Why did this bomb?


Even though i normally stay away from over the top films, this was funny, clever film making. Several people in this board talked about the film not being faithful to the original series. I never saw the tv show but from what i got, the theme was to help people out in each story. This i feel is the origin story for the gang and you can you can tell from the last scene that if they make a sequel, it will be in the same lines of the tv show. I want to know why this underperformed. Especially when movies with similar themes and dumber writing were received well.

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Movie ripoffs of TV shows, specifically 70s and 80s action shows, as a general rule don't do so well, remember Miami Vice or Starsky and Hutch? Probably neither does anybody else, so in that regard, I'd say this movie's fared the best of them so far. Now there's the exception of the piece of crap 21 Jump Street, but we won't get into that right now.

Yeah okay this is the origin of it, and we should probably be thankful that they didn't try to do it as the original in Vietnam and with them being Green Berets (I'm still waiting for somebody to explain that one, why WAS it changed from Green Berets to Rangers?), but it just is not the A-Team, it is AN A-Team, as a typical stand alone run-of-the-mill action movie, it does very well, but because it DOES have a pre-existing title to it, that comes with a legacy, and the movie can't touch that legacy, no matter how hard they tried which I really don't think was too much. Some people look at Sharlto's Murdock and say he's not Murdock, not as good as Murdock, and this is AFTER Sharlto has reworked Murdock to BE more like Murdock, the original script had him very UN-Murdocklike. In short, you take on a project and give it an already established, famous, and well loved name, you have big shoes to fill, and you better be able to deliver; and I'm sure they tried, but they just fell a little flat.

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I think the low quality of 95% of the movie remakes of "nostalgia" shows had already turned off audiencecs before The A-Team was released.

Due to the lack of moderators, trolls can ruin the IMDB message boards. Don't feed them.

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I watched A-Team as a kid and was a big fan and wasn't bothered at all by anything in this movie.So what if they changed a couple of things? It was a fun tv show and this was a very fun movie.I went to see it at the cinema and loved it.It was funny as hell and the action sequences were all top class.I dont know why this bombed.Its a much better movie than some that have made 10 times the money.I'm just sad their not making a sequel.

Lucca Brasi sleeps with the fishes!!!

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I watched A-Team as a kid and was a big fan and wasn't bothered at all by anything in this movie.So what if they changed a couple of things? It was a fun tv show and this was a very fun movie.I went to see it at the cinema and loved it.It was funny as hell and the action sequences were all top class.I don't know why this bombed.Its a much better movie than some that have made 10 times the money.I'm just sad their not making a sequel.


My thoughts exactly. I loved the show when it originally aired and had fond memories of it. When I saw the movie in the theater I had my reservations about it being bad but I got all the jokes, including the in jokes. I was one of two people that got the in jokes in the theater. When I went home I found the show was online and watched it. That didn't change my feelings on the movie. What did, however, was seeing the director's cut. That was better and should have been what they released to theaters. I caught the movie on tv tonight and don't remember some of the scenes in either release. I don't know off hand if there is a third cut or not, but I liked it and still laughed while watching it.

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I think this bombed for a couple of reasons, 1 bad script and 2 bad casting. I liked Liam Neeson and Sharlto Copeley but Cooper, Biel and whomever was cast as B.A. were bad choices.

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Rampage Jackson. That wasn't so bad, what was bad was the way they wrote B.A.'s character.

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Agree, but for years everyone knew it was going to be this aspect that was going to be the major down fall of the movie.

B.A. in the tv show was just Mr T being Mr T.... thus how can you portray B.A in a movie without coming across as just Mr T?

I think they made a good go at it and it almost did work but just fell short.

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I think the thing that really killed it was him in prison getting fixated on Ghandi or whoever, didn't make any sense.

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I actually liked that aspect of the character and felt it added to it, rather than making the guy go out and watch Rocky 3 and the whole tv series just to get a idea of who he is playing.

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Added, how? Big bad B.A. Baracus suddenly becomes Mr. Passive-and-gets-his-ass-kicked-and-puts-his-men-in-jeopardy, no matter what interpretation you are spinning, no way in hell is THAT B.A. Baracus.

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As I said, a lot of what made B.A. in the tv show was Mr T.... This is a movie about the A-Team, not a Mr T bio-pic.

They got the essence of the character (also remember in the show there could be times B.A. was a real softy) and expanded it, but deep down you could buy it as a modern intake of B.A.

I would actually say Face was more the polar-opposite of the tv show... in the tv show he always came across as some what wimp-ish and soft, yet in the movie came across as really big mouthed and cocky.

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It was released in a bad month of 2010 summer. The World Cup was going on at that time, plus that stupid remake of The Karate Kid with Wil Smith's kid Jaden was out there. That took away a lot of the business.

If this movie had come out in 2000, it would have done well as in 2000 The A-Team would have still done well with the 18-30 market. But in 2010, I think the movie was seen as some 80s nostalgia show, and w/o a stupid parody comedy hook like 21 Jumpstreet did, then a lot of teenagers and early 20s crowd stayed away from the movie.

The only old TV shows that were big successes as action flicks were the Mission Impossible movies and The Fugitive. Both had huge star power draws in Harrison Ford and Tom Cruise, as well as fantastic scripts. The A-Team had a very good script and very good cast, but I guess this wasn't enough to overcome public perception that it was just some stupid show based on an old 80s show.

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Maybe A-Team fans are just more loyal to the source than fans of say, 21 Jump Street, therefore they made the decision to stay HOME, a concept that's completely mindblowing today, it's like people who panic if cable goes out, they just HAVE to go see all the latest movies, there's no or else.

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The A-Team had a very good script and very good cast...
Yes the casting was good. The script may have been good, but the story was difficult to follow and not helped by the rapid-fire editing and constant location changes. Even Liam Neeson said he had trouble following the story when he saw the finished product. It doesn't bode well for a franchise start-up, when you have a $110 million dollar film that is all over the shop.

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I watched A-Team as a kid and was a big fan and wasn't bothered at all by anything in this movie.So what if they changed a couple of things? It was a fun tv show and this was a very fun movie.


^This. Ditto.

When theres no more room in Hollywood, remakes shall walk the Earth.

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It was actually pretty decent and if they'd spent more time on character development and interaction, a sequel might have had a chance. The rapid-fire editing and too many action scenes killed it. People do actually have the attention span to watch something for more than 5 seconds.

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it did bomb, because the producers did not understand what made the original great. a very common mistakes with remakes and reboots.

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