Has anyone else ever thought of a wasted opportunity in a movie? Something like where the character(s) fail to realize/ignore an easy way of making money/other valuable thing.

I think a movie that fits this perfectly is the Indian in the cupboard. Why? Because he could have used that magic key to bring ANY toy to life. What could you do? Several very profitable things.

1. Make the greatest and most affordable pets. How much does a t-Rex toy cost? 2$? How much could a mini tyrannosaur cost? 500$ 1000$? Any animal/alien/dinosaur, all available in a miniature size. Your profits would be ten-fold and above.

2. The greatest fighting sport ever. With clever camera tricks, you can make something small appear big. Something like a action figure. Something that could become the greatest cage fighter in history. Anything vs anything in a fight to the death. Low cost, low maintenance fighters, with a website to host fights, with premium content of course. Several million premium viewers would turn you into a very rich person.

So what missed oppurtunities in movies have you seen?

Edit: just to clarify I meant wasted oppurtunities by characters in movies, not by the director/producers and etc.

But both of those points have nothing to do with the plot or theme of the story. (and none of that stuff is in the series of books.)
I think you missed the entire point of the film.

My definition of a missed oppurtinity in a story is when a character's inaction leads to a weaker plot. (a boring moment that could have been made exciting by adding a little extra)
Or the director/writer doesn't show us something important that happened. (we learn about a car chase, but never got to see it)

But just inventing crazy scenarios out of thin air doesn't mean the movie made a mistake for not adding them in.

I'm sure the OP really means that he wants to read about what other people considered to be wasted opportunities in movies like when a movie could have ended immediately if the main character had done a simple thing. I'm not sure what the Indian in the Cupboard movie is about, but if it's about making money or something, then what the OP listed could have easily been quick and easy options for the movie to end immediately, rather than going through a long and convoluted process.

@Thread: I can't think of any right now, but I'm sure I will eventually.

I was surprised by the lack of a thorough, proper car chase scene in Drive.

I know the plot of the movie, it's just the fact that it could have been used for more instead of bringing his toy back to life. This is more of a "what if" thread than anything. And it's entirely possible. (in the film he brings a trex to life along with several action figures)

There is a diffrence between plot being stupid and the movie (let's pretend movies are sentient )actually missing the point.

Example of a movie being stupid: Minority Report has one of the biggest, stupidest plot holes ever in a movie. The character could easly run away and come back later on a clean state, debunking everything that he was accused for. But the screenplay demands him to stay. But wait, there is more. Because his stupid actions, he actually commits that very thing, that he wanted to avoid. And before anyone say it: This is not determinism vs free will debate. It's stupidity vs common sense.

Example of missing the point: Star Wars prequels. While we all knew that Anakin will become darth Vader. We didn't know How. Now we know. Being a spoiled idiot brat turns you into a evil badass cyborg, who knew? This could be done in so many ways, but Lucas chose the worst one possible.

So for the plot dictating over basic human logic, here are some examples from the top of my head:
1. Minority Report
2. Neverending Story 2 - most of the plot, could be easly dealt with withing 10 minutes of the movie
3. The odd life of Timothy Green - so much evil....
4. Saw I - easly resolved within 2 minutes
5. I, Robot - Asimov turns in his grave.
6. Da Vinci Code - I hated the book, but then It transfered and multiplied with the movie.

Okay, here I go...sure, the Transformers movies (and Michael Bay) aren't renowned for their plots, but in the third movie they completely jumped the gun!

that's a good point, I'm sure the USAs allies would like to stop an alien invasion, what did the decpticons have? One carrier ship? So I think a couple of our carriers as well as tanks, troops, battleships, etc. would have stopped that fairly easy. And that would have been one country. Also in the second movie didn't a battleship destroy that large deception with one shot? Where was that at?

This may have been debunked somewhere, but in Transformers, if the Autobots and the Decepticons are from Cybertron, why do they transform into human made cars and jets?

Ummm, this has been established since the 80's... when the cartoon was created.

Camouflage.
They scan our technology and mimic it.
If they all looked like spaceships from another galaxy, everyone would be freaking out all the time.

It should be mentioned that in the cartoons, few humans new about their existence. They weren't constantly being seen by everyone .

The Star Wars prequels are LOADED with this....if the characters would have just form coherent thoughts Senator Palapatine would have been busted a long time ago....oh Georgie /dry.png' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':dry:' />.

And to be fair, they do explain that towards the beginning of the first Transformers movie...

Or just trusting Anakin and allowing him to be a Jedi, instead of contributing to his turn to the darkside.


Then again, that maybe the most sensible thing written into the plot, as exclusion and distrust are pathways to bitterness.

There was a movie made couple years ago named after a book which share the same name. The movie itself is good that is if you did not read the book. Everything was going fine until the end.

In the movie there is a group of seven blowing up a bridge. After they blew it up one of them got shot and dying. The boyfriend took her to hospital end of movie.

In the book. There was only five blowing up the bridge. Those five were happy after blowing up the bridge until they made to base and see her dying on the floor in her boyfriends arms. She and her boyfriend was doing something else. Oh yes I think they were searching for food when one of the invading soldiers spotted them and shoot and the bullet hit her. The boyfriend took her to hospital and end of book.

That is a glaring change done by the movie over the book.

The http://www.rsimpson.id.au/books/tomorrow/index.html and http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1456941 is 'Tomorrow, when the war began'

To be fair, the actors done a fine job. Its the script which is the problem. It will be better if the ending of the movie is like the book. There would be more impacted and wonder how did it happened.

With the book it is a series of seven including the first. With the movie is up in the air.

I think Tedd was a wasted oppotunity.

The movie was ok, and Mark Wahlberg did his job fine, but it was too much of the family guy style humor.

Plus I couldn't stand Tedd.

The problem with Anakin turning to the darkside was rather he was tricked into turning and not "seduced" like Obi-Wan said in episode 4. Anakin worrying about Padme dying in child birth is kinda lame---not only that but that's actually rare even in real life and in a society that has high tech equipment I'm pretty sure Padme would have survived one way or the other but she dies because Anakin used forced choked on her.

I feel that the War of the Worlds(Tom Cruise one) was a wasted opportunity. It would have been far more interesting if they had tried to base it off of the book.

The Hobbit.
Excellent book, seen a excellent theatre version (at least they could afford real midgets) The movie was a bad joke aimed at tweens.
Starship Troopers maybe if the movie even had the slightest resemblance to the book with power armored exoskeletons that have been a major influence in sci-fi (even so far as spawning cross cultural great stuff like 0079 gundam) I suppose the biggest flaw of the movie was shifting from the anti-communist book to anti- imperialist/colonial whatever those films were suppose to be.

The dark knight rises was a completely wasted opportunity. Nolan needs to fire his brother.

Jokes on you, Radaghast was my favorite part of the Hobbit.

Palpatine 's use of the force was too strong or something like that. He could basically jedi-mind trick anyone he wanted to without even having to see the person. Something along those lines.

The guy was able to control an entire galaxy with absolute control.

The stupidest thing in Minority Report is that he, the accused criminal, can still use his own ID to get into what is supposedly a secure police facility. Did no-one think to cancel the alleged criminals access codes?

Good for you. Personally I think it was terrible the film basically had a check list of 'would I find this funny if I were in middle school' if yes, it got added in. That and it's so obvious that when the movie went over schedule they finally just gave up and stopped caring. for example

I too liked him, but I may be bias as I watched the heck out of Sylvester McCoy's Dr Who episodes.

Night at the Museum comes to mind. So likenesses of historical figures become inhabited with the personality and memory of the original person? The applications are vast. Mold a Mozart, introduce him to modern musical equipment, see what amazing magic he could compose. Mold Fermat, ask him for the proof to his famous theorem. Mold da Vinci, give him the tools of modern science. Mold Alexander, ask him who he really left his empire to. Or simply just mold like a hundred Einsteins, Bohrs or Hawkings, put them together, and see the field of physics advance by leaps and bounds.

Anti-fascist. The whole movie was poking fun at the audience by casting the totalitarian jingoists as the good guys and making us root for them against our will.