8 failed films of very cool directors
Miscellaneous / / February 18, 2022
"The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lava", "Water Girl" and other controversial paintings.
1. The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lava in 3-D - Robert Rodriguez
The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl 3‑D
- USA, 2005
- Science fiction, fantasy, action, comedy, adventure.
- Duration: 93 minutes.
- IMDb: 3.7.
Boy Max loves to fantasize. One day, he tells his classmates about his best superhero friends - the boy Sharkboy, raised by sharks, and the girl Lava, who can control fire. Everyone around considers Max's story a fiction. But suddenly Sharkboy and Lava appear and take the guy with them to help save Miracle Planet from the invasion of Darkness.
This is probably the most unexpected film you could expect from the director of From Dusk Till Dawn and Sin City. Although Robert Rodriguez also directed children's films - the first Spy Kids was warmly received by the audience - The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lava turned out to be something terribly ridiculous.
Probably, the fact is that the story that became the basis of the plot of the film was invented by the young son of Rodriguez. Childhood fantasies are great, but pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into them is not always a good idea.
Watch on iTunes →
2. Pinocchio - Roberto Benigni
Pinocchio
- Italy, 2002
- Fantasy, comedy, family.
- Duration: 108 minutes.
- IMDb: 4.4.
The poor master Geppetto carves a doll named Pinocchio from a log. To his surprise, the puppet comes to life and becomes very mischievous. Geppetto hopes that the wooden boy will go to school. But instead, the naughty doll goes in search of adventures, which eventually turn into big trouble for the tomboy.
Italian director and actor Roberto Benigni in 1999 twice went up to the stage for the Oscar. His tragicomedy "Life is Beautiful" was awarded as the best foreign language film, and he himself received the prize for the best male role in it.
But just five years later, Benigni practically buried his career by deciding to film the fairy tale by Carlo Collodi. Moreover, he appointed himself to the main role in it. Alas, the attempts of the 52-year-old actor to portray a little boy caused the audience to feel more cringe than tenderness. Critics did not leave stone unturned from the tape, and Benigni after that disappeared from the screens for a long time.
Interestingly, almost 20 years later, Benigni played the role of Geppetto in the next production of "Pinocchioby Matteo Garrone. And in this image, he looked fantastically good, so that justice, in a sense, prevailed.
3. "Girl from the water" - M. Night Shyamalan
lady in the water
- USA, 2006
- Fantasy, thriller, drama, detective.
- Duration: 110 minutes.
- IMDb: 5.5.
Cleveland Heep, an apartment building manager, finds a mysterious naked girl in the pool one night. She turns out to be a marine nymphwho is trying to return home to lead her people in the fight against the Skrunt demons. Cleveland and the residents of the house decide to protect the girl and help in her mission.
Without M. Night Shyamalan couldn't get past this list. For every good film a director makes, there are at least three terrible or downright mediocre ones. But his first obvious failure was precisely “The Girl from the Water”.
Against the backdrop of previous works - reference thrillers with a spectacular denouement like "Signs" and "The Sixth Sense" - the film seems to be some kind of mockery. The stilted dialogue is annoying, and the characters are no better than pieces of cardboard.
At the box office, the picture failed with a deafening crash, and after it followed the extremely dubious "Phenomenon" and the monstrous "The Last Airbender", which finally cemented Shyamalan's reputation as the most unstable director Hollywood.
Watch on iTunes →
Watch on Google Play →
4. "Planet of the Apes" Tim Burton
Planet of the Apes
- USA, 2001.
- Fantasy, Action, Thriller, Adventure.
- Duration: 119 minutes.
- IMDb: 5.7.
US Air Force Captain Leo Davidson teaches monkeys how to fly aircraft. One day, communication with the space module, where the hero's favorite chimpanzee is located, is interrupted. The astronaut rushes to the rescue of the test subject, but falls into a time loop and finds himself on a planet where people behave like wild animals, and they are ruled by intelligent talking monkeys.
The science fiction novel by the French writer Pierre Boulle has been transferred to the screens several times. And the most notable was the 1968 adaptation, which ended differently than the original book.
Fox's first thoughts about re-screening arose back in the 1980s, but they came close to implementing this idea only at the beginning of the 2000s. Reboot directed by Tim Burton, the author of beautiful and gloomy movie fairy tales. His "Planet of the Apes" was a huge box office success, but received a lot of bad reviews from critics and is generally not loved by anyone.
But the fault of the director in the failure of the film is objectively not. After all, the weakest side of the tape is the story and the plot, and Tim Burton just did not work on them. But the monkey makeup, for which the legendary Rick Baker was responsible, is still amazing.
Watch on iTunes →
5. "Jack" - Francis Ford Coppola
Jack
- USA, 1996
- Fantasy, drama, comedy.
- Duration: 113 minutes.
- IMDb: 5.8.
Jack Powell was born with a strange condition about which little is known to science. The kid physically develops much faster than usual and at the age of 10 looks like a forty-year-old man. Jack's parents are afraid that other children will not accept him, and they try their best to protect their son from the outside world, so the boy is homeschooled. But you can't keep him away from his peers forever.
It's hard to believe that this film was created by the director of Apocalypse Now, Dracula and The Godfather. Francis Ford Coppola wanted to work with Robin Williams so badly that he took on an atypical genre of sentimental tragicomedy. However, the experiment turned out to be unsuccessful: critics unanimously insisted that Jack was the worst work in Coppola's work.
Even Robin Williams, who has repeatedly played adults with the souls of children (Captain Hook, Jumanji), did not save the situation. After all, the script, sinning with stupid and tasteless jokes, was beyond his power to fix.
Watch on iTunes →
Watch on Google Play →
6. "Killed Hook" - Zack Snyder
Sucker Punch
- USA, Canada, 2011.
- Fantasy, Action, Adventure.
- Duration: 110 minutes.
- IMDb: 6.0.
An inheritance-hungry stepfather commits his twenty-year-old stepdaughter named Dolly to a psychiatric hospital. There she is given an illegal lobotomy. Five days remain before the arrival of the surgeon, and during this time the heroine needs to arrange an escape, having obtained several items. At the same time, she, along with her friends in misfortune, Cutie, Rocket, Blondie and Amber, slips into the world of her fantasies and dreams.
Forbidden Reception is the first independent project by Zack Snyder, in which he did not start from already created worlds, as was the case with Dawn of the Dead, 300 Spartans, Watchmen and Legends of the Night Watchmen, but wrote the script personally.
But the complex concept of layered dream-fantasies only alienated viewers, and insane the flight of consciousness of the main character, inspired by the aesthetics of video games and comics, was close to few people. Critics also greeted the picture coolly, and fees in the world barely recouped the budget.
There is still debate around "Forbidden Reception" whether it is a good film or Snyder's creative failure. Some people sincerely admire the tape, while others still do not understand if this movie has an elementary meaning.
Watch on iTunes →
Watch on Google Play →
7. Alien 3 - David Fincher
Alien³
- USA, UK, 1992.
- Horror, fantasy, action, thriller.
- Duration: 115 minutes.
- IMDb: 6.4.
Lieutenant Ellen Ripley, Newt, Hicks, and the android Bishop escape the Alien planet, but a facehugger is found on the spaceship where they are in cryosleep. Because of him, all Ellen's companions die, Bishop is completely out of order, and the monster escapes to freedom.
The heroine wakes up on a planet that has been turned into a maximum security prison. Soon, an Alien is born from a dog, and the prisoners begin to die a cruel death. But the worst thing is that Ellen finds the embryo of a monster in her chest.
The Alien franchise is interesting because each new director kind of took it in a new direction. Ridley Scott filmed a chamber author's thriller, and James Cameron is a straightforward action movie, where there are much more monsters and action.
Alas, the third part was ruined by haste. The studio set a release date before the film even had a script. Due to creative differences, several directors left the project, after which debutant David Fincher was invited to shoot the tape.
In part, he managed to defend his creative view: the picture came out gloomier than its predecessors and gravitated more toward drama. But in the end, some of the expensive sets were never used, the friction on the set did not end, and Fincher was not allowed to the final editing. It is not surprising that the director has renounced his work and does not like to think about it.
Watch on Google Play →
8. Dune - David Lynch
dune
- USA, Mexico, 1984.
- Fantasy, thriller, adventure.
- Duration: 137 minutes.
- IMDb: 6.4.
10991 year. Several noble houses plot each other intrigues in the struggle for the right to control the planet Arrakis. The fact is that it is there that the valuable mineral spice, or melange, is mined, which is necessary for interstellar flights. After the noble Duke Leto Atreides becomes the victim of a conspiracy, his wife and son Paul manage to survive and take refuge in the caves of Arrakis.
For the first time, Frank Herbert's novel was tried to be filmed back in the early 1970s. The plans were grandiose: they wanted to put Alejandro Jodorowsky in the director's chair, Salvador Dali was supposed to play the emperor, and Orson Welles was supposed to play Baron Harkonnen. But in the end, the film remained a monumental unrealized long-term construction. By the way, George Lucas later used many of the developments for Dune when creating the first Star Wars.
The idea of bringing Dune to the screen came back in the mid-1980s. The director was David Lynch, for whom it was the first commercial project. He turned down Return of the Jedi for it, even though he hadn't read Dune or even heard of the novel before he sat down in the director's chair.
The problem is that Lynch - a talented avant-garde artist - has created an amazing beautiful world, but the action he turned out to be terribly boring. As a result, the audience, as well as critics, did not like the film, and its rental fees did not cover even half of the budget.
After that, the producers arranged for the release of a television version, which was longer than the release due to cut scenes that were simply pasted back and voiceover. Lynch responded by removing his name from the credits and replacing it with the pseudonym "Alan Smithy", and as a screenwriter, he credited himself as "Judas Booth" ("Judas Booth"), as if hinting that he had been betrayed.
Watch on iTunes →
Watch on Google Play →
Read also🎥🎥🎥
- 5 series that didn't end the way we wanted
- Why is everyone always unhappy with the film adaptations of popular books
- 15 best and one worst movie with John Travolta
- Why watch bad movies? We tell in the first episode of the podcast "Watcher"
- Non-obvious reasons why we love some movies and can't stand others