Who's to blame when a movie is bad?

[gbeenie]

Tom Hanks, lack of zombies and censorship.

In that order? 

[robertraur]

I'm surprised that the marketing campaign is never considered for the blame.  Trailers can be so misleading, especially when deciding what movie you want to see.

Case in point:  Bridge to Terabithia.  If you did not know the book, you would have thought this movie was just another Lord of the Rings rip off.  And if Eragon left a bad taste in your mouth (like it did me), you would have just skipped the movie.

Or how about the Last Mimzy.  If you have not seen the movie, can you tell me the plot.  I sure as hell can't.  I know Rainne Wilson is in it and that's about it. 

[Tyrant]

I blame focus groups and the inability of big studios to take risks, but it doesn't apply across the board. Wicker Man had flaws that I can only imagine came from the screenwriter, Catwoman, from what I've heard, was an awesome movie before it got through the Producer.

I agree up until the Catwoman thing. There is no way that film could've turned out well. It was doomed from conception.

  Well, that's the whole point. It could have been an awesome screenplay, but we're never going to know because the meeting with the producers probably went like this:

Producer #1: Wow. This is a great screenplay. It does need a few changes, though.
Writer: I expected you would think so. What changes?
Producer #2: Well, obviously the movie has a female lead. So we need someone really hot and popular.
Producer #1: We should use Halle. She's scorching. And she sells like crazy.
Producer #2: Great idea!! We'll draw up a contract! Contact her agent. Make sure the clothes designer thinks up something skimpy and sexy.
Writer: Er...don't mean to interupt, but what changes did you need to the screenplay?
Producer #1: Oh. That. Well, just rewrite some scenes here, here, and here. No big deal. Wow! We got Halle!! Make sure those scenes are written to show off how sexy she is.
Producer #2: Wahoo!!! We're going to make so much money!!! With Halle!!!

   Since the movie sucked so much, it's hard to believe there might have been a good idea in there somewhere. But that may be the case in all bad movies.
 

[CinemaslaveJoe]

There's no easy answer to this question.  As a filmmaker myself, I can tell you that directors often get more credit than they deserve for both successful films *and* box-office bombs.  A good director can make a good script into a great film, but few directors can make a bad script into a good movie.  Likewise, a good script will usually be a good movie regardless of the direction.  It starts with the script.

But a director doesn't always have as much power on a film as many people assume; studio executives routinely force directors to change their movies against their will.  Even Orson Welles saw his beloved "Magnificent Ambersons" butchered by RKO Studios.  And this was *after* he'd already proven himself a genius with "Citizen Kane."  But since "Kane" was a flop on its initial release, Welles didn't have the clout to fight them.  The result is the incomplete, sporadically brilliant movie we're left with today.

Earlier in this thread, someone jokingly said "I place the blame squarely on YOU, the viewer," but there's actually some truth to this.  Test screenings and are often used by studios as justification to alter and re-cut a film agains the filmmaker's wishes.  I've never understood this: why hire a director with a genuine vision for a particular project and then force him or her to change it?  Sad, really.

-CSJ

[pyro]

I'm surprised that the marketing campaign is never considered for the blame.  Trailers can be so misleading, especially when deciding what movie you want to see.

Case in point:  Bridge to Terabithia.  If you did not know the book, you would have thought this movie was just another Lord of the Rings rip off.  And if Eragon left a bad taste in your mouth (like it did me), you would have just skipped the movie.

Or how about the Last Mimzy.  If you have not seen the movie, can you tell me the plot.  I sure as hell can't.  I know Rainne Wilson is in it and that's about it. 

I'll let you know in about 80 minutes....I'm about 15 minutes in and so far I have no idea, and this is the only post on this board that seems to mention this movie even in passing


edit - I'm starting to guess new-age bullshit of the present and future, and 7 year olds on mushrooms?

[Jason_Voorhees]

1. The Director
2. The Studios
3. The Writers

[Chaos]

Jason,

Your list is close, but 1) is actually - the idiots who like movies like that, who there are enough of that the studio can still turn a profit, even on blatantly steaming piles of crap. As long as morons will line up to see this trash heaps, the studios will keep churning them out. The real group to blame for anything like this is ALWAYS, at the end of the day, the public. They make it possible.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Studio bigwigs. They are responsible with appointing bad actors and writers, and giving free rein to bad directors.

[Jason_Voorhees]

Jason,

Your list is close, but 1) is actually - the idiots who like movies like that, who there are enough of that the studio can still turn a profit, even on blatantly steaming piles of crap. As long as morons will line up to see this trash heaps, the studios will keep churning them out. The real group to blame for anything like this is ALWAYS, at the end of the day, the public. They make it possible.

I agree with that statement a little bit. However being the hopeless and helpless Sci-fi, fantasy and horror film geek I am I saddly end up seeing a lot of crap. For example the first Aliens vs. Predator film, I went to see it in hopes that the critics could just be liking the smell or thier own farts (but most of the time thier right these days). I also may see some if the studios may learn thier leasons and hopefully make a better film by listening to the fan and critical reponses however with the likes of Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer it is a sad case.

However I have been going to the movie less with the large ammount of remakes and sequels we didn't ask for. Don't get me wrong (if you couldn't guess by my board name) I like to go see films like Friday the 13th and Halloween series for a good laugh with my friends however the normally the only case.

[Plastic Self-Cleaning Duck]

I blame the studio 99% of the time.

Either because they interfered too much (see the story behind the final cuts of Brazil, The Abyss and even Ultraviolet)

They don't get involved enough and let really weak stuff go out.

Or they keep hiring no-talent asswipes like John Logan and let them have anything at all to do with movies (beware the upcoming version of Sweeney Todd)

Trivia:  The first cut of Star Wars was a total disaster.  It was choppy, incoherant, and stupid with a LOT of unnecessary scenes that looked like crap.  The movie was pretty much literally yanked from the fire at the last possible second by a miracle editor who did the third cut, which is now known as the theatrical release.

Which, from everything I read, that editor was Marcia Lucas....George's wife at the time.  Who Lucas the Hutt divorced just before the films and the fanchise really went South.

Connection?  Who's to say?

[mrbasehart]

Either because they interfered too much (see the story behind the final cuts of Brazil, The Abyss and even Ultraviolet)

I'm with ya on the first two....   

Oh, and while checking out John Logan's CV on imdb.com, I agree with you that most of the films on his list aren't very good but I really enjoyed The Aviator, so I'm gonna give him a pass on Sweeney Todd.

[Plastic Self-Cleaning Duck]

Oh, and while checking out John Logan's CV on imdb.com, I agree with you that most of the films on his list aren't very good but I really enjoyed The Aviator, so I'm gonna give him a pass on Sweeney Todd.

If you ever get a chance to see a tape of Leonardo DiCaprio at the Oscars that year, you'll see and hear him get up on stage and tell the whole world that Michael Mann rewrote the entire screenplay for that film without screen credit.  Logan's script (once again, when a movie turns out half-decent) was shit-canned but he kept bragging rights.

It was the same with Gladiator - he kept his name on the screenplay credit because his version introduced the son.  The guys who rewrote his mess kept that and only that.

And that Citizen Kane movie has his name on it still in spite of the authors of a documentary on the movie and Wells successfully suing him and the production for plagiarism.  Logan lifted whole paragraphs from this documentary that appeared on a DVD of the movie and put them into his script.

And yet they still hire this clown.

[Dim of the Yard]

My initial, knee-jerk reaction to "who's to blame" is the producers.  I am, after all, a huge fan of Terry Gilliam, and Brazil is my favorite movie of all time, so I'm very well versed with the drama that went along with producing the movie.  I also know of the drama that happened behind the scenes of Brothers Grimm, with the Weinstein brothers getting in the way of the movie Gilliam wanted to film.  They fired his first Director of Photography and threatened to drop the project if Gilliam went ahead and gave Matt Damon a prosthetic nose, for instance.

However, I'm also willing to place the blame on the director of the movie, and I've also drawn this conclusion using Gilliam.  Namely, Brothers Grimm.  Gilliam wanted to keep a certain scene in the movie that nobody else in the production wanted to keep in, and it took him six months to agree to remove the scene.  (During this time, Dimension Studios was shut down for a while, and Gilliam had gone to Canada to film Tideland.)  He admitted that he can sometimes be the worst thing for his movie, so that's what fueling my choice, mainly.

I'm also drawing this from a bad experience in theater, although I'm aware of how different the two are.  The director we had for Macbeth was absolutely ridiculous.  He insisted on adding a couple of lines to the show "to flesh out Lady Macbeth's character," even though they were relatively useless lines.  Anytime he met with resistance concerning some of his choices (for example, wanting to change the entire lighting sequence for a key scene after Opening Night), he flipped out, claiming it was his vision, and he was the director, and everybody should listen to him.  He's the God, HE'S THE GOD!

So, Producers are largely responsible, but I'm not about to let the Directors get away without taking any heat.

[Plastic Self-Cleaning Duck]

My initial, knee-jerk reaction to "who's to blame" is the producers.  I am, after all, a huge fan of Terry Gilliam, and Brazil is my favorite movie of all time, so I'm very well versed with the drama that went along with producing the movie.  I also know of the drama that happened behind the scenes of Brothers Grimm, with the Weinstein brothers getting in the way of the movie Gilliam wanted to film.  They fired his first Director of Photography and threatened to drop the project if Gilliam went ahead and gave Matt Damon a prosthetic nose, for instance.

However, I'm also willing to place the blame on the director of the movie, and I've also drawn this conclusion using Gilliam.  Namely, Brothers Grimm.  Gilliam wanted to keep a certain scene in the movie that nobody else in the production wanted to keep in, and it took him six months to agree to remove the scene.  (During this time, Dimension Studios was shut down for a while, and Gilliam had gone to Canada to film Tideland.)  He admitted that he can sometimes be the worst thing for his movie, so that's what fueling my choice, mainly.

I keep giving Gilliam a pass (as much as I can) because I think he's still a bit shell-shocked from the fight over Brazil and the backlash from The Fisher King.   That it makes him dig in his heels just as a first reaction.  That if he didn't have that BS in his past he'd probably not fight so much on things.

But I'm getting to a breaking point with him like I did with Burton when he made Mars Attacks!.

[Variety of Cells]

Are you speaking of Brothers Grim or Tideland when you refer to Gilliam?  I could see a comparison between Brothers Grim and Mars Attacks!... But between Mars Attacks! and Tideland?