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Topic	Geekacea: Dose One Edition
ParanoidObsessive 02/12/21 3:55:20 PM #187:	Zeus posted... Just not here and now in response to the question about it? >_> I literally said "I never really cared about Willow as a setting/story" and "I suppose if I watched Willow now I might have a different opinion of it" in my post right before yours. That seems pretty clearly indicative of my opinion of it. Didn't like it, didn't hate it. Meh. Zeus posted... idk, the Neverending Story did pretty well for itself, didn't it? And what about Clash of the Titans? Are you going to sit there and tell me Clash bombed? And while commercial success is a potential metric for the popularity of a genre, I'd imagine the more relevant metric would be the sheer number of fantasy films coming out at the time. Some were massive like Conan and the Neverending Story, but you also had Legend, The Princess Bride, Beastmaster (which gave us a show afterward), Red Sonja, the Conan sequel, and the kinda-creepy Return to Oz. And, just running a google search to see what I may have forgotten, I'm seeing Excalibur, Dragonslayer, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (which I'm embarrassed didn't come to mind because I loved that film), Fire and Ice, Deathstalker, and... well, I'm shocked that I've forgotten even that much. Then there are two dozen more films that I don't think I've heard of, but I kinda want to watch at this point. Hell, you even had things like The Last Unicorn. (And Masters of the Universe, which is kinda the snake biting its own tail.) Apparently Clash didn't fail, which is actually surprising to me, because I always assumed it did. I'll throw Excalibur in there as well - as much as I personally like it, I always assumed it was a failure... but apparently it did turn a bit of a profit (though not a huge one). But most of the rest of the films you mentioned were either blatant failures (Munchausen didn't even make back a quarter of its budget), or the sort of technical failures where they theoretically recoup production budget (and thus succeed, if only barely), but were actually failures when you factor in marketing budget. Beastmaster may have gotten a TV show 17 years later, but it was considered a commercial failure when it was released (and its sequel was a straight-up failure without equivocation). And that's not even including films you didn't mention, like Krull, Ladyhawke, and Sword of the Valiant. There were definitely a few successes (I never said every fantasy film in the 80s failed), but the majority did. [As an aside, Masters of the Universe was a failure mostly spurred by the fact that it barely had anything to do with the cartoon it was theoretically based on (though some people have pointed out that it almost works as a stealth Jack Kirby/Fourth World tribute). And Deathstalker is notoriously terrible in general. It's fallen into the rotation of "worst movies ever" reviewed by sarcastic Internet film critics. If you're contemplating tracking down films you've never seen/heard of before to watch, you might want to avoid that one. Unless you like watching bad movies to make fun of them.] I actually agree with the idea that commercial success isn't necessarily the best metric for the popularity of a genre (and definitely not the creative or critical value of a genre), but on the other hand, it doesn't really matter how many films the studios are putting out if no one is going to watch them in theaters. And that was mostly the point of my initial comment - fantasy wasn't really overly successful in the 80s. Most films failed right out of the gate, and even the ones that succeeded failed to spawn lasting franchises (and the few that managed to produce sequels almost always tanked at that point). People who were kids in the 80s may have loved 80s fantasy movies (I certainly did), which is part of why they became cult hits (and why some of them have gotten nostalgia-fueled remakes more recently), but that didn't really translate into success for them THEN. And in the context of the original discussion, Willow had multimedia tie-ins, but those failed, while Willow itself was generally seen as a failure (in spite of the fact that it technically made back its budget domestically). It was more successful internationally, but in the US it didn't really have the impact the behind it hoped it would (supposedly, Lucas himself was disappointed by it, which might explain why he never went back to that well in spite of it making its money back). --- "Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76 "POwned again." --- blight family <cite>ParanoidObsessive posted [p:950569432] in Geekacea: ... [t:79211564]...</cite> <quote><cite>Zeus posted...</cite> <quote>Just not here and now in response to the question about it? >_></quote> I literally said "I never really cared about Willow as a setting/story" and "I suppose if I watched Willow now I might have a different opinion of it" in my post right before yours. That seems pretty clearly indicative of my opinion of it. Didn't like it, didn't hate it. Meh. <cite>Zeus posted...</cite> <quote>idk, the Neverending Story did pretty well for itself, didn't it? And what about Clash of the Titans? Are you going to sit there and tell me Clash bombed? And while commercial success is a potential metric for the popularity of a genre, I'd imagine the more relevant metric would be the sheer number of fantasy films coming out at the time. Some were massive like Conan and the Neverending Story, but you also had Legend, The Princess Bride, Beastmaster (which gave us a show afterward), Red Sonja, the Conan sequel, and the kinda-creepy Return to Oz. And, just running a google search to see what I may have forgotten, I'm seeing Excalibur, Dragonslayer, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (which I'm embarrassed didn't come to mind because I loved that film), Fire and Ice, Deathstalker, and... well, I'm shocked that I've forgotten even that much. Then there are two dozen more films that I don't think I've heard of, but I kinda want to watch at this point. Hell, you even had things like The Last Unicorn. (And Masters of the Universe, which is kinda the snake biting its own tail.)</quote> Apparently Clash didn't fail, which is actually surprising to me, because I always assumed it did. I'll throw Excalibur in there as well - as much as I personally like it, I always assumed it was a failure... but apparently it did turn a bit of a profit (though not a huge one). But most of the rest of the films you mentioned were either blatant failures (Munchausen didn't even make back a quarter of its budget), or the sort of technical failures where they theoretically recoup production budget (and thus succeed, if only barely), but were actually failures when you factor in marketing budget. Beastmaster may have gotten a TV show 17 years later, but it was considered a commercial failure when it was released (and its sequel was a straight-up failure without equivocation). And that's not even including films you didn't mention, like Krull, Ladyhawke, and Sword of the Valiant. There were definitely a few successes (I never said every fantasy film in the 80s failed), but the majority did. [As an aside, Masters of the Universe was a failure mostly spurred by the fact that it barely had anything to do with the cartoon it was theoretically based on (though some people have pointed out that it almost works as a stealth Jack Kirby/Fourth World tribute). And Deathstalker is notoriously terrible in general. It's fallen into the rotation of "worst movies ever" reviewed by sarcastic Internet film critics. If you're contemplating tracking down films you've never seen/heard of before to watch, you might want to avoid that one. Unless you like watching bad movies to make fun of them.] I actually agree with the idea that commercial success isn't necessarily the best metric for the popularity of a genre (and definitely not the creative or critical value of a genre), but on the other hand, it doesn't really matter how many films the studios are putting out if no one is going to watch them in theaters. And that was mostly the point of my initial comment - fantasy wasn't really overly successful in the 80s. Most films failed right out of the gate, and even the ones that succeeded failed to spawn lasting franchises (and the few that managed to produce sequels almost always tanked at that point). People who were kids in the 80s may have loved 80s fantasy movies (I certainly did), which is part of why they became cult hits (and why some of them have gotten nostalgia-fueled remakes more recently), but that didn't really translate into success for them THEN. And in the context of the original discussion, Willow had multimedia tie-ins, but those failed, while Willow itself was generally seen as a failure (in spite of the fact that it technically made back its budget domestically). It was more successful internationally, but in the US it didn't really have the impact the behind it hoped it would (supposedly, Lucas himself was disappointed by it, which might explain why he never went back to that well in spite of it making its money back). --- "Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76 "POwned again." --- blight family</quote> ... Copied to Clipboard!
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