Quote · The Rest Is Entertainment
What's In A Name? The Worst Movie Titles Ever
Where this was said
Listener Q: Why Do Films End Up With Terrible Titles?
At 25:24 · chapter starts 20:37
Chris Rand's question about films with poor box office results and bad titles — he cites I Love Boosters and Crime 101 — prompts Richard to develop a full critical taxonomy of terrible film titles. He acknowledges confirmation bias first: bad titles can be retrofitted as causes of failure after the fact, as with The Shawshank Redemption, which Tim Robbins reportedly feared was too much of a tongue-twister [2] — Richard Osman "Shawshank Redemption: bad title, great film: Tim Robbins reportedly felt The Shawshank Redemption was a tongue-twisting, uncommercial title…" 22:13 . But genuine patterns exist. Generic blandness — John Carter — leaves the audience with no hook. Franchise over-explanation (Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania) signals exhaustion rather than excitement. Ludicrous grandeur (Quantum of Solace) alienates without intriguing. And the deadliest category: genre misdirection [1] — Richard Osman "Bad film titles fall into recognisable types: generic blandness (John Carter), franchise over-explanation (Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumani…" 21:08 . The Constant Gardener sounds like a Jane Campion art film about a prisoner; it is a John le Carré spy thriller — but le Carré would never allow a title change, and without his name on a cinema marquee, Ralph Fiennes is just a man doing something involving a tiny garden. Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire is cited as an extreme case of a subtitle forced by naming conflicts. Marina and Richard contrast these with the clarity of Barbie, Oppenheimer and A Minecraft Movie — titles where audiences know immediately what they're getting.
Bad film titles fall into recognisable types: generic blandness (John Carter), franchise over-explanation (Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania), ludicrous grandeur (Quantum of Solace), and the deadliest — suggesting the wrong genre entirely. The Constant Gardener sounds like a Jane Campion POW drama. It's a Le Carré spy thriller. No wonder it underperformed.
Tim Robbins reportedly felt The Shawshank Redemption was a tongue-twisting, uncommercial title — yet it became one of the most beloved films ever made.
One of the most extreme examples of a bad film title: 'Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire.' The unwieldy subtitle was added because another obscure film was already called Precious. The result was a title so cumbersome it became its own punchline — for a film that was genuinely brilliant.
The 2009 film starring Gabourey Sidibe was titled 'Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire' — an example of a title so ungainly it became its own punchline.
