Not to pick a fight, but any evidence to back this anti-rural statement up? Or is this just another “my favorite movie didn’t make a lot of money, it must be those unsophisticated fly-over, red staters fault.”
I didn’t see KOH, but the handful of reviews I heard didn’t particularly make me want to camp out and see it. Of course, maybe your right, after all - I live in “the sticks”.
I think KoH’s failure came down to the fact that Orlando Bloom has been in a lot of hit films, but is not a star that can carry a film.
I find his presence in films a negative.
I don’t care if other people liked it or not. After seeing it, I could have told that that movie wouldn’t do well in America.
Kingdom of Heaven was a nuanced movie. It had a more methodical pacing and thoughtful themes. If Ridley Scott wanted the movie to do well, he would have had Orlando Bloom wipe out the muslims and plant a Christian flag right in the middle of Jerusalem. It would have been moronic, but people would have gone to see it.
The finish was anti-climatic, and most of the “excitement” came from determining the characters motivations based on their histories and allegiances. The end of the movie ended with essentially a truce and the Christians ceding the city to the Muslims.
On top of that, the battle scenes were stunning, the cinematogrpahy beautiful, and the siege was as thrilling as the siege of Gondor in ROTK almost.
This movie didn’t do well because people want to see one side portrayed as unambiguously EVIL (be it aliens, or orcs, or terrorists) and then see them completely obliterated, and the good guys (US) raise their arms in triumph.
They don’t want to see that Christians have divisive opinions amongst themselves, and they don’t want to see Christians come out on the bottom of “who is more barbaric” when compared to the Arabs.
Cite?
Seriously.
Indeed - if the movie you described is actually KOH, I’ll try to rent it this weekend (if can find it out here in the sticks and see past the hayseed in my mouth- hyuk, hyuk). What I heard was that KOH was boring and unrealistic. I also heard that it was a thinly veiled commentary on the Iraq war with the Moslems as the eternal good guys and the European Christians were Boorish evil-doers. And this didn’t come from my rural redneck contacts, this came from a respected professor of the middle ages I still have dinner with ocassionally.
I’m glad to see that your prejudices have expanded from rural America to America in general, though.
You seriously are asking for a cite about my opinion on why a movie did bad?
Sure, it’s right here in my butt. Close your eyes and hold your hand out.
You go watch this movie.
Go watch Gladiator, another Ridley Scott epic that was similar in scope and action, and did great. It’s theme. . .triumphant revenge of the good guy over the bad guys.
Try to tell me where the major differences lie. And, don’t tell me Russell Crowe. He was no bigger a star than Orlando Bloom was when he made KoH.
KoH failed because people don’t want to hear what Scott had to say. If he makes the same movie with a triumphant, Christian, good guy ending, this movie does great.
This is my thought, as well. Being a typical New York Bleeding Heart Liberal Scumbag, moral ambiguity is a big selling point for me when I go the movies, and I didn’t like KoH at all. I found most parts to be, well, boring, and I was bothered by the fact that the worst actor in the entire cast was the lead.
They should’ve made the movie from Saladin’s point of view (Ghassan Massoud, who doesn’t have a huge body of work on-screen, apparently) – now that guy could carry a scene!
This is the part he wanted the cite for. And I agree with your earlier assessment of its origin.
Gladiator takes place in Ancient Rome. KoH takes place in the Medieval Ages. The latter is a much harder sell. Also, for all its faults, Gladiator wasn’t boring.
Another vote for Fantastic Four.
Just out of curiosity, was KoH released in any countries in the Middle East? If so, what was public reaction?
That guy was incredibly charismatic, at least to me. Such an interesting and intelligent face, and I loved his performance (especially that last part that I want spoil when he’s asked “What is Jerusalem to you?”).
While there was much deviation from history, I was actually surprised by how much history made it in to KoH. Most of the characters existed, and while Orlando Bloom’s real life counterpart had absolutely no similarity to the movie character for most there was similarity: Baldwin really was a leper who wore a mask and was very advanced diplomatically, Saladin really was a military genius and known for mercy, Reynaud de Chatillon really was a fanatical bloodthirst bastard who deliberately killed a member of Saladin’s family (some accounts say sister, some say daughter, some say cousin) to start a war, Guy de Lusignan really was an arrogant stupid ass, etc., and the surrender of Jerusalem really was that anticlimactic after an “as good as could be expected under the circumstances” defense. (The priest at the real surrender was actually more bastardly than portrayed in the movie- I’m guessing the director didn’t want to offend Christians.)
De Lovely is a movie I think should have been more popular (while actually released in 2004, it didn’t play the provinces until 2005 so I’ll count it here). An unusual love story, great music and great cameos, but it basically broke even (box office take 18 million/budget 15 million).
The Downfall/Der Untergang, also a 2004 movie that didn’t play America until 2005, is a German language film about Hitler’s last days with BRILLIANT* performances by Bruno Ganz as Hitler (neither a frothing monster nor sympathetic) and Corinna Harfouch as Magda Goebbels (the scene where she poisons her children… agh- every emotion you should feel is there), only grossed $5 million US but did $85 million worldwide. I’m not sure what it’s budget was- it can’t have been low budget because of the recreation of Fall of Berlin streets, explosions, uniforms, etc., but I hope it made enough to insure more cerebral historical movies.
C’mon. That is clearly an opinion statement.
If one disagrees, the correct response is “No way!” (or if in the Pit, it is “Bullshit, cock-smooch!”).
I couldn’t figure out what the “Cite” request was asking for and I didn’t agree with Trunk’s post.
According to imdb, budget was around $15 million, so it made more than enough money.
Trunk’s clearly stating an opinion as fact… Calling for a cite was asking if he had anything to back up his stated as fact opinion. His childish response showed that no, he doesn’t. He can shit in his own hand for all I care.
HHGTTG - we waited so long for this, and what we got was just such a pale imitation of what could have been, might have been, should have been.
Fantastic Four - for personal reasons I’ve been following the gestation of this movie since around 1998, so I was hoping with all my heart that it would turn out to be another great Marvel movie, like the Spider-Man or X-Men franchises. Alas, it wasn’t to be. The wrong director with the wrong cast working from a third-rate script… oh, there was so much wrong with it that it’s futile to try and list everything. You know, this could have really been something special. And it should have been - Marvel’s ‘first family’ and all, an enduringly successful comic book, great characters, plenty of visual appeal, a decent enough budget to deliver on the requisite special FX… but no, somehow it all got wasted.
Narnia - basically competent, but it lacked art direction and the necessary sense of style.
Kong - way too indulgent. A very good 80 minute story wrapped inside a 3 hour showreel for a special FX company.
While neither Everything is Illuminated nor Stay were slated to become big box office hits, I thought they’d be gems. I was wrong. The former film’s trailer was way better than the actual finished work, and the latter’s ‘twist’ made me feel like I’d just finished an R.L. Stine novel. Oh, and The Aristocrats was painfully bad. Perhaps if I’d approached it as a doc rather than a comedy…
Be Cool - only because Get Shorty was so good and this was so… blah.
Aeon Flux - again, because there was so much potential here for this to be so cool… and it just wasn’t.
I thought Hitchhiker’s was uninspiring, and agree that it was mostly the fault of the script more than anything else. But I was never a HUGE fan of the books, either, so I can’t really call it a huge disappointment.
I loved Sin City, and I’d never even heard of the source material. It revealed to me that I don’t have a personal dislike for “comic book” movies, I have a dislike for “pseudo-heroes who wear spandex” movies. More Top 5 than Top 5 Disappointing, for me anyways.
Well, sometimes at look at the FF movie and I see it as half-full, but in my heart, I know I was terribly disappointed and don’t care if they make another one. I thought the cast was quite good (for the most part) but truly the writing was a major disappointment. I think its greatest failure was in not bringing us VonDoom in all his complicated, baroque, and comic booky style. Truly a deep character relegated to being a love-sick meglomaniac (and he’s so much more than that!)
So, FF was probably my biggest disappointment (probably only because I knew better than to go see “A Sound of Thunder”).
With HHGTHG trailing. While I didn’t hate it, it was nowhere near as funny as it should have been.
I have KOH at home and still haven’t found the time to watch it. My daughter drug us to see Kong or I probably still would not have seen it. I found it surprisingly better than I expected and a worthy successor to the original (I’ve been able to blot that 1970’s travesty from my mind for the most part).
I have a friend who counts “History of Violence” as one the best movies he’s seen in the last 6 months and recommended it highly. I admit I want to see it, but missed it due to repeated viewings of “Serenity” which contrary to this list didn’t disappoint me at all.
Hmm. I didn’t like Kingdom of Heaven for exactly the same reason that the third LOTR movies is my least favorite: too many battle scenes. They weren’t stunning, they were brutal at first, then boring in their repetitiveness. If there had been a lot less fighting (scenes of it, anyway) and a lot more scenes that built on character development, both movies might have been significantly more interesting.