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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.
00:26Number 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.
00:44It 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
01:17tattoos.
01:18And, 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 shared.
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 the reaction the Joker's look actually was.
01:44Either 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.
01:58Number 9 Casting Chris Pratt
02:01The Super Mario Bros. movie and the Garfield movie.
02:05Everyone knows what Mario sounds like, right?
02:08The Mustachio Plumber's iconic voice, provided by the legendary Charles Martinet, is one of
02:14the most recognisable in all of pop culture, let alone video games themselves.
02:18You know, Wahoo and Itza Mia, 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 going to get a little 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
03:21cast Pratt in the role.
03:22This, after also starring in animated features like The Lego Movie and Onward.
03:28Seriously, 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.
03:39By the looks of the trailer, he's made no effort to replicate the character's sardonic
03:43drawl, which is like the whole point of Garfield.
03:46Maybe if they show us enough cute baby Garfield then we'll all go and see it, but for now,
03:50Pratt 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
04:20gear for something more low-key, with James Marsden's Cyclops even riffing on this choice
04:25in a comment to 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.
04:43As well as being an unmitigated disaster, genuinely one of the worst comic movies I've ever seen,
04:50Dark Phoenix also decked out its mutant cast in dull blue suits with big yellow X's on them.
04:56Now, in the film's defense, it did take inspiration from Frank Whiteley's iconic new X-Men designs
05:02from the comics, but even on that front, the movie failed to capture the texture of the costumes themselves.
05:08Plus, that's meant to be early 2000s fashion, but meant to be in the 90s with Dark Phoenix.
05:13Gimme those cropped hoodies and denim shorts.
05:16One 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 given
05:26their iconic suits from artist Jim Lee ended up getting squandered, with our hopes and dreams
05:32impaled 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, where
05:41individuality is one of the key themes, these bland, homogenized outfits are totally unacceptable.
05:47Further insult to injury when the Wolverine also cut an ending where Logan received his iconic
05:53orange suit in a briefcase.
05:55Also, last Dark Phoenix rant here, the movie had Dazzler, but only use Dazzler in one scene.
06:02If 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.
06:16I hope all seven 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.
06:41Since then, horror hounds have noticed that, despite being three years older, Halloween's
06:47Michael Myers has slowly been morphing into his hockey mask-wearing colleague, which is
06:52kind of dumb.
06:54While the original Myers was a disturbed but otherwise unremarkable human being, over time
07:00he has displayed more and more supernatural qualities.
07:03In Halloween 4, The Return of Michael Myers, he is revealed to have survived a building exploding,
07:07and 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
07:27normal-looking.
07:28This problem was fixed slightly in the first David Gordon Green film, but after that, and
07:34even when trying to tap into the original, they still fell into the pitfalls of the sequels
07:39they were, ironically, trying to avoid.
07:426.
07:43Retconning the first two films, Terminator Genisys and Terminator Dark Fate
07:49Considering how excellent and groundbreaking James Cameron's first two Terminator movies
07:54were, it'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, while 2009 film Terminator
08:08Salvation is more remembered these days for Christian Bale's Onset Outburst than for
08:13anything it pulled off on the screen itself.
08:15Gotta hand it to Salvation though, it actually tried to do something new with the franchise,
08:20and for that, it gets a little applause.
08:22Not too vigorous, just a respectful clap.
08:25Yeah, that's about the right level.
08:26Despite 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
08:38Dark Fate, which both had the amazing idea to muck around with the established continuity
08:43of the first two films.
08:45The whole premise of Genesis is that Kyle Reese, Sarah Connor's savior and baby daddy from the
08:51first movie, discovers that Skynet has beat him to the punch and that his charge is now
08:55being guarded by a reprogrammed T-800.
08:58As for Dark Fate, that goes completely off the rails within the first few minutes, as a
09:03second version of the T-800 tracks down the young John Connor and blows a big hole in him.
09:09Both of these retcons were obviously controversial, but to me, apart from undermining Cameron's
09:15films, they also just display a startling lack of imagination and endeavour.
09:21The Terminator mythos could be just as rich as Aliens or Predators, but it would be like
09:26if those films kept on making sequels were obsessively dedicated to reimagining the original.
09:32Just do something new, and better yet, something that makes sense because I still have no clue
09:38what the hell was going on with Genesis, or these hilarious character probos.
09:44What is Matt Smith screaming, and Matt Smith was in this?
09:48Ugh.
09:49I don't know, maybe there's no point in doing a Terminator sequel without Cameron,
09:53but you'd think that someone would find a unique angle here.
09:56Arnie, you deserve better.
09:58Number 5.
09:59Releasing Morbius twice
10:00Look, at this point, you've gotta hand it to Sony.
10:03After fumbling the bag with Spider-Man 4 and turning in the middest films to ever mid with
10:08The Amazing Spider-Man and its sequel, the studio negotiated a deal with Marvel for Spidey
10:13to enter the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
10:16They get to relinquish a lot of creative control, but cash in those lovely Disney checks all the
10:21same.
10:21But that wasn't enough.
10:23No.
10:24You know what else they needed?
10:25A Spidey universe, filled with villains and side characters.
10:31Villains.
10:31All of whom would never interact with the actual Spider-Man.
10:36Yeah.
10:36If not for David Zaslav and his tax write-off obsession, which we'll be getting to in a
10:41bit, this would maybe be the most cynically minded movie decision of the last 10 years.
10:46And they've been rewarded for it.
10:47The first Venom made nearly like a billion dollars.
10:51The second didn't do that bad either.
10:53And then after that, we have Madame Web, who bless her, is still somewhere in the Amazon
10:58looking for her mom who was researching spiders right before she died.
11:01And after that, we're gonna get Craven.
11:04And then, I don't know, maybe Big Wheel.
11:06But the mistake here isn't that Sony keeps making these movies.
11:10No.
11:11It's that it released one of them twice because it misinterpreted memedom for genuine positive
11:17sentiment.
11:18Yep.
11:18That's right.
11:19We're bringing back the Morbin discourse.
11:22No, I don't care that it's 2024.
11:24You all have to remember this happened as well.
11:27Morbius, starring Jared Leto as the vampiric character, was released against all reason
11:32in March 2022.
11:34The fact that the movie was so stupid and should just not exist led to an ironic meme movement
11:39online, with fans declaring that it was Morbin time and that Morbius would break every box
11:44office record on the globe.
11:46The film released enough reviews, scored a middling box office return, and then Sony
11:50was like, hey, those kids online, they like this Morbius character.
11:54Let's release it again, to even less interest.
11:59I genuinely don't know how someone at a studio thought this was a good idea, but at this point,
12:04you've just gotta respect the stupidity of it all.
12:07Like, that's next level dumbness.
12:104.
12:11Reducing the Violence, Robocop 3 and Robocop 2014
12:15The original Robocop from 1987 is famously bloody.
12:19Director Paul Verhoeven wanted his movie to be so outrageously gory that it would compliment
12:24the film's satirical bent, and boy did it do just that.
12:28The second Robocop, which came along around three years later, was set to be equally gratuitous,
12:33but it lacked the venom of its predecessor.
12:36The studio is keen to pacify the character and rake in box office receipts from a more
12:40family-friendly outing.
12:42Gotta love the 80s and its funnily inappropriate children's cartoons.
12:46You 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
12:56failed miserably, becoming both a commercial and critical disappointment.
13:01This makes it even stranger that, when the series was rebooted in 2014, it was once again handled
13:07with kid gloves.
13:09The new Robocop was also a PG-13 and shockingly also a bit rubbish.
13:15If anything, this was even worse, as fans could directly compare this tame version of
13:21the story to the beautifully unhinged original, which was not good news for the more recent
13:26model.
13:27But hey, at least we had that Robocop Rogue City game from the other year.
13:31That thing is a certified banger.
13:33Number 3.
13:34Legacy Cast Nostalgia
13:36Jurassic World Dominion and Ghostbusters Frozen Empire
13:40Jurassic World Dominion, the third movie in the rebooted Jurassic World series, was one
13:45of the first big post-COVID cinema releases and moviegoers were rewarded with a stacked old
13:51cast.
13:52Alongside 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
14:02Goldblum.
14:03In 2024, Ghostbusters Frozen Empire, another installment in a reboot of the classic series,
14:09pulled the same trick by bringing back Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson and Bill Murray to reprise
14:15their parts from the original film.
14:17Unfortunately, neither of these decisions resulted in particularly great movies.
14:21Both Dominion and Frozen Empire, if we're being really honest, relied way too heavily on shiny
14:27cameos, instead of crafting something new and fresh.
14:30Rather than loving homages to the past, these reunions felt more like they were playing to
14:35the nostalgia crowd, securing the cast first but failing to really craft a truly great story
14:40around them.
14:41For Dominion, that issue more comes down to just the story being bad and also those movies
14:48being boring in general, but with Frozen Empire, it just juggles too many characters for one
14:53film, which is a real shame because I had sort of high hopes for that one.
14:57The point I'm getting at is that nostalgia is nice and all, and in the Jurassic World movies
15:02case, not the main reasons those films are bad, but it can't be all we have to play with.
15:072. Canceling Movies For Tax Write-Off Purposes
15:12Warner Bros. Discovery Headlines were made in 2022 when Warner Bros. Discovery
15:17announced that it was cancelling plans to release its upcoming Batgirl movie on HBO Max, or anywhere
15:23else 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
15:42project got binned.
15:43David Zaslav's WB also revealed that it would be cancelling Scoob Holiday Haunt, an animated picture about younger
15:50versions of the Mystery Incorporated gang. One year later, Coyote vs Acme, a legal comedy about Wile E
15:57Coyote from the world of Looney Tunes, became 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 value
16:10and two talented filmmakers behind the camera, was canned. But if WB isn't careful, it's a real risk of ruining
16:18a once-prestigious
16:19studio's reputation, if that isn't the case already. And to be honest, it probably is. Like, how does WB
16:26expect audiences to get excited about upcoming movies when they know there's every chance they might not
16:32actually get to see them? And how do they attract talent? Moreover, how does the company keep getting
16:37away with it? In the words of Foghorn Leghorn, the boy's about as sharp as a golden ball.
16:431. All Those Boring Humans
16:47The MonsterVerse Movies
16:49If you're going to make an entire series of films about gigantic titans with supernatural powers, it's probably
16:55a good idea to make them the main focus. Launching with Gareth Edwards' Godzilla reboot in 2014, Legendary
17:03Pictures and Warner Bros. MonsterVerse has expanded to 5 movies and 2 TV shows, usually revolving around the
17:09deeds of the aforementioned giant reptile, and his buddy, King Kong. Well, that's who they should revolve around,
17:17in theory. Instead, bafflingly, 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, as does the new Monarch
17:32TV show, which is great, as well as the 2014 Godzilla film, but come on, you can't seriously tell me
17:39you get excited to
17:39watch about an hour of boring comedy and exposition from these guys once the titles have dropped.
17:46I just want to see the big monkey fight the big lizard. Is that too much to ask?
17:51Obviously, this franchise needs human characters to frame all the monster stuff around, and we've seen it done well.
17:57But if you're gonna tell stories through ordinary people, it needs to be something of value. Better yet, shift away
18:05from
18:05them and onto the terrifying ape and lizard that have been proven box office drawers for over 70 years.
18:12Please, and I'm begging you, because I would really like to watch one of these movies, but they are so
18:18boring to sit through.
18:19I want you to know the idea.
18:20But if they can apply it all the way through.
18:20The people because I invite you to do it.
18:20I want you to see all this.
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