clones – Bad Movie Twins

Jurassic World: Dominion Preview

Jamie and Patrick walk along the Canals of Amsterdam. They admire all the sites, including a few they recognize from Deuce Bigelow: European Gigolo. It’s a magical time. “This is a magical time,” Says Producer Frank Brow. It would seem he has decided to play their triplet in hopes that they agree to join America is Very Good as permanent hosts. “And that’s darn tootin’. You can use that on the show,” he adds. The Brow-isms were coming fast and furious in what appeared to be his primary strategy for wooing them into the gig. “Yo, Brow, my man, we’ve always heard that Amsterdam is a place of forbidden wonder (if you know what I mean). Is that true?” Jamie asks, waggling his eyebrows. Mr. Brow gulps, and Patrick can see Brow’s brow getting moist with nervous sweat. He gulps and, with dollar signs dancing in his eyes, summons his courage. “Of course, come with me,” he wheezes. A moment later they stand in front of a red light district storefront. “Mr. Brow, well I never,” Patrick exclaims, “I’m a happily married man.” Mr. Brow apologizes, his face turning crimson. He beckons them again to follow. A moment later they stand in front of a coffee shop. “Mr. Brow, well I never,” Jamie exclaims, “Everyone knows we D.A.R.E. to not do drugs.” Mr. Brow apologizes profusely and admits that when Jamie parathentically said “if you know what I mean,” it turned out that he didn’t. Just as he’s about to explain, Jamie’s eyes light up and he points at something over Mr. Brow’s shoulder. “That’s what I mean,” he says with great excitement. Brow spins around to see a giant amusement park called “Dino Globe” with the tagline “Amsterdam: the only place where dinosaurs are legal.” That’s right! We are finishing the Jurassic World trilogy with the only entry that qualified for BMT, this year’s Jurassic World: Dominion. Spoiler alert! I heard that the T-Rex might fight another dinosaur and maybe even inadvertently save the day. They just can’t quite Sexy Rexy. Let’s go!

Jurassic World: Dominion (2022) – BMeTric: 44.3; Notability: 71

StreetCreditReport.com – BMeTric: top 6.8%; Notability: top 0.4%; Rotten Tomatoes: top 10.5%; Higher BMeT: Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Bubble, Jeepers Creepers: Reborn, Firestarter, Moonfall, Morbius, Blacklight, Pinocchio, Me Time, Spiderhead, Deep Water, The Invitation, After Ever Happy, Jurassic World: Dominion, Senior Year, Blackout, The 355; Higher Notability: Black Adam; Lower RT: After Ever Happy, Jeepers Creepers: Reborn, Me Time, Poker Face, Blacklight, Firestarter, White Elephant, Prey for the Devil, Morbius, The Last Manhunt, Blackout, The Bubble, The Man from Toronto, Senior Year, On the Line, The 355, The Invitation, Pinocchio, Memory; Notes: That notability will only go up. I assume this is ultimately going to be a 100+ Notability film all said and done, just will take a few years.

RogerEbert.com – 2.0 stars – Worst of all, the series again fails to properly explore its most tantalizing question: how would our world change if dinosaurs were added to it? The opening section packs any halfway intriguing or funny thing that “Dominion” might have to say about this topic into a TV news montage—showing, for instance, a little girl being chased on a beach by baby dinos (an homage to “The Lost World”), a couple releasing doves at their wedding only to have one of them get snatched out of the air by a pterodactyl, and pteranodons nesting in the World Trade Center (possibly a reference to Larry Cohen’s “Q: The Winged Serpent,” in which an ancient Aztec god nests in the Chrysler Building). Ninety minutes of footage like this, minus any characters or plot at all, probably would’ve resulted in an artistically better use of a couple hundred million dollars than “Jurassic World: Dominion,” which will doubtless be a smash on the order of all the other entries in the franchise, even though it doesn’t do much more than the bare minimum you’d expect for one of these films, and not all that well.

(Actually higher praise than I would have imagined. The movie looks like garbage, no joke.)

Trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtQycgMD4HQ/

(I watched this trailer live as well. It is more obvious that the raptors actually look like garbage while watching the film. The scene with the raptors in the city is embarrassing.)

Directors – Colin Trevorrow – ( Known For: Jurassic World; Safety Not Guaranteed; Future BMT: The Book of Henry; BMT: Jurassic World: Dominion; Notes: His career is kind of balancing on a knife’s edge. He was supposed to do Star Wars 9, but then The Book of Henry was so catastrophic he got it taken away. The write up for his version sounded awful anyways. And now this. He’ll either retreat to a small Indie hit like Safety Not Guaranteed, or tee up another big film and his career will live and die by that.)

Writers – Emily Carmichael – ( Known For: Pacific Rim: Uprising; BMT: Jurassic World: Dominion; Notes: Ooooof, not an impressive set of films. She has otherwise exclusively written and directed shorts.)

Colin Trevorrow – ( Known For: Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker; Jurassic World; Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom; BMT: Jurassic World: Dominion; Notes: Yeah he got a credit on Star Wars 9, but I’m pretty sure they didn’t really use any of this script. Oddly didn’t really start writing stuff until he was directing huge features.)

Derek Connolly – ( Known For: Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker; Jurassic World; Kong: Skull Island; Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom; Pokémon Detective Pikachu; Safety Not Guaranteed; Future BMT: Monster Trucks; BMT: Jurassic World: Dominion; Notes: Just a story credit, but he’s done an eclectic set of films since writing Safety Not Guaranteed which Trevorrow directed.)

Michael Crichton – ( Known For: Jurassic Park; Jurassic World; Twister; Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom; The Great Train Robbery; The Lost World: Jurassic Park; Jurassic Park III; Disclosure; Westworld; Runaway; The Andromeda Strain; Coma; The Terminal Man; Looker; The Carey Treatment; Dealing: Or the Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues; Extreme Close-Up; Future BMT: Sphere; BMT: Jurassic World: Dominion; The 13th Warrior; Timeline; Congo; Rising Sun; Razzie Notes: Winner for Worst Written Film Grossing Over $100 Million for Twister in 1997; Notes: He wrote the original Jurassic Park book. Fun fact: he wrote Lost World after they had already decided to make the movie. There was never supposed to be a second Jurassic Park book at all.)

Actors – Chris Pratt – ( Known For: Thor: Love and Thunder; Avengers: Endgame; Guardians of the Galaxy; Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2; Avengers: Infinity War; Her; The Magnificent Seven; Zero Dark Thirty; Jurassic World; Moneyball; The Tomorrow War; Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom; Wanted; Jennifer’s Body; The Lego Movie; The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part; Onward; The Kid; 10 Years; The Five-Year Engagement; Future BMT: Passengers; What’s Your Number?; Take Me Home Tonight; Delivery Man; Jem and the Holograms; BMT: Jurassic World: Dominion; Movie 43; Bride Wars; Notes: He’s kind of in everything now. He is very good in Parks and Recreation which is where most people probably saw him first.)

Bryce Dallas Howard – ( Known For: How the Grinch Stole Christmas; A Beautiful Mind; Jurassic World; Spider-Man 3; The Help; The Village; Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom; Rocketman; The Twilight Saga: Eclipse; 50/50; Pete’s Dragon; Gold; A Dog’s Way Home; Hereafter; Manderlay; Good Dick; Book of Love; As You Like It; The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond; Future BMT: Terminator Salvation; BMT: Jurassic World: Dominion; Lady in the Water; Notes: Ron Howard’s daughter. She has notably directed a few of the recent Star Wars television show episodes.)

Laura Dern – ( Known For: Little Women; Jurassic Park; Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi; The Son; Blue Velvet; Downsizing; Marriage Story; The Master; The Fault in Our Stars; Wild at Heart; The Founder; Mask; Jurassic Park III; Cold Pursuit; Inland Empire; Wild; October Sky; Fat Man and Little Boy; A Perfect World; Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore; Future BMT: Little Fockers; I Am Sam; When the Game Stands Tall; BMT: Jurassic World: Dominion; Notes: She’s done a bunch of television in the recent years, including, oddly, an uncredited stint on White Lotus. She’s been in just three of the Jurassic Park movies, the first third and sixth.)

Budget/Gross – $165–185 million / Domestic: $376,009,080 (Worldwide: $1,001,136,080)

(A billion dollars. People just like dinosaurs yo.)

Rotten Tomatoes – 29% (114/393): Jurassic World Dominion might be a bit of an improvement over its immediate predecessors in some respects, but this franchise has lumbered a long way down from its classic start.

(It is not an improvement on its predecessors. It is, frankly, the worst of the six movies so far and in my opinion it is by quite a distance. Yes, even the third one.)

Reviewer Highlight: This is not a story that begged to be told or a saga that demanded a finale. It’s another dispiriting example of how Hollywood never leaves money on the table. It’s just a shame that so much talent is wasted in the process – Leonard Maltin, leonardmaltin.com

Poster – Jurassic Sklog: Extinction

(D as in Dumb.)

Tagline(s) – The epic conclusion of the Jurassic era. (F)

(F as in For Sure Dumb.)

Keyword(s) – year 2022

Top 10: The Batman (2022), The Kashmir Files (2022), Top Gun: Maverick (2022), Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022), Thor: Love and Thunder (2022), Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022), Bullet Train (2022), Uncharted (2022), The Adam Project (2022), The Northman (2022)

Future BMT: 65.8 Jeepers Creepers: Reborn (2022), 64.8 Halloween Ends (2022), 63.9 Firestarter (2022), 52.1 Radhe Shyam (2022), 50.5 Umma (2022), 45.9 The 355 (2022), 38.5 Memory (2022), 19.2 Black Adam (2022)

BMT: Moonfall (2022), Morbius (2022), Blacklight (2022), The Invitation (2022), After Ever Happy (2022), Jurassic World: Dominion (2022), Prey for the Devil (2022), The King’s Daughter (2022), Amsterdam (2022), Don’t Worry Darling (2022), Where the Crawdads Sing (2022)

(Wait, what is the sub cycle? Oh right, films set in the future. … … Yeah, I mean, prove it didn’t? I kid in a way, but as the biggest baddest sci-fi film of the year it did seem like fair game for Achievement Unlocked, no films definitively set in the future qualified in 2022.)

Welcome to Earf (HoE Number 17) – The shortest path through The Movie Database cast lists using only BMT films is: Bryce Dallas Howard is No. 2 billed in Jurassic World: Dominion and No. 2 billed in Lady in the Water, which also stars Paul Giamatti (No. 1 billed) who is in Paycheck (No. 4 billed) which also stars Ben Affleck (No. 1 billed) who is in Pearl Harbor (No. 1 billed) which also stars Josh Hartnett (No. 3 billed) who is in Here on Earth (No. 3 billed) => (2 + 2) + (1 + 4) + (1 + 1) + (3 + 3) = 17. If we were to watch Bicentennial Man, Jack, and The Glass House we can get the HoE Number down to 16.

Notes – Laura Dern strongly expressed her desire to return to the series in March 2017; adding that: “If you guys make a last one, you gotta let Ellie Sattler come back. She’s always the one who’s saving the day, man!”

Jeff Goldblum is the same age in this film that Richard Attenborough was in Jurassic Park (1993).

When Jeff Goldblum found out he was appearing with his two co-stars from the the original film, he wrote on Instagram about Colin Trevorrow a line he said in the original, “You did it, you crazy son of a bitch, you did it.” He also added, “happy as a clamasaurus to be reunited with my brilliant costars from the original Jurassic Park Laura Dern and Sam Neill for the next installment of Jurassic World… Coming soon!!”

Sam Neil has often said he thought Dr. Grant would have long since retired by now, but maybe the threat of dinosaurs back on American soil would force him to reconsider that option.

Colin Trevorrow has revealed that this film is actually going to have more animatronics than its predecessors. As he put it: “We’ve actually gone more practical with every Jurassic movie we’ve made since the first one, and we’ve made more animatronics in this one than we have in the previous two.”

Trevorrow stated that the film would be set around the world, and said that the idea of Henry Wu being the only person who knows how to create a dinosaur was far-fetched “after 30 years of this technology existing” within the films’ universe. Additionally, the film would focus on the dinosaurs that were freed at the end of Fallen Kingdom, but it would not depict dinosaurs terrorizing cities, an idea that Trevorrow considered unrealistic. Instead, Trevorrow was interested in a world where “a dinosaur might run out in front of your car on a foggy backroad, or invade your campground looking for food. A world where dinosaur interaction is unlikely but possible–the same way we watch out for bears or sharks. We hunt animals, we traffic them, we herd them, we breed them, we invade their territory and pay the price, but we don’t go to war with them.” Trevorrow said that the film would also be about Owen and Claire’s redemption, and their responsibility to take care of Maisie, a cloned girl from the previous film. Trevorrow said about the film and its predecessors, “I have a dinosaur movie that I’ve always wanted to see, and it took two movies to earn it.”

Laura Dern told TIME that reuniting with the adorable animatronic nausutoceratops “was equally as jaw dropping, but nothing will be like that first moment I walked through a field on Kauai [in Hawaii] with Sam Neill and I looked ahead and I saw a triceratops. That was my first dinosaur and I will love that dinosaur the most forever.”

Speaking with CinemaBlend, Bryce Dallas Howard expressed hopes of going all out for the then-untitled Jurassic World 3 and bringing in more characters from the original Jurassic Park (1993) to finish out the trilogy. Howard also revealed that this is currently one of the many goals of Jurassic World 3, saying: “In terms of the third movie, the goal overall is to bring the entire saga together. It’ll be the sixth film at the end of the day. For me, what I’m most wanting, other than an undercut, is for there to be more characters from the earlier films.”

Colin Trevorrow said that the film would be a “science thriller,” describing it as being the Jurassic World film that would most closely match the tone of Steven Spielberg’s original Jurassic Park (1993).

One Jurassic World character returning that director Colin Trevorrow is especially proud of: Dr. Henry Wu. That’s according to the actor who plays him, BD Wong, who said: “Colin’s very proud of where he’s taken this particular character. He kind of rescued this character from obscurity from the original Jurassic Park movie….Then years later Colin came back and said ‘Well who’s not dead?’ and went through the roster of characters. There was only one person they could really, not even resurrect him, they just pulled him back from obscurity because he had not been attended to properly as far as I’m concerned. And he has now taken a turn into a whole other world in the franchise and become a more complex and more interesting individual. So where he goes in the third movie, cannot be said by me right now, but Colin’s very proud of it and rightly so.”

Replicas Preview

“We’re so sorry,” Patrick says solemnly through a mouthful of pie. Jamie echoes the words blandly, all the while picking at his fingernails. Angel is stunned. While he agrees that his character’s death will be emotional and raw for the audience, he had been led to believe his character was going to take a larger role in the series going forward. The feedback for his work was fantastic and his star seemed only to be rising. But suddenly it had fallen and there was nothing he could do about it. “Do you need me to film a death scene at least,” but Jamie seems bored and just says they’ll “do it in post using CGI or something.” Angel sighs and leaves. “Finally,” Jamie says with relief, “we can get back to work without Angel distracting us and ruining everything.” He looks sideways at Patrick who apparently hasn’t heard him. They were each reacting to the pressure of production in different ways… “you think you might want to slow down on the pie, bro?”

“Angel has what?!” Banks screams into the telephone. My god, they are out of control. The only good thing in the production and they have to get envious and fire the poor guy. Banks is panicked. Three weeks from the premier and they aren’t even wrapped filming! Not to mention that Patrick has managed to stress eat his way to 60 pounds overweight. Looking at Rod’s pictures from set he’s barely recognizable. He buzzes his assistant. “Get Chris Klein on the phone.” If these idiots are going to pout and eat this picture into the ground, Banks isn’t going to go down without a fight. And that means only one thing: he’s gotta somehow replicate the Rich and Poe magic himself and fast. That’s right! We’re watching Replicas, the Keanu Reeves Sci-fi flick that bombed at the box office early in the year. At the time it seemed to portend a ripe BMT harvest for the year. Little did we know that a drought was on the horizon. Let’s go!

Replicas (2019) – BMeTric: 44.6; Notability: 13

ReplicasIMDb_BMeT

ReplicasIMDb_RV

(The fact that it opened that high is incredible. What kind of bizarre PR team is hitting the IMDb page for a film that was delayed for release by two years which is an almost inevitable January bomb? That is just crazy.)

RogerEbert.com – 1.0 stars – Here’s a fun game to play to keep your mind from truly wandering during a bad film: try and figure out exactly when the movie you’re watching went rotten. Was it a script that never should have been purchased? A concept that no one could have made work? Or did the problems start in pre-production, perhaps with the wrong cast or tech team being hired? Maybe the whole thing went to hell during production with a director who couldn’t manage tone or actors who checked out early? Or some bad films are tragically destroyed in post-production, sliced up in the editing bay. This is the game I played while watching the truly dreadful “Replicas,” and I went with “All of the above.”

(… I do the same thing to be honest. It always seems pretty easy to see where things went awry. Usually it is the director since his job often boils down to organization. And disorganization results in the most dire of situations: a boring bad movie.)

Trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKdpGHazAqs/

(Huh … so cloning and like … memory stuff? This seems very sci-fi and also very not good. I’m vaguely intrigued.)

Directors – Jeffrey Nachmanoff – (Known For: Traitor; BMT: Replicas; Notes: His brother is Dave Nachmanoff, a singer. Jeffrey accompanied him on his album Threads of Time.)

Writers – Chad St. John (screenplay by) – (Future BMT: Peppermint; BMT: Replicas; London Has Fallen; Notes: Writing the next Tim Story and Kevin Hart film My Own Worst Enemy)

Stephen Hamel (story by) – (Known For: Henry’s Crime; Future BMT: Siberia; BMT: Replicas; Notes: Executive Producer of John Wick. He writes a lot of the films his production company produces, but not all of them. Mostly has production gigs lined up it seems.)

Actors – Keanu Reeves – (Known For: Toy Story 4; The Matrix; John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum; John Wick; The Replacements; John Wick: Chapter 2; The Matrix Reloaded; Bram Stoker’s Dracula; Between Two Ferns: The Movie; The Neon Demon; Point Break; The Devil’s Advocate; The Bad Batch; Always Be My Maybe; Destination Wedding; Constantine; Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure; Speed; To the Bone; Dangerous Liaisons; Future BMT: Knock Knock; Exposed; Siberia; Even Cowgirls Get the Blues; The Watcher; Generation Um…; Chain Reaction; Feeling Minnesota; 47 Ronin; The Whole Truth; Youngblood; Matrix Revolutions; Sweet November; Street Kings; A Very Bad Day; BMT: The Day the Earth Stood Still; Replicas; Johnny Mnemonic; The Lake House; Razzie Notes: Nominee for Worst Actor in 1996 for A Walk in the Clouds, and Johnny Mnemonic; in 1997 for Chain Reaction; and in 2002 for Hard Ball, and Sweet November; and Nominee for Worst Supporting Actor in 1994 for Much Ado About Nothing; and in 2001 for The Watcher; Notes: Ya’ll know Keanu. He played a French-Canadian in Youngblood, and it is bar none the worse accent I’ve ever heard.)

Alice Eve – (Known For: Bombshell; She’s Out of My League; Star Trek into Darkness; Men in Black 3; Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb; Please Stand By; Starter for 10; Cold Comes the Night; Stage Beauty; Decoding Annie Parker; Some Velvet Morning; Future BMT: Sex and the City 2; ATM; The Con Is On; Misconduct; Dirty Weekend; Criminal; The Raven; The Decoy Bride; Entourage; Untogether; Crossing Over; Before We Go; BMT: Replicas; Notes: Daughter of Trevor Eve who was Jonathan Harker in Dracula with Frank Langella. Has two different colored eyes.)

Thomas Middleditch – (Known For: The Wolf of Wall Street; Zombieland: Double Tap; Godzilla: King of the Monsters; Kong: Skull Island; The Other Guys; Tag; The Kings of Summer; The Final Girls; The Campaign; The Rebound; Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie; Being Flynn; Joshy; Entanglement; Future BMT: Once Upon a Time in Venice; Fun Size; Search Party; The Bronze; The Brass Teapot; Splinterheads; BMT: Replicas; Notes: Starred in the hit comedy Silicon Valley on HBO, and … Verizon ads, I think it was Verizon.)

Budget/Gross – $30 million / Domestic: $4,046,429 (Worldwide: $9,206,925)

(That has to be Hollywood accounting. The robot looks so bad in the film that they must have spent $0 on any of the CGI. So did they just pay Keanu $29 million or something?)

Rotten Tomatoes – 9% (5/53): Equal parts plot holes and unintentional laughs, Replicas is a ponderously lame sci-fi outing that isn’t even bad enough to be so bad it’s good.

(Ha, it is just one giant plot hole, got it. Reviewer Highlight: The filmmakers manage to avoid every potentially interesting choice for far dumber, and far more inexplicable, conclusions. – Katie Walsh, Los Angeles Times.)

Poster – Twinzos (B)

replicas_ver6

(This literally makes the movie look like it’s about Keanu and his robot replica probably battling each other in hand-to-robot-hand combat. But, spoiler alert, that is not the case. Nice organization, interesting font, and OK color scheme. It’s fine.)

Tagline(s) – Some Humans Are Unstoppable (A+)

(I think this very well might be The Avengers (1998) of taglines. It is complete and utter nonsense and I don’t know how you put that on the poster. So bad that it became an A+ again because it’s so stupid. My brain hurts trying to even comprehend what they were thinking.)

Keyword – clone;

Replicas_clone

Top 10: Gemini Man (2019), Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones (2002), Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith (2005), Blade Runner 2049 (2017), Logan (2017), Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 2 (2017), Annihilation (2018), Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018), Tron (2010), Cloud Atlas (2012);

Future BMT: 54.7 Resident Evil: Retribution (2012), 51.2 Dude, Where’s My Car? (2000), 46.4 Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (2016), 46.2 Machete Kills (2013), 37.3 Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010), 37.0 Morgan (2016), 36.3 Gemini Man (2019), 35.1 Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008), 27.8 Pokémon: The First Movie (1998), 24.6 Resident Evil: Extinction (2007);

BMT: Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987), Replicas (2018), Hitman: Agent 47 (2015), Judge Dredd (1995), Æon Flux (2005), The Avengers (1998), Babylon A.D. (2008), Ultraviolet (2006), Species II (1998), Pluto Nash (2002), Godsend (2004)

(My God … we’ve seen so many of them! There appears to be a surge of clone related films. I wonder if the sour taste from Attack of the Clones has finally left everyone’s collective minds and clones are cool again.)

Welcome to Earf (HoE Number 17) – The shortest path through The Movie Database cast lists using only BMT films is: Keanu Reeves is No. 1 billed in Replicas and No. 1 billed in Lake House, which also stars Sandra Bullock (No. 2 billed) who is in Demolition Man (No. 3 billed), which also stars Sylvester Stallone (No. 1 billed) who is in Expendables 3 (No. 1 billed), which also stars Jason Statham (No. 2 billed) who is in In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Seige Tale (No. 1 billed), which also stars Leelee Sobieski (No. 4 billed) who is in Here on Earth (No. 1 billed) => 1 + 1 + 2 + 3 + 1 + 1 + 2 + 1 + 4 + 1 = 17. If we were to watch Hardball, and The Glass House we can get the HoE Number down to 8.

Notes – The story and screenplay for REPLICAS was developed at Keanu Reeves and Stephen Hamel’s production company Company Films. Hamel writes the majority of all the stories produced there.

Filmed in August 2016, but not released in the United States until January 2019. (Wow, why even release it?)

Nicolas Cage turned it down before it goes to Keanu Reeves (It does seem like a Nic Cage film)