Why the Fly II failed

By Drew Dietsch | Published 18 seconds

It is Drew Dietsch, a real human being, here again for Giant Freakin Robot to talk about another infamous failure.

We are watching one of my personal favorable cinematographic failures, a film that I have given the center of attention before in my Weekly podcast of the film club, genre.

A sequel of science fiction/terror that was fired by critics and quickly discarded by the public for being inevitably less than its prize predecessor of masterpiece.

And thanks in part to the reception of this sequel, there has never been another movie made with its franchise.

Go up to the phones with me while I explode why The Fly II failed.

The Fly II Origins

Originally from George Langángean in 1957, The fly He adapted for the first time in 1958 in a successful film that is also one of my favorites on which I happily made a video.

But in 1986, the Canadian gender teacher David Cronenberg Rececho The fly And its version became a fugitive success, not only with the public but also critically.

And it didn’t take long in Cronenberg’s The fly Be seen as a true classic.

Naturally, producers behind The fly I wanted to capitalize on the success of the film with a sequel. Always fun to keep in mind that one of those producers was the comedy icon, Mel Brooks.

Chris Walas, the effect artist who directed production in the new version of Cronenberg, would end up in the director’s chair for The Fly II.

Walas deliberately wanted the sequel to be more a direct monstrous film instead of the operating tragedy of the Cronenberg movie.

Somehow, this reflected the sequelae of lower budget and less well received for the original film of 1958, Flying Return and Curse.

With regard to public opinion, there were very few chances that a sequel could match the widely accepted quality of Cronenberg’s miraculous achievement.

So, The Fly II I was already having many baked obstacles before the film even filmed: the minor nature perceived from the sequelae, a predecessor that could not live and an artistic approach that would highlight how different this entry of the previous film is different.

The story of Fly II

The story of The Fly II It focuses on Martin Brundle, the son of the protagonists Seth Brundle and Veronica Quaife of the first film.

Martin is raised in a laboratory in Bartok Industries, the company that financed the telepods experiments of Seth Brundle.

Martin ages at an accelerated pace due to his corrupt DNA, but also has a genius intellect and is trying to solve the problem of his genetic destiny.

Naturally, it ends up becoming an incredible fly monster before everything is said and done.

The disgusting effects become great

Without combing every part of the plot or giving my review of The Fly II – That’s what The gender episode is there to – It is enough to say, The Fly II delivers an expectation that people had for a sequel The fly: Goopy, gross effects.

But while the Cronenberg film expressed those effects in a tragic and deliberately repulsive tone, The Fly II He is trying to have more fun with his effect work.

And go, always, letting a puppet of incredible Martinfly during the climax of the film, giving us one of the greatest love of the head of the cinema and unequivocally elaborating the best face that Rip has never put to the cinema.

However, it is not difficult to see why this more celebration approach for the Blood and Beast Bonanza may not have sat well with the public at that time.

While The Fly IIThe tone is certainly less dour than its predecessor, the story is not drawing the urine itself. The characters and the story are treated with a real emotional weight, and that can lead to a little dissonance for the members of the audience when things become happily bloody.

Cronenberg’s film tried the effects with maximum sincerity in disgusting effort and depressing people. Chris Walas has the same level of sincerity in its focus with the effects for The Fly IIBut it is not the same emotional objective as Cronenberg’s approach.

At the end of the story, Martin is our absolute hero and that makes his climatic confrontations much closer to a history of superheroes than the tragic romance of the first film.

And I am willing to bet that this did not click on the expectations that the public brought from The fly.

The dog dies and much worse

Now, The Fly II It has a very dark and depressing key element for its history that would be more in line with the emotional expectations of the first film, but it is the worst type of plot that you could do when it comes to the public like your film.

Martin is friends with one of the test dogs in the laboratory, but he witnesses that it is used in the telepod experiment. It becomes a horrible and suffering creature that Martin is told that he was sacrificed.

But that is a lie and Martin discovers that his canine friend has stayed alive. This leads Martin to kill the dog on the screen at a time when I bet that the money caused someone to leave the theater in protest.

Again, you can listen to what I think about all this for the movie in general in GenderBut let’s make it clear that dogs that die in films is a well -known negative brand against films for a non -insignificant part of the population that comes films.

And if you kill a dog in a movie and do not handle it in a way that most people feel that it is quite correct, you are likely to damage your movie substantially.

add The Fly IIThe problems that were anchored with younger actors who did not have a considerable cache with the public. I talked about the same problem in the Reign of fire Video and The Fly II It has the same load.

But unlike most of the films we are talking about for this series, The Fly II It actually opened in the number one place at the box office. And with a reported budget of $ 12.5 million, it would end up raising $ 20 million at the national box office and almost another $ 19 million in international markets.

So where does the “failed” part enter?

La Mosca II killed the franchise

Good, The Fly II He was cut in tapes by most critics and that general opinion about the film has remained. Another sequel was in development, but things collapsed in that entry in part due to the poor reception of The Fly II Making another sequel seems too risky.

And that poor reception ended up launching a cloud over any other possible continuous film franchise. Although there was a continuation of comics of The Fly IIThe story, no other film project has manifested with this property.

So indeed, The Fly II has killed any other Fly Movies until again notice.

I don’t say there is more Fly Films, but in the era of the IP freely, see a film franchise is actually cut after a single sequel feels quite rare and should add a layer of reflection on The Fly II.

It simply demonstrates that money is not the criterion for measuring the success of pop culture. Although I will always love Martinfly, he will probably remain a bit bastard in the eyes of most people because he is simply not as good as his father.