This reminds me so much of Wonder Woman: the entire film is about Diana figuring out there isn't a big bad guy but people do bad stuff. Then in the last scene everything is reverted because: surprise! there was a bad guy after all. If you stop watching the movie a few minutes before it ends it's still a pretty great movie, but I have no doubt in my mind the weird ending is because of studio interference.
I was enjoying the movie (even though it has week side characters and the visual effects are lacking) And then BIG BAD GUY! Because war exists because a god of war is making people fight, is not like after he is killed people still wage wars.
There was no bad guy after all because even after he was killed there were still wars: World war ii Zods invasion Doomsday STEPPENWOLF Darkseid Even before diana killed ares, the enemy was talking about surrendering. And they did.
I agree completely. It has a chilling moment where Diana has to accept that war will wage on no matter what and she can’t do anything about it. Would have been a poignant ending over the studio-mandated “twist villain.”
@@EmersonFlemingEmRock13 but war does rage on even after ares is killed. The enemy military decide to surrender even before ares is killed. Not because Ares is killed. Ares reveals that he doesn't start war but he just gives them ideas for weapons. War is human nature. That's why Diana says about the humans "they're everything you say but so much more". Meaning she knows ares is right about humans' tendency for war but that's not their defining trait.
Studio execs need to start taking the fall for this shit, instead of the director often taking the heat while the anonymous corporate worms slink away in the background unscathed.
@Gordon Freeman, yes absolutely, but at the same time the fear of getting fired accumulates to not taking risks and then interfere too much in the artistic direction the movie makers intend to go and we are full circle at the beginning of the problem... Only solution is to not go to movies who have no art in them at all, just marketing and bullshit tools for money, but when I see the boxoffice records it obviously isn't like that...
@@matthiasblum6555 Amerivans are too tired and overworked to make rational financial decisions. To compound this, they are fed economic bullshit left and right generated by interest groups to keep them from financial literacy. The american economy has now become reliant on its people's financial illiteracy. If they start making good decisions, the economy will collapse.
Sadly that's always been their policy. When David Fincher warned Brandywine that the movie they were forcing him to make - Alien 3 - was going to be a massive trash fire, he stated in interviews that the execs told him they KNEW it was going to be a massive flop, but didn't care because Fincher was going to take the fall anyway. One of many different equally legit reasons for him to publicly disown the movie, and why it makes him want to vomit when sycophantic edge lords proclaim how Alien 3 was the greatest movie ever made.
1. Make a project. 2. Give to a young and creative director with a unique vision. 3. Kick him/her off and reeshoot 90% of the movie because the director had a unique vision.
@PHILL SHIVELY yeah, cuz Snyder's "unique vision" won him so much praise in his previous DC efforts. Give me a break. Keeping his hands off of future DC projects is the best thing they can do. Aquaman looks great and he has virtually nothing to do with it. It's bright, visually interesting, energetic, humorous... you know, everything that a Zack Snyder film is not.
Great films: Matrix, Salt, Dark Knight, Twilight, Enemy of the State, X Men 2000, Titanic, Avatar blue space aliens, Men in black, Harry Potter and the goblet of fire, Nasuica of the Valley of the wind, Angels Egg, Akira, Fight Club, Fast and Furious and 2 fast 2 furious, Austin Powers, James Bond, and many more.
@@ruraladventurer1884 I guess we'll never see his unique vision because people really don't care to see it. Even when Snyder himself said the studio interfered heavily with BvS, people still relentlessly blamed him for the film's shortcomings, yet with Fant4stic, the studio gets blamed and everyone rallies behind Josh Trank. Justice League was just awful because it was directed by someone with absolutely no artistic vision (Joss Whedon).
Talking about the Fantastic Four and the executives who signed off on the script - I think you're hitting upon a dirty secret. I have nothing to base this on but a hunch, but I think that when these big tentpole release movies go totally off the rails like Fant4stic did, the people who signed off simply didn't read the thing. People are lazy and cocky and don't want to put in the work so they sign off on something they only have a vague notion of, and then they're genuinely shocked when they see what they get.
And Salo...the one film where having everyone dance at the end, as the director originally intended, makes the film almost worse...For those of you lucky enough to have never seen Salo, just imagine long drawn out torture scenes with political commentary followed up with a musical number. Some things just don't work together.
That's the funny and only thing I got from the "Hunger Games" series of films; never read the books, but the way that Sutherland said "Panem" made me chuckle at the republicanism of it.
Trailers reveal the whole story because the studios think they're like McDonald's restaurants where people want to know exactly what they're getting...
Like a 70's Disaster Movie. The Documentary and all that is said about it's production is more entertaining than the actual movie. Such waste. It is a tragedy.
It was released as Alien Cubed not Alien 3. I stated this fact at the time and with other movies taking the piss at Maths using the Squared sign instead of using the number 2. The creator is aware of this and states it. Yet you think it is the number 3. You watched and heard the video yet didnt.
A similar thing happened to Dark City. The director wanted the movie's premise to be a mystery until later on in the film, but the studio made him put in an opening narration which destroyed the mystery and atmosphere which was the film's greatest strength. Also, if you haven't seen Dark City, and like movies like Brazil and Blade Runner, I would highly recommend it. Just MAKE SURE YOU WATCH THE DIRECTOR'S CUT!! It's really an amazing movie experience.
Right on. Dark City is an incredible film, up there with Brazil and Blade Runner. Watch that, but I would prefer watching the director's cut more than the theatrical cut.
@@IAmATablecloth IMO even in the theatrical cut "Dark City" is a masterpiece. But I haven't seen the director's cut yet. Sadly it still hadn't been released in my country.
I Am Legend is another example, since the ending holds the meaning of the film and the title, and many of the changes from the book accentuate the ending. Instead, the ending was completely replaced, and now it's mostly remembered for having a terrible ending.
The book is always better, and I Am Legend is no exception. The movie was a decent alternate version of the story up until the woman and kid showed up, though.
I think the Last Action Hero is actually an objectively good movie for what it was trying to portray. Its a fun action flick with a lot of meta self referential material. Its deconstructionist, and points out how absurd a lot of the action movie tropes are but in the same regard, also does it in a loving way. To me it is really the culmination of Arnolds career from the 80s and also provides an excellent cautionary tale which is ... yes it is ok to be inspired by these heroes in movies ... but do not let that inspiration fall into delusion like Danny did in the beginning of the movie, because the real world is a lot more brutal then we give it credit for.
I'm going to agree with you. Last Action Hero doesn't work for the purpose of this video because it's a beloved piece of nostalgia. It's not just a send up to action movies, Hollywood, or a kid's movies. It didn't choose, but was edited well enough to be all of those things. It's not unusual for a movie to start as one thing and end as something else. If anything, using this example suggests that studio interference is not inherently bad. I still see LAH on TV from time to time decades later. That godawful Fantastic 4 remake won't get the same treatment. I think it's a situation where if you know the consequences of a studio's interference as a movie fan, you will understandably view it in a negative light. But too often, studio interference is "justified" by viewer reactions. Many films have test audiences that react to certain versions of events in a film. Look at the drastic changes done to Sonic because of the Internet backlash. Not all studio interference IS studio interference.
I remember seeing Last Action Hero in theaters as a kid. I totally got what it was trying to be. Part piss take, part action, all fun. I still immensely enjoy it as a beloved film from my childhood.
I enjoyed it when I first saw it and still enjoy it today. I have never understood why more people didn't like it. It's like...when it came out people just couldn't stand a film that doesn't take itself seriously but still has actual serious themes in the background. I learned long before the advent of Rotten Tomatoes not to listen to film critics.
I was at the opening night of the original Bladerunner here in Sydney some 30 years ago. I could not believe how BAD that tracked on ending was. It was 15 years later before I saw the "Directors Cut" with the dream sequence and original ending; which was playing to packed houses. "Brazil" was and is one of my favourite Gillian films; and fortunately we got the original ending when it was shown here in Australia. Can you imagine someone standing behind Da Vinci saying; "The smile, make it bigger, NO, bigger".
Another example; the Hobbit movies. They were being filmed as two movies. In the middle of production Warner Brothers told Peter Jackson the studio wanted 3 films. To end Desolation of Smaug & do the beginning of Battle of the Five Armies, Jackson had to have his crew / actors immediately create an hour of big budget action footage. Awful experience but a stretched out, mediocre 3rd film made Warners another $ billion. In the end $ is all that matters.
Not to mention a completely out of place and tacked on love triangle, that was cobbled together at the last minute, and had never been intended at any point during production, but studio's orders. Also, since there were multiple studios and as result executives, there were a lot of conflicting demands, rather than just trusting Jackson and company to do their job. Shame really. While I don't think The Hobbit was ever going to match Lord of the Rings in terms of sheer quality, and even though the movies themselves aren't bad, I'm really curious what a two film director's cut would have been like. One can only dream, though.
I wondered that it was the studios tampering, that changed a short novella into a ponderous three movie affair.. This surly was not the movie Jackson wanted, when he considered filming The Hobbit. Hitting it out of the park with Lord of the Rings, one suspects a sensitivity to Tolkien's tale. Something got in the way, the story became a theme park ride.
I think that it would have been great if 10 Cloverfield Lane ended right when the protagonist saw the alien ship. An ambiguous ending would have been better than what was released.
I agree. I love the fact that Goodman's character was right about the invasion, but I think the final scene is dragged out for too long and completely breaks the tone of the film. Just ending with her seeing the alien ship would have been enough.
an ending without fucking aliens at all would've been better. Ruined the movie and completely changed it. The movie wasn't about what was actually happening outside, its what was happening inside that house. Whatever is happening outside doesn't matter, yet they made everyone leave the theater thinking they just saw an alien movie when it was a psychological thriller about isolation.
disagreed fish if you ended without showing the alien ship, you have no nothing explaining why the women in the car was banging her fist to get into the shelter. No I think her seeing the air is clean only for her to spot the alien ship would had made the ending better and more in keeping with the original which had a dark ending too. That being said i enjoy the film.
Imagine if it was left ambiguous? If we were never revealed why the woman was trying to get in? It adds a mystique to the story. Also, it allows for us to focus our emotions on the real movie, the inside the shelter movie, and leave the theater with those emotions. Not "oh it was an alien invansion all along how bout that" emotions. It is lame and ruins the movie. Leave that shit a mystery, make it more interesting, and focus on the REAL plot.
I guess "Joker" is the antithesis of this - where a studio was actually bold enough to give a director free reign to deliver a subtle and unformulaic product. Joker was mega profitable, hopefully it'll set some kind of new precedent for taking risks and establishing character development over commercial multi-movie franchise concerns.
Ironically they didn't sabotage the movie but they did sabotage themselves by selling a large percentage of the movie to investors because they didn't believe it would be profitable.
ReactionVideoDotAvi Sometimes I wonder if film industry execs are smart at all. But maybe we only hear about failures because they make more entertaining headlines.
I think it wasn't sabotaged because it wasn't a big gamble at all. The director and Phoenix were heavily implied in the project to see it through and they were given a small budget with no prospect of a franchise and therefore no obligatory tie-ins with the rest of the films. They "accidentally" let this film happen while risking very little. Now that they actually saw it was profitable they are pulling a sequel out of their ass and they WILL interfere to force it within the larger universe.
I think WB is ruining their superhero franchise by constantly interfering with their films. Scenes were cut out of BvS, causing parts to not make sense, and both Suicide Squad and Justice League were victims of reshoots. Man of Steel made me think this would be my favorite movie series, but WB has turned it into a raging dumpster fire. When movie studios go through all the trouble of finding great writers, directors, and actors, they should probably take their hands off once shooting starts and let their film makers do their jobs.
And then comes out Joker, that is a very artistic and dark movie, and blows every other super hero movie away, but also, reveals something else... Its not only studios and directors that are afraid, theres a bunch of powerful folks that are scared about movies send a strong message. They are scared!
thats because the doom scene comes straight from an anime called Elfen Lied, where one of the main characters, Lucy, escapes the lab she's being kept in
Yep..there are flashes of subversion, like with the thing being used to kill and becoming damaged, but it all fell apart when they have to have the big laser shooting in the sky ending.
Haha, I believe Hollywood would probably put a "Hey, Totalitarianism ain't that bad!" ending in 1984 these days. Joss Whedon's Justice League cuts are also pretty funny, *spoiler* especially the scene where Cyborg and Flash robs Superman's grave while making funny quips. It was all shot like a Full House or Big Bang Theory episode, where they used a Plan 9 set they cobbled together in an afternoon. Flash decides to dig at normal speed (???). Cyborg glows in dark and is the worst person on earth to something conspicuous at night. At least they only had to dig 2 feet deep to find Superman's grave.
The problem is that these studios have these high level execs that try to impose their vision on a movie they know nothing about. It doesn't matter if the movie is a hit or a flop since these execs still make their money. Perhaps the studio board of directors should not allow execs to have any say in the creative aspects of the movie and leave that up to the movie director and producer. The exec's only concern should be in the financing and distribution of the movie and it's production budget.
You just hit the nail on the head with your comment about executives who need to be willing to take the blame when things go bad. That's one of the biggest issues. They want to tell the directors what to do, then when things go bad because they didn't go well, they want to step back and let that director take the blame.
I just finished working on my second small budget film (art dept.), and I can absolutely confirm your comment about the time restrictions that studios place on a project sabotaging its success. They want a film done in the absolute shortest amount of time possible, and that can be understood in the context of big business, high-dollar investment logic, but by placing arbitrary time restrictions on a project they undermine its chances of achieving the returns they aspire to from the very start. As you say, art by committee seldom works out well.
"Panic is a great way of resonating with the audience, if it's convincing." Another great example of palpable panic is when the reavers arrive at the opening scene of Serenity. If you've already seen the Firefly show, you know how dangerous they are. But if you haven't, all you have to go on are the reactions of the crew. And their panic is VERY convincing.
Or the hallway scene in Rogue One. Besides being a fucking amazing scene in so many other ways, just look at the faces of the rebels when Vader's lightsaber ignites. They know they're fucked, but they can't afford to NOT fight back, however futile it may be.
Fantastic Four 2015 has an excellent first hour that showed a bit of the Cronenberg style body-horror Josh Trank said he envisioned. I absolutely believe him and I would love for his cut to be released one day. The agony of The Thing, the grotesqueness of Mr. Fantastic, the obviously disturbing (and with historical implications hard to ignore) of a black Johnny Storm on fire... I wonder what he had in store for the last 45 minutes to an hour, because that portal BS last 30 minutes we know were not his choice. What was he planning for Sue to suffer? Maybe a little Verhoven's "Hollow Man" madness?
Trank was filming a Marvel Branded reboot of Chronicle. all the Trank parts are 'cut & paste' straight out of Chronicle and i really did NOT like that movie. Trank took more from Chronicle than from the actual source material. NO amount of reshoots could save it. and They got Doom ALL wrong in pretty much EVERY way possible except he was human, male, and of European ancestry, which describes half the people that appear in the movie. Trank's version probably ended with the earth being destroyed in a 5 way fight in which each person is fighting everyone else, at night, in the rain.
The ending of 10 Cloverfield Lane felt like from almost different movie - it magically turned from quite believable chilling movie into comics movie with superwoman. For me, the action scene in-grafted onto the ending damaged the movie.
Nikola Bornová I still like the film, but that last bit of the film really took me out of the mood. I had a suspicion that it was added on, I'm glad to see I was right.
Nikola Bornová It felt out of place because it wasn't intended to be there originally. Same with the Cloverfield Paradox, it was originally not intended to be a Cloverfield movie ...
John Carter was the subject of practically a civil war inside Disney as people inside Disney proper feared that Andrew Stanton, then a Pixar wunderkind, with a successful John Carter would signal a Pixar coup over Disney live-action in the same way they "took over" Disney animation in the decade prior. Could that be why TV and print ads for the film in the weeks before the premiere were as rare as actual Martians?
I personally like Last Action Hero, it's a fun Meta parody. I do understand the problems though. Fant4stic though seemed doomed to fail, I've seen it so many times with Fox's 'Marvel' movies in that they're just in name only with what they're called, their X-Men films are guilty of that too. They've hardly even touched the surface of what the Fantastic 4, the X-Men & villains are. That's why I feel the MCU has been successful, they (somewhat) care for the material they're based on (for the most part).
Boy are you wrong. Marvel Studios is just as guilty, if not moreso, of what you accuse Fox's movies of. The Winter Soldier bares little-to-no resemblance of the storyline from the comics, Avengers Assemble is a streamlined version with the wrong team, Thor Ragnarok, Iron Man 2 only bears one aspect of the Demon In A Bottle arc, Age of Ultron, Spider-Man Homecoming (Vulture himself is an "in name only" version of the villain), Captain America Civil War, and not to mention Guardians of the Galaxy. I like it as much as the next person, but James Gunn changed them from space cops to Space Pirates of the Carribean. Additionally, Josh Trank wanted to bring the Fantastic Four back to its roots, before everything went all cosmic.
: As soon as I saw the official cast announcement for F4 I called it. I knew it was going to be a train wreck. It wasn't that they were or are bad at their jobs. It's that it became immediately apparent they were going to go with the Fantastic Four being high school kids or college freshmen and/or sophomores, which was indicative of where the studio and Trank were targeting the film (see: "Chronicle"). Trank and the studio were making a variation of "Chronicle" but grafting it into a Marvel franchise. I really dug "Chronicle" but found the notion of this strategy to be not only insulting but also doomed to fail. Then the more that came out -- and didn't come out -- about production... well, it was doomed. (No pun intended.) The introduction of teen angst problems was drivel, as were the reworked backstories of the Four, and Ben Grimm was just a travesty. So was (not-Doctor) Doom. Add the clumsy retreading of the "Governments Are Dumb, But The Military Are Evil Geniuses Who Fail Forward" was extra insult to the injury. Yeah, the film was dark, but it wasn't the Fantastic Four, not even a tiny bit. I don't believe Josh Trank was right for the job, and the studio was really dense and shortsighted in their hiring of him... and then even worse in their eventual, inevitable meddling and trying to "save the project". Cast and crew did the best with what they had, but the other 70% of the whole thing was just an orgy of bad ideas and worse execution.
The Fant4stic trailer had so many scenes that were cut out. If Fox wouldn't have touched it, it would at least be unique. I have dreaded the MCU getting their hands on the X-Men because I already know what they are going to make. Most of their movies follow specific guidelines. The movie will fun and crowd pleasing, but that will be as far as it goes. It will be safe, sterile, and made by a committee with characters only developed enough to get the plot going. They will not go far enough to show the dynamic aspects of the X-Men mythos because these movies have to be for everyone. Fox at least took risks and some for sure didn't pay off, but we did get Logan, First Class, Days Of Future Past, Deadpool, and the first two films. I already know we will never get a Logan from Disney and that is what is so disappointing to me.
It's only real problem is that it was mismarketed. People thought it was the next Die Hard when, in fact, it was a parody/satire on Die Hard and other action films.
I worked as an assistant animator in the animation business doing commercials and features and working on multiple commercial failures because their stories stank and greed. Everything shot to a script and story-boarded out and the constant hunt for more investors. Thank goodness for the Beatles George Harrison, he'd been friends with and liked the Monty Python crew. So when he was asked to lend them some money he'd mortgaged his house and business to get The Life of Brian made. You're quite right when you said, ''Art by committee doesn't work''. You have one director with one vision, not multiple ones, especially when they're corporate.
I think execs see a filmmaker's work and assume their past success and style will carry over to their new movie, but are ignorant or arrogant towards the creative process and don't realize until the end that they're getting Fant4stic instead of a tone like The Avengers. It all comes back to their bad communication
Well said. I have recently watched three American films which began with interesting scenarios (for example, a time when currency is replaced by hours of life), but deteriorated into tedious car chases and fist- and gun-fights. I imagine that this was due to interference by the studios. It's a bit like allowing a book editor to completely rewrite the ending of a novel "No, no, Charles, we can't have that ambiguity. Pip and Estelle must end up getting married and having lots of kids. Then they can sing a big number at the end." Humbug!
Editing can improve a film if it improves cinematography instead of changing its tone. Obligatory mention of how the original Star Wars was saved in the edit, and how The Justice League became a mess for changing its mind and tried to copy The Avengers towards the end of the shooting.
I think what that proves is that movies are better if they're done collaboratively. George Lucas allowed the editor and actors to have constructive input into the project and the movie was richer for it, while in Justice League you have people in charge trying to strangle everyone's input for fear that they won't get exactly what they want.
The longer I've watched him, the more I've noticed we've in common taste wise. Maybe it's got something to do with us both being self deprecating, slightly poncey word smith Brits?
I think the points you make are all great. However, this is just one scenario out of dozens. Executives and committees are ruining movies for so many reasons, it's becoming the norm more than the exception. Even series which had previously been ground-breaking or handled well suddenly do a complete 180 and throw out everything fans liked about them (Ghostbusters, DC superhero films, live action remakes of Disney animated movies, anything with Star in the title, etc). But sadly, none of this matters. Because despite many of these movies being panned by fans, they still make $500+ million. In other words, no matter how bad the remake/sequel is, people still go and watch it. So from the mindset of a studio executive, they are a success. And they're not going to move away from meddling until they start losing money. And of course, they don't care about art. They have taken a system entirely about subjective opinions and taste and turned it into an assembly line. Which is exactly why they shouldn't be in the business of funding movies. They should go make predictable hardware products like smartphones or cars. But the irony is, Hollywood in the 1930s and 40s was also an assembly line. They just made hundreds of low cost films a year instead of dozens of high cost ones that current day Hollywood does. So if a movie didn't do well, they didn't care because there was ten more coming out next month. But today, if something like Iron Man 7 doesn't do well, the company is out $500 million. The root of the problem as I see it is Hollywood is bloated and needs to return to their old system of medium to low budget films. Which wouldn't send the shareholders and executives into a panic about taking risks.
I agree about the need for smaller films. With the old studio system, it was probably an advantage that they were making so many films, because the producers could only really ruin a few.
maxis2k I'd argue that given the amount of money that some of these movies make that they're totally in the right business and are definitely doing something right. You have to remember that these big studios aren't really in the business of making movies, they're really in the business of making money and movies just happen to be how they make their money. At the end of the day, the studios don't care that much how well received their film is, so long as it makes the money they want it to make then it's a success to them. This is also what the boards of these studios expect of their chief execs and if any studio chief starts making hugely popular movies that don't make money they'll soon find themselves out of a job.
@Riceball01 - Yes, but then you get big budget disasters like 'Ghost in the Shell', 'Batman v. Superman', 'Justice League', and ;Ghostbusters' that actually jeopardize the studios' profit margins because the money spent making AND MARKETING the movie in question (people often don't take into account the TOTAL budgets, wherein marketing and distribution account for doubling or tripling the amount spent on production itself) just cannot be justified against the box office returns. It used to be that home video sales and overseas box office revenues could salvage these movies, but that is no longer the case.
Brazil is one of my favorite movies! I first saw it when I was around 12-13 years old and I loved it. I can't remember if I ever saw it with the altered "happy" ending though.
Also this really explains why the ending of 10 Cloverfield Lane was so irritating. I thought the alien si-fi stuff didn't really fit with the lore built around the first Cloverfield movie. The first movie (and especially the viral marketing) really hinted at the monster being something awoken from the deep sea and not so much "alien invasion" (or not intelligent invasion at least). I wish they hadn't tacked the sequel on to the Cloverfield franchise because the ending is too much like War of the Worlds and undermines the lore.
More Gun Free Man Well the scene with Andrew from Chronicle at the hospital was inspired from Akira, it dosent surprise me if he did it again. Also whilst I'm not a massive fan of Elfen Lied that part was awesome.
I didn't think Elfen Lied was great (Gunslinger Girl is much better IMO), but it's an anime which could actually be made into a good film. A tight, contained story, no weird character designs that won't translate to real life. But it would have to be at least a hard R rating, preferably an X. (I know it's now NC-17, but X is just cooler.)
When I first saw Brazil, I thought it had a great ending. My sister watched it later and was wondering what I was talking about, it turns out there was a scratch on the dvd that jumped my viewing from the 'escape' to the credits because I cleaned the dvd before I put it back in the box my sister got to see the inbetween bit I missed. I kind of like my ending better.
The youth division 1970's was set up to let indie filmmakers do it the way they wanted and not interfere and SILENT RUNNING and AMERICAN GRAFFITTI was made as a result. Why can't they do that again? Silent Running was considered terrible by the studio but they still gave them final cut and did not interfere. they did this as an experiment, like engineers. Well try something new and when it doesn't work we will know not to do it that way again. But it did work and the rest is history.
Yeah, but your horror scene is deeply undermined when your villain looks like a crash test dummy. And I'm not saying that something like that can't be scary, but this was a person, not a dummy brought to life. It probably wouldn't be hard make a dummy look scary, in fact it might have actually been creepier if it was an actual dummy brought to life, but Fant4stic could have had "Dr. Doom" look better than that and have the scene be horrific. And I suppose maybe it's our fault for knowing what Dr. Doom looks like, but he has an iconic look that everyone has known for 60 years, same as the Fantastic Four, just make them look like the characters. Could you imagine the Darth Vader scene from Rogue One if he didn't look like Darth Vader? It would ruin the whole scene.
Yeah, his posture and the way he walks seems more like "chilling and strolling across the park" rather than "scarred man going in a rampage", the whole camera POV and the heads popping up like popcorn with underwhelming sound effects seems more comical than anything. The fact that I watched this same scene done better multiple times across other media didn't help either.
i always wished I could have lived to see the team up of Kubrik and Gilliam. That would have been an epic festival of bizarre weirdness and abstract avant garde idealism's lol
Death By Design Graphics they are both perfectionists who work in different styles. In theory it would be amazing but in reality it would be a disaster.
You're probably right but I still would have liked to see it regaardless. They aren't so different though I definitely get a Gilliam kinda vibe from a clockwork orange, (that bizarre dark comedyish kind of vibe) it always makes me think of fear and loathing in las vegas for some reason, but also trainspotting too. Both the directors of those movies borrowed some aspects of storytelling and shooting styles from him I believe.
Death By Design Graphics Shame so many great directors are dead. Still Gilliam working with someone equally bonkers like Lynch or Cronenberg would be great
Wow man, wow. WHAT an essay. Thank you so much for producing this, incredible and quality, content. And that set up of you and the lamp, please keep it. So intimate. I dont know what more I can do in terms of thanks, other than continue to watch your work. You're really helping people like me out, people who want an education on and about films, so, thank you! And keep up the incredible work!!
That cut Blade Runner scene just blew my mind. I have very vague memories of it, and the accompanying voice over throughout the film, and this is the first time since childhood hearing and seeing that.
I don't know but I watched the last action hero at least 3 times when I was a kid. It wasn't that bad. It was very funny but at the same time kinda scary at some point. I still remember the last arc when I thought the Arnold was gonna die and the kid was gonna end up like Arnold's movie child. The bogeyman figure was the most scary though. I almost cried when the kid had to let Arnold comeback in order to save him and never be able to meet him again. The film was cheesy but very entertaining and had many different tone which made it unique at least for me. Kinda bias but I love every movie Arnold in.
Fantastic. This was your best video essay by far. You're such an intelligent, well spoken person. You're snarky, but you're not condescending. It's a wonderful balance. You're videos are very well edited, and your speaking volume is perfect. You do a lot of work for these essay's, and I really appreciate all of that as I'm just an amateur editor myself. I'd subscribe again if I could. Keep doing you, man. Well done
I actually think The Thing being in constant pain could have been removed, honestly. The movie would already have been rather dark with out that, we, didn't really need that.
Interesting vid. Would love to see some of these studios get their act together in terms of the cutting room floor stuff that's sitting in their vaults and (after an appropriate amount of time has passed since the title's release) cobble the original vision/intent together into something watchable/releasable. They could call them the 'Cutting Room Floor Cut' - and rerelease the film with alternate versions (like Criterion's 'Brazil'). So much stuff has been shot that has never been seen. I would LOVE to see alternate versions of Solo, Justice League, Fantastic Four, Dark Phoenix - and other high concept big budget films that dramatically 'changed horses mid-stream' - with extensive reshoots.
I am glad you aren't antagonistic towards the idea that a studio needs to make money. Far too often people are antagonistic towards people for spending money to make money, always forgetting that it doesn't matter how critically successful a product is, if it bankrupts the studio.
I know they had to make the fantastic 4 to keep the rights to the property bit you are 100% correct in that I could have been a very dark very good movie. The fact that the cool parts fro. The cool parts in the trailer where not even in the movie and says it all.
Great blog, you've added a subscriber! Personally, I love Last Action Hero - the fact that it's tonally a complete mess could almost be considered a meta-commentary on movies - it can't be consistent because every movie inhabits its own universe. Plus, you've got Arnie at his peak, Charles Dance as a great villain, Ian McKellen's first Hollywood role, even a not-too-annoying kid actor (very rare for the eighties). If you remade LAH now, you would have the real world as realistically coloured, and then have them plunged into teal and blue when they go through the screen!
@@dericjames2018 So you're going to ignore that Raimi never bothered hiring a writer who understood Venom, or sticking with Venom as the movie's sole villain and saving New Goblin and Sandman for a future sequel?
@@SirBlackReeds The original villains Raimi wanted for Spiderman 3 were New Goblin and Sandman. Venom was only added due to Avi Arad pressuring him into having him in there for fan service.
I agree with the position in this video, of course - but I kind of want to make a case for the other side, too. I've been doing my own short films for a while, and at my own small scale - as I've been collaborating with other writers and co-directors, there have been situations similar to "studio interference." Of course it was between collaborators and artists who both wanted the project to be its best, but the conversations were comparable. And they were a good thing. I'm not saying every writer needs babysitting, but I know I've benefited from being able to turn to someone more removed from a project and asking what they think works. It's definitely possible for a creator to get so caught up in their own story that they lose their ability to see the "Bigger Picture." I'm not arguing that studios "need" to interfere or anything, but I think there are many cases where a dynamic between someone more artisticly-focused and someone more logistically-focused can combine to make a greater product. In my own cases, when either I or a collaborator are making the case that a project could be changed to be more marketable or appealing, it's not out of greed for money. It's because we want to make something that people want to watch, and we want it to be something that we want to watch, too. Not that we're catering to the lowest common denominator, but we don't want to lose sight of what was appealing about the idea in the first place. For instance, I made a Batman fan film back in 2019 - and it covered a sort of retelling of the events leading up to the origin of Batman and the Joker. It was a film written for Batman fans, and there needed to be payoff for them watching. What was appealing about the idea was seeing the characters become the iconic versions of themselves. As I was writing it, sometimes there were questions about how close Bruce should be to becoming Batman, or if the Joker should ever even put on his makeup - and I kind of had to step outside of the story and ask myself if I would be satisfied watching the movie if there wasn't any gratifying payoff in that sense. Even if the story was complete with its character arcs and was satisfying in an artistic sense, it was meant to appeal to Batman fans. The idea of the story was just as important as its artistic qualities. So as much as the artist inside of me was satisfied, the Batman fan had to be satisfied, too. I guess I say that just because there's a benefit to looking at films in that way, too, in my opinion. And I think it's even what draws a lot of creators towards creating in the first place. We see the landscape of a genre and want to influence it in some way - and we want our projects to have a certain audience and exist in a certain genre and have a certain impact. And that's the goal of the "studio mindset," too. I'm sure there are plenty of "money-hungry" executives, but I'm also sure that they could say the same things about films regardless of money, but just with an interest in audience appeal - which isn't a useless thing to care about. We don't have to be so pretentious that we pretend that films don't need to have any audience appeal. Again, not to say that "studio meddling" with films is a good thing, but it is useful for creators to have conversations where they can separate themselves from their artistic mindset and consider what they're creating from a broader standpoint, and to consider their audience.
I personally have to disagree that Ridley Scott's cut of Blade Runner being better than the studio cut. Implying Decker is too a replicant ruins all symbolism with Roy saving him at the end.
Roy is dying. Deckard is in mortal danger, but he is not dying. Roy's epiphany it that not only HIS life is sacred, but all life, animals, humans, replicants, including the life of his enemies. So saving Deckard life (for two days of for fifty years) maintains the symbolism intact, no matter if Deckard is a replicant or not. Also, Roy probably assumes that Deckard is human, replicants and humans are almost indistinguishable without exhaustive testing.
@@juanausensi499 And the arguement for Deckard being human is summed up by that one point, that the film doesn't have a redemptive arc if Deckard is artificial. I think there is more evidence to suggest he is a replicant than there is suggesting he's human.
Ah, but you are missing the fact that it's Gaff and not Deckard who that has that redemptive arc in the story. He's clearly human (who makes crippled androids?!) and he let's Deckard and Rachel go at the end. Gaff is the human hero of the film.
Cool video, I just have one issue: The last ten pages of "1984" by George Orwell have nothing to do with Winston and they are actually hopeful. "1984" is one of my favourite books, I've read it more than a dozen times, and I used to make the exact same mistake. If one assumes the end of the story is the end of the book, "1984" is incredibly depressing. If one realizes the end of the book is, in fact, not the end of the story, and Winston, and the REAL end of the book is the sole appendix on Newspeak, then one realizes Orwell's ultimate message: fascist dictatorships, like those of Oceania and those used by Orwell to model Oceania, are temporary and can never last. The first line of the appendix is: "Newspeak was the official language of Oceania and had been devised to meet the ideological needs of Ingsoc, or English Socialism." The first thing to notice about this line is it is written in the past tense. Newspeak WAS the official language of Oceania. It HAD BEEN devised to meet the ideological needs of Ingsoc. The last line of the appendix, which comes after a brief discussion on the difficulty of translating Shakespeare, Milton, and Swift, goes as follows: "It was chiefly in order to allow time for the preliminary work of translation that the final adoption of Newspeak had been fixed for so late a date as 2050." We aren't told if the full adoption of Newspeak was ever accomplished, but reading the rest of the appendix implies that it wasn't. Oceania and the world that destroyed Winston Smith didn't even last 100 years and was finished before 2050. "The Handmaid's Tale," by Margaret Atwood, has a similar conceit: academics in the future examining the records of a past fallen authoritarian state. The appendix of "1984" is written the same way.
Good stuff; makes me think of so much of what Warner Bros. has done in recent memory, from the DC films (Snyder was a flawed choice from the get-go, but the demand to cram so many characters into Batman v Superman was likely a studio choice), to how they mismanaged the Hobbit movies, even to the new Harry Potter spinoff. Each has smacked of executive interference to a level where it's not about improving the product or making it more marketable, but instead smacks of "why did you bother agreeing to this script/director/vision in the first place if you just wanted to alter so much of it?"
@9:25 “Last Action Lad & Alien Cubed were the result of studios not knowing what they wanted” I would instead suggest that those lackluster movies, like the ones you mentioned, are the result of studios not knowing what WE wanted. (A dubious distinction perhaps, especially given that their aim is to broaden appeal) My opinion very much echoes that of your own with regard to a general distaste of executive meddling in service to the bottom line, particularly in late stages of production. It’s a practice that, when benign, can rob a film of some of its uniqueness & creativity, but at its worst can result in spineless studio execs corrupting a filmmaker’s vision entirely!
Oddly, sometimes studios intentionally sabotage their films for political reasons. Gilliam's 'The Adventures of Baron Munchausen' was hampered on release to balance their internal books and to make a departing David Puttnam look bad.
There are a number of cases where studios deliberately don't publicise and don't widely release a film. Ostensibly because they think the movie won't make money anyway, but really because they are pissed that the director didn't play ball. As long as the execs get their bonuses, what do they care?
Cos JL was just generically plain it wasn't a film ruined by any twist being changed it was just overall generic, its not like it was a potentially good film that got undermined it was just a rushed out WB version of The Avengers which hadn't introduced all the characters properly before it was released.
@@optimisticwhovian1726 It actually was a potentially good film. After all, Zack Snyder had an actual plan going in. Personally, I hold Whedon at fault the most. Snyder made a bad call, sadly.
@@SirBlackReeds How is Whedon at fault? The studio decided to replace Snyder with a director whose filmaking style is incredibly different to him halfway through production. It's like getting a skilled cartoonist to finish off a realistic painting.
Sometimes I think Hollywood executives get caught up in the game "Justify Your Job." They're afraid somebody higher up will decide that their job, department, project isn't necessary, so they want to prove "yes, I have a role and I am productive," and end up being unable to leave well enough alone.
I enjoyed this video a lot more than I thought I would; I thought it would be a cheap rant but you were very intelligent with what you presented and was reasonably honest toward both sides of the argument. I really can't fault studios for pulling back and trying to be "safe," because if they don't make money they don't make any more movies, and having some film fall short of their potential is better than not getting those really great films that do occasionally get made. And I understand that it can be hard to make the judgement call of what needs to change; which movies do you preserve that artistic intention and which ones do you turn into a cash cow, what needs to change to make a movie profitable, those are questions that are REALLY hard to answer when a movie is still in production, and even harder when you haven't even started filming. I'm still going to find movies where I wish they had done things differently, but I try to be forgiving. Except for the new Star Wars episodes. Those were handled far too poorly by a company that knows better, and there is no forgiveness for them.
What is going on with the signature lava lamp, it's shining green, this is an affront to decency. When i watch GRS i expect a well structured and thought-out theory, an interesting subject and a reddish orange lava lamp. The first two you delivered but not the third.....NOT THE THIRD!!!
I watched the movie Arrival recently and noticed a problem similar to what you discussed here. At first it seemed like it was saying something about life being a series of events rather than a beginning and an end, which could have been cool. Then it seemed like it was either going address the folly of a search for meaning (the main character is a professor of language who is tasked with deciphering something is assumed to be a language) or the folly of the fear of the unknown (society starts to fall apart just because some aliens arrived and did nothing). Either of these would've been cool. It then develops its conflict around human fear of the unknown by having major world powers about to declare war on these (so far) peaceful aliens. The movie then dues ex machinas a happy ending and acts goes back to the message that life is a series of moments. I consider the first part of the movie "Arrival" to be a well thought out setup, the middle to be a good development of the theme introduced in the first part, and the end to be an asinine waste of potential. This is to say, I think the producers didn't respect the writer or give the writer enough creative freedom.
One film that really suffered with this was Michael Mann's The Keep. The whole production was a nightmare, with interference, the death of the special effects technician leaving them with a load of footage they didn't know what to do with, and a hideously truncated post period resulting in, amongst other things, terrible sound. And yet I still think it managed to rise above all that and become one of the most atmospheric and intelligent horror films of the 80s. If everything had gone to plan it would have been amazing!
8:49 This one made me laught of loud for real! Cudos. And a good look on the whole matter. I really love the great quality that your channel if putting out, keep it up :)
Thanks for this, a good essay. In addition to your point about studio businesses and the bottom line, I would add another element. It’s not exactly cockup before conspiracy, rather it’s cockup ON TOP of conspiracy. I work in the creative industries and have done since the 80s. In addition to fighting the bean counters (who generally do their job well enough) there is a clear and present danger from execs and other powerful but inexperienced (in the worst cases, untalented) types who think they know best. Sure, watching a lot of movies can give you insight - Tarantino is a good example - but it also needs talent, some experience, common sense and an ability to play well with others. Everyone seems to know how to make movies, write songs and... add any creative endeavour here. It might look like too many cooks from the outside, and it may we’ll be, but it’s also often inexperienced, many times untalented and, in the 80s at least, coked up business types who feel they are the undiscovered Speilberg messing things up.
Craptastic Four was doomed from the beginning,even before Fox,screwed everything up.The director never understood the source material.The FF comic,was never a grimdark body horror story,it's oldschool,lighthearted adventure. Turning the FF into bodyhorror is just as stupid as turning Batman into silly camp,like they did with the Schumacher movies,it doesn't suit the source material.
Well, not entirely true for Batman. The comics have been around a long time, and he has been campy at times. And that includes the Adam West Batman, which included a movie that people don't think nearly as little of as Schumacher's movies. Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb ;) Campy Batman can work. That said, doing that as a sequel to more serious/dark Batman's... not smart. And the Schumacher movies also screwed up in other ways, like with the character bloat. A prime example, Two-Face added nothing of value to the third movie (and was horribly handled as well). But yeah, Fantfourstic should never have been given to a director who didn't want to make a Fantastic Four movie.
Campy Batman could work just fine, though for a more youth orientated audience. Batman: The Brave and the Bold, for example, from a decade ago, was pretty campy, and ran for three seasons (though personally, I far prefer TAS). I'd also hazard that the Adam West Batman show will be in people's minds far longer than a show like Gotham. Likewise, the Schumacher movies were also aimed more at kids, and while the camp-factor might be high, I'd say the movies had a lot of other issues (like character bloat and product placement) that were a bigger factor than Arnold's ice puns.
@@yeet2787 What's really impressive about that bit isn't the Shark Repellent Bat Spray (nor the Barracuda, Whale, and Manta-Ray repellent varieties), but rather that a shark spent a good minute and twenty seconds chomping on Batman's leg, and it didn't even get through his costume. That's some high quality (bat) spandex!
I agree, the dark hate filled, everyone for themselves, crap is COMPLETELY the wrong tone for Fantastic Four. Also, they need to have characters who are smart enough to flip the light switch ON when they are in the room. Trank was filming a Marvel Branded reboot of Chronicle. all the Trank parts are 'cut & paste' straight out of Chronicle and i really did NOT like that movie. Trank took more from Chronicle than from the actual source material. NO amount of reshoots could save it. and They got Doom ALL wrong in pretty much EVERY way possible except he was human, male, and of European ancestry, which describes half the people that appear in the movie. It's pretty sad that the Corman FF movie is better than the next 3 yet it was not allowed to be released
@Kyros Droztamyr You're being very petty. The fact is that the 2015 had every "right" to use that style because guess what, it contains no significance. It's just a style, that's it.
Really enjoyed this video! FF definitely feels like a movie divided and it is so frustrating. Trank really should have been the perfect director coming off of Chronicle. Can't help but to think FF could have been great - had the studio just let talented people do their work and stay out of the way.
I have always liked Alien3, it's dark and nihilistic, perfect for the evolution of Ripley's character. But I definitely see what you mean with all of these examples. For shame, Hollywood.
This reminds me so much of Wonder Woman: the entire film is about Diana figuring out there isn't a big bad guy but people do bad stuff. Then in the last scene everything is reverted because: surprise! there was a bad guy after all. If you stop watching the movie a few minutes before it ends it's still a pretty great movie, but I have no doubt in my mind the weird ending is because of studio interference.
I was enjoying the movie (even though it has week side characters and the visual effects are lacking)
And then
BIG BAD GUY! Because war exists because a god of war is making people fight, is not like after he is killed people still wage wars.
But Ares' storyline in that filn was to set up: he had nothing to do with that war and to proof Diana's natural powers
There was no bad guy after all because even after he was killed there were still wars:
World war ii
Zods invasion
Doomsday
STEPPENWOLF
Darkseid
Even before diana killed ares, the enemy was talking about surrendering. And they did.
I agree completely. It has a chilling moment where Diana has to accept that war will wage on no matter what and she can’t do anything about it. Would have been a poignant ending over the studio-mandated “twist villain.”
@@EmersonFlemingEmRock13 but war does rage on even after ares is killed. The enemy military decide to surrender even before ares is killed. Not because Ares is killed. Ares reveals that he doesn't start war but he just gives them ideas for weapons. War is human nature. That's why Diana says about the humans "they're everything you say but so much more". Meaning she knows ares is right about humans' tendency for war but that's not their defining trait.
Studio execs need to start taking the fall for this shit, instead of the director often taking the heat while the anonymous corporate worms slink away in the background unscathed.
@Gordon Freeman, yes absolutely, but at the same time the fear of getting fired accumulates to not taking risks and then interfere too much in the artistic direction the movie makers intend to go and we are full circle at the beginning of the problem... Only solution is to not go to movies who have no art in them at all, just marketing and bullshit tools for money, but when I see the boxoffice records it obviously isn't like that...
That's why Alan Smithee is such a prolific director.
Gordon Freeman for real!!
@@matthiasblum6555 Amerivans are too tired and overworked to make rational financial decisions. To compound this, they are fed economic bullshit left and right generated by interest groups to keep them from financial literacy. The american economy has now become reliant on its people's financial illiteracy. If they start making good decisions, the economy will collapse.
Sadly that's always been their policy. When David Fincher warned Brandywine that the movie they were forcing him to make - Alien 3 - was going to be a massive trash fire, he stated in interviews that the execs told him they KNEW it was going to be a massive flop, but didn't care because Fincher was going to take the fall anyway.
One of many different equally legit reasons for him to publicly disown the movie, and why it makes him want to vomit when sycophantic edge lords proclaim how Alien 3 was the greatest movie ever made.
1. Make a project. 2. Give to a young and creative director with a unique vision. 3. Kick him/her off and reeshoot 90% of the movie because the director had a unique vision.
This what the fuck
@PHILL SHIVELY yeah, cuz Snyder's "unique vision" won him so much praise in his previous DC efforts. Give me a break. Keeping his hands off of future DC projects is the best thing they can do. Aquaman looks great and he has virtually nothing to do with it. It's bright, visually interesting, energetic, humorous... you know, everything that a Zack Snyder film is not.
Great films: Matrix, Salt, Dark Knight, Twilight, Enemy of the State, X Men 2000, Titanic, Avatar blue space aliens, Men in black, Harry Potter and the goblet of fire, Nasuica of the Valley of the wind, Angels Egg, Akira, Fight Club, Fast and Furious and 2 fast 2 furious, Austin Powers, James Bond, and many more.
@@ruraladventurer1884 I guess we'll never see his unique vision because people really don't care to see it. Even when Snyder himself said the studio interfered heavily with BvS, people still relentlessly blamed him for the film's shortcomings, yet with Fant4stic, the studio gets blamed and everyone rallies behind Josh Trank. Justice League was just awful because it was directed by someone with absolutely no artistic vision (Joss Whedon).
@PHILL SHIVELY I'll see your Justice League and raise you Suicide Squad. SS could have been decent, but the studio butchered it.
Talking about the Fantastic Four and the executives who signed off on the script - I think you're hitting upon a dirty secret. I have nothing to base this on but a hunch, but I think that when these big tentpole release movies go totally off the rails like Fant4stic did, the people who signed off simply didn't read the thing. People are lazy and cocky and don't want to put in the work so they sign off on something they only have a vague notion of, and then they're genuinely shocked when they see what they get.
I'm now convinced every tragedy on film could be improved by changing the ending to "And then everyone started dancing."
Fun fact, "and then everyone started dancing" was the original ending for Citizen Kane.
And Salo...the one film where having everyone dance at the end, as the director originally intended, makes the film almost worse...For those of you lucky enough to have never seen Salo, just imagine long drawn out torture scenes with political commentary followed up with a musical number. Some things just don't work together.
Why do you think musicals exist??
Wich can be improved by adding "due to the spasms induced by the the toxic gas in the air"
You forgot to add "to Bros"
If studios want a safe business model they should be selling bread, not making movies.
That's the funny and only thing I got from the "Hunger Games" series of films; never read the books, but the way that Sutherland said "Panem" made me chuckle at the republicanism of it.
Trailers reveal the whole story because the studios think they're like McDonald's restaurants where people want to know exactly what they're getting...
This is a trash take. Everything is a commodity, everything requires profit.
"Alien 3's production is perhaps a more entertaining story...than Alien 3"
Alright, I'm subscribed.
Like a 70's Disaster Movie. The Documentary and all that is said about it's production is more entertaining than the actual movie. Such waste. It is a tragedy.
It was released as Alien Cubed not Alien 3. I stated this fact at the time and with other movies taking the piss at Maths using the Squared sign instead of using the number 2.
The creator is aware of this and states it. Yet you think it is the number 3. You watched and heard the video yet didnt.
I like it. It's got issues but I liked it.
@@aidanmagill6769 It's not a bad movie, just that it's impossible to top Alien and Aliens
Aliens 3 gets a lot of flack yet Alien 4 is the elephant in the room
A similar thing happened to Dark City. The director wanted the movie's premise to be a mystery until later on in the film, but the studio made him put in an opening narration which destroyed the mystery and atmosphere which was the film's greatest strength. Also, if you haven't seen Dark City, and like movies like Brazil and Blade Runner, I would highly recommend it. Just MAKE SURE YOU WATCH THE DIRECTOR'S CUT!! It's really an amazing movie experience.
The original is defamatory and should be erased from history
Right on. Dark City is an incredible film, up there with Brazil and Blade Runner. Watch that, but I would prefer watching the director's cut more than the theatrical cut.
Plus, in the directors cut you can hear Jennifer Connelly's real voice singing😍
@@IAmATablecloth IMO even in the theatrical cut "Dark City" is a masterpiece. But I haven't seen the director's cut yet. Sadly it still hadn't been released in my country.
And, naturally, Netflix doesn’t have it.
I Am Legend is another example, since the ending holds the meaning of the film and the title, and many of the changes from the book accentuate the ending. Instead, the ending was completely replaced, and now it's mostly remembered for having a terrible ending.
studio panic on legend cause test screening show the audience just didn't like it either. so the studio went for the a more Hollywood one
test audience are normally California or new York i think so that who judging your films first
Yes. The terrible CGI aside, it's a genuinely good film up until the woman and the child appear. What could have been...
I am Legend was still bad even with the original ending. It's not even close to the books.
The book is always better, and I Am Legend is no exception. The movie was a decent alternate version of the story up until the woman and kid showed up, though.
I think the Last Action Hero is actually an objectively good movie for what it was trying to portray. Its a fun action flick with a lot of meta self referential material. Its deconstructionist, and points out how absurd a lot of the action movie tropes are but in the same regard, also does it in a loving way. To me it is really the culmination of Arnolds career from the 80s and also provides an excellent cautionary tale which is ... yes it is ok to be inspired by these heroes in movies ... but do not let that inspiration fall into delusion like Danny did in the beginning of the movie, because the real world is a lot more brutal then we give it credit for.
I'm going to agree with you. Last Action Hero doesn't work for the purpose of this video because it's a beloved piece of nostalgia. It's not just a send up to action movies, Hollywood, or a kid's movies. It didn't choose, but was edited well enough to be all of those things. It's not unusual for a movie to start as one thing and end as something else. If anything, using this example suggests that studio interference is not inherently bad. I still see LAH on TV from time to time decades later. That godawful Fantastic 4 remake won't get the same treatment. I think it's a situation where if you know the consequences of a studio's interference as a movie fan, you will understandably view it in a negative light. But too often, studio interference is "justified" by viewer reactions. Many films have test audiences that react to certain versions of events in a film. Look at the drastic changes done to Sonic because of the Internet backlash. Not all studio interference IS studio interference.
I remember seeing Last Action Hero in theaters as a kid.
I totally got what it was trying to be. Part piss take, part action, all fun. I still immensely enjoy it as a beloved film from my childhood.
I enjoyed it when I first saw it and still enjoy it today. I have never understood why more people didn't like it. It's like...when it came out people just couldn't stand a film that doesn't take itself seriously but still has actual serious themes in the background. I learned long before the advent of Rotten Tomatoes not to listen to film critics.
I was at the opening night of the original Bladerunner here in Sydney some 30 years ago. I could not believe how BAD that tracked on ending was. It was 15 years later before I saw the "Directors Cut" with the dream sequence and original ending; which was playing to packed houses. "Brazil" was and is one of my favourite Gillian films; and fortunately we got the original ending when it was shown here in Australia. Can you imagine someone standing behind Da Vinci saying; "The smile, make it bigger, NO, bigger".
Tacked on
@@gbear1005 wow, you've got time!
wow, I've got time!
Another example; the Hobbit movies. They were being filmed as two movies. In the middle of production Warner Brothers told Peter Jackson the studio wanted 3 films. To end Desolation of Smaug & do the beginning of Battle of the Five Armies, Jackson had to have his crew / actors immediately create an hour of big budget action footage. Awful experience but a stretched out, mediocre 3rd film made Warners another $ billion. In the end $ is all that matters.
Not to mention a completely out of place and tacked on love triangle, that was cobbled together at the last minute, and had never been intended at any point during production, but studio's orders. Also, since there were multiple studios and as result executives, there were a lot of conflicting demands, rather than just trusting Jackson and company to do their job. Shame really.
While I don't think The Hobbit was ever going to match Lord of the Rings in terms of sheer quality, and even though the movies themselves aren't bad, I'm really curious what a two film director's cut would have been like. One can only dream, though.
And they still left out Tom Bombadil and instead lengthened Radagast the brown.
Don't forget Jackson didn't do the pre-production people, that was Del Toro.
Even two movies would have been too much but I guess moneyyyyyyyyy. Damn studios.
I wondered that it was the studios tampering, that changed a short novella into a ponderous three movie affair.. This surly was not the movie Jackson wanted, when he considered filming The Hobbit. Hitting it out of the park with Lord of the Rings, one suspects a sensitivity to Tolkien's tale. Something got in the way, the story became a theme park ride.
I think that it would have been great if 10 Cloverfield Lane ended right when the protagonist saw the alien ship. An ambiguous ending would have been better than what was released.
Exactly! Her reaction of disbelieve was the perfect note to end it on. It's still a great movie, but the ending feels so weird now.
I agree. I love the fact that Goodman's character was right about the invasion, but I think the final scene is dragged out for too long and completely breaks the tone of the film. Just ending with her seeing the alien ship would have been enough.
an ending without fucking aliens at all would've been better. Ruined the movie and completely changed it. The movie wasn't about what was actually happening outside, its what was happening inside that house. Whatever is happening outside doesn't matter, yet they made everyone leave the theater thinking they just saw an alien movie when it was a psychological thriller about isolation.
disagreed fish if you ended without showing the alien ship, you have no nothing explaining why the women in the car was banging her fist to get into the shelter. No I think her seeing the air is clean only for her to spot the alien ship would had made the ending better and more in keeping with the original which had a dark ending too. That being said i enjoy the film.
Imagine if it was left ambiguous? If we were never revealed why the woman was trying to get in? It adds a mystique to the story. Also, it allows for us to focus our emotions on the real movie, the inside the shelter movie, and leave the theater with those emotions. Not "oh it was an alien invansion all along how bout that" emotions. It is lame and ruins the movie. Leave that shit a mystery, make it more interesting, and focus on the REAL plot.
I guess "Joker" is the antithesis of this - where a studio was actually bold enough to give a director free reign to deliver a subtle and unformulaic product. Joker was mega profitable, hopefully it'll set some kind of new precedent for taking risks and establishing character development over commercial multi-movie franchise concerns.
Ironically they didn't sabotage the movie but they did sabotage themselves by selling a large percentage of the movie to investors because they didn't believe it would be profitable.
ReactionVideoDotAvi Sometimes I wonder if film industry execs are smart at all. But maybe we only hear about failures because they make more entertaining headlines.
I think it wasn't sabotaged because it wasn't a big gamble at all. The director and Phoenix were heavily implied in the project to see it through and they were given a small budget with no prospect of a franchise and therefore no obligatory tie-ins with the rest of the films. They "accidentally" let this film happen while risking very little. Now that they actually saw it was profitable they are pulling a sequel out of their ass and they WILL interfere to force it within the larger universe.
I think WB is ruining their superhero franchise by constantly interfering with their films. Scenes were cut out of BvS, causing parts to not make sense, and both Suicide Squad and Justice League were victims of reshoots. Man of Steel made me think this would be my favorite movie series, but WB has turned it into a raging dumpster fire. When movie studios go through all the trouble of finding great writers, directors, and actors, they should probably take their hands off once shooting starts and let their film makers do their jobs.
Speaking of WB... "NARF!" -Pinky
And then comes out Joker, that is a very artistic and dark movie, and blows every other super hero movie away, but also, reveals something else...
Its not only studios and directors that are afraid, theres a bunch of powerful folks that are scared about movies send a strong message. They are scared!
WB shouldnt make another movie universe... just make standalone movies, or just dont rush the crossovers in justice league
You liked Man of Steel?
the Fan4stic Doom scene is on dark psychological anime levels of terror, i love it
Exactly..I just wish we'd got o see what the director actually wanted to make...instead they gutted his film and ruined his reputation in the process.
thats because the doom scene comes straight from an anime called Elfen Lied, where one of the main characters, Lucy, escapes the lab she's being kept in
Yep..there are flashes of subversion, like with the thing being used to kill and becoming damaged, but it all fell apart when they have to have the big laser shooting in the sky ending.
@@bloodydove5718 The scene from Akira where Tetsuo scapes the hospital fits even better.
Haha, I believe Hollywood would probably put a "Hey, Totalitarianism ain't that bad!" ending in 1984 these days. Joss Whedon's Justice League cuts are also pretty funny, *spoiler* especially the scene where Cyborg and Flash robs Superman's grave while making funny quips. It was all shot like a Full House or Big Bang Theory episode, where they used a Plan 9 set they cobbled together in an afternoon. Flash decides to dig at normal speed (???). Cyborg glows in dark and is the worst person on earth to something conspicuous at night. At least they only had to dig 2 feet deep to find Superman's grave.
strydom666 Cyborg glows in the dark...I think I hear a certain insane programmer revving up his car.
Yea, he could have included Justice leauge as it has two distinct Feels, broody Zynder vision and Wonky Whedon. vision
That... actually is pretty ludicrous, now that you mention it.
The problem is that these studios have these high level execs that try to impose their vision on a movie they know nothing about. It doesn't matter if the movie is a hit or a flop since these execs still make their money. Perhaps the studio board of directors should not allow execs to have any say in the creative aspects of the movie and leave that up to the movie director and producer. The exec's only concern should be in the financing and distribution of the movie and it's production budget.
CORRECT!
Agreed.
Very true and at the same time very naive idea.
The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Avengers Age Of Ultron, Fant4stic, Green Lantern, Suicide Squad, Justice League are recent examples of studio interference.
You just hit the nail on the head with your comment about executives who need to be willing to take the blame when things go bad. That's one of the biggest issues. They want to tell the directors what to do, then when things go bad because they didn't go well, they want to step back and let that director take the blame.
I rather like The Last Action Hero
When you remember it, it's quite good. When you watch it, you can feel that the comidic timing is way off.
As do I, but only because it's so weird and poorly executed it's kind of entertaining.
Make no mistake, these are highly trained attack dogs.
"Take his shoes?"
If God was a villain, he would have been me.
... one of my favorite films. I've seen it 3 or 4 times.
I just finished working on my second small budget film (art dept.), and I can absolutely confirm your comment about the time restrictions that studios place on a project sabotaging its success. They want a film done in the absolute shortest amount of time possible, and that can be understood in the context of big business, high-dollar investment logic, but by placing arbitrary time restrictions on a project they undermine its chances of achieving the returns they aspire to from the very start. As you say, art by committee seldom works out well.
I'm looking forward for your video about nostalgia exploitation in nowadays media.
The Shape of Water much? Ugh
"Panic is a great way of resonating with the audience, if it's convincing."
Another great example of palpable panic is when the reavers arrive at the opening scene of Serenity. If you've already seen the Firefly show, you know how dangerous they are. But if you haven't, all you have to go on are the reactions of the crew. And their panic is VERY convincing.
Or the hallway scene in Rogue One. Besides being a fucking amazing scene in so many other ways, just look at the faces of the rebels when Vader's lightsaber ignites. They know they're fucked, but they can't afford to NOT fight back, however futile it may be.
Speaking of John McTiernan, the Rollerball remake is also a textbook example of executives gutting a movie at the last minute.
Fantastic Four 2015 has an excellent first hour that showed a bit of the Cronenberg style body-horror Josh Trank said he envisioned. I absolutely believe him and I would love for his cut to be released one day. The agony of The Thing, the grotesqueness of Mr. Fantastic, the obviously disturbing (and with historical implications hard to ignore) of a black Johnny Storm on fire... I wonder what he had in store for the last 45 minutes to an hour, because that portal BS last 30 minutes we know were not his choice. What was he planning for Sue to suffer? Maybe a little Verhoven's "Hollow Man" madness?
Trank was filming a Marvel Branded reboot of Chronicle. all the Trank parts are 'cut & paste' straight out of Chronicle and i really did NOT like that movie. Trank took more from Chronicle than from the actual source material. NO amount of reshoots could save it. and They got Doom ALL wrong in pretty much EVERY way possible except he was human, male, and of European ancestry, which describes half the people that appear in the movie.
Trank's version probably ended with the earth being destroyed in a 5 way fight in which each person is fighting everyone else, at night, in the rain.
The ending of 10 Cloverfield Lane felt like from almost different movie - it magically turned from quite believable chilling movie into comics movie with superwoman. For me, the action scene in-grafted onto the ending damaged the movie.
Nikola Bornová I still like the film, but that last bit of the film really took me out of the mood. I had a suspicion that it was added on, I'm glad to see I was right.
It's a bit of a pity as Goodman is great in this movie.
DeViouS d well hello again.
Nikola Bornová It felt out of place because it wasn't intended to be there originally. Same with the Cloverfield Paradox, it was originally not intended to be a Cloverfield movie ...
goodial Yeah it was called the God Particle I think. Probably saw it and realise it was a turd so they slapped the Cloverfield brand on it.
John Carter was the subject of practically a civil war inside Disney as people inside Disney proper feared that Andrew Stanton, then a Pixar wunderkind, with a successful John Carter would signal a Pixar coup over Disney live-action in the same way they "took over" Disney animation in the decade prior. Could that be why TV and print ads for the film in the weeks before the premiere were as rare as actual Martians?
Such a shame, it was a good film
The books were great
Also, John Carter the movie was in development hell for decades (76-81 years in fact), switching within many companies like Warner Bros.
Yes the Lava lamp is back 😀😀😀
And with a sexy new dress!
Who killed the lava lamp?
What are you talking about? He always used a Lava lamp in these movie essays.
Dash go back and watch he's last couple of videos and you would see the almighty lava lamp missing.
*Joska Rifinsukr* IIRC Mother Nature.
So The Last Action Hero supposed to be more like Lèon: The Professional??
Woah.
I personally like Last Action Hero, it's a fun Meta parody.
I do understand the problems though.
Fant4stic though seemed doomed to fail, I've seen it so many times with Fox's 'Marvel' movies in that they're just in name only with what they're called, their X-Men films are guilty of that too. They've hardly even touched the surface of what the Fantastic 4, the X-Men & villains are. That's why I feel the MCU has been successful, they (somewhat) care for the material they're based on (for the most part).
The Vardon Yeah, but MCU villains have also been rather bland, the only ones that have stood out were Loki and Killmonger.
Boy are you wrong. Marvel Studios is just as guilty, if not moreso, of what you accuse Fox's movies of. The Winter Soldier bares little-to-no resemblance of the storyline from the comics, Avengers Assemble is a streamlined version with the wrong team, Thor Ragnarok, Iron Man 2 only bears one aspect of the Demon In A Bottle arc, Age of Ultron, Spider-Man Homecoming (Vulture himself is an "in name only" version of the villain), Captain America Civil War, and not to mention Guardians of the Galaxy. I like it as much as the next person, but James Gunn changed them from space cops to Space Pirates of the Carribean.
Additionally, Josh Trank wanted to bring the Fantastic Four back to its roots, before everything went all cosmic.
: As soon as I saw the official cast announcement for F4 I called it. I knew it was going to be a train wreck. It wasn't that they were or are bad at their jobs. It's that it became immediately apparent they were going to go with the Fantastic Four being high school kids or college freshmen and/or sophomores, which was indicative of where the studio and Trank were targeting the film (see: "Chronicle"). Trank and the studio were making a variation of "Chronicle" but grafting it into a Marvel franchise. I really dug "Chronicle" but found the notion of this strategy to be not only insulting but also doomed to fail. Then the more that came out -- and didn't come out -- about production... well, it was doomed. (No pun intended.)
The introduction of teen angst problems was drivel, as were the reworked backstories of the Four, and Ben Grimm was just a travesty. So was (not-Doctor) Doom. Add the clumsy retreading of the "Governments Are Dumb, But The Military Are Evil Geniuses Who Fail Forward" was extra insult to the injury. Yeah, the film was dark, but it wasn't the Fantastic Four, not even a tiny bit. I don't believe Josh Trank was right for the job, and the studio was really dense and shortsighted in their hiring of him... and then even worse in their eventual, inevitable meddling and trying to "save the project". Cast and crew did the best with what they had, but the other 70% of the whole thing was just an orgy of bad ideas and worse execution.
The Fant4stic trailer had so many scenes that were cut out. If Fox wouldn't have touched it, it would at least be unique. I have dreaded the MCU getting their hands on the X-Men because I already know what they are going to make. Most of their movies follow specific guidelines. The movie will fun and crowd pleasing, but that will be as far as it goes. It will be safe, sterile, and made by a committee with characters only developed enough to get the plot going. They will not go far enough to show the dynamic aspects of the X-Men mythos because these movies have to be for everyone. Fox at least took risks and some for sure didn't pay off, but we did get Logan, First Class, Days Of Future Past, Deadpool, and the first two films. I already know we will never get a Logan from Disney and that is what is so disappointing to me.
I know Last Action Hero is a mess, but I still like that movie.
So glad I'm not the only one. I love movies about the movies, and this was a clever one.
It's only real problem is that it was mismarketed. People thought it was the next Die Hard when, in fact, it was a parody/satire on Die Hard and other action films.
@@whosaidthat84 Definitely. People saw the movie expecting 100% action
Just watched an hour long video on UA-cam of someone saying the same thing about Kingsman The Golden Circle,
Larry Bundy Jr
COUNTRY ROOOOOOOOOAD
hi Larry. if you see this comment could you give the name of the UA-cam video? sounds like it would be right up my alley. thanks.
ua-cam.com/video/SKN55AHIxoM/v-deo.html
Larry Bundy Jr What a sad life you have
Found the Larry.
I worked as an assistant animator in the animation business doing commercials and features and working on multiple commercial failures
because their stories stank and greed.
Everything shot to a script and story-boarded out and the constant hunt for more investors. Thank goodness for the Beatles George Harrison, he'd been friends with and liked the Monty Python crew. So when he was asked to lend them some money he'd mortgaged his house and business to get The Life of Brian made.
You're quite right when you said, ''Art by committee doesn't work''. You have one director with one vision, not multiple ones, especially when they're corporate.
I think execs see a filmmaker's work and assume their past success and style will carry over to their new movie, but are ignorant or arrogant towards the creative process and don't realize until the end that they're getting Fant4stic instead of a tone like The Avengers. It all comes back to their bad communication
Well said. I have recently watched three American films which began with interesting scenarios (for example, a time when currency is replaced by hours of life), but deteriorated into tedious car chases and fist- and gun-fights. I imagine that this was due to interference by the studios. It's a bit like allowing a book editor to completely rewrite the ending of a novel "No, no, Charles, we can't have that ambiguity. Pip and Estelle must end up getting married and having lots of kids. Then they can sing a big number at the end." Humbug!
Editing can improve a film if it improves cinematography instead of changing its tone. Obligatory mention of how the original Star Wars was saved in the edit, and how The Justice League became a mess for changing its mind and tried to copy The Avengers towards the end of the shooting.
not only for changing its tone let not forget the studio not delaying the release date so they can there bonus knowing that the cgi wasn't ready
To be fair, I think Justice League was always somewhat of a mess.
Dat CGI lip though XD. The poor actor couldn't move his mouth much.
I think what that proves is that movies are better if they're done collaboratively. George Lucas allowed the editor and actors to have constructive input into the project and the movie was richer for it, while in Justice League you have people in charge trying to strangle everyone's input for fear that they won't get exactly what they want.
Yes, because you were there to see the first cut of Star Wars. I hate you snobby wannabe film experts.
"Alien Cubed" now has me thinking it would be interesting to see a mash-up between the Cube movies and the Alien franchise.
That lowkey name drop of 10 Rillington Place.
My god that was a grim movie. But then Georg loves his grimness.
The longer I've watched him, the more I've noticed we've in common taste wise. Maybe it's got something to do with us both being self deprecating, slightly poncey word smith Brits?
We'llAlwaysHave VALIS Shit I didn't notice. Bloody great film, and Richard Attenborough is terrifying
Watch the fairly recent English tv made with Tim Roth. You don't yet know what 'grim' is.
Not seen it. Don't see how it can outdo the 1971 one though
"It's almost as if art by committee DOESN'T WORK!" yup
I think the points you make are all great. However, this is just one scenario out of dozens. Executives and committees are ruining movies for so many reasons, it's becoming the norm more than the exception. Even series which had previously been ground-breaking or handled well suddenly do a complete 180 and throw out everything fans liked about them (Ghostbusters, DC superhero films, live action remakes of Disney animated movies, anything with Star in the title, etc). But sadly, none of this matters. Because despite many of these movies being panned by fans, they still make $500+ million. In other words, no matter how bad the remake/sequel is, people still go and watch it. So from the mindset of a studio executive, they are a success. And they're not going to move away from meddling until they start losing money.
And of course, they don't care about art. They have taken a system entirely about subjective opinions and taste and turned it into an assembly line. Which is exactly why they shouldn't be in the business of funding movies. They should go make predictable hardware products like smartphones or cars. But the irony is, Hollywood in the 1930s and 40s was also an assembly line. They just made hundreds of low cost films a year instead of dozens of high cost ones that current day Hollywood does. So if a movie didn't do well, they didn't care because there was ten more coming out next month. But today, if something like Iron Man 7 doesn't do well, the company is out $500 million. The root of the problem as I see it is Hollywood is bloated and needs to return to their old system of medium to low budget films. Which wouldn't send the shareholders and executives into a panic about taking risks.
I agree about the need for smaller films. With the old studio system, it was probably an advantage that they were making so many films, because the producers could only really ruin a few.
maxis2k I'd argue that given the amount of money that some of these movies make that they're totally in the right business and are definitely doing something right. You have to remember that these big studios aren't really in the business of making movies, they're really in the business of making money and movies just happen to be how they make their money. At the end of the day, the studios don't care that much how well received their film is, so long as it makes the money they want it to make then it's a success to them. This is also what the boards of these studios expect of their chief execs and if any studio chief starts making hugely popular movies that don't make money they'll soon find themselves out of a job.
@Riceball01 - Yes, but then you get big budget disasters like 'Ghost in the Shell', 'Batman v. Superman', 'Justice League', and ;Ghostbusters' that actually jeopardize the studios' profit margins because the money spent making AND MARKETING the movie in question (people often don't take into account the TOTAL budgets, wherein marketing and distribution account for doubling or tripling the amount spent on production itself) just cannot be justified against the box office returns. It used to be that home video sales and overseas box office revenues could salvage these movies, but that is no longer the case.
Your ignorance is astounding.
@@TheWilkReport BvS was a financial success. It didn't jeopardize the profit margins.
Brazil is one of my favorite movies! I first saw it when I was around 12-13 years old and I loved it. I can't remember if I ever saw it with the altered "happy" ending though.
Also this really explains why the ending of 10 Cloverfield Lane was so irritating. I thought the alien si-fi stuff didn't really fit with the lore built around the first Cloverfield movie.
The first movie (and especially the viral marketing) really hinted at the monster being something awoken from the deep sea and not so much "alien invasion" (or not intelligent invasion at least). I wish they hadn't tacked the sequel on to the Cloverfield franchise because the ending is too much like War of the Worlds and undermines the lore.
The Dr. Doom scene sure reminds me of Elfen Lied. Just switch Dr. Doom into naked anime girl, and add a few buckets more blood.
and the scene from Akira where Tetsuo redecorates the lab corridor with the soldiers innards.
More Gun Free Man Well the scene with Andrew from Chronicle at the hospital was inspired from Akira, it dosent surprise me if he did it again. Also whilst I'm not a massive fan of Elfen Lied that part was awesome.
I didn't think Elfen Lied was great (Gunslinger Girl is much better IMO), but it's an anime which could actually be made into a good film. A tight, contained story, no weird character designs that won't translate to real life. But it would have to be at least a hard R rating, preferably an X.
(I know it's now NC-17, but X is just cooler.)
More Gun Free Man I think there's a lot of Akira in there too.
I was looking for this comment.
When I first saw Brazil, I thought it had a great ending. My sister watched it later and was wondering what I was talking about, it turns out there was a scratch on the dvd that jumped my viewing from the 'escape' to the credits because I cleaned the dvd before I put it back in the box my sister got to see the inbetween bit I missed. I kind of like my ending better.
I didn't like the ending, it was too bleak and depressing.
Dab that gravy off boi
The youth division 1970's was set up to let indie filmmakers do it the way they wanted and not interfere and SILENT RUNNING and AMERICAN GRAFFITTI was made as a result. Why can't they do that again? Silent Running was considered terrible by the studio but they still gave them final cut and did not interfere. they did this as an experiment, like engineers. Well try something new and when it doesn't work we will know not to do it that way again. But it did work and the rest is history.
What is "The youth division 1970's" and how does it compare to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Hollywood?
Yeah, but your horror scene is deeply undermined when your villain looks like a crash test dummy. And I'm not saying that something like that can't be scary, but this was a person, not a dummy brought to life. It probably wouldn't be hard make a dummy look scary, in fact it might have actually been creepier if it was an actual dummy brought to life, but Fant4stic could have had "Dr. Doom" look better than that and have the scene be horrific. And I suppose maybe it's our fault for knowing what Dr. Doom looks like, but he has an iconic look that everyone has known for 60 years, same as the Fantastic Four, just make them look like the characters. Could you imagine the Darth Vader scene from Rogue One if he didn't look like Darth Vader? It would ruin the whole scene.
Yeah, his posture and the way he walks seems more like "chilling and strolling across the park" rather than "scarred man going in a rampage", the whole camera POV and the heads popping up like popcorn with underwhelming sound effects seems more comical than anything.
The fact that I watched this same scene done better multiple times across other media didn't help either.
That Dr. Doom scene is very similar to a scene in Akira. Plays out the same way.
i always wished I could have lived to see the team up of Kubrik and Gilliam. That would have been an epic festival of bizarre weirdness and abstract avant garde idealism's lol
Death By Design Graphics they are both perfectionists who work in different styles. In theory it would be amazing but in reality it would be a disaster.
You're probably right but I still would have liked to see it regaardless. They aren't so different though I definitely get a Gilliam kinda vibe from a clockwork orange, (that bizarre dark comedyish kind of vibe) it always makes me think of fear and loathing in las vegas for some reason, but also trainspotting too. Both the directors of those movies borrowed some aspects of storytelling and shooting styles from him I believe.
Death By Design Graphics Shame so many great directors are dead. Still Gilliam working with someone equally bonkers like Lynch or Cronenberg would be great
How so?
Oh right wasn't too sure on Gilliam. For some reason I thought Cleese was a Tory though
Wow man, wow. WHAT an essay. Thank you so much for producing this, incredible and quality, content. And that set up of you and the lamp, please keep it. So intimate. I dont know what more I can do in terms of thanks, other than continue to watch your work. You're really helping people like me out, people who want an education on and about films, so, thank you! And keep up the incredible work!!
Ohhh...the timing of the video. I came here after watching the Black suit scene from Justice League.
That scene where you just get a glimpse of it? In Snyder's cut he actually wore it.
That cut Blade Runner scene just blew my mind. I have very vague memories of it, and the accompanying voice over throughout the film, and this is the first time since childhood hearing and seeing that.
I don't know but I watched the last action hero at least 3 times when I was a kid. It wasn't that bad. It was very funny but at the same time kinda scary at some point. I still remember the last arc when I thought the Arnold was gonna die and the kid was gonna end up like Arnold's movie child. The bogeyman figure was the most scary though. I almost cried when the kid had to let Arnold comeback in order to save him and never be able to meet him again. The film was cheesy but very entertaining and had many different tone which made it unique at least for me.
Kinda bias but I love every movie Arnold in.
"Alien cubed" THANK YOU
Hahah. "Then everyone started dancing" sounds like a lot more wholesome ending than "he loved Big Brother" alright.
Fantastic. This was your best video essay by far. You're such an intelligent, well spoken person. You're snarky, but you're not condescending. It's a wonderful balance. You're videos are very well edited, and your speaking volume is perfect. You do a lot of work for these essay's, and I really appreciate all of that as I'm just an amateur editor myself. I'd subscribe again if I could. Keep doing you, man. Well done
Literally loled at the dab joke. Great video, love your stuff 👌
A bit out of focus, Georg, but no matter - always great to see you in this format! Thanks!
I actually think The Thing being in constant pain could have been removed, honestly. The movie would already have been rather dark with out that, we, didn't really need that.
So dark! You sure you're not from the DC Universe?
Interesting vid. Would love to see some of these studios get their act together in terms of the cutting room floor stuff that's sitting in their vaults and (after an appropriate amount of time has passed since the title's release) cobble the original vision/intent together into something watchable/releasable. They could call them the 'Cutting Room Floor Cut' - and rerelease the film with alternate versions (like Criterion's 'Brazil'). So much stuff has been shot that has never been seen. I would LOVE to see alternate versions of Solo, Justice League, Fantastic Four, Dark Phoenix - and other high concept big budget films that dramatically 'changed horses mid-stream' - with extensive reshoots.
Say it Frenchy! Say Chowder!
Chowda
Schowwdher!
NEVAIR!
Ah am not zum clumzy Cloozo-esque whaiturr!
Come back here, Im not through demeaning you
I am glad you aren't antagonistic towards the idea that a studio needs to make money. Far too often people are antagonistic towards people for spending money to make money, always forgetting that it doesn't matter how critically successful a product is, if it bankrupts the studio.
I know they had to make the fantastic 4 to keep the rights to the property bit you are 100% correct in that I could have been a very dark very good movie. The fact that the cool parts fro. The cool parts in the trailer where not even in the movie and says it all.
Great blog, you've added a subscriber!
Personally, I love Last Action Hero - the fact that it's tonally a complete mess could almost be considered a meta-commentary on movies - it can't be consistent because every movie inhabits its own universe. Plus, you've got Arnie at his peak, Charles Dance as a great villain, Ian McKellen's first Hollywood role, even a not-too-annoying kid actor (very rare for the eighties).
If you remade LAH now, you would have the real world as realistically coloured, and then have them plunged into teal and blue when they go through the screen!
Another movie ruined by studio meddling was Justice League and Suicide Squad
yutube jode and also Spider-Man 3 and Amazing Spider-Man 2, Green Lantern 2011, Age Of Ultron.
Honestly, I hold Whedon more at fault for Justice League.
@@dericjames2018 So you're going to ignore that Raimi never bothered hiring a writer who understood Venom, or sticking with Venom as the movie's sole villain and saving New Goblin and Sandman for a future sequel?
@@SirBlackReeds The original villains Raimi wanted for Spiderman 3 were New Goblin and Sandman. Venom was only added due to Avi Arad pressuring him into having him in there for fan service.
Pretty sure Suicide Squad's original cut was also bad seeing as how test audiences didn't like it either.
13:47 "At neast leed"
Love you Georg, never change.
Really looking forward to your aside on Brazil.
I agree with the position in this video, of course - but I kind of want to make a case for the other side, too.
I've been doing my own short films for a while, and at my own small scale - as I've been collaborating with other writers and co-directors, there have been situations similar to "studio interference." Of course it was between collaborators and artists who both wanted the project to be its best, but the conversations were comparable. And they were a good thing.
I'm not saying every writer needs babysitting, but I know I've benefited from being able to turn to someone more removed from a project and asking what they think works. It's definitely possible for a creator to get so caught up in their own story that they lose their ability to see the "Bigger Picture." I'm not arguing that studios "need" to interfere or anything, but I think there are many cases where a dynamic between someone more artisticly-focused and someone more logistically-focused can combine to make a greater product.
In my own cases, when either I or a collaborator are making the case that a project could be changed to be more marketable or appealing, it's not out of greed for money. It's because we want to make something that people want to watch, and we want it to be something that we want to watch, too. Not that we're catering to the lowest common denominator, but we don't want to lose sight of what was appealing about the idea in the first place.
For instance, I made a Batman fan film back in 2019 - and it covered a sort of retelling of the events leading up to the origin of Batman and the Joker. It was a film written for Batman fans, and there needed to be payoff for them watching. What was appealing about the idea was seeing the characters become the iconic versions of themselves. As I was writing it, sometimes there were questions about how close Bruce should be to becoming Batman, or if the Joker should ever even put on his makeup - and I kind of had to step outside of the story and ask myself if I would be satisfied watching the movie if there wasn't any gratifying payoff in that sense. Even if the story was complete with its character arcs and was satisfying in an artistic sense, it was meant to appeal to Batman fans. The idea of the story was just as important as its artistic qualities. So as much as the artist inside of me was satisfied, the Batman fan had to be satisfied, too.
I guess I say that just because there's a benefit to looking at films in that way, too, in my opinion. And I think it's even what draws a lot of creators towards creating in the first place. We see the landscape of a genre and want to influence it in some way - and we want our projects to have a certain audience and exist in a certain genre and have a certain impact. And that's the goal of the "studio mindset," too. I'm sure there are plenty of "money-hungry" executives, but I'm also sure that they could say the same things about films regardless of money, but just with an interest in audience appeal - which isn't a useless thing to care about. We don't have to be so pretentious that we pretend that films don't need to have any audience appeal.
Again, not to say that "studio meddling" with films is a good thing, but it is useful for creators to have conversations where they can separate themselves from their artistic mindset and consider what they're creating from a broader standpoint, and to consider their audience.
I personally have to disagree that Ridley Scott's cut of Blade Runner being better than the studio cut. Implying Decker is too a replicant ruins all symbolism with Roy saving him at the end.
Roy is dying. Deckard is in mortal danger, but he is not dying.
Roy's epiphany it that not only HIS life is sacred, but all life, animals, humans, replicants, including the life of his enemies. So saving Deckard life (for two days of for fifty years) maintains the symbolism intact, no matter if Deckard is a replicant or not.
Also, Roy probably assumes that Deckard is human, replicants and humans are almost indistinguishable without exhaustive testing.
@@juanausensi499 And the arguement for Deckard being human is summed up by that one point, that the film doesn't have a redemptive arc if Deckard is artificial. I think there is more evidence to suggest he is a replicant than there is suggesting he's human.
Ah, but you are missing the fact that it's Gaff and not Deckard who that has that redemptive arc in the story. He's clearly human (who makes crippled androids?!) and he let's Deckard and Rachel go at the end. Gaff is the human hero of the film.
Cool video, I just have one issue: The last ten pages of "1984" by George Orwell have nothing to do with Winston and they are actually hopeful.
"1984" is one of my favourite books, I've read it more than a dozen times, and I used to make the exact same mistake. If one assumes the end of the story is the end of the book, "1984" is incredibly depressing. If one realizes the end of the book is, in fact, not the end of the story, and Winston, and the REAL end of the book is the sole appendix on Newspeak, then one realizes Orwell's ultimate message: fascist dictatorships, like those of Oceania and those used by Orwell to model Oceania, are temporary and can never last.
The first line of the appendix is: "Newspeak was the official language of Oceania and had been devised to meet the ideological needs of Ingsoc, or English Socialism." The first thing to notice about this line is it is written in the past tense. Newspeak WAS the official language of Oceania. It HAD BEEN devised to meet the ideological needs of Ingsoc.
The last line of the appendix, which comes after a brief discussion on the difficulty of translating Shakespeare, Milton, and Swift, goes as follows: "It was chiefly in order to allow time for the preliminary work of translation that the final adoption of Newspeak had been fixed for so late a date as 2050." We aren't told if the full adoption of Newspeak was ever accomplished, but reading the rest of the appendix implies that it wasn't. Oceania and the world that destroyed Winston Smith didn't even last 100 years and was finished before 2050.
"The Handmaid's Tale," by Margaret Atwood, has a similar conceit: academics in the future examining the records of a past fallen authoritarian state. The appendix of "1984" is written the same way.
Origins of "woke" and Chinese dabbling... doesn't seem so obtuse now...
Good stuff; makes me think of so much of what Warner Bros. has done in recent memory, from the DC films (Snyder was a flawed choice from the get-go, but the demand to cram so many characters into Batman v Superman was likely a studio choice), to how they mismanaged the Hobbit movies, even to the new Harry Potter spinoff. Each has smacked of executive interference to a level where it's not about improving the product or making it more marketable, but instead smacks of "why did you bother agreeing to this script/director/vision in the first place if you just wanted to alter so much of it?"
Isn't the Doom scene almost the same scene from Akira in the hospital.
Every walking down a hall scene nowadays seems to be emulating that scene. Stranger Things is guilty of it too
*YES. YES IT IS. A MILLION TIMES. IT IS. AND NOBODY WANTS TO GIVE A "CARTOON" FROM JAPAN. THE CREDIT IT DESERVES.*
Absolutely
@9:25
“Last Action Lad & Alien Cubed were the result of studios not knowing what they wanted”
I would instead suggest that those lackluster movies, like the ones you mentioned, are the result of studios not knowing what WE wanted. (A dubious distinction perhaps, especially given that their aim is to broaden appeal)
My opinion very much echoes that of your own with regard to a general distaste of executive meddling in service to the bottom line, particularly in late stages of production. It’s a practice that, when benign, can rob a film of some of its uniqueness & creativity, but at its worst can result in spineless studio execs corrupting a filmmaker’s vision entirely!
Oddly, sometimes studios intentionally sabotage their films for political reasons. Gilliam's 'The Adventures of Baron Munchausen' was hampered on release to balance their internal books and to make a departing David Puttnam look bad.
There are a number of cases where studios deliberately don't publicise and don't widely release a film. Ostensibly because they think the movie won't make money anyway, but really because they are pissed that the director didn't play ball. As long as the execs get their bonuses, what do they care?
that scene in Fan4tic always reminded of a few different animes, especially the first few minutes of Elfen Leid
How do you make this video without talking about Justice League
Cos JL was just generically plain it wasn't a film ruined by any twist being changed it was just overall generic, its not like it was a potentially good film that got undermined it was just a rushed out WB version of The Avengers which hadn't introduced all the characters properly before it was released.
@@optimisticwhovian1726 It actually was a potentially good film. After all, Zack Snyder had an actual plan going in. Personally, I hold Whedon at fault the most. Snyder made a bad call, sadly.
@@SirBlackReeds How is Whedon at fault? The studio decided to replace Snyder with a director whose filmaking style is incredibly different to him halfway through production. It's like getting a skilled cartoonist to finish off a realistic painting.
Your videos remind me so much of 1970-80s BBC2 educational programmes about the arts. I mean that as a compliment :)
Kingdom of Heaven wasn’t a perfect movie, but the cut-to-hell version that screened *was* a travesty
Sometimes I think Hollywood executives get caught up in the game "Justify Your Job." They're afraid somebody higher up will decide that their job, department, project isn't necessary, so they want to prove "yes, I have a role and I am productive," and end up being unable to leave well enough alone.
If you want to talk about studio interference, I got two words for you:
Tom Rothman
Damn, he's married to Susan Harper, the lead from Suspiria. I also just learned they're gonna remake Suspiria. That's blasphemy.
Those are not words.
Two more: Kathleen Kennedy
I enjoyed this video a lot more than I thought I would; I thought it would be a cheap rant but you were very intelligent with what you presented and was reasonably honest toward both sides of the argument.
I really can't fault studios for pulling back and trying to be "safe," because if they don't make money they don't make any more movies, and having some film fall short of their potential is better than not getting those really great films that do occasionally get made. And I understand that it can be hard to make the judgement call of what needs to change; which movies do you preserve that artistic intention and which ones do you turn into a cash cow, what needs to change to make a movie profitable, those are questions that are REALLY hard to answer when a movie is still in production, and even harder when you haven't even started filming.
I'm still going to find movies where I wish they had done things differently, but I try to be forgiving.
Except for the new Star Wars episodes. Those were handled far too poorly by a company that knows better, and there is no forgiveness for them.
I wish Fantastic Four had just been called Planet Zero and ditched the property
bloodrunsclear fan4stic is actually a really good movie-if you pretend it's not associated in any way with its source material
that's really interesting. I hadn't considered the different edits that could exist, and how they could be detrimental to the original vision.
What is going on with the signature lava lamp, it's shining green, this is an affront to decency. When i watch GRS i expect a well structured and thought-out theory, an interesting subject and a reddish orange lava lamp. The first two you delivered but not the third.....NOT THE THIRD!!!
OMG, The lava lamp is turning into the Hulk!
I watched the movie Arrival recently and noticed a problem similar to what you discussed here.
At first it seemed like it was saying something about life being a series of events rather than a beginning and an end, which could have been cool.
Then it seemed like it was either going address the folly of a search for meaning (the main character is a professor of language who is tasked with deciphering something is assumed to be a language) or the folly of the fear of the unknown (society starts to fall apart just because some aliens arrived and did nothing). Either of these would've been cool.
It then develops its conflict around human fear of the unknown by having major world powers about to declare war on these (so far) peaceful aliens.
The movie then dues ex machinas a happy ending and acts goes back to the message that life is a series of moments.
I consider the first part of the movie "Arrival" to be a well thought out setup, the middle to be a good development of the theme introduced in the first part, and the end to be an asinine waste of potential.
This is to say, I think the producers didn't respect the writer or give the writer enough creative freedom.
Until 9:17, I thought Georg lived in a void .
One film that really suffered with this was Michael Mann's The Keep. The whole production was a nightmare, with interference, the death of the special effects technician leaving them with a load of footage they didn't know what to do with, and a hideously truncated post period resulting in, amongst other things, terrible sound.
And yet I still think it managed to rise above all that and become one of the most atmospheric and intelligent horror films of the 80s. If everything had gone to plan it would have been amazing!
"...they all dance to Bros."
So you do believe in dystopian futures. You dark-hearted soul, you.
8:49 This one made me laught of loud for real! Cudos. And a good look on the whole matter. I really love the great quality that your channel if putting out, keep it up :)
I love that Bros went on to be in Blade 2.
Nothing about that sentence is a mistake btw.
Well, only 1/3 of Bros ;)
Ah yes I remember, they played Wesley Snipes.
Thanks for this, a good essay. In addition to your point about studio businesses and the bottom line, I would add another element. It’s not exactly cockup before conspiracy, rather it’s cockup ON TOP of conspiracy. I work in the creative industries and have done since the 80s. In addition to fighting the bean counters (who generally do their job well enough) there is a clear and present danger from execs and other powerful but inexperienced (in the worst cases, untalented) types who think they know best. Sure, watching a lot of movies can give you insight - Tarantino is a good example - but it also needs talent, some experience, common sense and an ability to play well with others. Everyone seems to know how to make movies, write songs and... add any creative endeavour here. It might look like too many cooks from the outside, and it may we’ll be, but it’s also often inexperienced, many times untalented and, in the 80s at least, coked up business types who feel they are the undiscovered Speilberg messing things up.
Craptastic Four was doomed from the beginning,even before Fox,screwed everything up.The director never understood the source material.The FF comic,was never a grimdark body horror story,it's oldschool,lighthearted adventure.
Turning the FF into bodyhorror is just as stupid as turning Batman into silly camp,like they did with the Schumacher movies,it doesn't suit the source material.
Well, not entirely true for Batman. The comics have been around a long time, and he has been campy at times. And that includes the Adam West Batman, which included a movie that people don't think nearly as little of as Schumacher's movies. Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb ;) Campy Batman can work. That said, doing that as a sequel to more serious/dark Batman's... not smart. And the Schumacher movies also screwed up in other ways, like with the character bloat. A prime example, Two-Face added nothing of value to the third movie (and was horribly handled as well).
But yeah, Fantfourstic should never have been given to a director who didn't want to make a Fantastic Four movie.
Campy Batman could work just fine, though for a more youth orientated audience. Batman: The Brave and the Bold, for example, from a decade ago, was pretty campy, and ran for three seasons (though personally, I far prefer TAS). I'd also hazard that the Adam West Batman show will be in people's minds far longer than a show like Gotham. Likewise, the Schumacher movies were also aimed more at kids, and while the camp-factor might be high, I'd say the movies had a lot of other issues (like character bloat and product placement) that were a bigger factor than Arnold's ice puns.
*ahem* s h a r k r e p e l l e n t
@@yeet2787 What's really impressive about that bit isn't the Shark Repellent Bat Spray (nor the Barracuda, Whale, and Manta-Ray repellent varieties), but rather that a shark spent a good minute and twenty seconds chomping on Batman's leg, and it didn't even get through his costume. That's some high quality (bat) spandex!
I agree, the dark hate filled, everyone for themselves, crap is COMPLETELY the wrong tone for Fantastic Four. Also, they need to have characters who are smart enough to flip the light switch ON when they are in the room.
Trank was filming a Marvel Branded reboot of Chronicle. all the Trank parts are 'cut & paste' straight out of Chronicle and i really did NOT like that movie. Trank took more from Chronicle than from the actual source material. NO amount of reshoots could save it. and They got Doom ALL wrong in pretty much EVERY way possible except he was human, male, and of European ancestry, which describes half the people that appear in the movie.
It's pretty sad that the Corman FF movie is better than the next 3 yet it was not allowed to be released
It's a shame you aren't as big as other channels like RLM. You're fantastic. Keep up the good work man! I like your quality over quantity approach.
Fant four stic 😂😂😂
Wait, you mean to tell me Fantfourstic isn't the true title?
Makes me think of organized chaos!
@Kyros Droztamyr The comics used that style for the title.
@Kyros Droztamyr That's a really pathetic response. There's no right to use a particular style.
@Kyros Droztamyr You're being very petty. The fact is that the 2015 had every "right" to use that style because guess what, it contains no significance. It's just a style, that's it.
Speaking as an author: Hollywood stay away from me and my works.
I saw that moment in Fantastic Four and it was called Akira.
Really enjoyed this video! FF definitely feels like a movie divided and it is so frustrating. Trank really should have been the perfect director coming off of Chronicle. Can't help but to think FF could have been great - had the studio just let talented people do their work and stay out of the way.
George “rockhard” love the vids
I have always liked Alien3, it's dark and nihilistic, perfect for the evolution of Ripley's character. But I definitely see what you mean with all of these examples. For shame, Hollywood.