Thursday Movie Picks - Failure To Launch (a Franchise)

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This week's theme from Wandering Through The Shelves are movies that failed to launch a franchise. We have plenty of those lying around. Here's what I came up with.


1) The Mummy - Universal got way ahead of themselves with their Dark Universe concept when this movie completely bombed. Now they're just a punchline. 


2) The Golden Compass - Audiences didn't love what should've been the first movie in the His Dark Materials franchise. I'm somewhat grateful this bombed, because now we have a much better HBO series based on the same stories. 


3) Green Lantern - I remember being very excited for this movie and for pre-annoying Reynolds to be the Green Lantern...then everything about it was awful. 

Comments

  1. BirgitJune 2, 2022 at 7:04 AM

    I still have to see The Mummy and will as it's often on tv. The Golden Compass was ok but seemed confusing and a bit blah. We match with The Green Lantern. I bet that film will be big today. I had no expectations except low, when I watched it so I enjoyed this flick despite the laughter I gave at certain times.

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    1. Brittani BurnhamJune 3, 2022 at 8:16 AM

      I think The Green Lantern as a product could be a compelling movie, and now they have a blue print of what not to do.

      Delete
  2. joel65913June 2, 2022 at 9:22 AM

    I LOVED the first Mummy with Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz! It was just so escapist and fun with the cast full of a zest to play along, John Hannah was such fun as Rachel's irresponsible brother. The sequels were less fun (in part due to Rachel Weisz being MIA) but still passable. But when I saw they were trying to reboot them with Tom Cruise of all people I was leery. Then it came out and landed with a resounding thud and terrible reviews and my desire to see it which was negligible evaporated completely.

    While fantasy isn't a main interest of mine I can enjoy a well done film in the genre unfortunately The Golden Compass wasn't one of those. I hated it.

    I like Ryan Reynolds but The Green Lantern was so middling. I've never been a comic book fan so I have to admit I went into it thinking it was going to be the Green Hornet (I use to watch that show-with Bruce Lee as his assistant Kato!-when I was a kid) and realized right away I had them confused which curbed my interest. By the end I was wishing I'd found old reruns of the show to watch instead!

    The first one I thought of was The Rocketeer an extremely fun film that underperformed not so much because it wasn't popular, it did okay at the box office, but was so costly it ended up losing money which put the kibosh on a franchise. There was also Sahara with Matthew McConaughey and Steve Zahn that was suppose to launch a whole series of adventures for the Clive Cussler's Dirk Pitt character. I'm not always the biggest fan of McConaughey, he's often too unctuous and full of himself for me, but that served him well in this and he teamed well with both Zahn (LOVE him) and Penelope Cruz but again it didn't recover its costs. I also thought of truly dreadful The Lone Ranger which deserved to flop, it's garbage.

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    1. Brittani BurnhamJune 3, 2022 at 8:18 AM

      I didn't realize that about Sahara! I saw that movie once in theaters and never felt like returning. I forgot about The Lone Ranger too until the Depp trial. That looked so bad.

      Delete
  3. thevoid99June 2, 2022 at 3:48 PM

    We share the same pick with The Mummy. I saw some of it and... oh God... it was awful.

    To me, it's just another stupid... Tom Cruise KW-PLA who BOO-BA and AHH-GAH!!!! It's the same fucking movie he's been doing for nearly a decade. Top Gun: Maverick looks a bit different and Edge of Tomorrow at least made fun of those films but everything else is just him wishing he was Jackie Chan. He's a stupid, aging midget who worships a stupid alien that doesn't even exist.

    The Golden Compass honestly was a bore. All of those people in that film and it was... eh... The Green Lantern.... boy that didn't age well. The movie where Blake Lively stole Ryan Reynolds from Scar-Jo 3:16 (though honestly, I think Blake did Scar-Jo 3:16 a favor) and Peter Sarsgaard screams like a girl in that film. Awful fucking film.

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    1. Brittani BurnhamJune 3, 2022 at 8:18 AM

      Tom Cruise just does not interest me as an actor, even before all the Scientology stuff came to light. He's not terrible, I just don't care about him and like you said, his action movies are ver repetative.

      Delete
  4. AnonymousJune 2, 2022 at 6:11 PM

    The Mummy - Yeah too much confidence. They had done a big spread on some big publication (Vanity Fair? Variety?) with all the other actors they hired for the other franchise movies, photographed together...and then The Mummy didn't impress audiences.

    Golden Compass - the CGI animals look quite bad so didn't bother to see it.

    Green Lantern - Similarly saw the clip or trailer and thought the CGI looked awful so didn't watch and then the reviews came out and they were generally bad.

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    Replies
    1. Brittani BurnhamJune 3, 2022 at 8:19 AM

      Yes! They got way ahead of themselves with that vanity fair spread.

      Delete
    2. thevoid99June 3, 2022 at 6:58 PM

      Actually, it was photoshopped. That picture with Tom Cruise, Javier Bardem, Russell Crowe, Johnny Depp, and Sofia Boutella was a fake created by Universal. None of them were in the same room together and Angelina Jolie was supposed to be in that cinematic universe. She ended up joining the MCU!!!!! She made the right choice.

      Delete
    3. Brittani BurnhamJune 5, 2022 at 4:37 PM

      Oh that I knew! I knew they had to splice them together. Which is kind of funny considering Marvel got nearly all of their people to show up for a 10 year shoot.

      Delete
  5. Ronyell (a.k.a. Rabbitearsblog)June 2, 2022 at 7:10 PM

    We match on the Golden Compass and Green Lantern! I didn't care much for either movie and I'm actually glad they bombed. But I do hope we get a better Green Lantern film in the near future.

    Check out my Thursday Movie Picks!

    Ronyell @ The Surreal Movies and TV Blog

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    1. Brittani BurnhamJune 3, 2022 at 8:19 AM

      I hope so too, and I'm glad His Dark Materials is working well as a series.

      Delete
  6. SJHoneywellJune 3, 2022 at 9:12 PM

    This version of The Mummy is just so bad. Of all the versions--the Universal original, the Hammer reboot, the Brendan Fraser version, this Tom Cruise travesty is so clearly the worst. It's such a terrible misstep.

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  7. ThePunkTheoryJune 5, 2022 at 4:47 AM

    I still haven't seen the new Mummy film - I choose to ignore that it even exists 🤣

    ReplyDelete

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