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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 on true
02:30events, Bastards was fashioned more as a subversive revisionist history of what Tarantino wishes had
02:35happened. Despite the inherent ridiculousness of his film, it's in many ways easier to take seriously
02:40than Valkyrie, given that large swathes of the ensemble cast are Europeans and therefore can speak
02:45German and or French, as makes them inherently more believable in their roles. In the case of Valkyrie,
02:50Singer opted for a cast consisting primarily of British character actors and
02:54Tom Cruise, and rather than have him affect a German lilt, he simply had the cast speak
02:59in neutral accents. Despite being the more serious and highbrow of the two films,
03:04Valkyrie was a box office disappointment and failed to even receive a single Oscar nomination,
03:09whilst Bastards was a box office smash, received eight Oscar nominations, and even won one,
03:14Best Supporting Actor for Christopher Waltz. And 15 years on, have you heard anybody talk about
03:18Valkyrie? Yeah, case closed.
03:208. Upgrade Embarrassed Venom
03:23The first Venom film may have been a colossal box office success, but critics weren't convinced
03:28that Tom Hardy's admittedly amusing performance could compensate for the low-effort script and
03:32rather generic dated superhero movie treatment. But four months earlier, a considerably more creative
03:37and well-executed riff on the Venom concept was released to cinemas, and that film was Upgrade.
03:42Just as Venom focused on Eddie Brock becoming a host to an alien parasite which grants him
03:47supernatural powers, Upgrade centers around Grey Trace, a man who is rendered quadriplegic by
03:52botched mugging and implanted with a chip which gives him control of his body back. The rub,
03:56though, is that the chip also turns Grey into a brutally efficient killing machine.
04:00The narrative comparisons speak for themselves, as does the uncanny resemblance between Hardy and
04:04Logan Marshall Green. And on a mere $3 million budget compared to Venom's $116 million budget,
04:10Upgrade proved a far more satisfying version of that basic setup. Furthermore, the director of
04:15Upgrade got a mind-boggling amount of production value out of his tiny budget, whereas Venom's
04:20visuals were frequently garish and pretty ugly at times. Upgrade is therefore proof-perfect of what
04:25a smart, talented filmmaker can do with minimal resources, compared to the crass excess of Venom's
04:30generally lousy superhero shenanigans.
04:327. Rocketman Embarrassed Bohemian Rhapsody
04:36Freddie Mercury biopic Bohemian Rhapsody was released in October 2018 to rather mixed reviews,
04:41but enormous box office success, netting over $900 million globally. It was also nominated for
04:47five Oscars, including Best Picture, of which it won four, most notably a Best Actor Award for Rami
04:52Malek. And while in pure box office dollars and Academy Awards, Bohemian Rhapsody wins out,
04:57in terms of actual filmmaking quality, you know, the thing that really matters,
05:00it's effortlessly smoked by Elton John's biopic Rocketman. Released the very next May,
05:06Rocketman had a lot of superficial similarities to Bohemian Rhapsody, a splashy biopic of an iconic
05:11gay British musician starring a respected on-the-rise actor that was clearly gunning for awards.
05:16And though Rocketman garnered just a fraction of Bohemian Rhapsody's box office while receiving just
05:20a single Oscar nomination for Best Original Song, which it at least won, history will definitely be
05:26much kinder to it. While Bohemian Rhapsody was a relatively vapid Wikipedia page biopic which
05:31seemed vaguely embarrassed on fully engaging with Mercury as a gay man and a flawed human being,
05:35Rocketman went in entirely the opposite direction. A warts-and-all, R-rated biopic that managed to be
05:41stylish and entertaining, Rocketman was topped by a stellar Taron Egerton that proved infinitely more
05:47Oscar-worthy than Malek's more surface-level impression. Above all else, it showed Bohemian Rhapsody
05:52what was possible if the producers weren't centrally preoccupied with making a sanitized
05:56biopic to appease the broadest of general audiences.
05:596. Captain America Civil War Embarrassed Batman v Superman Dawn of Justice
06:04Batman v Superman was one of the most anticipated superhero movies ever, and with the momentum of
06:09some truly fantastic marketing behind it, it seemed to be destined to be both a fun wish-for-filment
06:14exercise and a commercial hit. But reviews were not kind, to say the least, with many critics
06:19tearing into the film's needlessly convoluted script, which with its excess of subplots and
06:24muddled motivations turned a seemingly basic slam-dunk concept into a rather frustrating slog.
06:29Plus, there was only a few minutes of Batman fighting Superman, you know, the thing that
06:33people actually paid money to see. Consequently, Batman v Superman turned a more modest profit than
06:38expected, grossing just, and I use just lightly here, $873.6 million while initial projections had it
06:45going as high as $1.5 billion. But less than six weeks later, Marvel showed DC how it was done,
06:51with the release of the immeasurably more entertaining Captain America Civil War, which
06:56similarly focused on beloved superheroes fighting one another, albeit with greater narrative clarity
07:01and more actual fighting. The audience reaction to the two movies was night and day, and to top it
07:06all off, Civil War ended up grossing almost $300 million more than Batman v Superman. On a broader
07:11level, it was indicative of how Marvel Studios had a successful interconnected cinematic universe,
07:16which patiently built up to this event, whereas Warner Bros., well, they tried to rush their way to it
07:21and consequently fell flat on their face.
07:235. Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio Embarrassed Robert Zemeckis' Pinocchio
07:27Last September, Disney released their live-action remake of their animated classic Pinocchio
07:32direct-to-Disney+, with Robert Zemeckis directing and Tom Hanks starring as Geppetto. Now,
07:37critics and audiences alike didn't have many kind things to say about it,
07:40lambasting the unnecessary changes made to the source material and expressing a general feeling
07:45that it just failed to justify its existence. Almost exactly three months later, though,
07:49Guillermo del Toro's stop-motion take on Pinocchio was released on Netflix, a deeply affecting,
07:54beautifully shot, and startlingly original take on the timeless story.
07:58The gulf of quality between the two Pinocchio films is staggering. Zemeckis' film feels like a
08:04soulless, perfunctory exercise for the most part, while del Toro's feels the result of an artist at the
08:08peak of their powers telling something with every earnest fibre in their being. Unsurprisingly,
08:13most of the many rave reviews for del Toro's version couldn't help but take potshots at
08:17Zemeckis' vastly inferior predecessor. While del Toro's Pinocchio is likely to win the best
08:22animated film Oscar and endure as a surefire classic, Zemeckis' effort seems to be destined
08:27to disappear into the streaming ether.
08:294. Never Say Never Again Embarrassed Octopussy
08:33Believe it or not, in 1983, two James Bond films were released within a mere four months of each
08:38other. The Roger Moore-starring Octopussy and Never Say Never Again, which brought Sean Connery
08:43back into the fold for one last go-around. Never Say Never Again was produced following a legal
08:48battle between Thunderball writer Kevin McClory and Bond author Ian Fleming, with McClory winning the
08:53rights to the novel's plot and characters. This allowed McClory to produce his own adaptation of
08:57Thunderball, that, while existing outside of the official 007 continuity, was for all intents and
09:02purposes a James Bond film. Octopussy was released first to easy box office success, though critical
09:08and fan reception has been firmly mixed ever since. It is, after all, the one where Bond dresses up as a
09:13clown. Never Say Never Again, though, followed up and, despite not being part of the legit Bond canon,
09:18proved a far more worthy experience. Despite his age, it was a hoot seeing Connery reprise the 007
09:24role once more. And, compared to the toe-curling acting in Moore's film, it took itself a little
09:29more seriously whilst still being a ton of fun. While Octopussy was the more commercially successful
09:33of the two, though both were major hits, Never Say Never Again endures as the critical fave and just
09:38tamright better movie. For a film produced as a result of a bitter lawsuit, that's pretty impressive.
09:443. Mortal Kombat Embarrassed Double Dragon and Street Fighter
09:48The mid-90s saw Hollywood turning to video games for some rather easy profits, resulting in the
09:53development of several films based on popular fighting games, namely Double Dragon, Street
09:57Fighter, and Mortal Kombat. The low-budget Double Dragon came first in November 1994, releasing to
10:03near-universal critical disdain and flopping at the box office, failing to recoup even its tiny $7.8
10:08million budget. The very next month, the considerably more anticipated Jean-Claude Van Damme starring
10:13Street Fighter was released, which, while grossing almost $100 million worldwide, was trashed by critics.
10:19Outside of Raoul Julia's superbly campy performance, that is.
10:22The next summer, Paul W.S. Anderson decided to show these movies up with Mortal Kombat,
10:27which was both a considerably greater financial success while receiving far more favourable
10:31reviews. Now, that isn't to say that Anderson's film is perfect by any means. Reviews are still
10:35firmly mixed here. But Mortal Kombat successfully translated the style, tone, and atmosphere of the
10:40games to the big screen, as Double Dragon and Street Fighter both categorically failed to do.
10:45But Mortal Kombat ended up falling flat on its face soon enough, though, when 1997's sequel Mortal
10:50Kombat Annihilation received worse reviews than either of its competitor films, whilst also
10:54flopping at the box office. Oof, talk about a fatality.
10:582. Everything Everywhere All at Once Embarrassed the MCU
11:01Now, the multiverse is the big cinematic trend right now, with the Marvel Cinematic Universe
11:06obviously covering the market on big budget renditions of the concept, by way of Spider-Man
11:11No Way Home and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Now, it's impossible to deny the success of
11:16either of these movies, both of which turned immense profits and were well-received by critics and fans
11:21alike. But Sandwiched Between Them was an indie film that came totally out of nowhere and demonstrated
11:26how an imaginative multiverse movie was actually done, and on a fraction of the budget, no less.
11:31Everything Everywhere All at Once was released in March to rave reviews and, on a mere $25 million
11:35budget, grossed over $100 million globally. The directors of the film, both called Daniel,
11:40one called Quan and one called Shinut, used their kitchen-sync filmmaking ingenuities to produce
11:45visually dazzling results despite their minimal VFX budget, and on a pure conceptual level,
11:50it's surely the most unique take on the multiverse that we've yet seen. And as entertaining as the
11:55aforementioned MCU movies were, they're multiverse-faring shenanigans, but they seemed
11:59a bit boring by comparison. I mean, sure, it was fun seeing three iterations of Spider-Man hanging out,
12:04and Sam Raimi got compellingly freaky with the Doctor Strange sequel, but given the limitless potential
12:09of the worlds presented therein, both films barely felt like they scratched the surface
12:12of their multiversal potential.
12:151. The Bourne Identity Embarrassed Die Another Day
12:18It's often said that Austin Powers and the film 9-11 collectively killed the Pierce Brosnan
12:23era of tongue-in-cheek James Bond films, though in reality the primary culprit is actually Doug Liman's
12:28The Bourne Identity. Released five months before Brosnan's final outing as 007, The Bourne Identity was in
12:34many ways a Bond film without the branding. A kinetic, globe-trotting spy thriller focused on
12:39a protagonist with the initials JB. It proved a major critical and commercial success, and to
12:44this very day is credited with reinvigorating the stagnant spy genre by way of its more cerebral
12:49storytelling and gritty, intense action. The Bourne Identity was such a riveting breath of fresh air
12:54that it became tough to get excited about another silly Bond movie, and so it's little surprised that
12:59Die Another Day's joyless ride left critics and fans alike rather indifferent. Though Die Another Day was a
13:04massive box office hit regardless, more than doubling Bourne's financial haul, it ultimately
13:09brought Brosnan's tenure as 007 to an unceremonious end, before Bond producers rebooted the franchise
13:14with Daniel Craig in the grittier vein of the Bourne movies.
13:18And there we go my friends, those were 10 movies that embarrassed other movies released at the same
13:22time. I hope that you enjoyed that and let me know what you thought about it down in the comment
13:26section below. As always I've been Jules, you can go follow me over on Instagram where it's
13:29at RetroJ, but the O is a zero and I hope to see you over there my friends. But before I go,
13:34I just want to say one thing, hope you're treating yourself well with love and respect because you
13:38deserve all of the best things in life alright, and do not let anything or anyone else tell you
13:42otherwise. You are a massive ledge and you deserve all the best things in life, like love, happiness
13:47and success. So I want you to go out there and utterly smash it today. I believe in you.
13:51As always I've been Jules, you have been awesome, never forget that, and I'll speak to you soon. Bye.
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