We’ve already made a list detailing some of the strangest creations by the despised film studio The Asylum, which creates “mockbusters” (B-movies intended to capitalize on the success of a similarly-titled film released around the same time), but guess what? There are more.
In case you desired a second collection of The Asylum’s most bizarre hits (like Sunday School Musical and Transmorphers), we’ve delivered with a somewhat disparaging guide to The Asylum’s most heinous attempts at “cashing in” on the popularity of Hollywood films that are better than ninety-nine percent of what they’ve created.
Independents’ Day (2016) / The Independence Day franchise
While it wasn’t very successful critically or commercially, Independence Day: Resurgence was still a very talked-about film when it came out in 2016 - and even if it was mostly piggybacking on the success of 1996’s original, it still had some great visuals - which is more than we can say for The Asylum’s further piggybacking, a film with a nearly identical title that was released just two weeks after.
While it’s not a carbon copy of the other film, both focus on an alien invasion as the main plot point, which the Asylum clearly intended to lead to consumer confusion.
Ghosthunters (2016) / Ghostbusters (2016)
Despite failing at the box office due to (somewhat overblown) backlash from fans of the original, 2016’s Ghostbusters remake was widely considered by critics to be a fairly solid reimagining of one of Hollywood’s most famous flicks. So, of course, The Asylum saw the moneymaking opportunities and quickly jumped onto the bandwagon with their own mockbuster, not unlike a shark attracted to blood devouring its victim.
Their version, a horror-themed rip-off with an equal dose of male and female leads, almost enters so-bad-it’s-good territory - but that definitely isn’t a recommendation.
Tomb Raider (2018) / Tomb Invader (2018)
One of the better films based on a video game in recent memory, Tomb Raider, was the unfortunate victim of The Asylum’s rampant desecration of Hollywood hits, in the form of the terrible and unashamed knockoff Tomb Invader. The low-budget exploitation flick (also known as Tomb Hunter) follows a stereotypical female action hero who goes on a stereotypical quest - and features absolutely no original or groundbreaking ideas.
It’s a waste of time to watch, and if anyone with genuine talent was involved in the production of this dumpster fire, we mourn for them.
Aladdin (2019) / Adventures of Aladdin (2019)
Disney’s 2019 live-action Aladdin remake became one of their most successful films, returning over $1 billion in box office receipts. Since The Asylum only takes a few months to create their films (often on budgets of less than $1 million), they clearly saw the rip-off possibilities beforehand - but instead of creating an original idea and marketing it to look exactly like the blockbuster version, they just adapted the traditional folk tale of Aladdin that the Disney film is based on.
Their version is genuinely terrible - because it uses the same story, it’s so mediocre and bland that it’s not even enjoyable as a bad movie. We’d recommend watching this only if you’re interested in the especially rare.
Avatar (2009) / Princess of Mars (2009)
One of The Asylum’s favorite strategies is adapting old, public-domain stories as B-movies and marketing them around the same time that blockbusters with similar themes are released. In this case, after they realized what a successful film the environmentally conscious and visually stunning Avatar was shaping up to be, they prepared a (very loose) adaptation of 1917’s A Princess of Mars (which, oddly enough, would later be made into a big-budget film itself, Disney’s John Carter).
While, besides their interplanetary setting, the two don’t really have that many similarities, The Asylum tied their film in with the blockbuster by advertising it as being based on “the story that inspired James Cameron’s Avatar”.
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018) / Triassic World (2018)
Since the Jurassic Park franchise has become one of the most universally successful franchises in cinema - you can see where this is going. Triassic World was the Asylum’s chosen name for their unapologetic rip-off of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom - because why watch some of the best actors in cinema history face off against incredibly realistic, epic dinosaurs when you can watch B-movie freelancers awkwardly run away from kind-of-decent CGI?
This one is actually one of The Asylum’s more entertaining acts of apostasy against quality filmmaking, and if you’re able to distract your brain from the constant abominations being released upon your senses, you may even enjoy it.
Trolls (2016) / Trolland (2016)
The Asylum should have stuck with their live-action productions - at least some of them were tolerable, even enjoyable if viewed with the right mindset. Trolland (which, in a nauseatingly unoriginal plot, follows an outcast troll who, unlike his “normal” counterparts, hates pulling pranks) is none of these things.
The horrific, low-budget animation makes it hard to concentrate on anything other than the indescribable expressions decorating the faces of the trolls, as well as anyone else watching this insult to Dreamworks Animation’s Trolls, an incredibly-animated gem featuring some of the best voice talents of the decade.
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012) / Clash of the Empires (2013)
While Peter Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy wasn’t as well-made or visually creative as his Lord of the Rings films, it was still a pretty amazing series of films that holds its own against most other fantasy franchises. It was also the successor to a massively successful multimedia empire, which meant, of course, that The Asylum decided once again to try and make people think they were responsible for a worldwide blockbuster, titling their bizarre amalgamation of fantasy elements Age of the Hobbits.
The title’s use of the word “hobbit” led to the film being prevented from release (it was eventually retitled Clash of the Empires, going straight-to-DVD in March 2013), although The Asylum argued that the film was “about a real-life human subspecies commonly known as hobbits,” and thus did not infringe on the similarly-titled blockbuster’s copyright.
Bumbleebee (2018) / Hornet (2018)
It should be obvious at this point that the signature studio of mockbusters will get as close as they can to copyright infringement (in terms of titles, at least) without actually breaking the law (most of the time - remember Age of the Hobbits?). Anyway, considering the success of The Asylum’s terrifyingly bad Transmorphers, Hornet was an obvious follow-up, spitting on what was possibly the most sacred and critically successful of all the films in the Transformers franchise, Bumblebee.
The film focuses on the strangely familiar Hornet, a robot who must save humanity after we’re all brainwashed by alien creatures - and at least we can say it’s not nearly as bad as some of the more putrid rip-offs The Asylum has put out, as we’ve become used to pointless, terrible B-movies by now - Hornet just doesn’t expand on its terribleness enough to embrace its true, heinous, nature as an Asylum film.
Finding Dory (2016) / Izzie’s Way Home (2016)
Finding Nemo was a groundbreaking computer-animated film, and one of the first to feature the sea as its primary setting, so obviously it became the target of quite a few mockbusters - but The Asylum was merciful with Pixar’s masterpiece - that is, until Finding Dory came out. At that point, The Asylum’s overpaid executives released their wretched wrath upon one of cinema’s most beloved creations, devising the animated atrocity granted the name of Izzie’s Way Home. One look at the title should tell you everything you need to know about The Asylum’s terrible, treacherous filmmaking pattern - burning your soul and poisoning your mind with its utter lack of any shape, form, or beauty.
While these incredibly stupid rip-offs can be fun to joke about, it’s also heartbreakingly sad to consider that they continue to be commercially successful, and we shudder for those who are “gifted” these blighting blemishes upon filmmaking as an art instead of their less dreadful (and much more original) cinematic counterparts.
