| Posted by: Derek Janssen at March 16, 2008, 10:51 pm | | Topic: Interesting film making decisions Forum: groupsrv | | G. M. Watson wrote: Quote: Interesting topic.......I've heard of some movies that were made to be trilogies but never had the success at the box office to get funding for the 2nd and 3rd versions. "Battlefield Earth." They were originally planning to do sequels to cover the rest of the Hubbard novel. They were even planning to do an animated TV series for the kids on Saturday morning too! Nowadays, EVERY movie wants to be a trilogy before it opens*: "Battlefield: Earth" wanted to be a trilogy... "Godzilla" wanted to be a trilogy... That loopy JJ Abrams "Superman" script wanted to be a trilogy... Even those low-budget soccer movies nobody saw are already up to their second movie. And as the saying goes, people in hell want water, BUT... ;) (* - Call it peer pressure, as the mentality now seems that any hit movie that *stays* one hit movie--or worse yet <giggle!>, only gets ONE sequel--must be doing something wrong... Modern producers, who associate hits with threes, now make sure to plan that into their long-range ambitions.) Quote:Travolta still has hopes of doing the sequels someday. (Viz.) Quote:On the DVD, Roger Christian said he still believes that the day will come when "Battlefield Earth" will be recognized as a truly great movie. He said that it's like "2001: A Space Odyssey," a movie that disappointed audiences on first release but may be recognized as a true classic decades later. Or the TV show "Star Trek," which got poor ratings in the 1960s but achieved lasting fame with new generations of fans. Maybe 40 years from now, "Battlefield Earth" will be as popular as "Star Trek" has become today. At least, that's Christian's theory. All that is so wrong in so many ways I am helpless to do anything but protest that _2001_ did not disappoint the initial audiences, at least not in my experience, we flocked to it and returned to it and discussed it and worked to understand it. And we did so in large numbers. To use crass current terminology, 2001 was considered the ultimate stoner movie, at a time when that dubious genre didn't yet exist outside of experimental/underground film. I personally knew a number of people who swore that watching the Stargate sequence (especially in the original Cinerama release) while ripped on acid was akin to seeing God (and even for those of us who watched it unenhanced, it was a powerful experience on that huge Cinerama screen). And yes, you're right; far from disappointing audiences, every screening I attended in '68 was packed, often with repeat attendees. I don't know what Travolta was smoking, but 2001 was a HUGE sober-mainstream hit in 1968. (I'm talking dollars, not whether *I* happened to like it...And I happen to have slept through most of its theatrical runs.) Every sci-fi movie's existence was judged against it for nigh on a decade, until You-Know-Who came along. Not that they liked it, but they went to see it--As Cinerama movies go, this was Coin of the Realm, as not seen since "How the West was Won". Derek Janssen ejanss1@verizon.net |
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