dejadrew ([info]dejadrew) wrote in [info]inclusive_geeks,
2011-03-16 21:23:00
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Why Mars Needs Moms REALLY failed!

Most of us probably didn't go to see the movie "Mars Needs Moms." Not many people did, as it is currently tanking in the box office.

But why didn't people go to see it? Was it because of the incessant terrible trailers, which made it look about as appealing as old cat vomit and contained a kid summing up his mother as "you know, the one who feeds me? Who vacuums the house?" Was it the many many bad reviews, including the one BetNoir pointed out to us earlier in the week which described the movie's whole premise and attitude as inherently hostile to single moms, working moms, single dads, same-sex parents, any family where kids are being raised by relatives other than their mother and father, pretty much any non-nuclear family structure, and Murphy Brown? Could all of those people have stayed home? Could that be it?

Oh no, no. Silly, silly people you. No, the movie failed because it MENTIONED WOMEN IN THE TITLE.

'The title also was problematic, specifically, the use of the word "mom," which might have been a turn-off for boys.

"The title shouldn't have been Mars Needs Moms, but Boys Need Not Come," one studio exec joked.'

...

...

...

... I hate life.

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  • 26 comments

[info]castlemew

March 17 2011, 03:44:47 UTC 1 year ago

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK

[info]albijuli

March 17 2011, 03:50:38 UTC 1 year ago

[info]avalonknight

March 17 2011, 03:53:55 UTC 1 year ago

(I know the age range between the two movies are different, but I can't help but make this crack after reading "No, the movie failed because it MENTIONED WOMEN IN THE TITLE.")

So, how much did the movie "Pretty Woman" made back then?

[info]etherial

March 17 2011, 05:21:06 UTC 1 year ago Edited:  March 17 2011, 05:21:34 UTC

Tangled, which did really well, was renamed from Rapunzel, because "Some people might assume it’s a fairy tale for girls when it’s not.".

They've got some screwed up people in the spin department of the company that invented the full-length animated feature with Snow White.

[info]thatwordgrrl

March 17 2011, 05:31:16 UTC 1 year ago

And yet...I present to you the Toy Story franchise, which is -- at heart -- a bromance. Yet even on it's third film, is making box office bank.

Sometimes it's marketing. And sometimes it's just about who makes a better film.

That being said, rather side-stepping of the marketing people to blame the lack of return *on the audience* rather than the fact that they made a crappy film: "Hey, we had a great target audience. It was just an awfully small target to hit."

[info]petalsinthewind

March 17 2011, 12:09:44 UTC 1 year ago

I don't know what you're presenting Toy Story as a counterpoint to. How is a male friendship story's market success inconsistent with people blaming femininity for a film's failure?

[info]sylvanstargazer

March 17 2011, 14:09:40 UTC 1 year ago

It's the same people who don't think female protagonists sell video games. Except Metroid. Or Tomb Raider. Or heck, Ms. Packman. Or the 5 of the top 19 best-selling XBox games that allow you to play as a woman, including two of the multi-player shooters.

Disney makes piles of money off of little girls, but respects them very nearly not at all. It's pretty disappointing. For all they are terrible, terrible films that look like they were made in Poser, my little sister loved Barbie Rapunzel and the other Barbie films, if only because they didn't seem to actually be designed for boys. At age 7, she already knows the difference between "stars a woman" and "expects women to watch it".

[info]cicipsychobunny

March 17 2011, 18:46:16 UTC 1 year ago

Well obviously if it were called Tomb Raideress it wouldn't sell as well, or something.

[info]avalonknight

March 18 2011, 04:37:17 UTC 1 year ago

Man, I completely forgot about Tangled! Although I still haven't seen the movie (timing sucked this past winter, didn't even get to see Tron), I'd only buy it if the "spirit" of Rapunzel isn't there, like turning her into a superhero where her hair detaches into a whip and she's fighting Medusa (actually, that sounds kinda cool. I'll call it "Battle of the Hairs"). Other than that...lack of self confidence, Disney? By the way things are going, it's sad to see that Mars Needs Moms might make Disney childishly say, "See, told ja so!"

[info]booksforlunch

March 20 2011, 17:12:06 UTC 1 year ago

... did you know that there's a comic in which Rapunzel uses her hair as whips during fights?

"This is the tale as you've never seen it before. After using her hair to free herself from her prison tower, this Rapunzel ignores the pompous prince and teams up with Jack (of Beanstalk fame) in an attempt to free her birth mother and an entire kingdom from the evil witch who once moonlighted as her mother. Dogged by both the witch's henchman and Jack's outlaw past, the heroes travel across the map as they right wrongs, help the oppressed, and generally try to stay alive. Rapunzel is no damsel in distress–she wields her long braids as both rope and weapon–but she happily accepts Jack's teamwork and friendship. While the witch's castle is straight out of a fairy tale, the nearby mining camps and rugged surrounding countryside are a throwback to the Wild West and make sense in the world that the authors and illustrator have crafted. The dialogue is witty, the story is an enticing departure from the original, and the illustrations are magically fun and expressive. Knowing that there are more graphic novels to come from this writing team brings readers their own happily-ever-after.
–Cara von Wrangel Kinsey, New York Public Library "
http://www.amazon.com/Rapunzels-Revenge-Dean-Hale/dp/159990070X

[info]avalonknight

1 year ago

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[info]thatwordgrrl

March 17 2011, 04:01:04 UTC 1 year ago

Frankly, I don't care the reason why, so long as it tanked. Which will hopefully convince other studio execs not to listen to Robert Zemekis and his motion-capture zombiepeople.

[info]draike

March 17 2011, 04:02:00 UTC 1 year ago

...

[info]aphephobia

March 17 2011, 04:09:28 UTC 1 year ago

Anyone else laughing about how they're blaming their intended audience for having essentially misogynistic ideas yet THIS FILM IS MISOGYNISTIC?

OMG, the hypocrisy burns.


No, douchebags, your film is made of fail, just like you people are, because audiences aren't stupid, we're not living in the 19-fucking-50s any more, and there are probably way more single parent, same-sex couple, non-traditional roled families and people who realise there's nothing wrong with that than any of you narrow-minded condescending shitheads can fathom.

Accept your failure, make relevent and awesome movies, and move on. Don't blame your intended audience for not sucking up shit.

[info]kickthehobbit

March 17 2011, 04:36:41 UTC 1 year ago

They don't present it as their audience being misogynistic, though—they present it as a marketing failure. Which is kind of funny, really—marketing, especially marketing toward children, is misogynistic. They're calling it out for not being misogynistic enough.

[info]seiberwing

March 17 2011, 04:20:26 UTC 1 year ago

...

Admittedly "Mars Needs Moms" is a pretty stupid title. But this is not why.

[info]nounbeast

March 17 2011, 17:26:25 UTC 1 year ago

The only good that this movie has done for me personally is manage to get Rob Zombie's "Mars Needs Women" stuck in my head every time I see that ridiculous title. (Although this has made me kind of afraid to read the lyrics of said song.)

[info]kshandra

March 17 2011, 04:34:56 UTC 1 year ago

Photobucket

[info]booksforlunch

March 17 2011, 10:20:47 UTC 1 year ago

LOL. right-click/safe.

[info]kellicat

March 17 2011, 07:22:37 UTC 1 year ago

I'm angry, but I'm sorry to say that I'm not surprised by this nonsense. Nothing matters so much to Hollywood executives as getting boys to spend money. The fact that more women are earning money (including the mothers that they just disparaged) in today's world doesn't seem to have reached their thick skulls.

Besides, this argument is just flat-out wrong. Tim Burton's "Alice in Wonderland" had a woman's name in the title and managed to gross over a billion dollars. I don't think they can blame the icky presence of women in title for the colossal failure of this movie.

[info]booksforlunch

March 17 2011, 10:23:25 UTC 1 year ago

Wasn't there also some articles a while ago about women being the majority of those buing cinema tickets?

(I also read that they are the majority of car buyers in the US, go figure.)

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[info]booksforlunch

March 17 2011, 16:45:06 UTC 1 year ago

I read that about women buying more cars in Microtrends by Mark Penn, who rightfully pointed out that, if women buy the majority of cars EVEN when they are generally treated like shit by sexist car salesmen and marketers, what revenue are these fools missing by not pursuing that demographic and catering to them?

I don't get it.

(To be fair, he also pointed out that the average woman needs twice as long as men do to covet a new(er) car after having bought a new one. So, men might be "easy".)

[info]amaterasu_no_ki

1 year ago

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[info]plaguekitty

March 17 2011, 18:37:46 UTC 1 year ago

All I can really say is my own perspective as to why I didn't bother to go see this movie.

The trailer for me was what stuck with me and made the "deciding" factor in why I didn't bother wasting my money. Yeah, the name isn't really the best, but wow did the trailer suck.
Firstly, it did nothing for me to let me know exactly what is going on in the movie, besides the fact that some kid's Mommy is wanted by aliens(which is in the title, so go figure, it didn't tell me anything I couldn't have figured out on my own.) and it also provided me no "wow" factor to even drive me in. There was no humor, or real interest.
What I want to know is why a young boy is talking about botox? My little brother wants to shoot zombies in video games, not crack jokes at people about wrinkles. It's all I even remember from the commercial. lol.

[info]bearpaw9

March 18 2011, 15:18:48 UTC 1 year ago

My only kid is a teenaged boy, and we are on a tight budget, so I was never going to see this movie in theaters anyway. But, what was up with the adds for the movie that were also auto ads? Cartoon action to get me to look at the screen and then switch to an attempt to sell me a van -- I thought that was annoying.

[info]amaterasu_no_ki

March 20 2011, 16:26:59 UTC 1 year ago Edited:  March 20 2011, 16:27:46 UTC

My experience on why I didn't see it? First of all, I don't watch TV, so I mostly find out about movies through online buzz, magazine ads, and (the biggest way) posters in the MTA system. The bus stop on the way from the subway station had a Mars Needs Moms poster. First of all, the poster generated zero interest. It was so generic and didn't give any idea of what the movie might have been about, so I imagined childlike aliens abducting your stereotypical mom figure in a movie. Booooooooring. Second of all, I (correctly, apparently) read "Mars Needs Moms" as "Mars needs slaves to care for their people, do all the cooking and cleaning and play the stereotypical role of tucking people into bed, reading bedtime stories and apparently only mothers can do that." Ick. So I skipped.

ETA: Am reading the review and jeez, it's even worse than I thought.
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