WME Page: Marco 5: Epilogue

***Marco 5: Epilogue*** (also simply known as ***Marco 5***) is a 2022 Marcanese computer-animated dystopian comedy film produced by Anaya Animation and released by Columbia Pictures, Paramount Pictures, Annapurna Pictures, and Amazon Studios. The seventh and final installment of the *Marco* franchise and the sequel to *Marco 4* (2017), the film is directed by Kevin Armand in his feature-length directorial debut, from a screenplay by Gennedy Tartakovsky (who served as director of the *Hotel Cloudylandia* movies and the 2021 Marco Toon *Family Staycation*) and Mike White, and produced by Cody Cameron, Mike Rianda, and Amos Vernon. Adam Sandler and Selena Gomez took over the roles as Marco and Melissa respectively, while the recurring cast is joined by Nick Kroll, Chloe-Garcia Moretz, Jamie Demetriou, Snoop Dogg, Craig Robinson, Asher Blinkoff, Michael Cera, and Rianda as the voices of Richard and Jett. In this film, Marco and his friends enjoy their retired lives from espionage until one day, their world gets changed to some dystopia, which forces Marco and his remaining crew to stop an evil algorithm clone he made from launching some tech uprising to save the world.

Originally planned to be released theatrically in the United States on June 4, 2021, Sony Pictures Releasing cancelled the film's release plans in favor of *Joaquin & Emiliano: The Rise Of Marco,* and sold the film's distribution rights to Amazon Studios for $100 million, due to rising cases of COVID-19 in the United States and troubled production delays. The film premiered on October 1, 2021 in Turkey and other select countries, followed by a streaming release worldwide on January 14, 2022 The film received mixed-to-negative reviews from critics and audiences alike, criticizing the PG rating, screenplay, unfaithfulness to the main franchise, and James Corden's performance.

The film later obtained a limited theatrical release on September 23, 2022. Unlike its predecessors, it was deemed as a box office disappointment, grossing $35 million with a $100 million budget, thus being the lowest-grossing film in the *Marco* franchise to date.

## Why It Sucks

1. The main problem with this movie is that it has *nothing* to do with the previous four films of the main franchise. Whereas those movies were usually based on espionage and elements of science fiction, this leaves out the espionage part in favor of a generic *Raiders of the Lost Ark*-style story that takes up a third of this movie's plot and has little resemblance to the main plot, which is about Marco and his crew facing a dystopian world thanks to AI.
2. The film went through development, production, and marketing hell all at once, which is embarrassing for a movie like this to be pitched and brought into production **since 2005**, when the first *Marco* film was released to theaters. This looks akin to something that Disneytoon Studios (the former Disney subdivision who infamously released direct-to-DVD sequels in the late 90s and early 2000s) would do, although some scenes like Diamond Road, for instance, look like theatrical quality.
3. This is yet another film in which humans are good and AI is bad, but its portrayal of artificial intelligence is rather dumb, convoluted, and completely heavy-handed in the form of Marco's alter ego, who's generically named AI. *Do holograms even become drunk?*
4. And speaking of AI, he's not much of a threat given the small amount of screen time he has compared to the main characters and Madcap, his right-arm henchman who is illegitimately seen as the true villain of the film. Doesn't help either that AI makes for a bland and boring antagonist until the film's climax.
5. Most of the characters in this film are either underdeveloped, given the small amount of screen time, or severely flanderized to the point that they come off across as annoying, self-centered, arrogant, or indifferent, with the worst offender being Marco himself.
	* Speaking of Marco, he's been toned down to a clumsy, irresponsible jerk throughout as he caused most of the film's problems by taking off his clone's DNA strip, therefore making his AI clone evil.