Through the
month of March, I’m going to be taking another look at films I’ve previously
reviewed, correcting any mistakes I’d noticed, and/or adding in some new perspective.
And the first film I’m gonna be recovering is Stormbreaker.
This was one
my earlier reviews (but not the earliest I’m covering) and it’s one I have some
regrets over, I have now read the book and I think it’s fine, not one of my
favourites, but I might check out the upcoming Alex Rider series they’re
developing.
When I first
reviewed this film, I concluded that over-marketing could be the reason for
the film’s failure, it wasn’t, that was really naïve of me to say. Marketing
certainly was a factor for this but the blame seems to land at the feet of
everyone’s favourite company, the Weinstein company, who clearly didn’t like
the film, gave it a trailer featuring more Ewan McGregor than there was in the
film and didn’t bother giving it a wide release in the US, it went straight to
DVD in other territories too, this may be the consequence of not having a big
studio like Warner Bros. behind it like Harry Potter did.
Its
reception probably didn’t help either, it holds a 35% Rotten Tomatoes rating
and only a 53% audience score.
So, let’s
take another look at Stormbreaker and see what else I missed.