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When movies look at what failed and go "yes, I'll have more of that."
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00:00Now, I don't know about you, but there is nothing more annoying than watching someone
00:04repeatedly make the same mistake over and over again.
00:07The movie business is responsible for trying the same stupid things again and again.
00:12From casting blunders and weird costuming to franchise ratcons and naked attempts at
00:18invoking nostalgia, I'm Ewan, this is what culture, and here are 10 diabolical movie
00:23mistakes you won't believe they made twice.
00:27Number 10, Bad Tattoos, Suicide Squad, and The Bride
00:32In early 2024, it was revealed that Jesse Buckley, Christian Bale, and Penelope Cruz would be
00:37joining director Maggie Gyllenhaal to make The Bride, a redo of classic monster movie Bride
00:43of Frankenstein.
00:45It was later revealed that Bale will be playing Frankenstein's monster, and pictures of the
00:49actor in costume were shared online.
00:51Ironically, considering that the Welshman famously portrayed Batman, the internet made many
00:56comparisons between him and one of the Caped Crusader's biggest enemies.
01:01Yeah, fans noticed pretty instantly that Bale's monster design was a dead ringer for Jared Leto's
01:07infamous incarnation of the Joker from the 2016 Suicide Squad movie.
01:12This version of the Clown Prince of Crime was rarely marked for his golden grills and audacious
01:18tattoos.
01:19And wouldn't you know it, this recent costume has also been memed to within an inch of its
01:23life.
01:24He's even doing the mad Joker head tilt run hands through hair thingy in the promo image
01:30shared.
01:31Like, how did no one point this out?
01:33Suicide Squad came out, of course, in 2016, which means that in just 8 years, the costume
01:39department for The Bride forgot how bad to reaction the Joker's look actually was.
01:43Either that, or they have way better movie taste than Oliver's and were not roped into
01:49seeing it by that deceptively good Bohemian Rhapsody trailer, which I still hold a grudge
01:55over.
01:56Also, on a serious note, still looking forward to this one.
01:59Number 9.
02:00Casting Chris Pratt.
02:01The Super Mario Bros. movie and the Garfield movie.
02:06Everyone knows what Mario sounds like, right?
02:08The Mustachio Plumber's iconic voice, provided by the legendary Charles Martinet, is all the
02:14most recognizable in all of pop culture, let alone video games themselves.
02:18You know, Wahoo and It's a me, Mario.
02:22My terrible voices aside, the Italian inflections of Mario's voice meant that when it was revealed
02:29that Chris Pratt would be voicing the character in the 2023 Super Mario Bros. movie, audiences
02:35were, well, a little surprised.
02:37Pratt's decision to perform the role using a very suspicious Italian accent, and again,
02:42I have no right to comment on that given what I just did, was met with a mixture of criticism
02:47and heckling from moviegoers.
02:49It's fine for an actor to put their own spin on a character, but when they remove something
02:53that is so integral to the persona, people are understandably gonna get a little bit peeved.
02:59Worth noting as well that the Mario movie itself was ridiculously popular, so evidently people
03:05who aren't as chronically online didn't really care.
03:08But even so, Pratt, in the words of J. Jonah Jameson, you're a menace.
03:14Oh, and it actually doesn't stop there.
03:16The very next year, another animated movie featuring a character with a famous voice also cast Pratt
03:22in the role.
03:23This after also starring in animated features like The Lego Movie and Onward.
03:27Seriously, what is the obsession here?
03:30The Garfield movie, the latest big screen outing for the lasagna-loving orange cat, will
03:35star the Guardians of the Galaxy actor as the titular feline.
03:38By the looks of the trailer, he's made no effort to replicate the character's sardonic
03:42drawl, which is like the whole point of Garfield.
03:45Maybe if they show us enough cute baby Garfield, then we'll all go and see it.
03:49But for now, Pratt fatigue has well and truly warded me off.
03:548.
03:55Dull Costumes
03:57X-Men and Dark Phoenix
03:59In comic book land, the X-Men house were the brightest, most vibrant costumes you'll
04:04ever see.
04:05I mean, just look at these guys.
04:07They're the coolest.
04:08Unfortunately, when the first live-action X-Men movie came out in 2000, black leather was
04:14all the rage, so the likes of Wolverine, Cyclops, Storm, and Magneto ditched their iconic gear
04:20for something more low-key, with James Marsden's Cyclops even riffing on this choice in a comment
04:26to Logan before the finale.
04:28This unfortunately dull trend continued throughout the following sequels, bar a brief aberration
04:33with X-Men First Class, until X-Men Apocalypse ended with a tease that more exciting uniforms
04:39were on the way, and then they took it away from us.
04:42As well as being an unmitigated disaster, genuinely one of the worst comic movies I've ever seen,
04:49Dark Phoenix also decked out its mutant cast in dull blue suits with big yellow X's on them.
04:55Now, in the film's defense, it did take inspiration from Frank Quitely's iconic new X-Men designs
05:02from the comics, but even on that front, the movie failed to capture the texture of the
05:07costumes themselves.
05:08Plus, that's meant to be early 2000's fashion, but meant to be in the 90's with Dark
05:12Phoenix.
05:13Gimme those cropped hoodies and denim shorts.
05:16What at first seemed like the perfect chance to incorporate some of the great individual costumes
05:21from the comics, particularly since Dark Phoenix was set in that decade when the X-Men were
05:26given their iconic suits from artist Jim Lee, ended up getting squandered, with our hopes
05:31and dreams impaled on a rusty pole like Jennifer Lawrence's Mystique.
05:35What characters wear might not seem like a big deal, but in a series like the X-Men,
05:41where individuality is one of the key themes, these bland, homogenized outfits are totally
05:46unacceptable.
05:47Further insult to injury, when the Wolverine also cut an ending where Logan received his
05:53iconic orange suit in a briefcase.
05:55Also, last Dark Phoenix rant here, the movie had Dazzler, but only use Dazzler in one scene.
06:03If you have Dazzler, I expect full commitment.
06:06Ugh, maybe it'll happen in the future.
06:09Number 7.
06:10The Jasonification of Michael Myers by the franchise Halloween
06:14I'm really proud of that entry heading.
06:16All 7 of you who got it enjoyed it.
06:18Anyway, John Carpenter's 1978 movie Halloween is rightfully held in very high regard, as it
06:26pretty much single-handedly popularized the slasher genre that is still alive and well today.
06:31One of the many franchises to follow in Halloween's blood-soaked footsteps was Friday the 13th, which
06:37introduced its major villain, Jason Voorhees, in 1981.
06:42Since then, horror hounds have noticed that, despite being three years older,
06:46Halloween's Michael Myers has slowly been morphing into his hockey mask-wearing colleague, which
06:52is kind of dumb.
06:54While the original Myers was a disturbed but otherwise unremarkable human being,
06:59over time he has displayed more and more supernatural qualities.
07:02In Halloween 4, The Return of Michael Myers, he is revealed to have survived a building exploding,
07:08and he has also come back from being stabbed, electrocuted, and set on fire.
07:13As the franchise progressed, his physical appearance also had to change.
07:17By the fifth Halloween movie, The Curse of Michael Myers, the titular baddie was a huge
07:22Hulk of a man with Jason's strength, when in the original, he was much slimmer and more normal-looking.
07:28This problem was fixed slightly in the first David Gordon Green film,
07:33but after that, and even when trying to tap into the original,
07:37they still fell into the pitfalls of the sequels they were, ironically, trying to avoid.
07:42Number 6.
07:43Retconning the first two films,
07:46Terminator Genisys and Terminator Dark Fate.
07:49Considering how excellent and groundbreaking James Cameron's first two Terminator movies were,
07:55it's almost impressive that most of what came after has been pretty stinky.
08:01Terminator 3 Rise of the Machines was inoffensive, but ultimately pointless,
08:06while 2009 film Terminator Salvation is more remembered these days for Christian Bale's
08:11on-set outburst than for anything it pulled off on the screen itself.
08:15Gotta hand it to Salvation though, it actually tried to do something new with the franchise,
08:19and for that, it gets a little applause. Not too vigorous, just a respectful clap.
08:25Yeah, that's about the right level.
08:27Despite Rise of the Machines and Salvation varying from so-and-so to just pretty bad,
08:32neither came close on the crafter scale to franchise follow-ups Terminator Genisys and Terminator Dark
08:38Fate, which both had the amazing idea to muck around with the established continuity of the first
08:44two films. The whole premise of Genisys is that Kyle Reese, Sarah Connor's savior and baby daddy from
08:50the first movie, discovers that Skynet has beat him to the punch and that his charge is now being
08:55guarded by a reprogrammed T-800. As for Dark Fate, that goes completely off the rails within the first
09:02few minutes, as a second version of the T-800 tracks down the young John Connor and blows a big old
09:08hole in him. Both of these retcons were obviously controversial, but to me, apart from undermining
09:15Cameron's films, they also just display a startling lack of imagination and endeavour. The Terminator mythos
09:21could be just as rich as Aliens or Predators, but it would be like if those films kept on making sequels
09:29were obsessively dedicated to reimagining the original. Just do something new, and better yet,
09:35something that makes sense because I still have no clue what the hell was going on with Genesis,
09:40or these hilarious character probos. What is Matt Smith screaming, and Matt Smith was in this?
09:49I don't know, maybe there's no point in doing a Terminator sequel without Cameron,
09:52but you'd think that someone would find a unique angle here. Arnie, you deserve better.
09:57Number 5. Releasing Morbius twice. Look, at this point, you've gotta hand it to Sony. After fumbling
10:04the bag with Spider-Man 4 and turning in the middest films to ever mid with The Amazing Spider-Man
10:10and its sequel, the studio negotiated a deal with Marvel for Spidey to enter the Marvel Cinematic
10:15Universe. They get to relinquish a lot of creative control, but cash in those lovely Disney checks
10:20all the same. But that wasn't enough. No, you know what else they needed? A Spidey universe filled with
10:27villains. And side characters. And villains. All of whom would never interact with the actual Spider-Man.
10:35Yeah, if not for David Zaslav and his tax write-off obsession, which we'll be getting to in a bit,
10:41this would maybe be the most cynically minded movie decision of the last 10 years. And they've
10:46been rewarded for it. The first Venom made nearly like a billion dollars, the second didn't do that bad
10:52either. And then after that, we have Madam Web, who, bless her, is still somewhere in the Amazon
10:58looking for her mom who was researching spiders right before she died. And after that, we're gonna
11:03get Craven. And then, I don't know, maybe Big Wheel. But the mistake here isn't that Sony keeps making
11:09these movies. No, it's that it released one of them twice because it misinterpreted memedom for genuine
11:16positive sentiment. Yep, that's right, we're bringing back the Morbin discourse. No, I don't
11:22care that it's 2024. You all have to remember this happened as well. Morbius, starring Jared Leto as the
11:29vampiric character, was released against all reason in March 2022. The fact that the movie was so stupid
11:36and should just not exist led to an ironic meme movement online, with fans declaring that it was
11:41Morbin time and that Morbius would break every box office record on the globe. The film
11:46released enough reviews, scored a middling box office return, and then Sony was like,
11:51hey, those kids online, they like this Morbius character, let's release it again, to even less
11:58interest. I genuinely don't know how someone at a studio thought this was a good idea, but at this
12:04point, you've just gotta respect the stupidity of it all. Like, that's next level dumbness.
12:10Number 4. Reducing the violence. Robocop 3 and Robocop 2014. The original Robocop from 1987
12:18is famously bloody. Director Paul Verhoeven wanted his movie to be so outrageously gory
12:24that it would compliment the film's satirical bent, and boy did it do just that. The second Robocop,
12:29which came along around three years later, was set to be equally gratuitous, but it lacked the venom of
12:35its predecessor. The studio is keen to pacify the character and rake in box office receipts
12:40from a more family-friendly outing. Gotta love the 80s and its funnily inappropriate children's
12:45cartoons. You guys had Robocop, Rambo, genuinely a travesty, we never got one from Predator.
12:51Either way, Robocop 3 then came along and turned up the child-friendly vibes another notch and failed
12:57miserably, becoming both a commercial and critical disappointment. This makes it even stranger that,
13:03when the series was rebooted in 2014, it was once again handled with kid gloves.
13:09The new Robocop was also a PG-13 and shockingly also a bit rubbish. If anything, this was even worse,
13:18as fans could directly compare this tame version of the story to the beautifully unhinged original,
13:24which was not good news for the more recent model. But hey, at least we had that Robocop Rogue City game
13:30from the other year. That thing is a certified banger.
13:333. Legacy Cast Nostalgia
13:36Jurassic World Dominion and Ghostbusters Frozen Empire
13:40Jurassic World Dominion, the third movie in the rebooted Jurassic World series,
13:45was one of the first big post-COVID cinema releases, and moviegoers were rewarded with a
13:50stacked old cast. Alongside modern stars like Bryce Dallas Howard and the aforementioned Mr. Pratt,
13:56Dominion also reunited the main trio from the first film, Sam Neill, Laura Dern, and Jeff Goldblum.
14:03In 2024, Ghostbusters Frozen Empire, another installment in a reboot of the classic series,
14:09pulled this same trick by bringing back Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson, and Bill Murray to reprise their
14:15parts from the original film. Unfortunately, neither of these decisions resulted in particularly great
14:21movies. Both Dominion and Frozen Empire, if we're being really honest, relied way too heavily on
14:27shiny cameos, instead of crafting something new and fresh. Rather than loving homages to the past,
14:32these reunions felt more like they were playing to the nostalgia crowd, securing the cast first,
14:37but failing to really craft a truly great story around them. For Dominion, that issue more comes down
14:44to just the story being bad and also those movies being boring in general, but with Frozen Empire,
14:50it just juggles too many characters for one film, which is a real shame because I had sort of high
14:56hopes for that one. The point I'm getting at is that nostalgia is nice and all, and in the Jurassic
15:01World movies case, not the main reasons those films are bad, but it can't be all we have to play with.
15:072. Cancelling movies for tax write-off purposes – Warner Bros. Discovery
15:13Headlines were made in 2022 when Warner Bros. Discovery announced that it was cancelling plans
15:18to release its upcoming Batgirl movie on HBO Max, or anywhere else for that matter.
15:24Batgirl, which had been due for release that year, was set to star Leslie Grace as Barbara
15:29Gordon and feature a host of big stars like J.K. Simmons, Brendan Fraser, and Michael Keaton returning
15:35to the role of the Dark Knight. And having seen glimpses of the Flash? Yeah, I think it's safe to
15:41say the wrong project got binned. David Zaslav's WB also revealed that it would be cancelling Scoob
15:47Holiday Haunt, an animated picture about younger versions of the Mystery Incorporated gang.
15:52One year later, Coyote vs. Acme, a legal comedy about Wile E. Coyote from the world of Looney Tunes,
15:59became the third casualty of WBD's cost-cutting crusade.
16:03Really gets my blood up. It was bad enough that Batgirl, a big budget project with plenty of name
16:10value and two talented filmmakers behind the camera, was canned. But if WB isn't careful,
16:17it's a real risk of ruining a once prestigious studio's reputation, if that isn't the case already,
16:22and to be honest, it probably is. Like, how does WB expect audiences to get excited about upcoming
16:29movies when they know there's every chance they might not actually get to see them? And how do
16:34they attract talent? Moreover, how does the company keep getting away with it? In the words of Foghorn
16:39Leghorn, the boy is about as sharp as a golden ball. And in number one, all those boring humans,
16:47the MonsterVerse movies. If you're gonna make an entire series of films about gigantic titans with
16:53supernatural powers, it's probably a good idea to make them the main focus. Launching with Gareth
16:59Edward's Godzilla reboot in 2014, Legendary Pictures and WB's MonsterVerse has expanded to
17:05five movies and two TV shows, usually revolving around the deeds of the aforementioned giant
17:11reptile and his buddy, King Kong. Well, that's who they should revolve around, in theory. Instead,
17:19bafflingly, a ludicrous amount of these movies' screen time has been devoted to a rogues gallery
17:25of bland, uninspired humans. Skull Island fared better than the others in this department,
17:30as does the new Monarch TV show, which is great, as well as the 2014 Godzilla film, but come on,
17:37you can't seriously tell me you get excited to watch about an hour of boring comedy and exposition
17:43from these guys once the titles have dropped. I just wanna see the big monkey fight the big lizard.
17:49Is that too much to ask? Obviously, this franchise needs human characters to frame all the monster
17:55stuff around, and we've seen it done well. But if you're gonna tell stories through ordinary people,
18:01it needs to be something of value. Better yet, shift away from them and onto the terrifying ape and
18:07lizard that have been proven box office drawers for over 70 years. Please, and I'm begging you,
18:14because I would really like to watch one of these movies, but they are so boring to sit through.
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