On Box Office Flops...

I have a confession to make.  I really like box office flops.
It's almost like there's a direct ratio of how badly a movie performs critically and how much I enjoy it.  There are exceptions to this rule of course.  Some movies like 'Jonah Hex' or 'Prince of Persia' have truly disappointed me.  But for every 'Prince of Persia' it seems like there are five 'Cowboys and Aliens'.

I get a bizarre pleasure of reading bad reviews, then seeing the movie myself and then going: "What's wrong with the critics?  What's wrong with audiences?  This is amazing!  Our society is undeserving of this masterpiece!"  I think it's the same counter-cultural trait I have that seeks out TV shows that have been canceled after only one season and going: "WHAT WERE THEY THINKING!  THIS SHOW WAS THE BEST THING EVER!"  I think this may be part of the reason my big brother is convinced that I'm secretly a Hipster.

For the past three years I've allowed myself to see at least one guilty pleasure flop movie.
Last year it was 'Seventh Son'.
The year before that it was 'I, Frankenstein'.
This year it was 'Gods of Egypt'.
I enjoyed each one slightly more then the last.  I think 'Gods of Egypt' is my favorite flop in recent memory.  If this keeps up, I can't wait of next years flop!

So.  Why do such enjoyable movies flop on a regular basis?
I'm assuming that other people enjoy some of these too, and it's not just that there's something wrong with me.  I think it's probably a case by case thing, but here are some common factors in the flops I like.

The flops I like (just like everything else I like) tend to be genre movies.  The stuff that appeals to Geeks.  "But Geekboy," you say, "All of the most successful movie of the past decade (minus the teen romances) have been comic book movies aimed at Geeks!"  And you'd be right.  Geekdom has been dominating the box office.  But for whatever reason, Geek movies are very sink or swim.  It will either make a million dollars like 'The Avengers', or it will flop.

Flops tend to be like B-movies.  They're fun as all get out.  Escapism in its purist form.  They really appeal to a small group of people, and those people go see them and enjoy them.  Eventually these movies will probably be cult classics.  But unlike the monsters and aliens that inhabit classic B-movies,  The modern day flops often have a huge budget.  I recall reading about Disney's 'The Lone Ranger' how ironic it is when a modern day western goes overbudget, because B-grade westerns used to be the cheapest movies to make.  Even though a group of people see and like these movies, if they don't have selling power, some kind of marketing gimmick like a bunch of popular Superheroes together in one movie, they can't make back the money spent trying to make the coolest movie ever.


I'd like to start a new segment on this blog called 'Floptacular Films'.  In these posts I plan to give some of those overlooked movies a second look.  There are movies out there that I almost didn't watch because they didn't do well, or because a lot of people didn't like them.  Maybe you skipped over some of these that I enjoyed.  Maybe if more people looked on the bright side of these flops, people would watch them and fewer enjoyable movies would be dismissed by society.

If I were casting Flash Gordon...

You know what I think would be really cool?  A modern Flash Gordon trilogy that stuck close to the source material, but treated it more like a fantasy epic then a cheesy old science fiction.  Kind of like the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but with more rocketships.  Why not have Peter Jackson direct it?  While I'm daydreaming, here's a list of actors I'd like to see play some of the main roles.  Let's start with the main antagonists.

Ming the Merciless:

Flash, Dale, and Emperor Ming

Speaking of 'Lord of the Rings' I see Hugo Weaving as perfect for this role.  He always has a sort of sophisticated menace about him, even on the rare occasion that he's playing a good guy.  Shave his head and slap a Fu Manchu mustache on that guy and you have the perfect Ming.

Hugo Weaving

Princess Aura:

Princess Aura and Flash

After 'Tron: Legacy' and 'Cowboys and Aliens' I thought Olivia Wilde was going to be a real breakout star in genre movies.  She hasn't really done anything that caught my attention since then, but I would love to see her play a villain.  Something about those wide eyed stares she's always giving the camera is simultaneously A). Really hot - and - B). Just a little bit creepy.

Olivia Wilde

Let's move on the the supporting cast shall we?

Prince Barin:

Prince Barin and the Forest Men of Mongo

One of the few things I liked about the either so-bad-it's-good or so-bad-it's-actually-really-bad 1980's Flash Gordon was former James Bond actor Timothy Dalton as Prince Barin.  There's something about that suave British-ness combined with forest swashbuckler that works so well for the character.  So who's an ex Bond actor to take up the mantel?  Answer, there really isn't one.  Pierce Brosnan would have worked, but he's a little old for Barin now.  And the tough guy thug thing Daniel Craig has going as Bond just wouldn't wok at all.  I now direct your attention to 2011's 'X-men: First Class'.  This movie brought the X-men back to the time-period the X-men were created in: Cold War era 1960s.  They were doing there absolute best to be a James Bond movie with mutants.  Michael Fassbender's take on a younger Magneto was to play him as if he were Bond.  I see him as a good fit for Baron.

Michael Fassbender

Another option would be to simply bring back Steve Bacic who was pretty fantastic as Barin in the 2007 Flash Gordon TV series.

Steve Bacic

Prince Thun:

Prince Thun and Flash Gordon

This one took a little thinking, but I think Michael Dorn of Star Trek fame would be a good match for an older and wiser take on the Prince of the Lion Men.

Michael Dorn

King Vultan:

Princess Aura and King Vultan

So I keep going back to actors from the 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy, but I could see John Rhys-Davies -Gimli - as the King of the Hawkmen.  

John Rhys-Davies

 If he proved unavailable, another Dwarf from Middle Earth comes to mind: Richard Armitage - Thorin Oakinshield - would work as well if not better.

Richard Armitage

Queen Fria:

Flash and Queen Fria

Okay, last time using a Lotr actor, I promise.  But Cate Blanchett's Lady Galadriel would be a perfect match for the icy Queen of the land of Frigia.

Cate Blanchett

So this brings us to our main cast.  And this is the hard part.

Doctor Hans Zarkov:

Dr. Zarkov

One actor comes to mind.  And yes, he was in a Peter Jackson Movie.  No. NO!  Put that cauldren of hot tar and those bags of feathers DOWN!  Down.  Good reader.  I'm talking about German actor Thomas Kretshmann, who played Captain Engelhorn in the 2005 'King Kong'.  Engelhorn was, in my opinion, one of the coolest characters in the movie.  And Zarkov is arguably the coolest in the main trio of Flash Gordon heroes.  Thomas Kretshmann also had a blink-and-you-miss-it role as Baron Strucker in Marvel's 'Avengers: Age of Ultron'.  Zarkov has a rather menacing introduction as a european Mad Scientist, and 'Age of Ultron' proves Kretshmann has that menace.

Thomas Kretshmann

So.  Now we just have...  

Flash Gordon and Dale Arden.

Flash and Dale

I've run out of ideas.  I always do when I get to this point.  In the original comic strip Flash Gordon and Dale Arden are more or less blank slate characters.  And it works.  They are our veiwpoint characters, every-man type people we can identify with and project ourselves overtop of.  They are a delivery mechanism for the fantastic world, the quirky side characters, and the adventures that happen in the story.  But that's something that's hard to adapt for a movie.  So I find myself returning again to the 2007 Flash Gordon TV show.

I'm sure Eric Johnson would be willing to return to the role of Flash.  He did it for this animated short after all.  And if we're bringing back 2007's Flash why not bring back Gina Holden as Dale too?

Eric Johnson

Gina Holden

Well, you've heard me ramble long enough.  What do you geek out about so much you daydream about future movie adaptations of?  If you have a guilty pleasure you'd like to see remade as a big budget movie, let me know about it in the comments.

Thoughts on Heroic Sacrifice

"Have you ever seen 'Pacific Rim?'" a friend of mine asked.  "Yeah," I answered. "Good movie, but it would have been better if the hero died in the end."  I'm given a strange look, and am left wandering if I sprouted an extra head.

(This post may contain spoilers for Pacific Rim, Spiderman 2, Cowboys and Aliens, and Suckerpunch)

In the climax of Pacific Rim, our hero pilots a disabled self-destructing mech into a portal to another dimension in the bottom of the ocean.  He sent his unconscious co-pilot girlfriend back to the surface in an escape pod, and we are led to believe that he is about to go down with his ship.  At this point in the movie, I actually started to believe that our hero might not live through the story, and that's something that rarely happens.  So, when he takes a second escape pod to the surface in the ta-da nick of time, I was pretty disappointed.  If he had died, it would have been a beautiful self sacrificing moment.  Dying to save not only the love of his life, but the world as we know it.  And as the hero had lost so much over the course of the story, for example the twin brother with whom he shared a telepathic link, loosing his life felt like a satisfactory end to his story arc.

Willingness to sacrifice ones self for others is a key part of the definition of a hero.  However, that sacrifice doesn't always have to be the protagonist's life.  Take 'Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back' for example.  Han Solo spends the entire movie putting his own needs - paying off Jabba the Hutt - to the wayside in order to ensure Princess Leia's safety.

Another good example is Peter Parker in Sam Raimi's Spiderman Trilogy.  In the first movie, Peter scarifies the possibility of a future relationship with Mary Jane Watson because his secret life as Spiderman could put her life in jeopardy time and time again.  In Spiderman 2 Peter gives up the happiness of a normal life to put on the Spiderman suit again because he knows it's the right thing to do.  Spiderman 2 has a powerful line of repeated dialog that rivals "With great power comes great responsibility."  The gist of it is this: "Sometimes to do what is right we must give up what we want most; Even our dreams."  Peter isn't the only one who gets a heroic sacrifice in this story though.  The villain Doc Ock conquers his inner demons and saves New York City, atoning for his wrongdoing while giving up his life and scientific ambitions.


So, heroic sacrifice doesn't HAVE to be a character's life, but it CAN be.
In the criminally underrated movie 'Cowboys and Aliens' our heroine, Ella, is an alien who's race have been pretty much been wiped out by the same marauding aliens invading Earth.  To ensure that no other planets will be ravaged like her own had been, she makes her way to the heart of the Mothership and blows it, the invading aliens, and herself sky high.

Themes of self sacrifice can be found all throughout Zach Snyder's 2011 film Suckerpunch.  There are parallels between the lives of 3 of the characters: Babydoll, who after a failed attempt to protect her sister from an abusive stepfather is thrown into an insane asylum to keep her quiet.  Sweet Pea is equally protective of her younger sister Rocket.  In a scene that parallels the abuse scene in the beginning, Babydoll comes to Rocket's aid when she is slapped around by an abusive cook.  After this Babydoll and Sweet Pea form a bond, because they are both looking out for Rocket, who is a sister to Sweet Pea and like a sister to Baby Doll.

They, and a handful of other inmates, attempt escape the asylum, and to do so have to fight through several visually spectacular dream sequences.  Several of the girls are killed along the way, including Rocket, who dies to save her big sister Sweet Pea.  In the end only Sweet Pea and Babydoll remain.  Babydoll realizes that the only way either of them can escape is if one of them distracts the guards and is recaptured.  She doesn't even hesitate.

In the beginning of the story Babydoll's abusive stepfather bribes an orderly at the asylum to forge an order to have Babydoll lobotomized so she couldn't testify against him.  In the end of the movie Babydoll allows herself to be lobotomized.  Afterwards the doctors discover that there was a mistake, and root out the cause of the injustice.  The villains of the story fall into their own trap, all because of Babydoll's sacrifice, ending the story on a beautiful bittersweet note.

I think if you want to make your hero stand out, a little selflessness goes a long way.  A heroic sacrifice of some kind might be the way to go.