Formula Breaking Episode / Live-Action Films

• Halloween III: Season of the Witch ditches Michael Myers and instead has a story about evil masks that possess little children. The original plan was for a Genre Anthology film involving several unrelated stories, with the first just being longer. The movie tanked, and they haven't made another non-Michael version since.
  • It's also the last Halloween film that John Carpenter, who was not open to the idea of milking sequels, was associated with.
• Home Alone 3 takes place after Christmas, contrary to the other five Home Alone films taking place before.
• Titanic (1997) was this for James Cameron. He typically directs sci-fi films with a lot of action such as The Terminator, Aliens and Avatar so a tragic historical romance was a bit of an odd one out for him.
• Ruthless People is a departure from the usual fare from filmmaking team Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker, as it's their only film that isn't a spoof, but a more traditional farce.
• Scream:
  • Scream 3 is the only film in the series in which there is only one Ghostface, as opposed to there being two.
  • Scream VI also dispenses with the usual formula of there being two Ghostfaces. There are five — three official, and a pair of wannabes.
• The original Alien might count as this for Ridley Scott. His forte is either historical epics (Gladiator, Kingdom of Heaven) or films with overt feminist themes (Thelma & Louise, G.I. Jane), so a horror film in space stands out, though the original Alien still has feminist undertones as seen with Sigourney Weaver's character.
• Martin Scorsese has made something of a career out of this. Best known for crime thrillers (GoodFellas, Taxi Driver, Cape Fear, The Departed) or historical dramas (The Age of Innocence, Gangs of New York, Shutter Island), he also directed The Last Waltz (Rockumentary chronicling The Band's last concert), The Last Temptation of Christ (controversial re-telling of the Crucifixion), The Aviator (Biopic about Howard Hughes) and Hugo (all-ages period adventure). He also directed the video for Michael Jackson's "Bad". Most recently he has gone with Black Comedy The Wolf of Wall Street (about the notorious wall street scammer).
• The 1968 film The Party starred Peter Sellers.
  • And it was directed by Blake Edwards.
  • And it had music by Henry Mancini.
  • And it was released by The Mirisch Corporation.
    • They all worked on a certain film series together.
• Part of why the James Bond film Licence to Kill was poorly received in its original release (at least in the US) was how extremely atypical it was compared with previous Bond films. This time, Bond was not on a mission with MI6, fighting for king and country, he was on his own, fighting for himself and his friends in a Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
• This is explicitly stated to be the reason why Marvel made the Guardians of the Galaxy movie for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Each of the previous movies depict the origins of the Avengers, with top of the line Marvel characters such as Captain America and Thor, culminating in The Avengers movie. Guardians of the Galaxy is pretty much a gathering of C-list and D-list Marvel characters that nobody would have expected to be featured in a film.
• The 2014 Seltzer and Friedberg movie Best Night Ever is almost a total departure from their normal film style. For one while it is a comedy it isn't a spoof: while it is clearly influenced in style by The Hangover being set around a wild weekend in Vegas to celebrate an upcoming wedding it tells its own story with original characters. It also much more realistic, low key and character driven (!) than any previous Seltzer and Friedberg film with little to no pop culture reference and no cartoony humour. About the only traditional Seltzer and Friedberg touch is a lot of gross out humour and nudity.
• When the four Burton/Schumacher Batman films are taken into consideration, Batman Returns departs from the other three in a number of important ways. Bruce Wayne gets practically no Character Development, there is no Disposable Love Interest, hardly any character is likable or even relatable, and the ending is bittersweet at best.
• A Woman of Paris was considered to be a radical break from Charlie Chaplin's usual movies. It didn't feature him as a star and was an actual drama film with a few comedic moments in it. The audience didn't like it and as a result Chaplin was forced to go feature himself again in his future movies. Monsieur Verdoux was another break with tradition: a Black Comedy about a serial killer who murders women where he didn't play his familiar tramp character. Once again the audience didn't like it that much and it would only become a Cult Classic later.

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