten Tomatoes before release

That's how lacking in momentum Reeves' career was at the time. This had glorified video-on-demand movie

that somehow secured a theatrical release vibes all over it. But oh, how wrong we all were

John Wick ultimately released so strong reviews and turned a hefty profit at the box office

largely due to its impressively nuanced world-building, darkly humorous script, killer ensemble cast and sharply staged stylish action

In turn, John Wick revitalized Reeves' career, ensuring he's appeared in countless quality projects since

including three increasingly impressive John Wick sequels. I mean, that's definitely a turnaround

Number six, the Facebook biopic, The Social Network. So many film lovers groaned loudly when Fox announced development

of a film about the creation of Facebook, because who honestly would be interested in watching a movie about something so mundane

Yet betting against David Fincher is a fool's errand at this point

because paired with a screenplay from a never better Aaron Sorkin and a superb ensemble cast

The Social Network wasn't just a good or even great movie. It's one of the best of the last 20 years

Fincher film is so much more than the Facebook movie It a fascinating examination of entrepreneurship in the internet era a gripping courtroom drama that questions the nature of IP ownership and a razor character study of Facebook controversial figurehead Mark Zuckerberg

brilliantly played by Jesse Eisenberg. Fincher and Saw can do about as much with this concept as any filmmakers possibly could

transforming a potentially dry tale of empire building into a towering drama about one of the most pivotal creations of the 21st century

That it lost both Best Picture and Best Director Oscars to The King's Speech

a fine film mind, is a decision that's aged like milk left out in the sun all day long

Number five, a talking raccoon and tree monster becomes superheroes, Guardians of the Galaxy

Guardians of the Galaxy marked a concerted effort by Marvel Studios to expand the storytelling ambition of the Marvel Cinematic Universe

venturing beyond the more basic origin stories for its focal superheroes and delving into weirder, riskier territory

And let's be honest, on paper, it's easy to appreciate just how much of a gamble James Gunn movie was

being adapted from a niche Marvel comic general audiences had no knowledge of

which counted among its team a talking raccoon and a sentient tree monster

In the wrong hands, this could have been an absolute bust, an unwielding mess which felt at odds with the rest of the MCU

and consequently failed to connect with audiences. Had it bombed at the box office, would anyone have really been surprised

But Kevin Feige was smart to hire Gunn for the job, who was able to translate the comic book to the cinematic medium

with wit, panache and, most of all, heart. Guardians ended up netting almost $800 million globally

making it the third highest-grossing MCU film at the time, behind only The Avengers and Iron Man 3

An impressive feat for a film so many were readily and understandably betting against

Number four. A stranded man befriends a farting corpse. Swiss Army Man

Generally speaking, first-time directors are advised to set their sights modestly and tackle a more familiar genre film before venturing into more ambitious territory on their sophomore feature

But in their debut Swiss Army Man, filmmakers Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan

decided to take a gigantic swing by making a movie about a man stranded on a desert island

so far so good, who befriends a flatulent corpse which washes up on the shore

The potential for disaster speaks for itself here, but Shynos and Kwan have such a firm handle on their movie's tone

and Paul Dano and Daniel Radcliffe commit so fervently to their roles, but the film is able to wring unexpected profundity from a superficially crude premise

And without its success, the Daniels almost certainly wouldn't have gone on to give the world the most recent Best Picture Oscar winner Everything Everywhere All at Once

another borderline miracle of a movie that could have gone totally awry in different hands

So no matter what the Daniels make in the future, they've certainly got the benefit of the doubt at this point

Number three, a father disguises himself as a female housekeeper to get closer to his kids

Mrs. Doubtfire. Imagine trying to pitch Mrs. Doubtfire today. It would be laughed out of every office in Hollywood in record time A film where a man dresses up as a female housekeeper in order to have greater contact with his children following his divorce

sounds awful when you speak it aloud, suggesting a kooky comedy where Robin Williams dons a fat suit

and frolics around for lowest common denominator laughs. But it's a testament to director Chris Columbus

that, while an inherent funny concept, Mrs Doubtfire is actually an unexpectedly thoughtful

even mature dramedy about the pain of divorce and those who always suffer the most, the kids

Underneath its fundamentally ridiculous premise is a film that has something to say and commits

fully to its emotional ideas, rather than merely serving up a predictably syrupy, happy ending

It helps that Robin Williams is excellent in the lead role, of course, and while not every aspect

of Mrs Doubtfire has aged superbly, it remains a tremendously popular film that transcends its

potentially disastrous premise. Number two, a time travel comedy about a man attempting to

prevent incest. Back to the Future. Back to the Future may be

one of the most beloved movies of all time but just think about how insane

and even problematic this must have sounded to Universal executives when it was first pitched. A time travel

comedy where a high schooler heads back to 1955, accidentally gets his teenage mother hot for him and spends the

rest of the movie trying to negate her unknowingly incestual feelings in

order to ensure he isn't wiped out of existence. Yep, that's the highest-grossing movie of 1985

There's obviously far more to the movie than that, but at its core, that's what it's about

and so it's a little surprise that the script was rejected more than 40 times before finally

getting the green light. But thanks to the witty, creative script, excellent performances

and fantastic direction, Back to the Future triumphed, serving up a cheeky what-if for

audiences without excessively luxuriating in the ickier elements of its narrative. Number one, astronauts try to restart the dying sun with a nuke, Sunshine

From its log line alone, sci-fi film Sunshine was basically inviting laughter

A group of astronauts take part in a dangerous mission to reignite the dying sun with a nuke

the size of Manhattan. Without any other information, this sounds like it sits comfortably alongside the core

or any number of Roland Emmerich-directed disaster flicks which are high on digital spectacle but desperately low on brains

Yet Sunshine is not that movie at all. Directed with taut style by Danny Boyle

from a tense, character-driven Alex Garland script, this is a film that manages to make plausible enough sense

out of an undeniably absurd premise, while avoiding the schlocky blockbuster clichés you'd expect

Though it certainly loses itself a little in the third act where it turns into a quasi-slasher movie

for the most part, Sunshine keeps its wild concept tethered to some semblance of reality

and, crucially, ensures you won't be tempted to laugh even once. And that concludes our list

If you can think of any other examples, then we'd love to see them in the comments down below

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just by searching Ellie Littlechild. I've been Ellie with WhatCulture. I hope you have a magical day and I'll see you real soon