On-the-nose movie titles

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It's more clearly in the "working title as to pitch to executives that we were too lazy to change once we started marketing" category

And Titanic is about a ship. Same goes with The Hangover, a story about friends who were, well, hungover.

So true. People may dismiss this observation (just check out this thread!) but it's accurate -- and we've been seeing examples of this trend for the last 10-15 years (BAD SANTA, BAD TEACHER, EPIC MOVIE, etc etc etc).

I can't put my finger on the exact reason, but I suspect it is tied in -- somehow -- with the fact that corporations who fund these big-budget, big-studio movies now seem to be behaving as though they have to appeal to EVERYBODY. Thus, even movie *titles* have to be comprehensible to the lowest-common denominator -- subtlety and cleverness be damned.

This post reminds me of the controversy at Disney Animation Studios in the 80s over the title of The Great Moused Detective.

From Wikapedia:

Following the box office under-performance of the 1985 Paramount/Amblin film Young Sherlock Holmes, Eisner decided to rename Basil of Baker Street into The Great Mouse Detective feeling the name "Basil" was "too English".[7] The re-titling of the film proved to be unpopular with the filmmakers where animator Ed Gombert wrote a satirical interoffice memo, allegedly by studio executive Peter Schneider, which gave preceding Disney films generic titles such as Seven Little Men Help a Girl, The Wonderful Elephant Who Could Really Fly, The Little Deer Who Grew Up, The Girl with the See-through Shoes, Two Dogs Fall in Love, Puppies Taken Away, and A Boy, a Bear and a Big Black Cat.[8][9] These generic titles would later become a category on Jeopardy!.[10]

What else should it be called? Not everything has to be intellectual. This is about a guy who throws a mega office Christmas party that goes out of control. Should it be called Laugh Hard just because it's a comedy set in an office building? Speck & Gordon made a movie about male figure skaters called Blades of Glory, which isn't on-the-nose, and there are probably tons more movies with titles that aren't on-the-nose. But sometimes, on-the-nose just works, like it does in this case IMHO. Remember the working title for American Pie? "Unfinished Teenage Sex Comedy Which Can Be Made for Under $10 Million That Studio Readers Will Most Likely Hate but I Think You Will Love". They should have stuck with that because American Pie is so on-the-nose because a guy f*#k$ an American pie in the movie!

Alien

One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest