Why did this movie flop?

I think people were not ready for a female as the lead in a pirate movie.
Gena was a huge star in the 90's coming off thelma and luise, league of their own, hero ,beetle juice and the fly
she was one of the top female actresses, but for a female lead in a pirate movie which is historically a mans world made it comical.
this was not Aliens!

Mathew modine was never a real A list bankable leading star, he was always a great actor who starred in good movies, but he was never the Super star.
so this might have confused audiences also, was this 100 million dollar movie with reny harlin who just directed diehard 2 and cliffhanger, starring gena davis and mathew modine,
in a time where bruce willies, mel gibson, costner ,stallone, arnie, JCVD seagal, etc etc
were all the a list stars.

so people were probably thinking, ummmm what is this? another waterworld?
disney summer movie for kids?
is it a comedy?

I think the script needed to be more darker, and the lead character should of been a man. and a strong female supporting role.

I don't know.. I mean some films flop and no one knows why. thats hollywood
some films go on to make 300 million dollars with a 100thousand budget and everyone is left scratching their heads

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It failed because it was made simply to let little girls believe that they could have pirate adventures just like little boys do. As an 'equal opportunity' movie, it could have been made on a shoestring budget with decent actors, and mostly on sets in the studio backlots. There were numerous wonderful low budget pirate films made years ago for the Saturday matinee set, all you need is a good story. That said, it's not a bad movie. It just isn't a great one, and the studios sink so much money into every production, if it isn't a huge hit, they consider it a loss, because they waste so much money making them.

As someone else said, Davis as the lead was a HUGE mistake.

While watching this movie for the first time, last night, I kept trying to figure out exactly what was wrong with it. If you read the Trivia section, it becomes clear that there were several big problems. Personally, I don't believe that the acting was bad or that any character was miscast.

I noticed a few specific instances where the film editing was questionable but the fact that there were three cameras running continuously suggests that the film editor had way too much footage to go through, too much material and probably limited time to do it in.

There are multiple examples of scenes that weren't set up very well. When that happens, even the best acting looks bad.

Again, from Trivia, it appears that the director didn't have control over the film in many places. That he only seems to get jobs doing TV suggests that he's not very good at movies, which are very big projects. If he were a writer, he would have written one or two books that just failed and he went back to writing articles for magazines.

The movie is certainly watchable to a certain extent; Geena Davis is always fun to watch and the actors make the best of a bad situation but the movie is just not very well made. The water tank shots and effects were very good. But the movie is just a dog (no pun intended) and the reason for that lays squarely on the shoulders of a not-so-good director.

Just watched this movie for the first time today, so here's my opinion.

-This movie is a fun pirate film, but its nothing special. It had cool special effects and good action scenes, but the plot was too generic for me. There really wasnt much more to it other than "pirates use map to find buried treasure". I'll watch it again if I'm in the mood for a generic pirate movie, but there was nothing deeper to draw me back to it.

-I couldnt figure out the genre. I couldnt tell if it was meant to be a serious pirate movie or a movie with a lot of comedy undertones. At least with POTC its clear that its going to be mostly fantasy and comedy elements. With this movie there were a lot of unconvincing flat scenes that I couldnt tell whether I was supposed to be laughing or feeling inspired.

-Geena Davis was a poor choice. I have no problem with Davis or her acting in general, but this movie was a tough role for her to pull off. In the 1800's, even women in the highest classes of society were treated vastly inferior to men. Pirates were humans who were living on the outskirts of those rules and morals. For an 1800's woman to break through all of those deep-set prejudices to command a ban of scummy pirates, she would have to be real tough. Geena Davis came off more as a sitcom housewife than a realistic female pirate.

-They spent way too much on this movie and expected way too much from it. If this had been made much more efficiently and with a much lower budget, people would be praising it as an awesome hidden gem pirate movie. Instead its a box office bomb. They under-advertised the movie and it wasnt a blowout that people were rushing to recommend to their friends, so it really only sold to the random people who wandered into the theater to see it.