quote:Wait a second... what about Pluto Nash? I seriously thought that was the biggest bomb, even more so than FF: Spirits.
Naw, Nash is at number five.
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within was a serendipitous combination of practically everything that should be avoided in the business science of moviemaking. It could be used as a textbook example of doomed projects. Ignoring the movie's poor reception with moviegoers, Square fans and critics entirely, it is nearly impossible to have created a larger red line than existed with the Square Pictures project. Disney succeeded only by having train-wreck management (and retarded advertising and promotion) behind a production process (combination of traditional cel and CGI) which was nearly but not quite as expensive as Square Pictures' Maya 3D.
The production costs for the movie reached stratospheric levels: $137 million. It was a complete dud at the box office, and the movie closed theatres and live DVD sales with a $123 million loss. This figure does not count the expenses of Sony's aggressive marketing campaign for the movie, which I would estimate at somewhere around $30-$40 million.
Put it all together, and the movie represents a total loss of anywhere between $153-163 million dollars for Square Pictures, which promptly folded.
With Pluto Nash, the financial expenditure was so (comparatively) low, that Castle Rock could have put the completed movie in a box, forever and not attempted to recoup any money from the project at all, and they would have still been completely unable to match Square's loss. This is almost what they did: recognizing that the film was unsalvageable, they killed off all promotion costs, sat on the final release for a while, and eventually tacitly released it without any fuss, fanfare, or critic movie screenings. It's at #5 on the biggest-box-office-bombs list, behind other movies like Cutthroat Island, Around the World in 80 Days, and The Alamo.
A big part of the failure of The Spirits Within would have to involve how the movie didn't grok with most moviegoers at all. Even the few critics who liked the movie were compelled to hammer it for its nonsensical, esoteric plot, and criticize it for having the human figures fall soundly into the Uncanny Valley.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
It's from a list of films generating losses. It's mentioned in Pluto Nash's Wikipedia article, and I think it's based on updated IMDB or Numbers data. Which I'm assuming are in order.
quote:As of 2006 this is the fifth-largest financial loss of any film ever made (after Treasure Planet, Cutthroat Island, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, The Alamo, and Around the World in 80 Days), both in absolute dollar values, and adjusted for inflation.
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: It's from a list of films generating losses. It's mentioned in Pluto Nash's Wikipedia article, and I think it's based on updated IMDB or Numbers data. Which I'm assuming are in order.
quote:As of 2006 this is the fifth-largest financial loss of any film ever made (after Treasure Planet, Cutthroat Island, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, The Alamo, and Around the World in 80 Days), both in absolute dollar values, and adjusted for inflation.
quote:Originally posted by Kamisaki: And what's with the asthmatic robot? I mean, I know that he supposedly got his butt kicked by Mace Windu and that's why he can't breathe right, but still. Not a good idea to make one of your major villains sound like a 90 year man. Not unless you're making a comedy, anyway.
Grievous actually did get his lungs crushed, and it's shown in the Clone Wars cartoon, which was actually *WAY* better than the 3 prequels.
Yeah, I know, I saw Clone Wars, and I agree that the cartoon was way better than the movie. I guess I should have left out the word "supposedly" from my post. But still, that incident in Clone Wars seemed to be just a way of explaining why Grievous had respiratory problems in Ep. 3, not an integral part of the plot to Clone Wars. So my point was they should have just left that part out of both, and have Grievous in Ep. 3 kick just as much ass as he did in Clone Wars.
Posts: 134 | Registered: Mar 2004
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quote:Worst movie I've ever seen in the history of my life.
Yes, but aren't you 12? Point being, your taste in movies (as well as everything else) will change and expand as you get more experience. At that point, you'll likely be embarassed that you held up War of the Worlds as the best movie of the year while simultaneously panning the LOTR trilogy. Or not, who knows.
Posts: 5462 | Registered: Apr 2005
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I swear to God, if the Halo movie has a single first-person view with him gunning enemies down, I will burn down the theater.
The Halo games have never had a very good story anyway (come on, the concept of a ring world was completely lifted from the book Ringworld) so the only thing I can imagine this will have going for it is pretty special effects and action.
Posts: 208 | Registered: Jun 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Hitoshi: I swear to God, if the Halo movie has a single first-person view with him gunning enemies down, I will burn down the theater.
The Halo games have never had a very good story anyway (come on, the concept of a ring world was completely lifted from the book Ringworld) so the only thing I can imagine this will have going for it is pretty special effects and action.
You know, that wouldn't have bothered me as much in Doom if the rest of the movie was even remotely close to the concept of the game. One four minute scene does not compensate for the other hour and a half of mindlessness deviation from the source material.
Posts: 3486 | Registered: Sep 2002
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quote:Originally posted by Hitoshi: I swear to God, if the Halo movie has a single first-person view with him gunning enemies down, I will burn down the theater.
The Halo games have never had a very good story anyway (come on, the concept of a ring world was completely lifted from the book Ringworld) so the only thing I can imagine this will have going for it is pretty special effects and action.
Yeah the ring was lifted from Niven's book but the story of the Flood and how Humans fit into that universe (Halo's universe, I mean) is really cool. It's a great story that is helped to be even cooler by the 3 great books that were released.
halo 2....eh... not so much.
Posts: 317 | Registered: Feb 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Hitoshi: I swear to God, if the Halo movie has a single first-person view with him gunning enemies down, I will burn down the theater.
The Halo games have never had a very good story anyway (come on, the concept of a ring world was completely lifted from the book Ringworld) so the only thing I can imagine this will have going for it is pretty special effects and action.
You know, that wouldn't have bothered me as much in Doom if the rest of the movie was even remotely close to the concept of the game. One four minute scene does not compensate for the other hour and a half of mindlessness deviation from the source material.
But then again how fast would it have become boring if they had The Rock simply going through rooms and rooms of bad guys (in legion quantity) and blowing them all away? Most people would rather just load up Doom and do it themselves. Though I confess I am so SICK and TIRED of movies where the Elite Marines (soldier types) get sent in only to be destroyed by their personality flaws, or stupid coincidental equipment failure.
Here are just a few of the stupid things I noticed in Doom:
Flashlights in movies MUST go out when they are most needed.
Baddies can inexplicably move from the ground, and into the ventilation system right above your head within seconds and they always know when you are about to jerk your head and stare in their direction.
Elite Marines when they see 2 bright glowing eyes are trained to stare at them until they are attacked savagely and then all they can do is wail and scream for help rather then fight back.
When marines come to a point where a path converges in 2 directions they have all failed to watch Scooby Doo and so follow standard detective protocols and split into groups that can be more easily isolated and destroyed.
Even with a buddy to watch your back either you will fail to see something behind you grab your buddy, or your buddy will get stalled with something (falling to far behind you and getting lost is a popular director choice) and seal your own doom.
The person in charge of everything NEVER NEVER NEVER has the most common sense. Its always the underdog OR the 2nd in command. Moby Dick doomed us to this formula with Captain Ahab and 1st mate Starbuck.
Ill have more points later.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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Ok, what gives? I read through the entire thread and there isn't a single mention of Red Vs. Blue. There's a problem here.
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
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You're right about the "going room to room killind baddies". I never said that Doom should have been made in to a movie in the first place.
What you are describing about Doom can be said about any movie in the genre. What that genre is is up to interpretation.
Posts: 3486 | Registered: Sep 2002
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quote:Originally posted by Glenn Arnold: Ok, what gives? I read through the entire thread and there isn't a single mention of Red Vs. Blue. There's a problem here.
I thought that was a reference to the Matrix, oops.
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