Thursday, June 2, 2022

Thursday Movie Picks- Failure to Launch

 



Nope, we are not talking about boats or the Oligarchs' yachts, but about movies that execs thought would make a good franchise but turned out to be duds. Frankly, I can't keep up with all the movie sequels ad nauseum. I long for originality and often think that the one movie was enough ( Matrix anyone?). Here are my 3 movies that I don't think are as horrible as many think or maybe I just thought I was ready to watch shit and was pleasantly surprised at the gut flora. ( I hate those commercials that say gut and flora...nothing smells pretty in one's intestines). Wandering Through The Shelves puts out a great theme each week so head on over and see what everyone else has chosen. Here are my 3

1. THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN-2003


I like this flick even if it's full of holes and eye rolls. Sadly, this is Sean Connery’s swan song playing the legendary Alan Quartermaine( not the Alan Quartermaine from General Hospital) who is brought back into service to fight a man who wants to bring about war. He gets help from some young western kid, the Invisible Man, Dr. Jekyll, Vampire gal, Nina, Capt. Nemo and Dorian Gray. It's quite the group but I enjoyed the frolic through Venice to a winter's lair. I heard they were planning to make more but it tanked at the box office so just this one flick o poop.


2. THE A TEAM- 2010

Liam Neeson is doing so many action figure guys that I miss his actual acting. He takes over the role of George Peppard  in the tv series of the same name from the 1980s. I watched this show all the time because it was fun and...stupid. Yes, stupid but enjoyable. He plays Hannibal Lector..oops, wrong film, he plays Hannibal who, along with Face, Murdock and B. A. Baracus aka Mr. T( not actually Mr. T but an actual actor) must find a way to prove they are innocent. Along for the ride is Jessica Biel who is head of an FBI unit in charge of finding them and so angry with Face by putting her tongue down Face's throat. There were supposed to be more flicks but, alas, it did not make the mulah.

3. GREEN LANTERN-2011

I bet this will be very popular this week because it is infamous for crashing and burning. Ryan Reynolds, the star of the movie, makes sure to make fun of himself and the movie any chance he gets. He plays a loser who is given this green orb or something like that ( who cares) by an alien which makes him one of the guys in charge with keeping the peace. Humans are considered morons when it comes to peace but he learns and proves his metal while wearing this bright green outfit. I heard nothing but horrible reviews so, when I watched it, I expected to hate it, but I found that I didn't mind it. Again, it's dumb but I've seen much worse. This was suppose to be huge but it was just a huge flop so no more films were made. 💩

Any films that you can think of that are supposed to have been the start of long-winded sagas only to fizzle?

16 comments:

  1. Hi, Birgit!

    Happy happy happy birthday, dear friend! To paraphrase the vintage ad slogan: "You're not getting older... you're getting badder. (Badder, of course, meaning better.)

    I enjoyed your visceral opening paragraph, BB. In other words, my gut reaction is favorable.

    Mrs. Shady is a huge fan of the late Sean Connery, and we watched his League movie about a year after its release. We enjoyed it. However, the version we watched, the longer director's cut, had Alan Quartermaine helping Luke, Laura, Holly and Scorpio find the Ice Princess.

    Yesum, I liked The A Team as a TV series. I was working at an NBC-TV affiliate when it premiered, and was friendly with the stuff in the promotions department. Knowing I was a collector of TV memorabilia, they gave me surplus 8 by 10 glossies from the series - production stills and publicity portraits. Over the years, I collected similar material from many other TV series and arranged them on the wall of my apartment. During those drinking years of my second bachelorhood, I shared a place with two other guys. We had a portable bar in the living room and my "wall of fame" as I called it, was next to the bar, creating a pub atmosphere and generating conversation when we had guests over. Getting back on topic, I have not seen the movie inspired by the TV series, but the cocky, swaggering Geo. Peppard would be a tough act to follow, I would think, and I pity the fool who tried to replace Mr. T. Who did they get for the role... Steve Urkel from Family Matters?

    https://image.klikk.no/4479658.jpg?imageId=4479658&x=0&y=0&cropw=100&croph=100&width=1000&height=1537

    Dirk Benedict, the actor who played "Face" on the A Team TV series, was a hoot as the star of a 1973 horror movie I have watched several times entitled Sssssss. He turns into a snake!

    Just once, I'd like to meet a woman who expresses her anger toward me by putting her tongue down my throat. Just once!

    Although I watch and enjoy several superhero series on TV, I don't watch many films of the genre. Therefore, I have not seen Green Lantern.

    I can't think of any one-release franchises, but would love to watch 20 or more sequels to Mars Needs Women.

    I hope you and your hubby and Harley do some celebrating this evening and over the weekend. Once again, happy birthday and many more, dear friend BB!

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  2. Brain dead on this one, but Happy Birthday. I actually started college in 1964, so you are just a spring chicken.

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  3. I have seen none of these, but remember Ryan Reynolds mocking his movie in an interview. Nothing comes to mind about the topic, but I hope you are having a lovely birthday today. 💐

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  4. Hi Birgit!

    Firstly looks like I missed your birthday, so many happy returns of the day!! Hope it was fantastic!!

    I've only seen The Green Lantern out of these three which was just so standard and ordinary. I wasn't expecting much from it but it didn't even deliver a mildly entertaining time.

    I was warned away from League-so unfortunate that Sean Connery chose to close out his career with that. Sort of like Joan Crawford with Trog, they had other offers afterward but had tired of the grind and what they were offered wasn't good enough to return. A pity.

    I never watched the original The A-Team so had zero curiosity about the film version. I've heard it was junk which certainly didn't peak my interest!


    The first one I thought of was The Rocketeer an extremely fun film that underperformed not so much because it wasn't popular, it did okay at the box office, but was so costly it ended up losing money which put the kibosh on a franchise. There was also Sahara with Matthew McConaughey and Steve Zahn that was suppose to launch a whole series of adventures for the Clive Cussler's Dirk Pitt character. I'm not always the biggest fan of McConaughey, he's often too unctuous and full of himself for me, but that served him well in this and he teamed well with both Zahn (LOVE him) and Penelope Cruz but again it didn't recover its costs. I also thought of truly dreadful The Lone Ranger which deserved to flop, it's garbage.

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  5. They just started running The A Team on MeTV. Unlike the movie, there were a lot of laughs in the show. The movie, quite honestly, left me cold.

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  6. I don't think I've seen any of these. With the topic, the first movie that came to mind was Howard the Duck, but that's not a film I would recommend. Otherwise, this topic has me drawing a blank.

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  7. So far any of the Fantastic Four starts have been duds.

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  8. I've only seen your first pick and I didn't care for it much at all. No need for a sequel to that one. The other two didn't particularly interest me. If I did see either of those then they must have been so bad that I forgot them.

    The only one that came to my mind was Howard the Duck. I kind of liked that one as I recall, but maybe I was just in the right state of mind that made the film entertaining to me.

    Arlee Bird
    Tossing It Out

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  9. I love Ryan Reynolds and I enjoyed the Green Lantern.
    Hope you're having an excellent day.

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  10. I didn't know they were trying to make more of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen because I thought it was one graphic novel, now of course I realise they sometimes compile individual volume of a series and release it as one single edition.

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  11. We match on Green Lantern! I was hoping that this movie was going to be good, but it wasn't that good and we haven't seen Green Lantern back in the films ever since. Let's hope that a better Green Lantern movie gets made in the near future.

    Check out my Thursday Movie Picks!

    Ronyell @ The Surreal Movies and TV Blog

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  12. Hi Birgit - I haven't seen any of them ... and yes - I can believe tv programmes don't translate to film - I used to enjoy the A-team ... silly but fun - Happy Birthday and here's to many more - cheers Hilary

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  13. Hope you had a wonderful birthday Birgit xxxxx

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  14. Sadly, your list includes adaptations of two of my favorite comics. And because I love the comics, I've never been able to bring myself to watch the film versions of either The League or Green Lantern.

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  15. I hope both you and your husband had a great birthday. I've never seen any of these, but I saw the original A Team in reruns on an oldies channel.

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