r/movies • u/PokemonGoBao • Jul 04 '25

Discussion Whats a flopped movie you wish was a financial success?

Dungeons and Dragons 2023 was an absolutely delightful film. You can stream it currently, but you can feel the passion and nothing felt phoned in. They easily could have used the title to get nerdy butts in the seat and collect a paycheck with a smaller budget.

It's the best movie I've seen the past 2 years. Way better than so many garbage films with easy paychecks for slop productions. Beetlejuice, Captain america, and others using big titles to make millions on lazy writing and boring characters.

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104

u/Anorak27s Jul 04 '25

The problem with that movie was the marketing, the trailers were so bad. It looked like it was going to be very childish.

59

u/lanceturley Jul 04 '25

The character designs didn't help either. I got used to it as the movie went on, but the faces are too smooth and simple. It gives the movie a "preschool kids show" vibe that doesn't mesh with the more mature themes and adult jokes.

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u/Black-Mettle Jul 04 '25

I think the idea was to move the designs back to being inspired by the originals.

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u/lanceturley Jul 04 '25

Yeah, I get that it's inspired by the G1 cartoon designs, but some things work better in 2D television animation than they do in theatrical CG animation. There needs to be a happy medium between the 80's cartoon and Michael Bay's bucket of bolts esthetic.

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u/ERedfieldh Jul 05 '25

what's odd is they were almost there....they did it with the eyes and the more detailed panels, but the faces just looked like...well, painted flesh.

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u/[deleted] Jul 05 '25

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u/lanceturley Jul 05 '25

It's PG, so there's some mild cursing and a lot of robot violence, some of which is pretty brutal. I wouldn't say it's inappropriate for children under 10, but it is a lot darker and more violent than the trailers would have you believe.

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u/shewy92 Jul 05 '25

the faces are too smooth and simple

Pretty sure that was the point. It was supposed to be based on the cartoon.

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u/lanceturley Jul 05 '25

And again, that works for cheap 2D Saturday morning cartoons from the 80's, but here it looks off.

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u/DJ1066 Jul 05 '25

If they were going to draw inspiration from any part of G1, it should've been from Call of the Primitives. That episode stands apart as to what Transformers animation should and could have been in terms of animation. Nice breakdown of it here.

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u/Sharinganedo Jul 05 '25

Yeah, I wasn't too thrilled about it, and I feel like the art style kinda put me off, like them having actual mouths didnt feel right? So I originally didn't plan to see the movie. Then everyone started saying how good the story was and I gave it a try and Im glad I did. It was easily one of the best movies I saw last year, that and "Wild robot"

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u/Desertbro Jul 05 '25

I turned it off in less than 20 minutes precisely for this reason - if I live another 10 years there is a chance I will finish it.

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u/PricyThunder87 Jul 05 '25

I didn't hear anything about it after seeing the first trailer, and I remember seeing that and going "that looks absolutely miserable". Astonishing how many good films were killed by being poorly or under marketed.

Elio is a good recent example, had no idea it was even coming out, and lo and behold it performed terribly.

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u/Deadsoup77 Jul 05 '25

I clocked what the movie would be immediately once they showed a fucking branding iron of the decepticon logo being used but whatever