Is there anything worse than 90's Hollywood blockbusters?

[DerekG]

I'm not a snob. I adore the fantasias of Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Robert Zemekis, James Cameron and Peter Jackson.

They're marvelous storytellers. But with few exceptions ("Jurassic Park," "Terminator 2"), they spent the duration of the 90's tackling more dramatic fare...or just dallying. Which left us in the hands of stylized hacks, who spewed out the following:

"Armageddon"
"The Rock"
"Independence Day"
"Con Air"
"Cliffhanger"
"Godzilla"
"The Mummy"

Honestly, I get chills just thinking about them.

[bigwillq]

1. I thought Armageddon was good.

I cried at the end.

[DerekG]

3. Michael Bay is the antichrist

Movies should not be two-hour-long MTV music videos.

[bigwillq]

4. I still liked it.

The other ones on that list in the OP I didn't care for.

[beyurslf]

2. Um, Howard the Duck?

Yeah. We need not go any further.

[windy252]

7. I must watch that some day

just to see why it's considered horrible.

[kevsand]

11. There are two kinds of people.

Those who get it, and those who don't.

It was the same way with the comic book. It wasn't like all the others, so a lot of people didn't like it, but those who did thought Steve Gerber was a genius and possibly the best Marvel writer of his day.

Admittedly, the film was not as good as the comic, but did retain a fair amount of its quirkyness, and features both a wonderful performance by Jeffrey Jones and a 25 year old Lea Thompson (yum!). Plus Tim Robbins.

[Hissyspit]

20. The comic was brilliant. The movie was a corruption of it.

Too much interference from the studio. The first mistake was to not animate Howard, but use a little person in a duck suit. Big mistake.

A few years later, Who Framed Roger Rabbit was a huge hit using the live/animated technique.

[kevsand]

24. The studio clearly had no idea what to do with it.

Part of the reason it bombed so badly at the box office was because they were totally clueless as to how to market it. And a big part of its rep as a bad movie stems from the lackluster profits.

You're also absolutely right about it being nowhere near as good as the books. They took all the bite and edgyness out of Howard and "cuted" him up way too much.

I'd have to disagree about live action vs. animation, though. I don't think Howard would have looked or felt right with the state of the art at that time. Roger Rabbit worked because they were supposed to be toons. Howard needed to be real flesh and blood and feathers, at least for me.

I basically just loved the character and the concept, and while the film wasn't everything I wanted it to be, I still think it was a lot better than its rep.

[UCLA02]

33. 25 yo Lea Thompson...

Fell in love with her in Space Camp, though.

Ahhh, my puberty years...and a 25 yo Lea Thompson frozen in time in my mind.

[Vidar]

13. Kinda liked Howard, but I won't defend it.

[fizzgig]

28. oi!

that is a rad movie, imho.

maybe it's cuz they got me at a young age...

[Jade Fox]

5. I kinda liked "Con Air"....

Independence Day was a lot like the 1980s TV mini-series called V, only V was, uh, good! Armageddon is the worst movie I ever walked out on.

[TK421]

8. Armageddon was pure torture from the beginning...it was a total bore

[SOteric]

6. You mean

The Shawshank Redemption (1994), Schindler's List (1993), Pulp Fiction (1994), The Usual Suspects (1995), The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Fight Club (1999), Reservoir Dogs (1992), Fargo (1996), Twelve Monkeys (1995), The Big Lebowski (1998) Being John Malkovich (1999), Delicatessen (1991)...?

[DerekG]

9. They were not Hollywood blockbusters

Granted, some earned substantial profits, but none belonged to the popcorn-summer-season class.

[DS1]

16. But how many of those are still talked about?

The "blockbusters", that is

[DerekG]

17. Not often

The Bay/Bruckheimer/Devlin/Emmerich productions had short lives, compared to their 70's and 80's antecedents.

[kevsand]

10. I didn't see Cliffhanger, but I thoroughly enjoyed every other film

on that list.

You want bad blockbusters? Try the seventies:

Towering Inferno
Earthquake
Airport ad infinitum
Rollercoaster

Need I say more?

[DerekG]

12. The 70's failures were offset by superb escapist fare

"The Exorcist"
"Jaws"
"Star Wars"
"Close Encounters of the Third Kind"
"Superman"
"Alien"

[kevsand]

14. That's true, but then the studios ran half of those aground

on the shoal of sequels. Exorcist, Jaws, and Superman all had lobotomies in their subsequent incarnations, but kept making enough money to warrant still one more go-round. Same thing with The Omen and Planet of the Apes. The studios still ruled back then, and they usually sucked. The really good stuff came from only a handful of craftsmen.

[DerekG]

15. Certainly. I just don't think the 90's boasted passable FX entertainment.

After "The Abyss," "Terminator 2," and, to a lesser degree, "Jurassic Park," nothing comes to mind.

[kevsand]

26. How about these?

The Fifth Element (1997)
The Sixth Sense (1999)
Army of Darkness (1993)
Species (1995)
Dark City (1998)
The Crow (1994)
Face/Off (1997)
Broken Arrow (1996)
Deep Blue Sea (1999)
Sphere (1998)
Galaxy Quest (1999)
The Matrix (1999)

Granted, not all of them really qualify as "blockbusters," but they were all eminently watchable, and most had pretty big name casts. I do notice that most of these were in the second half of the decade. Maybe it was just the first half of the nineties that sucked...

[DerekG]

27. I actually consider '99 the beginning of the new wave of blockbusters

It was that year in which filmmakers such as the Wachowskis, M. Night, and George Lucas (re)emerged, blanketing their productions with atypical idiosyncratic flourishes. This would reach its apex with Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" adaptations.

As for the earlier films cited, the only one I'd deem an artistic triumph would be Proyas's "Dark City" (the greatest SF film of the past decade, IMHO). And that wasn't a blockbuster.

[kevsand]

30. The second half of the nineties also saw the return of

slasher films to widespread popularity with Wes Craven's re-energizing "Scream" in 1996 and its sequel in 1997. Lesser films like 1997's "I Know What You Did Last Summer" were quick to capitalize on the trend.

That genre had become pretty jaded in the eighties and early nineties until those two films breathed new life into it and brought bigger audiences back into the theatres. It also probably didn't hurt that 1997 was the debut of Buffy the Vampire Slayer as a tv series, although it never quite lived up to the original 1992 feature film.

[DerekG]

34. I wasn't enamored with that trend

There are a handful of slasher films I find enormously effective ("Black Christmas"; "Halloween"; "A Nightmare on Elm Street"), and I credit their success to the dead sobriety suffusing every frame. The recent spat, unfortunately, was so taken with spouting pop-culture references they forgot to be scary.

On a related note: Have you seen Wes Craven's "New Nightmare?" It was a kind of prototype for his "Scream" franchise, but one I found far more intriguing. For the first time since the original, Fred Krueger had an air of menace. Good stuff.

[kevsand]

35. I've never been a huge fan of slashers, myself,

so I missed New Nightmare when it came out. The original Friday the 13th was interesting at the time because of the innovative make-up and uniqueness of some of the deaths, but none of the rest had anything to commend them until Jason X added a couple of new twists. Overall, the genre really hasn't come up with much of anything new since Psycho, although Carpenter's original Halloween had his engagingly minimalist score and relentless, methodical pacing.

To tell you the truth, there've only been a handful of horror films that really creeped me out. The original versions of Haunting of Hill House, Night of the Living Dead, and Texas Chainsaw were very disturbing, but the only film since then to give me a legitimate physical response was The Grudge.

On a lighter note, I think that both Night of the Creeps and Shaun of the Dead are perfect little masterpieces of comic horror.

[Archae]

18. Most 60's "blockbusters" sucked too.

My Mom dragged all 5 of us kids to "The Bible."

[GoddessOfGuinness]

19. It's like pop music

only it's on film.

If only they made movies with more taste and less filling.

[swag]

21. No.

[LSdemocrat]

22. This decade's so called "blockbusters"

[CanuckAmok]

23. If anything, all that happened is that the action-blockbuster was...

...defined as a genre.

Of your list, some are better than others. Con-Air and The Rock are two of the better ones.

The Alien franchise, of course, Terminator 2, Ronin, and Air Force One are quality films in their own right, that happen to be action/CGI-based. True lies is fairly decent, story-wise, although I found the subject matter pretty objectionable.

I could not understand why Godzilla, the Jurassic Park movies, and all the 'man vs. nature' (Dante's Peak, Twister, etc) were so well received. They were great eye-candy, but they were nearly plotless.

I have heard that the producers of Independence Day were successfully sued by the estate of HG Wells, as it was basically just an updated, jingoistic version of War of the Worlds. I don't know if that's true, however.

The Mummy franchise had potential, and it was fun, but the writers didn't bother to inject any clever dialogue into what could have been a camp classic. Basically, they were lazy, and relied on the visual razzle-dazzle to entertain.

As is what happens with any genre, the action blockbuster has become transparently formulaic, and for that reason, peoples' standards have lowered. The public don't generally go to see "The Leage of Extraordinary Gentlemen" to be intellectually challenged; it's a visual roller-coaster.

And have you noticed that most action blockbusters have pretty much adopted the formula of the basic video game?

They're a series of relatively low-level battles with opponents, and a climactic battle with the "boss" at the end. Imagine the Alien as a barrel-hurling gorilla and Sigourney Weaver as an Italian plumber, and you'll see my point.

[kevsand]

29. That video game-like structure has also been a staple

of Hong Kong cinema for over forty years. I wonder if there hasn't been some kind of mutually reinforcing harmonic at work here...

[ContraBass Black]

25. Snakes!

On a plane!

[UCLA02]

31. ...on the muthafuckin' plane!

eom

[UCLA02]

32. Bay/Bruckheimer...

...were the Amos and Andy of the 1990s: as popular as they were offensive to the senses.

[Blue_Tires]

36. Hollywood blockbusters made after 2000 n/t

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

37. Armageddon was horrible.

Deep Impact was much better.

And I kind of liked Con Air. :shrug:

[TheBaldyMan]

38. SFX took all of the budget, didn't spend a dime on the script

It's usually a recipe for big box-office reciepts but usually they sink without trace after a few years when the effects look dated.

Compare them with something like Toy Story or Shrek. The animation isn't as impressive nowadays but the script holds up to the test of time.