Even though filmmaking is a collaborative effort, it’s the actors who become the public
face of the final product.
Which can be great when the movie is a hit, and humiliating, when it’s not.
While most actors take the occasional negative review in stride, these stars think they just
made the next Citizen Kane.
The Rock
With a 19 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, Baywatch clearly didn't win critics over with its comedic
take on the classic TV show.
Detroit News critic Adam Graham, wrote,
"So what you’ve got is some basic R-rated humor, a few funnies, some tanned, toned bodies
and a half-baked plot — nothing more, but maybe a little less.
It’s "Baywatch."
What did you expect?"
But Anthony Lane of The New Yorker praised The Rock, saying,
"Thank heaven for Dwayne Johnson…who saves the life of the movie.
Whether it deserves to be saved is another matter."
But Johnson wasn’t feeling that low Rotten Tomatoes score.
He tweeted, "Fans LOVE the movie.
Critics HATE it.
What a glaring disconnect."
Maybe it was all hype, but it seems like The Rock takes his '90s-remakes a little too seriously.
Ben Affleck
Batman versus Superman: Dawn of Justice was supposed to be the event of 2016.
It would be the first time the two characters appeared in the same film, and it would set
the stage for a movie version of the Justice League to compete with Marvel's The Avengers.
But despite a massive marketing campaign, it bombed.
The Atlantic’s Christopher Orr wrote,
"Batman v Superman is a tiresome, ill-tempered film, and one too lazy even to earn its dismal
outlook."
And The Washington Post said the movie showed,
"...protagonists who grimace, scowl and wince their way through heroics with the joyless
determination of shift workers making the doughnuts."
Affleck later blamed audiences for not understanding the film’s tone when he sat down with Fox
5 DC.
"People seemed to want to have a lighter tone to the movie"
"Tone isn’t like a qualitative thing.
It's subjective, right?
Some tones resonate with me that might not with you."
Affleck, we feel you.
Megan Fox
Despite producer Michael Bay's success with Transformers, the 2014 live-action reboot
of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles bit it hard.
It currently sits on Rotten Tomatoes with a 22 percent, after critics found the movie
way too similar to Bay's previous works, and for all of the wrong reasons.
Critic Christy Lemire wrote,
"It's essentially a Transformers movie…complete with mass destruction, urban panic, white-hot
lighting, inane quips, product placement, explosions and, well, Megan Fox."
And Amy Nicholson of LA Weekly shot,
"If you thought Michael Bay had forgiven Megan Fox for saying he was 'like Hitler,' this
new April O'Neil role is proof he hasn't."
As the no n-CGI face of Turtles, Fox didn't weather the criticism well.
According to Cinemablend, during a press conference, she fired off on audiences.
"Those people can complain – they all go to the theater.
They're gonna love it – and if they don't love it, they can f*** off, and that's the
end of that."
"That’ll make sense to you when you see the movie"
Vin Diesel
In 2004, Vin Diesel starred in the The Chronicles of Riddick, a spin-off of the sci-fi flick
Pitch Black.
But despite Diesel's fan-approved character, The Chronicles of Riddick failed at the box
office and with critics, earning just 29 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.
The Washington Post wrote what everyone was thinking, saying,
"The muddy, convoluted story revolves around the star's cool-guy poses and one-liners."
In an interview with Collider, Diesel hyped his film saying,
"You hear a lot of directors talk about how they build worlds, but this is the real deal
and you can tell."
Diesel was so confident in the film that he had waited nine years to work with director
David Twohy again, saying,
"If you ever fell prey to a studio's idea of interchanging a director for something
like that [...] you would lose so much by not having somebody in that chair with a huge
ego about the property."
Diesel knows he's not talking about The Godfather, right?
Will Smith and Cara Delevingne
After the Batman versus Superman bomb, Warner Brothers needed a hit for the DC Extended
Universe.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the studio authorized an alternative cut of Suicide Squad
— edited by the team behind the trailers, instead of director David Ayer — which became
the version that hit theaters.
The plan didn’t work.
Suicide Squad released in August 2016 to bad reviews.
Colin Covert of the Star Tribune wrote,
"This is what happens when the comic book fanboys have taken over the asylum.
It is damaged goods from the get-go, the kind of film grown in a petri dish in Hollywood."
But while talking to Reuters, stars Will Smith and Cara Delevingne were quick to dismiss
the critics as haters.
Smith said,
"I think people had expectations that may have been different, but I'm excited for the
fans to get to vote."
Delevigne added,
"The critics have been absolutely horrific, they're really, really horrible…
I just don't think they like superhero movies."
However, that same year, Captain America: Civil War earned a 90 percent fresh rating
along with Doctor Strange, with Deadpool coming in at 84 percent.
Maybe the problem isn't the critics, guys.
Matt Damon
Before The Great Wall opened in February 2017, star Matt Damon had been battling accusations
of whitewashing for his part in the Chinese fantasy epic.
But the movie had another problem: It stunk.
With a Rotten Tomatoes score of 35 percent, critics weren't exactly blown away.
Rolling Stone's Peter Travers wrote,
"What a bummer that all Chinese master Zhang Yimou and Hollywood star Matt Damon come up
with is a B-level creature feature with delusions of grandeur."
However, Damon blamed the lack of critical appeal on the whitewashing controversy, telling
ABC News,
"I think people maybe thought it was something about building the Great Wall, or something
having to do with actual Chinese history.
It's this crazy monster movie...It's 1100 A.D., but there are monsters.
I guess kind of like Game of Thrones."
You know nothing, Jon Snow — uh, Matt.
Russell Crowe
In 2007, Russell Crowe and director Ridley Scott latched onto a script Variety called,
quote, "A revisionist take on the Robin Hood tale, with Nottingham as a noble and brave
lawman."
It would later be rewritten into a Robin Hood origin story with Crowe playing the legendary
archer instead of the Sheriff of Nottingham.
After Robin Hood landed in theaters in 2010, the Rotten Tomatoes were stewing at 43 percent.
The Miami Herald wrote, "Robin Hood achieves something you never would have thought possible:
it makes you nostalgic for Kevin Costner and Bryan Adams."
Crowe also took some heat for his accent.
During a BBC interview, Crowe was asked if he was going for an Irish accent.
He fired back.
"You've got dead ears mate, you've seriously got dead ears if you think that's an Irish
accent."
"No, I was going for Italian.
Missed it."
Crowe then stormed out, and never came back.
Halle Berry
When Rotten Tomatoes 9-percenter Catwoman hit theaters in 2004, the Halle Berry adaptation
of the DC Comics character was such a disaster that, according to IndieWire, it frightened
Hollywood executives from taking a chance on any female-led superhero films until 2017's
smash-hit Wonder Woman.
The Orlando Sentinel called it, "Arguably the worst superhero film ever made."
And the New York Observer called it,
"The kind of movie that almost guarantees the loss of a few I.Q. points."
But Berry would tell the BBC,
"I pushed myself and grew as an artist in ways that will never be realized by anyone
but me."
As critic Lou Lumenick joked, it’s, "A purr-fectly ridiculous and boring cat-astrophe."
OK, ok, we get it.
It’s show business
So, maybe these stars signed expensive, convoluted contracts preventing them from admitting they
just tanked it at the box office.
But that doesn't make it any less amusing when they go down swinging over a Teenage
Mutant Ninja Turtles reboot.
We all know it's that same larger-than-life personality that will make us line up to see
what they're up to next!
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