10 Movies Way Better Than They Had Any Right To Be
Making chicken salad out of chicken sh*t.
A lot of movies these days come burdened with huge expectations, ones that they can often fail to meet from either a critical or commercial point of view, but the fact that everyone has different tastes means that a lot of these criticisms are entirely subjective and spark fervent debate. Just look no further than the wildly varying opinions on the DCEU for proof.
The best movies are the ones that please everybody, and the worst are the ones that please nobody at all. While that may sound blindingly obvious, the middle ground is the most interesting part because it generates so much discussion among film fans around the world about what truly makes for a great movie. If you can find any two people have the exact same top ten list of favorite movies, then you're a liar.
Then there are the movies that turn out so much better than even the most optimistic of glass half-fullers could ever predict. Projects that have been written off due to behind-the-scenes issues, an apparent lack of interest, a derivative premise or a sequel precisely zero people were asking for.
One of the best experiences a movie-goer can have is going in with low expectations, only to have them blown right out of the water. And these ten movies did just that.
10. X-Men: First Class
Rushing a movie through production in order to meet an already-scheduled release date is always a risky move, especially when it involves a franchise that's beginning to run out of steam. After the disappointment of The Last Stand and X-Men Origins: Wolverine had stretched audience goodwill to breaking point, Fox decided to hit the reset button on the entire X-Men series in what seemed like a final throw of the dice.
When Matthew Vaughn officially signed onto the project there were less than fourteen months to go until First Class hit theaters, which is an insanely short schedule for a $140m summer blockbuster and not only that, he decided to rewrite the existing script with regular collaborator Jane Goldman first. If that wasn't crazy enough, shooting only started a little over nine months before the release date and pre-production didn't even begin until April 2011. To put that into perspective, the movie was coming out on June 3rd.
Many were predicting that such a quick turnaround would be detrimental to the final product, with Vaughn himself admitting to having "never worked under such time pressure". To the surprise of almost everyone, First Class turned out to be arguably the best movie in the entire series yet, bringing the X-Men back from the brink and setting the franchise up for the next decade in the process.