10 movies that went so badly wrong they killed an entire genre
Hopefully, nobody sets out with the intention of deliberately making a bad movie, although it’s been made clear a number of times that certain films would have been much better off never being made at all.
Cinema history is littered with films so terrible they’ve ended careers and sent studios spiralling into the financial depths, but it takes something truly special – or maybe disastrous would be a better word – to pull the rug out from an entire genre.
Sometimes, all it takes is one motion picture to draw a line under the appeal, viability, or popularity of a genre that’s been a mainstay of the industry for decades, and in some cases, the blows have been so fatal that recovery wasn’t an option.
In certain cases the genre in question has managed to recover, but never to the same extent as before. It’s a footnote no feature or filmmaker wants to be remembered for, but the following ten titles, in one way or another all helped sweep a once-mighty medium under the rug, whether it was temporary or on a more permanent basis.
10 movies that killed a genre:
10. CHiPs (Dax Shepard, 2017)
For a hot minute, Hollywood was obsessed with taking TV shows that had enjoyed the peak of their popularity in the 1980s and refitting them as action and/or comedy movies laced with self-awareness of their episodic predecessors, but Dax Shepard’s dismal CHiPs put paid to that enterprise as being a viable one.
So eminently forgettable it’s entirely acceptable if its existence has gone completely unnoticed until this very point; the highly-specific genre was everywhere in the 2010s, from the phenomenal 21 Jump Street and its sequel to Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson’s Starsky & Hutch, Joe Carnahan’s The A-Team, and Michael Mann’s Miami Vice to name just a small few.
Once writer, director, and star Shepard’s attempt was immolated by anyone unfortunate enough to see it and shunned by those with disposable income ready to spend on a worthwhile ticket, the pipeline mysteriously dried up and has yet to start flowing again.
9. Gods and Generals (Ronald F. Maxwell, 2003)
The war epic has continued to endure in many forms, but it’s noticeable that the American Civil War has hardly been at the forefront of any studio executive’s thinking since the spectacular failure of Ronald F. Maxwell’s movie Gods and Generals in 2003.
The $56million production couldn’t even recoup a quarter of those costs at the box office and even got a video game tie-in in the hopes of finding further success, but that ambition was rendered laughable when the film delivered 219 minutes of pompous navel-gazing that bored viewers either to tears or sleep, depending on whether or not they persevered through to the end.
Ironically released the same year as Anthony Minghella’s Academy Award-botherer Cold Mountain, it’s telling that the closest thing to arrive since that channels the spirit of Gods and Generals from an aesthetic or narrative perspective is Matthew McConaughey’s Free State of Jones, which fittingly tanked in 2010.
8. Looney Tunes: Back in Action (Joe Dante, 2003)
Warner Bros deciding that the best use of Coyote vs Acme is as a tax write-off illustrates that combining live-action with hand-drawn animation is every bit as cursed as it was in 2003 when Joe Dante’s Looney Tunes: Back in Action flopped, to signal the end of the two forms meeting under worthwhile circumstances.
Space Jam: A New Legacy technically doesn’t count because it was burnished with eye-gouging levels of CGI, but considering the LeBron James-fronted sequel was abysmal and lost a fortune, it continues to underline the point nonetheless.
Joe Dante is capable of better, as is star Brendan Fraser, but putting the two together and parachuting them into the world of Bugs Bunny and the gang was a recipe for disaster that tasted so bad that the one time a comparable project has been made in the 20 years since, it’s being withheld from everyone to save a few bucks.
7. The Greatest Story Ever Told (George Stevens, 1965)
The biblical epic has never truly recovered from the failure of The Greatest Story Ever told, although Mel Gibson played his part in making a concerted attempt at rehabilitating it when The Passion of the Christ became one of the highest-grossing R-rated movies ever made four decades later.
Before George Stevens’ unwieldy three-hour extravaganza fell significantly short of turning a profit, titles including The Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur, Quo Vadis, and Barabbas had ensured the genre was in rude health, whether that was bringing in crowds or experiencing awards season glory.
Since then, though, dipping into the Bible for inspiration has become an exponentially riskier proposition on the rare occasions that it does happen, with Ridley Scott’s remarkably uninteresting Exodus: Gods and Kings standing as proof that things haven’t been the same since The Greatest Story Ever Told.
6. Mars Needs Moms (Simon Wells, 2011)
Robert Zemeckis has helmed several classic movies and won an Academy Award for ‘Best Director’ as rewards for his efforts, but his decision to invest so much time, effort, and investment into his technological side-lines proved to be as short-lived as it was misguided.
ImageMovers Digital was formed to pioneer performance capture technologies with Zemeckis leading from the front, but the profitability of The Polar Express, Monster House, Beowulf, and A Christmas Carol was negligible at best until Mars Needs Moms came along and torpedoed the entire operation.
One of the biggest bombs in history, it’s not a coincidence that not only was the company shuttered almost immediately after Mars Needs Moms completed production and all of its staff laid off, but ImageMovers never again dipped its toes back into the water of fully digital motion pictures ever again.
5. Lost Horizon (Charles Jarrott, 1973)
The all-singing and all-dancing Hollywood musical remains capable of busting blocks when handled correctly, but the industry’s fondness for mounting a consistent string of expensively assembled epics was delivered two death blows for the price of one.
A remake of Frank Capra’s 1937 original, Lost Horizon fell so short of expectations amongst the paying public that it was the last musical feature to be given a roadshow release, to the extent it took on the disparaging – if not entirely unearned – nickname of ‘Lost Investment’.
Prior to Lost Horizon, lavish Hollywood musicals were a regular occurrence and a reliable source of box office income. However, from the fateful day, it stumbled into cinemas and proceeded to fall straight onto its face, the costly and extravagant song-and-dance spectacular has become a rarity. They can hit big when required to this day, but this was the exact point where it dissolved as a staple unto itself.
4. Home on the Range (Will Finn and John Sanford, 2004)
Traditional hand-drawn animation was always fighting a battle it couldn’t win in the onslaught of the computer-generated revolution, but Disney did itself no favours when Home on the Range didn’t present much of an argument for why the genre deserved to survive and thrive.
The Princess and the Frog and Winnie the Pooh may have been released in 2009 and 2011 to decent results, but after Home on the Range lost an estimated $70m and was blown away in terms of both visuals and voice acting by the hits being churned out by Pixar and DreamWorks, the Mouse House announced that it was shifting away from hand-drawn altogether in favour of CGI.
Being the film that convinced a cultural powerhouse like Disney to abandon the techniques that brought it such an array of iconic movies is one of the most unwanted distinctions imaginable, but it’s one forever associated with Home on the Range.
3. Disaster Movie (Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, 2008)
The parody movie used to be a beacon of comedic gold, yielding a string of unforgettable classics packed to the brim with iconic soundbites, classic characters, and rapid-fire gag rates that ensured if one of them missed, the next one would be along in a heartbeat.
Unfortunately, Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer came along, and they ran the entire thing into the ground to the extent that parodies or spoofs, in the truest sense of the word, are virtually non-existent as a major mainstream concern.
The duo may have made their directorial debuts on Date Movie and followed it up with Epic Movie and Meet the Spartans, but the trio was inexplicably successful despite all three of them being reprehensible attempts at comedy. Disaster Movie saw takings plummet by over 50% to signal audiences didn’t care anymore, and that was the beginning of the end.
Vampires Suck, The Starving Games, Best Night Ever, and Superfast! were still made for incomprehensible reasons, but it was the cinematic equivalent of following a dead horse into the afterlife for the express purpose of beating it to death for a second time, waiting for it to be reincarnated, and then doing the same thing all over again.
2. Cleopatra (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1963)
Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton’s epic may have become profitable eventually, but Cleopatra was such an expensive undertaking that the film came dangerously close to bankrupting 20th Century Fox altogether and sending an industry powerhouse out of business.
It may have been the highest-grossing release of 1963 but didn’t claw its way into the black until two years later when the studio negotiated a lucrative deal for the broadcast rights, but the damage had already been done to the swords-and-sandals historical epic.
The Fall of the Roman Empire hoped to capitalise the next year and paid the price, and it wouldn’t be until Ridley Scott’s Gladiator arrived almost 30 years later that the genre was given a shot at redemption, which it would almost inevitably go on to squander after a slew of spiritual successors racked up huge losses of their own.
1. Heaven’s Gate (Michael Cimino, 1980)
The studio western has never been the same since the Heaven’s Gate shambles, although Michael Cimino’s notoriously meticulous epic did more damage beyond its reputation of being a colossal folly that rendered any hopes of the genre ever becoming a major concern again.
Turning his creative control into a byword for how not to oversee a production that seemed to spiral out of control to new levels on a daily basis, Cimino’s stewardship conspired to convince the entire movie business that the auteurs were being handed too much power and needed to be reigned in.
The paradigm of filmmaking had been changed yet again as directors became secondary to concepts and earning potential, while the number of high-profile westerns to have been backed to the hilt by one of the major studios to the same extent as Heaven’s Gate in the years since is so short that it only serves to enhance the catastrophic damage done by one single film.
