The problem with remakes like Jack The Giant Slayer is that…oh, I’m sorry. You weren’t aware that Jack The Giant Slayer is a remake? Well then: the original was called Jack The Giant Killer, and it was pretty awful.
The remake is called Jack The Giant Slayer, and by all accounts, it too is pretty awful. Starring Ewan McGregor and the guy who played Beast in X-Men: First Class, the new version is yet another CGI-laden Lord Of The Rings wanna-be.
As I was saying, the problem with remaking terrible movies is that it’s putting lipstick on a pig. Director Bryan Singer, who now REALLY needs to hurry up and finish the X-Men sequel he should have done in place of Jack The Giant Slayer, had a pretty bad weekend. Jack didn’t do jack at the box office: costing as much at $200 million to make, the movie only brought in $28 million in ticket sales, making it the Gigli of CGI-laden Lord of The Rings wanna-be’s. That, my friends, is what we call a bomb.
It’s usually not a good sign when a movie that looks like it should be running with the Summer Blockbuster pack is released in early spring; of course, it’s also not a good sign when the trailer for that movie inspires uncomfortable laughs and puzzled stares instead of “oohs” and “ahs”. It joins the ranks of other recent big budget flops, movies like…
John Carter
Even Taylor Kitsch’s man-nipples could not save John Carter from tanking. Which was a shame, because it was actually a pretty entertaining flick. (If you scroll down, you can read the post I wrote about it when it was released, and perhaps it will inspire you to Netflix it, or at least watch it on Starz, where it airs 25 times a week. Hey, Taylor Kitsch gotta eat, you know.) The movie reportedly ended up costing Disney some $200 million over its $200 million budget. Don’t expect a sequel any time soon.
Speed Racer
The Wachowski brothers – creators of The Matrix – seemed like the perfect guys to make a movie out of one of Japan’s most famous animated exports, the 1960′s cartoon Speed Racer. And the movie was very true to that cartoon: crazy cars, frenetic dialogue, and an obnoxious kid who walks around with an awful monkey dressed as a person. Unfortunately, audiences did not like their odds of having a seizure while watching it on the big screen. And so it bombed, losing over $100 million in theaters.
Sahara
A mashup of Romancing The Stone and Dazed and Confused‘s Wooderson featuring Penelope Cruz running around in a tank top sounds like a good idea on paper, and…actually, no, no it does not, except for the bit about Penelope Cruz. I think I saw Sahara. I couldn’t tell you what it was about. The Sahara, maybe? It cost Paramount in $121 million in losses. Let me repeat that: $121 million.
The Adventures of Pluto Nash
Did you know that Eddie Murphy made a science fiction comedy in which he played an a wise-cracking owner of a nightclub…on the moon? Don’t feel bad. You aren’t alone. In development since the 1980′s, filmed in 2000 and finally released two years later, the movie was another nail in the coffin of Eddie Murphy’s career. Based on scientific calculations, researchers proved that only 27 people saw The Adventures of Pluto Nash in the theaters, and of those, 5 thought they were actually seeing a big-screen version of the Don Johnson TV series Nash Bridges. Net loss? About $113 million.
I get the feeling that Jack The Giant Slayer might outdo them all; John Carter has at least made some of its money back in DVD and Blu-ray sales. And as I said, it actually didn’t completely suck. But I can’t see anything remotely interesting about Jack. Except perhaps Ewan McGregor’s hair:
Read More: A Look At John Carter
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About Jason Avant
