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Bombs, Disasters and Flops: The Most Notable Examples Part 11 |
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Bombs, Disasters and Flops: The Most Notable Examples Part 11 |
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Note: The box-office figures for domestic grosses and non-USA grosses are fairly accurate, but must be taken as estimates only. |
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Greatest Box-Office Bombs, Disasters and Flops of All-Time
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| Film Title, Director, Studio, Budget Information, Description | |
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Ride With the Devil (1999) Esteemed Taiwanese director Ang Lee's Civil War-era dramatic western told about how guerrilla-style renegade Bushwackers (known as Missouri Irregulars) in the South fought against Union troops and loyalists (known as Jayhawkers) along the Kansas-Missouri border. Producer James Schamus' intelligent script was based on Daniel Woodrow's 1987 novel "Woe to Live On," providing commentary on the local feuds (part of the larger war) where the conflict turned more personal, and led to emotional and physical wounds. The violence-filled film starred miscast Tobey Maguire (as poor German immigrant son Jake Roedel with pro-Northern tendencies), Skeet Ulrich (as Roedel's cocky Southern-supporting friend Jack Bull Chiles), Jeffrey Wright (as pro-Confederate and ex-slave Daniel Holt, now "freed"), Simon Baker-Denny (as Southern gentleman George Clyde), and singer Jewel (as young war widow Sue Lee Shelley) in her screen debut. The group were cared for by Sue Lee during a cold winter in a crude woodshed shelter, during which time both Jack and Jake fell in love with her in secondary romantic sub-plots. The slowly-deliberate, unconventional and serious film was a combination romance, war film, and coming-of-age film about lost innocence -- a complex mix, that explored the brutal effects of war on familes and on its young protagonists whose motives in fighting were unclear, and provided an evaluation of the pointlessness of war in general -- explaining the film's title. Lee's attention to historical detail and to period authenticity were evident, expressing his talent in making diverse choices in film-making subject matter with lyrical and sumptuous cinematography. However, the dark and sober film never found its audience, due to its slow pacing and lack of traditional entertainment values. |
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The 13th Warrior (1999) Antonio Banderas (in a traditional Tyrone Power or Victor Mature type role) starred in this Disney action-adventure film - a 10th century Viking saga (by Die Hard director John McTiernan) - as real-life Arab poet and nobleman Ahmed Ibn Fahdlan from Baghdad, who traveled northward to Viking lands as an ambassador. There, he became the non-Nordic "13th Warrior" who led adventurous and pagan roughneck blonde Norse (or "Northmen") warriors to fight against a local demonic scourge of maurading half-men, half-beast cannibals (known as "Eaters of the Dead") who attacked during night mists wearing giant bear skins to terrorize the land. The plodding, male-dominated storyline, embellished with expensive special effects and set-pieces, was based on Michael Crichton's obscure 1976 novel "Eaters of the Dead" (adapted by William Wisher and Warren Lewis) - once the original title of the film. The carnage-filled film - with bloody scenes of graphic violence and lots of decapitations, sword fights, and battles - was derivative of various other hero-led films, such as The Seven Samurai (1954), Conan the Barbarian (1982), Braveheart (1995), Kull: The Conqueror (1997), and of the Old English epic poem Beowulf. Producers thought incorrectly that Banderas might repeat the success of his earlier swashbuckler The Mask of Zorro (1998). The disastrous film was delayed repeatedly (over a year and a half since its production in 1997), choppily re-edited (with the removal of tedious subplots) with some additional scenes re-shot by an uncredited Crichton, and then released in the late summer of 1999 without much fanfare. It was a loud film, in part due to Jerry Goldsmith's crashing and wailing score, and even with strong overseas box-office, it didn't recoup its costs. |
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Wild Wild West (1999) This wastefully-expensive, fluffy comic fantasy and buddy film, Sonnenfeld's follow-up western James Bond spy-spoof to Men in Black (1997), featured, among other things, Kenneth Kline as a red-wigged prostitute with falsies wearing a can-can dress in a brothel, a hammy Kenneth Branagh as legless Southern mastermind villain Dr. Arliss Loveless who had created a steam-powered, 80 foot-tall and 8-legged, fire-ball-spewing, mechanical iron tarantula (via special effects) in the desert, deadly buxom females with names such as Amazonia (Victoria's Secret model Frederique van der Wal), Miss Lippenreider (Sofia Eng), and Munitia (Musetta Vander), and much more. The unsatisfying, vacuous film about a secret-agent duo in the post-Civil War old West was derived from the mid-to-late 60s popular TV series of the same name, with Robert Conrad as Secret Service agent Jim West (now played by miscast Will Smith) and Ross Martin as his brainy buddy, disguises-master and inventor Artemus Gordon (now played by Kevin Kline). Two made-for-TV movie sequels had already failed miserably: The Wild Wild West Revisited (1979) and More Wild Wild West (1980), both by director Burt Kennedy. The plot was about the duo's attempts to investigate the disappearance of America's top scientists, and to foil Loveless' plot to kidnap and kill President Grant (also played by Kline), take over the US, and then divide the existing states between Mexico, England, and himself. The chemistry between the West/Gordon partnership was lacking and mismatched, to be substituted by expensively-amazing special effects (created by Industrial Light and Magic), a lame and clunky storyline, unclever racist and handicapped humor, mostly unfunny, cringe-inducing dialogue and situations (for example, Smith's dialogue to a white lynch mob about how he was accidentally "drumming" on a white lady's "boobies"), sexual innuendoes, and mysterious love interest showgirl Rita Escobar (Salma Hayek) who wore a revealing, tight-fitting bordello costume over her ample cleavage. The visually-stimulating film's muddled characterizations were undoubtedly due to the failed attempts of six screen/storywriters to pen an understandable script after numerous rewrites - including the addition of more gag sequences to pump up the comedy. Released around the same time as Lucas' disappointing summer blockbuster Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999), Sonnenfeld's dull-edged but bloated film did poorly at the box-office during its theatrical release. It was nominated for nine Razzie Awards including Worst Actor (Kline), Worst Supporting Actor (Kenneth Branagh), Worst Supporting Actress (Kline as a prostitute), and Worst Supporting Actress (Salma Hayek, tied with Dogma (1999) and it won five: Worst Director, Worst Original Song -- "Wild Wild West", Worst Picture, Worst Screen Couple (Kline and Smith), and Worst Screenplay. |
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Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000 (2000) Headlining star John Travolta (a devoted member and spokesperson for Scientology), following his revived career success with Pulp Fiction (1994) (and other hits including Get Shorty (1995) and Face/Off (1997)), promoted this unappealing film turkey into production over almost two decades. It was a questionable adaptation of Scientologist founder L. Ron Hubbard's 1980 propagandistic science fiction novel (of over 800 pages) of the same name first published in 1982 (and adapted and scripted by screenwriters Corey Mandell and J.D. Shapiro). It was mostly derivative of the grubby dystopic look of previous films, such as Blade Runner (1982) and The Postman (1997), as well as Planet of the Apes (1968), John Carpenter's Escape From New York (1981) and Escape From L.A. (1996) films - and then mixed with prehistoric man films, such as One Million Years B.C. (1966) starring Raquel Welch, Caveman (1981) with Ringo Starr and Quest for Fire (1981). This horribly boring film marked the directing debut of Roger Christian. It was set in the year 3000 and told about alien captors named Psychlos (from the planet Psychlo) who had conquered the Earth and virtually destroyed it by plundering its mineral-gold resources through strip-mining. Travolta starred as Terl -- an unkempt, snot-nosed, matt-haired, ruthlessly exploitative, 9-foot tall alien with awful teeth -- similar in appearance to a homeless Star Trek Klingon, who was the greedy chief security officer for the Psychlos' greenhouse-domed mining operations (over the city of Denver), who was commissioned to supply the 'home-office' with a quota of gold. The protagonist of the film was rebellious man-animal survivor and captive Jonnie Goodboy Tyler (Barry Pepper) who revolted against his enslavement, while sent to retrieve gold from a ruined Fort Knox. The comic-bookish film became popularly reviled and scorned along the same thematic lines of its 'bad-movie' predecessor, Showgirls (1995) -- for its ludricrous and dumbly incoherent plot, incompetent editing, camp appeal, cliched dialogue, faulty and ugly special effects, excessive tilt-angled and slow-motion camera shots, an unusual "center wipe" transitional editing device, a loud and obnoxious soundtrack, and thinly-drawn characters. It played more like a bad TV movie about space invaders than a $73 million dollar blockbuster, and quickly bombed at the box-office. In the year 2000, Travolta was insisting, incredulously, that there be a sequel (since the film was based on only the first half of Heinlein's book.) It won seven of its eight Razzie Award nominations, including Worst Actor (Travolta), Worst Director, Worst Picture, Worst Screen Couple, Worst Screenplay, Worst Supporting Actor (Barry Pepper), and Worst Supporting Actress (Travolta's real-life wife Kelly Preston, as alien babe Chirk with an elongated tongue that rolled up like a window shade), with an additional nomination for Worst Supporting Actor (Forest Whitaker as Terl's sidekick). It also won the 2005 Razzie Award for Worst 'Drama' in the Razzie's 25 year history, defeating Mommie Dearest (1981), The Lonely Lady (1983), Showgirls (1995) and Swept Away (2002). |
Intro | Part
1 | Part 2 | Part
3 | Part 4 | Part
5 | Part 6 | Part
7 | Part 8 | Part
9 | Part 10 |
Part
11 | Part 12 | Part
13 | Part 14 | Part
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Created in 1996-2008 © by Tim Dirks. All rights reserved.
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Introduction to Greatest Box-Office Bombs, Disasters and Flops: Films have the potential to skyrocket the profits of a studio, or to send it into ruins and bankruptcy. Sometimes an actor’s or director's career suffers, sometimes not. Films that cost more to make than they take in revenue (both domestic and worldwide) are considered box-office catastrophes or bombs. Movie audiences often love to relish the fact that some films, such as Gigli (2003) or Heaven's Gate (1980), turn out to be monumental flops, and are fascinated by the details of why certain directors/actors and their films fail.