5

The Phantom Menace And The Force Awakens

The biggest issue with The Phantom Menace isn't Jar Jar Binks. Nor is it "Now THIS is podracing," though that is the quote I hear just before I wake up screaming for the mercy of any deity that will listen. No, the big problem is that in the realm of Star Wars, which is built around huge themes and climactic battles and unforgettable characters, The Phantom Menace seems to be kind of about nothing. There are trade regulations and a kid that might do something later and Liam Neeson's haircut. These are the only things that we're really given to latch onto. The rest is just a smattering of weirdness. The main villain is a ninja vampire with lightsabers that he duct-taped together, which is a far cry from the lumbering menace of Darth Vader.

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."

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.

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.

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.

Anyway, it kind of dampens the mood when you have a trilogy-ending battle between Magneto and the X-Men, and the number-one guy on Magneto's side is a Juggernaut who shouts things like "I'M THE WRONG GUY TO PLAY HIDE AND SEEK WITH!" before knocking himself out when he runs into a wall. And then Magneto loses his power, Hugh Jackman cries over Jean Grey's dead body, and that's about it. This is the "last stand?" Aw, man. That's, um, that's unfortunate.

And it's the exact opposite of X-Men: Apocalypse, which in all things goes stupid. Throwing in every X-Man that it can get the rights to, X-Men: Apocalypse is the closest that we'll ever get to a live-action version of a really mediocre episode of the '90s cartoon. Classic X-Men characters seemingly come out of the fucking walls to join a plot that they're instantly an important part of. And it all ends with the extremely RPG-esque climax of all of the X-Men shooting their respective lasers at Apocalypse in order to stop him. The characters are just moments away from checking their pockets for healing items, and it doesn't feel out of place because there is not a single scene in X-Men: Apocalypse that isn't at least covered in a thin layer of dumb.