6 Famously Terrible Movies That Were Almost Awesome
#3. Cool World
Via Movi.ca
The Brad Pitt/Kim Basinger animated/live action feature Cool World was an utter disaster, scoring a solid 3 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. That's worse than Batman & Robin, Showgirls and Stop! or My Mom Will Shoot, which incidentally came out that same year.
Via Amazon
Seriously, take that in for a couple of minutes.
It was supposed to be the world's first animated horror film (and it is pretty damn horrifying, just not in that way), but according to director Ralph Bakshi, the only horror was his experience working on the film with Paramount.
The Awesome Movie We Missed Out On:
It was supposed to be a "hard-R, gritty, sexy, noir horror/thriller." The original storyboards for Ralph Bakshi's script look like a mix between Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Sin City.
Via 
Via Oh, and the female lead up there wasn't supposed to be Kim Basinger -- Bakshi wanted Drew Barrymore.
Getty
Which would have worked out great since she's already a cartoon.
Everything seemed to be moving forward for that version of the film until Bakshi found a "surprise" waiting for him while on location. As Bakshi puts it, "Frank Mancuso, Jr. [the film's producer] had the script rewritten in secret. I had a huge fight with the guy and punched Mancuso, Jr. in the mouth."
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He punched his hairline into a comb-over.
Also not helping were some even-less-welcome screenwriting suggestions from Basinger, who, according to Bakshi, decided she wanted it to be a PG movie (it wound up PG-13). The result, in Bakshi's own words, "was a total disaster."
Via Animationarchive.org
Judging from the storyboards, we now want to fight the staff, too.
#2. Robin Hood
Via Filmdocket.com
When most of us saw the ads for the Russell Crowe Robin Hood movie last year, the only reaction was, "What's the point?" This is a character that has been brought to the screen almost 100 times, according to IMDB, and the ads made it look like the same old shit. A blandly heroic Robin Hood shoots arrows at the evil soldiers who oppress the people while he presumably robs from the rich and gives to the poor. The only saving grace of Ridley Scott's contribution was that its artistic liberties did not include crazy shit like Morgan Freeman inventing the telescope in 1194.
History!
So why did they even bother making it? Is this the best story to spend $200 million bringing to the screen?
Well, it got made because the original script was apparently freaking amazing. It turns out the production of Scott's Robin Hood is ultimately the story of two films: the movie you saw ...
Or more likely didn't see.
... and a wholly abandoned project called Nottingham.
The Awesome Movie We Missed Out On:
Nottingham would've been the single most original Robin Hood movie in history. The original script (written by Ethan Reiff and Cyrus Voris) so excited studios when it turned up in 2007 that it became the subject of a fierce bidding war (Universal wound up paying freaking $1.5 million for it). It was a totally different take on the story -- the Sheriff of Nottingham is the main character and protagonist. Shit gets real once the sheriff investigates a string of grisly murders in the area. The sheriff then pursues an assholish Robin Hood (Russell Crowe) for the crimes only to find out that Robin, while a dickhead, was actually being framed.
It was more than "Robin Hood has a bow."
The film was to climax with an epic siege of the city of Nottingham between Prince John and King Richard, all while the Sheriff tries to discover the identity of the real killer using 12th century detective techniques (Reiff is a history buff and researched how actual killings in that era were investigated).
Cue sunglasses and an inappropriate scream.
Then, director Ridley Scott came on board and said, "What is this shit? We're making a Robin Hood movie! Get all that standard Robin Hood stuff back in there. That's what everybody wants to see." The movie was renamed Robin Hood and lots more scenes with people shooting bows and arrows were added. A few rewrites later, very little of the original screenplay remained. Today, Nottingham is a cautionary tale for every young, aspiring screenwriter out there. It doesn't matter what you write: the director and the star will decide what makes it onto the screen.
Did they mention he had a bow? Because he totally did.
#1. The Godfather: Part III
Via Geneticwriters.wordpress.com
It's the Rocky V of the Godfather trilogy, and for more reasons than just the poorly acted, painfully unwelcome supporting characters forced onto the audience at gunpoint.
She must have known someone in the film crew. But who?
All talk of Sofia Coppola's horrible acting aside, perhaps the biggest blow to The Godfather: Part III was the notable absence of Robert Duvall's consigliere Tom Hagen from the whole damn affair. The short story is that Robert Duvall's price to reprise his role was too high, but the more accurate story is that Sonny and Fredo's deaths had pretty much put Tom Hagen on equal footing with Michael for the male lead, a fact which the corresponding actors' proposed salaries didn't reflect. Duvall later said, "If they paid Pacino twice what they paid me, that's fine, but not three or four times, which is what they did."
Also, we're pretty sure Duvall looked this awesome when he said that.
Add it all up, and The Godfather: Part III was released to a chorus of boos, to the point that it's a massive understatement to say it's the worst of the Godfather films.
The Awesome Movie We Missed Out On:
The Godfather: Part III was supposed to be such an ostentatious Greek tragedy that Coppola originally wanted to title the movie The Death of Michael Corleone.
Probably at the hands of Al Pacino.
The film would have chronicled the fall of one of the greatest cinematic characters of all time, centering on a civil war between Michael Corleone and the last moral fiber left in the family, good ol' Tom Hagen. How do we know this? Because this is precisely the spectacular ending that the first two films had been hinting toward all along. Coppola would later lament in his DVD commentary that Duvall's absence "was a profound loss ... to this movie," adding that the film seemed "incomplete" without the crucial inclusion of Tom Hagen.
Then again, perhaps Duvall simply saw Sofia Coppola approaching the film like an iceberg.
To learn more about horribly misunderstood masterpieces, Jacopo asks that you pick up a copy of his latest book Go @#$% Yourself!": An Ungentlemanly Disagreement by Filippo Argenti and check out its topic page.
For films where a lack of knowledge was a good thing, check out 11 Movies Saved by Historical Inaccuracy. Or find out where some of your favorite shows came from in 7 Classic Kid's TV Shows Clearly Conceived on (Bad) Acid.
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Cool World always baffled me. I always wondered "how come Ralph Bakshi is the responsible for such a horrid piece of shit?", it dissapointed me. Good to know he wasn't really responsible of that crap and that Bakshi himself thought it was a total disaster.
ReplyThe original Cool World sounds amazing...
ReplyI dont get why there so much hatred for Alien Resurrection. Ok ill grant the part where the Alien queen gives birth the human/alien hybrid thing was pretty lame, but up to that point it was a pretty good film.
ReplyAnd hell even with that part its still better than both of the Alien Vs. Predator movies(although granted that is setting the bar awfully low...)
I...don't think that Morgan Freeman is depicted inventing the telescope, so much as having one that has some assembly required. Your mileage may vary on whether that's better or not.
ReplyBut I still weep for the ruin of "Nottingham." That movie sounds so f*****g badass.
What the hell was Ridley Scott's problem?! "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves" cast such a long shadow, you'd think a fresh, wildly inventive spin on the Robin Hood story would have been music to his ears (as it was to all the other Hollywood types bidding over the script). Why would Ridley Scott feel like he had to dumb it down and give everyone a "traditional" Robin Hood movie in the friggin' 21st century?! This isn't the 1950's, where we're all expecting a dashing and heroic Errol Flynn-type as "Robin Hood". This is the "Dexter" and "CSI" generation. So the story being told from the Sherriff's perspective, the kickass "Cadfael"-style medieval CSI... Who today WOULDN'T have wanted to see that?! People would have eaten this s**t up!
ReplyBut it wasn't "Robin Hood", it was "a vaguely Robin Hood-like person that steals from the rich and keeps it has something to do with the signing of the Magna Carta...except not"
And "Prince of Thieves" remained the better version after Scott was done. That's a shame - I *really* wanted to see "Nottingham"...
"Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot"
Reply*sigh* the '80s and early '90s were full of such blind hope and possibility.
Since Morgan Freeman is...well...Morgan Freeman, who's to say he didn't invent the telescope? as for GIII, you know what would have been better? When Mary gets shot, she is dead before she hits the ground. It would have saved us more of her acting and it would have been pretty shocking.
Reply#6: The exact reason why I can never forgive the albatross that is Superman :/
ReplyWell I am depressed. Seeing how awesome these movies could have been and seeing the state of current movies leads me to believe there is a direct correlation. If these movies had fulfilled their potential, maybe we could all be living in a world populated by f*****g PHENOMENAL MOVIES.
ReplyDidn't Alien 2 do really good in the box office? Or at least in VHS sales? You'd think they'd have enough money to do whatever the f**k they wanted for Alien(s) 3.
ReplyI'm truly surprised that The Avengers didn't make it on this list. The casting was just as bad if not worse than any of these (Uma Thurman as Ms. Peel? Are you kidding me?) and the story was complete shit. I wonder when people in Hollywood will stop thinking that "camp" simply means "too stupid to bear"
ReplyWhich Avengers? The two of them or the Marvel version?
In my opinion, Xmen sucks, I find that their huge roster ruins the whole of Marvel. This is why I shifted to DC comics for some authentic Dark Knight comics and the storylines have never disappointed me.
ReplyAnd Superboy punching reality SO f*****g HARD that reality re-sets 20 years is good storytelling?
I do want to say X-Men is actually really good, yeah it has a lot of people but so did s**t like the Secret Wars and to bash on DC, look at f*****g Justice League Unlimited where it was like every single DC character in DC in that show.
Ridley Scott totally sold out changing Nottingham into another Robin Hood movie no one I knew gave 2 shits about seeing. And it didn't even pay off.
ReplyHow come Jacopo knows everything ever. Congrats dude your articles are amazing.
ReplyI don't think that X-Men 3 or Godfather 3 are as bad as people claim. Though those alternate plots do sound cool.
ReplyWhen I first read about the X-Men 3 storyline that didn´t get made, I almost cried. It sounds incredibly epic, that´s what Dark Phoenix deserved, not wander around like a zombie for half of the movie.
ReplyNottingham sounds awesome...
ReplyOh, come on, this is the most blatantly biased article ever. I, personally, liked all of these movies except Cool World. Why not talk about the GENUINELY TERRIBLE (not just disappointing to nerds) movies that almost kicked ass, like Ballistic: Ecks vs Sever?
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesSo if someone holds a work to higher standards than you they're nerds? Isn't that a little biased.
I like Ecks vs Sever, but that's just me.
So basically you're easy to amuse and/or have low standards, then you call people nerds AS you're informing them of said easiness to amuse and/or low standards. Not good people skills, Sergeant.
The Mario Bros movie should be on this list. The original screenplay was a light-hearted fantasy very much in the vein of the Mario games, with Mario, Luigi and Yoshi battling tutles and goombas in order to rescue the Princess who had been kidnapped by Bowser(who actually was a turtle in the original script). Miomoto(the guy who created Mario) signed off the rights to make the movie based on the screenplay. Most of the cast signed on based on this original screenplay.
ReplyBut the directors(a husband and wife team who had never made a full length film before) decided the script was too kidd-ish and decided to make it more 'dark and gritty.' They hired the art director from Blade Runner to build the Mushroom Kingdom as a kind of ruined city and proceeded to re-write the screenplay(having basically no knowldge of Mario Bros themselves). The production was also by all accounts a nightmere, with dialogue changes coming almost daily, getting so bad that much of what made it into the film was ad-libed.
Simply being accurate to the games does not make a good movie. The older script was total shit, too.
Nottingham sounds like such a great movie.
ReplyMy Thoughts exactly. This movie would have made it onto my 'watch again-and-again classics' without doubt. Thanks, Universal. Thanks Scott - though reading that interview gave me a few laughs. One of the original writres obviously knows subtle sarcasm and speaks it as a second language.