Bad Movie Creation Matrix

[JaseSF]

And here's some options for a Twist Ending:

1) The End is Really Just the Beginning
2) While it doesn't look like it, these events really did take place on a futuristic Earth
3) The monster in actuality has good intentions behind his actions only our protagonists are blind to them until the very end.
4) The lead villain is in reality the hero's parent, old friend or some other family member.
5) The monster spawns more monsters...unexpected offspring suddenly become part of the equation.
6) The lead hero suddenly comes to the realization he/she isn't human at all but in fact...

[Inyarear]

You know, I remember Mad Magazine doing a feature something like this years ago. The way it worked, though, couldn't be fully automated the way these matrices could (and have been, via things like the George Bush Conspiracy Theory Generator).

Basically, what Mad Magazine did was come up with various premises for movies, and then make up potential plot summaries for each based on different movie genres. The premises were given as headers for the rows while the movie genres were given as headers for the columns.

Although they were meant to be funny, some of the resulting plot summaries were actually pretty good. For example, there was the plot based on the premise that a man's doctor tells him he has six months to live. What does he do next? If the movie's a slapstick comedy, the man lives it up, blows all his cash, and then learns that the diagnosis was wrong and he's most likely going to live a long and healthy life.

That's not a bad idea for a movie, right? In fact, somebody has probably already made a movie just like that, though I can't think of one that uses this exact premise. (If there were one, though, I bet it would star Jim Carrey as the supposedly terminal guy.)

Using Mad Magazine's premise/genre matrix, I found it's easy to come up with all kinds of ideas for movies, both very good and very laughably bad. Here are the movie ideas I got from just one premise using this method:

Premise:
A college boy meets his fiancee's oddball family for the very first time.

Genres:
1. Family Flick
2. Action Flick
3. Fantasy Flick
4. Sci-fi Flick
5. Chick Flick (Romantic Comedy)
6. Slapstick Comedy
7. Slasher Flick
8. Anime Movie

Plot Summaries:

1. The girl's relatives don't like the boy very much because they all think he's weird, but he's such a nice and resourceful boy that they eventually warm up to him.

2. During his visit, terrorists invade the family home and take them all hostage. Becoming an unlikely hero, the boy manages to rescue everyone and kill the terrorists. Naturally, the family has no objections whatsoever to the marriage after this.

3. The girl's family turn out to be elven royalty from a magical world. In order to win the hand of their beloved princess in marriage, the boy must go on a quest for a mystical artifact in their homeland.

4. The girl and her family are all actually space aliens disguised as humans. The girl's brilliant relations proceed to experiment on the happy couple's genes in an effort to make them genetically compatible enough to have children.

5. The boy and girl are from wildly different cultures. A major culture clash causes hilarious hijinks to ensue at their wedding as the families of the bride and groom struggle to adapt their differing customs to each other.

6. During the visit, the clumsy boy makes just about every mistake he possibly could; as a capper to the whole socially catastrophic evening, he accidentally burns the family's house to the ground. Inexplicably, they all like him anyway.

7. The family actually turns out to be a death cult, and the girl is just bait to bring in a lot of healthy young men to be human sacrifices. A struggle for survival ensues and the young man is the only one to escape their gruesome plans for him; everybody else gets killed in various grisly ways.

8. The girl has a lot of friendly relatives, and they all try so very hard to "help" the young couple with their relationship and their wedding plans that they very nearly wreck the whole affair in the process.

See how easy this is?