Galaxy Quest

Yo ho mateys! One of the most unlikely franchises to become a multi-billion dollar grossing juggernaut was indeed Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean series. Led by Johnny Depp’s iconic Jack Sparrow, the series has run five instalments (to date) and grossed an estimated 4.5 billion dollars worldwide. This is pretty incredible considering that, in 2003, the first film was seen as a huge gamble. Pirate-based swashbucklers hadn’t been popular since the days of Errol Flynn, and modern attempts to revitalize the genre, including 1983’s Nate & Hayes, Roman Polanski’s Pirates and 1995’s Cutthroat Island, were all notorious flops. Add to that the fact that Johnny Depp was going pretty far out with his “hero” Jack Sparrow, who looked much more like Keith Richards than Errol Flynn, and you had one nervous studio. However, the resulting film was an absolute smash, leading to four sequels of varying quality. In this episode of WTF You Need to Know About This Franchise (written, edited and narrated by Kier Gomes and produced by Tyler Nichols), we dig into the saga and give our picks for which Jack Sparrow adventures you should go on and which ones you can skip. 

When director Sean S. Cunningham set out to make the original FRIDAY THE 13TH, he was trying to craft a cinematic rollercoaster ride. His little independent production was such a crowd-pleasing thrill ride it became one of the biggest hits of 1980. And spawned a franchise that is still going on to this day. So let’s celebrate FRIDAY THE 13TH by looking back and figuring out WTF Happened To This Horror Movie?

Now, I know what you’re thinkin’ punk; what’s the deal with making an episode about WTF Happened to this Celebrity about Clint Eastwood? Nothing happened to him. He’s still making movies at ninety-two. Indeed, you would be correct - but we here at JoBlo are such massive fans of Eastwood that we couldn’t help but whip together an awesome WTF episode exploring his life and legacy. The fact is, it’s unlikely any other actor has ever had the impact that ol’ Clint did. Sure, others were maybe better actors, but were there better “stars”? And not only that, but he’s been directing movies since the seventies, and some of them are all-out masterpieces such as Unforgiven, Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby, and so many more. In this episode, we trace Clint’s humble beginnings, as a second lead on the show Rawhide, through his breakout as the “Man with No Name” in a trilogy of westerns with Sergio Leone, through the Dirty Harry series, his passion projects like Bird and so much more. So sit back, relax and enjoy WTF Happened to Clint Eastwood, written (with Brad Hamerly), narrated, produced and edited by Taylor James Johnson.

It’s not a stretch to say that James Cameron’s The Terminator might be one of the most influential movies of all time. Produced on a shoestring budget, The Terminator introduced the world to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s T-800 and Linda Hamilton’s Sarah Connor, mother of the human resistance. In this original classic, Arnie’s T-800 is a terrifying figure, much different from the heroic character we’d come to love in the sequels. Here, he’s sent back to kill Sarah Connor before she can give birth to her son John Connor, only to be protected by a heroic soldier from the future, Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn). With its iconic, menacing score by Brad Fiedel and novel FX via Stan Winston, The Terminator is considered by many to be one of the best sci-fi action hybrids ever. Still, the road to the big screen was not easy for James Cameron’s epic. We’ll dive right in on this week’s WTF Happened to this Movie, written and narrated by Dave Davis and edited by Juan Jimenez. 

John Carpenter’s The Thing didn’t go over well when it was released in 1982. Ignored by movie-goers, it was a box office failure. Reviled by critics, it even saw Carpenter labeled a pornographer of violence by some reviewers. It was such a disappointment for the studio they took another project away from Carpenter as punishment. But it gradually found its audience, building up a cult following. And soon, a legion of fans and critics alike began calling it one of the greatest horror movies ever made. It didn’t take long for THE THING to go from being known as reprehensible trash to being considered an all-time classic. So let’s take a look at the making of this classic with a new episode of WTF Happened to This Horror Movie?

Every kid of a certain age grew up wanting to be Jackie Chan. A legend in Hong Kong and most of the world from the late-seventies on, Jackie Chan also, at long last, became a superstar in North America after the release of his 1996 classic Rumble in the Bronx. Supercop, First Strike and more dubbed versions of his Hong Kong movies would follow, but it was 1998’s Rush Hour, which paired him with Chris Tucker, that made him a phenomenon in the United States. It was as if, at long last, the United States was let in on a secret the rest of the world already knew.

Jackie Chan emerged in the late nineties after a failed attempt to make him into a Bruce Lee clone. Never wanting to be a typical martial arts star, Chan opted to mix comedy and martial arts in a way that made him a household name throughout much of the world in the eighties. His movies like Police Story, Wheels on Meals (you read that right), Dragons Forever, Armour of God (which almost killed him), and more were giant hits worldwide. The U.S did indeed try to use him in a few films, with him having minor roles opposite Burt Reynolds in The Cannonball Run and its sequel, and he got solo action films (in English) with The Big Brawl and The Protector. Neither film’s director knew how to use him, especially in The Protector, which tried to make him into a Clint Eastwood-style tough guy, a formula that didn’t mesh with Chan at all, leading to him temporarily swearing off U.S movies. Finally, in the nineties, he could do it his way, and in this episode of WTF Happened to this Celebrity, written (with Mathew Plale), narrated, and edited by Taylor James Johnson, we trace his career and where he’s at now. 

Jupiter Ascending was a movie sci-fi fans were really looking forward to. It would mark the long-awaited return of the Wachowskis to the sci-fi action genre, something they left behind when Speed Racer flopped theatrically. This promised to be a large-scale fantasy epic that fans hoped would be the new Matrix. Alas, things didn’t work out that way, with critics savaging the film when it came out and audiences staying away in droves. Complaints included a muddled sci-fi universe, a bizarre choice to make Channing Tatum’s hero part dog, and the fact that newly minted Oscar-winner Eddie Redmayne’s acting was so over the top that people thought he should have his award taken back. A charming performance by Mile Kunis as the heroine and a solid score by Michael Giacchino was not enough to save this turkey. It would mark the Wachowskis' swan song as a team, with Lilly Wachowski stepping away from directing. Lana would rebound with the decisive sequel, The Matrix Resurrections, which would also prove to be a financial flop.

So WTF Happened to Jupiter Ascending? Let's unpack this well-intended and fun (in a camp way) sci-fi fantasy in an episode edited by Diane Baldwin, written by Daniel Woburn, and narrated by Mathew Plale.

If one were to list the greatest rock n’ roll frontmen of all time, Van Halen’s David Lee Roth would be near the top. With a swagger and look that seemed tailor-made for the MTV era, Roth was riding high in the eighties and, for a while, was among the biggest rock stars on the planet. From 1974 to 1985, he was Van Halen’s lead singer, but after the release of 1984, their biggest album, Roth departed from the band. He would reunite with them for brief stints in 1996 and 2001, before a mostly permanent reunion in 2007, but even without the band backing him up, some of his solo work has been iconic. In this episode of WTF Happened to this Celebrity, we look at a true rock n’ roll legend!

Ben Stiller's Tropic Thunder memorably satirized both the Hollywood war film and the often ridiculous lengths actors will go to in order to "capture" the characters they're playing. While the notion that Robert Downey Jr's Kirk Lazarus would dye his skin to play an African-American might be hard to swallow, it wasn't entirely out there fourteen years ago. Hollywood's self-seriousness was arguably at its zenith at this moment in time, and Stiller's film brilliantly satirizes some of the more infamous performances of the era, such as Sean Penn in I Am Sam, Eddie Murphy in Norbit & The Klumps, and more. It's also just a damn funny film (with Tom Cruise as you've truly never seen him before in a Harvey Weinstein/Scott Rudin satire that went over a lot of heads back then), as we dig into Tropic Thunder in this episode of WTF Happened to this Movie!

While there have been plenty of horror remakes over the years, there's only one directed by Martin Scorsese. And while that should be enough to garner limitless interest, add in Robert De Niro and Jessica Lange and you've got a recipe for something spectacular. So join us as we dive into the maniacal world of Max Cady in Cape Fear.