No idea. And look at the cast! Not A list, perhaps, but solid B+ list: Catherine McCormick (2 years post Braveheart), Rufus Sewell, Oliver Platt, Fred Ward, Naomi Watts, Moira Kelly…
I don’t know who pissed off whom, but I think this was intentionally sunk by inadequate marketing, too. Wikipedia tells me it was a limited release in theaters, where it didn’t do well. I didn’t hear of it until, as I say, it showed up on my wall, and I was an avid reader of Hollywood/video retailer insider magazines at the time.
I thought the advertising for John Carter pretty accurately presented the movie. Mediocre action slummer.
Personally, it seemed to me I saw plenty of advertising for Pirates! Band of Misfits, but I disagree with the OP in that I found it adequate but almost boring.
I tend to think that “Bad Marketing” means “I liked the movie but it didn’t do much business, the marketing must have sucked.” One of the worst bits of marketing I’ve seen are the trailers that ran for The Seven Samurai. Gave away the entire movie including showing the deaths of many important characters.
Really? We saw the trailer and had the opposite complaint, that it gave away too much of the plot (granted, we haven’t seen the actual movie, so maybe it’ll turn out to have been misleading). Watching the actual movie seems kind of superfluous now.
I complained about the marketing for Reign of Fire in another thread. The trailer and posters used a bunch of footage that didn’t make it to the actual movie, making it seem like the movie was a Godzilla type “dragons destroy modern cities” type movie instead of the post-apocalyptic thing it actually was.
I’ll add Hugo to the list. The movie was alright, but it wasn’t a particularly great film for little kids, despite the fact that it was marketed as such. We brought a bunch of my SO’s little cousins to see it, and they were bored out of their skulls.
Actually, the trailers for Brave have intrigued me. It looks like fun. Lighthearted adventure, spunky redhead with a mean bow vs. medieval sexism, plenty of humor and snark, is what I got from them. Sold!
Here’s a link to the trailer, see for yourself. (Ironically, you will have to watch a 15 second Youtube ad in order to watch Disney’s ad for the movie. If this is Just Too Much, I totally understand.)
Yeah, I’m on the bandwagon having the opposite reaction too. It painted a very clear picture to me that the story was about a brash and willful princess who refuses to play into her parents ideas of duty and gender roles. There’s adventures with archery. And the foe is likely not who it seems, re scary bear is actually a friend.
It also looks to follow Pixar’s tested script formula. Paint a vivid picture of a protagonist’s world and family. Isolate protagonist from family. Protag learns lessons, self-discovery, revelations, etc. Dramatic reunion. I’m even thinking of ripping it off myself, it’s such a rock solid arc.
Well obviously I’ve seen the trailer that’s where I made my opinions from.
I assumed that I would be in the minority with my opinion too, it’s just for it being the next big thing from Pixar I’m not impressed.
(Also how in the hell are they gonna have the Pizza Planet truck in there?)
IIRC there were many different trailers and teasers for Brave. The first ones were certainly short on information, but I saw the latest trailer just before Avengers and saw nothing wrong or confusing with it. It looked funny and full of heart, with some beautiful scenery. Typical Pixar movie.
Another Gabor Csupo movie had the same problem - The Rugrats Go Wild. It was originally intended to be a crossover between Rugrats and The Wild Thornberrys (in fact, the original idea was to release this before The Wild Thornberrys Movie, in order to “introduce” people familiar with Rugrats to the characters, and never mind that TWT had been a TV series for about five years), but for some reason, was marketed as “just” a Rugrats movie - and, at one point, the commercials consisted of showing three young kids saying, “Spike (the Rugrats dog) is going to talk!” followed by the kids doing a hula dance for the rest of the commercial. (On top ot that, it turns out Spike “talks” only for about a minute.)
However, the “worst marketed” movie is probably the Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie, which had no advertising whatsoever outside of Cartoon Network.
That’s just savvy business as buying airtime for ATHF spots would be akin to burning money. That’s coming from a guy who liked the first couple of seasons of the show for the disposable silliness it is.
