After proving himself as one of the animated medium’s top talents by directing the universally-acclaimed The Iron Giant, The Incredibles, and Ratatouille – nabbing himself a pair of Academy Awards in the process – the jaw-dropping Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol saw Brad Bird take to live-action like a duck to water, until Tomorrowland caused the wheels to fall off.
It’s been eight years since the Disney-backed behemoth tanked so hard at the box office that it ended up losing an estimated $150 million and inadvertently killed off Joseph Kosinski’s Tron: Legacy sequel in the process, and Bird still hasn’t returned to step behind the camera on a flesh-and-blood production, with safe-if-spectacular follow-up The Incredibles 2 being succeeded by the in-development Ray Gunn.
A longtime passion project of Bird’s, Tomorrowland‘s ambition far outweighed its execution, with the barrage of dazzling visuals and sumptuous world-building being negated by a weak screenplay, poor characterization, and a borderline sense of indulgence that took it for granted audiences would fall in love with the futuristic titular world just as hard as its creator did.
Suffice to say, that didn’t prove to be the case after the $190 million blockbuster struggled its way towards $209 million at the box office, securing a status as one of the biggest money-losing failures in history into the bargain. It’s undoubtedly beautiful to look at, though, with iTunes subscribers digging Tomorrowland back up from the depths of irrelevancy to inject it with a brand new wave of momentum, after FlixPatrol revealed it to be one of the streaming service’s most popular titles this weekend.
