4

Quantum Of Solace and Spectre

Casino Royale is a great origin story for Bond. In the post-Batman Begins era, when every action hero seems to require reinvention in some suitably gritty, self-aware way, Casino Royale managed to feel like an organic piece of storytelling, and not the product of a film executive demanding that all jokes be cut and replaced by monologues about vague suffering. But after Casino Royale, we got Quantum Of Solace, which was about ... water shortages? Look, I'm not saying that we need to go back to the days of Bond using a remote-control helicopter to drop a bald, kitten-loving villain into a smokestack, but maybe give us something with a bit more whimsy than an unscrupulous utility company.

Spectre, on the other hand, was all about trying to make you believe that this was the biggest thing to happen to Bond ever. Remember every Daniel Craig Bond movie? The main bad guy in Spectre was secretly behind all of that. All the villains worked for Spectre and somehow failed to mention that. Remember every chase scene and fight sequence and doomed makeout session? They all led to THIS, Mr. Bond, because Spectre is important, goddammit. It is. Every plot twist in Spectre feels like the boast of a deluded child. "You say your uncle works for Nintendo? Well, my uncle IS a Nintendo."

The switch is easy: Give Quantum Of Solace just a tiny bit of the rampaging "You thought you knew James Bond. Think again" bluster that Spectre had. Just something to indicate that I'm watching a real, awesome James Bond movie, and not the James Bond equivalent of a phone call to his bill collection company. "The price of water is going to go up? Well, I certainly can't have that. I'm James Bond. Can I speak to a manager? I'm James Bond."

And then take Spectre down a notch with some of that classic Quantum Of Solace disappointment. I mean that in the best way possible. Bond has fought a ton of villainous organizations over the years, but Spectre has always been number one. They kicked over his sand castles, stole his prom date, and threatened the safety of that world he lives in. They're significant. But we don't need to flip the whole James Bond table over when we explain why they're significant.

3

Blade And Blade: Trinity

I love the Blade films like they're my children. If I ever do have children, my first will technically be my fourth, because I became a proud father in 1998, when Blade came out. But like any father, I was a little disappointed when my beloved son didn't quite stick the landing at the end of the movie. After 100 minutes of bloody, grimy hand-to-hand combat, a bunch of dudes exploded into skeletons and went inside the evil Deacon Frost. What? Why now? I'm not going to cry out for realism in my vampire movie, as "spirit skeletons with wings" will always come out of nowhere, but it's definitely a shift. This is followed by a short fight between Deacon and Blade, the greatest line in movie history, and a needle being spin-kicked into Deacon's face.

At the end of Blade: Trinity, however, Blade is taking on Dracula. Fucking Dracula. And the climactic scene between a vampire hunter and the ultimate vampire is ... a very simple fight. Wesley Snipes grunts and kicks. Dracula grunts and punches. Grunting and kicking are on Blade's resume, but you'd think that during a final confrontation with Dracula, the filmmakers would put some icing on the cake. Also, it kind of makes Dracula look bad. He's been a symbol of nearly unstoppable terror in dozens of films, but as it turns out, the secret all along has been to kick him, like, a lot.

If anything, the ending of the first Blade should've been a dozen minutes of Blade slowly chopping the shit out of Deacon Frost, followed, of course, by the greatest line in history. It fits the tone of film to cap it off with a measured ass-kicking, and not a headfirst dive into the bottom of a pool of craziness. That should've been saved for Blade: Trinity. Of course, we all dreamed of Blade turning into a ten-part series, with each installment somehow outdoing the last in terms of Blade quips and undead decapitations. But it's starting to look like we might not get that, which means that Blade: Trinity might as well have gone all-out in its attempt to make Dracula look like something more than a buff dude who hates smiles. Flying bones coming out of bodies, little bats that turn into people when they come inside, Blade singing the soundtrack as he does literally anything in the movie -- you name it and I'd honestly be fine with it. It's Blade: Trinity. It's not like you're gonna make it worse.

2

Godzilla 1998 And Godzilla 2014

The 1998 Godzilla is pretty infamous for taking Godzilla, a creature that blurs the line between radioactive science and mythology, and ripping every ounce of mysticism from it. The biggest plot point of the movie is the revelation that Godzilla is asexual, and because this is a film that was made in 1998, a lead character responds with "Where's the fun in that?" The cast of characters, with personality traits like "has a funny name," "carries camera," and "French," scream most of their lines, and remain engaging simply because, in a movie about a giant atomic monster rampaging through New York City, they're still the loudest things on screen.

On the other hand, the 2014 Godzilla can't decide whether it wants to provide a science-y look at Godzilla or a folkloric one, and so it drops the former completely about two-thirds of the way through. This is hard on the lead characters -- a soldier, his scientist dad, and another science dude -- as they are not really good for anything other than reading Godzilla-related encyclopedia entries out loud in order to progress the plot.

So why not switch them? The cast of the 1998 Godzilla is in no way prepared to handle a storyline that requires them to take lectures in Kaiju biology seriously. They're self-aware in that bizarre late '90s way, where every serious situation needs someone, preferably Martin Lawrence, shouting a punchline to prove that they, like you, aren't actually invested in what's going on. They're way too cool for that. So just stick that cast in the 2014 Godzilla, where they can scream and shout and run around while awesome monsters wrestle in the background.

And if you put the straight-faced cast of the 2014 film in the 1998 film, you'd be able to take the movie seriously, or at least appreciate the movie for taking itself seriously. That cast is perfect for longwinded conversations about Godzilla's sex life. It includes Bryan Cranston, who is watchable in anything -- doubly so if that anything happens to include a very passionate proclamation about monster boners.

1

X-Men: The Last Stand And X-Men: Apocalypse

X-Men: The Last Stand never quite gets as big as it wants you to think it is. Jean Grey has turned bad, Magneto is moving the Golden Gate bridge, and you have the Juggernaut! But on the flip side, Magneto's team has gone from rogues like Mystique and Toad to Multiple Man and a dude with quills. Wait, let me check Google to see what his name was. I bet it's "Quill." Yep, it's Quill. Never change, X-Men.