“Nicole Kidman sucks” says Forbes

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I like to think myself an avid reader, just perhaps not the most exploratory one.  A few years ago I was at a Scrabble party at a friends place and, in reaction to a debate about the latest Harry Potter novel, Phillip Pullman’s ‘His Dark Materials’ series came up.  Not long after that I saw the initial trailer for the box-office flop Golden Compass; starring Nicole Kidman, and I was mad excited.

The dismal rating on IMDb, accompanied with that from RottenTomatoes embarassed many a dear fan.  I was a dear fan.

In this case, I firmly believe the lack of (local) success of this film can be mostly blamed on the producers and a tamed down script.  Regardless, this movie bombed, but luckily (for the sake of a possible sequel) it saw a few hundred million in profits overseas.  That being said, this summers blockbuster, The Dark Knight, has made more than three times as much money with half the budget.

Where am I going with this?  Forbes just named Nicole Kidman (Compass‘ Mrs. Coulter) the most overpaid actress in the business.  Their format for this conclusion is to average the amount she made on her last three movies (The Golden Compass, Margot at the Wedding and The Invasion)  in relation to how much she is being paid.  Her movies have averaged a profit of $1 for every $1 she is paid (or £1, that works too).

This is my beef with Hollywood, as much a popular and trendy beef it is; actors and actresses are repeatedly hired for their popularity and not necessarily their actual talent.  The existence of an actual ‘career’ for Jennifer Garner, Jennifer Lopez and Drew Barrymore are testament to this fact, but save for ‘Jenny on the Block’, I have no idea why any of these examples are even popular at all.  Other cases would be Tom Cruise and his rich-boys-cult, Nicolas Cage’s history of actually decent movies and Will Farrel’s Legend.  Diaz is just a damn babe.

The argument for Kidman seems to be the same one against remakes/ book movies.  I was not even a sperm when the first two Body Snatchers movies came out, so any opinion in regards to Kidman’s The Invasion is completely theoretical.  But I have seen enough book-movies and as aforementioned, I get wet of Phillip Pullman’s HDM series.  As was the case with not properly using Kidman’s talent (argueable), so was the case of not properly using the source material that was given to them.

Thankfully, however, with the success of Nolan’s The Dark Knight, Hollywood is starting to take this genre seriously, and in the wake of Compass’s bomb, so have the writers for the (possible) Subtle Knife sequel.

Tags: golden compass, list, nicole kidman, phillip pullman