There's more resting on a movie title than you think. In some cases it's all an audience know before buying a ticket, meaning on top of acting as a summary of the events or themes, it has to sell the whole thing as well. Edge Of Tomorrow (which was originally titled All You Need Is Kill) has been retitled as its taglineLive Die Repeat for home video release in an attempt to make-up for its disappointing box office run. Recent years has seen an explosion of puns, colonated subtotals and other tricks attempting to appear fresh and new in a bloated marketplace. This is only exacerbated by Hollywood's love of sequels. The old faithful of whacking a 2 on the end of the original title is viewed to no longer past muster, acting as a sign of a creatively compromised film. Whether audiences are actually put off by such a simple trope doesn't matter (the evidence of How To Train Your Dragon 2 is that they're not), studios are keen to come up with alternate ways to title their sequels. Today we're going to cast our eyes forward and look at ten movies with ridiculously dumb titles we really hope get rethought before their ultimate release.
Honourable Mention - Star Wars Episode VII
There may be set leaks to keep spoiler-friendly fans happy, but in terms of official information on Star Wars Episode VII is thin on the ground; since the cast was announced back in April we've learnt nothing new. It may be a little expectant, but we hope the next nugget Lucasfilm reveals will be the title of the damn thing. Multiple names have been thrown around. Michael Arndt's take on the script was reportedly titled Return Of The Sith or Rise Of The Jedi, while A New Dawn was rumoured to be the shooting title. The former two both skew too close to previous titles, while A New Dawn has recently been used for a prequel book to TV cartoon Rebels. But could that just be J.J. Abrams-level misdirection? ARGH?! Whatever Star Wars 7 ends up being called, however, expect it to be pretty ridiculous. But, as this is Star Wars, it won't be as big a problem; this a series where the fan favourite entry is called The Empire Strikes Back.