Jules Winfield

I was thinking about this when I rewatched Reservoir Dogs. At no point do any of the characters use the term Reservoir Dogs either to describe themselves or the cops or a name of a bar that they hangout at. There is no solemn story told by Keitel to Roth comparing their outfit to a bunch of dogs hanging out by a reservoir trying to catch some fish or algae or some shit. It's basically open to whatever excuse you want to give as an explanation for the title. What other movie titles are like this? You can even use a subtitle. Like The Final Chapter for Friday the 13th 4. It ended up not being the final chapter so the subtitle doesn't make much sense now.

E Unit

Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark

DonnachaOne

Knight & Day
Okay, his name's Knight, and she has a different personality. Still not strong enough for a punny title.

The Lovely Bones
It made sense in the book. The explanation was left out of the movie.

Hearts in Atlantis
They used a Stephen King novella, but used the name of the collection it appeared in. It's given a half-assed explanation in the beginning narration. Still doesn't suit.

Ocean's 12 and Ocean's 13
So is Eddie Izzard part of the gang now? How about Julia Roberts? Not a dealbreaker, but they work better as consecutive titles in the series rather than appropriate ones.

PopcornTreeCt

I remember reading a quote about Reservoir Dogs' movie title, it went something like this, I'm paraphrasing: If you grew up in the Midwest then you know about reservoirs and how dangerous they can be. Dogs would get stuck in the reservoir and couldn't get out and if you had multiple dogs in there, they would end up fighting and kill each other to survive. Isn't that what the movie is about?

Solid Snake

I have heard the term before and the way I know of it is pretty much what is quoted w/ slight variation.

the variation being that it's a pack of dogs you don't want to fuck with because they've got nothing to lose.

bluetoast

Superbad - meaningless title that has nothing whatsoever to do with the story. Same with Cloverfield.

PenguinJoe

"How Do You Know?" is one of the worst movie titles I've ever heard. I can understand why it bombed based on that title.

Crocker Jarmen

I recall Tarantino saying in an interview that he choose the title because he liked how the words went together, it was about the way it sounded rather than what it meant. One of his favorite movies at the time was Au Revoir Les Enfant, and either he thought it sounded like"reservoir" or he thought it was pronounced like "reservoir". I think it was the latter.

EDIT: I tried google and can't find Tarantino actually saying this, only other people saying it about Tarantino, so it's probably not true. Never mind.

Rob V

The Postman Always Rings Twice..... The fuck?

PenguinJoe

How about, "I Still Know What You Did Last Summer". But the movie takes place two summers later the so it would be "I Know What You Did Two Summers Ago" not last summer.

PenguinJoe

The Roman Polanski movie "Cul-De Sac" doesn't take place on a Cul-De Sac but at a private beach front home. That title makes zero sense.

majorjoe23

The Neverending Story. It ended.

PenguinJoe

Apparently not since there's a part 2.

majorjoe23

And part 3, but eventually that ended. Even though it felt like it never would.

Guru Askew

"Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl.". By the filmmakers own admission the ship itself has nothing to do with the curse, they just fudged it a bit to get a good title.

PopcornTreeCt

I never really liked the title "Good Will Hunting". I love the movie but the film's title bugs the fuck out of me.

Numanoid

joliom

The Last House on the Left (it's a solitary house out in the country)

Halloween III: Season of the Witch (no witches to be found)

Chariots of Fire (no chariots, no fire, not even any Romans)

Fargo (almost the entire movie takes place in Minnesota, no one ever goes to Fargo)

Back to the Future (shouldn't it be Back to the Past since he travels back to 1955, or maybe Back to the Present if you look at it from the perspective of him needing to return to his time?)

Quantum of Solace (Huh?)

Numanoid

What's the explanation?

Sonic

Mallrats

Where were the rats in the mall?

Guru Askew

It makes perfect sense if you actually know what the words mean. It alludes to the story far more than most Bond titles.

Perkinsun Dzees

Quatermass

Young Adam - I assumed it was some sort of Scottish slang but apparently it's not. There's no one named Adam in the movie or play that it was originally based on.

whoopdido

Not to nitpick, but William H. Macy's character goes to Fargo. He comes home one day and his wife asks "How was Fargo?"

Jon2

That could have been solved very easily. Instead of having Jack Sparrow holding a coin from the cursed treasure (which kept the pirates from ridding themselves of the curse), he could have been holding ...

wait for it...

a black pearl.

It would have been a great bit of audience misdirection what with everybody thinking it was the ship that was cursed. It would have been good for a laugh, too, if it wasn't revealed what part of the treasure he had until the film reached point where he would reach down and place a black pearl on top of the rest of the treasure.