Best Based on tv series Movies
Ranked by how strongly each film carries the visual signature of based on tv series cinema — measured across 3,010 indexed frames from 33 films, against a 404,689-frame catalogue baseline. Not by box office, and not by vote.
Based on tv series films over-index on lab coat, backpack and helmet — the objects that make the genre recognisable before a line is spoken.
- 1
Speed Racer (2008)
Lana Wachowski, Lilly WachowskiDP David TattersallIMDb 6.1TMDB 6.3See in full on FrameThrower →
Speed Racer is a young man with natural racing instincts whose goal is to win The Crucible, a cross-country car-racing rally that claimed the life of his older brother, Rex Racer. Speed is loyal to the family business, run by his parents Pops and Mom. Pops designed Speed's car, the Mach 5. The owner of Royalton Industries makes Speed a lucrative offer; Speed rejects it, angering the owner. Speed also uncovers a secret that top corporate interests, including Royalton, are fixing races and cheating to gain profit. With the offer to Speed denied, Royalton wants to ensure that Speed will not win races. Speed finds support from his parents and his girlfriend Trixie and enters The Crucible in a partnership with his one-time rival, Racer X, seeking to rescue his family's business and the racing sport itself.
- 2
Mission: Impossible II (2000)
John WooDP Jeffrey L. KimballIMDb 6.1TMDB 6.1See in full on FrameThrower →
Chimera is a deadly virus that will bear a grisly death unless you are given the antidote. The creator of Chimera is murdered and the antidote is stolen by a disavowed I.M.F. Agent, Sean Ambrose (Dougray Scott). The Impossible Mission Force, (I.M.F.), hire the skilled and charming Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise), and the beautiful Nyah Hall (Thandie Newton), who has had her share with Ambrose. Their mission, should they choose to accept it, is to send Hall undercover to Ambrose and learn what she can for Hunt to bring down Chimera, but they will have to break into a secure lab by jumping off of buildings and dodging bullets. Its impossible.
- 3
The Fall Guy (2024)
David LeitchDP Jonathan SelaIMDb 6.8TMDB 7.0See in full on FrameThrower →
He's a stuntman, and like everyone in the stunt community, he gets blown up, shot, crashed, thrown through windows and dropped from the highest of heights, all for our entertainment. And now, fresh off an almost career-ending accident, this working-class hero has to track down a missing movie star, solve a conspiracy and try to win back the love of his life while still doing his day job. What could possibly go right?
- 4
James BobinDP Javier AguirresarobeIMDb 6.1TMDB 6.6See in full on FrameThrower →
Having spent most of her life exploring the jungle with her parents, nothing could prepare Dora for her most dangerous adventure ever: high school. Always the explorer, Dora quickly finds herself leading Boots, Diego, a mysterious jungle inhabitant, and a ragtag group of teens on a live-action adventure to save her parents and solve the impossible mystery behind a lost Inca civilization.
- 5
Peter SegalDP Robert M. StevensIMDb 6.5TMDB 6.5See in full on FrameThrower →
Tasting the fruit of his labor with his wife Jane Spencer (Priscilla Presley), the maladroit and now retired Police Squad Lieutenant, Frank Drebin (Leslie Nielsen), secretly dreams of getting back in action. Before long, his old partners, Ed Hocken (George Kennedy) and Nordberg (O.J. Simpson), will have to enlist the help of their loose-cannon friend, when Rocco (Fred Ward), the deranged terrorist, intends on blowing the annual Academy Awards ceremony to smithereens. Once more, Drebin goes undercover, interrogating dangerous blonde bombshells, and putting his precious, but fragile marriage in jeopardy. Are this year's Oscars doomed to disaster?
- 6
Star Trek (2009)
J.J. AbramsDP Dan MindelIMDb 7.9TMDB 7.4See in full on FrameThrower →
On the day of James T. Kirk's birth, his father dies on his damaged starship in a last stand against a Romulan mining vessel looking for Ambassador Spock, who in this time, has grown on Vulcan disdained by his neighbors for his half-human heritage. 25 years later, James T. Kirk has grown into a young rebellious troublemaker. Challenged by Captain Christopher Pike to realize his potential in Starfleet, he comes to annoy academy instructors like Commander Spock. Suddenly, there is an emergency on Vulcan and the newly-commissioned USS Enterprise is crewed with promising cadets like Nyota Uhura, Hikaru Sulu, Pavel Chekov and even Kirk himself, thanks to Leonard McCoy's medical trickery. Together, this crew will have an adventure in the final frontier where the old legend is altered forever as a new version of the legend begins.
- 7
Charlie's Angels (2019)
Elizabeth BanksDP Bill PopeIMDb 5.0TMDB 6.4See in full on FrameThrower →
Elena Houghlin is a scientist, engineer and inventor of Calisto -- a sustainable energy source that will revolutionize the way people use power. It will be ready as soon as she works out the last issue, if not it could be turned into a dangerous weapon. But when the cutting edge technology is pushed to an investor before she can do that, Elena turns to the Townsend Agency for help. Now, it's up to the Angels -- Jane, Sabina, and the newly recruited Elena -- to retrieve Calisto before it can be transformed into a weapon of mass destruction.
- 8
Get Smart (2008)
Peter SegalDP Dean SemlerIMDb 6.5TMDB 6.2See in full on FrameThrower →
American Maxwell Smart works for a Government spy agency in an administrative capacity. When the agency's head office is attacked, the Chief decides to assign Maxwell as a spy and partners him with sexy Agent 99, much to her chagrin. The duo nevertheless set off to combat their attackers by first parachuting off an airplane and landing in Russian territory - followed closely by an over seven feet tall, 400 pound goon, known simply as Dalip. The duo, handicapped by Maxwell's antics, will eventually have their identities compromised, and may be chalked up as casualties, while back in America their attackers have already planted a bomb that is set-up to explode in a concert.
- 9
David ZuckerDP Robert M. StevensIMDb 7.6TMDB 7.3See in full on FrameThrower →
A rerun of many of the gags from the television series Police Squad! (1982). An Airplane! (1980)-type spoof, this time with the an incompetent Lieutenant Frank Drebin, who always "gets his man". Visual gags come thick and fast, and it's impossible to catch them all with one viewing. The plot: Queen Elizabeth II of England is coming to town, and Vincent Ludwig has plans to assassinate her using a brainwashed baseball player.
- 10
David LynchDP Ronald Víctor GarcíaIMDb 7.3TMDB 7.4See in full on FrameThrower →
Essentially a prequel to David Lynch and Mark Frost's earlier TV series "Twin Peaks". The first half-hour or so concerns the investigation by FBI Agent Chet Desmond (Chris Isaak) and his partner Sam Stanley (Kiefer Sutherland) into the murder of night-shift waitress Teresa Banks in the small Washington state town of Deer Meadow. When Desmond finds a mysterious clue to the murder, he inexplicably disappears. The film then cuts to one year later in the nearby town of Twin Peaks and follows the events during the last week in the life of Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) a troubled teenage girl with two boyfriends; the hot-tempered rebel Bobby Briggs (Dana Ashbrook) and quiet biker James Hurley (James Marshall), her drug addiction, and her relationship with her difficult (and possible schizophrenic) father Leland (Ray Wise), a story in which her violent murder was later to motivate much of the TV series. Contains a considerable amount of sex, drugs, violence, very loud music and inexplicable imagery.
What based on tv series films are made of
How much more often each element appears in a based on tv series frame than in an average frame from the catalogue. A ratio, not a share — lab coat is not in most frames, it is simply far more common here than anywhere else.
- lab coat6.7×
- backpack3.1×
- helmet2.9×
- boy2.1×
- vest2.1×
- mustache1.8×
- leather jacket1.8×
- suit1.8×
How based on tv series films are shot
Weaker signals than the objects above, and worth saying so: most dramatic genres skew dark and night-heavy, so these numbers separate based on tv series from the catalogue far more than they separate it from its neighbours.
- 12%interior indeterminatevs 7% baseline
- 19%high keyvs 12% baseline
What breaks the pattern
The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie (2004) is the least typical film here — it carries the least of what the rest of this list is made of. Which is either a failure of the genre label, or the most interesting film on the page.
Method
Every frame in the FrameThrower catalogue is tagged for shot size, lighting, time of day, camera angle, colour and the objects visible in it. This page aggregates those tags across 3,010 frames from 33 films carrying the based on tv series label, and compares each figure to the same measurement across the whole catalogue (404,689 frames). Films are ranked by how closely they match the theme’s over-indexed elements, weighted by how distinctive each element is; one film per series. Only films with at least 20 indexed frames and 500 TMDB votes are listed.
Machine-readable: /api/list/based-on-tv-series
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