10 Movies That Embarrassed Other Movies Released At The Same Time
Everything Everywhere All At Once showed the MCU how the Multiverse is done.
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00:00 Now, the success or failure of a movie is never just down to its quality. Timing is
00:04 also hugely important. Knowing when to release a film, free of obvious competition, can make
00:09 all the difference at the box office. And in terms of overall reception, it's probably
00:13 smart to create some distance from other similarly themed movies. After all, films with something
00:18 in common that release close together will inevitably be compared. And generally speaking,
00:22 one of these movies will be considerably better than the other. And in extreme cases, the
00:26 better movie doesn't just outdo the lesser one, it decisively shows it how things are
00:30 done and basically embarrasses it in the process. So let's take a look at them as I'm Jules,
00:35 this is WhatCulture.com, and these are 10 Movies That Embarrassed Other Movies Released
00:39 at the Same Time.
00:40 Number 10. Avatar The Way of Water Embarrassed Black Panther Wakanda Forever
00:45 This past holiday season was the battle of the aquatic-themed mega-budget blockbusters
00:49 as Black Panther Wakanda Forever faced off against Avatar The Way of Water. Now, Wakanda
00:54 Forever was released first in mid-November, just five weeks before the Avatar sequel,
00:58 to solidly positive reviews, even if most critics agreed that it didn't match the
01:02 brilliance of its predecessor, quite understandably given Chadwick Boseman's untimely death.
01:07 With its primary antagonist being Namor, the king of an Atlantis-like civilization, the
01:11 bulk of the film is centred around water, and director Ryan Coogler did a mostly solid
01:15 jump with it. But then Avatar The Way of Water came out, and the mind-boggling visual majesty
01:20 of James Cameron's long-gestating sequel made Wakanda Forever's seafaring action
01:24 look, well, kinda like a crayon drawing crudely scrawled on a napkin, by comparison. This
01:30 is particularly apparent in their especially water-based third act, widely considered both
01:34 to be the strongest part of Avatar 2 and the weakest section of Wakanda Forever. Cameron
01:39 obviously had the major advantage of time and money, whereas basically all Marvel movies
01:43 are on a strict production conveyor belt due to their interconnected nature. Even so, The
01:47 Way of Water showed what can be achieved by a filmmaker at the top of their game with
01:51 all of the resources that they need to achieve their vision. No matter how good a director
01:55 Coogler is, there was no way for him to compete with that.
01:58 9. Inglourious Bastards Embarrassed Valkyrie
02:01 Now, don't feel too bad if you don't remember Valkyrie, Bryan Singer's World War 2 thriller
02:06 that was released at the tail end of 2008 and starred Tom Cruise as Colonel Klaus von
02:10 Stauffenberg, a German army colonel who plots to assassinate Adolf Hitler. It came and went
02:15 upon a firm wave of indifference, and its fate as being forgettable was categorically
02:19 sealed the next summer when Quentin Tarantino released his similarly-themed Hitler assassination
02:23 movie Inglourious Bastards. It of course goes without saying that Tarantino's film was
02:28 very different. While Valkyrie was based on true events, Bastards was fashioned more as
02:32 a subversive revisionist history of what Tarantino wishes had happened. Despite the inherent
02:37 ridiculousness of his film, it's in many ways easier to take seriously than Valkyrie,
02:41 given that large swathes of the ensemble cast are Europeans and therefore can speak German
02:45 and/or French, as makes them inherently more believable in their roles. In the case of
02:50 Valkyrie, Singer opted for a cast consisting primarily of British character actors and
02:54 "Tom Cruise", and rather than have him affect a German lilt, he simply had the cast
02:58 speak in neutral accents.
03:01 Despite being the more serious and highbrow of the two films, Valkyrie was a box office
03:05 disappointment and failed to even receive a single Oscar nomination. Whilst Bastards
03:10 was a box office smash, received eight Oscar nominations and even won one, best supporting
03:14 actor for Christopher Waltz. And 15 years on, have you heard anybody talk about Valkyrie?
03:19 Yeah, case closed.
03:21 8. Upgrade - Embarrassed Venom
03:23 The first Venom film may have been a colossal box office success, but critics weren't
03:27 convinced that Tom Hardy's admittedly amusing performance could compensate for the low-effort
03:32 script and rather generic, dated superhero movie treatment. But four months earlier,
03:36 a considerably more creative and well-executed riff on the Venom concept was released to
03:40 cinemas, and that film was Upgrade.
03:43 Just as Venom focused on Eddie Brock becoming a host to an alien parasite which grants him
03:47 supernatural powers, Upgrade centres around Grey Trace, a man who is rendered quadriplegic
03:52 by botched mugging and implanted with a chip which gives him control of his body back.
03:56 The rub, though, is that the chip also turns Grey into a brutally efficient killing machine.
04:00 The narrative comparisons speak for themselves, as does the uncanny resemblance between Hardy
04:04 and Logan Marshall Green. And on a mere $3 million budget compared to Venom's $116 million
04:10 budget, Upgrade proved a far more satisfying version of that basic setup. Furthermore,
04:15 the director of Upgrade got a mind-boggling amount of production value out of his tiny
04:18 budget, whereas Venom's visuals were frequently garish and pretty ugly at times. Upgrade is
04:23 therefore proof perfect of what a smart, talented filmmaker can do with minimal resources, compared
04:28 to the crass excess of Venom's generally lousy superhero shenanigans.
04:32 7. Rocketman Embarrassed Bohemian Rhapsody
04:36 Freddie Mercury biopic Bohemian Rhapsody was released in October 2018 to rather mixed reviews
04:41 but enormous box office success, netting over $900 million globally. It was also nominated
04:47 for five Oscars, including Best Picture, of which it won four, most notably a Best Actor
04:51 award for Rami Malek.
04:53 And while in pure box office dollars and Academy Awards, Bohemian Rhapsody wins out in terms
04:57 of actual filmmaking quality - you know, the thing that really matters - it's effortlessly
05:01 smoked by Elton John's biopic Rocketman.
05:05 Released the very next May, Rocketman had a lot of superficial similarities to Bohemian
05:09 Rhapsody, a splashy biopic of an iconic gay British musician starring a respected on-the-rise
05:14 actor that was clearly gunning for awards. And though Rocketman garnered just a fraction
05:18 of Bohemian Rhapsody's box office while receiving just a single Oscar nomination for Best Original
05:23 Song - which it at least won - history will definitely be much kinder to it.
05:27 While Bohemian Rhapsody was a relatively vapid Wikipedia page biopic which seemed vaguely
05:31 embarrassed on fully engaging with Mercury as a gay man and a flawed human being, Rocketman
05:36 went in entirely the opposite direction. A warts-and-all, R-rated biopic that managed
05:41 to be stylish and entertaining, Rocketman was topped by a stellar Taron Egerton that
05:46 proved infinitely more Oscar-worthy than Malek's more surface-level impression. Above all else,
05:50 it showed Bohemian Rhapsody what was possible if the producers weren't centrally preoccupied
05:55 with making a sanitized biopic to appease the broadest of general audiences.
05:59 6. Captain America Civil War Embarrassed Batman v Superman Dawn of Justice
06:04 Batman v Superman was one of the most anticipated superhero movies ever, and with the momentum
06:09 of some truly fantastic marketing behind it, it seemed to be destined to be both a fun
06:13 wish-fulfillment exercise and a commercial hit. But reviews were not kind, to say the
06:18 least, with many critics tearing into the film's needlessly convoluted script, which
06:22 with its excess of subplots and muddled motivations turned a seemingly basic slam-dunk concept
06:27 into a rather frustrating slog. Plus, there was only a few minutes of Batman fighting
06:32 Superman - you know, the thing that people actually paid money to see. Consequently,
06:35 Batman v Superman turned a more modest profit than expected, grossing just - and I use just
06:40 lightly here - $873.6 million, while initial projections had it going as high as $1.5 billion.
06:48 But less than six weeks later, Marvel showed DC how it was done, with the release of the
06:52 immeasurably more entertaining Captain America Civil War, which similarly focused on beloved
06:57 superheroes fighting one another, albeit with greater narrative clarity and more actual
07:02 fighting. The audience reaction to the two movies was night and day, and to top it all
07:06 off, Civil War ended up grossing almost $300 million more than Batman v Superman. On a
07:11 broader level, it was indicative of how Marvel Studios had a successful interconnected cinematic
07:16 universe which patiently built up to this event, whereas Warner Bros. tried to rush
07:20 their way to it and consequently fell flat on their face.
07:23 #5. Guilmo Del Toro's Pinocchio Embarrassed Robert Zemeckis' Pinocchio
07:28 Last September, Disney released their live-action remake of their animated classic Pinocchio
07:32 direct-to-Disney+, with Robert Zemeckis directing and Tom Hanks starring as Geppetto. Critics
07:38 and audiences alike didn't have many kind things to say about it, lambasting the unnecessary
07:42 changes made to the source material and expressing a general feeling that it just failed to justify
07:46 its existence. Almost exactly three months later, though, Guilmo Del Toro's stop-motion
07:51 take on Pinocchio was released on Netflix, a deeply affecting, beautifully shot, and
07:55 startlingly original take on the timeless story.
07:58 The gulf of quality between the two Pinocchio films is staggering. Zemeckis' film feels
08:03 like a soulless, perfunctory exercise for the most part, while Del Toro's feels the
08:07 result of an artist at the peak of their powers telling something with every earnest fibre
08:11 in their being. Unsurprisingly, most of the many rave reviews for Del Toro's version
08:15 couldn't help but take potshots at Zemeckis' vastly inferior predecessor. While Del Toro's
08:20 Pinocchio is likely to win the Best Animated Film Oscar and endure as a surefire classic,
08:25 Zemeckis' effort seems to be destined to disappear into the streaming ether.
08:29 4. Never Say Never Again - Embarrassed Octopussy
08:33 Believe it or not, in 1983, two James Bond films were released within a mere four months
08:38 of each other, The Roger Moore-starring Octopussy and Never Say Never Again, which brought Sean
08:42 Connery back into the fold for one last go-around. Never Say Never Again was produced following
08:47 a legal battle between Thunderball writer Kevin McClory and Bond author Ian Fleming,
08:52 with McClory winning the rights to the novel's plot and characters. This allowed McClory
08:56 to produce his own adaptation of Thunderball that, while existing outside of the official
09:00 007 continuity, was for all intents and purposes a James Bond film. Octopussy was released first
09:06 to easy box office success, though critical and fan reception has been firmly mixed ever
09:10 since. It is, after all, the one where Bond dresses up as a clown. Never Say Never Again,
09:15 though, followed up and, despite not being part of the legit Bond canon, proved a far
09:19 more worthy experience. Despite his age, it was a hoot seeing Connery reprise the 007
09:24 role once more. And, compared to the toe-curling acting in Moore's film, it took itself a
09:28 little more seriously whilst still being a ton of fun. While Octopussy was the more commercially
09:33 successful of the two, though both were major hits, Never Say Never Again endures as the
09:37 critical fave and just downright better movie. For a film produced as a result of a bitter
09:42 lawsuit, that's pretty impressive.
09:44 3. Mortal Kombat, Embarrassed Double Dragon, and Street Fighter
09:48 The mid-90s saw Hollywood turning to video games for some rather easy profits, resulting
09:53 in the development of several films based on popular fighting games, namely Double Dragon,
09:57 Street Fighter, and Mortal Kombat. The low-budget Double Dragon came first in November 1994,
10:02 releasing to near-universal critical disdain and flopping at the box office, failing to
10:06 recoup even its tiny $7.8 million budget. The very next month, the considerably more
10:11 anticipated Jean-Claude Van Damme-starring Street Fighter was released, which, while
10:15 grossing almost $100 million worldwide, was trashed by critics. Outside of Raoul Julia's
10:20 superbly campy performance, that is.
10:22 The next summer, Paul W.S. Anderson decided to show these movies up with Mortal Kombat,
10:27 which was both a considerably greater financial success while receiving far more favourable
10:31 reviews. Now, that isn't to say that Anderson's film is perfect by any means. Reviews are
10:35 still firmly mixed here. But Mortal Kombat successfully translated the style, tone, and
10:40 atmosphere of the games to the big screen, as Double Dragon and Street Fighter both categorically
10:44 failed to do.
10:45 But Mortal Kombat ended up falling flat on its face soon enough, though, when 1997's
10:49 sequel Mortal Kombat Annihilation received worse reviews than either of its competitor
10:53 films whilst also flopping at the box office. Talk about a fatality.
10:58 2. Everything Everywhere All at Once Embarrassed the MCU
11:02 Now the multiverse is the big cinematic trend right now, with the Marvel Cinematic Universe
11:06 obviously covering the market on big budget renditions of the concept, by way of Spider-Man
11:10 No Way Home and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Now, it's impossible to deny
11:15 the success of either of these movies, both of which turned immense profits and were well-received
11:20 by critics and fans alike. But sandwiched between them was an indie film that came totally
11:24 out of nowhere and demonstrated how an imaginative multiverse movie was actually done, and on
11:29 a fraction of the budget, no less.
11:31 Everything Everywhere All at Once was released in March to rave reviews and on a mere $25
11:35 million budget, grossed over $100 million globally. The directors of the film, both
11:40 called Daniel, one called Kwan, and one called Shynet, used their kitchen sink filmmaking
11:44 ingenuity to produce visually dazzling results despite their minimal VFX budget, and on a
11:49 pure conceptual level, it's surely the most unique take on the multiverse we've yet
11:53 seen. And as entertaining as the aforementioned MCU movies were, their multiverse-faring shenanigans
11:58 seemed a bit boring by comparison. Sure, it was fun seeing three iterations of Spider-Man
12:03 hanging out, and Sam Raimi got compellingly freaky with the Doctor Strange sequel, but
12:07 given the limitless potential of the worlds presented therein, both films barely felt
12:11 like they scratched the surface of their multiversal potential.
12:15 1. The Bourne Identity Embarrassed Die Another Day
12:18 It's often said that Austin Powers and the film 9/11 collectively killed the Pierce Brosnan
12:23 era of tongue-in-cheek James Bond films, though in reality, the primary culprit is actually
12:28 Doug Liman's The Bourne Identity. Released five months before Brosnan's final outing
12:32 in 007, The Bourne Identity was in many ways a Bond film without the branding, a kinetic,
12:37 globetrotting spy thriller focused on a protagonist with the initials JB. It proved a major critical
12:43 and commercial success, and to this very day is credited with reinvigorating the stagnant
12:47 spy genre by way of its more cerebral storytelling and gritty, intense action.
12:52 The Bourne Identity was such a riveting breath of fresh air that it became tough to get excited
12:56 about another silly Bond movie, and so it's little surprise that Die Another Day's joyless
13:00 ride left critics and fans alike rather indifferent. Though Die Another Day was a massive box office
13:05 hit regardless, more than doubling Bourne's financial haul, it ultimately brought Brosnan's
13:10 tenure as 007 to an unceremonious end, before Bond producers rebooted the franchise with
13:15 Daniel Craig in the grittier vein of the Bourne movies.
13:18 And there we go, my friends. Those were 10 movies that embarrassed other movies released
13:22 at the same time. I hope that you enjoyed that, and let me know what you thought about
13:25 it down in the comments section below. As always, I've been Jules, you can go follow
13:28 me over on Instagram where it's @retroj but the O is a zero and I hope to see you
13:32 over there, my friends.
13:34 But before I go, I just want to say one thing. Hope you're treating yourself well, with
13:37 love and respect because you deserve all of the best things in life, alright? And do not
13:41 let anything or anyone else tell you otherwise. You are a massive ledge and you deserve all
13:45 the best things in life, like love, happiness and success. So I want you to go out there
13:49 and utterly smash it today. I believe in you.
13:52 As always, I've been Jules, you have been awesome, never forget that, and I'll speak
13:55 to you soon. Bye.