Twin Movies of the ‘90s: The Winners and Losers of When They Made the Same Movie Twice
Starring Pierce Brosnan, fresh off GoldenEye, and Linda Hamilton, Dante’s Peak is the more character-driven and (slightly) more plausible disaster film of the two, with its emphasis on a small town in the American Northwest oblivious to its impending doom (read: Mount Saint Helens). In the film, the characters have more to fear from the atom bomb-like imagery of ash and rock falling from the sky. Conversely, Volcano is a true Irwin Allen-like ensemble piece where Los Angeles residents, including a mismatched Tommy Lee Jones and Anne Heche, must pool together to fight rivers of lava from invading their neighborhoods like it’s a band of aggressive gentrifiers.
Who won? With the critics? The answer would be neither, although Roger Ebert at least begrudged, “It’s said that Volcano cost a lot more than Dante’s Peak… but it doesn’t look it. Dante’s Peak had better special effects, an entertaining story, and a real mountain. Volcano is an absolutely standard assembly-line undertaking.” Audiences once again agreed with Roger since Volcano earned $123 million worldwide, well below Dante’s Peak’s $178 million summit.
Antz vs. A Bug’s Life
As the competition that ended friendships, the Antz and A Bug’s Life rivalry is all the more bizarre when one remembers Antz was considered a threat to Disney because it starred, uh, Woody Allen… the ‘90s were a different time, eh? It was also a period where Pixar was not yet owned by the Mouse House and was green enough for its co-founder John Lasseter to tell a friend at a rival studio, namely Jeffrey Katzenberg, that they were working on a movie called “Bugs” about a worker ant rising in an ant colony’s society and impressing the queen-to-be. That’s at least how Lasseter and fellow early Pixar leader Steve Jobs remembered it to Jobs’ biographer, Walter Isaacson. So imagine their surprise when months later, the trades announced that Katzenberg’s new DreamWorks (which Katz co-founded after leaving Disney while Toy Story was in development), was also developing an animated bug movie called Antz.
Lasseter and Pixar animators claimed betrayal and umbrage, although to this day Katzenberg insists he first heard a pitch for Antz back in the early ‘90s when he was still at Disney. Whatever the case, Antz’s allegedly more adult sensibility (it again starred the voice of Woody Allen, as well as Sharon Stone, Sylvester Stallone, and Christopher Walken) reached theaters first by little more than a month ahead of the retitled A Bug’s Life.
Who won? Antz might have gotten there first, but for all its novelty and sexual innuendos between computer-generated ants, the more classic adventure story of A Bug’s Life (and its Disney/Pixar magic) won out. The New York Times’ Janet Maslin wrote, “Antz started with the same collective mentality and then invoked bugs with star personalities… to deliver some zest. But [in Pixar] the ants’ story is more coherent on its own terms, so the audience is more caught up in narrative than in all-star individual characters.” Antz tapped out at $172 million worldwide and $91 million domestic; A Bug’s Life collected $363 million worldwide and $163 million locally.
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves vs. Robin Hood
There must really have just been something about Kevin Costner back in the ‘90s, because he seemed to always be the top choice for any role—even when that role was of a 12th-century Anglo-Saxon nobleman. This fact of life is also the reason why Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves was able to crush John McTiernan’s dream of doing a Robin Hood movie. Fresh off Predator and Die Hard, and with The Hunt for Red October in the pipeline, McTiernan coveted making a Robin Hood movie at 20th Century Fox. He even had discussions with Costner to star before Costner scooted over to Warner Bros. for a slightly edgier take courtesy of his pal Kevin Reynolds nabbing the director’s chair (this sound familiar…).
