If they casted an over-the-top yet awesome British guy as the villain. You know. Tim Curry, Gary Oldman, Sean Connery, John Wayne, those type of guys. I love those guys.
This is a difficult question since all parts are important and when one is below par, it becomes noticeable. For me, the part that will stick out as awful most times (apart from dialogue) is the sound. Ill-fitting sound effects (Man with the Golden Gun) or a score that simply does not fit (Ladyhawke) can ruin a great movie or be the final dog-shit bullet for an already bad one.
It's definitely the characters and character development for me. The best movies have the most memorable characters. I'd say dialogue and story are an extremely close second. You do need all of these to be a great movie.
it really depends on the film. because you can have a really horrible film, like red dawn, 2009, with fantastic performances, but horrible over all. or you can have a film with horrible performances, or but wonderful plot. you can have a film with a fantastic villain, but horrible heroes. you can have fantastic special effects, in a poor movie too. or you can have horrible effects, in a really GOOD movie. and then you have movies, that are so bad, that they are great to watch. like Season of the Witch, Birdemic, Street Fighter, and Batman and Robin. The most important element then, is fun. make it fun. make sure the actors are enjoying their roles. make sure the visuals, no matter how good, or bad, are fun to look at. and interesting. even birdemic succeeds at this point. it has such shitty effects, that it is fun to watch. so make sure it is fun... AND do not edit it down, keep it in tact! otherwise you might have a movie, that no longer makes any sense.
i forgot about that. you gotta have a big giant combining robot battle at the end of your movie, no matter what your movie is! imagine if at the end of Lincoln, Lincoln jumps into a giant transforming train robot, and Booth jumps into a giant robot too...
remember that scene in dexter's lab, where dexter defeats a giant statue of lincoln by controlling a statue of lincoln, and then shooting it in the back of the head? yes. like that. that is how it should of ended.
I'll go one step further and say Character interaction. Seems to me, that even if everything else fails, if you've got great momments with your characters interacting with each other, you'll end up with a very watchable film. You can have some of the most awsome characters ever created, but if they stand alone, they will come off as dull/boring. Though it's like cooking, it's all about the ingrediants. What's used, how much is used, how it's mixed together.
