Tentpole Trauma

The DCEU was poised to make their play for Avengers style glory with Zack Snyder's follow-up to the divisive Batman v Superman: Dawn of  Justice, but after tragedy struck the director was forced to leave the completion of the project to then-celebrated geek god Joss Whedon. The  end result was an uneven Frankenstein of a film that failed to crack 500 million, a disaster for a mega-budget superhero team up that featured  many of the world's most popular superheroes. With Snyder's original vision now streaming, it seemed only fitting that Sebastian, Jennifer and guests Ken and Chrystal Oyegun busted out the motherboxes and resurrected the 2017 version of Justice League.

Horror remakes were all the rage at the turn of the previous decade, as were vampires, so an updated version of the 1985 hit Fright Night was all but inevitable. Armed with a strong cast that featured Anton Yelchin, Toni Collette, David Tennant and sexy vamp Colin Farrell, Craig Gillespie's 2011 version had all the markings of a winner, so why did it fail to find blood at the box office? Join Sebastian, Jennifer and Rodney as they drive a stake through the heart of this unfairly forgotten horror comedy.

George Lucas adapting a Marvel comics property should be a license to print money, right? Directed by Lucas collaborator Willard Huyck, the 1986 adaptation of Steve Gerber's beloved comics character was given a huge budget that would feature top shelf animatronics and special effects, but audiences found it off-putting and ridiculous enough to flock far away. Still, is there enjoyment to be found in this lame duck? Find out when Sebastian, Jennifer and Sonic the Hedgehog screenwriter Josh Miller quack themselves up over the notorious cinematic fowl-up Howard the Duck.

In a post-Matrix Hollywood, the prospect of adapting Peter Chung's cult anime hit seemed like the opportunity to kick-start another FX heavy sci fi franchise. Get Girlfight director Karyn Kusama to direct combined with white-hot star Charlize Theron in the action heroine lead...how could it fail? That's the mind-bending conundrum Chris, Rodney and Sebastian wrestle with as they dissect the strange cinematic concoction that is the 2005 adaptation of Aeon Flux.

In honor of Black History Month we're covering the obvious choice...Men in Black: International! Directed by filmmaker F. Gary Gray this  continuation of the Will Smith fronted franchise was sure to be a smash, except it didn't star Will Smith. But can its box office failure be blamed on charming replacements Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson? Join Jennifer and Sebastian as they don the black suits and try to de-neuralize this all-but forgotten 2019 flop.

Hold on a second... is this really fair? Christopher Nolan's mega-budget time travel spy thriller came out at the height of the pandemic, can its relative box office failure accurately be blamed on the film? Well no, but it was certainly a misguided effort to save cinemas and many were baffled by the muddy sound mix... look, we just wanted to talk Tenet, OK? Join Sebastian, Troy and Chris as they work backwards in time to make sense of 2020's most confounding blockbuster artifact.

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Coming off the 90s you'd be hard-pressed to find a cooler pair of directors than Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, and when they decided to bring their love of Grindhouse cinema to the mainstream in 2007 with a joint effort that also featured hot filmmakers Eli Roth, Edgar Wright and Rob Zombie, film geeks everywhere rejoiced. Sadly, mainstream audiences did not, and the film was the first major flop on both directors' resumes. But did it deserve to be? That's what Jennifer and Sebastian aim to find out when they take a deep-dive detour into the double-feature box office disappointment Grindhouse.

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Take the director of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and the writer of Alien, and you've got yourself an 80s sci fi horror hit, right? Well, not so much. Tobe Hooper's 1985 schlockfest Lifeforce delivered in terms of gratuitous nudity and gonzo spectacle, but in terms of box office and critical reception it was an apocalyptic disaster. Join Sebastian, Chris and Troy as they try to unravel the horny insanity of this baffling yet wildly entertaining misfire.

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Teaming Girlfight director Karyn Kusama with Oscar winning screenwriter Diablo Cody for a female-driven horror film seemed a tantalizing prospect in 2009; add to that the presence of then white-hot sex symbol Megan Fox to the mix and Jennifer's Body should have been a sure-fire winner. Sadly the film fizzled at the box office and fan reaction was tepid – did this horror comedy deserve better, or was it too clever for its own good? Join Sebastian, Jennifer and Rodney as they try to see the forest Through the Trees in regards to this misunderstood and perhaps misjudged late aughts offering.

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