Another Stupid movie to Overreact to...

[mr3urious]

On the plus side, The live action Americanized "Akira" film has been stalled once again! Let's hope that thing dies in a pile of nightmarish, veiny cartoon car vomit. Or was it the bunny or the bear?

If the Speed Racer movie bombed, I don't see how a live-action Akira would do any better.

Back on the negative side... I don't know when the heck this was released, but one of those awful tenth party DTV Asylum type film makers has released a bad looking horror film unashamedly stealing the name of a famous Asylum where Gotham's criminal elite often find themselves. Yep. To confuse incredibly stupid gamers and comic fans (I'm sure 99.9999999999999% of those two wouldn't be fool slightly), they called a weak "murderer in a run down mental institution" plot based film "Arkham Sanctorum" (or something like that). Saw it in a Barnes and Nobel. Really!?! There's nothing even slightly related to Batman, the video game with batman, DC comics or guys in weird costumes. We're DC's lawyers?

I think the movie you're looking for is last year's Arkham Sanitarium.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3630782/?ref_=nv_sr_1

That's about as misleading as Avengers Grimm from The Asylum themselves.

 

[Drtooth]

If the Speed Racer movie bombed, I don't see how a live-action Akira would do any better.

And the worst part is, Speed Racer was the good one. It's supposedly come out that Dragon Ball was turned into the awkward teen drama it was because of Fox, not the film's writer. So yeah. They took something that was making money for being itself and turning it into a generic, bland tween film that no one would bother seeing because they thought no one was going to go see the actual thing that made Dragon Ball Dragon Ball. Very smart decision right there. At least with Speed Racer, they tried. Plus, I like how they revealed that Speed's brother altered his appearance so Speed wouldn't recognize him. That's an improvement over the original source material there.

They rarely get American cartoons right when they do this. Why bother trying to out suck the Japanese at adapting their series? Apparently their Gatchaman film was awful. I didn't like much what they did with Cutey Honey either.

I think the movie you're looking for is last year's Arkham Sanitarium.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3630782/?ref_=nv_sr_1

That's about as misleading as Avengers Grimm from The Asylum themselves.

I have to admit, I read about Avengers Grimm and I dig the concept. At least it has the team up portion of Avengers making sense. This is just generic horror film with a video game series/iconic comic book series name tossed in. I don't even think they had Asylum's money making it.

 

[Luke kun]

Now I could "complain" about this, but we're actually making fun of how freaking awful, mechanical, and dated it looks. I do not see this appealing to kids unless a time warp somehow opens up and shoots this film back to 1992 or something.

Say what you will about CGI and modern kid's entertainment, but giant Barney style walkaround costumes with their own TV show is quite passe. And that's not such a bad thing.

Wretchedpiece of FILTH! Ruin the comedic genius of Johnathan Winters, will you?!?!

I remember those VHSes...*shudders*

 

[Drtooth]

I'm going to go full sail and say "The Gallows." Just...just The Gallows. I'm not an excellent judge of horror films by any means yet know the point of most of these teen focused ones are just dumb hot teenagers being cannon fodder for the real star of the show, the killer. But even then, trying to give it the benefit of the doubt, this one just feels like the least inspired thing I've ever seen. Like it should have been made by The Asylum and released directly to Netflix levels of not giving 2 forks.

A key to these films is genre blindness on the part of the too dumb to live, I get that. But for the love of freaking Mike these kids are so incredibly genre blind that it's abusive. And I wouldn't give 2 craps about this thing if it wasn't advertised every...single...commercial...break. I don't know if the marketing's to blame for this, but the whole thing looks like cheap jump scares with a poor excuse plot.

 

[The Count]

Yeah, when it comes to jump-scares, they really ought to study at the feet of Universal Studios' Halloween Horror Nights.

BTW: Has anyone here heard about Michael Keaton supposedly starring in a motion picture version of Boom! Studios Imagine Agents comic book?
There was a headline about this at IGN Filmforce, where I go to get my daily movie news updates. The thing that made me chuckle was the blurb at the end about the report who posted the news, saying that he only learns about the existance of a comic book when they make a movie out of it. So by that logic, does that mean he doesn't know about Boom! Studios Muppet Show/Muppet Fairy Tale comics run? At least, not until we get a movie treatment of either the initial four-issue Meet the Muppets stories, The Treasure of Peg Leg Wilson, On the Road, Family Reunion, Muppet Mash, or The Four Seasons?

*Hopes for a movie treatment of Family Reunion cause then we'll finally get a grown-up puppet version of Skeeter.

 

[Drtooth]

Movies based on comics from indie companies is far from new. IDW also has one in the works. Thing is Boom already had a comic based movie. 2 Guns. And no one has seen it or even remembers its existence. I almost tried seeing it, but didn't.

 

[Drtooth]

ARRRGGHHH!!! Yet another freaking YA novel has been greenlit.

Just...just... really?!? And with cryptic terms no less. I mean... gah. I've said it a million times but, yeah... there's so many comic book super hero adaptions and soon to be a crapload of Dinosaur movies (which started last year at any rate), but what about the endless stream of bad YA novel movies? There's waaaaaaaaay too many of them now.

And giving characters cryptic or otherwise goofy sounding names isn't dramatic. it's stupid. "Spinning Man?" REALLY?!?!

 

[mr3urious]

And the protagonist's name is Caw, for crying out loud! There's no way this crap can be taken seriously!

 

[Drtooth]

The nicest thing I can say is that at least it isn't a crappy version of the post-Apocalypse, nor is it a fan fiction hormonal aide. Still sounds stupid as shell, though.

And yeah..it's a trilogy of books like all the others. Probably could get 4 movies. I've been saying this about YA novels for years, but...The Simpsons WAS RIGHT!!!

 

[Drtooth]

I should have posted this a month ago, but...

The film is 3 years old now. Somehow it feels like 5 years ago to me because of how far in the rear view it is.

Now let's review.

Movie was released to theaters:
Bombed quickly and embarrassingly.

Promises of another movie:
Thankfully never happened.

Plans of a TV series:
Also thankfully never happened.

Merchandising and DTV projects:
(aside from some rare promotional stuff) Also a big fat no.

The painful irony remains. Had this been a DTV project, it would have been a series. Barney started out as a series of little videos, and that dinosaur caused shockwaves in the children's television industry so hard Sesame Street felt it. But no. A preschooler movie? What could possibly go wrong? I mean, it's not like famous trusted brands released movies that flopped and only to be vindicated years later on the home video market.

By all means, Ken's delusions of grandeur are deliciously karma flavored. The Oogs were pretty much snatched out of the hands of the desperate creators who's show was just starting to hit some level of national penetration, they go bankrupt, and some sleazy guys buy the rights cheap. Several years later, they took a Teletubbies movie they couldn't make and slapped these characters on it (redesigned to be more "hip" or something stupid that wasn't true), and try to build a media empire on an all or nothing gamble of a film that used twice as much in marketing costs than it cost to make. I'm wondering where the plastic glow wands factored in, since 20 Mil couldn't have been spent completely on that film. In the end, huge failure. If it was a series of cheap Redbox and Netflix "shut the kids up" videos, we'd be seeing like 10-20 of them.

In the end, we have something that was more culturally relevant for being a failure, and even then barely.