Why did this movie flop?

[deleted]

You could argue that it lacked bankable actors, but I think the major problem was its lack of an advertising campaign to match its budget. Waterworld wasn't any better of a film, but due to its high budget (nearly double that of Cutthroat) it received a lot of attention which made people want to see it. Cutthroat Island remained practically under the radar until the rumor leaked that it put Carolco out of business.

What doesn't kill you, hurts like hell.

i think that it flopped because it came out in 1995. i think that if it came out today it could have much higher success, but because of "pirates of the caribbean" everyone will say "cutthroat island" stole ideas.

I'm 40 years older than you and this movie reminds me of the old pirate stories I used to read as a kid. For my money it's a far superior treatment of pirates than Pirates of the Caribbean was (generally I like Johnny Depp and Geoffrey Rush as actors (e.g. as in Chocolat (Deep) and Tailor of Panama (Rush) but they over-acted and were far too much over the top in that rather far-fetched show. Like you I can't understand why Cutthroat Island flopped at the theatre while Pirates of the Caribbean was a resounding success. Perhaps it had better publicity and promotion. It was far les intelligent than Modine and Gina's romp. Some of the lines in Cutthroat Island were almost Shakespearean in quality ("as you are shallow and lying I shall dig you a shallow grave in which to lie in" and there were many other good lines and quips . "So you know Latin? Then say something in Latinish!", etc, altogether much more cerebral than anything in Pirates of the Caribbean. A good plot laced with plenty of romping and almost ceaseless activity , and last but not least Morgan's monkey. Still there is no accounting for popular taste or lack of such.

I'm really glad that someone addressed this, because I was wondering the exact same thing. I saw "Cutthroat Island" for sale in a video rental place, and thought, "A pirate movie? I've never heard of it!" so I looked it up and rented it. Totally going back to buy it!

I think I like it even better than the POTC series (and I was a huge fan of those). I mean, you have to admire POTC's effects, but CTI is incredibly brilliant considering the technology available in '95. I also like that they filmed it in Malta and Thailand, which isn't really typical of Hollywood (as far as I know).

I think Cpt. Jack Sparrow is awesome, but Morgan Adams (Geena) blew him out of the water when it comes to being a bad-ass! The "CutThroat Island" plot itself was very consistent, whereas with "Pirates of the Caribbean" the audience is always playing catch-up.

Here are my guesses as to why (some have been commented on above):
1.Wrong timing. It was a summertime movie released in winter.
2.It got panned by the critics unmercifully even before it was released and the advertising made no attempt to counteract this.
3.Today's audiences couldn't accept a woman as a swashbuckling hero good as she might be and I thought Geena was terrific!!. I'm afraid many people cannot accept a woman in an Errol Flynn type role.
4.It was expensive to make causing someone to lose a lot of money. The word "failure" attached to a movie always is relative. If this had been a low budget movie it would have been treated differently.

I still do not understand why the movie flopped so badly (cost 90, made 10). Yesterday i had my wife watch it for the first time without knowing anything about it, and she gave it a 10/10, and was sure it was a success.

I can say the following are the possible reason:
1- Promotion
2- Delay in release
3- too many re writes
4- Nobody wanted the lead make role (all high profile actor rejected it)
5- Having a female role that is more powerful than the male role

Anyway, maybe a new generation will appreciate this movie better.

I don't pretend to have any great objective insights, so all I can do is give my own subjective impressions.

Overall, I generally enjoy this movie, but I find myself really wanting to like it more than I do. It had so much going for it -- a fairly clever and good-natured script that was funny when appropriate without being insulting to the intelligence; some lovely performances (and I thought Geena Davis was in fact really good in this -- certainly better than she gets credit for); some brilliant cinematography and stunts; and of course that stunning musical score.

The biggest problem for me with this movie was that, as leading man, Matthew Modine had almost zero charisma in his on-screen character, and he had utterly zero chemistry in his relationship with Geena Davis. There was no spark.

(I think if Geena had had someone to play her scenes against that she could really bounce off, we would have seen her performance as much better than she seemed.)

Add to that: the pacing was glacial in some scenes, with no apparent benefit to it's being that way, and that killed the flick's forward momentum. I'm not all that surprised that we got that from Renny Harlin -- I've never thought he was much chop as a director, especially in the finer points like shaping a movie and judging its pace -- but I would have hoped that one of the four editors might have said, "Hey Renny, this bit doesn't really work, does it?"

And my last quibble -- maybe it's nit-picking -- is over whoever chose the locations for shooting. It's hard to simply enjoy the flick, to get lost in the story like I prefer to do, when you're spending your time wondering why they're pretending to be in the Caribbean when they're quite clearly in south-east Asia. It's distracting.

Bottom line: with no chemistry between the romantic leads for the audience to relate to, and constant lapses of dynamics in the direction to keep you swept up in the action, then this movie was missing what it really needed to energise audiences. Without that, they'll just go somewhere else. (As, in fact, they did.)


You might very well think that. I couldn't possibly comment.