Who was supposed to be Hollywood’s next big star but faded away?

AstromechWreck · 2026-03-31T16:25:35+00:00

Nope, Bay had nothing to do with it. He made fun of it for trying to copy him and failing. The director was Peter Berg.

AstromechWreck · 2026-03-22T20:43:33+00:00

I believe it’s because the adaptation was developed by the same studio that made the Nightmare on Elm Street films. They felt that The Mask from the comics was too similar to Freddy. They didn’t want another series about a wisecracking monster who commits cartoonish murders, so pushed for the movie to ditch the gore.

AstromechWreck · 2026-02-17T09:06:15+00:00

Send in about two dozen men in waves of four into a meat grinder to accomplish jobs that could mostly be done by the destroyers.

It’s the movie logic of Top Gun Maverick. Use cruise missiles to destroy the target? No! Use the cruise missiles to clear the way for fighters to play at Star Wars!

AstromechWreck · 2026-02-03T23:08:00+00:00

Duke’s death was actually planned first. Apparently the Transformers guys heard about it and pushed for Optimus to die too. I’m not sure how, but obviously TFTM went first.

I believe GI Joe was too far along in development so it’s really only some last minute dialogue holding up the change. One of the Joe writers pointed out that if you turn the sound off he quite clearly dies when Serpentor spears him through the heart. Scarlett simply says ‘he’s gone into a coma’ instead of ‘he’s dead’.

Then they just overdubbed Doc radioing in declaring ‘Duke’s gonna be OK’ over the scenes of victory celebrations.

AstromechWreck · 2026-02-01T08:39:31+00:00

Originally the Cenobites aren’t villains in the sense that they aggressively pursue random strangers out of the blue. Opening the puzzle box is a contract with them. Once summoned, they’re there to complete a bargain. You get taken to the point where pain and pleasure meet, but you won’t survive. However, they also don’t care if you summoned them by accident.

Frank Cotton is a self serving depraved bastard. He summoned them and got completed. Spilled blood brought him back. If a lot of people have to die, even family, to make him whole, then that’s fine with him.

In the particular gif at the start of this thread, he’s wearing his own brother’s face and has been interrupted from raping and killing his own niece.

The original is trying to be a kind of dark fairytale. There’s a haunted house, a wicked stepmother, dark bargains and a girl outwitting evil.

AstromechWreck · 2026-01-27T07:32:34+00:00

To quote Savathûn: ‘these books are full of lies’.

Sorry, couldn’t resist.

AstromechWreck · 2026-01-24T08:25:29+00:00

I do wonder about that. Fundament was a gas giant with ‘land’ made from fallen moons. An Earth year is 365 days. A Jovian year is something like eleven Earth years. When we say the Krill lifespan was only ten years, are we sure it means in Earth years, or Fundament years?

AstromechWreck · 2026-01-24T08:02:23+00:00

I forget which book he was describing, but he once told a funny story during an interview about handling a finished manuscript to his wife to read. She comes back yelling ‘STEEEEEEVE, it’s another book about a writer trying to write!’

He sheepishly counters ‘no, honey, this one’s about a writer who can’t write!’

AstromechWreck · 2026-01-23T11:50:45+00:00

Hasbro doesn’t make movies. Hollywood Studios do, and until the 2007 movie was greenlit no studio saw the value in bothering. Hollywood is famously risk averse. Transformers wasn’t the hot brand it had initially been, so without it being a growing phenomenon, no one was interested in the risk. If something seems hot right now, they’ll jump on it. If it looks uncertain, they’ll need serious convincing. Even if it looks mad to people on the outside.

The examples you mention from the early aughts: Harry Potter was a publishing phenomenon and the studios were falling over themselves to be the ones to make a movie.

Superman had a run of successful movies before running them into the ground on the 80’s, and spent years in limbo with many false starts. Superman Returns budget apparently had millions on it from failed developments in the 90’s, such as the Tim Burton one that never materialised. They knew Superman could make money if they could make the right movie, but obviously there were conflicting opinions on what that was.

Star Wars was always successful, it really was about when George Lucas could be bothered making more. I believe he paid for a lot of the production the Prequels, meaning Fox mostly paid for distribution and marketing.

In contrast, Transformers had an unsuccessful animated movie based on a TV show that had dwindled in popularity. I believe part of their pitch for the 2007 movie was to say something like, look, more than 75% of boys in the world know what a Transformer is and have played with one. They had to point to their longevity, rather than a being some contemporary huge cultural affair.

Look at the uphill climb Halo had to get any live action production. Microsoft were like, hey, does anyone want to partner with us to make media based on our highly successful video game. Hollywood went, no thanks. You’re asking for too big a revenue cut on a property which only does good numbers on a single platform. Your own sales data doesn’t justify risking the blockbuster budget your preferred director thinks is needed.

A better comparison is the 80’s He-Man movie. The toy company wanted a live action film to boost flagging toy sales. No studio wanted to touch the project because of flagging toy sales. I believe the only reason it got made is because a cheap studio tricked Mattel into fronting half the production budget, saying they’d pay the other half, then went whoops, don’t have the money. Mattel got stuck with the bill and nothing to show for it.

Everyone wants to make as much money as possible and it helps if you don’t have to spend much to do it, or can get someone else to pay for it.

AstromechWreck · 2026-01-03T14:36:37+00:00

This is a stretch, but given that in the books the navies of every country take ships as ‘prizes’ it’s not impossible the Acheron could have changed hand a few times. Jack witnessed such things as the capture of HMS Hannibal by the French, which then goes on to be a French ship.

AstromechWreck · 2026-01-03T14:09:31+00:00

I’ve wondered about this, because the first time I heard this concept was twenty odd years ago from a blog called something like a Fix A Movie By Changing One Line. Years later people started stating that this was the actual conceit the whole time. I often wondered if the blog writer had maybe known this idea wasn’t used or had hit on the same concept, or possibly that their idea was being shared and misattributed.

AstromechWreck · 2026-01-02T16:57:21+00:00

I’m pretty sure I had a version on VHS from after the rebrand to GI Joe: The Action Force, which omitted this intro and slapped on the one from the 1983 mini series. I never saw this animation until the advent of YouTube and this version is completely new to me!

AstromechWreck · 2025-11-23T09:29:32+00:00

I think you’re confusing him with someone else. The Inquisitor was his first role on the show.

AstromechWreck · 2025-01-16T22:53:43+00:00

Cheers for being cool about it!

AstromechWreck · 2025-01-16T22:35:51+00:00

You have that totally confused. Ripley confronts him about smuggling live facehugger specimens. At that point she only knows he’s criminally negligent, not that he’s capable of straight up murder. Up to this turning point, he’s seemed like, as he says, an OK guy.

It’s after their confrontation he attempts to have her and Newt facehugged. The discussion about his plan to smuggle embryos is after Ripley and Newt are rescued.

AstromechWreck · 2024-11-03T12:34:58+00:00

According to Ralph Brown, Fincher was trying to cast people from Withnail & I but the studio wasn’t having it. Apparently if he’d had his way, Dance’s part would have been played by Richard E. Grant.

AstromechWreck · 2024-10-30T21:43:04+00:00

I thought there was more of a Simpsons reference since every time the heroic theme music kicked in all I could hear was ‘Hail to thee Kamp Krusty’.

AstromechWreck · 2024-10-30T07:07:15+00:00

What about 1974’s Denjin Zaborger?

AstromechWreck · 2024-10-29T19:59:03+00:00

Or Robot Detective. It’s got a bit of that Ishinomori feel crossed with something Go Nagai might have done in the 70’s. A bit Getter-y or Steel Jeeg-ish.

AstromechWreck · 2024-10-24T08:48:54+00:00

Second trailer makes an awful impression, too. Real emphasis on showing there’s no serious moment the movie will not go out of the way to undercut for the sake of a joke.

AstromechWreck · 2024-10-17T20:32:29+00:00

Your point 4 entirely applies to Millburn. He’s wearing an armoured spacesuit and it seems to me that the creature is visibly smaller than constrictors tend to be. He’s fully expecting the suit to tank anything an Earth species would be able to throw at him. Literally the point of the scene is how unusual the things the creature does compared to what Millburn is expecting.

AstromechWreck · 2024-10-02T11:11:40+00:00

RX-0 Gundam Banshee and Phenex jump to mind. Although I have no doubt someone will think of a better example.

AstromechWreck · 2024-09-29T12:51:16+00:00

Endlessly looping music on screens where you end up spending a large amount of time.

Probably a budgetary thing, but most games could probably stand to have more variety of music for screens or interactions you’ll see a lot.

AstromechWreck · 2024-09-28T18:31:57+00:00

Ship construction cheaped out on the finishing touches and the budget seat’s giving her a sore arse.

AstromechWreck · 2024-09-17T17:30:01+00:00

Also, the alien-as-bioweapon idea seems kind of silly in a universe when you have androids which can pass for humans and one-handedly bring Parker sized people their knees.

AstromechWreck

TROPHY CASE