Why Did This Movie Do So Poorly?

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This is from a longer article:

One sad irony is that the most accurate movies generally sink faster than the Titanic did. Dr. Toplin cites the example of Ride With the Devil (1999), director Ang Lee's well-researched and fact- based depiction of the Civil War on the Missouri border, climaxing with William Quantrill's notorious raid on Lawrence, Kan.

The movie accurately depicted the conflict. It showed the Confederate guerrillas not in dashing uniforms but in the well-worn rags they probably wore almost all of the time. It even made the point that a small number of black soldiers fought (uneasily at times) on the Confederate side.

Ride With the Devil won the History Channel's Herodotus Award.

Despite outstanding direction, however (Mr. Lee would go on to direct Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, a box-office smash), and despite an array of stars - including Tobey Maguire, the rock star Jewel and UNCW alumnus Skeet Ulrich - it sold almost no tickets. (I don't think it ever reached a Wilmington screen.)

Why? Dr. Toplin concludes, sadly, that Ride With the Devil was too accurate. Its depiction of a guerrilla war, with atrocities committed by both sides, did not satisfy the audience's need for clear heroes and villains.

That, and the already mentioned studio difficulties, spoiled the run of what is a very good film. I'm a native of Lawrence, Kansas and I can tell you it is the ONLY film I know of that treats the event correctly and gives you a feel for the time and the place.

Try watching crap like THE DARK COMMAND or KANSAS RAIDERS and you'll see what I mean.

"Every burned book enlightens the world."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Which it easily could have become in the hands of other writers/producers/directors.

SPOILERS AHEAD-IF YOU HAVEN"T SEEN THE MOVIE STOP RIGHT NOW

OTHERWISE--YE BE WARNED!!!
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This movie failed because the script is just too damn well-written. I am not referring to the way the characters spoke. The language used was not "outdated" or too "archaic" for most audiences. The picture showed that there were people on both sides willing to kill other people just for their beliefs, just because they "did business" with the other side, just because they might have "harbored an enemy" by giving that person a meal, or lodging.
What happened in Lawrence was terrible, but also it happened in Atlanta, and it also happened in New York. This movie showed just how inhumane people can be to their fellow humans, for no reason at all. It is also interesting that the
people in Missouri were prejudiced against Jacob, because his father was a German immigrant (and they believed all the immigrants were for Lincoln)
and that the Northern soliders killed Jacob's father because his son fought with the Southern Bushwackers. Either way that man had no chance. Either way a lot of people had no chance, and I think this is what turned a lot of people away from seeing this in the movies. I saw this on DVD, and I though it was incredible. I thought the acting was great, the story was well-written and the battle scenes were well-filmed, as was the "quiet" scenes.

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SPOILERS





In my opinion the movie flopped because it wasn’t the flamboyant epic that people expected:

1)None of the actors was very charismatic. Replace Skeet Ulrich and Tobey Maguire by Brad Pitt and Leonardo di Caprio and you have a whole new dynamic. I thought Jewel did very well for her first role. As a singer-turned-actress she would put Madonna to shame any day. But I still don’t understand why Ang Lee went out of his way to distract her from her singing career. She is rather inexpressive. She isn’t going to move us to tears or whatever. Surely Kate Winslet would have made a delightful saucy southern belle.

2)I thought the photography was crap. When you go to see a civil war movie you want to see ‘Gone with the wind’. You want the luxurious colors, the glorious light…In ‘Riding with the devil’ you get the gray skies, the rain, the snow… It’s almost like England. The movie looked like it was shot with some cheap video camera, with low resolution and hardly any dynamic range.

3)The introduction is too short. Jack’s father is killed very near the start of the movie. And Jake and him join the guerilla. I thought that was too abrupt. It would have been nice to see more of their lives before the war, to learn to know them before they are changed by the war. The movie didn’t feel long to me, I would happily have taken in 20 or 30 minutes more.

However I still liked the movie. On the up side you have:

1)A terrific story. As Ang Lee puts it himself in the DVD featurette it is about ‘the coming of age of two men through the death of their friends’. The concept is intriguing and could have led to a deep exploration of the human soul.

2)A great actor. I thought Jeffrey Wright was by far the best actor in the movie. The scene where he tips his hat to a sleeping Jewel was for me the most touching moment.

3)Beautiful music. Once more Mychael Dana has managed to write an outstanding score. It is about the only thing in the movie with an epic quality.

A lot of people on this board liked the movie because it was realistic and historically accurate. Now if the movie were more of a glamorous epic like ‘Gone with the wind’ you could think it would be in danger of losing its authenticity. It seems rather contradictory that a movie should be at the same time bigger-than-life and realistic. However we undoubtedly have some examples that show it can be done. Recently I thought ‘Cold Mountain’ was such a movie, at the same time poetically epic and deeply rooted in reality. But it is surely difficult to achieve. At the same time as ‘Cold Mountain’ there was ‘The last samurai’, another ambitious historical epic. That was in my opinion a disastrous failure. The movie didn’t feel right because it was completely unrealistic. The samurai-philosophers looked to come more from Fantasyland than 19th century Japan.

Further back, ‘Dances with the wolves’ was another great epic achievement. It provided adventure and poetry but also a solid sense of witnessing something real.

Why did it flop?
Two words: Tobey Maguire
The guy cannot act!