Why Have Johnny Depp's Movies Been So Bad Lately?

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It’s unappetizing, the prospect of scoring easy points off Johnny Depp over his string of commercial and critical failures, the most recent of which is the phantasmagorical nothingburger Alice Through the Looking Glass. Then there are the sordid (though vigorously contested) accusations of alcoholism and violence that have attended his divorce from Amber Heard. And let’s not forget his pointedly slummy bearing in public. So I want to begin by saying that Depp remains, in spite of everything, an actor of enormous charm, and one who at his best has a contagious delight in playing dress-up and wearing outlandish makeup and adopting funny (both strange and ha-ha) voices, who prides himself on embracing a mode of performance that most leading men would find too “out there” — though he has likely inspired a generation of them to indulge their own goofy sides onscreen.

But Depp’s compass, always wobbly, seems to have gone haywire, and I sense that it’s not a temporary phase but the cumulative effect of choices — creative and personal — that he made more than two decades ago. Hard as he works, he’s plainly in love with the kind of dissolution that passes itself off as madcap, countercultural defiance, even when it’s just … dissolute. And his role models tend to be legendary examples of prodigal waste: brilliant, self-destructive child-men who lead unwary followers over cliffs. Is Depp on the precipice?

His transformation began with his apparent liberator, the ostentatious weirdo Tim Burton. Depp — after an unstable childhood in Kentucky and Florida — became an instant heartthrob in the fledgling Fox network’s then-hip, now laughably tacky undercover-cop series 21 Jump Street, and he came to hate the job and the bland fate it portended. In 1990, he persuaded Burton to cast him in the title role of Edward Scissorhands, a whey-faced ghoul-boy whose inventor (Burton idol Vincent Price) gave him scissors in place of hands, so that he hurt people he longed to embrace. It was a tender, marvelously designed film, and also a monument to — and justification for — Burton’s morbid self-pity. In Depp, he found a dream alter ego: not some nerdy misfit who had freakishness thrust upon him but a beautiful young man who could have passed for “straight” and chose to cultivate his inner freak. In Burton, Depp found someone who could help him to express poetically his sense of himself as a wounded outsider.

After that, Depp would be aggressively offbeat. In the next five years, he acted in Arizona Dream, Benny & Joon, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, Ed Wood, Don Juan DeMarco, and Dead Man. Apart from Don Juan DeMarco (more about which below), those films ranged from noble tries to jolly entertainments to, in the case of Jim Jarmusch’s Western Dead Man, a near masterpiece. Although none were hits, Depp was right to be proud. He told interviewers that he just wasn’t a “blockbuster boy.” He thought of himself, he said, as a musician — and he remains one, performing in the Alice Cooper–led “supergroup” Hollywood Vampires. The most worrying thing was Depp’s attempt to emulate (especially in Benny & Joon) the poetic deadpan of Buster Keaton. You might ask, “What’s wrong with that?” Well, the true genius of Buster Keaton was that his great, heavy-lidded “stone face” served as a counterpoint to an elastic body that could be buffeted by the gale winds of fate and miraculously right itself. Depp’s Keatonesque persona was often endearing but just as often dear.

And then came Don Juan DeMarco with Marlon Brando.

It’s worth lingering on Brando, arguably the greatest of all film actors. No one could be so huge yet so subtle. No one could think so wittily in character. In an essay on Last Tango in Paris, Norman Mailer wrote that every line Brando spoke sounded like an imperfect compromise among five different, equally inadequate things he might have said. So Brando was capricious and deep. He was also a damaged child, abandoned by his mother (the town drunk) and physically abused by his father. He came away with a self-loathing that he treated with sex (lots of it) and then food (lots and lots of it). In a career of ups and downs, he scaled the heights in 1972 in Last Tango in Paris. But in his autobiography, he wrote that Last Tango “required a lot of emotional arm wrestling with myself, and when it was finished, I decided that I wasn’t ever again going to destroy myself emotionally to make a movie. I felt I had violated my innermost self and didn’t want to suffer like that anymore.” He stuck with that decision. Never much for rehearsal or memorization, he also developed a system whereby he wore a tiny earpiece, through which an assistant fed him lines. He argued that this made his acting more spontaneous.

Depp was smitten — and it can’t have hurt that his title character was one of those counterculture emblems, an apparent madman whose insistence that he’s Don Juan ends up helping his benumbed therapist (Brando) to rediscover romance and fantasy. Depp could perform for Brando and have his own madness sanctified. (He even dared to cast Brando in his directorial debut, The Brave, which he pulled from domestic circulation after a cataclysmic Cannes Film Festival premiere.)

But Depp’s infatuation wasn’t with the Brando who trained under Stella Adler and learned to release his volcanic emotions onstage and in movies. It was with the crazy, lazy Brando, who skipped (often entertainingly, but still …) along the surface of his roles. Depp’s next guru was even farther gone: Hunter S. Thompson at his most alcoholic and paranoid, his brain addled by years of amphetamines. So Depp was inspired by men who indulged their appetites (or, as therapists say these days, “self-medicated”) to the point where they became cartoons of themselves. It’s no wonder that acting became like free jazz, played better when drunk — in spirit if not literally.

Of course, Depp gave more disciplined performances, like his fine, believable work in Donnie Brasco as a cop who goes undercover and becomes a surrogate son to a mob middleman played by Al Pacino. It helped that he couldn’t compete with Pacino in the scenery-chewing department — no one can. He also had a chance, as a man whose loyalty is divided, to play subtext, which isn’t his forte. In general, Depp plays one dimension at a time, hiding behind harlequin masks instead of opening himself up. Emotionally, he doesn’t release.

Here’s an odd thing. In interviews, Depp has said that there was physical abuse in his home when he was growing up, and he has admitted to having an explosive temper — as evidenced by his trashing hotel rooms while dating Kate Moss and Winona Ryder. But it’s hard to visualize those episodes. Russell Crowe hurling a phone at some luckless employee: Sure, you can see that, because you sense Crowe’s volatility in his acting, even when he’s playing gentle men. If you heard that, say, Robert Duvall had a short fuse, you’d have no problem imagining it. With most good actors, the emotions are close to the surface. With Depp, not so much. To get a sense of Depp the holy terror, you have to watch Leonardo DiCaprio’s performance as a hotel-trashing movie star in Woody Allen’s Celebrity — very likely modeled on DiCaprio’s co-star in Gilbert Grape. (Depp has admitted that he was heavily “self-medicating” — his words — during that shoot.)

No, there would be little Method self-exploration in Depp’s work, only whimsical caricature, from his loving Thompson imitation in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas to his macabre Willy Wonka in Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory — a man deformed by a cold father and given to torturing little kids. His Sweeney Todd was underpowered musically but otherwise demonically committed. And, of course, one role did finally make him a “blockbuster boy” after all: Jack Sparrow in the Pirates of the Caribbean series, in which his marvelously tipsy, swishy shtick recalls both Brando’s foppish Fletcher Christian and another of Depp’s role models, Keith Richards. (Although Richards has never lost his musical chops, the history of rock and roll is littered with the corpses of musicians who emulated him without having his superhuman constitution.)

Depp’s fortunes have shifted in the past few years. Although the latest, dire Pirates film made a billion dollars worldwide, his Jack Sparrow feels played out. He was a clownish Barnabas Collins in Burton’s camp travesty Dark Shadows. His Tonto in The Lone Ranger was meant to be subversive, to send up the kind of Western in which White Father Knows Best, but the point got blunted in all the mayhem. His Terry-Thomas impersonation as the title character in Mortdecai was fun for five minutes and then grating — he couldn’t change gears. He looked apathetic, checked out in the increasingly silly cautionary sci-fi flop Transcendence. He began well in the underrated (but still not very good) thriller The Tourist, but apart from his voice — a resonant purr, as distinctive in its way as Orson Welles’s more basso stylings — he was all surface. On a more serious note, he worked hard to humanize the murderous Boston gangster Whitey Bulger in Black Mass, and his watchful, paranoid vibe was impressive. But it still felt like an impersonation. He was a sober Hunter Thompson.

In an excellent though dispiriting 2013 Rolling Stone profile by Brian Hiatt, Depp was unusually introspective. Near the end, he summons the spirit of his Obi-Wan: “And then there’s the voice Depp hears in his head sometimes — all the time, really. It’s Marlon Brando’s growl, and this is what it says: ‘*beep* it. *beep* it. You don’t need this *beep* *beep* it.’ Depp laughs hard relating this, as if Brando is yelling it in his ear. ‘Marlon got to a point in his life where he just said, “I don’t care,” ’ says Depp, smiling like a fugitive with road’s end in sight at last. ‘And that must be some species of nirvana. It has to be. It’s freedom.’ ”

But when you hear Brando’s audio diaries in last year’s superb documentary Listen to Me Marlon, you understand that “I don’t care” wasn’t freedom for Brando, just as shooting guns, drinking himself into oblivion, and blowing his head off wasn’t freedom for Thompson. Depp clearly still cares, but whatever he’s going through now, he looks like a man in hell. His and Heard’s public-service message to keep Heard out of an Australian prison for sneaking dogs into the country was clearly meant to be ironic — an imitation of a bad actor reading bad lines badly, as if with a gun to his head — but left a bitter aftertaste. He looked like a man at the end of both his marriage and his tether.

Depp does not seem the type to go Full Brando or Full Thompson — his work ethic is too strong, his interests too varied. Maybe he’ll realize that he’s tired of the imitation game and doing ghoulish kiddie stylings for Tim Burton. Maybe we’ve seen only the surface of his talent and he’ll stop hiding and go inward for inspiration, like the Brando of Last Tango. Maybe there are altogether different kinds of miracles to come.

[king of comedy]

I know he and Tim Burton are a great team. Maybe they'll team up again.

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http://www.nickiswift.com/14196/holl...&utm_content=3

For decades, actor Johnny Depp was on a path many expected to be filled with Academy Awards, box-office triumphs, and leagues of adoring fans. Nowadays, that seems like a distant, if misguided prediction. After a string of bad movies, we think now may be the time for Hollywood to re-examine its love affair with the Edward Scissorhands icon. Here's why.

He's severely overpaid

In 2015, Forbes*named Depp the most overpaid actor in Hollywood, taking over an embarrassing title that previously had been held by Adam Sandler for two-straight years. According to Forbes' calculations, Depp's two recent flops, Mortedcai and Transcendence, "returned a meager $1.20 for every $1 he was paid on them." Mortdecai grossed a little under $7.7 million in its domestic run, off a $60 million budget. Transcendence, meanwhile, grossed a pitiful $23 million off a reported $100 million budget. Even the shadiest broker would tell you that's a really bad investment.

As of 2014, Depp's reported asking salary is $20 million per movie, according to The Hollywood Reporter, and even when studios can't meet his price, he still often walks away with a ridiculous amount of cash. Take Into the Woods, for example, the movie-musical that Depp reportedly joined only as a favor to Disney and director Rob Marshall, the team behind Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. For that movie, Depp made a jaw-dropping $1 million for just one week's worth of work, all thanks to a fancy-sounding Hollywood trend called "boarding," which is essentially allowing a big star to hit it and quit it on set.

He hasn't had a hit in years

Depp's recent string of box-office bombs have stretched well beyond Mortdecai and Transcendence. In fact, the leading man has been struggling to connect with audiences for years. One of the first signs of trouble came with the release of The Tourist in 2010, which limped its way to $67.6 million off a staggering $100 million budget and really bad reviews. The following year, Depp's The Rum Diary finished with a more-than-disappointing $14.1 million after being pulled from about 1,300 domestic theaters its third week at the box office.

And then there was The Lone Ranger, Depp's largest disaster to date. That particular movie became one of the biggest box-office bombs of 2013, earning just $89.3 million. Its estimated budget? $215 million. This is is the part where your jaw hits the floor.

Even Depp's fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie, 2011's On Stranger Tides, could be viewed as a disappointment. Although it grossed a healthy $241 million at the box office, it was still a franchise low. The previous films earned $423.3 million, $309.4 million and $305.5 million, respectively.

His movies earn bad reviews and Razzies

These days, the only thing that might be worse than Depp's box-office returns are his reviews from critics. One quick glance at his profile on Rotten Tomatoes, and you can see the damage. There's The Tourist, which finished with a dismal 20% fresh rating; The Lone Ranger, which earned a slightly-better, but still-terrible 31% fresh rating; and Mortdecai, which rotted on the vine with an awful 13% fresh rating.

If that wasn't painful enough, in the last three-or-so years alone, Depp has been nominated for three Razzie Awards. His received the worst actor nomination for The Lone Ranger, followed by the worst actor and worst screen combo nominations for Mortdecai. The bad combo nod was shared by Depp and "His Glued-On Moustache."

From three-time Oscar nominee to three-time Razzie nominee. That's gotta hurt.

He doesn't seem to be trying as hard

Look back to the earlier days of Depp's career, and recall ambitious performances in movies such as What's Eating Gilbert Grape, Ed Wood, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Many thought Depp was going to be remembered as the greatest actor of a generation, and, for a while, it seemed like he was. Even when he began to slip into more mainstream territory, such as 2004's Finding Neverland and the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, one still got the sense he was doing something fresh and exciting.

Lately, that Depp is nowhere to be found on the big screen. Just look at his upcoming movies list on IMDb. Two of them—Alice Through the Looking Glass and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales—are follow-ups to films that weren't that good to begin with. They feel more like cash grabs than attempts at making great movies.

Sure, Depp was pretty fun in Into the Woods, but even that performance felt like a hodgepodge of character traits pieced together from former flicks Sweeney Todd and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Ten years ago, we might have been excited about Depp being cast in a creepy fairy tale film, but when he showed up in Into the Woods in 2014, we just rolled our eyes.

That dog-smuggling incident

Depp has had his fair share of tabloid headaches over the years. Remember in 2003 when he compared the United States to "a dumb puppy?" But nothing comes close to the wacky scandal he and his wife, Amber Heard, faced in 2015 after Heard allegedly tried to illegally smuggle the couple's two dogs into Australia. According to People, Heard was slapped with "two counts of illegally importing the pups, Pistol and Boo, into the country and one count of producing a false document." She faced a $75,000 fine and up to 10 years in prison for the dog-smuggling charges and a separate $7,500 fine for the false document charge.

The smuggling charges were later dropped. Heard wound up pleading guilty to providing a false immigration document and received a "one-month good behavior bond," according to NBC News. Following the sentencing, Depp and Heard released a bizarre apology that NBC News fittingly compared to a hostage video. In it, Heard says forced things like, "Australia is a wonderful island," while Depp chimes in with, "When you disrespect Australian law, they will tell you firmly."

Depp later mocked the video at a press conference for Alice Through the Looking Glass (via Reuters), but by then, the damage had already been done.

There's still hope

Okay, fine. Anyone who's reached this point in our article is probably thinking, "Wait a minute, what about Black Mass?"

For those who don't know: Black Mass was a 2015 crime drama that cast Depp as notorious mobster James "Whitey" Bulger. Depp received some of the strongest reviews he'd seen in years, earning a Screen Actors Guild nomination for best actor and even attracting some Oscar buzz. The film did pretty well at the box office too. It opened to $22.6 million its first week out, finishing just behind Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials. The film eventually grossed $62.6 million, domestically, on its way to a worldwide total of nearly $100 million.

Obviously, Depp didn't make the Oscar shortlist, but the fact that critics liked his performance enough to insert the words "Johnny Depp" and "Oscar" into their conversations for the first time in a decade is enough to give us hope that Depp's career is salvageable. Put it this way: after Mortdecai and Transcendence, there's nowhere to go but up.

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[king of comedy]

I hope he makes a great comeback.

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https://lebeauleblog.com/2016/09/21/...looking-glass/

Posted by kevthewriter

Alice Through the Looking Glass is arguably one of the most surprising box office bombs this year. While I don’t think anyone predicted that it was going to replicate the box office success of its predecessor, I don’t think anyone thought it was going to bomb just as badly (if not worse) as The Lone Ranger and John Carter.

But why did it bomb?

Here are my theories:

5. Competition

While X-Men: Apocalypse was released the same weekend. Although the X-sequel was also a box office disappointment, it did have more hype around it than Through the Looking Glass and, while it didn’t do so well either, it did make more money in the long run. It probably didn’t help that they were vying for similar audiences, as both are big budget sci-fi/fantasy blockbusters and most people chose X-Men over Alice (even though the majority of people chose neither).

4. The Story

The plot looked stupid. If there’s anything right the advertising for the first one did, it’s that it hid that it was secretly just “a fantasy adventure about a chosen one ala Harry Potter or Narnia starring Alice in Wonderland characters” and made it look like it could be a faithful adaptation (even though it wasn’t). The same can not be said for Alice Through the Looking Glass, as the trailer made it loud and clear that the movie was going to be “a generic time travel movie starring Alice in Wonderland characters”. That might’ve turned people off, because how many people really want to see Alice from Alice in Wonderland go time traveling? What’s next, a movie where Mr. Toad goes to an alternate dimension? A movie where Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz goes to space? The whole plot just seemed a bit silly, even for Alice in Wonderland…

3. Johnny Depp’s bad publicity

Well, this is going to be awkward to talk about but, the same day the movie came out, Amber Heard sued Johnny and claimed that he had abused her. This probably scared many people away from the movie as they felt that, if they saw the movie, they would be supporting an abusive man.

2. People are sick of Depp/Bonham/Burton

While these three haven’t made a movie together since 2012, they haven’t been quite able to sell a movie on their own since the early 2010’s. The last Depp/Bonham/Burton movie that was a success was the first Alice in Wonderland while the only films Depp’s been in that have been box office successes were Pirates of the Caribbean 4, Rango, and some movies he’s had a small part in, like 22 Jump Street and Into the Woods. Otherwise, he has not been in a movie that was a box office hit for a while, especially when he’s doing movies with Helena Bonham Carter. Not only was Dark Shadows, which was also directed by Tim Burton, a flop but so was The Lone Ranger, which Burton had no involvement in.

As for Tim, it’s a little hard to tell. Yes, Frankenweenie and Big Eyes flopped but those movies would’ve probably bombed no matter who directed them because claymation movies and oscar-baity films released by The Weinstein Company don’t tend to break box office records. The only film that shows people might be sick of Burton is Dark Shadows, as that didn’t do well at the box office. But the only way to know for certain that people refuse to see Tim’s movies anymore is if Miss Peregrine flops. Yet, as we can tell, whenever those three do a movie together, even if Tim is just the producer, audiences are probably not going to turn up in droves anymore.

However I think the biggest reason Alice Through the Looking Glass flopped was…

1. Poor Marketing

I think this is the biggest reason the movie was a box office bomb. When the first one came out, I remember it was hyped to the heavens and many people were looking forward to it. However, when the movie actually came out, it got a very divisive, bordering on negative, reception and it left many people disappointed.

So, considering the first movie was a disappointment, it probably made a lot of people not want to go through the looking glass. Then, to make things worse, they waited 6 years when the hype had died down and most people hardly, if ever, talk about the movie. In fact, many of what fans the first movie had probably didn’t care either because they probably hadn’t been thinking about the movie for a long time and, by now, weren’t really itching for a sequel. The movie, despite the hype that surrounded it, had no cultural impact and, as a result, not as many people were excited for a sequel when it finally came out. Now, had the movie come out 2-3 years later, as opposed to six, it might’ve still had a chance of being a box office hit but, seeing as they waited so long, they were too late and released the movie when no one really cared about Alice and her friends anymore.