City of Heroes: Live Forum Archive

Worst Movie with the Best Cast?

Amy_Amp

By Amy_Amp,
Posted on: 2011-08-23 19:45 in Comic and Hero-Villain Culture

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Starwinds View Post
My opinion is that Mars Attacks! succeeded in what it was trying to accomplish. It was meant to be a bad, campy, slightly nostalgic flick about little green men coming down with their ray guns of doom. Asking Mars Attack! to be a "great" movie, would be like asking Monty Python to be serious...
This!

 

Posted

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Originally Posted by Icelock View Post
No mention of Mars Attacks! yet?
Mars Attacks! did have a star-studded cast. But it also wasn't a "bad" movie at least as far as this thread is concerned. Mars Attacks! was never trying to be a critically serious sci-fi movie. In fact as a "sci-fi comedy" I thought it was actually one of the best of that particular sub-category.

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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Lothic View Post
Mars Attacks! did have a star-studded cast. But it also wasn't a "bad" movie at least as far as this thread is concerned. Mars Attacks! was never trying to be a critically serious sci-fi movie. In fact as a "sci-fi comedy" I thought it was actually one of the best of that particular sub-category.
Then again, to count as a comedy it would have had to have been either witty or funny. Apart from some visual flair, it was neither. Much of the blame lies with Jonathan Gems's screenplay, but the underlying challenge of parodying a trading card series probably doomed it from the start. Not that it serves as an object lesson to the upcoming movie tie-in projects such as Battleship, Candyland, and Stretch Armstrong.

It's certainly not in the same league as either Ghostbusters for sci-fi comedy or Bettlejuice as a Tim Burton movie.

 

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I liked Mars Attacks!, Aliens 3 and The 5th Element. Is something wrong with me? >.>

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"Just remember what ol' Han Solo does when the hyperdrive's busted and asteroids are all around and an Imperial cruiser's on your tail. Yeah, ol' Han Solo just looks that princess straight in the eye and he says, 'Never tell me the odds.'"


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(also, Judi Bowker is very nice on the eyes. )

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Posted

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Originally Posted by TrueGentleman View Post
Then again, to count as a comedy it would have had to have been either witty or funny. Apart from some visual flair, it was neither. Much of the blame lies with Jonathan Gems's screenplay, but the underlying challenge of parodying a trading card series probably doomed it from the start. Not that it serves as an object lesson to the upcoming movie tie-in projects such as Battleship, Candyland, and Stretch Armstrong.

It's certainly not in the same league as either Ghostbusters for sci-fi comedy or Bettlejuice as a Tim Burton movie.
I wasn't really trying to suggest that Mars Attacks! was as good or better than something like Ghostbusters or Bettlejuice. But I also don't consider it anywhere near bad enough to be a canidate for this "worst movie" thread either.

Mars Attacks! was clearly a Sci-Fi parody with its tongue firmly planted in its cheek. I don't even really consider it to be in the same class as something like Ghostbusters and wouldn't have really compared the two, but for the type of spoof movie it was I thought it was fairly entertaining. *shrugs*

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Posted

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Originally Posted by Chairman Moth View Post
I'd probably add another vote for Aliens 3 for this thread had I seen it all the way through. I remember sitting and watching it for 20 minutes on TV and thinking the whole time that it just had to be a straight-to-video release.

Staying on topic of the Alien franchise , was I the only one a little put off by Bill Paxton's performance in Aliens? The lines "Game Over, Man!" and "It's a Bug hunt!" were better uttered by Tom Servo and Crow on the "Manos the Hands of Fate" episode of MST3K.

Don't get me wrong, I loved the movie, but I was SO glad when his character was killed off.
Sacrilege! Hudson was the best character in the movie.

True movie fact: Bill Paxton is the only actor to have been killed by a Terminator, a Predator and an Alien in his movie career.

Also, without that performance, Sam Rockwell would have had nothing to channel when he filmed Galaxy Quest.

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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Lothic View Post
I wasn't really trying to suggest that Mars Attacks! was as good or better than something like Ghostbusters or Bettlejuice. But I also don't consider it anywhere near bad enough to be a canidate for this "worst movie" thread either.

Mars Attacks! was clearly a Sci-Fi parody with its tongue firmly planted in its cheek. I don't even really consider it to be in the same class as something like Ghostbusters and wouldn't have really compared the two, but for the type of spoof movie it was I thought it was fairly entertaining. *shrugs*
I didn't really care for Mars Attacks!, but I would not have included it on this list. A lot of Burton's movies tend to bug me as he tends to not focus on story and just works on designing something weird. I saw what he was going for with Mars Attacks! and just didn't care. "Big Fish" stands out to me because he had to actually keep half the movie grounded in reality, but still had the areas of the film where he could stretch his creativity (and pulled it off brilliantly).

Now, if you want a Burton movie that probably deserves to be on this list, I'd say "Planet of the Apes" belongs.

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Okay, I may need to run and hide after saying this, because I know it's a cult classic. However, it is not a cult classic because it's a "great" movie. It's actually a really really really bad movie. What makes it so classic is the audience, not the movie....

Rocky Horror Picture Show


Tim Curry + Susan Sarandon + Meatloaf + Barry Bostwick + Charles Gray

How this movie made more than a handful of DVD sales is, honestly, beyond me. Like I said, the only "fun" is not in sitting down and watching this movie, it is watching it with a bunch of people who are just as crazy as you are. I mean, sure, you can always throw a RHPS party, but who really wants to clean up after THAT?

- Garielle
Quote:
Originally Posted by Frosty_Femme View Post
I said "ur" which is not a word. It's a sound dumb people make when you ask them to spell out "you are".

 

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Originally Posted by Garielle View Post
Okay, I may need to run and hide after saying this, because I know it's a cult classic. However, it is not a cult classic because it's a "great" movie. It's actually a really really really bad movie. What makes it so classic is the audience, not the movie....

Rocky Horror Picture Show
Heh, this reminds me of a long-lost friend of mine who loved bad movies. I mean, really bad. The worse the better. Derek could have appreciated pretty much any film that ever appeared on MST3K on its own, unShadowrama'd "merits". The only exception anyone ever identified was 1976's The Big Bus (Stockard Channing, Joe Bologna), which he hated with the fury of a thousand suns.

To his eternal frustration, Derek was never able to form an opinion of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, because, he complained, he was never able to see it in an appropriate setting. The home video availability at the time (this was long before DVDs) was lamentable, and anytime he found a theater that was showing it, the people wouldn't sit the hell down and watch the f---ing movie, which would spur him into ranting fits of rage.

It was joking rage, of course - he was a very sharp guy, not nearly so monumentally dense that he didn't understand the fact that the RHPS cult's whole thing is audience participation - but there was a nub of truth at the core of it. It annoyed him very much that he was never able to decide whether the movie irritated him because it sucked even more than his stupendous threshold for movie suction would permit, or because the antics in the theater were getting in the way.

 

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Come to think of it, The Big Bus might be a candidate for the original thread topic. Its cast includes, in addition to Channing, René Auberjonois, Ned Beatty, José Ferrer, Larry Hagman, Howard Hesseman, Sally Kellerman, and Lynn Redgrave. It was trying to be a parody of the then-red-hot "star-studded disaster film" genre with a dash of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World thrown in, but ended up just being... the only movie a man who enjoyed Megaforce hated.

 

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Originally Posted by Deacon_NA View Post
I wouldn't nominate Magnolia for this particular "award" but I do agree with your sentiment. No other movie has taken me from "really like" to "hate" as quickly as this did when the "wtf ending" happened. Just seeing or hearing any mention of this movie raises my blood pressure a point or 2.
I thought Magnolia was brilliant. The ending brought made a good movie into a great one for me.

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Originally Posted by Captain_Photon View Post
Come to think of it, The Big Bus might be a candidate for the original thread topic. Its cast includes, in addition to Channing, René Auberjonois, Ned Beatty, José Ferrer, Larry Hagman, Howard Hesseman, Sally Kellerman, and Lynn Redgrave. It was trying to be a parody of the then-red-hot "star-studded disaster film" genre with a dash of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World thrown in, but ended up just being... the only movie a man who enjoyed Megaforce hated.
I think I've seen most of this movie. It had a dash of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World but it was mostly like a sad, bus-based cousin of Airplane II. I actually think the Futurama episode that featured the "Land Titanic" was a slight homage to the silliness of The Big Bus.

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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Lothic View Post
Mars Attacks! did have a star-studded cast. But it also wasn't a "bad" movie at least as far as this thread is concerned. Mars Attacks! was never trying to be a critically serious sci-fi movie. In fact as a "sci-fi comedy" I thought it was actually one of the best of that particular sub-category.
I first watched Mars Attacks! hoping, maybe even expecting, to see an entertaining movie with the understanding that it wasn't going to be an entirely serious movie. It failed to deliver entertainment and/or laughs (well, the marsians were worth a few laughs), so it definately places high on my list of worst movie with best cast-list.

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Originally Posted by Megajoule View Post
"Just remember what ol' Han Solo does when the hyperdrive's busted and asteroids are all around and an Imperial cruiser's on your tail. Yeah, ol' Han Solo just looks that princess straight in the eye and he says, 'Never tell me the odds.'"
Okay, we need to start a thread of just these... and then convince a mod to sticky it so no matter how depressed or mopey or DOOOOOM the forums get, we can look at it and laugh.

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gi joe

 

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Wow, six pages in and no mention of Ralph Fiennes, Uma Thurman and Sir Sean Connery in The Avengers?

There have only EVER been 2 movies I've considered walking out of, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation and The Avengers. And I saw Battlefield Earth, Alien 3 &4 and Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes in theaters!


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Originally Posted by Ynaught View Post
Wow, six pages in and no mention of Ralph Fiennes, Uma Thurman and Sir Sean Connery in The Avengers?

There have only EVER been 2 movies I've considered walking out of, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation and The Avengers. And I saw Battlefield Earth, Alien 3 &4 and Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes in theaters!
I'd blocked all memory of that film from my brain.

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Originally Posted by Smersh View Post
I'd blocked all memory of that film from my brain.
Well, maybe not all memory.



But yes, a terrible, terrible movie overall.

 

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Originally Posted by Deacon_NA View Post
I wouldn't nominate Magnolia for this particular "award" but I do agree with your sentiment. No other movie has taken me from "really like" to "hate" as quickly as this did when the "wtf ending" happened. Just seeing or hearing any mention of this movie raises my blood pressure a point or 2.

Two movies I'll throw out there, very similar to each other actually.

"Cannonball Run" with Burt Reynolds, Peter Fonda, Farrah Fawcett and many many more.

"Rat Race" - not as star-studded as the above, but John Cleese, Seth Green, Cuba Gooding Jr (when he was still respected) and most importantly (to raising my hopes) directed by Jerry Zucker. It just didn't work.
:O I love Cannonbal Run! I wouldn't call that a bad movie. It's whole intention was just to get some big names together for a fun movie (kinda like the Oceans movies), it wasn't about being a work of art, it was just about having fun.

Now that said, Speed Zone, a cannonball run movie without being cannonball run, had some popular actors, but I don't know if I would call them all great, but it was the same thing, known actors getting into a cross country race.

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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ynaught View Post
Wow, six pages in and no mention of Ralph Fiennes, Uma Thurman and Sir Sean Connery in The Avengers?

There have only EVER been 2 movies I've considered walking out of, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation and The Avengers. And I saw Battlefield Earth, Alien 3 &4 and Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes in theaters!
That movie was so bad and so full of WTF that my friend and I, who normally would go to this $2 theater to heckle bad movies, just sat through the whole thing in stunned silence and afterwards just looked at each other and said something to the effect of "what the hell did we just watch?"

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Originally Posted by TrueGentleman View Post
Well, maybe not all memory.



But yes, a terrible, terrible movie overall.
That's too unrealistic for Nolan's Catwoman!

 

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Not actually a terrible movie, but may have the widest gulf I can think of between the star-studdedness, size, and collective caliber of its cast and the outcome: Richard Attenborough's A Bridge Too Far (1977). Based on Cornelius Ryan's book of the same name about the failure of the Allied offensive codenamed Operation Market Garden in September 1944, this film had so many big stars they couldn't fit them all on the poster and was directed by one of the biggest names in the business at the time.

I mean, check out this list: Dirk Bogarde, James Caan, Michael Caine, Elliot Gould, Gene Hackman, Sean Connery, Anthony Hopkins, Ryan O'Neal, Robert Redford, Maximilian Schell, Laurence Olivier. And that's just the A-listers. This film also included appearances by the likes of Denholm "Marcus Brody" Elliott and a young John Ratzenberger.

Like I said, it's not a terrible movie. It's no The Big Bus or Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. It's not even Force 10 from Navarone (which was hampered mainly by being the long-delayed sequel to such a stonking great movie that it would have been disappointing even if it was better-than-average). It's just... well, like the military operation it depicts, appropriately enough, it's a reminder that even great figures who are on a roll can overreach. It's so complicated, the cast is so huge and full of prominent talents, that it always seems muddled, like it can never quite catch up with itself and get its feet under it. It ends up being just an OK war movie, and when you start with a director like Attenborough, a cast like that, and a book like Ryan's, "just OK" is a shatteringly disappointing outcome.

 

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Hey! I liked Sky Captain! Well...mostly. The solution to the plot felt weak, but then it was faithful to the genre, and typical of the crazy plots of the 30s and 40s serials. Or comics for that matter. I've got an old Shadow comic somewhere in which the plot was that Shiwan Khan was going to take over the world riding what amounted to a 13-wheeled Segway. I can't make this stuff up! Anyway, Sky Captain was faithful to the style, perhaps too much so for the tastes of todays audiences.

 

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Absolute Power
Clint Eastwood, Gene Hackman, Ed Harris, Scott Glenn and a script that lies there coughing up blood for 2 hours.

"If there's anything worse than being sacrificed, it's being sacrificed incompetantly."