While there were plenty of great 2000s action movies, there are also a lot of genre outings from the era that deserve a remake. Sometimes, filmmakers need to take a second shot at a story to make the premise really shine. Some movies, in spite of their failures, actually had great potential – if handled correctly.
Whether it because of a poor script, a horrible casting choice, or a creative decision that went in the wrong direction, several great movie premises were unfortunately wasted. This led to a string of bad films in the 2000s. In the cases of at least a few of these films, modern remakes could finally do their central concepts justice.
10 Catwoman
Batman’s on-again, off-again love interest Catwoman deserves a great movie, but 2004’s disastrous Halle Berry vehicle wasn’t it. The 2004 movie inexplicably reinvented Catwoman’s entire backstory, giving her unnecessary superpowers and wasting Berry’s star power with a silly story about unethical cosmetic companies. After 2022’s The Batman proved Catwoman could be a compelling lead character in her own right, 2004’s solo adventure deserves a remake that fixes the many mistakes of the iconic anti-heroine’s earlier screen incarnation.
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9 DOA: Dead Or Alive
2006’s DOA: Dead Or Alive provided little hope for the future of movies based on video games. A brainless action thriller that was too goofy to take seriously but not funny enough to work as self-parody, DOA: Dead Or Alive managed to make the game’s premise into an unwatchable box office bomb. The idea of an Enter the Dragon-type story centered on four female martial artists in the vein of Bruce Lee could have worked out better than it did.
8 After the Sunset
While not all of Pierce Brosnan’s James Bond movies were great, the actor still had charisma to spare. Despite this, 2004’s After the Sunset still managed to waste the screen veteran, Salma Hayek, and Woody Harrelson in a crime caper about a beleaguered FBI agent chasing a pair of glamorous jewel thieves. This heist movie’s cat-and-mouse plot had potential, but After the Sunset wasted its killer cast with a predictable story. As such, the Brett Ratner movie could be worth a remake, perhaps with the same actors.
7 Alone in the Dark
Like DOA: Dead Or Alive, Alone in the Dark is a vintage video game that seems perfectly suited for a screen adaptation. However, 2005’s live-action incarnation of the classic game lost all of its scares, thrills, and fast-paced action heroics in the journey to the big screen. With that in mind, a future attempt at adapting this classic, atmospheric action/horror/thriller game could lead to a much better result. Since the original Alone in the Dark is considered one of the worst movies ever made, the filmmakers shouldn’t struggle to outdo the 2005 flop.
6 Bulletproof Monk
The premise of Bulletproof Monk sounds like the blueprint for an action movie classic, with an ordinary street punk learning martial arts from an enigmatic, immortal kung fu master so that he can protect a vital scroll. However, while this martial arts movie could have been a classic, Bulletproof Monk fell flat upon release. Chow Yun-fat’s considerable martial arts skills were wasted while Seann William Scott was miscast in the lead role, resulting in a movie that could be worthwhile if it was remade with more fitting contemporary stars.
5 Taxi
Queen Latifah and Jimmy Fallon were terribly miscast in Taxi, a critically abhorred 2004 action-comedy that failed to live up to its French predecessor. However, the movie’s premise is still superb as Taxi paired a loose-cannon police officer banned from driving with a wisecracking taxi driver. There is a reason the original French movie spawned a series and, with a classic buddy cop duo, a Taxi remake could still be a great action comedy.
4 Vantage Point
In spite of the potential that comes with re-framing an assassination attempt from various perspectives, 2008’s Vantage Point did nothing new with this idea. Despite its acknowledged creative debt to Rashomon, Vantage Point is a surprisingly dull effort that wastes a huge, diverse cast. A more fast-paced remake could integrate all manner of social media footage into proceedings to make the mystery harder to discern and the twists less predictable.
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3 88 Minutes
Like Vantage Point, 88 Minutes was an action-thriller that arrived too soon. This real-time crime thriller was a boring dud, but the idea behind the movie is great. Al Pacino’s detective had the titular time frame left to live, and he needed to unmask his would-be killer within this brief window if he wanted to survive. A remake that hews closer to director Brian Taylor’s 00s action masterpiece Crank could be great fun where 88 Minutes was too self-serious and listless to succeed.
2 The Man
The Man paired Samuel L Jackson’s tough-as-nails ATF agent with Eugene Levy’s mild-mannered salesman and sent the duo on an adventure to uncover who killed the former’s partner. The laughs never came in the 2005 buddy cop movie, but the same story could succeed with an R-rating, a harder edge, and higher stakes. If The Man’s remake felt more like a more unhinged spin on Lethal Weapon, the re-imagining could be as solid as Midnight Run, 1986’s Running Scared, or any of the other vintage action comedies that the original movie riffed on.
1 Stealth
Stealth couldn’t help but feel a little silly when it arrived in cinemas back in 2005, and this could have contributed to the action-thriller’s disastrous box office failure. The idea of an experimental aircraft going rogue and attacking its creators just felt too unbelievable, but unmanned drone technology has come so far since 2005 that this would-be blockbuster’s premise of a killer AI plane is no longer inherently ludicrous. Since Top Gun: Maverick proved escapist war movies still have box office appeal, this is another one of the 2000s action movies perfectly primed for a remake.
