14h ago

What big budget movie had absolutely no buisness getting made?

152 comments

A lot of the Movies Sony makes now. Morbius, Kraven, etc.
- 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.
- I "think" John Carter beat it, but yeah.

Perhaps, Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star. I have a weird relationship with this movie. I know it's shit but I can't help but be fascinated by it. It's a fun movie to make your friends and family watch with you so you can watch their reaction. I wouldn't even say it's so bad it's good. It's bad but entertaining at the same time. I watch it and think "how the fuck did this get made?"

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.
- 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
- It's shit but also entertaining. I kinda wanna watch that one again.

'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.
- 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.

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.

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.
- 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 the desired result. Oh well.
  
  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.

marvel

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.
  
  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.
- 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.
  
  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.
  
  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.
  
  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.
  
  You expect a movie director only interested in pretty scenes to write a good plot!?
  ... your name must be Kathleen Kennedy...
- 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.
- 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.
  
  WTF Rogue One is awesome
  
  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.

Borderlands. How did they spend that much money and none of the decision makers stop and think "nope this is crap"
- Still have to see it. I'm in no rush, but since I am a Borderlands fan, I have to know.
  
  It’s really bad. Like, nearly unwatchable.

All of the Jurassic Parks sequels.
- JP 3 is the best! 92 minutes - all of the action, no tired butt.
- Even the Spielberg's sequel?
  
  Especially the Spielberg sequel... After the success of the first movie, Crighton wrote a Lost World novel as a sequel to the FILM, not the first book.
  Spielberg jettisoned the book and did his own sequel instead. :(
  I really wanted to see the chameleon dinosaurs on film.
  
  Lost World was alright, 3 was meh. The rest are a big bag of:
  
  Yep!

Cats
- The moment they announced Cats I knew it wasn't going to work.
  First, the story sucks. A bunch of cats prancing around and learning not to be a dick to that one cat.
  Second, Cats is a spectacle. The reason you go see Cats in a theater is for the spectacle. Everyone is dressed up and dancing around. It's meant to be an experience. You can't translate that to film.
- What, you didn't like the butthole cut?
- I support the idea of making a cats movie. Just not like that. Should have been more costumes then cgi. Youre audience is furrys... so do furrys..
  
  Just watch the Andrew Lloyd Webber theather version. It's by far the best.

The Minecraft Movie
- I loved it. It was slop, but was good slop. I think it's fun to watch with a friend.
- It _could _ have been great. But it ended up - like the Mario movie - being a formulaic piece of drek.
  
  Both movies were loved by their target demographic: children
  
  I feel better knowing I'm not the only one who didn't like the new Mario movie for the same reason.
  
  I'm curious why you watched it

Avatar.
- I mean yeah it was a shit film but it obviously had "business" being made because it was the highest grossing film ever for a while. I think it was the start of Holywood going out their way to crack the Chinese market (or at least the first time they did it successfully).
- You mean, "Dances with Smurfs"?
  
  It's clearly ripping off Pocahontas, not Dances With Wolves.
- I know it's just rehash Pocahontas but I enjoyed it. Suspend all that crap for a second and just enjoyed it
- Avatar at least had the excuse of existing to push 3D and mo-cap technology.
  Not sure about Avatars 2-5...
  
  There are sequels???
  
  Yeah, I watched it in a 3d cinema at the time and it was a great experience. Not the pocahontas story, but the cinematics. Avatar 2 was just shit. It's like they're pretending to be a real scifi franchise by building an entire world.
  
  Same thing for the sequels. Here's an article about it. Maybe it's the passage of time, but I'd say 2 is much more visually stunning than 1
  
  There's five of them???
- i love that the answer to "which one?" is "doesn't matter, they suuuuuuck"
- Alien pocahontas
  
  Smurfgully
  
  Incredible summary. 10/10.
- At first I thought you meant the first Airbender movie. Which also fits the criteria here.
- This but nickelodeons avatar live action remakes.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
- At least it was better than Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
  
  Did we watch the same movie? I marathoned all the films and Dial of Destiny is dire. To be honest, only the first film is truly great. I'd probably rank them 1, 3, 4, 2, 5.
  
  Is it worth watching though?
  I couldn't sit through Grandpa Pants and his Crystal Skull.
- lmao
  
  That's literally why it was my choice. It's one of the biggest budget films ever... and also one of the biggest flops ever.

Pearl Harbor. 5 minutes of cool CGI, rest of it being absolutely forgettable.
- It was so bad that Team America World Police had a song about how bad it was as their ballad.
- What's the CGI? The attack scene itself is way longer than that
- Id rather watch earl arbor. Its about a guy named earl who is also a tree.
  
  To be fair that could be a wild movie
- I was in the Navy and my ship visited Pearl Harbor in the 90s. We gave honors to the ship monuments and it was a great honor to be apart of that. It was a memory I really cherish.
  When the bad reviews started coming out almost immediately, I knew I could never watch that movie and hold my personal memories in the same regard.
  so I have never seen it and will walk out of the room if someone insists on watching it around me.
  
  Take Titanic, where the movie is a romance that happens to be set in a historical event.
  Now imagine that instead of a director who really loves the ocean, it's a director who really loves blowing shit up. That's Pearl Harbor, and you would be correct for avoiding it with violence if necessary.
  
  You're not missing much. I saw it around the time it came out and will not watch it again. There are just too many things that are a better use of my time, like shampooing the family dog or taking a nap.

Dragonball
- still salty about that movie ruining my 15th birthday
- I bought it on DVD just because I didnt want to scare investors away from every trying the IP again...

Mortal Engines
It seemed like a prime IP to get its time on the big screen, being that it's got a lot to build off of. But the sheer number of characters that were introduced throughout the movie and the 'all of this and more awaits,' really had me overwhelmed with having any continued interest in the "main characters" as the movie entered its third act. There were more issues, but that was the one that really sealed its fate imo.
- Im pretty sure I watched this movie but I cant remember how it went
- I wouldn't say it was great

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

All of them.
- Hot take! We've got a hot take over here!
- Yeah, but which
  
  Hollywood hasn't produced anything original in 10 years or so. Everything has been reboots or adaptations from books.

Captain America. Especially the one with a person of colour in the title role.
Edit: downvote all you want. Americans are racist hypocrites.
- Americans are not a monolith, and the fact you act as such says a lot more about you than you'd ever care to admit.
  
  They are like two monoliths. Both are stupid.
- I dont think black people existed in the 50s. At least according to maga
- I'd pay good money to see an animated adaptation of Truth in the Kyle Baker art style...

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