Everything Everywhere All At Once showed the MCU how the Multiverse is done.
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00:00Now, the success or failure of a movie is never just down to its quality.
00:04Timing is also hugely important. Knowing when to release a film, free of obvious competition,
00:09can make all the difference at the box office. And in terms of overall reception,
00:12it's probably smart to create some distance from other similarly-themed movies. After all,
00:17films with something in common that release close together will inevitably be compared,
00:21and generally speaking, one of these movies will be considerably better than the other.
00:25And in extreme cases, the better movie doesn't just outdo the lesser one,
00:28it decisively shows it how things are done, and basically embarrasses it in the process.
00:33So let's take a look at them as I'm Jules, this is WhatCulture.com,
00:36and these are 10 Movies That Embarrassed Other Movies Released at the Same Time.
00:4010. Avatar The Way of Water Embarrassed Black Panther Wakanda Forever
00:45This past holiday season was the battle of the aquatic-themed mega-budget blockbusters,
00:49as Black Panther Wakanda Forever faced off against Avatar The Way of Water.
00:53Now, Wakanda Forever was released first in mid-November, just five weeks before the Avatar
00:58sequel to solidly positive reviews, even if most critics agreed that it didn't match the
01:02brilliance of its predecessor, quite understandably given Chadwick Boseman's untimely death.
01:07With its primary antagonist being Namor, the king of an Atlantis-like civilization,
01:11the bulk of the film is centred around water, and director Ryan Coogler did a mostly solid
01:15jump with it. But then Avatar The Way of Water came out, and the mind-boggling visual majesty
01:20of James Cameron's long-gestating sequel made Wakanda Forever's seafaring action look, well,
01:25kinda like a crayon drawing crudely scrawled on a napkin, by comparison.
01:29This is particularly apparent in their especially water-based third act,
01:33widely considered both to be the strongest part of Avatar 2,
01:36and the weakest section of Wakanda Forever. Cameron obviously had the major advantage of
01:40time and money, whereas basically all Marvel movies are on a strict production conveyor belt
01:44due to their interconnected nature. Even so, The Way of Water showed what can be achieved
01:49by a filmmaker at the top of their game with all of the resources they need to achieve their vision,
01:54no matter how good a director Coogler is, there was no way for him to compete with that.
01:589. Inglourious Bastards Embarrassed Valkyrie
02:01Now don't feel too bad if you don't remember Valkyrie, Bryan Singer's World War II thriller
02:06that was released at the tail end of 2008 and starred Tom Cruise as Colonel Klaus von Stauffenberg,
02:11a German army colonel who plots to assassinate Adolf Hitler. It came and went upon a firm wave
02:16of indifference, and its fate as being forgettable was categorically sealed the next summer when
02:20Quentin Tarantino released his similarly themed Hitler assassination movie, Inglourious Bastards.
02:25It of course goes without saying that Tarantino's film was very different. While Valkyrie was based
02:30on true events, Bastards was fashioned more as a subversive revisionist history of what Tarantino
02:35wishes had happened. Despite the inherent ridiculousness of his film, it's in many
02:39ways easier to take seriously than Valkyrie, given that large swathes of the ensemble cast
02:43are Europeans and therefore can speak German and or French, as makes them inherently more
02:48believable in their roles. In the case of Valkyrie, Singer opted for a cast consisting primarily of
02:53British character actors and Tom Cruise, and rather than have him affect a German lilt,
02:57he simply had the cast speak in neutral accents. Despite being the more serious and highbrow of
03:03the two films, Valkyrie was a box office disappointment and failed to even receive
03:07a single Oscar nomination, whilst Bastards was a box office smash, received eight Oscar nominations,
03:12and even won one, Best Supporting Actor for Christopher Waltz. And 15 years on,
03:17have you heard anybody talk about Valkyrie? Yeah, case closed.
03:208. Upgrade ā Embarrassed Venom
03:23The first Venom film may have been a colossal box office success, but critics weren't convinced
03:28that Tom Hardy's admittedly amusing performance could compensate for the low-effort script and
03:32rather generic dated superhero movie treatment. But four months earlier, a considerably more
03:36creative and well-executed riff on the Venom concept was released to cinemas,
03:40and that film was Upgrade. Just as Venom focused on Eddie Brock becoming a host to
03:45an alien parasite which grants him supernatural powers, Upgrade centres around Grey Trace,
03:50a man who is rendered quadriplegic by botched mugging and implanted with a chip which gives
03:54him control of his body back. The rub, though, is that the chip also turns Grey into a brutally
03:59efficient killing machine. The narrative comparisons speak for themselves, as does
04:02the uncanny resemblance between Hardy and Logan Marshall Green. And on a mere $3 million budget
04:07compared to Venom's $116 million budget, Upgrade proved a far more satisfying version of that
04:13basic setup. Furthermore, the director of Upgrade got a mind-boggling amount of production value out
04:18of his tiny budget, whereas Venom's visuals were frequently garish and pretty ugly at times.
04:23Upgrade is therefore proof perfect of what a smart, talented filmmaker can do with minimal
04:27resources compared to the crass excess of Venom's generally lousy superhero shenanigans.
04:327. Rocketman ā Embarrassed Bohemian Rhapsody
04:36Freddie Mercury biopic Bohemian Rhapsody was released in October 2018 to rather mixed reviews,
04:41but enormous box office success, netting over $900 million globally. It was also nominated for five
04:47Oscars, including Best Picture, of which it won four, most notably a Best Actor award for Rami
04:52Malek. And while in pure box office dollars and Academy Awards, Bohemian Rhapsody wins out in
04:57terms of actual filmmaking quality ā you know, the thing that really matters ā it's effortlessly
05:02smoked by Elton John's biopic Rocketman. Released the very next May, Rocketman had
05:06a lot of superficial similarities to Bohemian Rhapsody, a splashy biopic of an iconic gay
05:11British musician starring a respected on-the-rise actor that was clearly gunning for awards.
05:16And though Rocketman garnered just a fraction of Bohemian Rhapsody's box office while receiving
05:20just a single Oscar nomination for Best Original Song, which it at least won,
05:24history will definitely be much kinder to it. While Bohemian Rhapsody was a relatively vapid
05:29Wikipedia-page biopic which seemed vaguely embarrassed on fully engaging with Mercury
05:33as a gay man and a flawed human being, Rocketman went in entirely the opposite direction.
05:38A warts-and-all, R-rated biopic that managed to be stylish and entertaining, Rocketman was
05:43topped by a stellar Taron Egerton that proved infinitely more Oscar-worthy than Malek's more
05:48surface-level impression. Above all else, it showed Bohemian Rhapsody what was possible if
05:52the producers weren't centrally preoccupied with making a sanitized biopic to appease the broadest
05:57of general audiences.
05:596. Captain America Civil War Embarrassed Batman V Superman Dawn of Justice
06:04Batman V Superman was one of the most anticipated superhero movies ever,
06:08and with the momentum of some truly fantastic marketing behind it, it seemed to be destined
06:12to be both a fun wish-fulfillment exercise and a commercial hit. But reviews were not kind,
06:18to say the least, with many critics tearing into the film's needlessly convoluted script,
06:22which with its excess of subplots and muddled motivations turned a seemingly basic slam-dunk
06:27concept into a rather frustrating slog. Plus, there was only a few minutes of Batman fighting
06:32Superman, you know, the thing that people actually paid money to see. Consequently,
06:35Batman V Superman turned a more modest profit than expected, grossing just, and I use just
06:40lightly here, $873.6 million, while initial projections had it going as high as $1.5 billion.
06:48But less than six weeks later, Marvel showed DC how it was done, with the release of the
06:52immeasurably more entertaining Captain America Civil War, which similarly focused on beloved
06:57superheroes fighting one another, albeit with greater narrative clarity and more actual fighting.
07:02The audience reaction to the two movies was night and day, and to top it all off,
07:06Civil War ended up grossing almost $300 million more than Batman V Superman. On a broader level,
07:12it was indicative of how Marvel Studios had a successful interconnected cinematic universe
07:16which patiently built up to this event, whereas Warner Bros. tried to rush their way to it and
07:21consequently fell flat on their face.
07:235. Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio Embarrassed Robert Zemeckis' Pinocchio
07:28Last September, Disney released their live-action remake of their animated classic Pinocchio
07:32direct-to-Disney+, with Robert Zemeckis directing and Tom Hanks starring as Geppetto. Critics and
07:38audiences alike didn't have many kind things to say about it, lambasting the unnecessary changes
07:42made to the source material and expressing a general feeling that it just failed to justify
07:46its existence. Almost exactly three months later, though, Guillermo del Toro's stop-motion take on
07:51Pinocchio was released on Netflix, a deeply affecting, beautifully shot, and startlingly
07:56original take on the timeless story. The gulf of quality between the two Pinocchio films
08:01is staggering. Zemeckis' film feels like a soulless, perfunctory exercise for the most part,
08:06while del Toro's feels the result of an artist at the peak of their powers telling something with
08:10every earnest fibre in their being. Unsurprisingly, most of the many rave reviews for del Toro's
08:15version couldn't help but take potshots at Zemeckis' vastly inferior predecessor. While
08:20del Toro's Pinocchio is likely to win the Best Animated Film Oscar and endure as a surefire
08:24classic, Zemeckis' effort seems to be destined to disappear into the streaming ether.
08:294. Never Say Never Again Embarrassed Octopussy
08:33Believe it or not, in 1983, two James Bond films were released within a mere four months of each
08:38other, the Roger Moore-starring Octopussy and Never Say Never Again, which brought Sean Connery back
08:43into the fold for one last go-around. Never Say Never Again was produced following a legal battle
08:48between Thunderball writer Kevin McClory and Bond author Ian Fleming, with McClory winning
08:52the rights to the novel's plot and characters. This allowed McClory to produce his own adaptation
08:57of Thunderball that, while existing outside of the official 007 continuity, was for all
09:02intents and purposes a James Bond film. Octopussy was released first to easy box office success,
09:07though critical and fan reception has been firmly mixed ever since. It is, after all,
09:11the one where Bond dresses up as a clown. Never Say Never Again, though, followed up and,
09:15despite not being part of the legit Bond canon, proved a far more worthy experience.
09:20Despite his age, it was a hoot seeing Connery reprise the 007 role once more. And compared to
09:26the toe-curling acting in Moore's film, it took itself a little more seriously whilst still being
09:30a ton of fun. While Octopussy was the more commercially successful of the two, though
09:34both were major hits, Never Say Never Again endures as the critical fave and just downright
09:39better movie. For a film produced as a result of a bitter lawsuit, that's pretty impressive.
09:443. Mortal Kombat, Embarrassed Double Dragon, and Street Fighter
09:48The mid-90s saw Hollywood turning to video games for some rather easy profits,
09:52resulting in the development of several films based on popular fighting games,
09:56namely Double Dragon, Street Fighter, and Mortal Kombat. The low-budget Double Dragon came first
10:01in November 1994, releasing to near-universal critical disdain and flopping at the box office,
10:06failing to recoup even its tiny $7.8 million budget. The very next month, the considerably
10:11more anticipated Jean-Claude Van Damme-starring Street Fighter was released, which, while grossing
10:15almost $100 million worldwide, was trashed by critics. Outside of Raoul Julia's superbly campy
10:21performance, that is. The next summer, Paul W.S. Anderson decided to show these movies up with
10:26Mortal Kombat, which was both a considerably greater financial success while receiving far
10:30more favorable reviews. Now, that isn't to say that Anderson's film is perfect by any means.
10:34Reviews are still firmly mixed here. But Mortal Kombat successfully translated the style, tone,
10:39and atmosphere of the games to the big screen, as Double Dragon and Street Fighter both
10:43categorically failed to do. But Mortal Kombat ended up falling flat on its face soon enough,
10:48though, when 1997's sequel Mortal Kombat Annihilation received worse reviews than
10:52either of its competitor films, whilst also flopping at the box office. Talk about a fatality.
10:582. Everything Everywhere All at Once Embarrassed the MCU
11:02The multiverse is the big cinematic trend right now, with the Marvel Cinematic Universe
11:06obviously covering the market on big budget renditions of the concept, by way of Spider-Man
11:10No Way Home and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. It's impossible to deny the success
11:16of either of these movies, both of which turned immense profits and were well-received by critics
11:20and fans alike. But sandwiched between them was an indie film that came totally out of nowhere
11:25and demonstrated how an imaginative multiverse movie was actually done, and on a fraction of
11:30the budget, no less. Everything Everywhere All at Once was released in March to rave reviews,
11:34and on a mere $25 million budget, grossed over $100 million globally.
11:39The directors of the film, both called Daniel, one called Kwan, and one called Scheinert,
11:42used their kitchen sink filmmaking ingenuity to produce visually dazzling results despite their
11:47minimal VFX budget, and on a pure conceptual level, it's surely the most unique take on the
11:52multiverse we've yet seen. And as entertaining as the aforementioned MCU movies were, their
11:57multiverse-faring shenanigans seemed a bit boring by comparison. Sure, it was fun seeing
12:02three iterations of Spider-Man hanging out, and Sam Raimi got compellingly freaky with the Doctor
12:06Strange sequel, but given the limitless potential of the worlds presented therein, both films barely
12:11felt like they scratched the surface of their multiversal potential.
12:15The Bourne Identity Embarrassed Die Another Day
12:18It's often said that Austin Powers and the film 9-11 collectively killed the Pierce Brosnan era
12:23of tongue-in-cheek James Bond films, though in reality, the primary culprit is actually Doug
12:28Lyman's The Bourne Identity. Released five months before Brosnan's final outing as 007,
12:33The Bourne Identity was in many ways a Bond film without the branding, a kinetic,
12:37globetrotting spy thriller focused on a protagonist with the initials JB.
12:41It proved a major critical and commercial success, and to this very day is credited
12:45with reinvigorating the stagnant spy genre by way of its more cerebral storytelling and gritty,
12:50intense action. The Bourne Identity was such a riveting breath of fresh air that it became
12:55tough to get excited about another silly Bond movie, and so it's little surprise that Die
12:59Another Day's joyless ride left critics and fans alike rather indifferent. Though Die Another Day
13:04was a massive box office hit regardless, more than doubling Bourne's financial haul, it ultimately
13:09brought Brosnan's tenure as 007 to an unceremonious end, before Bond producers rebooted the franchise
13:14with Daniel Craig in the grittier vein of the Bourne movies.
13:18And there we go my friends, those were 10 movies that embarrassed other movies released at the same
13:22time. I hope that you enjoyed that and let me know what you thought about it down in the
13:25comments section below. As always I've been Jools, you can go follow me over on Instagram
13:29where it's at RetroJ but the O is a zero and I hope to see you over there my friends.
13:33But before I go I just want to say one thing, hope you're treating yourself well with love
13:37and respect because you deserve all of the best things in life alright, and do not let anything
13:41or anyone else tell you otherwise. You are a massive ledge and you deserve all the best
13:45things in life like love, happiness and success so I want you to go out there and utterly smash
13:50it today, I believe in you. As always I've been Jools, you have been awesome, never forget that
13:55and I'll speak to you soon. Bye.