THE RESULTS:
– The Social Network: 10 votes
– Animal House: 6 votes
– Good Will Hunting: 5 votes
– Old School: 3 votes
– Revenge of the Nerds: 3 votes
– Back to School: 2 votes
– Accepted: 1 vote
– The Paper Chase: 1 vote
– PCU: 1 vote
– Road Trip: 1 vote
– Rudy: 1 vote
– Spring Breakers: 1 vote
While many will cry foul at Animal House finishing second, at least it lost to a very admirable opponent. For my money, David Fincher’s The Social Network was the best film from 2010, and it appears to still have quite a few fans. Perhaps if I had specifically asked for best college comedy, the results would have been different.
This Week’s Poll: Raise your hand if you were surprised to see The Lone Ranger flop at the box office this weekend. No one? Yeah, me either. The Lone Ranger finished second with just over $29 million, barely eking past last week’s hit, The Heat. While its box office performance could have been even worse, it’s still a huge disappointment for a film that cost nearly $250 million to make. For this week’s poll, let’s take a look at films that have been even bigger busts: what is your favorite “box office bomb” guilty pleasure? Do you believe Heaven’s Gate or Ishtar are misunderstood classics? Are you a closet Gigli fan? Let’s hear your thoughts!
For a helpful list of other box office bombs, check out this list on Wikipedia.
Surprising!!! Wha???
What did you have pegged as the winner?
I picked Revenge of the Nerds but I thought Animal House would run away with it.
Yeah, I thought Animal House would win, too. Crazy results.
Interesting top winner here! Not much complaining from me.
Voted for Sahara and Speed Racer.. Really do genuinely enjoy both of them a lot! They’re fun little films.
I’ve actually heard some good things about Sahara lately — I might have to check it out then.
I had to wikipedia a list of the different box office bust and I have to say of all the movies on that list: I absolutely loved Treasure Planet. It was my moms favorite disney movie for a long time and it was kind of our “bonding” movie when I was in my rowdy teenage years.
Oh, I should have included a link to Wikipedia’s list. Good idea! I haven’t seen Treasure Planet, but that’s really cool that you have a special connection to it.
I went with Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within and John Carter, as both are decent films that suffered primarily through poor marketing and public misunderstanding. (I also kind of liked Green Lantern, but it suffered from being nowhere near as good as it should have been.)
The Spirits Within wouldn’t have had a stellar reception regardless, I think, but Square made a big misstep in tacking “Final Fantasy” on the front. They were trying to gain the audience of their video game series, but in the process lost everybody else, as most people said “It’s based on a video game, it’s going to suck.” As a CG animated movie when those weren’t common, and attempting to portray realistic human beings, it needed all the help it could get, and saddling it with a poor name went a long way towards sinking it. Even the non-prefixed name isn’t all that great.
John Carter was a tremendously fun movie… but the marketing for it was absolutely inept. Disney forgot that most people nowadays don’t know the stories it’s based on. The name John Carter doesn’t mean anything to them, any more than Michael Smith. It needed the “of Mars” attached so people would know what it was from the beginning. If they didn’t want to do that (they gave some half-assed reasoning that he wasn’t “of Mars” until the end), then they could have done John Carter of Earth. Just give something so people know, from the very title, what genre it is. Then do a real job of telling people what it is, and why it’s a revered story. This thing had months of marketing, and it was only in the last week or two that the ads mentioned that it was by the same guy who wrote Tarzan, and that the John Carter of Mars stories were the inspiration for Superman, Star Wars, and Avatar. By that time, the general public had already concluded the film was a rip-off of those films. Coupled with the general public perception that “pulp fiction” refers only to a Quentin Tarantino film, and it was doomed from the outset.
Morgan, you are spot on about The Spirits Within. I don’t think that was a bad film at all, but you’re right, slapping the FF name on it didn’t do it any justice. From what I remember, the film had no connection at all to the video game series either. A real head-scratcher all around there.
I haven’t seen John Carter, but I have heard quite a few people say it was better than they expected. I agree about the terrible marketing. Coming from someone who had never even heard of the stories it was based on, I had no idea what the film was going to be like. I just kept hearing all of the negative publicity regarding its overblown budget and tepid reviews, and that pretty much put me off of it. Might give it a shot now though since it’s on DVD.
A good litmus test for how well you’ll like it is to compare it to other pulp fiction films. If you enjoy old-school (1950s) sci-fi films, and you enjoy sword-and-sandal fantasy films (such as Conan the Barbarian), then you’ll get a kick out of John Carter.
Those are two areas I’m not well-versed in, unfortunately. I have always wanted to check out Conan though…
Hi, Eric:
Good poll!
Not surprised with ‘The Social Network’ winning with the younger age of those talking the poll. Nor by my single vote for ‘The Paper Chase’.
A belated Honorable Mention would also include ‘The Sterile Cuckoo’.
Hi Jack, your vote inspired me to add The Paper Chase to my Netflix queue, so it wasn’t for nothing. 🙂 I hope to see it soon.
Also have to go with ‘Hudson Hawk’. For the singing duets during heists. And for seeing a young, mute David Caruso getting beat up.
I’ve always been curious about Hudson Hawk. Seems like it could be goofy, campy fun.
Nice to see The Social Network win,a film I need to revist.
I’ve seen about a 1/3 of those box office busts, yet I barely remember anything about them!
Final Fantasy was kind of a big thing for pushing the visual medium, but the story was just…meh.
I was so looking forward to Speed Racer, and so disappointed by the result, I don’t even think I finished it.
I didn’t finish Speed Racer either. 🙂 For whatever reason, I started it and never got back around to it.
Agreed on The Social Network — that’s one I want to revisit. Same with Black Swan, my other favorite from 2010.
Boy I missed this poll again but I would’ve voted for Social Network too. For this week’s poll, I went w/ John Carter as it was quite enjoyable for me. Haven’t seen a lot on the list so I picked Blade Runner as it was a flop at the box office before it became a cult hit.
Oh, Blade Runner is a good pick. It wasn’t quite as big of a bust as some of the others, but yeah, it definitely disappointed at the box office. Great movie!
This was an easy one. A while back I wrote a list of my favorite guilty pleasures with “Hudson Hawk” at the top. I”m also a fan of “John Carter” and was glad you gave us the ability to vote for two.
Those are two I am curious to check out, especially Hudson Hawk. Thanks for voting!