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Everything Everywhere All At Once showed the MCU how the Multiverse is done.
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00:00Now, the success or failure of a movie is never just down to its quality.
00:04Timing is also hugely important. Knowing when to release a film free of obvious competition
00:08can make all the difference at the box office, and in terms of overall reception,
00:13it's probably smart to create some distance from other similarly themed movies.
00:16After all, films with something in common that release close together will inevitably be compared,
00:21and generally speaking, one of these movies will be considerably better than the other.
00:25And in extreme cases, the better movie doesn't just outdo the lesser one,
00:28it decisively shows it how things are done, and basically embarrasses it in the process.
00:33So let's take a look at them as I'm Jules, this is WhatCulture.com,
00:36and these are 10 movies that embarrassed other movies released at the same time.
00:40Number 10. Avatar The Way of Water Embarrassed Black Panther Wakanda Forever
00:45This past holiday season was the battle of the aquatic-themed mega-budget blockbusters,
00:49as Black Panther Wakanda Forever faced off against Avatar The Way of Water.
00:53Now, Wakanda Forever was released first in mid-November, just five weeks before the Avatar
00:58sequel to solidly positive reviews, even if most critics agreed that it didn't match the
01:02brilliance of its predecessor, quite understandably given Chadwick Boseman's untimely death.
01:07With its primary antagonist being Namor, the king of an Atlantis-like civilisation,
01:11the bulk of the film is centred around water, and director Ryan Coogler did a mostly solid
01:15job with it. But then Avatar The Way of Water came out, and the mind-boggling visual majesty of
01:20James Cameron's long-gestating sequel made Wakanda Forever's seafaring action look,
01:24well, kind of like a crayon drawing crudely scrawled on a napkin by comparison.
01:29This is particularly apparent in their especially water-based third acts, widely considered both
01:34to be the strongest part of Avatar 2 and the weakest section of Wakanda Forever.
01:38Cameron obviously had the major advantage of time and money, whereas basically all Marvel movies are
01:43on a strict production conveyor belt due to their interconnected nature. Even so, The Way of Water
01:48showed what can be achieved by a filmmaker at the top of their game with all of the resources that
01:52they need to achieve their vision. No matter how good a director Coogler is, there was no way for
01:56him to compete with that.
01:589. Inglourious Bastards Embarrassed Valkyrie
02:01Don't feel too bad if you don't remember Valkyrie, Bryan Singer's World War II thriller that was
02:06released at the tail end of 2008 and starred Tom Cruise as Colonel Klaus von Stauffenberg,
02:11a German army colonel who plots to assassinate Adolf Hitler. It came and went upon a firm wave of
02:16indifference, and its fate as being forgettable was categorically sealed the next summer when Quentin Tarantino
02:21released his similarly themed Hitler assassination movie Inglourious Bastards. It of course goes
02:26without saying that Tarantino's film was very different, while Valkyrie was based visionist
02:30history of what Tarantino wishes had happened. Despite the inherent ridiculousness of his film,
02:35it's in many ways easier to take seriously than Valkyrie, given that large swathes of the
02:39ensemble cast are Europeans and therefore can speak German and or French, as makes them inherently
02:44more believable in their roles. In the case of Valkyrie, Singer opted for a cast consisting
02:49primarily of British character actors and Tom Cruise, and rather than have him affect a German
02:54lilt, he simply had the cast speak in neutral accents. Despite being the more serious and
02:59highbrow of the two films, Valkyrie was a box office disappointment and failed to even receive
03:04a single Oscar nomination, whilst Bastards was a box office smash, received eight Oscar nominations,
03:10and even won one. Best Supporting Actor for Christopher Waltz. And 15 years on, have you heard anybody
03:15talk about Valkyrie? Yeah, case closed. 8. Upgrade Embarrassed Venom
03:20The first Venom film may have been a colossal box office success, but critics weren't convinced
03:25that Tom Hardy's admittedly amusing performance could compensate for the low-effort script and
03:29rather generic dated superhero movie treatment. But four months earlier, a considerably more creative
03:34and well-executed riff on the Venom concept was released to cinemas, and that film was Upgrade.
03:39Just as Venom focused on Eddie Brock becoming a host to an alien parasite which grants him
03:44supernatural powers, Upgrade centers around Grey Trace, a man who is rendered quadriplegic by botched
03:49mugging and implanted with a chip which gives him control of his body back. The rub, though,
03:54is that the chip also turns Grey into a brutally efficient killing machine. The narrative comparisons
03:58speak for themselves, as does the uncanny resemblance between Hardy and Logan Marshall Green.
04:03And on a mere $3 million budget compared to Venom's $116 million budget, Upgrade proved a far
04:08more satisfying version of that basic setup. Furthermore, the director of Upgrade got a
04:13mind-boggling amount of production value out of his tiny budget, whereas Venom's visuals were
04:17frequently garish and pretty ugly at times. Upgrade is therefore proof-perfect of what a smart,
04:22talented filmmaker can do with minimal resources, compared to the crass excess of Venom's generally
04:27lousy superhero shenanigans. 7. Rocketman Embarrassed Bohemian Rhapsody
04:33Freddie Mercury biopic Bohemian Rhapsody was released in October 2018 to rather mixed reviews,
04:38but enormous box office success, netting over $900 million globally. It was also nominated for
04:44five Oscars, including Best Picture, of which it won four, most notably a Best Actor award for
04:49Rami Malek. And while in pure box office dollars and Academy Awards, Bohemian Rhapsody wins out,
04:54in terms of actual filmmaking quality, you know, the thing that really matters, it's effortlessly
04:58smoked by Elton John's biopic Rocketman. Released the very next May, Rocketman had a lot of
05:04superficial similarities to Bohemian Rhapsody, a splashy biopic of an iconic gay British musician
05:09starring a respected, on-the-rise actor that was clearly gunning for awards. And though Rocketman
05:14garnered just a fraction of Bohemian Rhapsody's box office while receiving just a single Oscar
05:18nomination for Best Original Song, which had at least won, history will definitely be much kinder to
05:23it. While Bohemian Rhapsody was a relatively vapid Wikipedia page biopic, which seemed vaguely
05:28embarrassed on fully engaging with Mercury as a gay man and a flawed human being, Rocketman went in
05:33entirely the opposite direction. A warts-and-all, R-rated biopic that managed to be stylish and
05:39entertaining, Rocketman was topped by a stellar Taron Egerton that proved infinitely more Oscar-worthy
05:44than Malek's more surface-level impression. Above all else, it showed Bohemian Rhapsody what was
05:49possible if the producers weren't centrally preoccupied with making a sanitized biopic to
05:53appease the broadest of general audiences. 6. Captain America Civil War
05:58Embarrassed Batman v Superman Dawn of Justice
06:01Batman v Superman was one of the most anticipated superhero movies ever, and with the momentum of
06:06some truly fantastic marketing behind it, it seemed to be destined to be both a fun wish-for-filment
06:11exercise and a commercial hit. But reviews were not kind to say the least, with many critics tearing
06:17into the film's needlessly convoluted script, which with its excess of subplots and muddled motivations
06:22turned a seemingly basic slam-dunk concept into a rather frustrating slog. Plus, there was only a
06:27few minutes of Batman fighting Superman, you know, the thing that people actually paid money to see.
06:31Consequently, Batman v Superman turned a more modest profit than expected, grossing just,
06:36and I use just lightly here, $873.6 million, while initial projections had it going as high
06:42as $1.5 billion. But less than six weeks later, Marvel showed DC how it was done, with the release of
06:49the immeasurably more entertaining Captain America Civil War, which similarly focused on beloved
06:54superheroes fighting one another, albeit with greater narrative clarity and more actual fighting.
06:59The audience reaction to the two movies was night and day, and to top it all off,
07:03Civil War ended up grossing almost $300 million more than Batman v Superman. On a broader level,
07:09it was indicative of how Marvel Studios had a successful interconnected cinematic universe,
07:13which patiently built up to this event, whereas Warner Bros., where they tried to rush their way to it,
07:18and consequently fell flat on their face.
07:205. Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio Embarrassed Robert Zemeckis' Pinocchio
07:24Last September, Disney released their live-action remake of their animated classic
07:29Pinocchio Direct to Disney+, with Robert Zemeckis directing and Tom Hanks starring as Geppetto.
07:34Now, critics and audiences alike didn't have many kind things to say about it,
07:37lambasting the unnecessary changes made to the source material and expressing a general feeling
07:42that it just failed to justify its existence. Almost exactly three months later, though,
07:46Guillermo del Toro's stop-motion take on Pinocchio was released on Netflix,
07:50a deeply affecting, beautifully shot, and startlingly original take on the timeless story.
07:55The gulf of quality between the two Pinocchio films is staggering. Zemeckis' film feels like
08:00a soulless, perfunctory exercise for the most part, while del Toro's feels the result of an artist
08:05at the peak of their powers telling something with every earnest fibre in their being. Unsurprisingly,
08:10most of the many rave reviews for del Toro's version couldn't help but take potshots at
08:14Zemeckis' vastly inferior predecessor. While del Toro's Pinocchio is likely to win the best
08:19animated film Oscar and endure as a surefire classic, Zemeckis' effort seems to be destined
08:24to disappear into the streaming ether.
08:264. Never Say Never Again Embarrassed Octopussy
08:30Believe it or not, in 1983, two James Bond films were released within a mere four months of each other,
08:35the Roger Moore-starring Octopussy and Never Say Never Again which brought Sean Connery back into
08:40the fold for one last go-around. Never Say Never Again was produced following a legal battle between
08:45Thunderball writer Kevin McClory and Bond author Ian Fleming, with McClory winning the rights to the
08:50novel's plot and characters. This allowed McClory to produce his own adaptation of Thunderball,
08:55that, while existing outside of the official 007 continuity, was for all intents and purposes
08:59a James Bond film. Octopussy was released first to easy box office success, though critical and
09:05fan reception has been firmly mixed ever since. It is, after all, the one where Bond dresses up as
09:10a clown. Never Say Never Again, though, followed up and, despite not being part of the legit Bond
09:14canon, proved a far more worthy experience. Despite his age, it was a hoot seeing Connery reprise the
09:20007 role once more. And, compared to the toe-curling acting in Moore's film, it took itself a little
09:26more seriously whilst still being a ton of fun. While Octopussy was the more commercially successful of the
09:31two, though both were major hits, Never Say Never Again endures as the critical fave and just
09:35tamright better movie. For a film produced as a result of a bitter lawsuit, that's pretty impressive.
09:413. Mortal Kombat Embarrassed Double Dragon and Street Fighter
09:45The mid-90s saw Hollywood turning to video games for some rather easy profits, resulting in the
09:50development of several films based on popular fighting games, namely Double Dragon, Street Fighter,
09:55and Mortal Kombat. The low-budget Double Dragon came first in November 1994, releasing to near-universal
10:00critical disdain and flopping at the box office, failing to recoup even its tiny $7.8 million
10:06budget. The very next month, the considerably more anticipated Jean-Claude Van Damme starring
10:10Street Fighter was released, which, while grossing almost $100 million worldwide, was trashed by
10:15critics. Outside of Raoul Julia's superbly campy performance, that is. The next summer,
10:19Paul W.S. Anderson was receiving far more favourable reviews. Now, that isn't to say that
10:23Anderson's film is perfect by any means. Reviews are still firmly mixed here. But Mortal Kombat
10:28successfully translated the style, tone, and atmosphere of the games to the big screen,
10:33as Double Dragon and Street Fighter both categorically failed to do. But Mortal Kombat
10:37ended up falling flat on its face soon enough, though, when 1997's sequel Mortal Kombat Annihilation
10:42received worse reviews than either of its competitor films, whilst also flopping at the box office.
10:47Oof, talk about a fatality.
10:492. Everything Everywhere All At Once Embarrassed The MCU
10:52Now, the multiverse is the big cinematic trend right now, with the Marvel Cinematic Universe obviously
10:57covering the market on big budget renditions of the concept, by way of Spider-Man No Way Home
11:02and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Now, it's impossible to deny the success of either
11:07of these movies, both of which turned immense profits and were well-received by critics and
11:11fans alike. But Sandwiched Between Them was an indie film that came totally out of nowhere and
11:16demonstrated how an imaginative multiverse movie was actually done, and on a fraction of the budget,
11:21no less. Everything Everywhere All At Once was released in March to rave reviews and,
11:25on a mere $25 million budget, grossed over $100 million globally. The directors of the film,
11:31both called Daniel, one called Quan and one called Shinut, used their kitchen-sync filmmaking
11:35ingenuities to produce visually dazzling results despite their minimal VFX budget, and on a pure
11:40conceptual level, it's surely the most unique take on the multiverse that we've yet seen.
11:44And as entertaining as the aforementioned MCU movies were, they're multiverse-faring shenanigans,
11:49but they seemed a bit boring by comparison. I mean, sure, it was fun seeing three iterations
11:53of Spider-Man hanging out, and Sam Raimi got compellingly freaky with the Doctor Strange sequel,
11:58but given the limitless potential of the worlds presented therein, both films barely felt like
12:02they scratched the surface of their multiversal potential.
12:061. The Bourne Identity Embarrassed Die Another Day
12:09It's often said that Austin Powers and the film 9-11 collectively killed the Pierce Brosnan era of
12:15tongue-in-cheek James Bond films, though in reality the primary culprit is actually Doug Liman's
12:19The Bourne Identity. Released five months before Brosnan's final outing as 007, The Bourne Identity
12:25was in many ways a Bond film without the branding, a kinetic, globetrotting spy thriller focused on
12:30a protagonist with the initials JB. It proved a major critical and commercial success, and to this
12:35very day is credited with reinvigorating the stagnant spy genre by way of its more cerebral
12:40storytelling and gritty, intense action. The Bourne Identity was such a riveting breath of fresh air that
12:45it became tough to get excited about another silly Bond movie, and so it's little surprised that Die
12:50Another Day's joyless ride left critics and fans alike rather indifferent. Though Die Another Day was a
12:55massive box office hit regardless, more than doubling Bourne's financial haul, it ultimately
13:00brought Brosnan's tenure as 007 to an unceremonious end, before Bond producers rebooted the franchise
13:05with Daniel Craig in the grittier vein of the Bourne movies.
13:09And there we go my friends, those were 10 movies that embarrassed other movies released at the same
13:13time. I hope that you enjoyed that and let me know what you thought about it down in the comment
13:17section below. As always I've been Jules, you can go follow me over on Instagram where it's
13:20at RetroJ, but the O is a zero and I hope to see you over there my friends. But before I go,
13:25I just want to say one thing, hope you're treating yourself well with love and respect because you deserve
13:29all of the best things in life alright, and do not let anything or anyone else tell you otherwise.
13:34You are a massive ledge and you deserve all the best things in life, like love, happiness and
13:38success. So I want you to go out there and utterly smash it today. I believe in you.
13:42As always I've been Jules, you have been awesome, never forget that, and I'll speak to you soon. Bye.
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