Watching The Abyss is a lot more palatable after reading the book that was written in parallel by Orson Scott Card. He fleshed out the characters a lot more than a two-hour film can, and you feel a lot more sympathetic to the SEAL after reading it. It also nicely explains some of the twists of the story that are occasionally just hinted at with a single, two-second take (cutting the wire).

I understand why Event Horizon (or Sunshine, for that matter) could end up being listed in this thread, but The Abyss doesn't deserve a nomination.

Oh, and while we're listing films that had great potential but totally blew it, may I nominate The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. It could have become The Avengers of the 19th century but what do we get? A car chase in Venice, of all places.

There's a longer version of The Abyss as well that is superior to the theatrical cut.

I also see Highlander 2 mentioned. Rest assured that Highlander: The Source is about 100 times worse.

Unpossible!

Pretty much cracked it why it sucked..A find of human history and if we all just forget about it,it will go away..Another in the psycho crewmember kills crew is Sunshine...Or Supernova..Or Doom...Or Prometheus...Or Lost in Space..

Oh god, Lost in Space. What a massive turd that was and I actually saw it in the theater. I bet Gary Oldman regrets doing that movie.

Yeah, Sunshine fits too, but I liked it nonetheless. Even though it really didn't make sense in about 10 different ways. LOL
How about Push? Kind of an attempt at XMen without having to secure the rights.

I liked James Spader in supernova, but it didn't have many redeeming qualities.

I won't add Stargate, but it's close. The show was better. Most of it doesn't make sense in the first 30 minutes.

I liked it up until they found the derelict spacecraft, and that stupid CGI monkey thing. The opening scene was OK, but the dialog was bad. I liked how they explained them getting lost, and I thought Gary Oldman's character was good in the beginning.

You call those bad???

May I present, currently only available to you lucky Amazon subscribers......

Invasion of Alien Bikini

Lucky for you guys, here's a nifty little trailer from YouTube:



Worth the cost of Prime all by itself....



of course I got Prime for free for 6 months.

I don't think that one qualifies though because you can tell from the trailer that they were going for a very tongue firmly planted in cheek approach. They were consciously going for cheesy and they succeeded.

The Abyss was a story about the crew going on an unusual mission, it wasn't about the mission itself. The extended version does flesh it out quite a bit more (both humans and aliens) and TBH I've not seen the theatrical version in 25 years, not since the extended cut came out. It's just not worth it.

Sphere was a great book. The adapted screenplay totally blew it. I don't blame the actors, they have done plenty of great work elsewhere. I don't blame the effects, they had a good budget. They just totally screwed up the adaptation. The book was my favorite Crichton novel after Jurassic Park, but I didn't even bother to get the DVD for $5 when I saw it.
I even have an old laserdisc of the Andromeda Strain (the original of course).



The Jedi Master

For me, the brilliance of that film is how it masterfully and slowly unravels the mystery behind the crashed satellite.

I thought that the remake was actually fairly decent. It deviated from the original in the right places; the original has the scientists and the military work in complete secrecy from the public. That doesn't work anymore these days where everybody has a smartphone that is photo camera, film camera, audio recorder, and TV transmission van in a single handheld device. Of course I like the 1970s original still better, but, the remake sucked less than I thought it would.

The remake was unremarkable. If the order had been reversed, the remake would never have impinged upon the genre and it would've been forgotten. Not remembered for being great, nor scorned for being awful.

I'm sure there are a lot of people who've forgotten it already but still remember the original.



The Jedi Master

Yup. I watched the SyFy remake once and thought it was OK and then about 2 weeks later I forgot who was even on the cast.

I thought it was A&E? LOL Can't even remember which network it was on!



The Jedi Master

Oops. You're right. It was A&E. I guess it's admirable that A&E even greenlit a project like that since the vast majority of what they do now is reality show junk.

I believe that was also the last time I watched A&E, and when I did I hadn't watched it in maybe a decade prior.
Pretty much my entire 21st century A&E viewing was that one remake!



The Jedi Master

Yeah, the A&E we knew from the 1990's with shows like "Biography" and other historical documentaries vanished a long time ago.

Killer Klowns from Outer Space



Wheels

There has only been one sci-fi movie I've ever seen that
I didn't have any problem with, in the science nor the
construction as a story, and that's Outland. A good
solid whodunnit on a mining asteroid. I forgave them
their difficulty in reproducing fractional gravity.

Oh, and I thought Buckaroo Banzai was a masterful work
of sheer genius, but of course it wasn't sci-fi, it was
a high comedy satirical romp, aimed at intellectual crazies.
Laugh-a while you can, Monkey Boy! Wherever you go: there
you are!