Scott, you bring up the most critical point at the tail end of your post...

That is was based on Berke Breathed's book.

Having both read the book to my kids (a favorite of theirs) and now having seen the movie, I can tell you that, while the film is certainly not terrible by any stretch of the imagination, it is a relatively poor representation of the book.

These yahoos did EVERYTHING for this movie BUT trust the source material. And while I'm pleased that Mr. Breathed got a nice sweet payday for selling the rights to his tale, those in charge thought they "knew better" than the author.

To coin the young youngsters these days..."epic fail."

There was real artistry and heart and soul to Breathed simple storybook. Three things this movie is sorely lacking. It reeks of misspent dollars from the ground up... bags of cash hurled into queasy motion capture tech and useless 3-D.

I hate to say it but here was another example of "artistry by committee" that obviously didn't work. As is almost always the case. And yet Hollywood always "knows better," don't they?

I can't find it now, but I'm pretty sure it was one of the AV Club critics who tweeted that the problem was that moms don't want to see a movie about Mars and kids don't want to see a movie about moms.

@ Amos - That point is so true. It would be interesting to apply that same logic to other recent flops and see if the premises are geared towards niches of people that could care less. It still will always come down to an awesome story with interesting character we CARE about.

But do some movies fail at the premise or the execution? Regardless if they are from branded properties or have stars involved?

@ Scott - Come to think of it, would it be cool to focus on different recent flops for a week? Not for the sake of ragging on them - but factual constructive criticism.

It could be interesting to get insight from you and the GITS community about possible flop causes - hindsight can be foresight.

A few suggestions:

"The Wolfman" (2010)
Production Budget: $150 million
Worldwide Gross: $139,789,765

"MacGruber" (2010)
Production Budget: $10 million:
Worldwide Gross:$9,322,895

"The Dilemma" (2011)
Production Budget: $70 million
Worldwide Gross:$66,659,523

For more info on this subject check out Vanity Fair's List of the 11 Biggest Movie Flops of All Time:

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/oscars/2010/01/the-11-biggest-flops-of-all-time.html

This is a list of the highest grossing animated movies of all time:
Shrek 2 - 441M$
Toy story 3 - 415M$
Finding Nemo - 339M$
The Lion King - 328M$
Shrek 3 - 322M$
Up - 293M$
Shrek- 267M$
The Incredibles - 261M$
Monsters Inc - 255M$

A few things: first of all, only 2 out of 9 movies on this list have human protagonists which I do not think is a coincidence. It is EXTREMELY difficult to make a blockbuster animated movie with human protagonists. I think it has something to do with the emotional connection of the audience and the suspense of disbelief. Also, The only 2 animated movies on the list with human protagonists were made by Disney AND PIXAR. Mars needs moms was made by Disney alone... So maybe Pixar figured out how to make it work. And maybe the movie should be renamed "Disney needs Pixar"...

@Jason: Thanks for that Vanity Fair article. I'll update the OP with that link.

@en: Thanks, too, for that list. The point you make is a most interesting one. I'll include that in the OP update.

@Jeff: Haven't seen the movie, but I would figure you're right about deviating from the source material.

@Amos: I heard something similar in which a critic said people hear Mars they think science fiction. They hear Moms they think drama. So right there you have a source of confusion for the consumer.

@en, "uncanny valley" is what I suspect you're touching on.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley

And it's what I suspect vexes Zemeckis. Beginning with Polar Express.

The list of the 9 highest grossing animated films is a nice one, but is it entirely true that we don't want to see human protagonists?

Despicable Me is #10
How To Train Your Dragon is #15
Aladdin #16
Tangled #21
And Another Zemeckis film using the same technology, The Polar Express is #27.

I'm sure it is possible we are more accepting of non-human cartoon characters in films, but using the same theory, I could argue that people only want to watch blockbuster films with fantasy elements:

Avatar
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
Alice in Wonderland (2010)
The Dark Knight
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

Maybe people just suspected that Mars Needs Moms wasn't going to be a good movie. Why is it that when a movie flops the last thing Hollywood or critics want to give credit to is the audience for recognizing a bad film (38% tomatometer)?

I wrote a long post that got munched by the internet lol.

It boiled down to --

I don't understand the problem with the movie from the trailer.

I've neither read the book, nor seen the movie. But I don't understand WHY Mars Needs Moms. Seems they can procreate without them. They just need moms to look after them? I don't know, though. And that's the problem.

A similar movie is coming up on the horizon with a very similar problem.

HOP

No idea what that movie is about. It shows rabbits and chicks, and that combination makes me think it's about Easter, but I really don't know.

There is no story in either of these trailers.

Compare the trailers of the list of 9 up there. The central problem to the story is evident from the trailer in all but one (UP being the exception).

UP most likely did this because the central problem is extremely heavy and also an internal problem. It could also come off trite or overly sappy in a trailer.

UP doesn't leave us hanging though. Instead of playing up the main characters loss in the trailer, they play up the Boy Scout getting stranded on the house. Conflict. And enough to get me into the theater.

I don't see the conflict in either MARS NEEDS MOMS of HOP from the trailers.

Without conflict there is no story. And I could be wrong, but I think most people go to movies to see story and not watch chicks and rabbits being adorable or Kids hanging out with Aliens.

James I'm glad you "rescued" your munched post because you nailed it right on the head.

And, again, Hollywood thinks they can REPLACE quality storytelling and classic dramatic structure with the bells and whistles of motion capture and, of course, 3-D images spilling off the screen into our laps to distract us from the fact that there's no conflict, thus no story.

Sadly "Mars Needs Moms" spiraling into the sea probably won't be a powerful enough lesson for them to end their destructive lust affair with stereophonic images and actors hopping around with sensors glued to their bodies.

As someone who is working on a hollywood film that is both stereoscopic and motion capture... story is still very much king on this project.

Bad storytelling is bad storytelling regardless of how much or how little technology you throw at the problem.

I haven't seen MNM. The storytelling could be quite competent. But the core idea isn't attractive to its market. Combine that with the Uncanny Valley and you have huge probelems.

I think the AV Critic nailed it. As a kid, I read and watched movies and read books to get away from the family, not further enmeshed and - if some kind of family message was in there - it was handled "submersively" (subversive meets submerged) and not put right out in front in the title. Ugh! What kid wants to be taken to a theater with his mom to watch a movie about moms? It comes down to commitment. A picture book you can read in 10 minutes verses an hour and a half long movie. Big difference.

Scott,
An interesting one in a wildly different genre to explore is Birth. Excellent direction, beautiful cinematography, exceptional acting and scoring. But when I watched it, I thought it had no chance the minute they committed to that premise, even though the craftsmanship was phenomenal.

I think we're getting more accepting of human protagonists in animated films as Carlos points out, but IMHO the humans in Zemeckis's animated films simply look creepy. THE POLAR EXPRESS suffered from the "uncanny valley" effect like Atlantic says, and I found the characters on the poster for MARS NEEDS MOMS enormously off-putting visually, but I'd need to look at it more to put my finger on why.

En touched on the heart of the uncanny valley mechanism. If something gets (visually) close to human, deep expectations get toggled, and when those expectations aren't met, we're left unsettled. That disconnect, between what's expected and what's there, is the uncanny valley.

It was an issue with Final Fantasy: Spirits Within (2001), first full out cgi film, so excited about that one, couldn't wait. Did not do well at box office. They went realistic with look, and it landed right in that valley.

I suspect also relates to behavior. Psych professor shared story, he sent his abnormal psych students to town's main street and had them act abnormally (but not threatening) to the store clerks. Outcome? Lots of security called. People so uncomfortable with the divergence between expected and actual behavior, they felt threatened.

Just to note -- my post wasn't talking about the quality of storytelling in the final product.

It was addressing how trailers need to tell us what the story is.

How do we know if we want to go see a movie, if we don't even know what it is in the first place?

I think advertisers and studios -- when they have something they think is a "stupid" idea, often intentionally decide NOT to tell the audience what the movie is about because they are afraid the audience won't like it.

So instead, they're trying to trick an audience into the theater. But it's backwards thinking.

That and thinking like -- The tween market doesn't like X. But our story is about X. So we're not going to tell them that our story is about X to try and get them into the movie because we need the tween dollar.

Again, backwards thinking.

They need to remember what attracted them to the project in the first place and advertise that.

I knew Tenacious D and the Pick of Destiny was about Jack Black being Jack Black in his search for a magical pick of destiny that would allow him to ROCK! from the trailer alone.

Talk about stupid idea. But I knew what it was about and could decide for myself if I wanted to spend 10 bucks on it.

And truth be told -- I probably would have gone and seen it had my friends not already seen it.

HOP I won't go see. Nor Mars Needs Moms.

I'll probably go see SUPER and that looks like a dumbed down version of KICK ASS.

You gotta sell what you have. But sell the shit out of it. Where's the pride in salesmanship that coined the term -- "could sell an igloo to Eskimos"?

Nothing pisses me off more than seeing 100 million dollar advertising campaigns that are totally ineffective for very simple and stupid reasons.

You think movies are formulaic? Shitty advertising campaigns have a freaking template.

I just went to my local theatre and saw one of those big cardboard signs advertising 'Mars Needs Moms'.

My immediate thought was that the NAME of this film makes it sound lame.

I don't know anything about the story, nothing of the book. I just know the title turned me off.

If it was going to be called:-
'Escape to Mars' or 'My Martian Mom' it would have slightly more instant appeal.

@Atlanta thanks for posting that link (and sorry I called you "Atlantic").

@Ian - good observation. I used to work at a company called NRG (National Research Group) and we would cold call people to find out their interest in upcoming movies, and one thing we would sometimes ask about was the title. In the case of MARS NEEDS MOMS I doubt Breathed's contract would allow for changing it, but I wonder how people reacted to it.

I also didn't like the title, and after your post I put my finger on why - it sounds like it's scolding me - "EAT YOUR SPINACH!" "FATHER KNOWS BEST!" "MARS NEEDS MOMS!" Doesn't sound like much fun...

I'm fascinated by this.

I asked my young daughter if she wanted to see this and she does. Then I realized she's not a good judge of movies. She wants to see everything. But I have to say unlike other movies she hasn't bugged me to go to this. lol

I know I was hoping to find someone else to take her. I didn't want to see it. I definitely thought this was an animated movie for kids. I don't go to kids' movies unless I think I'll be entertained too. I wasn't aware it was a book, the look of the film didn't turn me off, I could figure out the story line from the title (it does give a hint as to what it's about) Watching the trailer didn't give me any sense of action/tension -- it didn't give me a hint as what the story was behind them needing moms -- -- in fact the aliens appeared to be adult-like so why do they need moms?

For me it came down to as a mom I didn't want to spend 90 -120 minutes watching a animated movie about a kid rescuing his mom from Mars. Just didn't look that exciting or funny or interesting or heartwrenching from the trailer.

Two problems with Mars Needs Moms: 1. The title should have been "Mars took my Mom" or "Martians took my Mom" - something to suggest a protagonist (I suspect they wanted to appeal to moms so kept it vague - big problem). 2. As everyone who has ever been a teenage boy knows; moms are lame. They shoulda based it around the dude's first girlfrienf (after his first kiss) and called it "Mars Needs Girls" - there's a hundred mill right there.

@Amos and others nailed it (citing the AV Club): Who is this movie for? Which demographic wants to see something entitled "Mars Needs Moms"?

@En Are the highest grossing movies based on US Domestic Grosses or worldwide?

@Chris: Domestic. Worldwide is at least double for pretty much all of those.

In other news...

HOP's newest trailer looks MUCH better. Gives the story.

Curious if they can make a 30 sec version.