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 are expected to feature,
00:11 and even the most innovative examples tend to stay pretty close to at least a few conventions.
00:16 The more genres you try to add into the melting pot, the more difficult it becomes to balance them successfully,
00:21 and in plenty of cases, trying too hard to bring 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 creative team
00:33 simply decided to just down tools halfway through, tear up the script, and set the rest of the narrative in another genre entirely.
00:40 And that's what we're here to talk about today, as I'm Jules, this is WhatCulture.com,
00:44 and these are 10 movies that completely switched genre halfway through.
00:48 Number 10, Hancock.
00:49 Now on paper, Hancock had the potential to be a phenomenal deconstruction of the superhero genre,
00:55 with the focus being placed on an all-powerful being who, by all intents and purposes, was, well, a bit of a dick.
01:00 Unfortunately, this was during the time when star Will Smith was steadfast in his refusal to deviate from his established screen persona during the summer months,
01:08 so despite a hugely promising first act, the movie soon devolved into the standard tropes that we'd seen a thousand times before.
01:16 Hancock makes the switch from exploring what forces a superhero into becoming an alcoholic layabout with no interest in saving the day,
01:23 to a formulaic tale of two characters with the same powers using them in a third act showdown heavy on visual effects.
01:30 The tonal change was clearly a studio-mandated one, and it sinks the whole movie down as a result.
01:35 Number 9, Hot Fuzz.
01:37 From a box office perspective, Hot Fuzz was by far the most successful of the Three Flavors Cornetto trilogy,
01:43 earning more in theaters than Shaun of the Dead and The World's End put together - more on that later.
01:48 And a lot of that had to do with the third act venture into 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'd come to expect from Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, and Nick Frost,
02:03 but it still came as a surprise when the action movie references directly led to a pivot towards the kind of high-octane action and shootouts
02:11 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.
02:21 Now let's take a look at the closer of the Cornetto's Holy Trinity,
02:24 because we're back with the next collaboration between Edgar Wright, Nick Frost, and Simon Pegg with The World's End,
02:29 which went full-on apocalyptic sci-fi after spending the first half setting both the stage and the character dynamics.
02:35 The coming-of-middle-age comedy draws a surprising amount of pathos among the laughs,
02:40 with Simon Pegg's performance in particular one of the best of his career.
02:44 But it still came a little out of the blue when Wright decided to go 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 the leeway to drastically increase the level of violence without alarming the censors.
03:01 And after zombies and buddy cop movies, science fiction seemed like the next logical step for the Cornetto trilogy.
03:07 Number 7, The Prestige.
03:09 Watching The Prestige for the first time, you get drawn in by Christopher Nolan's meticulous attention to detail,
03:14 and an intriguing mystery narrative that seems poised to answer more and more questions as the story progresses.
03:20 But eventually we discover that the movie is a lot more than just your average standard period piece.
03:25 The rivalry between Hugh Jackman's Robert and Christian Bale's Alfred gets more and more intense,
03:30 and with each new reveal we're as stumped as the magicians themselves as to how they keep pulling off such impressive feats of both personal and professional sleight of hand.
03:39 The introduction of David Bowie's Nikola Tesla hints at something far more fantastical,
03:43 and the twists and turns do not stop coming as The Prestige heads deeper and deeper down the sci-fi rabbit hole.
03:50 Number 6, The Babysitter.
03:52 The Babysitter is the best-reviewed movie of MCG's entire career,
03:57 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 low-budget horror comedy.
04:07 All of the setup leans so heavily into the established formula for the team comedy
04:12 that the eventual descent into madness comes spectacularly out of the blue,
04:16 as a 12-year-old kid with a crush on his babysitter discovers that along with all of her impossibly attractive friends,
04:21 she just happens to be part of a devil-worshipping cult intent on making a sacrifice.
04:26 It might come out of nowhere, but the tonal change ultimately makes sense in the context of the movie,
04:32 as The Babysitter reveals that the influencers on its sleeve are less John Hughes and more John Carpenter.
04:38 Number 5, Million Dollar Baby.
04:41 The boxing drama has always been one of the sports movie's best sub-genres when handled correctly,
04:46 but Million Dollar Baby upends the archetypal nature of the story on its head
04:50 by making the pugilistic nature one of the least important aspects of the narrative.
04:55 A lot of people would have no doubt been expecting a female-driven spin on the rocky formula
04:59 that would follow our determined heroine on a quest for redemption.
05:02 Instead, a nasty accident during a fight leaves Hilary Swank's Maggie, paralyzed, and Million Dollar Baby morphs
05:08 into a somber drama that reflects on uncomfortable ideas like euthanasia and mortality,
05:13 instead of relying on the genre's staple of training montages and improbable comebacks.
05:19 Number 4, Psycho.
05:21 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.
05:31 As well as providing one of the earliest campaigns to encourage people not to share spoilers that would have blown the reveal
05:36 that the biggest name in the movie was about to be subject to one of cinema's most iconic death scenes,
05:41 the idea of Psycho itself as a slasher seemed to come out of nowhere.
05:45 All of the build-up and payoff made it seem as though we were in line for a crime thriller,
05:49 as a big stash of money is stolen and our heroine goes on the run, holding up in the Bates Motel.
05:55 That being said, underestimating the master of suspense was definitely a fool's game,
06:00 and the detour into horror territory became yet another classic example of Hitchcock toying with people's expectations and their emotions.
06:08 Number 3, Sunshine.
06:10 Sunshine remains one of Danny Boyle's most divisive movies, and definitely bombed at the box office for good measure after earning $32 million worldwide.
06:19 But we should have known better than to expect a straightforward sci-fi with the genre-hopping Boyle at the helm and Alex Garland on scripting duties.
06:27 It's a psychological and existential space story to begin with, but as the crew of the ship begins to unravel, it becomes clear that something sinister is afoot.
06:35 But it would be safe to assume that not a lot of people were expecting Sunshine to reveal itself as a slasher movie,
06:40 with a murderous and skinless Mark Strong picking them off one by one.
06:45 Splitting opinion right down the middle, some people thought that it ruined the movie, and others thought that it was a welcome change of pace after the exposition-heavy first half.
06:53 But one thing that everybody agreed on was that they never saw it coming.
06:57 Number 2, Predator.
06:58 With its reputation as the action genre's biggest star firmly established following The Terminator, Commando, and Raw Deal,
07:05 audiences were expecting a standard Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle based on the marketing for Predator, which focused on the uber-macho ensemble of veteran soldiers.
07:14 So far, so familiar.
07:15 And as we were introduced to our cast of memorable supporting characters, they made their way through the jungle,
07:20 blowing s*** up and gunning down an army of faceless goons in the process.
07:23 However, one heat-vision shot of a massive claw later, and Predator the film was turned upside down.
07:30 The invisible extraterrestrial picked off the team one by one, and what had initially seemed like a standard "Arnie goes on a one-man rescue" mission,
07:37 soon pivoted into hard sci-fi that saw the big Austrian facing off with an 8-foot tall alien with mandibles and a bloodlust for human trophies instead.
07:46 And number 1, From Dusk Till Dawn.
07:49 Close friends and frequent collaborators Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez found their respective success through very different mediums,
07:56 with the former famed for his razor-sharp writing and reliance on the crime genre,
08:00 while the latter was a jack-of-all-trades willing to try his hand at almost anything.
08:04 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 personalities.
08:13 The first half is a classic Tarantino crime thriller full of whip-smart dialogue and astute in-character observation.
08:19 But as soon as the unlikely travel buddies show up at the titty-twister, all bets are off.
08:24 As soon as we see our first set of fangs, From Dusk Till Dawn goes completely batshit insane and never lets up,
08:31 with the wild genre flip resulting in one 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 comments section below.
08:45 As always, I've been Jules, you can go follow me over on Twitter @RetroJay but the O is a 0,
08:49 and the same for Instagram, @RetroJay but the O is a 0.
08:54 But before I go, I just want to say one thing.
08:56 Hope that you're treating yourself well my friend, because we can all go through periods in our life where we feel like we need a change,
09:00 and you know what, as we explored today, sometimes changing genres or changing tacks in our life is not a bad thing.
09:06 It can sometimes take a lot of work and can feel like an uphill struggle,
09:09 but trust me, if you feel like you can 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.
09:17 Just try and do it in a healthy way and at your own pace, alright?
09:20 Big love to you.
09:21 As always, I've been Jules, you have been awesome, never forget that, and I'll speak to you soon.