I’ve been a huge movie buff since I can remember.  I’ve seen my fair share of good and bad movies.  I’ve seen amazing sequels like The Empire Strikes Back, Godfather Part II, and The Dark Knight.  I’ve also seen some pretty bad ones like Superman IV, Batman and Robin, and Sicario: Day of the Soldado.  Likewise, I’ve seen some really good remakes and reboots, as well as some of the bad ones.  Sometimes, though, you come across a sequel or reboot that had so much hype built up that it just completely shits the bed.  For this post, I’m going to go over the sequels/reboots that completely missed the mark, despite all the build-up and hype.  Before I begin, I should mention that not all of these movies are going to be bad movies.  Far from it, some of them are pretty good from my perspective, they just failed to understand what the original film tried to do.  I’ve written posts about best sequels and reboots and some bad ones, but this one is a little different.  So, let’s get this train-wreck off to a good start, shall we?

Hellboy(2019)

This one is very recent, and you can check out my review by hitting the reviews tab.  I went into this one with pretty low expectations, considering all the negative things that I’ve heard and read about it.  Is it as awful as everybody says?  No.  In fact, there’s a bit about it that I actually really like.  The level of violence is pretty cool, along with the creature designs, but all the good stuff is hampered by really lousy writing as well as some questionable casting decisions.  Everybody is in agreement about the fact that Guillermo del Toro should have been allowed to do his third and final film in the Hellboy films starring Ron Perlman.  Sadly, the only way they would be able to do that would be to animate it.

The Godfather Part III

This is one film that a lot of film enthusiasts wish didn’t happen.  It certainly didn’t need to happen.  The first two Godfather films are masterpieces in their own right, with each one winning multiple awards including an Academy Award for Best Picture.  How could you top two of the most iconic films in cinematic history?  Simple answer:  You can’t.  It’s not a terrible movie, and as far as third entries go, it’s still better than a lot of films, but in the Godfather series, Part III is woefully inadequate, with some really lousy performances.  Al Pacino is still fantastic as Michael Corleone, but even he goes over the top sometimes, and it ain’t pretty.  Francis Ford Coppola’s daughter, Sofia Coppola is horribly miscast and delivers one of the worst performances of the decade.  Unlike the first two films, Godfather Part III plays like a typically generic gangster movie.  It doesn’t work, at least, not in the context of the previous stories.

Ghostbusters 2016

I don’t think it would surprise anybody that this one would find its way on to this list.  The concept behind this film was pretty good with having female characters take on the role of the Ghostbusters, but the execution was all over the place.  The performance of the female leads, especially Kate McKinnon were pretty good and they save the movie for me, but the overall writing and direction by Paul Feig tanked the whole damn thing.  He didn’t really have a clue how to write a Ghostbusters film that wasn’t self-referential.  The reason that the original film worked was because the film played it straight.  This one takes time out of the film to remind you that it’s a Ghostbusters film.  Ultimately, I thought it was a fun film that worked when it was doing its own thing and not being a Ghostbusters movie.  As it stands, an official Ghostbusters III is now in the works and is going to ignore the 2016 film entirely, as it should.

Psycho 1998

Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho is considered by many to be one of the quintessential thrillers of 20th century film, and they aren’t wrong.  The 1960 film is an absolute classic in every sense of the word and was the pre-cursor to the modern-day slasher film.  So, would a remake be a bad idea?  On paper, no.  If done right, it could work if they changed up certain things.  Somebody forgot to tell Gus Van Sant that, because he remade Psycho shot for shot.  As a result, anybody who had seen the original film would know exactly what’s coming, when it’s coming, and how it’s coming.  This was so ill-advised on so many levels.  Vince Vaughn was no Anthony Perkins and as a result, the film failed on every single level.

Martyrs 2016

I don’t know what it is about American film-makers trying to remake foreign movies for American audiences, especially when they don’t need to be.  Martyrs was a French horror film from 2008 that was unflinching in its brutality and its message.  It was very bleak and had a mean streak a mile wide.  I’ve only seen the film twice since I picked it up ten years ago, that’s how impactful it was.  When I learned that the film was being remade for American audiences, I was legitimately curious.  I wanted to see if the film-makers would retain the level of intensity and sheer viciousness of the original film.  Sadly, that isn’t the case.  It’s a very watered-down horror film with an ending that it didn’t earn and feels out of place in terms of the story.  The way the original Martyrs ended was shocking, but there was a reason for it.  The movie was a commentary on the dangers of religious zealotry and fanaticism, but that message got lost somewhere in translation.  I didn’t hate the American version.  I thought it was fairly well shot, if not well written.  If you like your horror movies with a serious mean streak, stick with the original Martyrs, it’s far more meaningful and stays with you much longer.

Star Trek Into Darkness

I really like the new Star Trek films.  I think they’re a lot of fun and are extremely well-made.  There were a lot of problems with the second movie, Into Darkness.  The first problem was the worst-kept secret in cinematic history: Benedict Cumberbatch playing Khan Noonien Singh, the legendary villain from the origin series episode, Space Seed and subsequent film, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.  The problem with Into Darkness, as a whole, is that it’s nothing more than a glorified remake.  It follows a lot of the same beats as the original film, especially in the third act.  Don’t get me wrong, Mr. Cumberbatch is fantastic as Khan, but the film doesn’t really do a whole lot new with the character, and some of the writing was awful.  I still had a lot of fun with it, but this was a sequel that needed to be a lot more than it was.

Quantum of Solace

James Bond has been a fixture in cinema since the early 60’s.  Played by Sean Connery, Roger Moore, George Lazenby, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig, James Bond is one of the most iconic characters ever written.  Quantum of Solace is the first direct sequel to a James Bond film, which makes for some interesting possibilities.  Quantum of Solace was a victim of bad timing.  There was writer’s strike back in 2007-2008 and that affected a lot of movies during that period.  As a result, a lot of the film had to be re-written on the fly by the film’s director and Daniel Craig in an attempt to get something out to audiences.  While I don’t think it’s a bad movie at all, you can tell that the writer’s strike had a negative impact on the quality of the film.  That being said, in terms of quality, it’s still better than Moonraker.

The Predator

This one hurts.  A lot.  The film was being directed by Shane Black, who starred in the original film and wrote other films like Lethal Weapon.  He was also a pretty decent director with films like Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang, The Nice Guys, and Iron Man 3.  So…what happened?  Fred Dekker and Fox Studios are what happened.  Going by his filmography, Dekker didn’t have a lot to his name outside of some TV shows.  This was not a guy that really understood the franchise whatsoever.  The whole thing was a massive misfire that that ended up being nothing more than a CGI monster fest.  Granted, some of the action was pretty good, and some of the characters were somewhat interesting, but the whole film felt amateurish at best.  This is not the kind of film the Predator franchise needs.  I don’t hate it, as I found it to be fairly entertaining, but when stacked up against the last three movies, it lowers the bar so far to the ground that it trips over it.

The Mummy 2017

If you really want to talk about a misfire, look no further than 2017’s The Mummy, starring Tom Cruise.  Oh, man.  This was going to be the first movie to launch the new Dark Universe series of films, but it ended up killing the Dark Universe instead.  It was going to be a new cinematic universe featuring the classic monster from the early days of cinema: The Invisible Man, The Mummy, Dracula, and Frankenstein.  In fact, the next movie in the series was going to be The Bride of Frankenstein, a remake of one of cinema’s most celebrated sequels and monster movies.  Is it going to happen?  Most likely….not.  The decisions made with this movie were really, really stupid.  The first mistake was announcing the Dark Universe before even having a first movie to see if it would work.  Nope.  Alex Kurtzman and five other writers couldn’t come up with a compelling story or reason why this movie should even exist.  I liked Sofia Boutella as the villain, as she was the most compelling part of it, but the film spent too much time trying to be self aware.  The humor didn’t work and the action was average at best.  The visual effects weren’t even that good, although the plane sequence was awesome.  It’s got that going for it.  This one missed the mark by a thousand miles.

Alien Covenant

When Prometheus was released back in 2012, it was an unexpected film.  People were anticipating a legitimate prequel to Ridley Scott’s Alien, but what they got was something very different.  I loved Prometheus, so when a sequel was announced, I was looking forward to seeing the further adventures of Dr. Elizabeth Shaw and the android David as the searched for the Engineers, aliens that created humanity.  Was that what we got?  Nope.  We got a film that was attempting to be both a sequel to Prometheus and a prequel to Alien but failing at both.  Not only that, Ridley Scott had the fucking audacity to kill off Shaw between movies, effectively sweeping Prometheus under the rug.  This film was a massive disappointment to so many people.  We got this one instead of Neill Blomkamp’s Alien 5, which would have been a direct sequel to James Cameron’s Aliens.  To that, I say this: Fuck you, Ridley Scott.  I love his movies, but at this stage in his life, his ego has gotten the better of him.  Now that Fox Studios has been bought by Disney, there might be a possibility that we’ll get an Alien film that’s actually worth a damn, if Disney lets the property continue to be R-rated.

Well, those are some of the sequels and remakes that I feel just blew it.  Again, I don’t necessarily hate these movies, but in terms of their respective franchises, the completely missed the mark.  Hopefully, they didn’t do any permanent damage.

 

Released: April 2019

Director: Neil Marshall

Rated R

Run Time: 120 Minutes

Distributor: LionsGate Studios

Genre: Action/Fantasy/Horror

Cast:
David Harbour: Hellboy
Ian McShane: Professor Broom
Milla Jovovich: Nimue/The Blood Queen
Sasha Lane: Alice Monaghan
Daniel Dae Kim: Major Ben Daimio

People make mistakes.  Actors, engineers, diplomats, scientists, and even cashiers make mistakes from time to time.  It’s a part of life; nobody’s perfect.  However, sometimes even the smallest mistake can have serious consequences.  In the film industry, mistakes can be very, very costly.  Some of the biggest box office flops were a result of somebody screwing up.  Usually it’s not necessarily the actor that screws things up, but sometimes it’s the casting director, producer and film director that can cause some serious damage.  Even a movie studio can really screw things up.  I’ve seen it happen with movies like Alien 3, Justice League, and The Lone Ranger just to name a few.  I’m a huge fan of the Hellboy films with Ron Perlman, both the live-action films and the animated ones, so when it was announced that LionsGate would be rebooting Hellboy with a different actor in the lead, David Harbour.  Let’s just say that Guillermo del Toro, the director of the first two films, should have been allowed to do his third film, as this new film really was a mistake.

The film opens in the Dark Ages with a brutal sorceress, Nimue, unleashing a monstrous plague across the land.  A handful of brave knights including King Arthur(yes, that one), confront Nimue, and using Excalibur, cut her into several pieces to be spread across the country.  This was done to prevent her from devastating the world.  In modern day Tijuana, Hellboy was sent to retrieve an agent of the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense who had gone missing tracking down a nest of vampires.  Returning to England, Hellboy is informed that somebody is trying to bring resurrect Nimue in order to destroy him and the world.  Teaming up with a psychic, Alice and a soldier, Major Ben Daimio, Hellboy races to defeat the forces of evil before they destroy the world.  The new Hellboy isn’t the first film to bring King Arthur into the mix, but it’s been done better in so many other movies.  I don’t know how much time they spent trying to write this story, but it needed a few more re-writes.  This was not a very good story to reboot the franchise.  It’s your typical “stop the bad guys before they destroy the world” setup, but again, I’ve seen it done better.  It literally goes through the motions, checking off each box for a movie of this kind.

Speaking of writing, let’s talk about the characters:  They are all assholes.  There’s nobody here that’s actually worth giving a damn about, not even Hellboy.  If you’re going to have a story about trying to stop the apocalypse, you need characters that you care about and can relate to.  There’s none of that here.  Even the bad guys aren’t given enough to really sink your teeth into.  It all devolves into stereotypical motivations like, “This guy wronged me at some point in the past, so I must destroy him.”  That’s it.  Even Nimue isn’t given much beyond wanting to destroy humanity.  The acting isn’t awful by any stretch.  Milla Jovovich is clearly having a blast hamming it up as the main villain, and I actually get a kick out of Sasha Lane as Alice.  Ian McShane is always a delight to watch, even in bad movies.  I’m just not a big fan of his portrayal of Professor Broom.  My issue here is with David Harbour as Hellboy.  I’m not blaming the actor at all.  He’s giving it everything he’s got, but the character was written in a way that kind of forced Harbour into doing his best Ron Perlman-as-Hellboy imitation.  I just wasn’t buying it.

Whoever did the soundtrack for this film needs to be taken out and beaten with giant wooden stick, because the song choices in the film make absolutely no sense, whatsoever.  They don’t fit at all, and the main score of the film is generic trash.  I’m pretty sure I won’t be buying the soundtrack for this one.  Let’s talk about some of the good stuff now.  From a visual standpoint, this film is very interesting.  The creature designs and the sets are absolutely fantastic.  The Baba Yaga witch was genuinely creepy.  Some of the bigger creatures and demons that show up later in the film are pretty damned cool.  It’s also really cool when Hellboy first touches Excalibur when he has visions of a world that’s been destroyed.  Some of the practical and gore effects are pretty good too.  Also, this is a very violent movie.  It’s got a bit of a mean streak and I kind of appreciate that, but was it really necessary to see people torn to shreds every 20 minutes for no reason?  I’m not opposed to a good blood bath, but considering that we had two movies that were PG-13, they didn’t really need to rely on the level of violence that we got in the new film.  That’s just the film-makers compensating for a lousy script.  The action is pretty good and really fun at times, but it rings a bit hollow.  Again, it goes back to the writing which wasn’t very strong in the first place.

After Hellboy was released on the 12th, it came to light through various industry insiders that the production of the film was severely problematic.  According to Dark Horizons, it was revealed that there were clashes between the director, some of the actors and a number of the producers.  From what I understand, David Harbour and Ian McShane re-wrote some of their lines without Neil Marshall knowing about it; Harbour himself walked off the set a number of times, while Neil Marshall’s cinematographer was fired, and there a number of interruptions between Marshall and the rest of the crew.  Apparently, Neil Marshall wasn’t even allowed a final cut for his film.  This explains a lot of the problems with the movie.  Does that mean that everything was true, though?  It’s hard to say.  When you’ve got multiple perspectives on the matter, it’s difficult to know who is telling which version of the truth, but there was obviously problems behind the scenes.  You can tell just by watching the movie.

Is Hellboy the complete disaster that everybody says it is?  No.  At least, I don’t think so.  There were aspects of the film that I really dug.  I liked Hellboy’s look, the action sequences and creatures like I stated before.  While the CGI is questionable at times, the quality seems strangely appropriate for a film like this.  It also moves pretty quick and isn’t really boring.  That being said, this is one of those cases where the film-makers should have held off on the reboot and gave Guillermo del Toro the resources that he needed to do a third film with Ron Perlman.  Both del Toro and Perlman really wanted to do it, but the under-performing second film didn’t make it feasible.  Will we get another Hellboy?  I doubt it.  The box-office stats for this film are dismal as are the reactions from critics and audiences.  I don’t hate the film, it’s just not the film that it needed to be.

My Final Recommendation: This one is on nobody’s side: 5/10

As many of you may be aware, the teaser trailer and title of Star Wars: Episode IX dropped on Friday during the Star Wars Celebration in Chicago.  The title is The Rise of Skywalker.  After watching the Episode IX panel and the subsequent teaser for the next film in the iconic franchise, I’ve had some time to process the whole thing.  This post is going to be filled with a lot of speculation, which is one of the funnest things to do when a new Star Wars film is announced.  While I’m going to hypothesize on what the main title means for the film later on in the post, I want to address the elephant in the room:  Emperor Palpatine.  At the end of the teaser, you hear a maniacal cackle which can only belong to one person: Emperor Palpatine/Darth Sidious.  If you saw the Episode IX panel which I believe is currently available on YouTube, then you will know that after the teaser played, Ian McDiarmid appears and says “Roll it again.”  This was significant because it cements the fact that the main villain of the Skywalker saga, Palpatine is indeed in Episode IX.  In an interview with Kathleen Kennedy, the president of Lucasfilm, she revealed that the Emperor’s presence in Episode IX was always part of the plan.  From a story-telling standpoint, this actually makes a lot of sense.  Darth Sidious was/is a master manipulator.  He orchestrated everything from the Clone Wars to the battle at Endor, and I do mean everything.  While it was certainly shocking to see that Sidious makes a return in the new film, it’s not actually a surprise that he’s here or that he’s behind the events of the last two films.  But how could Palpatine be in this new movie?  We all saw him get tossed into the reactor shaft by Darth Vader at the end of Return of the Jedi. So, he should be dead, right?  Right?  Not necessarily.

In the old canon before Disney acquired Lucasfilm and the Star Wars franchise, there was a Dark Horse graphic novel called Star Wars: Dark Empire.  It took place about 6 years after the Battle of Endor where the fledgling New Republic was still fighting the remnants of the Empire.  However, the Empire was putting up a much stronger fight than the Republic had anticipated, leading to people to speculate that a new Dark Side user had taken control.  As it turns out, it was Palpatine.  How did he survive?  He did, but his body didn’t.  See, in Dark Empire, Palpatine used clones to prolong his life by infusing those new bodies with his spirit and power.  As Lucasfilm and Disney have been so thoughtful as to not discard everything from the old Expanded Universe, it is entirely feasible that the film-makers would take that element from Dark Empire and apply it here.  So, what about Supreme Leader Snoke?  As we all know, Snoke was killed in the last film by Kylo Ren, leaving him in charge of the First Order.  Or so we thought.  If Snoke was not a clone of Palpatine, he was most certainly just a puppet.  Palpatine was a puppeteer, doing his own dirty work from the shadows, so it makes sense that the rise of the First Order was Palpatine’s plan from the beginning.  He probably saw his own death coming and planned for it.  So, the last two movies were essentially distracting the Resistance and the audience from Palpatine’s return to power.

So, if the Emperor is coming back, where does that leave Kylo Ren?  As we all know, Kylo killed Snoke to take his spot.  Do we honestly expect Palpatine to just let Kylo Ren run the First Order?  Oh, no.  Darth Sidious does not share power and will eliminate any force that could oppose him, which puts Ben Solo at serious risk.  This could possibly lead into the title’s meaning: The Rise of Skywalker.  What if Kylo Ren, in a bid to redeem himself for the terrible things that he’s done, finally embraces the light side of the Skywalker bloodline?  Also, are we finally going to find out who Rey is, or is she just someone that the Force has chosen to balance things out?  In The Last Jedi,  we see a connection of sorts between Rey and Ben, one light and one dark.  They are two sides of the same coin, so it may make sense that they would team up again to destroy Palpatine once and for all.  Luke is dead so it falls on the last of the Skywalkers, Ben, to really bring balance back to the Force.

So…what about everybody else in the film?  What role will Leia play in The Rise of Skywalker?  It’s hard to say at this point, things had to be re-written when Carrie Fisher passed away.  This film was initially going to have a focus on Leia and her relationship with Ben, from what I remember.  Poe Dameron is still a pilot, but he’s probably been re-promoted to Commander or has become a general after The Last Jedi.  We know that Episode IX takes place a few years after the events of The Last Jedi, so things will have changed.  Rey has most likely become a Jedi in her own way, while Finn will take a more prominent role in the Resistance, committing himself fully to the cause.  General Hux is probably still the scheming and slimy dirt-bag he’s always been.  The one’s that I want to see are the Knights of Ren, which were referenced only in Episode VII.  Lando Calrissian is obviously making a big comeback as one of the allies that the Resistance is seeking.

For a teaser trailer, this one had quite a bit of stuff in it, but it only gave us a small glimpse at what’s to come just to get people talking and asking questions.  Believe me, there are a lot of questions that the trailer raised that the final film will have to answer.  There has to be answers, especially concerning the last two movies and the fact that The Rise of Skywalker is the final film in the Skywalker story-line.  This is a film that has to connect all three trilogies and I hope it does.  As a huge fan of Star Wars, I’m getting more and more excited for this one.  People are going to be understandably cautious after The Last Jedi and Solo split audiences down the middle.  So, yeah, I’m hopeful that this will be amazing and that it will be the perfect send-off for those involved, especially Carrie Fisher and her character.  December 20th, fellow Jedi and Sith Lords, mark your calendars.  This will be a December to remember.

When George Lucas released the original Star Wars film back in 1977, he had no idea the impact that the film would have.  He was hoping that some people would go and see it, but he didn’t realize that his film would change everything.  Star Wars has become so much more than just a movie.  For 42 years, Star Wars has become a major fixture in many people’s lives as well as the film industry.  The way the special effects were used and how the cameras moved not only flipped the entire industry on its head, but it made people all around the world pay attention.  The story of Luke and his quest to become a Jedi has become one of the modern-day myths.  After 40 years, not only does the original film starring Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, and Carrie Fisher still hold up, it’s still influencing film-makers today.  If it wasn’t for George Lucas’ film, we probably wouldn’t have directors like James Cameron, Peter Jackson, or Guillermo del Toro.  For 40 years, Star Wars has been a house-hold name, even for those that haven’t seen it.  That is the reach that the space opera has on pop culture.  The franchise has seen its share of ups and downs over the years, both in film and in other media, but the enduring strength of Star Wars simply can’t be contained.

The story of the Skywalker bloodline, which includes Luke, Leia, Anakin/Darth Vader, and Kylo Ren, is set to conclude this December with Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker.  As for what the story of the new film entails, we don’t know.  We’ll have to wait and see this December to see how it all plays out, but what we do know is that it’s going to be epic.  Obviously, we are going to see the return of characters like Poe, Finn, Rey, Kylo Ren, Chewbacca, C-3PO, and BB8, but we also get to see the return of a beloved character from the Original Trilogy, Lando Calrissian as played by none other than Billy Dee Williams.  The big question was how Carrie Fisher’s character was going to be in the new film, considering that the actress tragically passed away in 2016.  The answer is simple:  They implemented unused footage from The Force Awakens.  That was probably the best option.  Now, I watched the Episode IX panel live on YouTube this morning in anticipation of the new teaser trailer and title drop for Episode IX.  The Rise of Skywalker is an interesting choice.  Every episodic film in the franchise had a name that played on the themes of that particular entry.  The title, at least to me, suggests that there will be a member of the Skywalker family left standing at the end of the film.  Again, we’ll have to wait and see, but I’m genuinely interested to see how all this comes together.

Star Wars has seen it’s fair share of bumps over the years.  I’ll be straight with you:  The Last Jedi had some serious problems.  I loved the movie when I first saw it.  I enjoyed its unpredictability, but having had some time to think about it, Episode VIII spent too much time trying to pull the rug out from underneath the audience.  This is the issue that I have with Rian Johnson as a director.  He spends so much time trying to be unpredictable that he failed to make a compelling narrative.  The entire film was essentially one long chase sequence with The First Order on the heels of the Resistance.  While I loved what they did with the Force and the relationship between Kylo and Rey, the film felt both bloated and shallow at the same time.  Again, I don’t hate the film, it’s a fantastic action film, but as a Star Wars sequel, it’s not very good.  Episode IX seems to be a bit of a course correction, but hopefully it will still maintain its own identity.  Everything Star Wars, right now, is riding on the success of The Rise of Skywalker.  Considering the audience’s split reception to The Last Jedi and the tepid response to Solo, J.J. Abrams and company can’t afford to make another mistake.  From what I understand, the Star Wars films will be taking a bit of a hiatus after Skywalker’s release, rolling back plans to release a film every year.

So, what are my expectations for The Rise of Skywalker?  I think it’s going to be a hell of a lot of fun and I think it has the potential to be better than The Last Jedi.  The issue is if they can get it right.  Aside from Avengers: Endgame, Star Wars is going to be the biggest event of the year.  It’s hard to say if people will forgive Disney for Solo or The Last Jedi, so that may factor into the film’s overall performance.  I’m hoping the Skywalker saga goes out with a bang, not a whimper.  Come on, Disney, you can do it.