Good movies can bomb, bad movies can succeed. It’s the most unpredictable aspect. I’m sure a few people interjected about box office success, but that’s not how I would ever define a shitshow.
Just making a profit? Nope. Making boatloads of cash? then it had to be a least a sorta good idea.
Monetarily-wise? Maybe. Underestimating the human capacity for stupidity is a fool’s game.
Let’s put Congo into some perspective. It was expected to make near Jurassic Park money. Barely making its budget and marketing cost back is not as impressive as it might seem. A large budget film has to make triple its budget to turn a profit.
But saying that you think a movie is bad, is not the way we’re defining a shitshow here. There are already thousands of threads with people talking about movie they don’t like; this one is supposed to be slightly different.
De gustibus…and all. I loved it myself. Interesting film based on the look and feel of 1930s “Air Ace” magazines and things like the Superman cartoon “Mechanical Monsters” I liked the look and feel of its “Digital Backlot” and throwaway gags like the sunken S.S.Venture as they approach the Island. Or the use of the zeppelin mooring mast on the Empire State Building.
As a lover of old pulp mags, I really enjoyed Sky Captain when it was released, but I assume the “look” hasn’t aged well.
“Star Fleet Academy,” anyone?
The writer/director had never made a movie before, and has not made one since. Sometimes, all the ingredients are top-shelf, but the cook just isn’t very good.
A television series, not a movie…and it was nicely made and well loved.
The short that he made that “sold” the film, and fired up a lot of people, was top-notch.
The look of Sky Captain was compelling. The script was awful, and that’s before we get into the whole exhumation of Sir Lawrence Olivier.
I give some of the blame to Paul Williams. The soundtrack was just plain turgid throughout. But the rest of the film wasn’t exactly snappy either. Great casting, good concept, but Altman made it dull.
My personal contribution to the list: The Ridiculous Six. I mean, I know Adam Sandler greenlit this absolutely appalling “Western” featuring his buddies (yes, including Rob Schneider) but man, it was bad. 0% on RT. But it got sold to Netflix nonetheless, so maybe he got some of his $60m back.
It’s not for lack of trying. He’s been involved with several budding productions, most of which got scratched.
I blame Jules Feiffer, myself. Feiffer was a great cartoonist in his own right, but his book The Great Comic Book Heroes is misguided. His Popeye script was based on the original E.C. Segar strips, while most people knew Popeye through the cartoons (especially the Fleischer Studio cartoons), and these are two different universes. Most notably when Popeye says that he hates spinach. Going back to the strips might be “purer”, but you gotta recognize that the Popeye most people knew and loved was the cartoon Popeye.
I watched Popeye on cable, maybe a year or so after it came out. One criticism I had read in the original reviews – and which was very true as I tried to watch it – is that Altman’s trademark “overlapping dialogue” made it hard to follow the dialogue and the plot.
It seemed, to me, like there were often multiple conversations going on at once, and a lot of muttering, which might work in a more “adult-oriented” film like Altman’s other films, but not so much in a general-audience film that’s expected to be kid-friendly.
Pithy, muttered asides are a trademark of the Popeye strips and cartoons. These are hopelessly buried in an Altman voxscape (not a real word, I know).
And Robin Williams ended up having to redub a significant amount of his own dialogue anyway because the boom mics on an already-noisy outdoor set weren’t up to the task of capturing his sotto voce muttering while he was clenching a pipe in his mouth.
Just not by enough people willing to pony up a Paramount + subscription to sustain it.
I don’t think it qualifies, for reasons previously stated.
Yeah, bad reviews all over, but obviously we cant see the Box office, since there really is none. However, I would guess it would have been very low.