Movies That Killed Careers

I don't think Oliver Stone has been mentioned yet so...

Nixon - Oliver Stone had an incredible run of making controversial films that got great critical praise, did very well at the box office and got lots of attention at awards time. Platoon, Wall Street, Born on the Fourth of July and JFK were the big ones. Natural Born Killers was probably the most controversial without quite being successful enough to justify it, but still got a lot of attention, critical praise and looks like it ended up profitable. Heaven & Earth was a misfire but could be forgiven because the material was so obviously uncommercial. Up through NBK, he basically had a brand that was working for him and he was one of the few "name" directors out there.

But then came Nixon. It got better reviews and more awards than H&E and NBK, but failed to generate the controversy and get the attention his other political films did. In correlation with that, it had absolutely anemic box office. He had made low-grossing art films before, but this was an art film with an A-list cast and an unreasonably high budget. It was his biggest money loser to date.

After that, he never got the mojo back. He next did four purely commercial films, two of which were profitable and forgettable and two of which were money-losing Raspberry contenders. Then he tried to go back to political films with W., Snowden, Savages and a Wall Street sequel. Reviews were mixed to poor and consensus was that they paled in comparison to his earlier political films. Two of them flopped and the other two basically coasted to breakeven on star power and a brand name. The excitement that having his name attached to a film used to generate had long since been replaced with indifference.

 

Pssst, here’s a secret -
I worked on “Van Helsing” and “G.I. Joe”.
“Van Helsing” was supposed to have sequels, bring back the Universal monster franchise, have a Universal theme park ride and TV series. All immediately canceled.
While it did make money it performed nowhere near what was expected.

It’s funny, we were all excited to work on a Hugh Jackman, Dark Horse Comics “Van Helsing”.
When we saw that weird Mr. Hyde who looked like an unholy cross between Joe Cocker and Quasimodo we knew we were in trouble.
It is the loudest film mix I’ve ever been involved with. Painfully loud.

 

I was a huge G.I. Joe fan in the 1980s. What the movies desperately need is a true fan who grew up on the franchise to produce the movies, like Spider-Man had with Raimi, Superman had with Donner, the MCU has with Kevin Feige and DCU had with Zack Snyder (admittedly Snyder's films had trouble with the mainstream but they're gold for people who love the grim and gritty DC graphic novels).

G.I. Joe was so poorly imagined in the movies as a high-tech thriller like Mission: Impossible. G.I. Joe is supposed to be just as comic-booky as the MCU. The team is supposed to be a huge mishmash of completely different, clashing characters with different personalities, specialties and costumes. They aren't serious and stone-faced, they crack one-liners on a par with any 1980s Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. And there are just as many top-flight soldiers on the team as there are bumbling new recruits. Leading G.I. Joe is supposed to be like herding cats, because every team member is such an individual with their own ideas.

And whatever's true about G.I. Joe being a chaotic outfit goes ten times as much for their enemy Cobra. Cobra is in constant disarray with the leaders continually at each other's throats. They have vastly different personalities from each other, don't trust each other and are always backstabbing each other. Cobra Commander is one of the favorite characters because he was hilariously and ridiculously over-the-top, closer to Dr. Evil than a normal James Bond villain. He was a mustache-twirling type you loved to hate.

The overwhelming feeling you get from the G.I. Joe movies is that the characters have no personality. But the whole reason the franchise took off in the '80s was because the characters had such big, quirky, larger-than-life personalities.

I would say the movie True Lies came closest to capturing the exact tone of 1980s G.I. Joe. The franchise is supposed to have a lot of comedy. And a super soldier like Arnold working with a clumsier type like Tom...Arnold, against some real insane, cartoonish villains. Captain America: Winter Soldier was also in the right zone, especially the opening scene with the raid on the ship.

 

Nah. It didn't help, but Travolta continued to work in big projects immediately after "Earth" in 2000.

He's become one of the kings of direct-to-video crap now, but that's a more recent development. I don't get the sense "Earth" did any real damage to his career...

 

Cool to hear you worked on the film!

To be clear, I don't disagree that "VH" harmed SS's career, as it seems pretty clear it did. The movie was expected to be a much bigger hit than it was.

I'm just not so sure it killed his career. But the 1-2 punch of "VH" and "Joe" might've done the job.

Still, I can't help but think he'd get SOME work if he wanted it, which makes me suspect he doesn't.

2017's "Mummy" was as big a disappointment as "VH" - and also derailed a planned movie franchise.

Remains to be seen what damage it might do to Alex Kurtzman's career...

 

Chevy Chase is notorious for being an A-hole to work with -always has been apparently.

 

I am one of the few that really like Battlefield Earth

 

We we’re going to do a remake of “When Worlds Collide” with him after “G.I. Joe”.
That was over 10 years ago.
It never happened.
We didn’t do “Odd Thomas”. Whole new, ummm, “less expensive” crew.

I think you’re right that he could get a film made if he really wanted. Who knows?
I was in the business over 30 years and the ways of Hollywood remain mysterious to me.

In many ways it is High School with money.
The cool kids, the lame kids, popular ones, mean ones, those that fall from grace and are turned on by peers ...
Probably like most businesses.

 

Absolutely, and didn't Marvel Comics themselves revamp the GI Joe line back in the early 80's with their comics, of which the characters like Snake Eyes and others were translated right to the 80's cartoon's stories?

I found the 00's GI Joe movie to be a bit of a mess and a missed opportunity. The sequel was even worse. The movie studio messed up at possibly having a more profitable ongoing franchise by not taking some cues from the 80's cartoon.

 

• Showgirls (1995) - Elizabeth Berkley

Not as much an infamous career killer as it was a ritualistic Hollywood beheading.
It's fascinating to note that Berkley scored the role of 'Nomi Malone' over a fresh faced up-and-coming Charlize Theron at the time.
Could it have ended up better with a different actress in the lead?, or would we just be seeing Charlize Theron's head rolling down to sixth place on Dancing With The Stars instead?

• Batman & Robin (1997) - Alicia Silverstone

A critical and commercial flop of monumental proportions, this ghastly film derailed Silverstone's career, effectively turning 1995's ''It Girl'' into 1997's ''Eeek Girl'' overnight.

• The Boondock Saints (1999) - Troy Duffy

When the Hollywood Dream becomes the Hollywood Nightmare. You sell your script for a fortune and the keys to Tinseltown are firmly planted in your hands, but your meteoric rise
becomes a breathtaking fall as your burning noxious arrogance melts your wings and your high-flown ego outpaces your talent. The ballad of Troy Duffy is a cautionary tale for all.

 

The 80s Marvel Comic existed to sell toys!

 

Indeed, and it worked! The Transformers bots were a Marvel Comics creation too.

 

If I had to name the point Blake Edwards' career went south, Trail of The Pink Panther (which kind of gets a pass since it incorporates footage cut from Strikes Again) and Curse of The Pink Panther.

 

i think he redeemed himself with World Trade Center !

 

I'm not sure if the ''G.I. Joe'' movies killed off any careers in Hollywood, but I'm damn sure those movies upset a whole lotta nerds!

 

I thought that was THIS dude:

 

Yes, Marvel was heavily involved in the 1980s G.I. Joe relaunch. Hasbro basically hired Marvel to be a consultant to create the storyline for the 1980s toy line. Hasbro designed what the characters looked like, but Marvel's people named them and wrote their biographies. The main part of the deal was that Hasbro would run commercials advertising Marvel's G.I. Joe comics, to get around regulations on when they could run ads for the toys. It worked for both of them, Joe became a bestselling comic, at one time #1 in subscription sales, and the Joe toy line was around #1 in boys' toys a couple years after they launched it. And this is at a time when "war" comic books were a completely dead genre. No one was asking for them. There was even less interest then in military adventure stories than there is today. So it's very important to figure out what they did right for anyone who wants Joe to be a hit today. The comic book kept one writer for its entire run (Larry Hama) and that helped it develop an intricate, soap-opera like plot with a lot of secrets that were revealed at the right times.

The Marvel cartoon division was a completely separate division from the comics division. They basically took the characters from Hasbro after Marvel co-created them and put their own spin on it, with a little more sci-fi elements and humor. The cartoon also focused more heavily on certain characters than the comic did, and vice versa. The cartoon was mostly run by a former Marvel Comics writer (Steve Gerber, who created the Howard the Duck comic book and had a unique sense of satiric, camp humor that he sprinkled into the Joe cartoon too). Because Hasbro made like 20 new characters a year, I remember reading that the G.I. Joe cartoon series had the most *recurring* characters of any TV show up to that point in history, and was only dethroned later by The Simpsons.

What was really good about the Joe cartoon is that you truly could describe the personality of almost every single character in it. They had extremely efficient character development, distinctive dialogue and voice actors with a lot of energy and diverse, recognizable voices. It was also as action-packed as an Indiana Jones movie. It was the poster boy for being hated by parents groups for being too violent, but loved by us kids.

Marvel's editor-in-chief at the time tells the stories of how the 1980s G.I. Joe and Transformers were created here:
The Secret Parts of the Origin of G.I. JOE – JimShooter.com
The Secret Origin of the TRANSFORMERS – Part 1 – JimShooter.com
The Secret Origin of the TRANSFORMERS – Part 2 – JimShooter.com

This cross-promotion was a big deal to Marvel at the time, because, also according to their editor-in-chief, licensing Star Wars for comic books in 1977 probably saved the company from going out of business. Most of the actual comics writers and artists hated the licensed material though and only wanted to work on Marvel's core characters:
Roy Thomas Saved Marvel – JimShooter.com

The G.I. Joe movies are still primarily based on the 1980s characters, because in the two decades that Joe existed before that it was just a straight military doll with few multiple characters or villains. But the movies did a poor job updating the designs, capturing the tone and developing the characters' personalities. The movies don't feel like they have a core understanding of 1980s G.I. Joe and why it worked for its fans. Stephen Sommers was 20 when 1980s G.I. Joe came out, too old to have grown up with it. Compare to Sam Raimi who was 3 when the Spider-Man comic debuted. His movies feel like he was reading Spider-Man all his life. Richard Donner was 8 when Superman's comic debuted. Kevin Feige and the Russos were born in the early '70s, and could've been reading lots of the comics their movies were based on as kids.

The first G.I. Joe movie actually kind of killed the toy franchise. The toy line had been revamped a couple years prior with 1980s-style designs and they were selling very well. Then they loaded the toy shelves with the first movie figures, with their more boring designs (almost every figure in black armor or blue camo) and those toys ended up on clearance. Some upcoming releases were cancelled. The stores cut orders, far less product was ordered for the second movie, then in a couple of years the toy line was exclusive to Toys "R" Us only. A couple years after that they didn't sell them in stores at all, only online. All the old toys based on the 1980s designs have been going up in value in recent years, and they just finally relaunched a new version of the toy line in 2020 using designs close to the '80s figures which is selling very well.

 

Oh, so you're now including the ruined careers of plastic toys, right?
I was under the assumption that this thread was mainly about movies that ruined/derailed the careers of Hollywood actors, directors, producers, and such.
I didn't know it could also cover the lucrative 'careers' of plastic toys. That reminds me, I wonder how Barbie and Ken are doing these days, or did they finally get divorced?
Was Barbie awarded full custody of the skiing holidays? Has Ken finished writing his tell-all autobiography yet? I wonder...

 

I feel like this one sort-of killed off what was left of Johnny Depp's career:


There were already diminishing returns prior to this, and certainly his pitiable-masked-outsider schtick was getting tiresome to audiences already (Alice in Wonderland, The Tourist, The Rum Diaries, endless Pirates sequels), but I think this disastrously ill-conceived and ill-timed Lone Ranger project put a spike in him.

 

Ha ha! That's one of my favourite films. Love the soundtrack too!

I found out years later, it wasn't a success but I remember, when I went to see it, the cinema queue went right down the street so if nothing else, it was big in Swansea.

I reckon that, given Flash himself is the blandest character in any Flash Gordon production, Sam J Jones was perfectly cast. An alumnus from the Victor Mature school of acting. Why stretch yourself with two facial expressions when one will do nicely?

 

I liked k19 widowmaker with Harrison Ford
Travolta had that massive comeback after pulp fiction so he had a good run

 

I remain bewildered that Hollywood cannot figure out how to do a decent Lone Ranger movie. Somewhere, Clayton and Jay are shaking their heads.

 

Too soon or not, it was the first thing that came to mind when I saw this thread. I think one or two children died, as well. I also recall the prosecutor brusquely and sarcastically handing John Landis a box of Kleenex during his unconvincing crying performance on the stand during his manslaughter trial.

 

I wouldn't be surprised if he gets one more stab if he wants it, and I wouldn't be surprised if the subject matter is yet another politically divisive American figure, whose name I will withhold.

 

Daredevil, Paycheck and Gigli almost did that for Ben Affleck. Luckily he rebounded with an acclaimed performance in Hollywoodland, Smoking Aces and The Town.