Considering Grown Ups 2 has grossed more than $137 million dollars to date, anyone who blames a box office failure on critics should win some sort of award for stupidity. But that didn’t stop both Johnny Depp and Armie Hammer from claiming critics were to blame for The Lone Ranger‘s disappointing box office showing, with Hammer saying critics “decided to slit the jugular of our movie.”
Aw, I think “decided to cut its heart out and eat it” would’ve been a more apt metaphor.
“I think the reviews were written 7-8 months before we released the film,” said Johnny Depp. “I think the reviews were written when they heard Gore [Verbinksi] and Jerry [Bruckheimer] and me were going to do ‘The Lone Ranger’. They had expectations that it must be a blockbuster. I didn’t have any expectations of that. I never do.”
Ignoring his disapproving publicist, Hammer agreed with his co-star. “I have a delightful opinion about that that she’s gonna get mad to me about sharing [his publicist]. But I’m going to tell you.
“This is the deal with American critics: they’ve been gunning for our movie since it was shut down the first time, that’s when most of the critics wrote their initial reviews.
“If you go back and read the negative reviews, most of them aren’t about the content of the movie, but more what’s behind it. It’s got to the point with American critics where if you’re not as smart as Plato, your stupid. [sic – this is a priceless typo] That seems like a sad way to live your life.
“While we were making it we knew people were gunning for it. I think it was the popular thing when the movie hit rocky terrain they jumped on the bandwagon to try and bash it. They tried to do the same thing with to ‘World War Z’, it didn’t work, the movie was successful. Instead they decided to slit the jugular of our movie.” [YahooUK]
“They tried to do the same thing with World War Z, where they wanted to bash it, but then it came out and was kind of okay so they had to write okay reviews, which just proves how they totally wrote the bad reviews of our movie ahead of time without even watching it, you know?”
The Scientific Method, according to Armie Hammer: The plants in the control group grew half as fast as those that were chemically treated. CONCLUSION: The chemical has no effect, life is so random.
I wouldn’t lose any sleep worrying about unflattering comparisons to Plato there, pretty boy.
Mother of God, they should show this video to extract information from terrorists. This video is so painful it makes passing a kidney stone look like a lotiony handjob.
They were right about some of us rooting for it to fail though. Every time Jerry Bruckheimer makes a movie, I wish I could ride through the premiere on a unicycle with a sparkler in each hand and a rhinestone onesie that says “THIS SUCKS.”
[banner picture via Getty]