Movies That Killed Careers

Steve Carell - The Incredible Burt Wonderstone (2013) - This seemed to pretty much be the end of Steve Carell being able to headline a movie by himself. He can still do ensemble work, but he's not getting the lead parts like he used to anymore and when he tries, as with Welcome to Marwen, it's proved disastrous.

Tobe Hooper. After Poltergeist, he did a 3-picture deal with Cannon that all came out within a 14-month period in the mid-80s. All failed in different ways. Lifeforce was a crazy sci-fi alien vampire zombie movie full of erotic nude scenes with a budget as big as Rambo and a misnomer of a title akin to Friedkin's Sorcerer. Invaders from Mars was a '50s sci-fi homage that proved to be out of fashion at the time. And Texas Chainsaw 2 was apparently unwelcomely comedic for 1980s slasher fans. All 3 are now cult films in their own ways. But his career after that went on a steep and rapid downward slope into the bargain basement.

Lifeforce is probably the key failure here. That failure even forced Cannon to slash his budgets on the other two films. While the other two had some potential to perform on home video, Lifeforce was such a wild mash-up of genres that it remains impossible to explain let alone to market to this day. It's a graduate level exercise for genre fans. In the end, Lifeforce checks a lot of trivia boxes...a career-killer, a terrible title, a budget-busting bomb, a forgotten film and a cult classic.

Robert Zemeckis - Definitely in a slump now but it's a little hard to pinpoint when. Beowulf was probably where he really took the turn for the worse. It was a film that obviously never should have been made, nor made the way it was made as an uncanny valley CGI film. The Christmas Carol came next, again with uncanny CGI, and cost way too much. It lost up to $100 million and resulted in the head of Walt Disney Motion Pictures resigning. I would guess it probably broke even with ancillaries eventually. Flight was a welcome return to sanity, but only a one-off success that didn't really amount to a comeback. The next few did badly, especially another technology-obsessed film, Welcome to Marwen. That kicked him to maybe the lowest point in his career, doing an HBO Max original. And now he's doing a $150 million Pinocchio movie for Disney, which I have to imagine is an idea that scares far more people than it excites.

 

Cage "went mainstream" way before 1997, especially after "Moonstruck" gave him a shot at rom-com flicks.

Are "Honeymoon in Vegas" or "It Could Happen to You" films with great artistic integrity?

Anyway, if one wants to pin the date of Cage's "sell out", it'd be "The Rock" in 1996, not "Face/Off" in 1997.

At least "F/O" paired him with a respected director via John Woo.

"The Rock" was Michael Bay!

 

Cage went mainstream but didn't become a laughing stock in the '90s. Most of the 30 movies he made after Leaving Las Vegas until 2010 were either box office hits or got him critical acclaim. At the very least, they were almost all movies people had heard of. But look at the 40 movies he's made since 2010, starting with Sorcerer's Apprentice, and you can count on one hand the amount that were praised by critics. But even those got completely lost at the box office. I don't think there are any box office successes in there, certainly none on a high level. Up until 2010, he had a reasonably successful career. But the last 10 years have been a horror show.

 

One exception imo is "Mandy" - he was perfect in that role.

 

Actor Michael Beck was in the 1979 movie The Warriors to quite an acclaim. Then he did Xanadu in 1980 and this movie ruined his career. I feel sorry for Michael Beck that this happened to him since he seemed like a nice guy. According to either his wiki page or IMDB profile he went through some terrible things in his life, one regarding the death of his daughter. I hope he is doing well and is at peace despite all of this. Below is the quote from him about his movie career:

"The Warriors (1979) opened a lot of doors in film, for me, which Xanadu (1980) then closed"

 

Was Beck (not Becker) that closely identified with Xanadu? Wasn't Olivia Newton John in it? I don't recall her doors being closed. ... Though I guess the soundtrack saved her from ignominy.

 

I was looking up Hillary Swank's career cause I saw her on Hiking with Kevin Nealon.....her career took a dive after Million Dollar baby.....all horrible films after that one....BTW she seems like a very nice person

 

While Jack Black survived the awful "Tenacious D In The Pick Of Destiny", the man charged with directing that movie, Liam Lynch, never made another movie again (though, he did direct a few Sarah Silverman stand-up specials..).

 

I had no idea Liam Lynch directed that movie. Whatever!

 

I remember she tried her hand at a comedy film. Just awful, like Nicole Kidman trying to be funny.

 

I think her next film reunited her with Travolta and it was a massive bomb, and that was it

 

Madonna - Body of Evidence - Evita was a one-hit comeback after this but in a singing role. Her basic acting career died with Body of Evidence.

Dolly Parton - Straight Talk

Prince - Under the Cherry Moon

Molly Ringwald - Fresh Horses (1988) - Probably would've happened with her first post-teenage years movie. But if it's true that she turned down Pretty Woman and Ghost, then this could be self-inflicted career suicide.

Billy Crystal - Mr. Saturday Night (1992) - His directorial debut following the success of City Slickers. It bombed as did almost every non-animated movie he did after this besides the one-hit comeback Analyze This. The comeback didn't stick, even for the sequel. And he helped end another career with the next movie he directed...

Debra Winger - Forget Paris (1995) - She retired after this, for a long while. A "career frustration" retirement. The career had obviously been rocky ever since Terms of Endearment, but she did have some award recognition on some films right before this one.

Junior (1994) - This basically killed Arnold's comedy career and kicked Ivan Reitman off the comedy director's A-list. Reitman would never get good reviews on any movie he directed since and it looks like only No Strings Attached was profitable. His producing credits after this don't look too much better outside of Space Jam and Old School.

Joe Dante - Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003) - Speaking of Space Jam, this successor failed to repeat its success and bombed. And Joe Dante's phone never rang again.

Michael J. Fox - Life with Mikey (1993) was where the downward spiral started. The Frighteners (1996) was the death blow that sent him back to TV.

 

Perhaps it could be argued that “Kingdom Of Heaven“ killed Orlando Bloom‘s career as a leading man.

Some may argue that he was not the greatest actor to begin with, however putting him front and centre in a historically based epic film was probably not a good idea.

Romantic comedies may have been the better bet, or in supporting roles.

One thing that’s interesting from reading this thread is that perhaps Nicholas Cage has turned into the new Vincent Price, in that he has become typecast in independent films only as a weird/horror actor - his days of appearing in ‘A’ list movies are over. Does that mean he’s on the ‘C’ list now, where the logos for all the production companies at the beginning of the film seem to go on for 10 minutes, because there are so many of them?

I now buy any of Mr Cage’s recent movies (used), as I’m sure they’re going to turn into collectible releases later on. I think he’s turning into a horror icon myself.

 

Does Peter Frampton appearing with the Bee Gees in the Sgt Pepper’s movie count? It sure didn’t do his musical career any good.

 

DAMN...I enjoyed some of the trashed movies in this post...LOTS OF LAUGHS...

 

Interesting...we enjoyed this...no way did it hurt either actor...IMO.

 

my wife and I will pretty much watch anything Cage is in but that Jujitsu movie was really bad! but we finished it...ha ha ha ....

 

I do get the point made by some that Cage "sold out" when he decided to become an action star. I would still argue that he "sold out" when he did rom-coms, if that's the path we're gonna take.

My guess is that Cage's Oscar opened up offers for big budget movies and he decided to broaden his horizons. He eventually would do anything for a paycheck, but his first forays into Action Hero Mode were pretty well-chosen.

I resist the claims of "sell out" because that assumes Cage only did these movies for the money. Isn't it possible he liked those kinds of flicks and thought they'd be fun?

After all, the guy chose the last name "Cage" based on a Marvel Comics hero!

Not all Cage's movies over the last 10 years or so have been bad, and he occasionally shows glimmers of his old self.

But it's a pretty low ratio of decent/good to bad!

 

Very true, but it still seems just weird how he suddenly got unfunny. Even when he did Vegas Vacation in the 90's, despite playing Clark Griswald again, he just wasn't funny anymore (and the film suffered badly as a result).

Perhaps, but he was in so many good ones in the 80's that it's easy to forget about the bad ones.

 

I'm not certain what qualifies as a "good" Chevy Chase movie to you, but by my count I found exactly four films that he appeared in during the 1980s that might be considered "good" to most filmgoers: Caddyshack, Seems Like Old Times, National Lampoon's Vacation and Fletch.
A case might be made for Three Amigos which has developed a cult following, and National Lampoon's European Vacation, but those two films generally received mixed or negative reviews and certainly have their share of detractors.

 

I’d include Funny Farm and Spies Like Us in the “good” category. I think Christmas Vacation from 1989 is generally better received than European Vacation.

 

Spies Like Us received mostly negative reviews when it was released, but I have always rather liked it. I didn't think much of Funny Farm and I like all of the Vacation films except for the awful final one, Vegas Vacation.

 

Myers is very difficult to work with and has burned a lot of bridges along the way. Many of the people he worked with in the past will not work with him again.

 

Rosa Salazar - Alita Battle Angel

 

Well, he directed The American President immediately thereafter, which was a commercial and critical success. He also helmed big studio films such as Ghosts of the Mississippi and The Bucket List later in his career. So North didn't quite kill his directorial career. Although it certainly cooled it off.