Summer movie flops revisited: Just how bad were these big-budget disasters?
From Battlefield Earth to Waterworld, we're taking another look at some notorious big-screen bombs to see if they're as bad as we originally thought
Film Features Laurence Fishburne
Ever since Jaws birthed the summer blockbuster in 1975, motion-picture studios have saved their priciest, splashiest films for beach season. Every year between May and August you can expect the latest superhero extravaganza, Tom Cruise vehicle, killer-fish flick, or action-packed sequel—each with a budget equivalent to the gross national product of a small country. But while big budgets and big marketing often mean big box office, they can also mean big disasters. Sometimes 9-digit flops can be chalked up to bad publicity, a trailer that didn’t resonate, or the studio misjudging interest in a genre, story, or star.
Since, as they say, the customer is always right, most of these blockbuster dirigibles earned their reputation by virtue of being awful. But with time and distance, is something like 1987’s Ishtar or 1995’s Waterworld really as bad as their reputation? We decided to revisit, in alphabetical order, 12 notorious summer duds to see if they’re really that bad, or if they’re ripe for some sort of redemption.
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I was about to protest that this already existed:https://www.avclub.com/tag/my-year-of-flopsThen I saw how long it’s been.
“Pee Drinking Fish Men I Have Known” is is still one of the best titles for anything.
That series is also where “manic pixie dream girl” was coined.
Kirsten Dunst, right? Though I think Zoe Dechanel quickly grabbed the crown and ran with it, briefly loaning to Natalie Portman for Garden State.
Kirsten Dunst in Elizabethtown.
I think you and bfred are both right. Nathan Rabin introduced the term (which he’d thought of earlier) to describe Kirsten Dunst’s character in a review of Elizabethtown in 2007, and in the same passage mentions the Natalie Portman character in Garden State.https://www.avclub.com/the-bataan-death-march-of-whimsy-case-file-1-elizabet-1798210595Several years later and in another venue, he expresed some regret for unleashing this meme (but not for calling Elizabethtown a “Bataan Death March of whimsy”).https://www.salon.com/2014/07/15/im_sorry_for_coining_the_phrase_manic_pixie_dream_girl/Though Zooey Deschanel had a lot of credits already, that was a couple of years before she had what I think of as her breakout role in 500 Days of Summer.
And, later, we got:
I have heard variants of that phrase three times in the last month or so used in movies or tv shows. I wish I could remember which, but I don’t.
And Rabin keeps on Rabin’n. https://www.nathanrabin.com/ I don’t think he’s been specifically doing the flops column any more, but he still does some great stuff. I hear he’s hard up for subscribed readership. It would be great for anybody to start following in and maybe kick in a few bucks a month.
Event Horizon is really good IMO. And it’s remarkable how many of its creepy moving gothic architecture sets were physical or practical effects. Nowadays it would just be a lame mess of CGI.Of course you can tell which parts ARE CGI because they aren’t very good, but you can’t have everything.Also he does the pen thing
with that very attractive piece of paper.
It’s the movie that makes you realize Paul W.S. Anderson isn’t just a joke director to compare against Paul Thomas Anderson. Pity the rest of W.S.’s output is kind of a joke. But I’d say Event Horizon is the third best SF horror movie after Alien and The Thing. And I’m not joking.
Event Horizon makes great co-viewing with In the Mouth of Madness for a good dose of Sam Neill chewing horror scenery. Also the crew of the ship have this really good lived in feeling characterization where you feel for them and you want them to be safe. And Laurence Fishburne for a hero!
I don’t know why AVC has developed a sudden hatred for this film. They talked shit on it in the 15 worst Stephen King adaptations article too, and that was from a different author. I actually haven’t seen it, but I always got the impression it was widely regarded as a sci-fi/horror classic.
I was scrolling through cable channels a few years back and watched a few minutes of Ishtar. It didn’t seem bad. I’m not opposed to Simon & Garfunkel jokes (and they weren’t that far off in 1987), so maybe I’ll give it a try some day.
I don’t think Ishtar is bad exactly, but Beatty and Hoffman are miscast. With Steve Martin and Martin Short it might have worked
The Three Amigos had released a year earlier, with those two plus Chevy Chase. Maybe the studio thought that anyone could do ‘funny’, and expected Beatty and Hoffman to make a plethora of money.
Yeah as I think Beatty and Hoffman demonstrate in Ishtar, comedy is not as easy as it looks
These men are PAWNS.
Fuck yeah Three Amigos! youngfred loved that movie. “Sew, old woman! Sew like the wind!”
God, now I just want a Martin/Martin road comedy while they could still stand to do it.
Ishtar has been getting re-evaluated a lot lately, saying it’s not as bad as people remember, and that Elaine May (the director) got blackballed for decades undeservedly. I’ve only seen a few minutes myself and it didn’t seem as bad as I’d heard
Definitely. Mediocre? Yeah, sure. But the way people talk about it, you’d think it was ‘The Room” or something.
The characters seemed dated when the movie was new. Now that everything about it is old it is probably less distracting.
Ishtar is not bad at all. It’s funny. It’s a Hope/Crosby road movie, and unlike that series, they spent money actually GOING on the road to their locations. The too-old leads lean into their too-oldness, and their lack of hipness – and the awful songs (shout-out to Paul Williams) are hilariously bad.Also, as I recall, when the production started getting in trouble, neither Beatty nor Hoffman agreed to defer any of their quite substantial paychecks. (Despite being friends of Elaine May and supposedly wanting to help out.) I do wonder how much flak a male director would have gotten for the failure of this movie but we’ll never know.
ishtar is good, can confirm.
Hear hear.The songs were terrifically bad, and the scene where Hoffman and Beatty are composing the lyrics was funny and beautifully played.I don’t think the whole movie works, but the “disaster” was much much more related to the production than the final product. It’s probably about a C+.And yes: Men in the business almost always get more slack for continued work than women.
I do wonder how much flak a male director would have gotten for the failure of this movie but we’ll never know.Yeeaaah no we know.
Ishtar’s great – the guys are supposed to be unhip, that’s the whole point. They think they’re a great songwriting duo who just can’t catch a break, but they’re just bad. That’s why they take the gig overseas that leads to all the hijinks. A few of the jokes are dated, and a few would fall flat at any time, but overall it’s surprisingly fleet and funny.
Besides Scott Pilgrim It’s by far the best film on this list. It wasn’t amazing or anything, but it’s fun.
Yeah. Referencing Simon & Garfunkel in 1987 is like referencing Nirvana now.
LOL, S&G in 87 would be like referencing Nirvana in 2011. Welcome to old.
I thought the movie was pretty darn funny, Hoffman and Beatty were great playing against type, it was fun to watch Warren Beatty play a nerd. After it came out, with all the bad press, Gary Larson did a Far Side cartoon of the Blockbuster in Hell, and was endless shelves of Ishtar. Some years later, he admitted he hadn’t actually seen it, and had recently watched it, said it was actually pretty good, and apologized to the cast and crew for the joke. I would say give it a shot, it’s a fun movie.
I love Ishtar. Ive been looking for the soundtrack for years because the songs crack me up.
event horizon is a cult classic. it is quite possibly the most terrifying space based movie ever. the visuals, what it makes you think and feel blows all the aliens out of the water on the fear level.
I guess people just don’t know what to make of that one. I rewatched the trailer and it’s definitely marketed as horror, so who knows why it didn’t resonate like Alien or something similar. It’s a freaky as hell movie for sure.
Interestly enough, apparently Gary Larson of The Far Side fame had heard of Ishtar’s reputation when he drew Hell’s Video Store (where every video was Ishtar) but he hadn’t seen it when he drew it.He later did and didn’t find it as bad as it’s reputation suggested and he said it’s the one comic he’s apologised for.https://screenrant.com/far-side-gary-larson-apologize-ishtar-mistake/
I saw both Battlefield Earth and Event Horizon in the theater. Event Horizon was good! Battlefield Earth is one of the top 3-5 worst movies I ever saw in a theater. What a lord of shit.
I saw Battlefield Earth in theaters too. I was in university at the time and a friend of mine talked me into going by saying he heard the effects were good (they weren’t) and that a girl on his residence floor was going and she was interested in me (she wasn’t and I can’t even remember if she went).
The theater I saw it in was so empty (in NYC) and the movie wasn’t even so bad it was funny. It was so boring!
I’d already read the book of Battlefield Earth and hence had no need to see the movie.
My boss at the time insisted I read the book. I read about 100 pages in and then just pretended to have finished it.For a fiction writer, he was a hell of a cult leader.
I saw Event Horizon twice in the week it opened in Australia.I have no regrets.
I really enjoyed it and it actually gave me a nightmare like a week later. Which was cool because horror movies rarley do that for me. I was shocked people didn’t like it.
Good movie. I still remember renting it and being freaked the fuck out.
I thoroughly enjoyed it and horror isn’t my thing.
The lord of shit:
Ha, maybe I did mean lord of shit! That Dogma monster was something else! Damn typo’s! 🙂
It’s also based in sound theological and historical reasoning, unlike most movie monsters!
“Not even funny bad” should be the pull quote for the Battlefield Earth cover
I mean it’s so true! lol!A movie like Jason X is so bad that I can laugh at it and enjoy parts of it. Battlefield Earth was so awful I just wanted to hit my head against the wall so I didn’t have to finish watching that slog!
I caught Battlefield Earth on pay TV when I was a kid, late nineties, during the time of Austin Powers. I liked it…for about five minutes. See, I genuinely didn’t know anything about it, and thought it was a spoof of alien invasion flicks – it was just so over-the-top – just like how Austin Powers spoofed spy movies……and then, oh my fucking god, it dawned on me after a few more minutes: they were serious. Oh, oh god, no. They were being sincere.I’ve a distinct memory of feeling my stomach drop. And that was even before the grunting, dreadlocked cavemen figured out how to fly a Harrier after a two-minute montage in a still-working flight simulator.
I have a friend who dropped acid before seeing Event Horizon in theatres. Sounds traumatic to me.
Just the visual of the aliens in Battlefield Earth in those ridiculous giant boots to make them taller is an instant visual cue of how bad it is. It feels like a boring parody of a bad movie.
When I was in college, Event Horizon was free on demand in the dorm common room. A group of us realized we’d all watched it as kids and been scarred, so we thought it would be fun to rewatch it and laugh at how dumb we were as kids. It still got us.
Hudson Hawk is one of the most underrated films of all time.
Waterworld – as an elementary/middle schooler around the time this was released, I thought it was a perfectly fine summer movie. Yeah, it wasn’t as good as other summer blockbusters, but I did not find it abysmal. The setting was unique, the action/practical effects were good, there was some humor… it just did them all on such a mediocre level. Waterworld isn’t awful, it just had bad “value” for the amount of money that went into it (e.g. Costner’s crazy lodgings). Waterworld seems like a prime movie for a reboot – take the premise and just do a different movie in that world.Land of the Lost – this one looked awful from the trailers. It was also about the time, in my mind, that Will Ferrell’s manchild schtick had run its course.Scott Pilgrim – I enjoy it, but this is a niche film. No idea what the budget was for this to count as a flop, but it was never going to have mass appeal.The Mummy – what a mess. I wanted to like this movie so much (action! horror! Dark Universe! Tom Cruise’s generally solid-at-worst film output! Sofia Boutella as the Mummy!) but it was just soulless. Watching the movie just felt like a bunch of corporate checkboxes being checked and nothing else. Also, hot taek here, but Jake Johnson seems extraordinarily overrated. I never saw New Girl and I will assume that he was good in that (it was a popular show that certainly opened doors for him), but in the Mummy/21 Jump Street/Jurassic World, I have no idea why they paid him whatever salary he commanded, rather than going with a generic white guy. When I saw he was the sidekick in The Mummy, that was the first sign that maybe this movie was going to miss the mark.
This makes The Mummy so much better.In fact better by so much, you don’t need to see the rest.
– What is it? What do you smell?- Manflesh!
I saw Waterworld in the theater as a kid and thought it was fine. I rented it a couple of years ago to see if it had funny bad value and was honestly just bored.
I really like Waterworld, but its production issues and exploding budget made it a punching bag before it ever got to theaters so it feels like it wasn’t given much of a chance. Apparently a major takeaway was “don’t ever film where you can’t allow land to appear on screen.” They had to film only at certain times of day, from certain angles, so all that appears on-screen is ocean. It also had to be almost entirely on location, while most movies with a bunch of water are filmed in tanks.
Both Waterworld and The Postman struck me as efforts where they got to a certain point and said “The money’s gone, we have to wrap this up.” Costner’s done some solid work but had some awful clinkers, too. Postman was an excellent sci-fi book, though.
The trailer for The Postman frankly made the movie look dumb as hell so I never saw it, although I was curious about Tom Petty’s presence.I thought Waterworld went out fine, with the sinking of the Exxon Valdez and the surviving good guys finding dry land (where they immediately got nauseous from the lack of motion).
Saw both in the theatres when they came out. Enjoyed both at the time. They fulfilled their purpose of being an entertaining summer movie. Good enough for me.
I’m mostly mad at the Postman movie for putting Hollywood off David Brin. We’ll never have an adaptation of his “Uplift” books like Startide Rising.
Someone needs to send a copy of Earth to Christopher Nolan.
The Postman was a great concept that was just too long. Costner went through a period where he made projects that were Dances With Wolves epics, even if they shouldn’t have been. The Postman, Waterworld, Wyatt Earp, etc. I’m surprised Costner never made it into the MCU.
The thing with Land of the Lost is that everyone dismisses it because of the obvious cheap production value, but it was actually a really good show. They did what they could with the sets on a Saturday morning tv budget, but they didn’t skimp on the writers, if you watch the credits, you’ll see some of the greatest sci-fi writers of that era listed. The stories were good, yes, they were written toward a young audience, but they weren’t talking down to them. It still irks me that they turned it into a stupid Will Ferrell comedy, I hope someday someone will look beyond the admittedly cheap production value, and notice the amazing premise, and good writing, and make a serious kick ass update of this show.
That’s especially true of the first season, when David Gerrold was still involved. Writers included Gerrold, Ben Bova, Larry Niven, Norman Spinrad, and “Trek” refugees D.C. Fontana, Margaret Armen and Walter Koenig. It dropped off in season two, though even then there were scripts by Armen, Donald Glut and Theodore Sturgeon. What I love about LOTL is how weird it all is in the first two years. (Season three is weird in a different, more stupid way.) Lots of world-building, and bizarre dimensional shenanigans. For me, one of the oddest moments is when the Marshall family are standing on a high ledge looking out over the land with binoculars; due to the nature of their pocket universe, they see themselves from behind.
That’s one way to check out your own ass!
“No idea what the budget was for this”
You just jumped to the comments too?
Waterworld I kind of liked. It was “Mad Max” only sans Gibson and on water.
Scott Pilgrim was okay — it wasn’t as good as the source material, but not nearly as bad as most Alan Moore adaptations and the like, so I call that a win.
Land of the Lost was terrible because Will Ferrell is, like Adam Sandler, somebody who I just don’t find funny at all. Also, I’m old so I have ondness for the actual show.
The Mummy (Cruise not Fraser) — never saw it.
I quite enjoyed The Mummy, but I was watching it while utterly crumbly with jetlag and sleep deprivation, so I’m assuming everyone else’s opinion of that movie is a bit more accurate than mine.
I do appreciate Johnson’s voice work in the Spider-Verse films. He’s a good fit as older, somewhat jaded Peter Parker.
Saw Event Horizon in the theater and fucking loved it. It’s a cornerstone of the “You’re In Space and Everything is Fucked” genre. I didn’t discover till years later it was a flop; I thought everyone loved it as much as I did. To this day my old high school friends and I still murmur to each other libera te tutemet ex inferis on occasion. On the flip side, just about everyone I knew loved Scott Pilgrim while I’ve always kind felt like its cult darling status wasn’t justified. There are all sorts of issues with the characters and the plot that left me uncomfortable when I first watched it, though I couldn’t articulate why. If you asked me about it now I’d go on a diatribe about manic pixie dream girls and how it isn’t clear if Scott’s flaws are supposed to be recognized as flaws by the audience… but a quick google search will show plenty of smarter folks have already spilled gallons of digital ink over it. Waterworld for me is “eh”. I found it nowhere near as good as any of the Madmax movies, but also nowhere near as bad as everyone joked when it first came out. The gimmick is interesting and the action is fun. Not a hidden gem but there are certainly worse things to put on in the background while doing the dishes or cleaning your house on a lazy Sunday afternoon.
It’s got great action and pretty amazing setpieces. Costner’s fine, but lord is Hopper having a great time.
I watched Waterworld at the university movie theater, and the bungee-jump climax got full-on applause and cheering. And this was in Britain where we simply didn’t do that sort of thing.
I’ve tried to enjoy Event Horizon, the scary bits are good, but the floaty CGI objects, the acting (in places) and everything being filmed in close-up make it hard to love.
12 year old me really liked Ishtar. 16 year old me really liked Hudson Hawk. 20 year old me ok liked Waterworld. No version of me liked the others on the list.
Then no version of you ever saw Scott Pilgrim.
I have to take this opportunity to warn everyone. Do NOT be tempted to watch the director’s cut of Waterworld. I know that the general consensus is that director’s cuts are often better than theatrical cuts. Not in this case. It literally ruins the film.
TBH the only director that has a really good hit rate with Director’s Cuts is Ridley Scott. For everyone else, it’s a crapshoot.
I forgot Tina Majorino was in Waterworld. I bet making that movie when you were 9 was an amazing experience
I remember seeing Napoleon Dynamite for the first time and wracking my brain to figure out where I’d seen her before.
Apparently annoying moppets still exist in a post-apocalyptic world. I like to believe Costner tossing her overboard wasn’t scripted.
I’ve always thought Event Horizon was criminally underrated.
I can’t be the only one to see the Waterworld poster and think “I didn’t know Katherine Heigl was in it”. Looked it up on IMDB and didn’t even know the name Jeanne Tripplehorn, who was the supporting actor alongside Costner.
I thought it was Olivia Williams, who was in The Postman, but not Waterworld
She’s better known as “the other woman from Basic Instinct”.
That’s always the first thing I think of when I hear her name. But, she’s done a lot of stuff, including television shows like Big Love, Criminal Minds, and The Gilded Age.
Putting a film on here that got ok reviews and made a small profit seems disingenuous. The fact that Waterworld wasn’t a flop is a far more interesting truth than the lie that it flopped.
Yeah, I will not be sitting through Waterworld again just so I can watch carefully for Jack fucking Black.
I also forget that we live in 2023 sometimes.
It’s not even an “early” appearance by him. He had a bunch of credits by then, including several high-profile movies.
If it was wasn’t for Event Horizon, Christopher Nolan wouldn’t have been able to explain how wormholes work.
I saw Event Horizon in theaters back in the day and have always really liked that movie (honestly probably my favorite horror movie of all time). Of the rest of the list, I’ll stand up for Hudson Hawk (pretty sure I rented that from Blockbuster back in the day, and enjoyed it for what it was), Land of the Lost (just a goofy “get stoned and laugh at some dumb jokes” movie, but also I’m a Will Ferrell and Danny McBride fan), and Waterworld (a little too slow and serious, but the practical effects were really good…the bloated budget probably tarnishes this movie more than the actual movie).
It would be a stretch to call Hudson Hawk “good”, but it’s reasonably entertaining for what it is.
I thought Scott Pilgrim was a success, at least that’s how it feels with it’s many fans, however for me this movie brings back bad memories as it made me realized I was getting old. I think I was 29 when it came out and at that point, I felt I was up to date with pop culture, I was a fan of Cera’s tv shows, movies, the movie is directed by Edgar Wright who I was a fan of, Aubrey Plaza was in it and I was a fan of Mani pixie girls ( I was single at the time , for a looong time ) so this movie checked all the boxes for me except..I was like what the hell is this. some guy has to fight ex-boyfriends, what with the cartoons and anime shit. Just didn’t make sense to me. At the time I was workig at Starbucks so most of my coworkers were 18-23 year olds and they LOVED this movie and I felt so out of place..that was the first pop culture I could not connect with , shit I am getting old!! i should probably rewatch it at some point.
Yeah I’m surprised to hear that was a theater flop. I feel it’s always been well-regarded, at least among the target audience.
Maybe it just wasn’t marketed well. I feel like even pretty close to when it came out I knew a lot of people who liked it across a pretty wide set. It’s definitely well liked now that so many of the actors are super famous
Seemed to me like it was a reasonably successful indie comedy. But looking it up, it apparently had an $85 million budget, which is frankly nuts for a movie like that. Should have cost about half that at most.
Yeah, I’m in the same boat. About the same age as you were and same general grasp of pop culture. It’s one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen.
It’s almost as much of a Marmite movie as Napoleon Dynamite. My sister thought it was shit, and though I’d never admit it to her, it damaged our relationship a bit. Not as much as finding out she didn’t like Galaxy Quest, but was definitely a non-zero effect.
Didn’t like Galaxy Quest? Is your sister secretly an alien? Everyone loves that movies!
I’m guessing you were unfamiliar with the graphic novel, going into the film. The film is very faithful to it. Scott Pilgrim was a blast to see in the theater, despite the yeahyeahyeah problematic themes.
Had the same experience. I was 32 when it came out and I thought it would really hit with me but it fell flat. I was married and had a kid at that point so Scott Pilgrims twenty something trials didn’t really click with me
I saw “Ishtar” on its initial release. It’s a genial, Bob-and-Bing road movie. I enjoyed it. For some reason, people reviewed the budget rather than the film. Is the money on the screen? Absolutely not. But my ticket cost the same price as one for any other contemporaneous film. “Waterworld” was another case of reviewers behaving like bookkeepers. The film itself is a perfectly cromulent piece of post-“Road Warrior” apocalyptic action-fantasy. At least there the visuals better reflect what was spent, and in these days of virtual sets, I’m pretty forgiving of movies that cost a lot because they filmed on the goddamn ocean.
Like a lot of people (including this author) I wondered how they hell they spent so much money on Ishtar. That alone made it as much a curiosity as a movie.
Are dutch angles special effects? Because those were a worse aspect of Battlefield Earth than the dated CGI. That whole movie seems to have been filmed with a drunk tripod. Hell everything about that movie is worse than the special effects. Travolta’s scream voice, “ENDLESS OPTIONS FOR RENEWAL,” the Harriers that are still working fine after sitting around for a million years, the fact that it’s a slavish recreation of Hubbard material, take your pick.
I can’t speak for any other GenXers, but I did not feel any nostalgia while watching Land of the Lost. It had (at least to me) the air of “ha ha look how stupid this show you loved when you were a kid was.”
As a fellow Gen-Xer, I didn’t feel nostalgia because the original Land of the Lost coming on was the signal to me to turn off the TV and go do something else. Now Sigmond and the Sea Monsters? Or Far Out Space Nuts? That shit was golden.
Exactly. It was the “Unless you’re sick in bed, TV time is OVER” signal.
What many younger generations probably don’t understand about Generation X is that we watched a lot of garbage back in the day not because we liked it, but because there’s wasn’t a whole lot on. Land of the Lost was one of those shows you would watch only if you had absolutely nothing better to do. We knew it was bad then.
“we watched a lot of garbage back in the day not because we liked it, but because there’s wasn’t a whole lot on”This. Watched all kinds of crap simply because it was sandwiched between two shows I did like.
I think it might’ve been a factor of my age… it was on when I was ages 2 through 4, so I didn’t know any better. 😀
It’s also why Gen X has fondness for a lot of 60s and early 70s TV. Those shows got syndicated and were what TV stations showed during the day. So when you were sick, or it was the summer. You either watched soap operas, cooking shows or reruns of Gilligan’s Island
The show was very stupid, but kinda entertaining in a weird way. (Plus, adolescent me had a major crush on Holly; I also loved how they consistently defeated a T. Rex by shoving a log (the “fly swatter”) in its mouth). The movie, of which I saw about an hour or so, was unmitigated garbage with barely anything to do with the show (which should have been a good thing, but most definitely was not).
Hilarious to read some Waterworld apologists on here. It was – and still is – a deeply stupid film full of plot holes that are blatantly and insanely absurd.
Waterworld is a weird case. Before release it was already being forecasted to flop and kill Costner’s career and so on, and it was actually kind of a surprise when critics generally thought it was okay (not great) and it made what for other movies would be a decent sum, just not enough to compensate for the overages until you get into international and home video etc. Sort of a Cleopatra situation, really. But years after the word that this was a disastrous flop spread and reviews after the fact tend to be more negative, often colored by the story of it being such a waste of money and so on. Overall it’s fun, a little derivative of Mad Max but the spectacle is definitely impressive and I love Hopper’s performance. (“Maybe he answers to Charles!”)Event Horizon is probably Paul W. S. Anderson’s best film, though that’s not saying a whole lot. There are still some hacky touches here and there, but it’s still good.
The one that truly pisses me off is “Land of the Lost.” The premise and setting have the potential for a great family adventure ala the later “Jumanji” films. And for what it’s worth, the movie does lean into some of the more peculiar aspects of the old TV show. Unfortunately—and I say this as someone who generally likes Will Ferrell—his humor is a terrible fit here.
Thanks for defending Hudson Hawk and Waterworld that seem to be mostly criticized… for being failures at the box office, which is dumb. I also love Lone Ranger. I agree Johnny Depp’s Tanto is not that different from Jack Sparrow, but the film is still very fun to me.
We need the Failure, Fiasco, or Secret Success scale from Rabin’s “My Year of Flops.”
No Heaven’s Gate? Does that mean Santa doesn’t have the budget to bring me a full-size period-authentic working steam locomotive?Some people have revisited it and decided that it’s actually a pretty good movie (as might have been hoped from the writer/director and all-star cast)… if you watch a better cut than originally came out. There are of course a lot of ways to make a bad movie, and sometimes there’s a good movie hiding in the original material that they just failed to bring out. Critically panned upon initial release, it brought in an order of magnitude less money than perfectionist Michael Cimino had spent making it, and the debacle is often pointed to as the end of the unfettered auteur filmmaker in Hollywood. Unfortunately it was also a milestone in American Humane Association monitoring of productions that seek the “No animals were harmed…” stamp of approval in the credits.
I remember seeing Heaven’s Gate at the cinema.
I don’t remember what it was about or what the point of it was, but I remember I went to the cinema, the movie was called Heaven’s Gate, and I sat through the whole thing.
It either wasn’t my thing or it’s genuinely one of the most uncompelling movies ever made.
I still maintain the best damn thing to come out of Heaven’s Gate was the fact that Willem Dafoe got kicked off the production as an extra for giggling…
…and then narrating the documentary on the implosion of the film that also dragged United Artists down with it:That, and the story about how Cimino demand the main street of the town be made wider, so he ordered the carpenter to knock down all the buildings on both sides of the street and rebuild them slightly farther apart from each other, even after the carpenter said it would be cheaper and smarter to just knock down one side and move it back twice as far.
Heaven’s Gate opened in November, so it’s a winter movie flop, not a summer movie flop.
Ah. You’re right; I had the timeline of the original and the recut resleases backward. So, a prestige drama flop, not fitting the summer blockbuster flop theme of this list.
John Travolta in Battlefield Earth puts together one of the funniest performances I’ve ever seen. Just watch the scene where he tries to determine what humans like to eat. “He’s eating rat. RAT MUST BE HIS FAVORITE FOOD!!!” It’s a wonder how the Psychlos conquered entire planets considering they’re too stupid to velcro their own boots.Seriously, the movie is an unintentional comedy masterpiece.
I can’t believe I haven’t seen Waterworld. But it’s on Tubi so I guess I know how I’m spending part of my weekend…
It’s worth a watch if only for the stunts.
Hudson Hawk is my absolute favorite bad movie.
Loved Scott Pilgrim.Waterworld was pretty good IMO.Event Horizon was also good IMO.
imo, Hudson Hawk is one of those few movies that actually *does* hit that smaller-than-some-think sweet spot of ‘so bad it’s good’.
If y’all have a chance, check out the Director’s Cut of Battlefield Earth.
It’s somehow even worse.
As many of you probably know, 99% of the shots are at a Dutch angle.
My favorite moment is when Travolta is watching Barry Pepper run through hallways on a monitor.
The footage on the monitor is at a Dutch angle, and the camera shooting the monitor is also at a Dutch angle. It’s a Dutch angle filming a Dutch angle!
It’s great to see people have come around on Event Horison and that it is generally now recognised as a good, if not great, movie. I loved it. I also think Scott Pilgrim is great.Waterworld is another movie I really thought was underrated. I liked its premise a lot and enjoyed the world building despite it essentially serving as a water copy of Mad Max. I would love to see it remade in capable hands. There’s a lot of promise there for something really good. Haven’t seen Ishtar, but yes the rest of those movies are very, very bad.
Scott Pilgrim was a movie that I was exactly the right target market for at the time, loved almost all the actors in it but found the movie to be absolutely terrible. Relentlessly pleased with itself, up itself and too quirky for its own good.I got the jokes, I just found them terribly lacking in humour.
“R.I.P.D. isn’t completely unwatchable”
Hard disagree. I tried to watch it on a plane. Managed about an hour. If there hadn’t been 50 other movies to choose from I would have jumped.But Event Horizon and Scott Pilgrim are both better than the initial critical response suggests.
Pluto Nash is almost assuredly a horrible movie with bad jokes that have not aged well, but I don’t know how you cite references to Trump and Hillary as evidence of that? Isn’t that a sign of a film that picked cultural targets to still be relevant in a future society and actually got it right (at least with these two?)
Ghostbusters II. Not a terrible terrible movie, but enough of a disappointment to kill the entire franchise for 25 years.
Event Horizon will always be a weird watch for me – just an odd combination of 90s cock rock action and Marilyn Manson/Hellraiser visuals. A very imaginative and original premise with some creepy moments, but I can’t get myself to like it.
Wow, that’s a really good description of that movie. There’s definitely some sort of stylistic dissonance going on in it that isn’t unnerving, but off-putting. Sam Neil is a hugely underrated actor though.
It’s also interesting to compare Event Horizon to Warhammer 40k. I’m not saying it influenced it but the gothic cathedral space ship and the fact that faster then light travel requires going through a dimension full of demons occur in both things.
my favorite dig at waterworld is that people were calling it “fishtar”
Land of the lost did give us this gem…..seems they knew
Love this scene
Rocky and Bullwinkle – no Roger Rabbit, but decent; love the Taxi Driver gagHudson Hawk – ridiculous funLand of the Lost – better as a Will Ferrell movie than an adaptation of the showThe Lone Ranger – there’s a really good 90 minute movie in all that…stuffThe Mummy – a mistakeR.I.P.D. – okay, but it would probably work better as a Syfy Channel showScott Pilgrim – pretty much what I said about Hudson HawkWaterworld – if Costner’s character was less of a dick, I might have liked this
Never got the Scott Pilgrim hype but it’s mostly because I find Michael Cera unbearable as an ‘actor,’ and the film never really justifies what makes Ramona worth pursuing because its Knives who gets all the fleshing-out. (I mean if nothing else at least the movie’s awful Scott and cardboard standee Ramona deserve one-another. At least the movie ends with Knives not having to date Scott any more.
But also I spent the moving going ‘why is this movie not about Kim, who seems to be far more interesting.’ It’s true of most characters in the picture, honestly: Scott sucks. I’ve been told ‘that the point’ but I’m not sure the framing agrees and in any case it doesn’t make it better to watch.)
‘why is this movie not about Kim, who seems to be far more interesting.’ The smaller the role you give to Alison Pill, the larger she plays it. You always get a constant amount of Alison Pill.
She did her best in two seasons of Star Trek Picard. Not sure what anyone else could have done with what she was given.