Be literal and honest, but be vague.
For example:
An alien goes to earth where he poses as a newspaper writer to distract everyone from the fact that he wears tights.
Answer: Superman.
Now you try it but don't put the answer to see if we can guess the movie.
A man goes on to succeed in his workplace after life-saving surgery.
shareInspector Gadget
~~/o/
Pretty close.
shareROBOCOP
Inspector Gadget's grittier, less fun-loving brother.
~~/o/
YUP! Robocop cleans up the scum on the streets while Gadget helps to bring their bosses to justice.
Now I want to see a movie where Inspector Gadget teams up with Robocop, and they bond over their shared cyborg heritage.
You know you're in trouble when the dog is the smartest one in the bunch!
~~/o/
The Six Million Dollar Man
share[deleted]
Never would have got that one.
shareSpacefarers discover an inanimate object that wants to reunite with its creator in order to find greater meaning in its life.
~~/o/
2001
shareI have yet to see this reportedly polarizing film, so not the answer I was looking for, but hey, that works too!
The one I am aiming for has a disco ball effect when the spaceship goes at super-fast speeds, though it only appears in this particular film and none of the rest of its series.
~~/o/
That's almost exactly what happens in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
shareInteresting. I'll spill the beans then; Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979). It's hard to tell who inspired who, considering Trek has been on since the mid-1960s.
~~/o/
Fair point that Star Trek the TV series predates any of the movies' influences. I've always looked at the first as mostly a combination of trying to imitate the visual splendor of 2001 while incorporating a few aspects of Star Wars. The long shots of spaceships docking and undocking are straight out of Kubrick, while Lucas seems to have had more inspiration in the story's overall structure.
Then again, what do I know?
You know more than you let on. Star Trek always seems the translate better on the small screen (TV) than the big screen films; something in how a movie is made, trying to appeal to everyone instead of Treks' original fan base. This is certainly not to say that they cannot try.
~~/o/
It's a balance that's not so far out of reach. I'm of the mind that the best Trek stories rely not so much on action/space battles, rather the series' core ideals of an interstellar society exploring new worlds and avoiding violent conflict through diplomacy. Out of these recent entries, 2016's Beyond portrayed those qualities best for me. I agree that it leaned a bit heavily into the action, but we also get a view of those positive elements in a way that the 2009 and Into Darkness did not deliver.
There seems to be a way that Star Trek can still appeal to mass audiences today, but I'm not so sure if it involves imitating other stuff.