Hollywood has made so many mistakes that you knew damn well one thread wasn't gonna be enough to cover them all! So here is part II of the dreaded post that reminds us of the bloated-headed beast of the West upon whose vomit we must choke.
WHITE MAN'S BURDEN
A premise like this one is so promising that it breaks your heart to see it mangled. In an alternate universe, African Americans are the cultural elite and white people the struggling poverty class, and when a desperate white man is unjustly fired from his job, he kidnaps his wealthy, bigoted boss to show him the error of his ways. Unfortunately, casting John Travolta may not have been the best choice of a lead actor. Not to mention the fact that the entire film is driven by mis- or non-communication: none of the characters even discusses the series of events that got them into the mess or the miscommunication that made things worse. This is more proof that stories rely primarily on conflict to make a story move and characters talk in Hollywood, and how mechanical dramaturgy has sunk. It also wouldn't have hurt to have some history as to how things came to pass, but maybe that's asking too much.
15 MINUTES
People who have seen this awful, awful trash commentary on television may wonder why I'm defending it. That's because the only remaining indication that this film was more than what it seems doesn't come up until the last 3 minutes and only lasts for 8 seconds, in the form of a title credit on a camcorder. Other than that, there is almost nothing left of this once-promising black comedy of a satire that was brutally revised into a straight-forward action film. The complete ridiculousness of the antagonist's plan and their pratfalls in the making of it prove that the last thing this film should be is serious or taken at face value. Unfortunately, Hollywood isn't known for its longterm vision, so depth of vision is just as hard to find, and this film is a casualty of this deformity. Rent Series 7 instead.
ALIEN RESSURRECTION
The third Alien film, for all of its weaknesses (now corrected in the much better 145 min cut) is actually a pretty damn good conclusion to what was once a wonderfully constructed trilogy. Then 20th Century Fox fucked it up. The trilogy that became a franchise was slated for another sequel to bring the lead of Ellen Ripley back from the dead, forgetting for a moment that Alien is not Soapdish and that such things are IMPOSSIBLE! Hiring brilliant French director Jean-Paul Jeunet and the great Darius Khondji to create the visuals didn't save the fact that the quince-rewritten story was just a mindless chase-fest without any of the genuine scares, and a cast that few people actually give a rat's ass about. Merging Eurpoean Art-house tendencies with science fiction generally works...but as this film can attest, NOT ALWAYS!
THE MANGLER
Tobe Hooper directed The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the greatest American horror film ever made, and it is for this reason only that he is still alive. Otherwise, he would have been lynched by many horror fans who have been let down by his constant stream of failures since. With the exception of Crocodile, this may be the worst. Mangling the semi-decent short story of the same name, this attempt at gothic horror revolves around an ancient laundry press that is possessed by a demon. It could have been something, but with a hammy performance by the usually talented Robert Englund and Ted Levine, a script that makes very little sense, and cheap CGI effects that ruin the only good sequence in the film, it is little less than nothing. Maybe someday, Tobe Hooper will find that bottle of talent he once had and take a much needed swig of it and we can forget that this one happened.
8mm
When it comes to wasted potential, this one is in the hall of fame. Off the heels of the successful Se7en, Andrew Kevin Walker submitted an older script about a private detective who is sent to investigate the background of an authentic 8mm snuff film that has been found in the vault of a deceased millionaire. Then hope faded when director Joel Schumacher survived the repeated attempts to scrape him off the earth and took on the project. The rest is nothing but sloppy sections of cliched noir with shocking pornography re-enactments. None of the original depravity and mental degradation is left and to top it all off, the acting sucks. Cage's character is not a bland man who becomes possessed by the underworld in which he dwells, but has been changed to a bland man who becomes a melodramatic moralist finding justice for a poor victim. This film was supposed to destroy your soul, not avenge it!
THE BIG HIT
Grosse Pointe Blank is a hysterical film about a professional assassin; The Big Hit is about a squad of hypercool hitmen who, in a vie for their own big score make a very unhysterical film about professional assassins. This abortion of a comedy tries to balance every cliche about action movies ever made with every romantic comedy cliche ever made with every screwball comedy cliche ever made with every deal-gone-wrong cliche ever made with every Jewish mother cliche ever made...well you get the idea. And hopefully you do so that you can avoid this pretentious piece of shit that can't shut up about masturbation, bitchy girlfriends and video late fees.
DOUBLE TEAM
Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dennis Rodman. For God's sake!
MORTAL KOMBAT
Enter the Dragon is the prototypical martial arts tournament film of all time. So why is the premiere martial arts tournament video game not cinematically structured in the same way? The notoriously violent video game has so many setpeices that are perfect for a film, but in the big-screen adaptation, everything is played for direct-to-video thrills and all of the characters turned into setpeices themselves. Neither the actors nor the story is believable even in fantasy terms, and the techno soundtrack in combination with the ridiculous slo-mo fight scenes doom this project beyond salvation of any kind. And who the HELL casts Christopher Lambert as a Japanese god?!! And if you think that't bad, keep in mind they made a sequel.
HANNBIAL
And our last entry in this post is one of the most obvious Hollywood blunders in recent history. The most anticipated sequel of 20th Century literature was quickly made for the screen almost as soon as the ink on the manuscript was dry. It was also made incomplete. First of all, Thomas Harris is not as talented a writer as he's promoted to be, and his absurdly clumsy book makes an even more clumsy and embarrasing film, especially with half the content cut out. Anthony Hopkins plays his most famous role of Hannibal Lecter with all the relish he can, but his ferocious caged beast is more like a homicidal pussy cat out in the open. The talented Julianne Moore does not fit a role molded for Jodie Foster, and the script, in order to cut down on screen time, excises virtually all of the supporting cast and logical exposition, leaving a very beautiful, very slick waste of 2 1/2 hours of celluloid that shows stupid people doing inexplicable things.
WHITE MAN'S BURDEN
A premise like this one is so promising that it breaks your heart to see it mangled. In an alternate universe, African Americans are the cultural elite and white people the struggling poverty class, and when a desperate white man is unjustly fired from his job, he kidnaps his wealthy, bigoted boss to show him the error of his ways. Unfortunately, casting John Travolta may not have been the best choice of a lead actor. Not to mention the fact that the entire film is driven by mis- or non-communication: none of the characters even discusses the series of events that got them into the mess or the miscommunication that made things worse. This is more proof that stories rely primarily on conflict to make a story move and characters talk in Hollywood, and how mechanical dramaturgy has sunk. It also wouldn't have hurt to have some history as to how things came to pass, but maybe that's asking too much.
15 MINUTES
People who have seen this awful, awful trash commentary on television may wonder why I'm defending it. That's because the only remaining indication that this film was more than what it seems doesn't come up until the last 3 minutes and only lasts for 8 seconds, in the form of a title credit on a camcorder. Other than that, there is almost nothing left of this once-promising black comedy of a satire that was brutally revised into a straight-forward action film. The complete ridiculousness of the antagonist's plan and their pratfalls in the making of it prove that the last thing this film should be is serious or taken at face value. Unfortunately, Hollywood isn't known for its longterm vision, so depth of vision is just as hard to find, and this film is a casualty of this deformity. Rent Series 7 instead.
ALIEN RESSURRECTION
The third Alien film, for all of its weaknesses (now corrected in the much better 145 min cut) is actually a pretty damn good conclusion to what was once a wonderfully constructed trilogy. Then 20th Century Fox fucked it up. The trilogy that became a franchise was slated for another sequel to bring the lead of Ellen Ripley back from the dead, forgetting for a moment that Alien is not Soapdish and that such things are IMPOSSIBLE! Hiring brilliant French director Jean-Paul Jeunet and the great Darius Khondji to create the visuals didn't save the fact that the quince-rewritten story was just a mindless chase-fest without any of the genuine scares, and a cast that few people actually give a rat's ass about. Merging Eurpoean Art-house tendencies with science fiction generally works...but as this film can attest, NOT ALWAYS!
THE MANGLER
Tobe Hooper directed The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the greatest American horror film ever made, and it is for this reason only that he is still alive. Otherwise, he would have been lynched by many horror fans who have been let down by his constant stream of failures since. With the exception of Crocodile, this may be the worst. Mangling the semi-decent short story of the same name, this attempt at gothic horror revolves around an ancient laundry press that is possessed by a demon. It could have been something, but with a hammy performance by the usually talented Robert Englund and Ted Levine, a script that makes very little sense, and cheap CGI effects that ruin the only good sequence in the film, it is little less than nothing. Maybe someday, Tobe Hooper will find that bottle of talent he once had and take a much needed swig of it and we can forget that this one happened.
8mm
When it comes to wasted potential, this one is in the hall of fame. Off the heels of the successful Se7en, Andrew Kevin Walker submitted an older script about a private detective who is sent to investigate the background of an authentic 8mm snuff film that has been found in the vault of a deceased millionaire. Then hope faded when director Joel Schumacher survived the repeated attempts to scrape him off the earth and took on the project. The rest is nothing but sloppy sections of cliched noir with shocking pornography re-enactments. None of the original depravity and mental degradation is left and to top it all off, the acting sucks. Cage's character is not a bland man who becomes possessed by the underworld in which he dwells, but has been changed to a bland man who becomes a melodramatic moralist finding justice for a poor victim. This film was supposed to destroy your soul, not avenge it!
THE BIG HIT
Grosse Pointe Blank is a hysterical film about a professional assassin; The Big Hit is about a squad of hypercool hitmen who, in a vie for their own big score make a very unhysterical film about professional assassins. This abortion of a comedy tries to balance every cliche about action movies ever made with every romantic comedy cliche ever made with every screwball comedy cliche ever made with every deal-gone-wrong cliche ever made with every Jewish mother cliche ever made...well you get the idea. And hopefully you do so that you can avoid this pretentious piece of shit that can't shut up about masturbation, bitchy girlfriends and video late fees.
DOUBLE TEAM
Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dennis Rodman. For God's sake!
MORTAL KOMBAT
Enter the Dragon is the prototypical martial arts tournament film of all time. So why is the premiere martial arts tournament video game not cinematically structured in the same way? The notoriously violent video game has so many setpeices that are perfect for a film, but in the big-screen adaptation, everything is played for direct-to-video thrills and all of the characters turned into setpeices themselves. Neither the actors nor the story is believable even in fantasy terms, and the techno soundtrack in combination with the ridiculous slo-mo fight scenes doom this project beyond salvation of any kind. And who the HELL casts Christopher Lambert as a Japanese god?!! And if you think that't bad, keep in mind they made a sequel.
HANNBIAL
And our last entry in this post is one of the most obvious Hollywood blunders in recent history. The most anticipated sequel of 20th Century literature was quickly made for the screen almost as soon as the ink on the manuscript was dry. It was also made incomplete. First of all, Thomas Harris is not as talented a writer as he's promoted to be, and his absurdly clumsy book makes an even more clumsy and embarrasing film, especially with half the content cut out. Anthony Hopkins plays his most famous role of Hannibal Lecter with all the relish he can, but his ferocious caged beast is more like a homicidal pussy cat out in the open. The talented Julianne Moore does not fit a role molded for Jodie Foster, and the script, in order to cut down on screen time, excises virtually all of the supporting cast and logical exposition, leaving a very beautiful, very slick waste of 2 1/2 hours of celluloid that shows stupid people doing inexplicable things.
