I Am Number Four

Twenty-plus script notes on I Am Number Four. This is, seriously, the most poorly-written blockbuster movie I've ever seen. I mean, Battleship is bad, but it's mediocre bad. Tron: Legacy, Cowboys & Aliens, you can see how the scripts came across as serviceable, if uninspired. But with IA4, you could literally just do some Find And Replace on the screenplay, remove one character, give one's lines to another, and you'd instantly have a stronger movie.

I'm willing to bet this is just a case of crappy material in the first place, as the book was an uninspired cash-in on Harry Potter to begin with, but having the creators of Smallville do the adaptation couldn't have helped (it has literally the exact same uber-bland Clark/Lana/Whitney triangle from the first season of the show). Marti "under-Whedon" Noxon was also involved; she's controversial, but I think she did something to try and right the ship. The villains are fun in a decidedly Buffy sort of way, even if that also means we can blame the store-brand Faith Lehane on her.

Anyway, the movie's bad and you should feel bad.