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Hey! Mel Gibson is crazy but on screen he's very likeable! He's the only reason Signs can be enjoyed!

Emmerich is very hot and cold. He's just much more cold then hot. It's been a long time since he's done a good movie. Some would say he's due. I say he just needs to give up.

 LordofHats wrote:
Hey! Mel Gibson is crazy but on screen he's very likeable! He's the only reason Signs can be enjoyed!

His utterly atrocious acting did make me laugh.

And then cry.

And then eat an entire tub of icecream.

 MrDwhitey wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:
Hey! Mel Gibson is crazy but on screen he's very likeable! He's the only reason Signs can be enjoyed!

His utterly atrocious acting did make me laugh.

And then cry.

And then eat an entire tub of icecream.

You would have eaten the ice cream anyways!

 d-usa wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:

The Patriot - Ask anyone who's ever studied American History, and they'll tell you this movie makes them want to shank somebody.

As with many of the films of its ilk, Mel Gibson's endearing persona was it's only saving grace

I just wanted to wrap myself in an American flag after that movie and dream about freedom...

I just wanted to put on a royal blue uniform, start shouting Vive Le Emperor! and go pick a fight with Brits, Prussians, Belgians, Russians, Austrians, Hungarians, Italians, Some Spanish guys, some Egyptians, and of course sell Louisiana to somebody for a few million dollars*


*If anyone is interested, I will still sell Louisiana to them for $3,000,000. Its a steal!

 MrDwhitey wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:
Hey! Mel Gibson is crazy but on screen he's very likeable! He's the only reason Signs can be enjoyed!

His utterly atrocious acting did make me laugh.

And then cry.

And then eat an entire tub of icecream.

So...Mel Gibson gave you the beetus?

It's likely relying on the Fox/Tatum combo to bring in cash. Fox hasn't been part of a flop in a while and neither has Tatum (as a lead) so they'll probably make out alright. Lord knows out of the two of these that were coming out I gravitated toward Tatum/Fox instead of Butler.

 Ouze wrote:

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Also, here's a slideshow with more examples of the phenomenon. Technically I'm also wrong, I forgot about Dante's Peak/Volcano - those both sucked too.

Let's at be fair now, Dante's Peak wasn't Volcano levels of hilariously awful...

I mean, its at least factually more accurate than 'Crapcano', except for the little things like out-racing a pyroclastic surge... And the driving over semi-cooled lava & setting the truck on fire without the gas tank going boom... Or the walking about without a care in heavy volcanic ash fall... Plus the complete ignoring of harmonic tremors... And then the kids driving through heavy ash on a winding, narrow road...

Hmmmm... Well, at least they got the bit about helicopters being very bad ideas to use as an escape route part right!

So, has America developed some fear of the white house being invade or something?

 Mr Nobody wrote:
So, has America developed some fear of the white house being invade or something?

I doubt it, they win every time.

 Mr Nobody wrote:
So, has America developed some fear of the white house being invade or something?

It is less a "fear of the White House being invaded" and more an uptake of literature/rhetoric of the idea of a second American Civil War.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Mr Nobody wrote:
So, has America developed some fear of the white house being invade or something?

It is less a "fear of the White House being invaded" and more an uptake of literature/rhetoric of the idea of a second American Civil War.

We gotta keep our eyes open for the UN invasion force.

 Mr Nobody wrote:
So, has America developed some fear of the white house being invade or something?

Nah, more like a secret desire. Inside, we really all hate politicians.

We still win('murica!!!) but the politicians that failed us get taken down a notch.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Mr Nobody wrote:
So, has America developed some fear of the white house being invade or something?

Nah, more like a secret desire. Inside, we really all hate politicians.

We still win('murica!!!) but the politicians that failed us get taken down a notch.

I was living in Germany at the time, but I heard rumors that people were cheering when the aliens blew up the White House in Independence Day...

 Crablezworth wrote:
Olympus has fallen wasn't a smash hit but it did pretty well at the box office, cost 70m made 148m according to wikipedia. It seems this movie's budget is 150m, that sets the bar pretty high for this absurdist buddy comedy.

Interesting, the early numbers for Olympus were really bad, it looks like it recovered to post poor, rather than terrible numbers. Still, the US box office was $90 million. On a $70 million investment (remembering the cinemas take a lot of the money), those are not good numbers.


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 Ouze wrote:
Your honor, move to enter into evidence:



The people submit an offer to stipulate that both films were flops.

Both films were terrible, but tragically Armageddon was not a flop. It grossed over $200 million in the US, and $500 million worldwide. It was one of the biggest films of the year.


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 Ouze wrote:
Well, when the director apologizes for the film and say's he'd re-shoot it in retrospect, I think that meets one of the definitions of a flop, financial success notwithstanding.

Nah, the word flop is purely a financial thing. We've got plenty of terms to describe movies that are actually bad, like 'unwatchable' and 'directed by Michael Bay'.


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 MrDwhitey wrote:
His utterly atrocious acting did make me laugh.

Mel Gibson is about as crazy as they get, and not in a fun way but a depressing, this man is kind of a Nazi kind of way, but there's no doubting the guy can act, and had a real presence on film.

None of which was seen in The Patriot, was probably the most boring movie I've ever seen.

What I can't figuer out is if they factor the marketing costs into the overall budget. I remember something about avatar having a budget of like 250 million but they had spent almost the same amount on the marketing side of things.

 Crablezworth wrote:
What I can't figuer out is if they factor the marketing costs into the overall budget. I remember something about avatar having a budget of like 250 million but they had spent almost the same amount on the marketing side of things.

What makes it complicated is the way the studios play with those figures. A studio will have massive running costs, the major ones will spend $100 million each year on studio execs, office costs, scripts that get bought but never actually made in to movies and, of course, loads of cocaine. Then there's all kinds of marketing and other costs that get splashed around that aren't directly attributable to a particular movie.

Now, that kind of thing is nothing project accounting hasn't been dealing with for decades, but when it comes to the studios... the problem is that they lie. They'll weight the studio's overhead not on how much each film might have used up studio resources, but on how much the studios might want one movie to be seen as a financial failure, and another as a financial success. There are some political reasons for doing this, such as a film commissioned by an outgoing exec having millions in costs dumped on to it, but most of the reasons are commercial. In the first Harry Potter the three leads were given a deal that gave them a percentage of the profits of the film, and to avoid paying them the studio dumped hundreds of millions in overhead on to the film, to make it look like it made a loss. Similarly, Superman Returns was a modest commercial success, but a Superman movie turning a profit despite being boring and really weird would have made DC's negotiating position stronger, and so the studio dumped about a hundred million in additional costs on to it, including millions from the failed Nicholas Cage/Tim Burton Superman film from about a decade beforehand.


tldr - Who the feth knows what it costs the studio to make any particular movie. Those guys lie.

There is even a term for it: Hollywood Accounting. It has to be separated from regular accounting because accounting uses accounting practices whereas Hollywood Accounting uses the arcane and occult.

That movie looks like ass and turpentine.