Every year, studios chase a movie about a big issue which has a really nice plot. Mostly it looks like tech ethics, climate change, grief, trauma, violence, or inequality. These are real serious topics. But a film isn’t meaningful just because the subject matter is. It still needs clarity, structure, and characters that behave like human beings instead of mouthpieces.
In some films you can literally see what they were trying to do. You can see the message. You can see the intention. And you can see the moment where everything slips and the plot twists stop making sense. Here is a list of films that tried to say something real but in the end became a disappointing watch and proved how easily good intentions can derail a story.
10
‘The Circle’ (2017)
The Circle had everything going for it with a strong cast and a timely topic. It takes on data privacy, surveillance culture, and the way tech companies blur the line between innovation and control. It should’ve been the kind of movie that starts conversations because it apparently got everything right but it ended up feeling like a missed opportunity from the very first scene.
The story follows Mae (Emma Watson) as she joins a powerful tech company that claims to make the world safer through complete transparency. The problem is that the movie keeps repeating the same point without digging deeper. It never really explains how the system works or why people fall for it. And Tom Hanks, who plays the charismatic CEO, isn’t given enough material to turn his character into a real threat. The Circle tries to talk about issues that are actually relevant to all of us, yet it avoids taking a firm stance. By the end, it feels like the movie circled around its own theme instead of confronting it.
9
‘Mother/Android’ (2021)
Mother/Android was a movie about parenthood, survival, artificial intelligence, and moral responsibility all at once, but the story never settles long enough to share something meaningful about any of them. The setup shows a young couple, Georgia (Chloë Grace Moretz) and Sam (Algee Smith), who try to make it through a violent android uprising while she’s pregnant. There’s a real chance here to talk about what it means to bring a child into a collapsing world.
But the movie jumps between ideas without merging them. One moment it wants to be an emotional drama about two scared parents, and the next it tries to make broad statements about AI ethics and technology turning against humanity. None of these threads develops fully. The android rebellion itself is barely explained, so the story’s big warnings about technology was very superficial.
8
‘The Snowman’ (2017)
The Snowman is a thriller about systemic failure, trauma, and the way institutions overlook patterns of violence. Sounds serious, but the film version never finds its footing. Detective Harry Hole (Michael Fassbender) is meant to be a flawed and damaged investigator whose personal struggles reflect the broken system he’s working inside. But the movie barely explains his background, so his behavior feels extremely random. The film hints at themes like domestic abuse, cycles of violence, and failures in law enforcement, yet all of these ideas feel out of proportion.
Production issues are obvious. Entire plotlines feel missing, characters disappear without explanation, and the pacing jumps from slow to rushed within minutes. When a movie is dealing with topics like violence against women and institutional neglect, that lack of coherence makes it worses. The story ends up trivializing the very issues it wants to highlight.
7
‘Downsizing’ (2017)
Downsizing starts off with an interesting idea that if humans could shrink themselves to five inches tall, they’d use fewer resources and help the planet survive. This is a sharp social satire on climate change, inequality, and the promises of easy solutions. But the movie completely fails to to give this message.
Paul Safranek (Matt Damon) is supposed to represent the ordinary person searching for a better life in a collapsing world. The film sets him up for a story about economic pressure and environmental guilt, but once he shrinks, suddenly the movie becomes a commentary on class division, then a romantic drama, and then a story about global catastrophe. None of these threads connect naturally. The biggest problem is that the film treats its serious topics in a strangely casual way. Environmental collapse is reduced to background noise and conversations about wealth inequality barely scratch the surface.
6
‘Music’ (2021)
Music tries to be a heartfelt drama about disability, addiction, and family, but it approaches these themes without the understanding they deserve. The story follows Zu (Kate Hudson), a recovering addict who suddenly becomes the caretaker of her autistic half-sister, Music (Maddie Ziegler). The film clearly wants to talk about responsibility, compassion, and the challenges of caregiving, but its execution is misguided from the start.
The portrayal of autism is its biggest, most well-known problem. The makers casted a neurotypical actor to perform exaggerated, unrealistic behaviors and the film feels disconnected from Music as a real person. Somehow they stripped away the humanity of the character they claimed to spotlight. The narrative also tries to juggle multiple serious themes addiction, relapse, grief, and mental health but it handles each one in surface-level ways. Zu’s struggle for stability isrushed, and the film jumps through different themes but none of it develops naturally.
5
‘The Goldfinch’ (2019)
The Goldfinch aimed to be a thoughtful story about trauma, grief, and the long shadow of childhood tragedy. It is based on Donna Tartt’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel but the film struggles to translate that into something coherent. Theo Decker, played as a child by Oakes Fegley and as an adult by Ansel Elgort, survives a bombing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
That experience is supposed to shape every part of his life, from his guilt to his relationships to his choices as an adult. But the film jumps back and forth between timelines very quickly. You understand what happened to him, but you never truly feel it, and that distance weakens everything the movie tries to say about trauma. The story also touches on topics of addiction, loss, art theft, found family, and identity, too many major themes for a film that doesn’t give any of them the time they deserve.
4
‘Don’t Look Up’ (2021)
Don’t Look Up again, is a sharp satire about climate change, political polarization, and media distraction, but its message gets lost because everything is pushed to an extreme. The story follows astronomers Dr. Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) as they discover a comet that will wipe out Earth. Instead of treating it like the global emergency it is, the world turns it into a spectacle.
The film brings up very real issues for instance, the way science is dismissed, how politicians prioritize image over action, and how entertainment overshadows everything. But the execution is so exaggerated that the seriousness of the topics gets buried under jokes. President Orlean (Meryl Streep) represents political self-interest, the media hosts represent shallow news culture, and tech billionaire Peter Isherwell (Mark Rylance) performs a symbol of corporate detachment. They all make sense thematically, but the film rarely lets them as real human beings. Don’t Look Up has important things to say, but its loud, scattered approach makes the issues feel less thoughtful.
3
‘The Book of Henry’ (2017)
The Book of Henry is one of those films that looks like it’s building towards something meaningful but the way it handles these themes makes it confusing. The story is about Henry (Jaeden Martell), an incredibly intelligent boy who discovers that the girl next door is being abused. After he becomes terminally ill, he leaves behind a detailed plan for his mother, Susan (Naomi Watts), to carry out.
The problem is that the film treats these serious topics with an almost whimsical tone that doesn’t match the gravity of the situation. One moment, it’s a quirky family drama about a gifted child; the next, it shifts into a thriller where Henry’s mother is expected to follow her son’s blueprint for murder. The tonal jump is so sudden that the moral decision the movie asks the audience to accept, doesn’t land well with people.
2
‘Collateral Beauty’ (2016)
Collateral Beauty is a gentle, emotional film about grief, but the way it explores the subject ends up feeling manipulative and strangely detached from real human emotion. Will Smith plays Howard, a man who loses his daughter and retreats completely from his life. His coworkers, worried about their company and their own roles, hire actors to play Love (Keira Knightley), Time (Jacob Latimore), and Death (Helen Mirren) to confront him.
This setup could have been a heartfelt way to show Howard processing his grief, but the film makes a major mistake. It frames his suffering as a problem his coworkers need to solve for business reasons. Their plan, secretly filming him and editing the actors out to make him appear unstable, is uncomfortable to watch and looks like a massive breach of trust. Maybe the film wanted to show how people cope after unimaginable loss, but soon Collateral Beauty lost sight of the very grief it’s tried to honor.
1
‘Lucy’ (2014)
Lucy is built around a profound concept, the idea that humans use only 10% of their brains and using more would turn someone into a higher form of being. The problem is that the entire premise is based on a myth, and is shown as scientific truth. Because of that, everything that follows feels disconnected from reality, even though the movie presents itself like it’s tackling deep questions about human potential.
The story follows Lucy (Scarlett Johansson) after she’s forced to transport a synthetic drug that leaks into her system. As her brain capacity increases, she gains abilities like controlling electronics, altering matter, and traveling through time. These scenes are visually striking, but the movie keeps insisting that what’s happening is an evolution in neuroscience.The film also tries to explore ideas about consciousness, memory, and human connection, especially through Lucy’s conversations with Professor Norman (Morgan Freeman). But these discussions stay on the surface and have no scientific value. Watching Lucy is so disappointing because you feel it could have been a great film but still it missed it.
Lucy
- Release Date
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July 25, 2014
- Runtime
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90minutes
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