Home Entertainment Want to know how to blow $130 million? Watch this trailer for EMPIRES OF THE DEEP to find out

Want to know how to blow $130 million? Watch this trailer for EMPIRES OF THE DEEP to find out

2 min read
6

When you have lots of money, you do stupid things. Scores of ridiculously named children in Hollywood are testament to this. But wheareas those will only cost you the price of a lifetime’s worth of therapy, Chinese real estate tycoon Jon Jiang probably won’t be so lucky.

A passion project of his that he produced and wrote the initial draft of, the Olga Kurylenko starring undersea epic Empires of the Deep took three years and $130 million to make. Unfortunately, judging from this first trailer, the only thing about it that’s epic is the fail.

The fantasy adventure, set in ancient Greece, tells about a young man’s adventure in the undersea mermaid kingdom in order to save his father, while encountering ferocious sea monsters and gets involved in large-scale battles in the seabed between mermaids, monsters and demons. Kurylenko plays the Queen of the Mermaid Empire and stars opposite lead actor Steve Polites and Chinese actress Yanfei Shi.

I’ve always wondered what I would do were I to become filthy rich one day. Maybe buy my own amusement park and hire people to stand in long queues to the rides just so that I can walk past them to the front of those queues in smug satisfaction. But make a movie? I don’t think that’s ever shown up on my fantasy wishlist, probably because I know there are people better at it than I am.

Well, at least that would be general idea, because looking at that trailer, it looks like Jiang somehow managed to find people that actually are worse than he is at filmmaking. Before current director Michael French ended with the job, a load of other directors all came on board and then bailed on the project, starting with Catwoman director Pitof. Now when a guy, whose level of douchiness has reached single-named status and who produced one of the most maligned films of the last few decades, passes on your project then warning bells should be ringing.

And if you ignore those warnings, you end up with something as terrible looking as that trailer. Like, SyFy original movie terrible. Foregoing the fact that that trailer tells you absolutely nothing about the story or characters (which should be a hint for the final product), let me just ask the question that’s probably on your lips: How can a movie that cost $130 million still look like the cutscene of a Playstation 2 videogame? Surely, Olga Kurylenko’s paycheck and silly headgear didn’t cost that much?

I predict that we may just be about to see one of the biggest crash and burns of recent cinematic history.

Last Updated: October 24, 2012

6 Comments

  1. Lourens Corleone

    October 24, 2012 at 12:20

    I’d pay to watch Olga stare at a wall for 2 hours, but that’s a bit much.

    Reply

  2. DarthofZA

    October 24, 2012 at 12:58

    Wow… someone paid someone else money to make something that bad?

    Reply

  3. Wayne Bossenger

    October 24, 2012 at 13:04

    They probably sold this premise to studios by saying its the underwater avatar… still, it looks pretty bad (read: silly) from that trailer. Poor poor Olga… I hope she got paid a bucket(of chum)load to do this film…

    Reply

  4. James Francis

    October 24, 2012 at 13:23

    The trailer doesn’t make it seem any worse than, say, the Titans films…

    Reply

    • Kervyn Cloete

      October 24, 2012 at 13:30

      Nah, as crap as those films were, at least they always delivered on a visual level. This looks far too amateurish for that price tag.

      Reply

  5. Eetcarr

    October 24, 2012 at 15:10

    PS2 cutsenes look better.

    Reply

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