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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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.
Watching an Iowa-class battleship do things is always fun.
I’m still waiting for the film adaptation of Checkers.
Like the Queens Gambit but checkers would be hilarious
Hey Gemini, in the style of the 2012 movie Battleship, create a screenplay based on the board game Hungry Hungry Hippos.
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.
Ikr‽ That like Mike movie really painted him into a corner at an early age. His career still hasn’t escaped the type casting…
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
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.
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.
Morbius
Watching it flop, then become a meme, then the studio thinking it was attracting an audience because it was being mentioned a lot, to release it again only to have it flop again was just decadent.
…But then we would have seen the main character morb all over everyone!
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?
FWIW I much prefer Sony’s Spider-Man over Disney’s.
I’d like to add Uncharted to that, please.
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.
Those are big budget? I thought they were great low budget movies
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.
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 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.
Waterworld. At the time the most expensive movie ever made and the most spectacular flop of all time.
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.
Don’t worry brother, I still go back and watch waterworld. I like oceanscapes and post apocalyptic settings. Esthetic can be enough for me.
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.
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.
You fucking take that back right now…
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.
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.
The Room starring/produced by/executive produced/screenwritten/bankrolled by Tommy Wiseau
Hehe, any money for that movie is big budget.
precisely
Maybe vampires?
Everything Marvell
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
