With all of the recent flops, I feel like it's time to update the list. So far I have (in no particular order):
Concord, Dustborn, Ghostbusters (2016), Matrix (edit) Resurrections, Terminator Dark Fate, Watchmen (HBO), Joker 2, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, The Acolyte, Willow, Rings of Power, Saint's Row, Forspoken, Starfield, Unknown 9 Awakening, Flintlock, West Side Story, Charlie's Angels, Onward, Turning Red, Luca, Soul, Elemental, Lightyear, and Wish.
Edit: add Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, Borderlands (2024), Cowboy Bebop (Netflix), Resident Evil (Netflix), Witcher: Blood Origin, Wheel of Time[?] (Amazon), Agatha All Along, Star Wars Outlaws, Velma, and The Marvels.
Star Wars Outlaws is probably a flop. And the Agatha Marvel TV show.
Totally right. Added.
Just edited that comment to add the Agatha TV show.
Another good call. Added.
It'd be quicker to say what SUCCEEDED this year to be honest, this has felt like ALL the covid/DEI bucks ran out this year and they had to release the shit they worked on regardless of quality.
2 years ago but Top Gun: Maverick should repeatedly be brought up for this. As crazy as Tom Cruise can be the scene between him and Kilmer is hard to watch for all the right reasons and it's mostly just Cruise talking for both in movie and out of movie reasons. Sure there's still DEIversity scattered throughout it, the first segment with the test plane is almost all black guys bar Maverick and 1 other, the female pilot, Bob who is wearing glasses?!. NGL that actually bugs me the most of the mission candidate lineup.
Anyway, TGM needs watched more, even with the Star Wars meme.
maverick was a fantastic followup to the original (I actually watched the first movie right before heading to the theater, and it holds up incredibly well), even the female pilot wasn't the girlboss I was dreading.
The only real stumbling block I saw was the character development of the new cast members, which wasn't awful, but really needed more time focused on fleshing them out.
Yeah Phoenix was your typical bad ass girl with an attitude, but still got rektd by Mav. Good they tones down her bitchness towards the end.
Disagree with the characters development of the new cast members, I think the movie made the right decision focusing mainly on Mav and the people close to him. I had zero interesr in the other rando kids.
honestly? I was prepared to hate her as much as Carl Manvers in Captain Ms. Marvel, so maybe that made her easier for me not to hate. Honestly, the "heel" character was more unlikeable, as it should be.
This is more of a nitpicky thing I thought of after the fact, honestly. The film is fantastic, but I try to be as objective as possible. As an example, Ice was a dick to maverick in the original top gun, but they made it clear why at least. his character was better fleshed out. The arrogant pilot (whose name I forget) in Maverick was just a dick until he wasn't.
I still like the film, obviously, and it's a lot better than some of the dreck they've put out in recent years, but there are flaws, just like any film.
True, but saying "everything in 2024 flopped" doesn't help as much against the "get woke go broke is a myth" crowd as being able to list literally dozens of flops over the last ten years. They'll try to counter with Spider-Man 2, but even that has stopped making DLC lmao.
Well it sort of is a myth. As long as international finance is funding woke they'll never go broke. If you have unlimited funding your projects don't need to be successful.
To some degree, but that's not the pitch that people get. "Be more Inclusive(TM) and you'll bring in the Modern Audience(TM)!" is much more compelling than "basically every product you make will flop from now on, but don't worry, huge Wall Street firms will still pump money into your company until they decide not to."
I doubt that anyone buys that pitch. By now everyone knows that agenda driven products don't sell.
It's more like do what we tell you to do or we'll make sure that no one invests in your company anymore.
The New York Times was running pieces saying that it works as recently as January of this year. In the last month or so, they've been saying that it doesn't, true, but admitting that is a new development.
OK, but that has to go hand in hand with at least some profits. Colossal losses time after time are not what anyone had in mind.
Part of the agenda. We see failure after failure after failure. One bigger then the other. And still they tell us that it works.
As long as Wall Street continues financing them, the CEOs don't give a fuck. They get their fat bonuses regardless. Even if Ubisoft collapses they just get bought out by a bigger fish and then they'll continue on their course.
Besides this agenda is not about making profit. It's about brainwashing the population.
Until recently.
Works best when people actually watch your propaganda.
I think "Resurrection" is what you're looking for, though honestly, the original is the only good one.
They are all pro-trans garbage.
I enjoyed the sequel for what it could have lead up to (raised great questions and expanded the lore), but they shit the bed with the third one. Never even bothered with the 4th
The freeway scene is still one of the best action sequences in movie history.
But man is it a slog to watch through all of the pseudo-philosophical garbage to get to it.
Yeah. Second place goes to the Neo vs Smith zergrush scene. It mostly still holds up today when rewatching. The philosophy was dry, but laid a great foundation for the third to go wild with, but they apparently were more focused on being trannies than answering the questions their own movie asked.
Normally, I'd agree with you, but in this case, I feel like leaving the philosphy open-ended works better in this case. it makes you think about the questions asked, rather than having the answers spoonfed to you by somebody who took a philosophy 101 class to get their screenwriting major...
I agree. I think that they could have left the philosophy open with ending it how they did -- I was completely fine with ALL of that.
What I was not fine with was how they got there. They should have had a cool action sequence involving Seraph and the Agents. We all wanted to see it but never got to see it (they even teased it in the film with the short exchange between Smith and Seraph).
The whole mech sequence was pretty cool, and the final fight was okay. But it just felt like too much of the film was detoured from getting to its finale in a satisfying way.
yeah, but I can forgive that too, mainly, because if it was my film, I'd put all that geeky goodness in there too.
regarding the seraph fight...yeah, that would have been cool, but it probably would have been hard to do, given how smith worked at that point. It may have simply been too hard to find a good way to make it make even a little bit of sense in story...
You're completely correct. Edited.
The only woke game that was not hurt by wokenes was BG3.
Spiderman 2 and GOWL Ragnarock made decent enough money but both would have sold considerably more if they removed the woke elements. There was also a rumor that Spiderman 2 performed a lot less that Sony was expecting.
BG3 was smart enough to put 1 whole mildly attractive female romance option. Over 50% of players romanced shadowheart. They also let you build your own waifu. That’s enough to make a game successful nowadays even if they had to patch every male character trying to overtly fuck you.
The first act demo was also not as blatantly woke as the later acts. Yes, it still had the tiefling refugees, but you didn't have the aasimar turbo lesbian curbstomping the big bad of act 2.
Hey, how did you get hold of my old Icewind Dale 2 saves? 🤔
Both Minthara and Karlach aren't too bad either, especially as you spend more time with them in-game, probably the voice actors helped quite a bit.
Sadly the build your own waifu thing is a full on bait at the beginning, unless you are talking about making your own MC compared to the guardian thing.
Minthara is bad as fuck ngl but I have a thing for grumpy goth bitches
Never played BG3, but was curious. Google image searched her. JFC, is that the best looking female character in the game?
Dear fucking lord.
True, but I didn't include them because they technically made money. Besides, you'll know exactly what the comeback is going to be (GoW and Spider-Man 2), and then you can laugh in their faces when you tell them that SM2 has already stopped making DLC.
Suicide Squad lost a few hundred million.
I would say crap like Echo and Secret Invasion
Damn it, I forgot about Suicide Squad. The Marvels bombed horribly too.
Has wheel of time been cancelled? I hope so. I heard the ratings weren’t good. Just really annoys me how they could’ve had an epic series but current year doesn’t allow for a proper adaptation
Hell even the WoT source material was littered with obnoxious feminism (not too much but enough to notice). I can't even imagine how bad the show would be.
I shouldn’t have been shocked but I still was precisely because the books had all the powerful females you could ask for and they still decided to take away make achievements to elevate women more. The books do at least have the message of men and women working together
In defense of the books, as much as there are badass women, there are also plenty of examples of controlling, arrogant women fucking up really, really badly. As an example, for all that Cadsuane gets presented as a hyper-competent living legend, her involvement does largely culminate in Rand giving her a much deserved chewing out for all the things she should have done better.
Apparently it has not, and a Season 3 is in the works.
Well I hear the viewing numbers aren’t good so that is something
I'm pretty sure they aren't, but I'll stick a question mark on that one, just in case. Oh, and I forgot about Velma.
I don't know if Hyenas counts since they cancelled that at 95% done. But there's also the upcoming Sonic and Shadow game, whatever that's called. If they felt the need to cover Rouge's back and the wings for some reason, but leave Amy in the backless dress, it's just dumb useless decision after useless decision.
I would argue that Covid is the gift that keeps on giving.
First, the diversity hires drained money out of companies by being able to work from home. Now they're back at the office, they're finding out that hiring a skin color and a vagina isn't profitable at all.
Especially since the DEI office and work culture shift has made you unable to say anything even remotely negative in the office about anything. So the no talents can feel like they're a part of something they shouldn't be a part of. All to make a product worse. It's literally a grift with built in feel good steps to keep the unemployable employed just a little longer.
These companies are going to have to get rid of them or die off.
And honestly either one is preferable. If you were dumb enough to go for the easy ESG money and lose control of your product and your company for the woke bucks, your drive and passion for making something is gone anyway.
That abysmal show Witcher blood something, was that even completed? I assume it was a mega-fail.
Borderlands, RE and Cowboy Bebop live action movies failed do to being woke.
Some one said the one good thing about Witcher Blood origin is that it shows precise the kind of show they would make if they tried something original. Well, this takes place in the Witcher world but not based on anything specific I don’t think
From the trailer it looked like complete trash so I don't even know what the premise was. I think it was predating the witchers.
Yea, when I see a preview with such perfect current year diversity that is my first red flag
In Blood Origins every kingdom was to much alike. Have different ethnicities with different laws and different culture and architecture that is so distinct that when there are scenes in that region the viewer would know what region it was.
It creates immersion, excitement, a sense of awe and interest.
But we got modern day diversity where every region/ kingdom is a mix of every human ethnicity and everything screams modern day California.
Exactly. And they wonder why people would rather watch and read older stuff. New stuff all looks the same
Good ones, thanks! Though didn't the RE movie come out in 2001?
Netflix made one in 2022 where Wesker is played by Lance Reddick and it is centered around him and his 2 daughters.
Is woke af and completely stupid.
It was so bad the actor died.
Well, maybe not, but he did die after.
Thanks, I never even heard about that one.
Wheel of time tv series can probably added on that. I don't know the viewing numbers but it was shit and no one gives a crap about that show.
Yep, totally agreed. Man, Amazon and Netflix have put out some godawful flops.
While I agree with tracking this, I want to track the stuff that goes woke and doesn't go broke as well. Partially for a sort of "what is the line" sort of thing, as well as just figuring out what is acceptable to the larger population but not the smaller population.
For example BG3 - gayness fucking everywhere, endlessly, hyper inclusive, every settlement is a metropolitan queer's diverse utopia where we are still racist to each other but at least 2 of the gate guards are black :)
Hugely successful, very woke from character creator to actual content in-game, but is glossed over for the most part because it is a pretty solidly built game. I'm not saying any of you are giving the game a pass but at least from the broader perspective of this topic, it wouldn't ever be considered a 'go woke go broke' with their level of success.
***Also thought of a few more for your list - Lightyear was a big wakeup for Disney, lost them a lot of money for adding in unnecessary gayness to a children's movie, and lead to them actively telling their staff to "avoid making her too gay" when referring to a character in that emotions movie (forgot the name).
You're thinking of Inside Out 2, which apparently was not woke and did almost 1.7 billion(!) at the box office. That could definitely land on the "unwoke projects doing well" list along with Top Gun: Maverick.
More efficient to create a "not woke, didn't go broke" list TBH.
Not sure, if it counts, but it's not looking good for Netflix Tomb Raider.
I went over your list and everything in the thread: I've seen none of it nor I have played any of it.
I can play civ5 and watch content produced before 2015 for the rest of my life.
Not sure if rings of power is considered a flop since they are still making it
You have a point, but for as huge of a budget as it has, I feel confident putting it solidly in the flop category.
ressurections was okay-ish... Bad case of sequelitus, but it was watchable...
does the netflix death note count?
Sorry, not trying to crapflood your inbox
I'm not sure, tbh. Does it?
not sure. I know it bombed hard, and they basically rewrote Misa's character... Not sure if L rises to the level of a palette swap, though...
Shame, willam dafoe as Ryuk looked good, but willam dafoe is one of those actors that can spin gold out of almost any shitty script...
might wanna add captain marvel...film only did well off the back of the avengers movies...and I'm pretty sure it broke the MCU's crushing it streak...
Yeah, but it did make over a billion at the box office. It doesn't belong with the rest of these, imho.
fair, maybe put it in the category of harbinger of downfall or something (not added to this list)
Onward? Game good
Not the game, but the Pixar movie that grossed just $142M worldwide.
Probably easier to make a list of things that don't have woke drivel prominently injected where it shouldn't be.