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+ Career Killer of the Year: Wolfgang Petersen + Costliest Flop of the Year: 87.36 mil. $ range
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| An upside-down cruise ship underwater makes up this disaster-teasing poster for Wolfgang Petersen's Poseidon |
The giant cruise ship the Poseidon gets hit on new year's night by a 'rogue wave', which turns it upside down. Chaos ensues inside, as a group of survivors fight their way to the surface!
Poseidon is written by Mark Protosevich (I Am Legend (2007)), adapting The Poseidon Adventure (1969) by Paul Gallico (Miracle in the Wilderness (1975)), and co-produced and directed by German-born American master filmmaker Wolfgang Petersen (Ich Werde Dich Töten, Wolf (1971)). The novel has previously been adapted as The Poseidon Adventure (1972) and Beyond the Poseidon Adventure (1979).
Really handsome visual effects, especially in the beginning of the film and around the impact of the freak wave, keeps Poseidon above water for a while as a more good-looking, appropriately silly update of the well-known, silly, tiring 1970s movie. We are introduced to plentiful characters, but the encounters become very superficial one and all, and more than once outright laughable in their corniness. Popstar Fergie (Nine (2009)), the black and the latino characters all die relatively quickly, and so the film lives up to the old Hollywood race-profile cliché of letting the white characters outlive other races.
Despite controlled length the film develops sort of like the original Poseidon movie with many long, thrill-less scenes with wet stars, flames and screaming. Petersen fails to elevate this shipwreck.
Related posts:
Wolfgang Petersen: 2006 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
Top 10: Best epic movies reviewed by Film Excess to date
The Boat/Das Boot (1981) - Petersen's awe-inspiring WWII epic
Watch a trailer for the film here
Cost: 160 mil. $
Box office: 181.6 mil. $
= Big flop (returned 1.13 times its cost)
[Poseidon was released May 10 (Philippines, Thailand) and runs 98 minutes. Shooting took place from June - October 2005 in California, including in Los Angeles. The film opened #2, behind Mission: Impossible III, to a 22.1 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it spent another 2 weekends in the top 5 (#4-#5), grossing 60.6 mil. $ (33.4 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were South Korea with 14 mil. $ (7.7 %) and Japan with 9.9 mil. $ (5.5 %). The film was nominated for the Best Visual Effects Oscar, lost to Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. Roger Ebert gave the film a 2/4 star review, equal in rating to this one. The film additionally made in excess of 27.1 mil. $ on the North-American home video market. Petersen returned with Vier Gegen die Bank (2016). Kurt Russell (Vanilla Sky (2001)) returned in Death Proof (2007). Poseidon is rotten at 33 % with a 4.90/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
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