Worst Ideas Ever

by Daniel B. Kline

  In this long and convoluted story, Terl selects Jonnie as the foreman for this project seemingly as punishment but blatantly obviously as a way for Jonnie to have a little space to put a rebellion together. Like a Batman villain insisting upon setting up the Caped Crusader to be turned into taffy or maybe be eaten by sharks—then leaving, assuming his plan will work—Terl basically gives Jonnie all the tools needed to eventually overthrow the Psychlos. This included educating him using one of those magic sci-fi plot device rapid education montages. In this montage, he not only teaches Jonnie the Psychlos language but points out that they can’t go near the radiation because it causes an explosive reaction with the gas they breathe while on Earth.

  Conveniently, the mine site—which Terl cannot visit—sits atop an abandoned underground U.S. Military base with working aircraft, weapons, fuel, and nuclear weapons. Mind you, these weapons must be hundreds of years old, yet they work perfectly, including the flight simulators, which Jonnie and his rebel crew use to teach themselves how to fly high-tech jets in a manner of days. Of course, the good guys find a way to defeat the bad guys, even managing to teleport a nuclear bomb back to the Psychlo home planet, killing everyone there (let’s assume their entire population was evil and the Earth occupation wasn’t the product of some bad-egg Psychlos).

  The movie cost over $75 million to make and another $25 million to market while making just under $30 million worldwide.

  Vanity Projects Gone Wrong

  • Glitter

  Take an established star in music and put him/ her in either a literal or a thinly-veiled version of his/ her own life, and the public would surely lap it up. Sadly, though, for every Eminem in 8 Mile, there were countless Vanilla Ices in Cool as Ice. Still, this did not stop Twentieth Century Fox from casting Mariah Carey in Glitter, a poorly scripted film that was essentially Carey’s life story. Hopes were high for the movie, but nobody bothered to check, before making it, whether Carey could act or whether she was emotionally stable enough to star in a movie.

  It turned out she wasn’t, as the film’s release over the lucrative Labor Day weekend after Carey had to be hospitalized during the promotional run-up to the film for “extreme exhaustion.” This followed a bizarre appearance on MTV’s then hugely influential Total Request Live where she spoke incoherently and attempted a strip tease for the show’s young teen audience.

  Glitter was widely panned by critics, and despite Carey’s fame and the hype surrounding the movie, it made only just over $2 million in its opening weekend. Ultimately, the movie grossed about $5 million worldwide on a budget (not counting marketing expenses) of $25 million.

  • The Postman and Waterworld

  Kevin Costner earned himself an enormous amount of Hollywood benefit of the doubt when he went against pretty much the entire industry and turned Dancing with Wolves into a critically acclaimed megahit. Sadly, however, those instincts proved to be the exception rather than the rule as Costner’s next two attempts to go against conventional wisdom resulted in two of the biggest financial failures in box office history.

  The first, Waterworld, was more or less Mad Max set in the ocean. Costner’s character was a weird hybrid who had both gills and lungs as well as an unflattering ponytail that, it was rumored, had to be painted in during postproduction so Costner’s alleged bald spots would not show through. The Postman was also set in a postapocalyptic world, and the plot was even less entertaining as Costner played a drifter who finds an old United States Postal Service uniform, which he uses to convince people that the United States was back in business and help was coming against their warlord overlords.

  The Postman had an $80 million budget and made just over $17 million worldwide. Waterworld made more money (around $88 million), but its then incredible $175 million production budget made it an even larger money loser.

  • Gigli

  In 2003, Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck were huge movie stars who happened to be dating. They were dubbed “Bennifer” by the press, and their huge celebrity created demand for their first starring roles together, and made the resulting movie Gigli a highly anticipated release. Unfortunately, at some point during the making of the movie, the public grew tired of the couple. Still, they were both very famous and had headlined successful movies, so if the film was good, the backlash could be averted. Sadly, the film was not good; in fact, it was epically bad and the public responded in kind. Gigli not only made just barely $6 million on a production budget of $54 million, it also ruined the box office chances for the movie Jersey Girl. That film, an infinitely better one than Gigli, made by indie director and Affleck friend, Kevin Smith, only featured Lopez in a tiny scene with Affleck, but that was enough, and Jersey Girl struggled to make $25 million on its $35 million budget.

  22

  Cop Rock: Police and Musical Numbers Don’t Mix

  While a lot of bad ideas have made it onto American airwaves (My Mother the Car, about a deceased mom reincarnated as a car, and Cavemen, tarring the Geico cavemen, come to mind) none were as amazingly awful—in both idea and execution—as Cop Rock. At first, the series seemed to be a novel idea with an impressive pedigree. The series was developed by Stephen Bochco, the mind behind Hill Street Blues, L.A. Law, and NYPD Blue. Basically, this was a guy who knew how to run a cop show, and how bad could anything that he conceived and developed be?

  The answer was, of course, perhaps the worst show of all time. Though the title suggests a show about police who play in a band on the side or maybe officers who specialize in musicrelated crimes, the reality was, in fact, much worse. Cop Rock was part police procedural, part bombastic Broadway musical. These two genres were not an easy match—think salad and ice cream—and the resulting program was an uncomfortable mess where any time the audience became invested in the story, that momentum would be crushed by a musical number.

  Imagine watching an hour of Law & Order, becoming invested in the courtroom drama, and as the tension rises as to what the jury will say, they deliver their verdict in song. “He’s Guilty” was an actual song on the show, which also included an opening musical sequence by Randy Newman. Other songs included Hispanic defendants launching into song, suggesting that their arrests were due to racism, and some episodes even feature Sheryl Crow as a background singer.

  Perhaps the most amazing thing about Cop Rock was that ABC actually aired eleven episodes of the show, which routinely tops lists of the worst TV programs of all time. Perhaps because of its profound awfulness, Cop Rock has had a bit of a Rocky Horror Picture Show–style afterlife. Instead of merely disappearing, the series has had runs on a number of cable outlets on VH1, A&E, and Trio.

  Viva Laughlin

  Before the surprising success of Glee briefly gave the TV networks the idea that people wanted to see shows that mixed musical numbers with reality, CBS tried the genre, failing in Cop Rock-esque fashion. Glee, which came a few years later, works because the premise naturally leads to characters performing songs, but those premises are hard to come by, and mixing music and drama most certainly did not work for CBS’s Viva Laughlin.

  Based on a popular British series, Viva Laughlin was a short-lived CBS series, which was cancelled after a mere two episodes in 2007 despite having Hollywood heavy-hitter Hugh “Wolverine” Jackman as one of its executive producers. Perhaps the show failed because murder mysteries do not naturally lend themselves to song. Police detectives investigating gruesome murders rarely break out into song, and there was no natural way to shoehorn giant production numbers into the plotline.

  The mystery centered on businessman Ripley Holden and his attempts to open a casino. This effort has required every dime he has, and when, at the last minute his financing falls through, he must approach his hated rival, the lazily named Nicky Fontanna for help. Fontanna, of course, wants to own the casino by himself, and Holden turns down the deal, at which point, Fontanna gets murdered, and lots of singing ensued.

  Though it was cancelled quickly, Viva Laughlin was not criticized for
its musical numbers the way Cop Rock had been. Instead, critics blasted the horrible scripts, bad acting, and generally awful dialogue. Though Jackman has gone on to prove his musical credibility hosting the Tonys and later the Oscars, Viva Laughlin has yet to be revived even in an ironic, “so bad it’s good” fashion.

  23

  Godfather Part III: Too Much of a Good Thing

  Sequels almost never live up to the original film. In fact, most sequels are just a pretty obvious way for everyone involved to cash in on the notoriety of the original movie. That makes it very impressive that the success of the original The Godfather was followed by The Godfather Part II. Both films were not only commercially successful, but both won best picture Oscars and are considered all-time classics.

  Following two best picture winners made it nearly impossible for The Godfather Part III to meet expectations. It’s sort of like if you just dated two supermodels, it would be hard to go back to dating that pretty girl at work. She might have been perfectly gorgeous had you seen her before you met the supermodels, but now, well, you know what filet mignon tastes like, so it’s hard to go back to burgers.

  The first two Godfather films both draw from the novel The Godfather by Mario Puzo. The third, though it maintains the story lines of the novel, does not actually follow a story in the book. The third film also requires that you watch the first two if you want the movie to make any sense. That, of course, happens with sequels, but in most cases even the most story-driven epics (think Empire Strikes Back or Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom) still make sense to a new audience once they get the characters straight. With The Godfather Part III, the film was simply too dense to watch on its own if you had not seen the first two.

  In the case of many enormously successful trilogies, this would not be a problem as the large audiences that loved the first two would see the third one. That might produce a slightly declining audience, but the crowds would still be large. Unfortunately, that system presupposes that the films all get released within a few years of each other. In the case of The Godfather films, the first was released in 1972, the second in 1974, and the third in 1990.

  Today, that might not be a problem because in the endless cable universe, it seems there are periods where The Godfather movies are always playing. In 1990, however, that was not the case as there were many less cable outlets, many fewer people with cable and, though the movies were available on video, only a small percentage of the potential audience was reaching back sixteen and eighteen years respectively to watch the first two movies.

  In addition to having story problems and a huge gap since the first two movies had been popular, The Godfather Part III had another huge problem—Sofia Coppola. The daughter of the Godfather eries director, Francis Ford Coppola, Sofia was not considered an actress by the general public. Her casting in a film where she would play a pivotal role alongside multiple Oscar winners was considered ludicrous and was widely panned before a single frame of her appeared on-screen. A complete unknown might have been questioned, but the director casting his own daughter was met with the reaction that Woody Allen would get if he cast himself in the lead in a remake of Gladiator.

  Sofia Copolla, who would later go on to become a successful director herself with Lost in Translation, was universally panned in the movie and her casting was seen as absurd nepotism. And while the first two movies won Best Picture Oscars, The Godfather Part III won two Golden Raspberry Awards, both for Sofia Coppola for Worst Supporting Actress and Worst New Star.

  Other Dubious Sequels

  • Superman IV: The Quest for Peace

  Even though Superman III featured Richard Pryor, a killer computer, and tobacco-laced synthetic kryptonite not to mention a plot that pitted an evil Superman against a good Clark Kent in a no-holdsbarred junkyard battle, that was not the worst Superman sequel. That honor instead goes to Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, a sort of Cold War analogy that had Superman (powered by the sun) battling the evil Nuclear Man (powered by villainous capitalists and their dangerous nuclear energy). Nuclear Man also had a ridiculous black-and-gold leotard that was supposed to look menacing, but mostly looked like he stole it from a lower-end Mexican wrestler. This was also the Superman where they cheaped out, so to say the special effects are amateur would be an insult to amateurs who would at least cover up the wires that made the hero fly.

  • Star Wars: The Phantom Menace

  The first three Star Wars movies have inspired one of the most devoted fan-bases in the history of moviedom. Fans were literally begging George Lucas to make more of them, and he responded by delivering a prequel trilogy. Though two of the movies were legitimately bad (only Revenge of the Sith is defensible), the worst of the three was the ponderous Phantom Menace. Not only did the movie feature a young Anakin Skywalker, well before his journey to becoming Darth Vader, it also featured endless debate scenes that bored everyone. Perhaps most egregious, the movie featured Jar Jar Binks, a CGI alien character who spoke in Ebonics and made the Ewoks seem macho.

  • Blues Brothers 2000

  This might have worked, except John Belushi was dead and even Jim Belushi had the sense to turn this piece of dreck down. Jim Belushi—the man who made K-9—turned this down, yet it still got made. The plot, if you can call it that, was basically just an excuse for two old guys Dan Aykroyd and John Goodman to wear suits and pretend they were still cool. They weren’t, and this was truly embarrassing.

  • Caddyshack II

  If there’s a truly awful sequel, there’s a decent chance it stars Dan Aykroyd. He’s in this too, but you know who isn’t? Bill Murray. Instead, we Jackie Mason, which is like trading Jaguar for a used Huffy.

  • Rocky V

  Rocky IV was ridiculous (that’s the one where he essentially defeated communism), but at least it followed the basic story arc of “Rocky trains hard and wins an impossible-to-win fight.” This sequel, however, has Rocky broken and braindamaged, working as a trainer to the charisma-free Tommy Morrison as villain Tommy Gunn. Mr. T had chains with more personality than this guy. Sadly, the movie does not culminate in a big boxing match. Instead, Balboa and Gunn have a street fight that weirdly had rounds.

  24

  Theodore Rex: Whoopi Goldberg and a Dinosaur Puppet Make $35 Million Disappear

  While it’s easy to imagine a Hollywood agent pitching “it’s Jurassic Park meets Lethal Weapon,” it’s hard to picture a studio not only buying the script but committing $35 million to a movie about a human cop paired with an animatronic dinosaur. It’s even harder to imagine that the studio (in this case New Line) would get Whoopi Goldberg to star alongside “the world’s toughest cop,” an animatronic puppet of a Tyrannosaurus rex. (A line from a movie poster touting the conscientious dinosaur literally read, “The world’s toughest cop is getting a brand-new partner. He’s a real blast from the past.”)

  The premise of the movie was that an evil DNA expert, Elizar Kane (Armin Mueller-Stahl) had, to all outward appearances, brought dinosaurs back to life with good intentions. In reality, his plan involved destroying the sun and plunging the planet into a new ice age in which he would survive by being frozen on his personal ark. Apparently, this would make him the leader of a post–ice age world. (Although, of course this could never be, given that he destroyed the sun, and suns tend not to magically reignite.)

  No explanation was made as to why these newly revived dinosaurs talked or why these traditionally slow-witted animals now would have fully human intellects. There was also no attempt to maintain consistency or even keep the film true to its own logic. Still, if you accepted the basic premise—and were willing to buy that anything can happen in a universe populated with wisecracking animatronic puppet dinosaurs—it would make perfect sense to you that Goldberg ’s “tough” cop, Katie Coltrane, would have to partner with one of these dinosaurs and attempt to save the world by using a plan so far-fetched, “it just might work.”

  Goldberg committed to making this film before she won her Oscar for 1990�
��s Ghost and did everything in her power to avoid actually making it. Threats of a lawsuit, however, forced her to make the movie and she responded by showing up to read her lines with the zeal of someone sentenced to make PSAs as community service. At times Goldberg was actually out-acted by her very poorly puppeteered prehistoric partner, and seeing this movie ends the debate over whether Bogus or Eddie represented the least inspired performance of Goldberg, the one-time star of The Color Purple.

  Despite the ridiculous premise, poor performances, and lousy script, the film still cost $35 million. While $35 million in today’s dollars represents the budget of a modest romantic comedy co-starring Hugh Grant, in 1995 it was a significant amount to spend on a cop-buddy film. That made it all the more shocking when New Line decided to forego a theatrical release of the film, instead quietly releasing it direct to video.

  By keeping it out of theaters, New Line avoided having the movie be considered one of the biggest box office disasters of all time. Releasing it direct to video also kept the film from being reviewed by newspapers across the country and robbed the nation of a Whoopi Goldberg publicity tour where she would have to tout a film she had only made to avoid a lawsuit.

  Goldberg’s reluctance to star in the movie proved prescient as it quickly cooled off her career. She immediately followed Theodore Rex with the almost equally abysmal Eddie (where she coaches the Knicks), Bogus (where Gérard Depardieu plays an imaginary French monster), and The Associate (where she works for conspicuously white people on Wall Street). Though she appeared in a number of other lousy movies after those three, Goldberg largely moved to television where she starred in a revamped Hollywood Squares and a self-titled sitcom where she inexplicably played a soul singer who owned a hotel. She currently appears on The View where she seems more successful than during her quickly cancelled syndicated talk show—the cleverly titled The Whoopi Goldberg Show.