There is a lot of cinema out there. Sometimes a story will float around the movie forums that will get distorted over time. Or maybe one little fact will be forgotten, which totally changes the piece of trivia. I enjoy it when a famous movie fact is all wrong and the actual truth of the story is so different that I cannot help but appreciate the irony. Today I shall set three facts straight and hopefully make you laugh at it all.
3 – MILLA JOVOVICH BECOMES COSTUME DESIGNER, ONE DRESS SHE DIDN’T MAKE BECOMES CULT SYMBOL
When Resident Evil: Extinction came out, Milla Jovovich, the lead actress of those movies, had found a passion in costume designing. On the DVD cover of that movie and any following Resident Evil, you will actually realise how much time and effort as clearly gone into Alice’s outfit. Extinction has the unique blend of survivalist clothing that makes Alice look like a Sci-Fi hero in a modern day setting. Jovovich is very talented at that side of movie production, which makes it surprising, and hilariously ironic, that everyone remembers the one dress she didn’t actually make.
When you think of Alice off the top of your head, she is always in that original red dress from the first movie. Waking up in the mansion with a simple dress and then taking on all of the zombie threat with that piece of clothing. Its simplicity is an important part of the idea of the dress, but it is also what makes it so memorable. Also easy for fancy dress purposes. It doesn’t help that in the third film, the Alice clones are all equipped with that red dress. I find it amusing that, despite her best efforts, Milla’s clothes are never remembered in the same light, as that thrown together piece of costume design in the original film.
2 – FINDING NEMO INCREASES NUMBER OF CAPTIVE FISH
The moral of Finding Nemo is a clear one. Keeping fish in a fish tank is bad and not unlike imprisonment. A big no-no. Fishing is all frowned upon and the story is all about respecting the beauty of the ocean and leaving them be. An admirable moral, but when it is in a kids movie, you will find that it will go right over the heads of the audience.
Fish sales went right up. Every kid who had seen that movie suddenly wanted a pet fish, even if they are one of the most boring animals in the world. Not only that, but now kids wanted exotic fish, so in many ways, Finding Nemo made the situation much worse. The movie tried to make kids respect the world around them, but all they ever cared about was owning a blue fish with a little memory. Personally, it didn’t work out for anyone. Do you know how hard it is to feed my vegetarian shark?
1 – SERENITY IS NERD SUCCESS STORY, DID AWFUL IN BOX OFFICE
Serenity is a cult movie for reasons other than being freaking amazing. It is the remains of a TV season the network scrapped, because the first episodes didn’t get the views they had waited for. However, there are so many people out there wanting it to be explored to its fullest extent that Fox gave in and gave Joss Whedon the budget to make a movie. Serenity was made and fans everywhere stuck up their two middle fingers to the man and…
Oh wait, the movie cost 39 million dollars to make and in the US, the opening box office raked in 10 million. That’s so not so great. In fairness, when you throw in international sales, the profit comes up to 38 million, so it’s not a terrible loss (I’m not counting advertising costs here), but it is still a loss. So basically, rather than showing the studios what the audience actually want, Serenity proved the big bosses at Fox right. Sure, it wasn’t as big a fail as they predicted, but it still failed to make a profit. It turns out that maybe the executives that wanted to cut Firefly from the TV could have been right to a point. I disagree with them, but I cannot help but find it ironic when nerds rave over how Serenity is their dream movie, when it actually symbolises every reason why we don’t get more great Sci-Fi movies like this.