Cats (2019)
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Directed by Tom Hooper, a guy who doesn’t know shit about cinematography but somehow had two previous films gain critical ablation despite this.
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Released years, even decades after the West End and Broadway shows had been discontinued.
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Relied heavily on a star-studded cast featuring Ian McKellen, Rebel Wilson, James Corden, Idris Elba, Judi Dench, Jason Derulo and Taylor Swift.
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Horrifically bad CGI which costed an absolute tonne to produce because Hooper was an arrogant arsehole and didn’t listen to the people on his crew who actually handled special effects for a living.
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Most of the songs are significant downgrades compared to the original stage show, i.e. musical vs film version of Magical Mr Mistoffelees.
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The SW Sequels. I admit that I didn’t hate TFA, but the other two were very very very shit.
The prequels as well.
I would disagree. The prequels told a story that deserved to be told and was mostly internally consistent. The tone was different from the original trilogy, but they are still decent, if flawed, works.
The sequels are fanboy level writing.
The prequels told a story that deserved to be told and was mostly internally consistent.
Hard disagree on both.
Most of them.
Marvel movies and well basically all of Hollywood are basically a massive money laundering scheme under the auspices of the DOD/USAF.
Ask GPT. Even it knows.
Everything Marvell
Cowboys and aliens.
Man pitched this fever dream of an idea in 97, was laughed out of the room.
Folks only agreed with the same guy to make it in 2006 after seeing it was based on a best selling comic book.
That comic book was written by the person who initially pitched the idea in 97. He practically paid comic book stores to carry and give away the comic book so it’d be a “best seller”.
Movie execs got hoodwinked lol
The Room starring/produced by/executive produced/screenwritten/bankrolled by Tommy Wiseau
Hehe, any money for that movie is big budget.
precisely
Maybe vampires?
Gods of Egypt is tone deaf CGI bloated slop and I fucking love it. Just a fun movie for me.
I know it’s utter garbage to most, not even fun bad. I’m just a total sucker for fantasy derived from Egyptian gods/lore no matter how cheesy.
$140 million budget and just barely made it back at $150.6 million.
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.
Everything you said was why it made so much. No one saw it coming and it was entertaining. I still think the first two are solid. After that it fell off. But the third is decent just because of Jack Sparrow’s father being Keith Richards.
You can bag on all you want but it’s movie. The main objective is to entertain. And it does that on many levels. It’s not necessarily cinema but most of these movies are not considered high class cinema. They are blockbusters whose main objective is to make money while entertaining.
Oh I thoroughly enjoyed the film. I went to the theater to see it 8 times, with 5 different girls.
It turned out fantastic. But it had absolutely no business being made. And that was the assignment of this thread.
The first one, in terms of cinematic story telling, is actually incredibly good (I don’t know how much that contributed to things); if you’re interesting, this video essay points out a bunch of stuff I hadn’t noticed, the first time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhdBNVY55oM.
Also, entirely agreed about the first two.
Treasure Planet is a well-written
Ehhh…; don’t get me wrong: I still absolutely love it. But I absolutely get why it flopped, too.
I loved that Tower of Terror movie. Knowing the lore made the ride so much better once I finally got to experience it.
It’s apparently not available anywhere, no streaming service carries it.
Stremio carries it:
But to be fair, it’s a piracy service, so it carries everything. But a damn good piracy service, though. So much so that I canceled all my streaming services and just use Stremio now.
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Morbius
…But then we would have seen the main character morb all over everyone!
I can’t find it now but I remember finding it pretty funny at the time when Uwe Boll said Leatherheads was a completely unnecessary movie. He’s right, but he also made the Postal movie.
Postal is probably his best work and he’ll fight you if you say differently.
I’m not sure how big the budgets were 20ish years ago, but these 2 for me:
- the Royal Tenenbaums
- Sideways
Both are very well reviewed by the public/reviewers and I cannot fathom why.
I personally love the royal tenebaums but the first watch i was like you. Wes Anderson is weird. Its like first you need permission to like it because its so different but once youre granted that permission, and can suspend disbelief, the world opens up to you.
I like Royal Tenebaum too. That intricate relationship between family members is so good to watch
He’s like blue cheese, not for everyone and still an acquired taste.
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 know your Star Wars comparison was to reinforce your point, but that does sound like a plausible plot for a legit Star Wars movie that I’d watch.
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.
It honestly was fine for a kids movie. The story was so generic that it was impossible to mess up and would work with any character/setting.
I was disappointed with how boring it was. They should’ve leaned way more into the emoji aspect.
Let me write the script. Id tackle it with the “anything goes” energy and it would be non-stop crazy nonsense.
Every Jurassic Park movie after the 2nd one.
JP3, yes. I liked the original Jurassic World, but they’re getting a bit tiresome now. It’s clear it’s a money grab.
‘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…
There’s a Mickey mouse and at least 2 Popeye ones now, too.
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 hated aladdin, the monkey and parrot were two of the best characters and without the comically over-the-top ‘acting’ they are completely different characters.
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
Ever after will be the #1 live action Cinderella for me. That said I didn’t mind the first one they came out with.
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.You actually wrong about this one. Those movies make bank. Suburban moms ruin everything.
