I have to say, even though I haven't actually seen the picture due to me being in the UK, I hated having justify myself to watching Jennifer's Body to loads of people It had everything I like, excluding Megan Fox.
I love Amanda Seyfriend, I love Diablo Cody and I love Adam Brody... Bad marketing, very much so.
People saw Transformers 1 because it was a decent blockbuster, people hated T2 because it became a Explosion Movie with added PG-13 porn. Megan Fox isn't an automatic draw. People like to look at her, but that's not to say they wouldn't rather just look at their PC's wallpaper and not hear her speak.
I think it's really scary just how much women-- even women on Jezebel-- judge this actress based on her appearance. Are we really going to villainize her for "knowing she's hot"? Should every "hot" woman have to keep her nose down and try not offend people simply by being confident and/or attractive?
I actually feel sorry for Megan Fox. It seems like she has a really good sense of humor about her sexpot image, and takes it in stride, but is also really displeased with it. I remember when Angelina Jolie was just starting out, she was really insecure about her intelligence. She talked about it in pretty much EVERY interview because no one could get past her looks. MANY actresses have the same problem-- they're considered too beautiful or sexy to be taken seriously.
She may have made some idiotic comments about her sanity or lack thereof, but to me, she seems like she's always in character.
Anyway, bottom line is, why don't we as women give other women more credit? Are we really that threatened by sexy women?
@thelaurenator:
Angelina Jolie proved her intelligence (or at least her strong convictions) by choosing challenging roles and volunteering in developing countries. Megan Fox has proven her, um, intelligence by making rather silly remarks pretty much every time she opens her mouth.
And while you dismiss the idea of "knowing she's hot," I think that there is something to be said for that. It's narcissism, and it's not attractive in either a man or a woman.
I had no idea that this is what the movie's about. I just saw all the horribly horribly photoshopped ads for it and figured it was a stupid slasher flick starring Megan Fox as a sex object.
"If the marketing droids at Fox had just been smart enough to realize that the movie was aimed at women - not unlike most horror movies - they might have had a cult hit on their hands."
Well, it could still be a cult hit - they generally don't do well in first release.
-Kle.
I haven't obviously seen it, because it's not out here in the UK yet (or is it?) but I am instantly reminded of the marketing of Fight Club, which is of course a clever and deeply uncomfortable black comedy about all sorts of things, and how they killed the original trailers and replaced them with scenes of Brad Pitt and Ed Norton punching people, making it look like a stupid gung-ho boys' movie.
So all the people who would have liked it and might have been turned on to Chuck Palahniuk and stuff (like I was, after the fact) didn't, because it looked like Another Lame Action Movie, and all the people who went to see it precisely because it looked like Another Lame Action Movie came out going, "That was rubbish!"
Or words to that effect.
Fight Club had a happy ending, in that it gained a new life on DVD, where I saw it, but will the same hold for Jennifer's Body? I dunno. I haven't seen it.
I would like this moment to blame this movie's failure on it's director. Last time she blamed the studio for making Aeon Flux bland and sucking in general, this time it's the marketing people's fault.
As a straight woman who calls herself a feminist and likes horror movies? I liked it. Not the BEST HORROR MOVIE EVER, but fun, quick, and worth the 8 bucks I paid to see it.
As to why it failed? Meghan Fox backlash I suppose. I hate to blanket statement people but I think her hate is part of the inclination some people have to hate whatever the media tells them they need to love. The media presents Meghan Fox as hot. HOT HOT HOT. YOU MUST FIND MEGHAN FOX HOT IF YOU ARE A STRAIGHT MAN. So if you don't want to be a sheep you go, "NO. I DON'T FIND HER HOT!" regardless if you do or not. It's like Shia LeBeouf hate or the recent Cristian Bale hate. It's silly backlash fever that people get swept up in. I'm not saying that that makes you a "hater" (because lord knows I get accused of that every time I say I hate something) but I just think people need to recognize it as that when it happens. It doesn't make Fox an awesome actress or a hot chick but the extreme vitriol I see hurled her way seems unneeded.
This isn't everyone, and I know it's a generalization. Honest? I think she's an okay girl. I sympathize with her because I feel like the things she says are misquoted and taken out of context and I think people really don't grasp how much of her "image" is what the media has made her not who she really is. The media likes things simple. Angelina Jolie is the mother goddess, Jenifer Anistan is the perpetually unlucky in love girl and Britney Spears is crazy. Every celebrity has their "role" in the media world. Meghan Fox got cast as the bitchy hot girl that says dumb things. She'll never be presented as anything else and for that she's got my sympathy.
Can we please start a Juno hate thread? It was not a good movie. Certainly not a bad one, but come on, folks, the acting and writing were second rate at best. The soundtrack was meh. The cheesy 'indie' scribbles for the seasonal changes was so expected i literally blew coke out of my nose from laughing when the first one happened. I couldn't walk out early and get my money back cause I went with a group of friends, but I so wish I had.
@sincbt3: YAY! I'm on the Juno hate train with you. I will never, ever let my hatred of that film go. Ever. My refusal to see this film has nothing to do with Megan Fox, nothing to do with the misdirected marketing. I'm a woman. I'm OBSESSED with horror films. But the reason I won't see this film is Diablo Cody. I can never get back the life I had before I heard the phrase "honest to blog." I know it's irrational, but there it be.
What bugs me most about Diablo Cody is that she's a wannabe geek, kind of like a white kid who listens to hip hop. I have not read her memoir, but if she claims to have been unpopular in high school I don't believe it for a minute, anymore than I believe that about, say, Kevin Smith, whom I also loathe. When the excellent Spaced finally became available on domestic DVD, I was crushed to see that Cody had done commentary for it. I'd like to coin a new term - "Feek," short for Faux Geek - to describe this phenomena.
@Wookie1972: So glad I am not the only one who thinks Diablo Cody is an hack. Her column on EW is a bore and people keep saying how brilliant it is. Juno was a cute little movie - not sure what the hoopla was all about. I don't get to go to the movies as often as I would like and this just has "rental" written all over it - just like Juno.
I'm a male Horror fan - over 40 - and I really liked the film. Of course, I'm also gay and saw it with another gay male friend. Both of us seemed to identify with Seyfried's character much more than with Jennifer. We thought it was smart, funny and a better-than-average genre film. I completely agree that the film's marketing was inept, at best. Maybe it will find its audience on DVD.
Sorry, as a woman, I gotta agree with cylon. The Megan Fox hateration is primarily attributable to her incredibly intense, viscerally threatening sexiness.
It is true that virtually all actresses are beautiful, but they are not all sexy. But Megan Fox is, if nothing else, painfully sexy. The people who say she isn't hot are kidding themselves. And the fact that she's had plastic surgery seems entirely irrelevant, since EVERY actress has had, at a minimum, a nose job and lip injections -- yes, even the well-respected, more cerebral ones like Natalie Portman, Kate Winslet, Angelina Jolie, Salma Hayek, etc.
Last, her alleged history of "dumb comments" is mostly a red herring. She hasn't actually ever said anything more or less controversial, weird, or "dumb" than any other actress. Mostly she has just admitted that she acts in silly movies that require her to be a piece of ass and not a thespian -- that should be an indicator of refreshing honesty, not her being a dumb bitch. The idea that people hate her because of her dumb comments is a manufactured excuse for people who don't want to admit that she really just triggers a visceral animal reaction because she's a sexual threat. Our reptile brains don't care that we'll never meet her in real life. If we still lived in tribal days, a woman as sexy as Megan Fox would be liable to cause destruction among every relationship and would be rightfully shamed/ousted to neutralize the threat.
It shouldn't really be surprising that chicks didn't want to go pay $8 to see a movie starring a drop dead gorgeous woman who makes you feel like shit about yourself the rest of the night and wonder if your boyfriend is thinking about her while he does you (P.S. he is).
I disliked the movie because the dialogue was awful. The occasional annoying term or phrase from Juno (which I liked) became a parade of words like "freaktarded" being slung about left and right, or some borderline-fob Asian girl blindly citing Wikipedia to get laughs. Cody needs to stop with that.
Also it doesn't help that they just threw a lesbian make-out scene in there with no reason aside from maybe having some material for a commercial.
Or even her 'emerge from the water' slo-mo segment-- is that supposed to be aimed at girls?
I'm not saying that the marketing helped the movie, but if its merits are really that strong then perhaps the girls would tell each other how much they liked it? ...Unless they all have toxic relationships with one another and are trying to steal each other's boyfriends.
@dandank: This, I think is the reason a lot of people avoided the movie. I don't really care about Megan Fox one way or the other (though I have always liked Seyfried); it was the fact that it was written by Diablo Cody that made me stay away. The dialogue in Juno made my ears bleed.
10/09/09
10/08/09
I love Amanda Seyfriend, I love Diablo Cody and I love Adam Brody... Bad marketing, very much so.
People saw Transformers 1 because it was a decent blockbuster, people hated T2 because it became a Explosion Movie with added PG-13 porn. Megan Fox isn't an automatic draw. People like to look at her, but that's not to say they wouldn't rather just look at their PC's wallpaper and not hear her speak.
10/08/09
10/08/09
I actually feel sorry for Megan Fox. It seems like she has a really good sense of humor about her sexpot image, and takes it in stride, but is also really displeased with it. I remember when Angelina Jolie was just starting out, she was really insecure about her intelligence. She talked about it in pretty much EVERY interview because no one could get past her looks. MANY actresses have the same problem-- they're considered too beautiful or sexy to be taken seriously.
She may have made some idiotic comments about her sanity or lack thereof, but to me, she seems like she's always in character.
Anyway, bottom line is, why don't we as women give other women more credit? Are we really that threatened by sexy women?
10/08/09
Angelina Jolie proved her intelligence (or at least her strong convictions) by choosing challenging roles and volunteering in developing countries. Megan Fox has proven her, um, intelligence by making rather silly remarks pretty much every time she opens her mouth.
And while you dismiss the idea of "knowing she's hot," I think that there is something to be said for that. It's narcissism, and it's not attractive in either a man or a woman.
10/08/09
I might have to check it out now.
10/08/09
Well, it could still be a cult hit - they generally don't do well in first release.
-Kle.
10/08/09
So all the people who would have liked it and might have been turned on to Chuck Palahniuk and stuff (like I was, after the fact) didn't, because it looked like Another Lame Action Movie, and all the people who went to see it precisely because it looked like Another Lame Action Movie came out going, "That was rubbish!"
Or words to that effect.
Fight Club had a happy ending, in that it gained a new life on DVD, where I saw it, but will the same hold for Jennifer's Body? I dunno. I haven't seen it.
10/08/09
10/08/09
10/08/09
When I finally did see it years later I was blown away. Bad marketing indeed.
10/07/09
10/08/09
But whoever did the production/set design for Aeon Flux was a genius.
10/07/09
Besides, Lucky McKee has a way cooler name than Diablo Cody. Plus, he's not up his own ass as much as her...
10/08/09
10/08/09
10/07/09
Screaming "cheap, lazy ripoff" in your promotional material isn't particularly inspiring.
10/07/09
10/07/09
As to why it failed? Meghan Fox backlash I suppose. I hate to blanket statement people but I think her hate is part of the inclination some people have to hate whatever the media tells them they need to love. The media presents Meghan Fox as hot. HOT HOT HOT. YOU MUST FIND MEGHAN FOX HOT IF YOU ARE A STRAIGHT MAN. So if you don't want to be a sheep you go, "NO. I DON'T FIND HER HOT!" regardless if you do or not. It's like Shia LeBeouf hate or the recent Cristian Bale hate. It's silly backlash fever that people get swept up in. I'm not saying that that makes you a "hater" (because lord knows I get accused of that every time I say I hate something) but I just think people need to recognize it as that when it happens. It doesn't make Fox an awesome actress or a hot chick but the extreme vitriol I see hurled her way seems unneeded.
This isn't everyone, and I know it's a generalization. Honest? I think she's an okay girl. I sympathize with her because I feel like the things she says are misquoted and taken out of context and I think people really don't grasp how much of her "image" is what the media has made her not who she really is. The media likes things simple. Angelina Jolie is the mother goddess, Jenifer Anistan is the perpetually unlucky in love girl and Britney Spears is crazy. Every celebrity has their "role" in the media world. Meghan Fox got cast as the bitchy hot girl that says dumb things. She'll never be presented as anything else and for that she's got my sympathy.
10/07/09
10/08/09
10/08/09
What bugs me most about Diablo Cody is that she's a wannabe geek, kind of like a white kid who listens to hip hop. I have not read her memoir, but if she claims to have been unpopular in high school I don't believe it for a minute, anymore than I believe that about, say, Kevin Smith, whom I also loathe. When the excellent Spaced finally became available on domestic DVD, I was crushed to see that Cody had done commentary for it. I'd like to coin a new term - "Feek," short for Faux Geek - to describe this phenomena.
10/08/09
10/09/09
Ooh. don't get me started on her EW column.
10/07/09
10/07/09
It is true that virtually all actresses are beautiful, but they are not all sexy. But Megan Fox is, if nothing else, painfully sexy. The people who say she isn't hot are kidding themselves. And the fact that she's had plastic surgery seems entirely irrelevant, since EVERY actress has had, at a minimum, a nose job and lip injections -- yes, even the well-respected, more cerebral ones like Natalie Portman, Kate Winslet, Angelina Jolie, Salma Hayek, etc.
Last, her alleged history of "dumb comments" is mostly a red herring. She hasn't actually ever said anything more or less controversial, weird, or "dumb" than any other actress. Mostly she has just admitted that she acts in silly movies that require her to be a piece of ass and not a thespian -- that should be an indicator of refreshing honesty, not her being a dumb bitch. The idea that people hate her because of her dumb comments is a manufactured excuse for people who don't want to admit that she really just triggers a visceral animal reaction because she's a sexual threat. Our reptile brains don't care that we'll never meet her in real life. If we still lived in tribal days, a woman as sexy as Megan Fox would be liable to cause destruction among every relationship and would be rightfully shamed/ousted to neutralize the threat.
It shouldn't really be surprising that chicks didn't want to go pay $8 to see a movie starring a drop dead gorgeous woman who makes you feel like shit about yourself the rest of the night and wonder if your boyfriend is thinking about her while he does you (P.S. he is).
10/07/09
10/07/09
Also it doesn't help that they just threw a lesbian make-out scene in there with no reason aside from maybe having some material for a commercial.
Or even her 'emerge from the water' slo-mo segment-- is that supposed to be aimed at girls?
I'm not saying that the marketing helped the movie, but if its merits are really that strong then perhaps the girls would tell each other how much they liked it? ...Unless they all have toxic relationships with one another and are trying to steal each other's boyfriends.
10/08/09