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I went to "Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die" shortly after it premiered (I enjoyed it) and all of the trailers were for horror movies, including this one. When the trailer started, I was interested. By the time it ended, I had mentally checked out and was just waiting for the movie to start.
The trailer didn't seem particularly coherent. It felt like a hyper 5 year-old telling a story but they start a new sentence before finishing the previous one.
Who can afford the movies?
Who is this movie for? You have incredible dramatic actors, but the tone and make-up looks campy and goofy. It doesn't feel like a scary horror movie; it looks too silly to take seriously. The previews are mostly just close-ups of Bale and Buckley with black shit on their faces. I also can't imagine what the plot would be, besides making a female Frankenstein's monster, and due to the above I can't be bothered to find out why.
Good dramatic actors combined with campy and goofy and not really scary sounds great to me. To give you context, I loved Everything Everywhere and Poor Things. I'm willing to give this a try. The critiques I've read sounded like the screenplay is not brainless either, but doesn't really hold together well enough for the film to really work. Pitty if that's the case.
Poor things came to mind for me. That was a unique and thought-provoking take that also had great actors in Dafoe and Stone but didn't seem so try-hard cringe. And it just came out 2 years ago, which just makes this movie look even worse to me.
"I can't imagine what the plot would be, besides making a female Frankenstein's monster, and due to the above I can't be bothered to find out why"
You do realize that making a female monster was a major plot point in the book, don't you? Like, allllllll the way back to Mary Shelley, "the bride of Frankenstein" has been a reoccurring driver of the story even if she never fully came to life like the OG
I have absolutely no concern with adaptations exploring and reimagining the female monster aspect of the story, but calling that a "major plot point" in the original story is a stretch.
The monster demands a bride, Frankenstein starts to make him one, and then realizes that that is a fucking terrible idea and abandons the effort. That's about it. And most of that gets yadda yadda'd through off page, if I recall. He never makes a second monster at all inthe end. Yeah, sure, it pisses off the monster, but he was already pissed so it ultimately changed next to nothing.
"That's about it"? Bro, it's basically the inciting incident for the latter half of the book. The monster was NOT some blood-thirsty demon or whatever when he originally confronted Frankenstein and ELOQUENTLY asked for a wife (like, the 'narrator' deliberately points out how shocking it is that he speaks with composure and full sentences and shit); he even explicitly said 'Look, guy who made me the horror that I am, just make me a girlfriend so I don't have to be so alone and we will go off and live in the woods somewhere forever, never bothering anyone again.'. But because Franky couldn't do it, the monster THEN goes on a rampage, killing at least 3 people including Franky's fiance and best friend, which leads to him trying to hunt down the monster for revenge, yadda yadda. Again, the bride is not an insignificant part of the story, even if she never sees the un-life of day. Some of y'all haven't picked up this book in decades and it shows
Which is why it's called, "Bride!" And not "The Bride of Frankenstein's Monster" or something. Great. Who cares? So what if in this version scientists succeed in "making Frankenstein a bride"? It just doesn't seem like the start of a gripping story to me. I can't imagine caring what they would do or how the characters would feel. Frankenstein has been over explored and feels stale.
Yeah, it has vibes like a studio accidentally spent real money on someone’s student art project.
I’ve been wondering the same thing since I heard about it. News articles were like “we had to remove some of the black vomit.” Who wants this?
It honestly feels like hubris from everyone involved, but I imagine eventually it will find an audience and they’ll pretend it was a cult hit all along.
I also hadn’t seen that the poster says “Here comes the mother f*%#ing bride!” Which is quite cringey. Hello fellow kids!
Is Hot Topic selling merch, by any chance? Edit: No! They really thought this was a movie for adults??
The first article I saw about it was quite recently too: “Frankenstein Couldn't ‘Lick Black Vomit Off The Bride’s Neck’ And Other Wild Studio Notes Maggie Gyllenhaal Received.”
It genuinely just sounds like a spoiled Hollywood baby getting to do their silly dream project:
I loved working with Pam Abdy, who runs Warner Bros. with Mike De Luca. She understood me and understood what I was saying. And there would be times where she would be like: ‘Maggie, you cannot have Frankenstein lick black vomit off the Bride’s neck. It’s just too much.’
It’s telling that it could have been worse. Ma’am, you are 48 years old, why do you sound like a high schooler?
I didn't even see that poster quote - Oof. It does seem like hubris from the folks involved.
Critical Drinker roasted it nicely. All kinds to stupid plot lines that make no sense.
I also can't imagine what the plot would be, besides making a female Frankenstein's monster.
Now replace female with male.
Female has nothing to do with it, and making your argument about the female lead makes the entire take sexist.
We will be equal when we can say that a movie is just bad without also needing to mention that the lead was female.
The plot literally revolves around making a female monster, as the titular Bride, for the existing male monster. You're stretching really hard to make mentioning sex in this context as sexist. Sex is plot relevant in this movie, again, called "The Bride", and they didn't say it was uninteresting because it was a female lead character. They mentioned many details that left them uninterested and none of it hinged on sexism. Chill out.
Not about the movie, not about even the person's criticism as a whole, but the phrasing. "besides making a female Frankenstein’s monster". Say that it's called "Frankenstein's Brother". The phrasing "...making an alternate male Frankenstein’s monster" is weird. It would sound better that it is "besides making Frankenstein’s brother/uncle/bride". I get what the commenter was saying, but the wording made it sexist.
We all need to be conscious that how we address woman-led movies because how we talk about them drives if studios make women-led movies. If a male-led blockbuster flops, we don't say "the male-led movie failed". We say it was a shit movie and that it failed. If a female-led move flops, we always call out that it was female led. That becomes in the eyes of hollywood "since it was female-led it flopped". So, I think it's important to call out that a movie can be perfectly shit regardless of what gender led the film.
People need to realise that most people don’t obsessively scour the feeds for the latest vocab guidelines.
What we choose to say have meanings, even if it wasn't the intent.
Frankenstein's monster was male and specifically asked for a female bride, it's an integral part of the story. If Frankenstein's monster asked for a non-binary partner, that too would be an integral part of the story and I would have used non-binary instead of female.
The entire film is predicated on a female Frankenstein's monster and from what I now understand, lots of feminist themes.
If this were a parody of a Disney Princess movie and it was predicated on a male lead, I'd have to use the same language but you wouldn't flip out.
I understand what you're trying to get at, but I don't think this is a spot to make a stand on gender language norms and the word "female" being sexist. There are times when it is, but this isn't that time.
Seems like I’m the only one looking forward to this movie? Gangsters and classic monsters is a fun combo in my book 🤷
Eh, that combo doesn't really land for me. To each their own.
yeah I'd only just heard of it last week. BUT - i won't see films in theaters, so not much I can do but wait.
Oh yeah, I don’t do movie theatres, either. I’m looking forward to it, but won’t be contributing to its box office.
The article doesn’t articulate a lot of reasons other than it was released too close to Del Toro’s Frankenstein movie.
It is kind of baffling to me that anyone ever thought a 90 million dollar Bride of Frankenstein movie would be a good ROI.
I guess the whole Dark Universe clusterfuck didn’t really teach anyone anything. Do they really think there is an audience for any of these classic monsters?
yeah I just don't see the point of the melania movie.
They should definitely do a version of Melania with the classic pairing of Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, and then Abbot & Costello Meet Melania.
They get numbers of people buying and watching the classic universal monster movies on streaming or blu-ray and assume they want a modern retelling but that's kinda the opposite of what those people are paying money to get.
I mean del toros monster movies are pretty sick
You'll notice he doesn't really lean that into "black vomit" in his monster fucker fanfics.
I saw it on Saturday and didn't really care for it. If it was more campy and less gender swapped Joker I probably would have liked it more.
Basically remove the Mary Shelly character and random sexual assault scenes that don't really add anything besides the first one that actually sets the plot in motion.
Shit movie bombs. How is this news?
I knew this movie was going to suck because the only time I heard about it was discord orbs.
How the fuck do you spend $88M making a movie? Did they just forget the century of work done by hollywood to decrease the costs of sets? Did they bring the entire cast of Expandables out and a spice girls reunion?
I do not get it. This reaks of some sort of tax fraud or money laundry.
Maybe every scene was a VFX Composition like Star Wars the Force Awakens.
And the budget they announce usually doesn’t even include the marketing budget, which is also millions of dollars.
It’s seriously incredible how much money they waste on vanity projects.
Found some charts
A good film does not need a marketing budget.
That's just wrong.
If you look at how film are financed, you'll see that it basically is money laundering and tax fraud. Short version is the studio sets up a production company, studio gives production company everything they need to make a film. Production company then let's the studio use their new stuff, for a fee (think like $5 for a page of a script printed out). Studio now owes production company millions (the cost to produce the film), so studio never makes a profit on the production. Production company goes out of business because studio doesn't pay them, so they eat the debt and folds.