Go

Filmism.net Dispatch February 28, 2015

  • Share
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  

There was a time production company Legendary was a bona fide hit factory. Just the first glimpse of their Celtic inspired ident before a movie was enough to get me excited, and as one of the names behind films like Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, The Hangover, Pacific Rim, Godzilla , Inception and Man Of Steel, the company had a nose for big successes.

Until last year they were a house producer at Warner Bros, and I never could figure out whey they jumped ship to Universal. With a little bit of hindsight, it indeed looks like they forgot to take their magic with them. Since the move it seems they've had nothing but disappointments.

As Above, So Below was dismissed as a middling horror flick. Dracula Untold looked like a cash grab mash-up of Twilight and Lord of the Rings and both audiences and critics agreed. It scored 23 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and was hardly a box office blockbuster. Seventh Son was left on a shelf for over a year before finally bowing just recently to terrible reviews and barely half what it needed to show a profit.

Angelina Jolie's Unbroken did good business but wasn't universally loved like the trailer made you think it should be, and the less said about Michael Mann's creatively bankrupt Blackhat the better.

Come on Legendary, come back to us.

Now here's someone else we should reassess; Harrison Ford. Sure, the cachet behind the iconic roles of Indiana Jones and Han Solo is hard to dismantle. But he's sure spent the last 20 years doing his best to do so.

Just look at that roster of turkeys; Ender's Game, Morning Glory, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Hollywood Homicide, Six Days Seven Nights. Let's be honest, he hasn't been in a good movie since The Devil's Own, and even that's pushing it.

It doesn't help that he also seems to be a curmudgeonly old fucker. During a Reddit AMA he responded to a question of whether Han or Greedo shot first by saying 'I don't know and I don't care'. He might not love Star Wars (and if he doesn't why is he coming back for JJ Abrams' The Force Awakens? Can anyone say 'paycheque'?) but millions do and the least he could do was play along for two miserable minutes.

Now it's been revealed he's signed on to the long talked-about Blade Runner sequel (can anyone say 'paycheque'?). If you ask me he's doing what Schwarzenegger and Stallone have done, signed onto a movie he probably doesn't care about because nobody's liked the shit films he's done since those characters we all loved him for. He might just be running out of money. Why else is Calista Flockhart in the news again, having signed onto the new Supergirl TV project?

If Ford was a country and one's status in moviedom was a credit rating, I'd frankly be writing him way down to the same depths Al Pacino and Robert De Niro have plummeted to.

Meanwhile, I (along with millions of hormonal middle-aged women) went along to 50 Shades of Grey, and it's neither as bad as you've feared or as dirty as you've hoped. I had a much better time with The Spongebob Movie: Sponge Out of Water, and for an avowed family/kids movie hater like me, that's saying something.

Among the most enjoyable movies I've seen lately however is the Evil Dead remake, which had the curious quality of making me question which version was actually the better movie.

© 2011-2023 Filmism.net. Site design and programming by psipublishinganddesign.com | adambraimbridge.com | humaan.com.au