AHC: Save a notorious flop
- Thread starter Mort the Reaper
- Start date
broken arrow 1996; it made money so maybe it doesn't fall under the category of notorious flop even if the reviews half said it was trash and if you saw it, it was trash
Both Slater and Travolta did not put in good performances, Travolta later refined himself far better as a villain in swordfish and other films. I feel Tom Cruise could have played a much better Captain Hale... he would have had to turn down either mission impossible or Jerry McGuire, which obviously where both huge successes for him
Maybe if Tony Scott can be grabbed to direct it, instead of John Woo (would require Scott passing on Crimson Tide) it could have come out as less of a corny campy mess
Both Slater and Travolta did not put in good performances, Travolta later refined himself far better as a villain in swordfish and other films. I feel Tom Cruise could have played a much better Captain Hale... he would have had to turn down either mission impossible or Jerry McGuire, which obviously where both huge successes for him
Maybe if Tony Scott can be grabbed to direct it, instead of John Woo (would require Scott passing on Crimson Tide) it could have come out as less of a corny campy mess
I don't know if it counts, but somewhere buried in Die Another Day is an interesting Bond film or two. Instead of having the villain change his genetics to become a British billionaire in just over a year, separate the plot threads into two different movies with different antagonists. Perhaps the films hare common threads, or the villain in one appears in the other, but make these separate movies. In the first one, the North Koreans are doing something with genetic engineering under the guise of humanitarian government support by Graves, whose full involvement is not known until the second movie where he is the heavy hellbent on upending the world order and enslaving humanity with his Icarus project.
I'd like to try and redeem Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band(with the Bee Gees and George Burns), but my experience of the film is confined to a few minutes of YouTube clips. Anyone seen it?
Good God.
If you even tried to redeem it *somehow*, odds are near-infinitely high that it could be a slight improvement over the original...
I remember seeing it once, when I was maybe late elementary school/jr high school age, probably thinking "hey, I like the Beatles... and it's got Alice Cooper and Aerosmith in it, how bad can it be?"
Never, ever, ask that question 😜
kirbopher15
Kicked
Bring the Snyder cut into cinemas instead of the Whedon cut that way that can start a revolution for all movies in the future
Short of beating Fox execs until they grow a brain? Not really. It had good ratings*, but was pulled and cancelled at the last minute for literally no reason.
*despite being put against POKEMON! no less.
I have an idea to save The Black Cauldron (1985), or at least make it much less of a flop. It's supposed to be based on the book series named The Chronicles of Prydain which is supposed to be really good, and the major deviations taken from the books are among the reasons for its lukewarm critical reception which in turn caused it to flop massively. If the deviations are fewer, then it would probably have better word of mouth thanks to fans of The Chronicles of Prydain appreciating it more. Granted, it might not save it from flopping completely but it would probably reduce the floppage to the point it gets released onto home video around 1986 and earns the money back for Disney that way.
HMMM perhaps it doesn't get cancelled by not being put up against Pokemon which gets it even better ratings.
The Black Cauldron is a really weird amalgam of the first two books, and as such it really, really does not make sense. The Horned King is, in the books, the primary minion of the main bad guy of the whole thing, who's basically Welsh Satan. He only serves as the main villain of the first book, and is then killed. Notably the way he's killed explains why he was chasing the prophetic pig in the first place, as she reveals his True Name, and uttering it kills him, because kid's book. The Black Cauldron is the second book (which should tell you all you need to know about how related the Horned King is to it), and notably its a weapon that the main bad guy of the series already had in the past, but has been stolen by the Witches. Its taken by Taran's group, stolen from them by book only characters, and then destroyed when a book only character sacrifices himself by throwing himself inside. He is not brought back to life.
This is again only the first two books in a five part series, so yeah trying to adapt them into one movie and provide a solid ending was a real bad idea.
The Wing Commander movie stays closer to the games dropping the idea around the Pilgrims and changing the appearance of the antagonists. While the movie would be more niche, it could also be done in a way to resonate with the audience that doesn't have a background with the games.
Ultimately I have to agree it wasn't doomed to flop on paper and only did thanks to some rather unfortunate creative liberties. If it were handled better it could easily have been saved, or at least spared from the worst of its floppage.
Good God.
If you even tried to redeem it *somehow*, odds are near-infinitely high that it could be a slight improvement over the original...
I remember seeing it once, when I was maybe late elementary school/jr high school age, probably thinking "hey, I like the Beatles... and it's got Alice Cooper and Aerosmith in it, how bad can it be?"
Never, ever, ask that question 😜
The most astounding thing about that film is the involvement of George Martin. His participation makes it kinda hard to dismiss the whole thing as just a bunch of glam and disco hacks hijacking the Beatles' legacy, since Martin was about as close to a Beatle as you can get without actually being one.
Apart from what I take to the sheer awfulness of that particular project, it occurs to me that 1978 was probably too late for a Beatles film, and too early for a Beatles nostalgia film. Maybe when the 20th anniversary of Sgt. Peppers happened in '87(it was actually a pretty big deal), someone like Altman could have done an ensemble-cast musical, with self-consciously retro 60s content.
Eh, the problem since I might not have laid it out well enough is that I just don’t see a coherent story coming out of any such film. It would be like filming the Lord of Rings, only you make one movie, which you call The Two Towers, where Saruman’s the bad guy, Sauron isn’t mentioned, Rivendell, Lothlorien, Gondor, Rohan, and Mordor are all cut (and Isengard is never named), the entire Fellowship save the Hobbits don’t exist, Frodo is made completely useless (so OTL film Frodo), Pippin is made drastically more annoying, and instead of going on a quest the main characters wander aimlessly for an hour before the plot happens to them at the end. This is essentially what the Black Cauldron is in relation to the Books.
I did a deep dive on this in my Forgotten Flops posts. And ultimately what doomed the movie is that you had a first time director who was a control freak, lots of oddball studio interference and nobody knowing how to market the film, because the idea of a video game genre as a film did not really exist. The financing for the film was a glorious mess, but what really did kill it was a director run amok and a terrible script. They should have focused on making a B-movie along the lines of Mortal Kombat. I know MK and WC are different genres, but MK is a film that established three characters, showed their motivations and desires, and set the plot in motion in five minutes. It's a masterwork in short-hand. WC was an odd combination of trying to explain things and not explaining things, and they did not really think what sort of movie they were making ahead of time.