Alternate Cinematic Disasters

[PGSBHurricane]

What about Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)? It was Walt Disney's attempt to turn animation into something more than just cartoons. It tried being experimental with regard to storytelling and the usage of the multiplane camera. Nevertheless, the public didn't take animation seriously and this movie failed to earn back its budget. This set back the animation industry and it would be years before animated films started being successful.

 

[Unknown]

Independence Day (1996)

The failure of this movie ruined Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin's careers and ended their partnership. Adding a romantic triangle subplot didn't help (reportedly, the unpopularity of this caused James Cameron to end that plot for Titanic (1998) and turn it into a docudrama-style movie). Thank God for small favors--Emmerich and Devlin were in the running for directing and producing the Godzilla movie, instead of the good Tarantino-produced and Michael Bay-directed movie we got...

 

[Unknown]

And a further note on why Thirteen Reasons Why (2017) failed: it was produced by Miramax, which was headed by Harvey Weinstein, who would become infamous as the reason the #MeToo movement took off--so making a movie about the same issues Weinstein would be accused of was a bit hypocritical to many people...

 

[Geon]

In this particular vein albeit OOC consider one of if not THE greatest film of all times, Gone With the Wind. Between problems with casting, constantly changing directors, friction between the stars and the directors, and budget problems the film was always one step from disaster. Had even one of these issues not been resolved today we might see this film not as a masterpiece but as the most expensive flop in Hollywood history.

 

[overoceans]

Title: The Power Of Ten

Genres: Action, Religious

Herbert W. Armstrong folded Ambassador Auditorium in the late 70s in order to redirect tithe money toward producing Christian end-time flicks. Hey, it worked for Hal Lindsey! What could go wrong?

Well...

1. The British Israel theology underlying Armstrong's version of the Apocalypse managed to offend pretty much anyone who would normally be the target audience for that sort of thing: Zionists, Christian Zionists, the "USA!! USA!!" crowd etc.

2. The film was of insufficent quality to attract action-genre enthusiasts. Charles Bronson, who played an agent from the tribe of Dan battling the forces of Antichrist, called it his most embarrassing career move, which is saying something.

3. Against the advice of his more pragmatic associates, Armstrong insisted on including anti-Christmas messages in the film, thus spitting in the face of the most cherished of all American traditions. (Admittedly, the scene of First Daughter Dawn Wells convincing the unconverted President Laurence Olivier to cancel Xmas at the White House, was a hoot.)

4. While TPOT was likely not an overall inspiration for the wave of Christian Identity terrorism that hit the US a short while later, the murder of Roger Ebert, in retaliation for having mocked British Israel ideas when proclaiming the film Dog Of The Week, definitely cast it in an even worse light than previously. There were rumours that merely renting it would get you on an FBI watchlist.

Still regarded as a major cult film, in the older, non-positive sense of the phrase.

 

[Unknown]

(Admittedly, the scene of First Daughter Dawn Wells convincing the unconverted President Laurence Olivier to cancel Xmas at the White House, was a hoot.)

Dawn Wells still refuses to talk about it to this day (which, ironically, is the stance her co-star on Gilligan's Island, Tina Louise, took towards Gilligan's Island after the show went off the air). Don't even try to bring it up to her (when someone at a Gilligan's Island TV special brought up her role in this movie, she said it was a piece of shit--on the air live). As for Laurence Olivier, he said in an interview right before his death that this was the worst of his late-career movies (which, if you consider The Betsy, The Jazz Singer, and Inchon, is really saying something, IMO) and apologized for starring in it.

BTW, they wanted Suzanne Somers to play the First Daughter originally, but she read the script and, thankfully, followed the advice of her then-fiancée (now husband) Alan Hamel, and turned it down. Now, if she'd only ignored his advice about leaving Three's Company ...

You know who they wanted to play the president originally? Orson Welles. Welles, thankfully, turned it down (and this was a man who appeared in the movie Butterfly with Pia Zadora, among other questionable late-career moves--except for his role in Transformers, which he quite enjoyed)...

The only saving grace of The Power of Ten was the choice of actor to play the Antichrist--Michael York. York later admitted that he deliberately hammed it up in the role because he realized the movie was going to be awful (he also did interviews promoting the movie--where he promoted the movies competing against it and urged viewers to watch them instead). He's widely cited as the most enjoyable part of the movie, even by the movie's detractors (it helps that he also took it for the money and because he wanted to play the Antichrist)...

(OOC: For an idea of how York would play the Antichrist, watch Michael York as the Antichrist in the Omega Code movies, where he chews up the scenery...)

 

[overoceans]

OOC..

@Unknown

I think we're on the same page here. I was actually thinking of those specific Olivier cheesefests when I cast him, though my main inspiration was Inchon.

I also considered Pia Zadora and Tina Louise for the White House, but Pia woulda been a bit too late(I think she'd still need to do Butterfly), and Tina a bit too exotic for a wholesome convert.

And I did think of Orson Welles for the prez, largely because he had done The Late Great Planet Earth a few years earlier. But I thought the odds of him getting mixed up in two separate versions of end-times eschatolgy would be much more than short.

And glad to see someone else remembers Alan Hamill. He used to host an afternoon chat-show on Canadian TV. Which seemed like a world away from Three's Company.

 

[Unknown]

BTW, @overoceans, it's actually Alan Hamel, not Hamill (as I thought)--and, for what's it worth (and however much influence he might have had with Somers leaving Three's Company), he and Somers are still together today, which says something, considering Hollywood marriages...

 

[overoceans]

OOC:

BTW, @overoceans, it's actually Alan Hamel, not Hamill (as I thought)--and, for what's it worth (and however much influence he might have had with Somers leaving Three's Company), he and Somers are still together today, which says something, considering Hollywood marriages...

Thanx for clarifying the spelling. Yeah, I found out a few months ago that Hamel and Somers were still married, and I was indeed surprised. I thought for sure they woulda been toast by now, partly because of the Hollywood marriage thing, but also because, like I said, they just seemed like two people who would inhabit entirely different worlds. But, hey, they've managed to make it last, so all the more power to them.

 

[Zheng He]

How about the whole trend in the 1990s of trying to make suspenseful movies about real world events - yeah, I'm talking those total duds Apollo 13 and Titanic. Memo to Hollywood producers - you cannot make a suspenseful movie when everyone knows how it ends. GIVE IT UP!!!!

 

[unclepatrick]

Iron Man. Who idea was it to cast Jack Black as Tony Stark ?
If they taken the movie seriously ,they might have turn marvel comics into a series of movies .

 

[Iggies]

Anastasia (1997) - the passion project of animator Don Bluth, the film was a daring animated adaptation of the Romanov family's final days, as told through the eyes of the Tsar's titular youngest daughter. The plot begins with the February Revolution of 1917 that brought down the autocracy and ends with the family's execution in Yekaterinburg a year later. It is nearly three hours long, and thoroughly explores Anastasia's relationships with her various family members, but especially her beloved older sister Maria.

Unfortunately, audiences just weren't ready. Anastasia was released more than a decade before the smash-hit World War II musical Inglourious Basterds inaugurated the age of serious adult animation, and 'cartoons' were still generally considered children's fare. Adult viewers avoided it on those grounds. Parents who brought their children to early screenings were horrified by the violence and grim themes, as well as the decidedly unhappy (but historically accurate) ending. It was a massive box office failure and bankrupted Fox Animation Studios. But despite the initial reception, Anastasia has since recovered its reputation and become a cult classic--it is often listed among the best animated movies of the 20th century. Tony Jay's chilling portrayal of head chekist Yakov Yurovsky is sometimes considered the best role of the voice-actor's long career.

The film is also notable because it was released during a short period of détente and was thus was briefly screened in the USSR. This run did not last long, and it ultimately drew an official protest from the Soviet government, which denounced it as 'sentimental lies and nothing but sentimental lies'.

 

[overoceans]

Gimme Shelter

Maybe if the Stones had gone with their original plans and made Altamont a free concert, and hired Hells Angels for security(to be paid with beer, according to the legend!), we could have ended up with some combustible social dynamics worth documenting on film.

But instead, they charged a substantial admission fee, and hired some of the beefier denizens from local communes for security, with the end result being a bunch of weekend revolutionaries enjoying a concert that was about as bourgeois as you can get while still being counterculture.

Not that there weren't some cute moments, eg. when the romantic couple near the stage get a little too frisky, and Jagger tries to settle them down with "Cool it, cats!" That was kinda funny.

I did hear the Angels were pretty miffed about losing the gig at the last minute. Sonny Barger was apparently quite bitter, used to joke about wanting to throttle Jagger as payback for the inconvenience.

 

[Walter Rodney Kinghorn]

What about the sequel to Gladiator? The one where Russell Crowe was a "immortal war zombie" according to Ebert, fighting the Fall of Rome all the way to serving Dubya in the Pentagon.

Jesus Christ man, that movie would have burned up all goodwill the second one had. A $300 MILLION DOLLAR SHORTFALL.

That killed off Russell Crowe's acting career and we got no more Ridley Scott films. Very sad.

At least Crowe's got some talent with singing.

On the other hand, hearing that Master and Commander was going to have Crowe in the lead role instead of Paul McGann, it is for the best. There's no way that those memes of the Eighth Doctor as Lucky Jack are going to go away. Ever.

 

[overoceans]

OOC

Walter:

I was with you up until the mention of Ridley Scott's involvement. Scott is not quite as highbrow as is sometimes claimed(Hannibal was pure schlock IMHO), but I don't think he'd try to pull as cheap a stunt as switching the genre to sci-fi mid-series.

The only way I could see it happening is if Scott originally directs Crowe in a time-travel flick(quite plausible), but then the studio decides it's a dud, and orders Scott to re-shoot a few scenes to make it into a sequel to Gladiator.

That kind of stuff does happen(I believe the Cloverfield films went from Godzilla Tribute to Psycho Locking People In His Basement), but I'm guessing Scott's prestige is such that his contracts wouldn't allow for it.







ㅡ

 

[JanWellem]

Blade Runner

Director Ridley Scott insists on the final cut privilege for the theatrical release. Thus instead of a narrated film noir style science fiction thriller, the motion picture turns out to be a socio-critical science fiction dystopia mirroring its' paragon Metropolis. Another highly controversial decision of Ridley Scott is to leave Blade Runner largely without the soundtrack it was supposed to have after the composer originally contracted to compose it, Evángelos Odysséas Papathanassíou, better known as Vangelis, has been killed in a car accident after having finished but a fraction of the entire score out of respect for him. This fraction is recorded, but used only sparingly by Scott during a few most crucial scenes. The studio tries to persuade Scott to have another composer either finish Vangelis' soundtrack fragment or compose an entirely new score and even hires a composer, who does both, but Ridley Scott's accepts neither alternative and thus only 13 minutes out of a runtime of 137 of Blade Runner are accompanied by music.

While art movie critics praise Scott's decision to not fall prey to the siren calls of the studio to dumb the movie down, early 1980s audiences are far less enthusiastic about the Final Cut and Blade Runner ends up running for just a single week in most theatres with the exception of a few art house cinemas, grossing a mere $ 13,5 million. Despite all of this Blade Runner later becomes a favourite of festival and university screenings, but killing the concept of director's final cut privilege in Hollywood for good.

 

[overoceans]

What about the sequel to Gladiator? The one where Russell Crowe was a "immortal war zombie" according to Ebert, fighting the Fall of Rome all the way to serving Dubya in the Pentagon.

The most laughable part of that was when Crowe gives Bush the speech about how "You need to fight as a republic, not an empire", throwing in a bunch of ahistorical crapola about how Rome only descended into torture and warmongering after it became an Empire. And of course, the screen version of Bush nods along solemnly.

A few months later, Abu Ghraib broke.

 

[M79]

The 1994 Casablanca remake with Ray Liotta, Sharon Stone, and Jack Nicholas was bad. How the hell did they think no one would notice replacing Sam with Bea Arthur?

Terminator: Redemption was worse, nearly killing the franchise for good. Trying to rewrite the Terminator timeline in and of itself seemed like a bad idea, but the ending with John Connor's mind getting transplanted into a T-888 as SKYNET offs itself and film going to black as Connor's troops arrive should have been test-screened. $250 million budget, $42 million return - worldwide.

But the ultimate Razzie winner would have to be 1998's Cutthroat Island 2: More Booty! To this day no one knows for sure who greenlit the film though that lecherous guy who got busted about 15 years later seems to get the lion's share of blame. Even the title sounds more like a porno than a mainstream film, never mind production values that per Siskel and Ebert, "made Manos: The Hands of Fate and Plan 9 from Outer Space look like cinematic masterpieces in comparison". And how the heck did Uwe Boll get put in the main Director's chair?!

On the flip side, the 2010 Quentin Tarentino reboot of Star Trek was phenomenal, especially with Hugh Jackman as Bones and Heath Ledger as Kirk. Zachary Quinto also made a Spock par excellence. And Disney saved us from a potential fan-service trilogy and gave us cinematic gold by cutting a deal for the Star Wars trilogy with Timothy Zahn, maybe due to getting Peter Jackson to direct the whole thing. This is especially surprising given the ability of each film to keep the audience's attention despite being between 2.5 and 3 hours each. Their ending with the Palpatine clone doing the mass-force-lightning trick at the end to nearly bring down the New Republic fleet but instead taking down Thrawn's Katana Fleet due to misdirection by Lady Vader is still one of the most awesome scenes in 21st century film.

 

[overoceans]

Rambo First Blood Part II

The franchise really just shoulda surrendered to the prevailing zeitgeist and had something like John Rambo going back to 'Nam and mowing down a buncha Asiatic commies for shit and giggles.

Instead, they decided to up the ante from the previous film, by having him ATTACK THE PENTAGON in order to get documents proving that military bigwigs were the ones ultimately responsible for US WAR CRIMES previously blamed on the grunts.

And of course, they just HAD to write it so that one of those murderous bigwigs had become president. At least they had enough brain cells to make him a fictional POTUS, but still.

Even without Jane Fonda praising the movie for its "courage", it woulda tanked.

 

[M79]

Rambo First Blood Part II

The franchise really just shoulda surrendered to the prevailing zeitgeist and had something like John Rambo going back to 'Nam and mowing down a buncha Asiatic commies for shit and giggles.

Instead, they decided to up the ante from the previous film, by having him ATTACK THE PENTAGON in order to get documents proving that military bigwigs were the ones ultimately responsible for US WAR CRIMES previously blamed on the grunts.

And of course, they just HAD to write it so that one of those murderous bigwigs had become president. At least they had enough brain cells to make him a fictional POTUS, but still.

Even without Jane Fonda praising the movie for its "courage", it woulda tanked.

Irony: Rambo dies at the end of the book which coincides with the actual end of the Vietnam War. The Sheriff is sympathetic, Trautman is a psychopath, and it takes place in Appalachia.