Audience-Alienating Premise: Difference between revisions

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* As mentioned above, ''An American Crime''. People interested in real life crime or with knowledge of the actual case may want to watch it, but between the theme and the title, very few else would want to.

* Basically every movie set during the second Gulf War has been a box office bomb, ''[[The Kingdom]]'', ''The Green Zone'', ''In The Valley Of Elah'', and most notably, Best Picture Winner ''[[The Hurt Locker]].'' The war itself is so politically charged that any depiction of it risks alienating large chunks of the audience based on its perceived politics. And it is too current to be escapism.

* ''[[Alegria]]'', the dramatic film inspired by the [[Cirque Du Soleil]] show, is a fable that entwines the story of a street mime and a circus singer falling in [[Love At First Sight]] with that of unwanted children being forced to tend and sell flowers for a cruel taskmaster. It's too dark and mature thematically for ~~children—the~~ story kicks off with the mime and his child friend both literally wanting to die, a supporting character is a lovelorn old alcoholic, etc. But how many teens or adults want to watch a movie about whimsical circus people helping to realize a [[World Half Full]]? The film only made it to theaters in Canada and a few European countries.

* ''[[Alegria]]'', the dramatic film inspired by the [[Cirque Du Soleil]] show, is a fable that entwines the story of a street mime and a circus singer falling in [[Love At First Sight]] with that of unwanted children being forced to tend and sell flowers for a cruel taskmaster. It's too dark and mature thematically for children — the story kicks off with the mime and his child friend both literally wanting to die, a supporting character is a lovelorn old alcoholic, etc. But how many teens or adults want to watch a movie about whimsical circus people helping to realize a [[World Half Full]]? The film only made it to theaters in Canada and a few European countries.

* This is one reason ''[[Newsies]]'' bombed in 1992: A drama about an 1899 newsboys' strike! And it's a ''musical''! At the time Disney was having great success with animated musicals and some executives thought they may as well revive the live-action musical, a genre that has become dead in the sixties and every attempt to revive were equally doomed. ''Newsies'' eventually got [[Vindicated By Video]], but only after its cast of then relative unknowns got their [[Star-Making Role]]s soon after it.

* ''[[Funny Games]]'' presents itself as a [[Gorn]] film that deconstructs the genre and makes the viewer question why they watch gorn films to start with. The problem here is that gorn fans don't appreciate being told they're sick bastards by the films they're watching, and non-fans aren't going to watch it in the first place.

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* Sony Pictures has spent [[The New Tens|the last decade]] releasing an unhealthy amount of these:

** [[Ghostbusters (2016 film)|''Ghostbusters'', the 2016 version]]. A [[Remake]]/[[Continuity Reboot]] of a [[Ghostbusters|beloved classic]], only [[Gender Flip]]ped. The sad thing is that the film could have found a public big enough to saving it from flopping, had the studio not used gender identity politics to promote it. Turns out that threatening everybody who criticized the premise or the [[Tainted by the Preview|badly put thorough trailers]] by calling all of them misogynists doesn't endear your film with its potential public. And in an aversion of [[No Such Thing as Bad Publicity]], people were [[Overshadowed by Controversy|so tainted for the controversy]] that avoided the film entirely.

** The Seth Rogen and James Franco collaboration ''The Interview''. It's a comedy about two journalists infiltrating North Korea to kill Kim Jong-il. Turns out that a film that advocates the killing of a world leader, no matter how much of an actual despot the individual is, is not going to sit well with ''anyone''. There was also an excessive use of gorn for black comedy that wouldn't have sit well with American audiences. Sony wisely pulled it out of release it in theaters worldwide, but the real question is how the film was greenlighted in the first place.

** The [[Seth Rogen]] and James Franco collaboration ''The Interview''. It's a comedy about two journalists infiltrating North Korea to kill Kim Jong-il. Turns out that a film that advocates the killing of a world leader, no matter how much of an actual despot the individual is, is not going to sit well with ''anyone''. There was also an excessive use of gorn for black comedy that wouldn't have sit well with American audiences. Sony wisely pulled it out of release it in theaters worldwide, but the real question is how the film was greenlighted in the first place.

** The 2016 film ''Passengers''. [[Never Trust a Trailer|Trailers depicted it]] as an standard romantic comedy about a man and a woman that awaken from [[Human Popsicle|their cryogenic asleep]] during a centuries-long interstellar travel and fell in love with each other. Then critics watched the film in preview and discovered that the actual plot was that the man awoke first, went to select the asleep passenger that appealed to him the most, and awoke her, just to not stay alone in the ship. And not only this was still depicted in romantic comedy fashion, the man was treated sympathetically [[Karma Houdini|and got free of any plot punishment]], despite him ruining the life of an innocent woman for selfish reasons. Critics were so appalled that they all spoiled the film in their reviews and pleaded the readers to no go to watch such a misogynistic piece of crap.

** The American adaptation of the famous novel ''[[The Millennium Trilogy|The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo]]'' isn't really that alienating of a premise, but the choice of releasing this R-rated thriller with a lot of rape and murder on Christmas Day (when the public prefer lighter films) definitely was.

** Adam Sandler's 2012 flick ''That's My Boy'', about a loser trying to reconnect with his estranged son... which was conceived by a <s>[[Teacher-Student Romance]]</s> statutory rape when he was ''twelve''. Add that people at this point was beginning to get tired of Sandler's shtick, and you get a film that flopped hard.

** [[Adam Sandler]]'s 2012 flick ''That's My Boy'', about a loser trying to reconnect with his estranged son... which was conceived by a <s>[[Teacher-Student Romance]]</s> [[Double Standard Rape (Female on Male)|statutory rape]] when he was ''twelve''. Add that people at this point was beginning to get tired of Sandler's shtick, and you get a film that flopped hard.

** Also by Sandler, the much-maligned 2015 film ''Pixels'' was a perfect storm of audience-alienating points: the plot being based in references to games from the 1980's (which young people may not recognize, and older people may associate with the stereotype of [[Video Game Movies Suck]]ing), the characters being an assortment of obnoxious gamer stereotypes, and Sandler's brand of comedy being now extremely despised. This film is the reason why now all films by Sandler are distributed by [[Netflix]].

** Also by Sandler, the much-maligned 2015 film ''Pixels'' was a perfect storm of audience-alienating points: the plot being based in references to games from the 1980's (which young people may not recognize, and older people may associate with the stereotype of [[Video Game Movies Suck]]ing), the characters being an assortment of obnoxious gamer stereotypes, and Sandler's brand of comedy being now extremely despised. This film is the reason why now all films by Sandler are [[Direct to Video|distributed by]] [[Netflix]].

** The 2018 adaptation of ''[[Peter Rabbit (film)|Peter Rabbit]]'' took a [[Peter Rabbit|classic book character]] and transformed him in an [[Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist]]. It also rebooted the original plot and replaced what [[Beatrix Potter]] put to make the character lovable with [[We're Still Relevant, Dammit!|cheap pop culture gags]]. Somehow it managed to avoid being a flop, but it's still marred by the controversy surrounding a scene where the [[Designated Villain]] [[What the Hell, Hero?|is deliberately assaulted with stuff he is deathly allergic to by the titular character]].

** The 2018 film version of ''[[Venom (comic book)|Venom]]''. Sony decided to pull a ''[[Catwoman (film)|Catwoman]]'' and made a film about one of [[Spider-Man]] most emblematic enemies, in a way that completely removes Spider-Man involvement on the character (for the ones not in the know, in the comics Spider-man is ''completely vital'' in the birth of Venom). In a subversion, the film managed to be somewhat successful, albeit mostly because the people ignored Sony marketing the film as a horror take on superheroism and took it as a dark comedy buddy film between [[A Boy and His X|a man and his killer alien symbiotic thing that combine into a killer antihero]].