DreamWorks Biggest FLOP Ever

Been a rough summer for movies at the box office but financial success isn't the sole decider of a film's quality. Curious to see what y'all think about this movie for the folks who did check it out. Not seeing much buzz about it so I'm wondering if marketing really just dropped the ball that hard. Probably

Holy shit, Chelsea was supposed to be a twist villain?? They literally introduced her in the trailer as the antagonist, what the hell?

It's weird to hear that Ruby Gillman wasn't advertised well, because I saw the trailers literally EVERYWHERE. But the trailer really did spoil the entire movie and convinced me not to see it. Also surprised this was DreamWorks. Literally thought it was from an independent animation studio with how it was presented

My grandma saw like one trailer and she loves simple children’s movies so I went with her. It was kind of tradition for us to go see movies together ever since I remember. She was disappointed, and she’s the one always talking about how she likes children’s movies and simple happy stories, because the world is sad enough for her, so she doesn’t need tragic or complex movies. And she was disappointed. Yeah, I also would have preferred for the mermaid to be just Ruby’s friend and a nice person instead of doing evil popular girl again. They had such cute dynamic as a shy nerd and outgoing popular girl

I was so disappointed that Chelsea didn't have a cohort of evil mermaids to team up with if she was going full bad guy. The poster showed 3 mermaids, not 1.

The issue is the fact that they legit advertised that they were trying to hide the fact that they were human, but like she’s blue, and that isn’t very hard to see. Wow, I guess the “villian” was a very clever person to find her “secret”

From my POV, I think the marketing was the major failure here. I saw tons of ads for this movie, but literally none of them even contained the TITLE of the movie until after the movie bombed. All the ads I saw were stuff like “Krakens vs Mermaids” or other vague clickbaity stuff that somehow totally fails to even clickbait. It was really weird, felt robotic. Anyone else experience that weird shit?

I think Cartoonshi said it best when he said that at LEAST Dreamworks is trying to be experimental. They're trying radically different concepts and art styles. Not all of them are gonna be bangers, but that's what Dreamworks does, they experiment. You got, Bad Guys and Last Wish then you got Ruby Gilman. I would take a studio at least TRYING to be creative and innovative, then Disney constantly pumping out remake after reboot after same story just different shapes ANY day. Same goes for Sony and Illumination, at least they're TRYING

What's sad is that the poor marketing for Ruby is still miles more existent than the marketing Disney did for Strange World.

The 1 thing that bothers me is... why does nobody notice Ruby is blue? She's blue with weird tentacle hair? How does nobody know she's a sea creature? How did her parents explain the whole staying out of the ocean thing when they look like fish people?

I think the marketing would have been better if they made us question why the mermaids are considered evil by showing clips of Chelsea the mermaid being nice. That way we would want to watch the movie to figure out why they're evil

Would've been nice to have a sort of "Wicked" story where people assume Ruby is evil because she's a kraken and Chelsea tries to help her fit in and is her friend.

Even apart from the issues with the marketing and plot, the whole “teenager trying to fit in” plot has been done nearly as many times as the “monster in a horror movie represents an abusive parent” thing.

WHY IS NOBODY MENTIONING HER "HUMAN" DESIGN?! IM GOING CRAZY - she's blue.. she's boneless... she DOESN'T HAVE A NOSE. She has TENTACLES for hair.... IS SHE SUPPOSED TO NOT REALIZE SHE'S A KRAKEN? IS SHE SUPPOSED TO LOOK HUMAN?!??!?!?!? I would have taken this movie more seriously and wanted to see it more if they did it like Luca. And while it may be a stylistic choice / a gag, having it be a main plot point for the entire movie is... Slightly absurd. Especially when you have deep and completely serious narratives in that same movie 💀💀

You know its deadly serious when Saber's voice feels defeated

I think the problem is that they very clearly tried to market this movie as petty competition for the Little Mermaid, a competition that DreamWorks was destined to lose. Maybe this movie could have done better if they marketed it with genuine passion and creativity instead of a gotcha moment for Disney.

My mother said she really disliked how the reason Chelsea used to manipulate Ruby is extremely weak, she says it’s either Ruby being far too stupid or the movie thinks the audience is stupid. (My mom didn’t see the trailers). My mom said a better reason would’ve been Chelsea really wants to save her mother Nerissa, who is imprisoned in the depths of the ocean. And the key is none other than the trident itself. She believes she can save her mother and bring her to the light side. In order to truly restore peace, setting the mermaid Queen free, and then sharing the trident between the two reigning forces, can truly bring peace. Chelsea really wants to redeem her mothers past war crimes, and she said she and Ruby could show her there is another way. Her mother wanted to force this destiny of hurting the Krakens and taking over the ocean, but Chelsea never wanted that. She just wished she could find a way to end it all, so she risked her life to find anyone, someone who would listen to her, and she found Ruby.’ This will make the audience wonder if some mermaids are really good. Then we can go ahead with the big reveal, that there is no Nerissa in a cage, for I am Nerissa. Also the trident is wayyyy to weak— Trident should have more powers: -Absorb other peoples powers and amplifying them. Having silvers power of levitation will really help. -Create waves, whirlpools -Resurrect and bring back the dead A better way to defeat Nerissa: Something smarter will be to utilise, shrinking and enlarging of the Krakens themselves to battle against Nerissa who couldn’t do that. Chelsea also gives her side of the story, saying that her injured fin is the result of a kraken negotiation gone wrong, making viewers truly question who is good and who is evil. ‘My mom is trapped deep beneath the trench, encased by the deep ocean volcanoes. Only the trident can subside the heat and unseal my mother.’ ‘It’s been 15 years since I last saw her… Ruby, I just wanted to be loved. But she was lost, blinded by revenge… but what if we can change that? What if we show her there’s another way? All the kraken queens going ham and using different powers on Nerissa at nearly the same time, showing off their unique styles and skills? It’s just this movie is so repetitive and feels woke too, it looks like Turning Red alongside Luka rewritten in the image of Ariel vs Ursula. What a disappointment. If my mom could write a better version, that’s intimidating. I also added my own ideas in there, but the reason my mom thought of, took her less than 1 minute of thinking to develop. Originality WHERE??? So disappointed with dreamworks.

I read the summary on Wikipedia and really thought they were setting us up for a misdirect where the mermaid girl Chelsea was actually good despite looking so very obviously evil in the ads. And then the two would work together to stop Chelsea s mom. That would’ve been such a better movie.

I give DreamWorks props for going outside the box and trying something new. They've always been the company to take more risks than others and that's why they have so many hit or misses.

This really feels like a movie with a premise that would have made a better TV show. A fun, monster of the week show with the Chelsea plot as the seasonal arc.