James takes a look at movies that are so bad they’re good, focusing on The Asylum, producers of classics like Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n Perhaps you’ve all seen this video<\/a>.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n If all the replays didn’t make it clear, that was a massive shark jumping out of the ocean grabbing an airplane in its jaws. It is from a film called Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus<\/a>.\u00a0 It came out in 2009 and didn’t win a single Oscar. In fact, it has very poor ratings on Rotten Tomatoes, IMDB and other film review sites. Despite this, there have been many sequels and spinoffs, including Mega Shark vs Gatoroid, the story about the acrobatically\u00a0skilled shark in the above video battling against an alligator who has been fed steroids. All of these movies have similarly low ratings. What kind of studio would continue making movies that people constantly dislike? The name of the studio is The Asylum and they’ve been busy lately. They have been called everything from B movies to Z movies for their tendency to make cheap, formulaic movies really quickly. They hire actors like Jaleel White (best known as Urkel<\/a>) and not-really-an-actor-but-I-guess-an-actor-now actors like 80s pop singers Debbie Gibson and her former rival Tiffany. The Asylum has produced 52 films since 2005, an astonishing rate for films of any quality.<\/p>\n The company was founded in 1997 and started making low budget\u00a0films, mostly horror, all of which went straight to video. Rental chains like Blockbuster would order a few thousands copies and with such a low budget, the movies managed to squeak out a profit. Eventually, some larger studios like Lions Gate moved into the low-budget horror market and The Asylum needed something new to do. Luckily, just around this time in 2005, one of their films received an order from Blockbuster about 7 or 8 times bigger than most orders they receive. The film in question was called War of the Worlds. Now you might be thinking “I didn’t know The Asylum made that Tom Cruise movie.” You would be right in thinking that. That is because, also in 2005, a film called H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds was released into theatres. This was the big budget Tom Cruise spectacle aiming to the big summer hit. It is unclear whether Blockbuster thought The Asylum’s version of War of the Worlds had something to do with the Tom Cruise one, or if they thought enough people would make that mistake and rent it from them, or if they believed people in 2005 were so interested in that plot that they needed multiple films about it.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n What is clear is that The Asylum had found an interesting business model. As long as they could keep making movies that sound like a\u00a0 current Hollywood blockbuster, video stores will keep ordering their product. These films, which aim to feed off the popularity ofHollywoodfilms\u00a0currently being promoted, are known as mockbusters. More on this later.<\/p>\n For now, let’s focus on the other type of film that The Asylum spends much of its time making. The first kind, which I call monster movies, such as Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus, involve monsters terrorizing other monsters, humans, or usually both. They feature extremely large creature like Crocosaurus\u00a0and Gatoroid\u00a0as well as lots of poorly realized\u00a0destruction special effects. According to interviews with the co-founders of The Asylum, they have an unusual method for writing these films. They like to think of the title and the poster and work backwards from there. While this method sounds a ridiculous, it seems to be working. If the idea is to get people’s attention when your studio doesn’t have the budget for a big advertising campaign, then The Asylum has been successful. They don’t have the money to make commercials, so when someone picks up a copy and considers renting it, all they really have to go on is the title and the front cover. It makes sense for this to be the studio’s primary concern. Most of their advertising comes to them for free by people watching ridiculous footage online and telling their friends about it. The clip at start of this article from Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus, and the trailer of the film, both became fairly popular as viral videos. The awful acting and special effects got people laughing to the point that the videos racked up a couple million hits on Youtube. While unrealistic events and bad CGI is enough to make people refuse to see certain movies, these are the very things that put Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus in the mind of many who would otherwise not know about it. That is not to say that people only watch it for free online in bits and pieces. Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus made enough profit through video store rentals and purchases to spawn several sequels. It is important to note that while these sequels didn’t share the viral popularity of the original, they still made money. This is proves Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus is not a fluke as we see by this business model being successful film after film. A catchy title, an arresting cover and a \u201cplot\u201d that promises action seems to be enough to make back the production costs.<\/p>\n Now, we can return to what\u00a0The Asylum is most famous for: the mockbuster. People same fascinated with these for a variety of reasons. Many people are impressed with how shamelessly this studio rips off others. Some are amazed that enough people are willing to watch what is so clearly an inferior version of something else. Many are just surprised that they can get away with this plagiarism from a legal standpoint. Check out the chart and see for yourself.<\/p>\n