Cinematical

This looked like a stinker from the get-go, as many (most) of Nicole Kidman's movies do. It seems as if she tries too hard to make a "popular" film between arties" Bewitched, Stepford, now this... another big-budget stinker.

Kidman has never been a box-office draw--quite the opposite. And Daniel Craig is great, but he isn't A-list, and won't be until he scores a non-Bond hit. Which isn't unusual for Bonds, really... Pierce Brosnan has made some genuinely good movies, but only his Thomas Crown remake--a Bond-like caper--rose above mediocre B.O. returns, and was only a mid-level hit at that. As good as Matador was, no one went.

Of course, Golden Compass may make the Kidman/Craig pairing a winner. That film's producers can't be thrilled by Invasion's returns, though.

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I can't speak for the rest of the country, but as a Washingtonian, I can report that the "Washington Post" chronicled so many flubs regarding the locations used in the film that most of us here probably blew it off as too silly and careless an effort to bother with.

Just speaking for myself, I never cared about "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" in any of its incarnations.

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This is just another failed remake. Why does Hollywood keep remaking things? They almost always fail. I, for one am sick to death of all the remakes. and there are a whole pile of them coming down the pipeline.

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If you want to compare to Rush Hour 3, for Rush Hour 3 it was pretty much a given that reviewers would not like it, but I like goofy action comedies and I liked the first two films, so I went to the third. It wasn't great, or even that good but it made me laugh a few times, so it was much as I expected.

Invasion not only was disliked by reviewers, the trailers for it looked boring. I usually like SF films, if the trailers had made it look like something I would like I would have went to watch it. Plus I only had time for one film this weekend so I went to Suberbad, very very funny.

Are there any stats on if remakes generally do bad or good? I think remakes get done because you have a proven property and quite a few actually do very well.
Some remakes in the IMDB top 250
The Departed (from a Hong Kong film)
Lord of the Rings (it has other film versions)
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (remake of The Three Outlaws )
Scarface

There are probably a few more in there that I don't know off the top of my head.

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On initially hearing about this movie I thought 'awesome, hopefully someone can provide another fresh take on the body snatcher story.' But I was without luck as I heard the film go down the tubes. I think there were enough problems when it was reported in certain markets that the film was having problems. I work in the industry and heard they were begging people to come to Washington to work because crew had left or been fired constantly. When that happens on a major film and then it's early morning review in newspapers puts it at vomitous, well things can't go well.

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I saw a few ads on TV (not many) and a trailer before a film (Hostel 2 likely, which might explain something.)

Until I started reading reviews I wasn't certain that this was the film Daniel Craig was in with her. Never saw him in the ads. I found that strange.



Much like I find people showing up in droves to see the most annoying man on Earth mock an elderly Jackie Chan strange, but people do it. There's absolutely no accounting for the taste of the general public, which tends to be awful (I saw Hostel 2, but I had alternate reasons, I swear!)

At least some movies that should bomb actually do.

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I saw both this weekend. Superbad was what I was expecting which was a good thing...very funny. The Invasion was also what I expected which was not a good thing, the movie fell apart. I have seen worse films but this is a rental at best.

http://www.movie-cat.com
Rob

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I wasnt really instrested in seeing the invaison when I saw the trailer it looked really borring but when i saw the trailer for supabad it looked funny it looked as you would have a better time at the movies watching superbadd then watching the invaison maybe because superbadd was more original also off the sucess of knocked up

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Maybe there will be a backlash on big budget remakes of classic films like the horror backlash after Hostel 2. Box office duds is the only way to get it through Hollywood's minds that they need to remake the BAD movies, not the good ones

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I saw The Invasion this weekend, mainly because I knew Kidman and Craig were in it, but honestly thinking about it there wasn't much on TV for it.
But I enjoyed the movie, it wasn't great, but it had some suspense and was a fun way to waste an hour and a half.

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When I first heard about The Invasion, I was excited--I tend to like both Kidman and Craig, I like the Invasion of the Body Snatchers story, and though I rarely think remakes live up to the originals, I like to see them for comparison. When I heard that Oliver Hirschbiegel was directing, I was super-excited, because both Downfall and Das Experiment hit my top ten for their respective years.

And that's the reason I didn't end up going to see it--when I heard the studio had apparently pulled the film Hirschbiegel made back in for rewrites and re-edits because it wasn't action-y enough, it pushed The Invasion from "potentially interesting psychological horror/thriller by a thoughtful director" into "studio-fracked-up-mish-mash". And apparently, that's exactly what has happened. If the studio didn't want a Hirschbiegel film, why did they get him to direct it? Hollywood infuriates me sometimes. I mean, most of the time.

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Jette, for me it was a combination of Kidman-itis (I like that one...) and all the bad press that surrounded this film. When I first saw the trailer, I was pretty pumped up for the film. I have enjoyed all the various permutations of the original for the most part and expected this one to be at least passable. Unfortunately, the more I heard, the less interested I got.

The other factor is Nicole Kidman's overexposure right now. She is a talented actress when she selects a good role however that talent has been diluted by all the weak roles she's assumed recently. For every "Fur" we get six "Stepford Wives" and that is NOT a good thing for her. Add the fact that we get the six films back to back and it just compounds how bad the stinkers she's in really are. She's a decent actress but she has extremely limited range and poor facial expression to boot. She always seems to have that same pained or surprised expression on her face no matter what the circumstance. Not good.

OK, a brief check on imdb shows the following statistics:

2008 - three films in pre-production already
2007 - three films completed or released
2006 - two films (a light year, she got married)
2005 - two films
2004 - two films
2003 - three films
2002 - two films
2001 - three films

That is a total of twenty films in eight years. That's a lot of movies! Use your own judgement but for me, she's moving quickly to the "B" list.

http://www.myspace.com/scoobarama

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I just can't get excited about another remake of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." It's been done to death. If they have to reamake something, do something with some flair like "The Blob."

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"The Invasion"'s massive failure is wholly unsurprising for a multitude of reasons: poor advertising, tired premise, horror remake fatigue, studio interference, the talented and gorgeous Nicole Kidman's crushingly waning starpower, etc. but the main reason why it was a total misfire at the box office is simply that, for some mysterious reason, the general movie-going public is invariably always able to discern the nasty stench of the shelf.

It's as bizarre as it is uncanny that even Joe Schmo Friday-Night-Multiplex-Man can put the pieces together and recognize a juggled, displaced bomb on even its opening weekend. He may not be able to spot and stay away from a typical turkey on an average weekend but God knows he can stay clear of movies that are delayed and massively reshot and all that.

Just take a look back at infamous movies that had their studios clumsily and nervously shuffling their respective release dates. From "Pluto Nash" to "Pathfinder", "The Ex" to "Evan Almighty", despite all best, desperate efforts to assuage the dire situation with everything from seeded press releases to expensive ad campaigns to title changes, those films always manage to flop. Mightily.

If a studio doesn't even have an ounce of faith in the finished product and is content with sitting on it for weeks or months, there really isn't any reason to see it when it's finally dumped into theaters when you can just wait another 2 to rent the DVD.

I don't know how the majority of audiences piece it together and find out a movie has been plagued with reshoots and games of release date musical chairs but they do and they stay far, far away.

If I had to venture a guess, I'd say that average moviegoers filter out the butchered, bounced crap by simple overexposure fatigue. While the overall marketing campaign may just be idling for a time, they are still seeing that same damn theatrical trailer for that same lame-looking movie attached to prints of every movie they see for months on end, albeit with altered release dates.

I know I experience that myself all the time and that was definitely the case for "The Invasion". Sometimes I find myself so exasperated at the sight of yet another appearance of those ancient, terrible trailers that I'll just leave the theater and mill around outside for a few minutes to prevent my death from boredom and/or sheer irritation.

The first time I remember walking out like that was when, for the millionth time, I had to see the trailer for that Brian Helgeland/Heath Ledger crapfest, "The Order". (Does anyone even remember that movie?) I swear, I was forced to catch that same embarrassing trailer in theaters at least 20 times over the course of at least a year. It made two minutes feel longer than two hours.

To this day, I have not even once been tempted to even consider being the least bit curious to see that movie.

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I'm pretty sure that the mainstream audience does not know if a movie has undergone reshoots, been pushed back, or had production problems in general, unless they read or hear about it in a review or from someone who follows movies closely. It seems to me that The Invasion's biggest problem was similar to The Last Legion's problem this weekend - I'd never heard of it until I checked to see what was coming out over the weekend, and I see a lot of movies. I didn't see trailers once for either movie in the theater, and I average about a movie a week. If it weren't for Kidman's presence, I'm confident that this movie would not have cracked the top 10. Whether you like her or not, she clearly can bring in an audience with a wide release, though people seem to like her in dark romantic comedies mostly. It seems to me that not only was the movie not marketed, but that the trailers that were out there were very uninteresting. By contrast, I've seen the Superbad trailers about a half dozen times, and it did look pretty funny. I'd like to know how much was spent on marketing these 3 movies.

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I personally do not see why the movie did not do better. I saw it twice within a week. The first time I went by myself (my dormmates were too busy). When I told them about it, they wanted to go and see it. The philosophical aspect about human beings in the movie triggered a great discussion afterwards; they loved it as I did.

Not only that, but I will buy it when it comes out on dvd. I am actually quite shocked that more people did not go see it. I have been telling people on campus to go and see it before it is out of the theatres -- it is worth seeing on the big screen.

I also should comment that young people have been exposed to such horrors on the big screen that "The Invasion" seems like an after school special one would be forced to watch. You just cannot compare "Saw I, II, & III," "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," and "Hostel" with "The Invasion;" the obnoxious teenagers behind us in the theatre just could not control their A.D.D. and were rather bored through the flick. Perhaps it was a movie for an older crowd (who did not show up for the remake).

Billy

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