how can people find out if a movie is bad if nobody chose to go see it????
good or bad, it doesn't explain why a $100 million blockbuster movie makes 0.5 in its opening weekend.
look at these movies, undeniably much much worse with and look how much they made.
BATMAN AND ROBIN 130 million!!!
Nutty Proffessor 2 125 million
Pearl Harbour 200 million
meet the fockers 280 million
Van Helsing 300 million
Alien vs Predator 170 million
avp2 140 million
Cutthroat island 10 million??????????
simple truth is Gena Davis and pirates didnt appeal to people. so they didnt even give it a chance.
i think this review says it better.
When Cutthroat Island was released in 1995, it was a monumental flop on the scale of Waterworld. Between casting woes, an overinflated budget, and MGM's refusal to spend any money on marketing, advance word of the film was sour, and Cutthroat Island sank out of sight after a mere week in U.S. theaters. The film recouped only about $10,000,000 of its massive $92,000,000 production costs, bankrupting Carolco Pictures and spelling doom for the box-office viability of future pirate flicks. Since then, the film has found a small cult following on home video, director Renny Harlin has become even more of a hack, and Disney has surprisingly resurrected the pirate genre with its hugely successful, Gore Verbinski-helmed trilogy. On the surface, Cutthroat Island and the Pirates of the Caribbean films have a lot in common—swashbuckling highjinks in tropical locales, massive action set pieces, and romance on the high seas—so why did Renny Harlin's ill-fated adventure fail while Disney went on to create a franchise? There are myriad reasons, I'm sure, but consider these names: Johnny Depp, Keira Knightley, and Orlando Bloom. That's a bankable trio. Matthew Modine, Geena Davis, and Frank Langella? Not so much. But it can't all come down to star power, can it?
Well, maybe. The story concerns female pirate Morgan Adams (Geena Davis), whose dying father has just commanded her to scalp him. You see, Harry Morgan has one third of a map to Cutthroat Island tattooed on his dome piece, and he wants his daughter to have it before he gets a locker next to Davy Jones. Morgan does some off-camera surgery, becomes the new captain of her father's ship, and sets sail for Port Royal, where she picks up William Shaw (Matthew Modine), a conniving thief who is just educated enough to translate the Latin on the map. After being spotted by Royal Navy redcoats, Morgan and her crew of scallywags narrowly escape and head to a brothel to retrieve the second portion of the map from Morgan's uncle Mordecai. With the location of the island now revealed, they cut through deadly seas toward their very own treasure island, pursued by nefarious pirate Dawg Brown (Frank Langella), Morgan's other uncle—sheesh, what's with this family—and possessor of the final third of the map. Once they make ground, Morgan and Shaw's tenuous alliance is strained by sexual tension and greed, but they have to work together if it means reaching the treasure and getting out alive.
Filmed in Malta and Thailand, Cutthroat Island is every bit as big as Pirates of the Caribbean. Renny Harlin clearly made the most of his nearly unlimited bankroll, turning every childhood pirate fantasy imaginable into wild, explosion-filled set pieces that are all the more impressive for being wholly unaided by CGI. There's one stunt in particular, where Geena Davis flips through a second-story glass window and down onto the seat of a rushing horse-drawn carriage, which will have you scratching your head for days. The film's pace rarely lets up, and we're drawn from one dizzying, death-defying encounter to the next, with only short character- building scenes for breathing space. Take a second to think of all the pirate movie clichés you've ever seen. Got 'em? Now, I guarantee you that every single one of them is present in Cutthroat Island. Does someone swing from a chandelier? Is there swordfight on top of the mainsail? Will a cute monkey provide endless comic relief? Yes, yes, and yes. It's as if someone told Renny Harlin, "Look, we're going to give you one hundred million dollars to make a pirate movie, but you've got to watch every swashbuckling tale since The Black Pirate with Douglas Fairbanks, write down everything that happens, and put it all in your film." There's a mutiny, a half-submerged treasure in a perilous cave, a thunderous maritime cannon battle, some sly double entendres, and more steel-on-steel action than you could, well, shake a sword at. The only thing missing is a pirate getting hit on the head by a coconut. And while there's nothing we haven't seen before, Cutthroat Island is at least consistently entertaining, even if the principle actors don't quite seem suited for their parts.
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