Like Seagal or Rob Shneider, he’s in an interesting situation. He’s too big an star - at least in his own mind - to play a supporting role or act in a small-udget movie, but he’s not profitable enough to merit a blockbuster budget. As a result, he stars in films where the single biggest expense is his own salary, while everything else is distinctly on the cheap. Films like that tend to take as few risks as possible, making them lazy, derivative, and ultimately only moderately successful. It’s a vicious cycle.
As a Steven Seagal aficionado (he’s second only to the great JCvD for awful-movie pleasure), I can say that he’s even given up trying to make amusingly bad movies. Basically, these days he gets paid ridiculous sums for attaching his name to movies, in exchange for which he does about a day’s filming where he essays a couple of reaction shots and waves his hands about at the camera. The fight scenes are all done by doubles, his dialogue is dubbed, and the producers then splice what is essentially bespoke stock Seagal footage (if that’s not an oxymoron) into whatever film they want to make.
The best example of this is Half Past Dead. It’s actually quite hilarious how blatant it is. Ja Rule mugs furiously at the camera for a while; stock footage of Seagal killing some guy; more mugging. At no point does Seagal’s “performance” intersect with what passes for a plot.
(And yes, I know I shouldn’t be expecting anything of a movie made so that young recording millionaires can play with guns, but there’s an art to making bad movies, dammit.)
Edited to add this magnificent excerpt from an interview with Empire magazine:
Empire: Going back to Genghis Khan, is there anything you feel you have in common with him? Steven: I don’t know that we have anything in common, other than that he was the most brilliant military strategist in the history of mankind.
*Sandra Bullock
*Matthew McConnaughey
*Patrick Swayze
*Steven Segal
*Stephen Baldwin
*Kate Hudson (except “Almost Famous”)
*Owen Wilson
*Tom Cruise
*Demi Moore
*Jessica Simpson, Britney Spears, et al (not real actresses, but they keep giving them films)
*Ben Affleck
You can’t exactly say that about Britney Spears. She’s made a grand total of three films where she appeared on camera. In one, she played “Britney Spears, Music Video Performer”. In another, she played “Flight attendant”. The remaining one is her actual movie, Crossroads, made in 2002. If “they” keep giving her films, “they” are doing a pretty crappy job at it.
That’s so odd that you posted this right after my “Melanie Griffin.” Forbidden Hollywood’s “We Shouldn’t Be in Pictures” is a trio with her, him and Juliette Lewis.
I gotta disagree with several of these. It’s not that they haven’t made LOTS of bad movies, but their name is by no means a “guarantee”, and in many cases they’ve made some really good flicks that counterbalance the sheer weight of bad.I mean, take a look at Donald Sutherland’s ouevre. The man would appear in damned near anything (try watching Gas, or The Trouble with Spies, both of which I was dragged to on the strength of his name), yet he never acquired a rep for bad films. Likewise Laurence Olivier, the Great Shalespearean who, at the end of his life, appeared in practically anything so as to set aside money for his heirs.
Christopher Lloyd – It’s hard to argue that he’s had more than his fair share of clunkers, but , even ignoring Cuckoo and BttF, he was in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, the Addams family movies, and others.
John Carradine – It’s hard to argue that he is the King of Bad Films, when you consider that he was in The Black Sleep (one of Lugosi’s last movies, which most folks forget about and say that only Ed Wood would hire him) and Tales from the Past (my personal choice for Worst Movie ), but the guy was in The Grapes of Wrath and Stagecoach and Hound of the Baskervilles, and was one of the definitive Count Draculas on stage (and played the role in two of the Universal 1940s movies. He returned to the role in some laughably awful movies after 1960, though).
John Travolta – He’s frequently annoying, and he’s so scieno that he pushed “Battlefield Earth” through. But he did a heckuva job in Get Shorty and Pulp Fiction. There are a lot of things I disliked about Grease, but he wasn’t one of them. And he’s taking quite a chance (that’s looking pretty good) with Hairspray. He’s not a guarantee of badness, by any means.
I’d have to disagree. I can watch Street Fighter or Timecop without actually being in pain. Seagal’s ugly mug is enough on its own to send me into convulsions.
He is at this phase of his career. He made some good films in the past, but I don’t see him doing any more good ones, not until he falls so low he needs to be “rediscovered” by the next Tarantino.
Alan Arkin
Jim Carey
Martin Short
Tara Reed
John Wayne
Pauly Shore
Adam Sandler
As much as I love Robin Williams, I don’t watch his films, until ‘Night at the Museum’. He was a delight but I figure it’s because he was well restrained by the director.
