3 Career Ending-Movies that Ended the Wrong Career
Every now and then a movie comes out that is so unforgivably bad, someone has to lose their career. I imagine after Waterworld flunked, the cast and crew sat down to a meeting that went down much like the end of National Treasure: “Well, somebody has to go to jail”. That movie knocked Kevin Costner out of circulation for nearly a decade. George Clooney survived Batman and Robin. Chrisopher O’Donnell and Alicia Silverstone- didn’t.
While some actors may or may not deserve the obscurity of Hallmark Channel westerns or midnight infomercials, America seems pretty vindictive when it comes to movies that let it down. You would think those most responsible for
the failure would be the first to go, but- as in Washington, as in Hollywood: it’s pretty random who loses their career and who goes on to prosper. George Lucas has survived fail after fail after fail- yet he continues to make movies, and people continue to watch them.
The following films are examples of careers that were ruined when a much better option existed. For instance, instead of O’Donnell and Alicia Silverstone, what if George Clooney had never found good work again?
The Movie: Cool as Ice.
Career Ended: Vanilla Ice.
Cool as Ice cemented Vanilla Ice’s decline in popularity with cement shoes. It has a whopping 8% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and the director later disowned it. “Cool as Ice? Yeah- I never did that...” And since Cool as Ice is a raptastic musical romance with Vanilla Ice himself as the lead, it’s no wonder. I just want to know what drugs he was on, because I need those drugs to watch it.
Anyone who wasn’t enamored with “Ice ice baby” would have foreseen this, but I’d like the 8 people who like this movie to come forward and explain their reasons. Perhaps there’s something in it I failed to notice, perhaps there was a subtle
charm to it that I wasn’t perceptive enough to catch. Or, perhaps, believe it or not, there are 8 absolute idiots living somewhere, who I’m convinced, are the 8 billionaires who watched Date Movie a million times at the box office. That’s more preferable to me than the existence of 100 million idiots....
The Career It Should Have Ended: Vanilla Ice.
I know it seems contradictory. A film like this could have ruined Malcolm MacDowell’s career- as I’m sure Suing
the Devil or whatever it’s called will- but... We live in a strange world. Vanilla Ice, of all the has-beens and one hit-wonders, of all hack artists with a forgettable gimmick, has- arrrgggh- made a come-back. Thus, apparently, Cool as Ice wasn’t bad enough. It needed to be far worse. It should have been so feloniously bad that the mere mention of “Vanilla Ice come-back” would blacklist anyone with the power to make that happen.
The Movie: Child’s Play
Career Ended: This one needs a bit of explaining. Child’s Play was a commercial success, it even spawned a franchise that has become a horror icon. It gave career opportunities to actors and actresses who wouldn’t have gotten better work. Yet- someone paid a price, and that person was-
The My Buddy doll.
If you grew up in the 1980s, you know all about My Buddy and Child’s Play. You will never forget the fear your parents gave you with a doll they should have been aware was the villain in a gory slasher film. I killed my own My Buddy doll many times, only to have him reappear with a lecture from my parents about not stabbing my toys with knives. Although I didn’t see Child’s Play until much later, it left a mark of fear and dread on my childhood I’ll never forget.
The Career It Should Have Ended:
Imagine if the writers and producers of Child’s Play had been a bit more prescient. Instead of using an existing doll, and giving an entire generation of American youth PTSD, they could have saved this generation much irritation and despair by making “Chucky” Tickle Me Elmo, or Barney, or, Furbie, or the Teletubbies- how much suffering would they have
spared? Making the killer of Child’s Play a then nonexistent toy would have dramatically reduced the scare factor, but it would have spared me the annoyance of later toys that- just flat out sucked. Making the most annoying, infuriating
childhood pandering machine a serial slasher ten years before it was conceived would have made the mention of “a purple loving Dinosaur” as toxic to kids as it is to me. And don’t tell me Child’s Play doesn’t have a sense of humor: I think “Chucky” jerking off to John Water’s commentary is quite artistic and sophisticated...
The Movie: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Career ended: Kristy Swanson (because Luke Perry doesn’t matter)
Don’t get me wrong: I rather like this movie. It’s funny, the acting is ok, and the plot is engaging enough to keep me
interested all the way through. Yet, most of America didn’t feel the same way. While it wasn’t a box office bomb, it rounded out modestly in sales and is an all-but-forgotten movie. Considering the budget, marketing expenses, and star
power that went into it, someone had to pay the price. This person was the beautiful, talented and graceful Kristy Swanson. Yes- she made The Chase. What else might I ask, has she been in since?
The Career That Should Have Ended: Buffy The Vampire Slayer.
I listed this one last simply because of the cascading mindfuck of consequences this movie had. In the late 90s, Joss Wheadon made Buffy into a WB television show, with consequences he could not have imagined.
First, it gave Alyson Hannigan- of the “flute” persuasion- her start. When your pinnacle performance is Freiberg/Seltzer
movie, you know you’re bad. While she is hot, hot doesn’t equate with good- Kim Kardashian...
Second, it gave the WB consistent income to continue sucking for many years. Not knowing that that god-damn frog was getting the funding to dance across my screen from the sacrifice of Kristy Swanson’s career saved me many TVs, because I would have kicked the screen out Chuck Norris style had I known that at the time.
Third: the show became a marketing vehicle to such stellar bands as Blink 182 and Third Eye blind. Oh, the joy...
Fourth: the show, while not creating, encouraged and catalyzed the “vampire as romantic interest” motif which ultimately gave us Twilight. Stephanie Myers would have probably written Twilight without Buffy, but without Buffy and others like it, you wouldn’t have an entire generation conditioned to desire vampires that make such a movie practical. Myers would have been alone in her own necrophilous fantasies.
Fifth: As bad as Twilight is, it spawned an atrocity much worse than itself: Vampires Suck. I trace this long list of
misfortune to the end of Swanson’s career and the beginning of Wheadon’s. I like Joss Wheadon. But I’d gladly give up The Avengers in order to loose all the bullshit Buffy- The Series created to see Kristy Swanson again. She was in Pretty in Pink, for God’s sake...
While some actors may or may not deserve the obscurity of Hallmark Channel westerns or midnight infomercials, America seems pretty vindictive when it comes to movies that let it down. You would think those most responsible for
the failure would be the first to go, but- as in Washington, as in Hollywood: it’s pretty random who loses their career and who goes on to prosper. George Lucas has survived fail after fail after fail- yet he continues to make movies, and people continue to watch them.
The following films are examples of careers that were ruined when a much better option existed. For instance, instead of O’Donnell and Alicia Silverstone, what if George Clooney had never found good work again?
The Movie: Cool as Ice.
Career Ended: Vanilla Ice.
Cool as Ice cemented Vanilla Ice’s decline in popularity with cement shoes. It has a whopping 8% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and the director later disowned it. “Cool as Ice? Yeah- I never did that...” And since Cool as Ice is a raptastic musical romance with Vanilla Ice himself as the lead, it’s no wonder. I just want to know what drugs he was on, because I need those drugs to watch it.
Anyone who wasn’t enamored with “Ice ice baby” would have foreseen this, but I’d like the 8 people who like this movie to come forward and explain their reasons. Perhaps there’s something in it I failed to notice, perhaps there was a subtle
charm to it that I wasn’t perceptive enough to catch. Or, perhaps, believe it or not, there are 8 absolute idiots living somewhere, who I’m convinced, are the 8 billionaires who watched Date Movie a million times at the box office. That’s more preferable to me than the existence of 100 million idiots....
The Career It Should Have Ended: Vanilla Ice.
I know it seems contradictory. A film like this could have ruined Malcolm MacDowell’s career- as I’m sure Suing
the Devil or whatever it’s called will- but... We live in a strange world. Vanilla Ice, of all the has-beens and one hit-wonders, of all hack artists with a forgettable gimmick, has- arrrgggh- made a come-back. Thus, apparently, Cool as Ice wasn’t bad enough. It needed to be far worse. It should have been so feloniously bad that the mere mention of “Vanilla Ice come-back” would blacklist anyone with the power to make that happen.
The Movie: Child’s Play
Career Ended: This one needs a bit of explaining. Child’s Play was a commercial success, it even spawned a franchise that has become a horror icon. It gave career opportunities to actors and actresses who wouldn’t have gotten better work. Yet- someone paid a price, and that person was-
The My Buddy doll.
If you grew up in the 1980s, you know all about My Buddy and Child’s Play. You will never forget the fear your parents gave you with a doll they should have been aware was the villain in a gory slasher film. I killed my own My Buddy doll many times, only to have him reappear with a lecture from my parents about not stabbing my toys with knives. Although I didn’t see Child’s Play until much later, it left a mark of fear and dread on my childhood I’ll never forget.
The Career It Should Have Ended:
Imagine if the writers and producers of Child’s Play had been a bit more prescient. Instead of using an existing doll, and giving an entire generation of American youth PTSD, they could have saved this generation much irritation and despair by making “Chucky” Tickle Me Elmo, or Barney, or, Furbie, or the Teletubbies- how much suffering would they have
spared? Making the killer of Child’s Play a then nonexistent toy would have dramatically reduced the scare factor, but it would have spared me the annoyance of later toys that- just flat out sucked. Making the most annoying, infuriating
childhood pandering machine a serial slasher ten years before it was conceived would have made the mention of “a purple loving Dinosaur” as toxic to kids as it is to me. And don’t tell me Child’s Play doesn’t have a sense of humor: I think “Chucky” jerking off to John Water’s commentary is quite artistic and sophisticated...
The Movie: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Career ended: Kristy Swanson (because Luke Perry doesn’t matter)
Don’t get me wrong: I rather like this movie. It’s funny, the acting is ok, and the plot is engaging enough to keep me
interested all the way through. Yet, most of America didn’t feel the same way. While it wasn’t a box office bomb, it rounded out modestly in sales and is an all-but-forgotten movie. Considering the budget, marketing expenses, and star
power that went into it, someone had to pay the price. This person was the beautiful, talented and graceful Kristy Swanson. Yes- she made The Chase. What else might I ask, has she been in since?
The Career That Should Have Ended: Buffy The Vampire Slayer.
I listed this one last simply because of the cascading mindfuck of consequences this movie had. In the late 90s, Joss Wheadon made Buffy into a WB television show, with consequences he could not have imagined.
First, it gave Alyson Hannigan- of the “flute” persuasion- her start. When your pinnacle performance is Freiberg/Seltzer
movie, you know you’re bad. While she is hot, hot doesn’t equate with good- Kim Kardashian...
Second, it gave the WB consistent income to continue sucking for many years. Not knowing that that god-damn frog was getting the funding to dance across my screen from the sacrifice of Kristy Swanson’s career saved me many TVs, because I would have kicked the screen out Chuck Norris style had I known that at the time.
Third: the show became a marketing vehicle to such stellar bands as Blink 182 and Third Eye blind. Oh, the joy...
Fourth: the show, while not creating, encouraged and catalyzed the “vampire as romantic interest” motif which ultimately gave us Twilight. Stephanie Myers would have probably written Twilight without Buffy, but without Buffy and others like it, you wouldn’t have an entire generation conditioned to desire vampires that make such a movie practical. Myers would have been alone in her own necrophilous fantasies.
Fifth: As bad as Twilight is, it spawned an atrocity much worse than itself: Vampires Suck. I trace this long list of
misfortune to the end of Swanson’s career and the beginning of Wheadon’s. I like Joss Wheadon. But I’d gladly give up The Avengers in order to loose all the bullshit Buffy- The Series created to see Kristy Swanson again. She was in Pretty in Pink, for God’s sake...