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This listicle from WhatCulture breaks down 10 instances of repeated movie mistakes, covering everything from controversial character designs like Jared Leto's Joker to questionable casting choices like Chris Pratt in animated roles.
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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.
18:19That's true.
18:19That's true!
18:20That's true.
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