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Movies that were supposed to launch franchises (but didn’t) Pt. 3 Posted by lebeau
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TMC
Dec 21, 2012, 2:35:10 AM12/21/12
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http://lebeauleblog.com/2011/06/28/movies-that-were-supposed-to-launch-franchises-but-didnt-pt-3/
Howard the Duck – George Lucas’s big screen adaptation of Marvel
comic’s wise cracking Howard the Duck came out 25 years ago. And yet,
it is still fun to make fun of. Howard was made when Lucas was at the
peak of his powers in Hollywood. The original Star Wars trilogy had
recently wrapped up. The Indiana Jones movies were ticking along.
And Lucas was looking to launch another franchise.
Lucas’ first attempt (of many) was Howard the Duck. Lucas enlisted
his film school chums, Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz who had
collaborated on American Graffiti with Lucas before derailing the
Indiana Jones franchise with Temple of Doom. Early on, Huyck and Katz
made the fatal decision to change the foul-mouthed Howard into
basically a clone of Donald Duck.
The end result was a schizophrenic movie. The satire which was the
heart and soul of the comic book was jettisoned in favor of special
effects. (Sound familiar?) The character was sanitized and dumbed
down to make him child-friendly. (Basically he got the Jar Jar
treatment.) And yet, in all that scrubbing, no one thought to take
out the human on duck sex scene!
There are so many “What the hell were they thinking?” moments in
Howard the Duck that you have to wonder how it ever got made. Much
less how someone decided it was worth blowing 37 million in mid-80s
dollars to make a movie filled with duck-related puns and Marty
McFly’s mom jumping the bones of a little person in a duck suit.
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me – I already wrote fairly extensively
about the rise and fall of Twin Peaks and the backlash that doomed the
movie. So I won’t go into a ton of details here. Suffice it to say
that when the show was cancelled due to low ratings, David Lynch
wasn’t ready to let go of his creation yet. So he made a deal to make
a trilogy of Twin Peaks films.
Unfortunately, much of the cast of the TV show was reluctant to carry
on for fear of type casting or resentment over the low quality of the
show’s second season. So the first movie could not be a continuation
of the TV show’s storyline. Instead, it was a prequel that rehashed
the grisly details of Laura Palmer’s murder.
Fans of the show already knew all they wanted to know about the death
of Laura Palmer and wanted a continuation of the show’s cliffhanger
(which is barely addressed in the movie). Non-fans couldn’t make
heads or tails of the thing. So the Twin Peaks movie alienated pretty
much everybody who saw it. As it turns out, that wasn’t a lot of
people because most of the intended audience of Twin Peaks still felt
burned by the ending of the TV show and didn’t turn up for the movie.
The idea had been to whet audience’s appetites for more and then
address the show’s on-going storylines in future films. But when Fire
Walk With Me was met with boos at Cannes, trashed by critics and
ignored by audiences, the Twin Peaks franchise was more or less
wrapped in plastic.
Judge Dredd – Judge Dredd was another smart, edgy comic book that
Hollywood just didn’t understand. Right off the bat, the makers of
the big screen adaptation shot themselves in the foot by casting
Sylvester Stallone as the futuristic lawman. This guaranteed that all
of the subtly and satire of the source material would be jettisoned in
favor of the usual Stallone movie formula.
How dumb was the Judge Dredd movie? Rob Schneider, Duece Bigalow Male
Gigolo himself, was cast as comic relief. Presumably because his
cameo in the sci fi-dud Demolition Man left audiences begging for more
Stallon/Schneider magic.
In the comics, Judge Dredd’s face is never seen. But you can’t put a
helmet on Stallone’s loveable mug. So the movie Dredd never wears his
trademark helmet very long. Also, judges in the comic are forbidden
to have romantic relationships. But the Stallone movie formula
requires a love interest. So movie Dredd takes up with another judge
played by poor, poor Diane Lane who really desrves some kind of award
for suffering so many indignities on the way to semi-stardom.
Even 13 years later, Stallone showed he STILL didn’t get it when he
gave the following quote to Uncut magazine:
It (Judge Dredd) didn’t live up to what it could have been. It
probably should have been much more comic, really humorous, and fun.
What I learned out of that experience was that we shouldn’t have tried
to make it Hamlet; it’s more Hamlet and Eggs…
Yeah, that was the problem, Sly. You didn’t make it silly enough!
You treated the original source material too seriously!
On the upside, The Judge Dredd franchise is receiving a reboot that
promises to be more faithful to the original comic. Based solely on
the lack of Rob Schneider, they seem to be off to a good start.
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time – When a movie has a subtitle,
they are basically letting the audience know that future installments
are to follow. When Disney made their big screen adaptation of the
somewhat popular video game, they were pretty certain they had a
Pirates of the Carribean-style franchise on their hands.
All the elements were there. Swashbuckling action, exotic locals,
hunky leading man with indie-movie cred. They followed the Pirates
recipe as closely as they could even including an incomprehensible
plot and an overlong running time. But for some reason, audiences
weren’t as interested in Pirates warmed up and reserved in a desert
setting.
Alas, another subtitle gone to waste on a franchise that was not meant
to be.
Starship Troopers – It’s easy to see why audiences didn “get” Starship
Troopers when it was released. The movie plays its satire so straight-
faced a lot of people took it as an endorsement of fascism. In order
to enjoy the movie, you have to embrace the notion that you’re not
supposed to like any of the main characters. In fact, you should be
rooting for the bugs.
The film is loosely based on a very pro-military sci fi novel written
by Robert A. Heinllein. Supposedly, the move started out as an
original story. But when the writing team became aware of
similarities to the Heinlein novel, they licensed it in part to avoid
a lawsuit. Director Paul Verhoven claims he never finished reading
the novel becuase he found it boring and depressing.
(Verhoven was so dedicated to the film, he actually filmed the co-ed
shower scene naked to make the cast feel more comfortable.)
The film ends with the protagonist winning a fairly meaningless
victory against the bugs. Rather than clamoring for more, audiences
felt let down by the anti-climax.
Starship Troopers did manage to launch a direct-to-video franchise.
In fact, Caspier Van Dien, the meatheaded star of the original film,
was desperate enough to reprise his role for Starship Troopers 3:
Marauder. But as we all know, direct-to-video sequels don’t count.
The Avengers – Hollywood has a pretty crappy record when it comes to
adapting TV series to movies. And yet, they keep going to the TV
well.
Adapting a TV show is a tricky business because audiences are used to
seeing the show for free. A big screen adaptation of a TV show has to
offer something new to entice the fanbase to shell out money for
something they are used to watching for free. But if you change the
TV show too much, you end up alienating your fanbase like Twin Peaks
did.
The appeal of TV adaptations is that the name has built-in
recognition. In theory, that makes it easier for the studio to sell a
movie to audiences. However, in the rush to adapt every TV show ever
made, Hollywood has optioned shows that no longer have much of a
following.
Case in point is The Avengers. The original TV show aired in England
through the 1960′s. It did run in the United States, but not in its
entirity. The show did have a cult following, but how large could the
cult possibly have been 30 years later when the movie was finally
made?
Of course, the real problem with The Avengers is that it was really
awful. It was a badly made adaptation of a TV show most people had
forgotten. About the film’s only selling point was Uma Thurman in a
catsuit. And one year after seeing Thurman vamp it up as Poison Ivy
in Batman and Robin, no one especially wanted to see any more of that
either.
Hopes of sequels died early. Warner Brothers realized they had a
turkey on their hands before they even released it. The release was
pushed back from the prime summer real estate of mid-June to the
dumping ground of August. And when they finally unloaded The
Avengers, they didn’t do any screenings for the press.
Spawn – You may have noticed a theme when I talk about big screen
adaptations of comic books. They tend to dumb them down until they no
longer resemble the source material at all. However, that is not the
case with 1997′s Spawn. Because Spawn was pretty dumb to begin with.
The (ahem) brain child of artist Todd McFarlane, Spawn was about a
government assassin who made a deal with the devil and came back to
earth as his soldier. Or something. The point of the Spawn comic
book was not so much the story as the cool way McFarlane drew capes,
spikes and chains.
Unfortunately, McFarlane’s look was impossible to duplicate in a live
action film in 1997. So what you saw on the screen was a cut-rate
Batman costume with a meatball for a head.
The Spawn movie flopped and the comic has dropped off in popularity
since McFarlane stopped drawing it. There were originally plans for a
sequel which McFarlane still talks about to this day.
These days, McFarlane is planning a reboot that will drop all of the
superhero elements of Spawn. McFarlane was recently quotes as saying:
“The movie idea is neither a recap or continuation. It is a standalone
story that will be R-rated. Creepy and scary… The tone of this
‘Spawn’ movie will be for more older audience. Like the film ‘The
Departed.’”
Yeah, Todd. That sounds awesome. Now why don’t you draw some capes
or something.
Howard the Duck – George Lucas’s big screen adaptation of Marvel
comic’s wise cracking Howard the Duck came out 25 years ago. And yet,
it is still fun to make fun of. Howard was made when Lucas was at the
peak of his powers in Hollywood. The original Star Wars trilogy had
recently wrapped up. The Indiana Jones movies were ticking along.
And Lucas was looking to launch another franchise.
Lucas’ first attempt (of many) was Howard the Duck. Lucas enlisted
his film school chums, Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz who had
collaborated on American Graffiti with Lucas before derailing the
Indiana Jones franchise with Temple of Doom. Early on, Huyck and Katz
made the fatal decision to change the foul-mouthed Howard into
basically a clone of Donald Duck.
The end result was a schizophrenic movie. The satire which was the
heart and soul of the comic book was jettisoned in favor of special
effects. (Sound familiar?) The character was sanitized and dumbed
down to make him child-friendly. (Basically he got the Jar Jar
treatment.) And yet, in all that scrubbing, no one thought to take
out the human on duck sex scene!
There are so many “What the hell were they thinking?” moments in
Howard the Duck that you have to wonder how it ever got made. Much
less how someone decided it was worth blowing 37 million in mid-80s
dollars to make a movie filled with duck-related puns and Marty
McFly’s mom jumping the bones of a little person in a duck suit.
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me – I already wrote fairly extensively
about the rise and fall of Twin Peaks and the backlash that doomed the
movie. So I won’t go into a ton of details here. Suffice it to say
that when the show was cancelled due to low ratings, David Lynch
wasn’t ready to let go of his creation yet. So he made a deal to make
a trilogy of Twin Peaks films.
Unfortunately, much of the cast of the TV show was reluctant to carry
on for fear of type casting or resentment over the low quality of the
show’s second season. So the first movie could not be a continuation
of the TV show’s storyline. Instead, it was a prequel that rehashed
the grisly details of Laura Palmer’s murder.
Fans of the show already knew all they wanted to know about the death
of Laura Palmer and wanted a continuation of the show’s cliffhanger
(which is barely addressed in the movie). Non-fans couldn’t make
heads or tails of the thing. So the Twin Peaks movie alienated pretty
much everybody who saw it. As it turns out, that wasn’t a lot of
people because most of the intended audience of Twin Peaks still felt
burned by the ending of the TV show and didn’t turn up for the movie.
The idea had been to whet audience’s appetites for more and then
address the show’s on-going storylines in future films. But when Fire
Walk With Me was met with boos at Cannes, trashed by critics and
ignored by audiences, the Twin Peaks franchise was more or less
wrapped in plastic.
Judge Dredd – Judge Dredd was another smart, edgy comic book that
Hollywood just didn’t understand. Right off the bat, the makers of
the big screen adaptation shot themselves in the foot by casting
Sylvester Stallone as the futuristic lawman. This guaranteed that all
of the subtly and satire of the source material would be jettisoned in
favor of the usual Stallone movie formula.
How dumb was the Judge Dredd movie? Rob Schneider, Duece Bigalow Male
Gigolo himself, was cast as comic relief. Presumably because his
cameo in the sci fi-dud Demolition Man left audiences begging for more
Stallon/Schneider magic.
In the comics, Judge Dredd’s face is never seen. But you can’t put a
helmet on Stallone’s loveable mug. So the movie Dredd never wears his
trademark helmet very long. Also, judges in the comic are forbidden
to have romantic relationships. But the Stallone movie formula
requires a love interest. So movie Dredd takes up with another judge
played by poor, poor Diane Lane who really desrves some kind of award
for suffering so many indignities on the way to semi-stardom.
Even 13 years later, Stallone showed he STILL didn’t get it when he
gave the following quote to Uncut magazine:
It (Judge Dredd) didn’t live up to what it could have been. It
probably should have been much more comic, really humorous, and fun.
What I learned out of that experience was that we shouldn’t have tried
to make it Hamlet; it’s more Hamlet and Eggs…
Yeah, that was the problem, Sly. You didn’t make it silly enough!
You treated the original source material too seriously!
On the upside, The Judge Dredd franchise is receiving a reboot that
promises to be more faithful to the original comic. Based solely on
the lack of Rob Schneider, they seem to be off to a good start.
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time – When a movie has a subtitle,
they are basically letting the audience know that future installments
are to follow. When Disney made their big screen adaptation of the
somewhat popular video game, they were pretty certain they had a
Pirates of the Carribean-style franchise on their hands.
All the elements were there. Swashbuckling action, exotic locals,
hunky leading man with indie-movie cred. They followed the Pirates
recipe as closely as they could even including an incomprehensible
plot and an overlong running time. But for some reason, audiences
weren’t as interested in Pirates warmed up and reserved in a desert
setting.
Alas, another subtitle gone to waste on a franchise that was not meant
to be.
Starship Troopers – It’s easy to see why audiences didn “get” Starship
Troopers when it was released. The movie plays its satire so straight-
faced a lot of people took it as an endorsement of fascism. In order
to enjoy the movie, you have to embrace the notion that you’re not
supposed to like any of the main characters. In fact, you should be
rooting for the bugs.
The film is loosely based on a very pro-military sci fi novel written
by Robert A. Heinllein. Supposedly, the move started out as an
original story. But when the writing team became aware of
similarities to the Heinlein novel, they licensed it in part to avoid
a lawsuit. Director Paul Verhoven claims he never finished reading
the novel becuase he found it boring and depressing.
(Verhoven was so dedicated to the film, he actually filmed the co-ed
shower scene naked to make the cast feel more comfortable.)
The film ends with the protagonist winning a fairly meaningless
victory against the bugs. Rather than clamoring for more, audiences
felt let down by the anti-climax.
Starship Troopers did manage to launch a direct-to-video franchise.
In fact, Caspier Van Dien, the meatheaded star of the original film,
was desperate enough to reprise his role for Starship Troopers 3:
Marauder. But as we all know, direct-to-video sequels don’t count.
The Avengers – Hollywood has a pretty crappy record when it comes to
adapting TV series to movies. And yet, they keep going to the TV
well.
Adapting a TV show is a tricky business because audiences are used to
seeing the show for free. A big screen adaptation of a TV show has to
offer something new to entice the fanbase to shell out money for
something they are used to watching for free. But if you change the
TV show too much, you end up alienating your fanbase like Twin Peaks
did.
The appeal of TV adaptations is that the name has built-in
recognition. In theory, that makes it easier for the studio to sell a
movie to audiences. However, in the rush to adapt every TV show ever
made, Hollywood has optioned shows that no longer have much of a
following.
Case in point is The Avengers. The original TV show aired in England
through the 1960′s. It did run in the United States, but not in its
entirity. The show did have a cult following, but how large could the
cult possibly have been 30 years later when the movie was finally
made?
Of course, the real problem with The Avengers is that it was really
awful. It was a badly made adaptation of a TV show most people had
forgotten. About the film’s only selling point was Uma Thurman in a
catsuit. And one year after seeing Thurman vamp it up as Poison Ivy
in Batman and Robin, no one especially wanted to see any more of that
either.
Hopes of sequels died early. Warner Brothers realized they had a
turkey on their hands before they even released it. The release was
pushed back from the prime summer real estate of mid-June to the
dumping ground of August. And when they finally unloaded The
Avengers, they didn’t do any screenings for the press.
Spawn – You may have noticed a theme when I talk about big screen
adaptations of comic books. They tend to dumb them down until they no
longer resemble the source material at all. However, that is not the
case with 1997′s Spawn. Because Spawn was pretty dumb to begin with.
The (ahem) brain child of artist Todd McFarlane, Spawn was about a
government assassin who made a deal with the devil and came back to
earth as his soldier. Or something. The point of the Spawn comic
book was not so much the story as the cool way McFarlane drew capes,
spikes and chains.
Unfortunately, McFarlane’s look was impossible to duplicate in a live
action film in 1997. So what you saw on the screen was a cut-rate
Batman costume with a meatball for a head.
The Spawn movie flopped and the comic has dropped off in popularity
since McFarlane stopped drawing it. There were originally plans for a
sequel which McFarlane still talks about to this day.
These days, McFarlane is planning a reboot that will drop all of the
superhero elements of Spawn. McFarlane was recently quotes as saying:
“The movie idea is neither a recap or continuation. It is a standalone
story that will be R-rated. Creepy and scary… The tone of this
‘Spawn’ movie will be for more older audience. Like the film ‘The
Departed.’”
Yeah, Todd. That sounds awesome. Now why don’t you draw some capes
or something.
Halmyre
Dec 21, 2012, 4:54:03 AM12/21/12
to
On Dec 21, 7:35 am, TMC <tmc1...@gmail.com> wrote:
> http://lebeauleblog.com/2011/06/28/movies-that-were-supposed-to-launc...
>
Can't access the link but is 'Sahara' mentioned?
--
Halmyre
> http://lebeauleblog.com/2011/06/28/movies-that-were-supposed-to-launc...
>
Can't access the link but is 'Sahara' mentioned?
--
Halmyre
Vaughan Andursen
Dec 21, 2012, 4:57:18 AM12/21/12
to
hislop
Dec 21, 2012, 8:33:58 AM12/21/12
to
and Battlefield Earth which actually had a sequel intended from the
beginning. They would have had to butcher the novel further to pull
that off with comedy writer hacks they used on the original.
Michael OConnor
Dec 21, 2012, 5:16:17 PM12/21/12
to
> Can't access the link but is 'Sahara' mentioned?
Clive Cussler had a three-picture deal (I think Inca Gold was going to
be the follow-up to Sahara) but even though he had script and cast
approval, he was upset with the final product and it turned into a
public urination contest. I don't know if Dirk Pitt will ever get
another shot at a film series, but I guarantee it won't be while
Cussler is still alive.
anim8rFSK
Feb 2, 2013, 12:16:38 PM2/2/13
to
In article
<fe157760-e404-4bbd...@10g2000yqk.googlegroups.com>,
The thing with his script approval was, they didn't honor it; they
totally ignored him and when he took legal action, the judge said that
his remedy wasn't to actually get what he contracted for, but to sue for
monetary damages after, which is an idiotic precedent - I mean, if you
notice the contractor is building your house half width and double
height, you can't stop him? You just have to sue him after it's done??
I have no idea why the Hell anybody tried to launch an underwater
adventure franchise with the one story in the series set, not only not
underwater, but in the freaking Sahara desert in the first place.
--
"Every time a Kardashian gets a TV show, an angel dies."
<fe157760-e404-4bbd...@10g2000yqk.googlegroups.com>,
totally ignored him and when he took legal action, the judge said that
his remedy wasn't to actually get what he contracted for, but to sue for
monetary damages after, which is an idiotic precedent - I mean, if you
notice the contractor is building your house half width and double
height, you can't stop him? You just have to sue him after it's done??
I have no idea why the Hell anybody tried to launch an underwater
adventure franchise with the one story in the series set, not only not
underwater, but in the freaking Sahara desert in the first place.
--
"Every time a Kardashian gets a TV show, an angel dies."
Michael OConnor
Feb 2, 2013, 2:11:04 PM2/2/13
to
> I have no idea why the Hell anybody tried to launch an underwater
> adventure franchise with the one story in the series set, not only not
> underwater, but in the freaking Sahara desert in the first place.
also left out the subplot of the staged (pardon the pun) assassination
of Abraham Lincoln at Ford Theater to cover the fact that the
Confederacy kidnapped Lincoln and held him on that Ironclad that wound
up in the desert in Africa. I think the one thing Sahara had going
for it was the not so green friendly bad guys were creating an
ecological disaster with their waste burning scheme that Pitt was
trying to prevent. Of the Pitt novels, I think Night Probe, which
dealt with the search for a secret document from WW1 in which Great
Britain sold Canada to the United States, would have made for a more
interesting story.
Michael OConnor
Feb 2, 2013, 3:41:33 PM2/2/13
to
> I have no idea why the Hell anybody tried to launch an underwater
> adventure franchise with the one story in the series set, not only not
> underwater, but in the freaking Sahara desert in the first place.
anim8rFSK
Feb 3, 2013, 6:30:22 PM2/3/13
to
In article
<7185aedc-4d85-4232...@9g2000yqy.googlegroups.com>,
Oh, yeah, they didn't even bother to paint the NUMA vehicles blue,
either. It was like a TV-movie just hacked out with what was available.
<7185aedc-4d85-4232...@9g2000yqy.googlegroups.com>,
either. It was like a TV-movie just hacked out with what was available.
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