10 Movies That Completely Switched Genre Halfway Through
If you're getting bored of something, just turn it upside down and make something different instead.
Transcript
00:00 So, when it comes to 99% of movies, genre is pretty much black and white.
00:05 Based on the story and the setting, there's a certain number of tropes and archetypes that
00:09 are expected to feature, and even the most innovative examples tend to stay pretty close
00:14 to at least a few conventions. The more genres you try to add into the melting pot, the more
00:18 difficult it becomes to balance them successfully, and in plenty of cases, trying too hard to bring
00:24 something new to the table can definitely backfire and leave the whole thing a mess.
00:28 However, there have been more than a few titles over the years where it appears that the main
00:32 creative team simply decided to just down tools halfway through, tear up the script,
00:36 and set the rest of the narrative in another genre entirely. And that's what we're here to
00:41 talk about today. I'm Jules, this is WhatCulture.com, and these are 10 movies that completely switched
00:45 genre halfway through.
00:47 Number 10, Hancock. Now, on paper, Hancock had the potential to be a phenomenal deconstruction
00:53 of the superhero genre, with the focus being placed on an all-powerful being who, by all
00:58 intents and purposes, was a bit of a dick. Unfortunately, this was during the time when
01:02 star Will Smith was steadfast in his refusal to deviate from his established screen persona
01:07 during the summer months, so despite a hugely promising first act, the movie soon devolved
01:12 into the standard tropes that we'd seen a thousand times before. Hancock makes the switch
01:17 from exploring what forces a superhero into becoming an alcoholic layabout with no interest
01:21 in saving the day, to a formulaic tale of two characters with the same powers using them in a
01:26 third-act showdown heavy on visual effects. The tonal change was clearly a studio-mandated one,
01:32 and it sinks the whole movie down as a result.
01:35 Number 9, Hot Fuzz. From a box office perspective, Hot Fuzz was by far the most successful of the
01:41 Three Flavors Cornetto trilogy, earning more in theaters than Shaun of the Dead and The World's
01:46 End put together - more on that later. And a lot of that had to do with the third-act venture into
01:50 Michael Bay territory, making the movie a lot more accessible to international audiences.
01:55 The first half of the movie is every bit the charming and irreverent British comedy that we
02:00 come to expect from Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, and Nick Frost, but it still came as a surprise when
02:05 the action movie references directly led to a pivot towards the kind of high-octane action
02:10 and shootouts that you usually expect to see in a Hollywood production with ten times the budget.
02:15 But you don't hear anyone complaining, because this film was brilliant.
02:19 Number 8, The World's End. Now let's take a look at the closer of the Cornetto's holy trinity,
02:23 because we're back with the next collaboration between Edgar Wright, Nick Frost, and Simon Pegg
02:27 with The World's End, which went full-on apocalyptic sci-fi after spending the first
02:32 half setting both the stage and the character dynamics. The coming-of-middle-age comedy draws
02:37 a surprising amount of pathos among the laughs, with Simon Pegg's performance in particular one
02:42 of the best of his career. But it still came a little out of the blue when Wright decided to go
02:46 for broke and transform his tale of long-lost friendship into a full-blown alien invasion epic.
02:52 It isn't like the laughs didn't stop coming, but the blue-blooded replicants give the filmmaker
02:56 the leeway to drastically increase the level of violence without alarming the censors. And after
03:01 zombies and buddy cop movies, science fiction seemed like the next logical step for the Cornetto
03:06 trilogy. Number 7, The Prestige. Watching The Prestige for the first time, you get drawn in
03:11 by Christopher Nolan's meticulous attention to detail and an intriguing mystery narrative that
03:16 seems poised to answer more and more questions as the story progresses. But eventually we discover
03:21 that the movie is a lot more than just your average standard period piece. The rivalry
03:25 between Hugh Jackman's Robert and Christian Bale's Alfred gets more and more intense. And
03:30 with each new reveal, we're as stumped as the magicians themselves as to how they keep pulling
03:34 off such impressive feats of both personal and professional sleight of hand. The introduction
03:39 of David Bowie's Nikola Tesla hints at something far more fantastical, and the twists and turns
03:44 do not stop coming as The Prestige heads deeper and deeper down the sci-fi rabbit hole. Number 6,
03:50 The Babysitter. The Babysitter is the best-reviewed movie of MCG's entire career,
03:56 with the director usually associated with big-budget and generally terrible studio blockbusters
04:01 finding a new lease of creative life in the most surprising of places thanks to Netflix's
04:06 low-budget horror-comedy. All of the setup leans so heavily into the established formula for the
04:10 team comedy that the eventual descent into madness comes spectacularly out of the blue,
04:15 as a 12-year-old kid with a crush on his babysitter discovers that along with all of
04:19 her impossibly attractive friends, she just happens to be part of a devil-worshipping cult
04:24 intent on making a sacrifice. It might come out of nowhere, but the tonal change ultimately makes
04:29 sense in the context of the movie, as The Babysitter reveals that the influencers on its
04:34 sleeve are less John Hughes and more John Carpenter. Number 5, Million Dollar Baby.
04:40 The boxing drama has always been one of the sports movie's best subgenres when handled correctly,
04:45 but Million Dollar Baby upends the archetypal nature of the story on its head by making the
04:51 pugilistic nature one of the least important aspects of the narrative. A lot of people would
04:55 have no doubt been expecting a female-driven spin on the rocky formula that would follow our
05:00 determined heroine on a quest for redemption. Instead, a nasty accident during a fight leaves
05:05 Hilary Swank's Maggie paralyzed and Million Dollar Baby morphs into a somber drama that
05:09 reflects on uncomfortable ideas like euthanasia and mortality, instead of relying on the genre's
05:15 staple of training montages and improbable comebacks. Number 4, Psycho.
05:20 Alfred Hitchcock definitely was no stranger from pulling the rug out of unsuspecting audiences,
05:25 and despite such a legendary career, he never managed to do it better than he did here in Psycho.
05:30 As well as providing one of the earliest campaigns to encourage people not to share spoilers that
05:35 would have blown the reveal that the biggest name in the movie was about to be subject to one of
05:39 cinema's most iconic death scenes, the idea of Psycho itself as a slasher seemed to come out
05:44 of nowhere. All of the build-up and payoff made it seem as though we were in line for a crime
05:49 thriller, as a big stash of money is stolen and our heroine goes on the run, holding up in the
05:53 Bates Motel. That being said, underestimating the master of suspense was definitely a fool's game,
05:59 and the detour into horror territory became yet another classic example of Hitchcock toying with
06:04 people's expectations and their emotions. Number 3, Sunshine.
06:10 Sunshine remains one of Danny Boyle's most divisive movies, and definitely bombed at the
06:14 box office for good measure after earning $32 million worldwide, but we should have known
06:19 better than to expect a straightforward sci-fi with the genre-hopping Boyle at the helm and Alex
06:24 Garland on scripting duties. It's a psychological and existential space story to begin with,
06:30 but as the crew of the ship begins to unravel, it becomes clear that something sinister is afoot.
06:34 But it would be safe to assume that not a lot of people were expecting Sunshine to reveal itself
06:38 as a slasher movie, with a murderous and skinless Mark Strong picking them off one by one. Splitting
06:45 opinion right down the middle, some people thought that it ruined the movie, and others thought that
06:49 it was a welcome change of pace after the exposition-heavy first half. But one thing that
06:53 everybody agreed on was they never saw it coming. Number 2, Predator.
06:58 With his reputation as the action genre's biggest star firmly established following The Terminator,
07:03 Commando, and Raw Deal, audiences were expecting a standard Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle based on
07:08 the marketing for Predator, which focused on the uber-macho ensemble of veteran soldiers.
07:14 So far, so familiar. And as we were introduced to our cast of memorable supporting characters,
07:18 they made their way through the jungle, blowing s*** up and gunning down an army of faceless goons
07:22 in the process. However, one heat-vision shot of a massive claw later, and Predator the film was
07:28 turned upside down. The invisible extraterrestrial picked off the team one by one, and what had
07:33 initially seemed like a standard 'Arnie goes on a one-man rescue mission' soon pivoted into hard
07:38 sci-fi that saw the big Austrian facing off with an eight-foot-tall alien with mandibles and a
07:44 bloodlust for human trophies instead. And number 1, From Dusk Till Dawn.
07:49 Close friends and frequent collaborators Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez found their
07:53 respective success through very different mediums, with the former famed for his razor-sharp writing
07:58 and reliance on the crime genre, while the latter was a jack-of-all-trades willing to try his hand
08:02 at almost anything. From Dusk Till Dawn best sums up the differences between them,
08:07 with Tarantino writing and Rodriguez directing a movie that showcases both of their filmmaking
08:12 personalities. The first half is a classic Tarantino crime thriller full of whip-smart dialogue and
08:17 astute in-character observation, but as soon as the unlikely travel buddies show up at the
08:22 titty-twister, all bets are off. As soon as we see our first set of fangs, From Dusk Till Dawn
08:27 goes completely bat-sh*t insane and never lets up, with the wild genre flip resulting in one
08:32 of the most deranged and gloriously enjoyable B-movies of the 1990s.
08:37 And there we go my friends, those were 10 movies that completely switched genre halfway through.
08:41 I hope that you enjoyed that and please let me know what you thought about it down in the
08:44 comments section below. As always I've been Jules, you can go follow me over on Twitter @RetroJ but
08:48 the O is a 0 and the same for Instagram, @RetroJ but the O is a 0. But before I go, I just want to
08:54 say one thing. Hope that you're treating yourself well my friend, because we can all go through
08:58 periods in our life where we feel like we need a change and you know what, as we explore today,
09:02 sometimes changing genres or changing texts in our life is not a bad thing. It can sometimes
09:07 take a lot of work and can feel like an uphill struggle but trust me, if you feel like you can
09:10 do yourself better, if you feel like you can achieve your best life by changing direction,
09:15 then I encourage you to do so. Just try and do it in a healthy way and at your own pace, alright?
09:19 Big love to you. As always I've been Jules, you have been awesome,
09:23 never forget that and I'll speak to you soon. Bye.