Almost to the end, folks. But before we finally recap the best (or, err, my favorites) of 2012, let's take a pit stop to discuss what are arguably the worst films of 2012. Now as always, I can't presume that I've seen every probable terrible movie out there (I generally avoid Adam Sandler comedies and didn't catch Parental Guidance in time), but I tried to highlight films that were both very bad and whose respective failures meant something more than just their artistic inadequacy. As always, the films below are in alphabetical order. So, without further ado, let's dive in!Alex Cross:
To William Hurt in A History of Violence, "How to do you f*** that up?!" You have a long-running detective series filled with larger-than-life villains and often insanely over-the-top violence. You have Tyler Perry, if perhaps cast against type than at least hungry to prove that he can do something different. You have Matthew Fox theoretically willing to chew up every bit of available scenery. And you have audiences primed for a kind of old-school adult-skewing genre picture that the previous two Morgan Freeman-starring Alex Cross films (Kiss the Girls and Along Came A Spider) represented back in the 1990s. How in the world do you make this film this incredibly boring? First of all, you take an explicitly R-rated story and neuter it into a still-inappropriate PG-13. Then you pile on generic cliche on top of generic cliche. Then you instruct every actor other than Fox to be as lifeless as possible. Finally, you never decide to make a down-to-Earth crime thriller or a would-be superhero/super villain story. The end result is a painfully dull would-be thriller that can't hold a candle to the most average episode of Criminal Minds.
As most of you know, the ambitious and expensive Cloud Atlas will be opening this weekend with around $10 million for the weekend. Even with Warner Bros. merely on the hook for distribution and marketing and even with the film's $100 million budget covered by foreign pre-sales, this is not a pleasant figure for a rather impressive movie. There will be finger-pointing and blame to go around over the next few days. But I would argue that the primary reason for its box office failure is actually a net positive. In short, Cloud Atlas had the bad luck to open during what can only be called a plethora of adult films. I've talked quite a bit about the slow and steady comeback of adult cinema in an age of non-stop tentpoles, but there is one downside to the current deluge. It can be argued that there is actually too much adult product out there in the current marketplace. And as we all know, a large majority of adult moviegoers aren't quite as frequent as the younger crowd. The stereotypical adult moviegoer, the one with a family and a job and various responsibilities, maybe only goes to the movies once a month. And if they went to the movies this weekend, they probably went to see Argo.
As I wrote two summers ago, there was a great irony in the idea of Super 8 being sold as the great summer original in a sea of mediocre sequels and reboots. The J.J. Abrams sci-fi drama sold itself as a diamond in the rough only to find itself facing off against one of the strongest mainstream summers in recent memory. So it is the case with Lionsgate's seemingly failed Alex Cross. I've long written about how the inexplicable death of the James Patterson film franchise signaled a sea change in Hollywood. Despite earning $74 million in America on a mere $30 million budget, Along Came A Spider was the second and last of the Morgan Freeman-starring Alex Cross thrillers. That Paramount, which once counted on pulpy, star-driven, adult-skewing (and often R-rated) thrillers as their bread-and-butter, would forsake what seemed to be a profit machine signaled that something was changing. As I've written before, 2001 was a game-changer for mainstream Hollywood in a number of major ways. One of the major wind changes we saw was the slow death of the adult-driven mid-budget genre film in favor of 'all tentpoles-all the time'. As I discussed earlier this year, the last two years has seen a real resurgence in just the kind of film that Kiss the Girls represented. Irony of ironies, when Alex Cross did return, the movie-going world didn't need him anymore.
The Paranormal Activity franchise is a multi-million dollar global phenomenon and shows little sign of stopping. The origins of the series stretch back to 2007 when director Oren Peli gathered a group of unknown actors together and shot a very small scale scare flick utilizing the 'found footage' technique (to keep costs costs down he even converted his house into a shooting location and set just seven days aside for filming). The story followed a young couple who encounter strange goings-on in their house. Katie claims an evil presence has always been with her, while her partner Micah is skeptical Setting up a video camera in their bedroom, they soon discover unexplained events, which escalate in the space of a few days. Made for just $15K, Paranormal Activity began gaining strong word of mouth thanks to an impressive showing at the ScreamFest Horror festival. This screening ended up securing Peli an agent but attempts to get the film a distribution deal stumbled even after the director (and Miramax's Jason Blum) re-edited the feature for its Sundance debut. A number of DVDs were sent out to any potentially interested party and one managed to catch the attention of Dreamworks execs Stacey Snider and Adam Goodman, who brought the film to Steven Spielberg's notice. The studio quickly cut a deal with Peli, on the proviso that he re-shoot the picture with an increased budget and higher production values. He agreed, on the condition that he could screen his original version for an audience first. When people walked out not long into the screening, Goodman figured they'd backed a failure. However, when he realized that the people had left due to being frightened by what they'd seen, his opinion changed. The remake idea was scrapped and the studio quickly moved to purchase the domestic rights to distribute (via their deal with Paramount) and the international rights to any sequels. Peli then re-edited the film, and altered the ending from the one seen at Screamfest. But, due to ongoing talks between Paramount and Dreamworks regarding their partnership, all of the latter's productions were delayed for the foreseeable future. Only when Adam Goodman became head of Paramount in summer 2009 did Paranormal Activity gain a release date.
