They Wasted A Perfectly Good Plot / Honest Trailers

In a World… where a lot of good story ideas go to waste...

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• The Honest Trailer for World War Z knocks it because of how little of the novel's epic and colorful story was actually used in the film.
  Narrator: Man, what a waste of good source material.
• The Honest Game Trailer for the Mad Max (2015) video game notes that since it was inspired by Mad Max: Fury Road, it could have been made into a pretty awesome car combat game or a straightforward car racing game, but was instead made into a dull open world third person fighting game filled with countless tedious side objectives.
• About Spectre's slow pace and bleak plot:
  Narrator: Guys, how do you make James Bond vs. the Illuminati boring?
• The Honest Trailer for Pixels points out how a movie with its great premise that's directed by Chris Columbus and has Peter Dinklage on its cast could have turned out way better if someone other than Adam Sandler had been calling the shots.
• The Honest Trailer for The Walking Dead Season 4-6 complains how some plot lines from the later seasons were squandered; most notably spending seven episodes building up to the group getting captured by cannibals and then quickly having the group blow up their fortress and move on.
  Narrator: You fast-forwarded through the cannibals? Why?! To get back to invokedmore woods-walking? Stay with the cannibals! You could have cleared that place out and made a barbecue pit, or something.
• The Honest Trailer for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice points out how much the movie suffered because of all the new characters and plot arcs that were forced into one movie and how much it tried to accomplish, like set up a movie franchise to rival the Marvel Cinematic Universe and create a sequel to Man of Steel as well as a standalone Batman story.
  Narrator: Whose idea was it to cram all this into one movie? They just burnt through, like, six movies worth of good material!
• In the Independence Day: Resurgence Honest Trailer, the narrator thinks the movie's setups for future sequels, prequels and spinoffs were better than the actual movie:
  Umbutu: They hunted us. We had to learn how to hunt them.
  Narrator: Aww! I want to see that one!
• The Honest Trailer for The Secret Life of Pets considers the fun premise and New York setting wasted on the weak story material.
• The Honest Trailer for Power Rangers (2017) notes how the high school drama is pretty compelling, despite being buried heavily under the usual cheesy Power Rangers antics.
• The Honest Trailer for Bright has the narrator go off on an increasingly frustrated rant about how little the movie made use of its premise of a modern day cop drama set in a world where fantasy creatures have existed for thousands of years, especially how outside of fantasy creatures living among the population, little is different from the actual world:
  Narrator: [after Will Smith's character makes a reference to Shrek] How does Shrek still exist? Is it a documentary? There's dragons flying around, but our buildings never changed? And what's this centaur cop doing? They never even mention that! You can't just add the word "magic" and claim it's any different from a normal cop movie!
• The Honest Trailer for the first three The Purge movies points out how the decent concept of a society that has a night when all crimes are legal keeps getting underused in the movies.
• In the Honest Trailer for Ready Player One (2018), the narrator expresses his disappointment at how all the characters picked avatars that are basically just exaggerated versions of themselves, while they could have gone for much more interesting choices.
• In the Honest Trailer for The Conjuring films, they mention the rather bizarre lawsuit filed against Warner Bros. over the movies that almost forced them to prove that ghosts were real and the narrator seems to wish we got a movie about that instead.
  Narrator: Aw man, that sounds way more fun than Annabelle.
• The Honest Trailer for Solo points out how it fails to really give insight into what made the title character into the selfish rogue he was when he was introduced in the original trilogy:
  Narrator: ...[the movie] gave fans a sense of how Han became the character we all know and love: by going through the events of Solo, then at some point off-camera before A New Hope, becoming the character we all know and love. So, what was the point of this movie, again?
• The Honest Trailer for The Meg bemoans how the movie, which was based on a series of novels, doesn't fully utilize the awesome ridiculousness of the source material and instead mostly has the titular shark bump into boats:
  Narrator: Aw, come one! You have five Meg books to pull from. And the first one starts off with a Meg fighting a T-Rex, then ends with Jonas ripping its heart out from the inside. Respect the Meg canon!
• The Honest Trailer for Robin Hood (2018) laments that the movie's world is pretty good, but is wasted on a bad story.
• The Honest Trailer for Wild Wild West begins with pointing out how much the movie had working in its favor, including a good director, Will Smith in the lead, and an untapped source material with an original premise, yet despite all that it still turned out bad.
• The Honest Trailer for Masters of the Universe complains that the movie, which is supposed to be about He-Man, barely uses any of the source material's settings or characters, and instead mostly has the movie take place on Earth and focus on a couple of Canon Foreigner teenagers.
• During the Honest Trailer for Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019), the narrator reads the human characters' storyline and is surprised that it sounds exciting on paper, but still turned out boring in the actual movie.
• The Honest Trailer for It (1990) points out how the series was doomed from the start, not just due to a low budget and strict censorship, but also because they only had 3 hours to tell a 1000 page story, resulting in a lot of the book being Adapted Out. Here, the narrator draws parallels with other Stephen King stories that suffered from this, like The Dark Tower (2017).
• The Honest Trailer for Dark Phoenix sums up all the things the movie could have done for a good plot, but neglected to use. These include more focus on Jean Grey so the audience can get to know her, exploring the cosmic potential of the Phoenix Force, or letting a new creative team work on the movie instead of the same guys that were also responsible for X-Men: The Last Stand.
• During the Honest Trailer for Spider-Man: Far From Home, the narrator almost forgets that the movie is supposed to be about Spider-Man going on vacation because of everything else in the movie related to the franchise taking up more time, such as reminiscing about the late Tony Stark, the aftermath of everyone being resurrected in Avengers: Endgame, and setups for Phase Four movies.
  Narrator: [about to doze off] Concept seems a little Disney+ to me; wake me up when he gets to space Wakanda.
• The Honest Trailer for Frozen II laments that the big reveal that the people of Arendelle, led by Elsa and Anna's murderous grandfather, betrayed the native population of the land for personal gain doesn't lead to any difficult character decisions or any commentary on historical injustices.
• The Honest Trailer for The Simpsons Movie points out how the side characters that stay behind in Springfield had their own interesting subplots, but these mostly happen off screen as the movie focuses on the Simpson family in Alaska.
• The Honest Trailer for Raya and the Last Dragon laments that the movie is too short to be able to properly explore the Avatar: The Last Airbender-inspired universe or get to know the supporting characters.
• The Honest Trailer for Army of the Dead lists several plot points from the movie that the narrator thinks should have been expanded upon, such as zombies being capable of reproducing with each other, some zombies apparently being at least partially robotic, an inert horde of zombies that's supposed to come back to life when it rains but is never seen doing so, and a pimped-out circular saw hyped up as a zombie-killing weapon, but which is only used to cut a hole through a wall.
  Narrator: They just use it to make a door?! Is Snyder saving the good stuff for the prequel, the sequel,^note referring to a pitch for a sequel made by Snyder the anime prequel,^note Army of the Dead: Lost Vegas, an animated TV series in development or the Snyder Cut?
• The Honest Trailer for Cruella laments that the central plot of the movie with the fashion heists is pretty good, but gets bogged down by having to serve as a set-up for the original animated movie.
• The Honest Trailer for What If…? (2021) mentions the original comic book and some of its crazier stories, like Wolverine becoming a vampire and Iron Man fighting King Arthur, and expresses some disappointment that the TV show, rather than make similarly wild and bizarre stories, mostly just does variations of past ones from the movies.
  Narrator: ...that dares to imagine something even more ridiculous: what if MCU writers could try something new? But not, like, new new; just a slight remix of some old favorites. Let's not go too crazy here!
  [...]
  Narrator: So if you want to see your favorite Marvel characters in exciting new stories that stretch the imagination, buy a comic book.
• The Honest Trailer for Moon Knight (2022) criticizes it for not making good use of its great cast, not digging deeply enough into its subject of mental illness, and especially for wasting one of coolest characters in Marvel comics, showing a panel of him gabbing with The Punisher.
• The Honest Trailer for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, a.k.a. Doctor Strange in One Alternate Universe That's Basically Just the Near Future, remarks on how little the movie makes use of its supposed universe-hopping story, only shows one alternate universe prominently and just zooms through other more interesting ones:
  Narrator: Witness a film that explores the limitless possibilities of the multiverse... for one. Whole. Scene. Really? Can we go back to paint world for a sec?
  [...]
  Narrator: Okay, settle for the MCU's bogus journey across the multiverse, where the differences are all cosmetic, the characters barely change, and the plot devices are either literal convenience stores or main characters, like America[...]
• The Honest Trailer for Jurassic World Dominion points out how dinosaurs spreading all over the world all happens off-camera between it and the previous movie and Dominion instead focuses too much on the giant locusts.
  Narrator: They-they know that bugs aren't dinosaurs, right?
• The Honest Trailer for Secret Invasion expresses disappointment that the series doesn't include Sharon Carter and have her be a Skrull to explain why she has become a criminal arms dealer in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.
• The Honest Trailer for Blue Beetle (2023) calls the movie out for never having the characters explore where the alien Blue Beetle came from, why it is on Earth, or why it choose Jaime as it's next host, all of which could have made up an interesting (sub)plot.
• The Honest Trailer for Paul Blart: Mall Cop suggests that the movie's concept of Die Hard in a shopping mall starring a security guard could make for a fun comedy if not for Happy Madison Productions's usual lazy comedy and writing.

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