Home Entertainment Midweek Mouth-Off: why do bad movies own the box office?

Midweek Mouth-Off: why do bad movies own the box office?

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midweek mouth off

Sometimes you get movies that reign supreme at the box office and deserve the top spot. Sometimes, you get movies that only find a cult following after the DVD release. Sometimes you get epic flops. But sometimes, you get movies that really shouldn’t do well, no one wants them to do well, yet inexplicably they do.

Michael Bay’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles falls into the last category. By all accounts it’s a terrible movie. Lacking the charm and appeal of the source material, it’s apparently a typical Baysplosion production, just with turtles instead of transforming cars. So why is it raking in so much money? Critics slated it, audience reception has been lukewarm at best, yet enough people have seen it so they’ve already green-lit a sequel.

I know that Michael Bay’s name carries some weight, you just have to look at the Transformer’s franchise for that, and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise is a big nostalgia draw card, but what is truly making people go watch it? Is it peer pressure of “you have to see this because you watched the cartoons as a child” or is it a case of “I have to judge a movie for myself, even if everyone I know says it’s bad”? Maybe it’s even “I just hope it’s so bad it’s good”. Whatever the reason, the numbers add up to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles holding the number one spot on the North American Box Office for two weeks now.

So this week, what I would like to know is: what makes you go watch bad movies? You know it’s going to be bad, every critic has told you that it’s bad, maybe even your friends that saw it before you told you not to waste your time. What’s your excuse?

Last Updated: August 20, 2014

7 Comments

  1. Rinceable

    August 20, 2014 at 10:38

    Ohhh, man this pisses me off. Guardians holds #1 for one week, TMNT for 2? I think it’s a younger generation, Generation Ritalin that we can thank 😛 That being said, I might just be an old bastard. Again, that being said, I will still go and watch it and when I leave the cinema I will think “It wasn’t that bad” and then a few hours later, when I’m curled up in the foetal position in my shower, I will know I’ve made a terrible mistake…

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  2. Alien Emperor Trevor

    August 20, 2014 at 10:54

    Well, because you pay to watch a movie before you see it. Also “bad” is a very subjective thing because everyone has different tastes, plus your expectations about what you’ll get from a movie play into it as well – sometimes what everyone else thinks is a bad movie can still be just fun to watch.

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  3. James Francis

    August 20, 2014 at 13:29

    Hey, I could ask why American Hustle or The Lego Movie did so well and were so critically charmed, even though they were far from good movies. ‘Bad’ is a matter of taste. If someone is confused over why Transformers or TMNT did so well, perhaps take a moment and question if your opinion of ‘bad’ is as universal and objective as you thought. Chances are it isn’t.

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    • Tracy Benson

      August 20, 2014 at 13:47

      Yes, I totally agree with you, “bad” is a matter of taste. What I mean is that some movies are reviled by audiences and critics alike, but they still make tons of money, and I just wonder what makes people go see them.

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      • James Francis

        August 20, 2014 at 14:00

        I would counter that if they were reviled by audiences, they wouldn’t make money. So the notion of bad movies doing well perhaps confuses critical consensus and online chatter with actual audience sentiment.

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  4. Gustav Willem Diedericks

    August 20, 2014 at 18:53

    For me it’s mostly because I want to make up my own mind about a movie. A case in point: Cloud Atlas. It’s didn’t recieve critical acclaim, and most of the people I knew panned it. I went to watch it and found it to be one of the most enjoyable movies of that year. Most people complained that they couldn’t understand it. I guess they just needed a few more IQ points :/

    Of course these are the same people that will give TMNT praise. I’ll just go Straight to DVD and decide for myself then.

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