Even talented, long established actors have bills to pay but I get what you mean.


Some excellent examples of obvious paydays and nothing else,


1. Robert DeNiro - The Rocky and Bullwinkle Movie

2. Michael Caine - Jaws 4. Caine has even acknowledged this in interviews.

3. Liam Neeson - The Phantom Menace

4. Nicholas Cage - Too many to list.

5. John Voight - Baby Geniuses 2

I can't speak to the Prometheus 2 movie, but yeah, Prometheus was shockingly bad. I came away shaking my head, and wondering if Ridley Scott was ever even on the set and had just had his named added without seeing it.

I liked Ben Kingsley in Iron Man 3. I thought he played the dual aspects of his character very well.

I also liked him in another likely forgotten by now film, Sneakers. That film had an awesome cast and for a techno thriller has aged rather well, thanks to not really going into details about how the computer stuff worked.
I think it was the first film I saw Donal Logue and Mary McDonnell in and the last I saw River Phoenix in.

Sneakers posed a lot of questions but didn't give all the answers and did just fine for it.



The Jedi Master

Definitely a cult classic in my book. I believe River Phoenix died a year after "Sneakers" came out. As for Mary McDonnell, the first thing I saw her in was "Dances With Wolves".

I've still never seen Dances with Wolves. But I saw Avatar, so I'm good.



The Jedi Master

Another vote for Highlander 2.
2012 doesn't seem to have been mentioned yet, but what an absolute load of ridiculous garbage that was! The stupidity just kept getting piled higher and higher.

I'm going to defend Chappie. While patchy at times it was kind of a surprising take on nature vs. nurture and robot sentience... I will concede, however, that there were some very unfortunate hairstyles going on there.

That was very obviously just a paycheck gig for John Cusack.

1. Robert DeNiro - The Rocky and Bullwinkle Movie


IIRC, that movie was DeNiro's pet project.

I think Chappie's biggest weaknesses were the South African rappers (that girl with the awful voice!) and Sharlto Copley not being right for that role.
His voice was too high and...I don't really know how to quantify it. For a comparison, look at how Alan Tudyk played both Sonny and K-2SO in I, Robot and Rogue One. I felt far more for those robots with their less emotional delivery.

The story was otherwise just fine, as was the majority of the cast.


If you're going to bring up 2012, you also have to mention 10,000 BC!



The Jedi Master

Ah yes. Who knew that women 12,000 years ago had perfect skin and hair and wore makeup?

Roland Emmerich did, of course.



The Jedi Master

Any relation to the Clan of the bare cave?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090848/

I love the synopsis: A young Cro-Magnon woman is raised by Neanderthals.

So it's a teen's coming-of-age drama?

Yeah I chuckled when I read that. Obviously the author never studied basic anthropology.

How about Lucy?

Do you guys think it is OK? I think it kind of jumped the shark.

It started OK, then it got intriguing, then God came on screen to turn Science Fiction into fictional science.

And then it turned into the bloody looney tunes matrix reloaded starring Scarlett Johanson...and drugs.


That said, The Matrix Reloaded and Revolutions.

Armageddon and Independence Day.

I left the cinema prematurely during Armageddon, as I just couldn't stand this heap of bull anymore.

Independence Day...I didn't leave, but it sucked badly nonetheless.

I'm convinced that Roland Emmerich and Michael Bay went to the same film school. Their styles are pretty much identical.

Clan of the Cave Bear was an adaptation of the first novel in a series.

I don't think the film was close to the book at all. Of course, when most of the characters in the book are nonverbal it's going to fail putting it on film.



The Jedi Master

This will probably be unpopular, but I absolutely loathe Event Horizon. I hate it so much I always have to look up Sam Neil in IMDB to see the name of it because I immediately brain dump it.

I see Event Horizon similar to The Abyss. Near misses. They each had an interesting premise but really missed the mark pursuing a bland simplistic small aspect of what could've been an epic story. Put them in the category with Lost in Space.

Event Horizon: the ship went to hell and back, but instead of fleshing that out, lets just have Sam Neil go nuts or possessed and kill people.
The Abyss: there's advanced life at the bottom of the ocean! But lets give someone the psycho-bends and go with that instead.
Lost in Space: we're colonizing space, seeing new an exotic planets and life forms. Lets just go with the nutty scumbag causing trouble and use a time travel cop out to save the day.

Oh, and Sphere. Another 90's attempt at (expensive) epic scifi that went to crap storywise. I've blocked that one from memory so effectively I don't even remember anything other than hating it.