I’m gonna go in a different direction than everyone else here.
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl
is a big budget movie that had absolutely no business getting made, because:
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Pirate movies have always been box office poison. Less than a decade earlier, Cutthroat Island made the Guinness Book of Records as the biggest box office bomb of all time, the latest in a series of pirate-themed failures. The only vaguely pirate-themed movies that had ever had anything you’d call success was Muppet Treasure Island and Goonies, and you could argue that Goonies wasn’t really a pirate movie, it had some pirate theming in it. In 2002, Disney’s Treasure Planet, basically Treasure Island IN SPAAACE had proven a box office flop. Treasure Planet is a well-written, well-made, well-advertised, well-reviewed pirate movie that failed at the box office. What idiot would bankroll another pirate film?
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It was a movie based on an old ride at Disney World. It was their fourth attempt at this, they made a TV movie based on Tower of Terror in 1997 that they’re apparently not proud of, 2000s Mission To Mars was a “commercial disappointment” and 2002’s The Country Bears was a critical and commercial flop. Yeah the year before they made Pirates of the Caribbean, Disney made a G-rated pastiche of the Blues Brothers out of The Country Bear Jamboree. They decided to do that and nobody stopped them. No movie based on a theme park attraction had ever made its money back.
The public’s reaction to the announcement was “They’re making a movie based on WHAT?” This wasn’t going to work. This movie had no business being made.
The film achieved massive critical and commercial success as the 141st highest grossing movie of all time taking $654.3 million against it’s $140 million budget and spawning four sequels.
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Morbius
not sure if it was “big budget” but Madame Web.
It was, essentially, a Spider-Man prequel that simply didn’t need to happen story wise. It introduced a bunch of characters from the comics that do indeed have Spider-Man like powers but in the film they simply “suggest” it. You had a villain whose entire purpose for doing what he did was he had a dream where said “spider people” killed him. You had Uncle Ben shoed in to simply say to the audience 'hey, HEY ASSHOLE! look…It’s a Spider Man Prequel!" and THAT was the ONLY connection to Peter Parker.
It’s like having a Star Wars Prequel where Uncle Owen is in it and he’s hanging out with a bunch of people who could potentially be Padawans but we’re not sure and they’re being hunted cause some random Sith had a dream that sure, they could potentially be Jedi one day. Now none of them actually are but they COULD be one day, just not in this movie.
I dunno what counts as big budget, but 30 Minutes or Less was seen as tasteless in how it was based on a real-life serious event that had occurred.
On a false advertising note, the movie’s run time is 1 hour, 23 minutes. Bullshit.
That happened where I grew up, and the details are so fucking bonkers.
I’ve seen the video of that dude getting blown up. Pretty crazy
Loveble Sidekick: The Untold Story of My Rise to Fortune
starring
Lovable Sidekick - as Himself
Scarlett Johansson - as LolaIt had no business being made, so it wasn’t.
Yeah, sure, but the full penetration sex scene was a bit over the top.
Title of your sex tape!
Every Jurassic Park movie after the 2nd one.
The Emoji Movie
Yes. You look at the title of the movie and you go, nope.
You just know there’s some producer out there who is salivating over minion merch.
A lot of the Movies Sony makes now. Morbius, Kraven, etc.
How dare you slight the cohesion and vision of the Whatever Sony Has The Rights To Cinematic Universe?
I was playing Spider-Man 2, where Kraven is a major character, when this movie came out and I wasn’t even aware of it. It is also now available on Netflix.
i first heard of kraven from the game, spiderman instead of the movie, i think the GAME cutscenes are better than the movie.
I’d like to add Uncharted to that, please.
Those are big budget? I thought they were great low budget movies
Waterworld. At the time the most expensive movie ever made and the most spectacular flop of all time.
You fucking take that back right now…
But I like Waterworld.
I “think” John Carter beat it, but yeah.
John Carter suffered from an awful title.
“Princess of Mars,” would have resonated better with marketing. And is actually one of the book titles.
I agree, but Dianey was desperate to create a new franchise. It was their response to Iron Man and the anticipated success of the MCU.
Neither of those movies were really all that terrible. I enjoyed John Carter. But clearly they didn’t connect with audiences.
Absolutely, I enjoyed both for what they were, silly fantasy/adventure movies.
Yeah, I was upset they didnt continue John Carter, it was just a fun zany scifi movie. I think it was the advertising that killed it, but if they had stuck with it I think it could have done well.
It’s the name and the power concept, all around bland and forgettable. Feel like that movie was a passion project of a book fan.
I must be on my own. I know John Carter flopped phenomenally, but I really liked it. Thought it was a great movie. Was very annoyed when I found out that there may never be a 2nd. Even if there was, at this stage it is very unlikely to be the same cast. IIRC, a lot of the blame was on Disney marketing. But IDK about these things.
It would have been a great Sci Fi miniseries, and eventually a movie. They didn’t prep the groundwork for the franchise and casted very poorly
I also liked it. But i think that it was completely miscast.
Don’t worry brother, I still go back and watch waterworld. I like oceanscapes and post apocalyptic settings. Esthetic can be enough for me.
I did some digging and apparently Waterworld somehow broke even. I remember a lot of the hype around the film at the time was wanting to see if it was really as bad as people said it was.
‘Live action’ remakes of animated classics, or any remake of an already good film.
Remake the ones that had potential. but failed in the execution.
It’s how Disney retains the trademark on the product. Like, Snow White, for instance. If the trademark was coming up, they’d rather crap out a bad movie then let the IP go to public domain.
And the only IP of any note we got out of it is :: checks my notes:: a Winnie the Pooh slasher pic…
You actually wrong about this one. Those movies make bank. Suburban moms ruin everything.
All those Disney live action remakes are sooo bad. People just don’t have the expressiveness of cartoon characters. The Lion King was the worst. The characters were animated and still wooden
I think Christopher Robin and maleficent were good. As long as they’re telling a new story it’s fun to see the old characters. When it’s just the exact same plot but a little darker and live action over animation it’s so dumb. Our CGI just ain’t good enough to justify that.
They’re remaking Moana already, and still a new movie, relative.
Moana is all about the musical performances. I love the whole movie but what is on the screen just kinda punctuates and gives context to the music for me. Frozen is the same way. And they’re thinking they are going to remake all that music and have it be just as good?
It would be like trying to remake The Blues Brothers with Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham just because the original is 40 years old.
The Cinderella one slapped. But that was the first one, and it was successful because it was made with care and thoughtful intention. Disney has been chasing that sucess ever since
Live action remakes are the end point of capitalism in media. Take something that
people likedmade money, and do it again with the same formula but a fresh coat of paint. No need to hire writers or spend time making a good story, just use the last one. No risks were ever taken.
Battleship. It’s just such a bizarre license for a movie, and certainly one nobody ever asked for. (Well, outside Hasbro execs clearly desperate for another Transformers-level hit.)
Oddly watchable in a big dumb fun kind of way, at least. And hey, it has Jesse Plemons not playing a total sociopath, so that’s neat.
Ikr‽ That like Mike movie really painted him into a corner at an early age. His career still hasn’t escaped the type casting…
I’m still waiting for the film adaptation of Checkers.
Like the Queens Gambit but checkers would be hilarious
All I need to know is, does anyone say, “You sank my battleship!”?
Yes, they work in the line “they’re not gonna sink this battleship!”. When you’re committed to this absurd premise, you pretty much have to say it.
It’s shit but also entertaining. I kinda wanna watch that one again.
I like it. It’s like junk food, you know it’s bad, but it’s still nice when you get the craving for something bad.
Yeah I’m not even sure why I watched it, it looks so bad. But it’s entertaining as heck, and well worth watching again
Ohh i forgot another one of my favorite. Ghost in the Shell live action. I love that movie because of Scarlett Johansson, but if you watch the original anime, everything just feels better, and the live action is simply unnecessary.
The Hobbit trilogy. It’s hard to understand how Peter Jackson could mess up movie after movie after movie like that.
Simple:
He and his crew had 2 years of prep for Lotr, storyboards, finding locations, making props and sets, etc.
New Line Cinemas forced him to do that same prep in 6 months for the Hobbit. Allegedly they didn’t even fully finish the script and had to cut in Del Toro scenes.
The forced trilogy structure also really hurt it. When the Hobbit film adaptation was initially announced (at the time just two movies, even), I thought that it didn’t make any sense to adapt a book shorter than any of the individual LotR installments into multiple movies. When they revealed it would be a trilogy, I knew it was some studio decision to milk it for money and didn’t have high hopes.
There is actually a fan edit floating around online somewhere called “The Hobbit: Extended Edition” which, contrary to what the name might imply, cuts down the trilogy into a single movie of comparable length to the LotR Extended films. Still not perfect, but a huge improvement in quality just from cutting out all of the extra garbage that didn’t need to be there.
There are a few different edits, but my fave is the M4 Book Edit. It only follows what was covered in the book and cuts out all the additions like the Kili/Tauriel love story (and Tauriel is cut out completely along with Azog until the end), the Dol Guldur stuff, and Gandalf’s escapades outside the party. It cuts the trilogy down to 4hr18min. Aside from a few unavoidably janky transitions, it’s great.
I absolutely adore it for 2 reasons: One, I really dislike the trilogy as a whole, but that’s because of the bloat, which M4 gets rid of. Two, the older I get the harder it is to go through LOTR as often as I like. I usually do an LOTR rewatch once a year, and tried to add in the Hobbit, but usually stopped after the first. It’s just too much time for not enough payoff. With the M4 edit, I’ll get stoned and watch it 5 or 6 times a year.
For as much flack as Jackson gets the for The Hobbit movies, he did a phenomenal job where it counts. There really is a wonderful, true-to-source Hobbit adventure scattered throughout the 8hr52min bloat that is the trilogy.
For funsies, if you like the other bits there’s another fan edit called Durin’s Folk and the Hill of Sorcery that’s 1hr8min that covers Gandalf’s adventure after he fucks off from the party at Mirkwood.
I think it was Prime’s Theater where I learnt that for the Smaug fight scene for movie 2, they planed the set the night before, painted the next morning, filmed, and the paint was still wet when the sets were taken down.
I like them all ¯_(ツ)_/¯
(Yes I had read the book before they were made)
The Last Jedi.
I left the theatre angry that they spent enough money to take mankind back to the moon on something that stupid.
thats the 2nd best star wars movie
I’ve given my reasons, how about you give yours?
I can’t leave it at that. I have to add some details.
Both the empire and the rebels repeatedly made tactical decisions so stupid a five-year old would know better. The opening battle involved sending unprotected bombers against a ship with anti-bomber defences and keeping the enemy commander talking on the phone to delay his response. That works in a Mel Brooks movie, not in Star Wars.
They killed a fan-favourite character off-screen. What, was the puppet too old to reprise its role?
The empire’s main guy decided to chase the rebels down instead of destroying them immediately. For fun, I guess.
Phasma’s a badass. Except that she capitulates at the first sign of personal danger.
All Holdo had to say was “yes, there’s a plan. Not telling you what because of operational secrecy”. Instead she expected Poe to blindly follow orders when he’d already shown he couldn’t do that.
“Oh no, the sacred texts!” …that you attempted to burn a moment ago.
That works in a Mel Brooks movie
Good. Our first laugh of the day.
My favorite bit:
Leia gives Rey a pendant and tells her that she can use that to track them wherever they go.
In the SAME SCENE, with NO CUTS, they are tracked by the first order and shout “THAT’S IMPOSSIBLE!”
You just described, IN THE SAME SCENE, how it is, in fact, possible.
Bonus: Putting a tracker in the Falcon was how the Death Star found Yavin IV in the very first movie.
I highly highly recommend this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuuDTnMPMgc
I think you’ll like it a lot. I realized that bathos is what I hated about the Last Jedi. They killed so many truly deep moments to have stupid jokes. They couldn’t let anything just be serious. It ruined the tone of the movie, couldn’t decide if they wanted to be a comedy or a drama, and so they did neither.
All Holdo had to say was “yes, there’s a plan. Not telling you what because of operational secrecy”. Instead she expected Poe to blindly follow orders when he’d already shown he couldn’t do that.
Well, he did fine following orders in the first movie, and then they changed the entire character in the second movie but kept the same name. I have no idea why they did that.
It’s the movie equivalent of trolling.
You expect a movie director only interested in pretty scenes to write a good plot!?
… your name must be Kathleen Kennedy…
Isn’t Kathleen the producer? It was directed by Ryan Johnson
Is this the one with horses in space?? I fuckin hated that. Perfectly encapsulated the overdone-ness of it all
No, the horses were in Rise of Skywalker.
The Last Jedi was the one with the “Can you hear me now?” gags, and Luke tossing the lightsaber away.
I think they meant the horse-like things on the casino planet.
Oh god, right enough, I’d forgotten about those, and that whole casino thing! God damn, I hated that movie…
And yet… it’s my favorite post-OT movie. It could’ve used another draft to tighten a couple things up here and there, but it was good.
Now… TRoS is one of the worst films I’ve ever seen in my life and is the only Star Wars property I’ve only seen a single time and never will watch again. Hell I watched Book of Boba Fett twice. Shit, I’ve watched In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale twice. I’d have to go back to Battlefield Earth to think of an equally terrible film.
But when watching The Last Jedi I feel nothing but joy.
I see why they made it but really the ip must be toxic because there’s no reason they cant make these movies.
+ Rogue One.
I tried watching new star wars and they were all so boring. I remember from childhood pod racing and that red guy with double light sabers.
I now see that people liked star wars for it’s story, but for me it was just a cool space fantasy. That nostalgia didn’t transfer for me.
I don’t very well remember the plot of the first three of the new movies, but I remember being bored, they felt slow and there were no hooks to make me care. After watching the third movie I just said fuck it and gave up.
I might try and watch the old movies as a grown up, but at this point I’d rather rewatch Shrek after work then gamble on a franchise I probably won’t like.
WTF Rogue One is awesome
Rogue One is a shitfest for a variety of reasons:
The original writer director didn’t start with a script, he started with a supercut of other sci fi films and used that to make a script.
Even when he had a script, he spent an hour a day shooting off script for things that looked cool, but served no purpose.
So when the first trailers came out, they were full of gibberish footage that was never actually used in the movie.
https://www.polygon.com/2017/1/6/14195898/rogue-one-star-wars-trailer-jyn-erson
Then he got fired and a new writer director was brought in, one who said his super power was he never liked Star Wars.
https://theplaylist.net/tony-gilroy-rogue-one-podcast-20180405/
“Because that was my superpower. A) I don’t like ‘Star Wars’—not that I don’t like it, but I’ve never been interested in ‘Star Wars’ ever, so I had no reverence for it whatsoever, I was unafraid about that and they were in such a swamp… they were in so much, terrible, terrible trouble that all you could do was improve their position.”
So you get conflicting scenes, one where Cassian has no trouble murdering an innocent informant, but not long after gets all sweaty and conflicted when it’s time to assassinate a legitimate military target.
https://youtu.be/LORtuZ0ISF4#t=48s
vs.
No character growth, no arc, just in one scene he has no trouble murdering an innocent guy WHO HELPED HIM BTW, but later refuses to take out a military target HE WAS SUPPOSED to kill.
To say nothing of crapping all over the iconic opening of Star Wars by having Vader watch the Death Star plans fly away, personally, with his own eyes.
No character growth, no arc, just in one scene he has no trouble murdering an innocent guy WHO HELPED HIM BTW, but later refuses to take out a military target HE WAS SUPPOSED to kill.
Yeah, it’s almost like the target he was about to assassinate could be the only person in the galaxy who knows how to take out the weapon he just witnessed level a city.
To say nothing of crapping all over the iconic opening of Star Wars by having Vader watch the Death Star plans fly away, personally, with his own eyes.
Those two scenes line up perfectly and imo are quite satisfying when watching the two films back to back. In what way does Rogue One’s ending “crap all over” A New Hope’s opening?
In Star Wars, Vader interrogates Leia, he talks about the plans being transmitted, not that he saw them personally be stolen.
He’s also ragged on by Motti for not having found the tapes when Rogue One puts him in the same hallway with them.
Speaking of… he force grabs every one and every thing in that hallway except the ONE THING he’s there for. Vader is not that STUPID.
The Death Star Plans have plot armor, they HAVE to get away, don’t put them in the same hallway as Vader and don’t make them a physical object that can be grabbed.
It’s pretty funny that it still turned out to be the best Star Wars film since the OG trilogy.
Empire Strikes Back is similar in it’s excellent story which somehow survived the shitstorm of fuckups and changes
I dunno, I think the best of the Disney versions is still Force Awakens. The big complaint is “Well, it’s just Star Wars…” which is true… but it’s Star Wars without George Lucas. They had to prove they could do what Lucas did without Lucas and I think they succeeded in that.
Then Last Jedi shit the bed. Then Carrie Fisher died which painted them into a corner with Rise of Skywalker. Force Awakens was Han, Last Jedi was Luke, Rise of Skywalker was supposed to be Leia… 😢
Yep I walked out of the theater about halfway in
Same. I got as far as “Yer a
wizardrebel now!” and was like “Nope!” Took 3 full tries before I finished it.The Rebel Moon movies are better than Rogue One and that’s saying something.
The Rebel Moon movies are better than Rogue One
Woah slow down there. I can understand not liking Rogue One, but no way the trash that is Rebel Moon is better.
Rebel Moon is worth it just to see the Space Nazis get wrecked. LOL.
I’m not going to read all that shit: Rogue One was fucking awesome.
about 2/3 of what they’re saying is about the production and trailers before the movie was released. Other critiques about no character growth for Andor, but not mentioning Jyn’s arc at all.
Also Rogue One brought us Andor, so even if it was a terrible movie, it spawned some of the best TV in the last 5 years, which says a lot about the movie and the characters.
Also no character growth for Andor while also complaining that he kills a guy in cold blood but then doesn’t kill Galen later under orders. And then breaks orders again because he put his faith in Jyn and not the Rebels.
Rogue One is a good movie and I don’t care about production issues. It made the Empire far more menacing than even the OT did. Peak Vader. Peak Death Star. Even peak Stormtroopers.
Yeah I didn’t want to analyze that too much, but the circumstances were completely different. The first guy he had to kill for his own preservation. The second time he was under no threat and starting to defy orders and listening to Jyn. It’s almost like a nitpick for the sake of picking things apart.
Which is why you’ll never know Rogue One is trash. LOL.
You take that back! It spawned andor which is also amazing. Rogue one proves they can actually make a gritty star wars film that shows a broken universe wouldn’t be all good vs evil bullshit.
I didn’t think I could dislike Rogue One until I watched Andor. After finishing Andor and then rewatching Rogue One, I felt disappointed that it wasn’t quite as good.
Not that it means Rogue One is a bad Star Wars film, but that Andor is just that good. I don’t think they’ll ever make another piece of Star Wars media that can surpass it.
There’s a distinction to point out between “absolutely no business getting made” vs “the final product turned out to be shit”. I can’t really think of anything that belongs to the former… I haven’t actually seen most of the films mentioned here so far, except the SW sequels… which turned out to be shit, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have made SW sequels at all: they just shouldn’t have made them shit.
Makes me think of the Warcraft movie. Warcraft actually has some good lore to get into, it could totally be made into a good movie. Of course they botched it though.
I weirdly don’t hate the warcraft movie. It sucks in some ways but it does a good job feeling like it’s in the warcraft universe.
I was more curious about the former but got a lot more of the latter. Unfortunately, it would be difficult to phrase the question to get only the desired result. Oh well.
If you want the former, I’ll say Arcane. They poured money into that and it shows. They will never be able to count money made by that, though it was great word of mouth and I’m sure increased sales. But they spent like a half-billion dollars on that with no hope of any return. But damn that was a hell of a series.
My initial thought seeing the title was Megalopolis but I don’t know the budget for it. Haven’t seen it yet, so I can’t speak to the quality of it, but I had read a ton of shit talking about how hard it was for Copolla to get it made and then distributed after he did make it. It sounds like the only thing that fits the question.
Definitely worth the watch
