WTF Happened to JOHN TRAVOLTA?

want you to hit me as hard as you can John Travolta is the guy that everybody's mom has a crush off a genuine movie star blessed with good looks and great talent john was a huge star in the 70s and his star drastically fell in the 80s he got that Tarantino boost in the 90s and it was pretty much up and down up and down up and down like a roller coaster ever since I love this guy consider me a fanatic oh and don't forget John Travolta's controversial beliefs with his religion known as Scientology so let's hop on that disco floor and pray to Lord Xenu to help us find out what the happened to John Travolta young John Travolta was an aspiring down-on-his-luck actor with big dreams but not a break in sight then he was introduced to Scientology and suddenly he was on a hit TV show and that hit TV show was Welcome Back Kotter he played everybody's favorite Italian teenage goofball Vinnie Barbarino John was so convincing that many thought he really was a big dumb beautiful buffoon which for an actor is actually a great compliment but it did make it hard for him to get other jobs outside of the world of Kotter nobody not nobody had faith in this handsome doofus nobody except Brian De Palma that is John Travolta was cast as a charming at horrible teenager in the film Carrie based on the novel by Stephen King John Travolta's big-screen presence was immediately noticeable everybody thought hey that guy should be in more movies and he was he did the TV movie the boy in the plastic bubble to the original Bubble Boy it's not as funny and of course there was the film that made John Travolta a household name that film was Saturday Night Fever in 1977 it was more than a movie it was a cultural phenomenon that brought disco into the mainstream yeah he showed the world that he could dance and act and he got his first Oscar nomination and this was not just a silly dancing movie no no no no Saturday Night Fever is a gritty coming-of-age drama that just happens to have some dancing it is film critic Gene Siskel favorite film of all time thumbs up first it was Saturday night that gave Jon a fever and then he got chills and they were multiplying in 1978's grease he showed the world that he could sing and he helped make nostalgia for the 1950s cool the first time I saw this film I was very young and very confused not only because of all the adult content but because I went into this thinking that Greece was a musical about ancient Greece I was expecting togas and I got leather jackets which was not disappointing actually I was pleasantly surprised it was great John earned a Golden Globe nomination Greece has it all has cars rock and roll timeless catchy songs unforgettable greasy characters classic classic stuff right there you [Applause] this was followed by urban cowboy another cultural music phenomenon the film helped bring to life the country-western music dance grace much like Saturday Night Fever did for disco and grease did for rock-and-roll musicals and much like Saturday Night Fever at its core this is a gritty coming-of-age drama that just happens to have some awesome dancing John Travolta had created an unofficial musical juggernaut trilogy Saturday Night Fever grease urban cowboy John was the musical leading man of our times of those times singing and dancing all the way into our hearts three films in a row that shaped our culture who else can say that for three years in a row they created multiple cultural movements just by singing and dancing that right there John Travolta is an unbelievable achievement and no one not no one can take that away from you in the late 70s John was the biggest movie star in the world and it seems like it would stay that way forever but eventually the honky-tonk disco full of grease has to shut down the 1980s were not kind to the career of John Travolta a decade full of flops had taken down the star there was the film moment-by-moment that did not live up to Travolta expectations and a series of failures would follow he was in the awful Saturday Night Fever sequel staying alive directed by sylvester stallone for some reason and another Olivia newton-john team-up called two of a kind and a less-than-perfect film called perfect oh my god look at that look at those moves whoa perfect but tucked away hidden in-between this parade of duds was the film blowout in 1981 directed by his buddy Brian DePalma blowout is arguably John's best film it was not exactly a hit at the time but years later this performance would catch the eye of director Quentin Tarantino but we'll get to that later John plays a Hollywood sound guy who may have evidence of a political assassination brilliant editing both picture and sound and this film shows us that John can lead a great film without singing or dancing just pure acting pure Travolta in Travolta was suffering from insomnia at the time of shooting so he used his pain for the performance like any good actor should they take that hurts deep inside and pull it out and turn it into art for us to enjoy it's kind of sadistic if you think about it but that's Hollywood or Hollywood blowout is a wonderful film but unfortunately this film was overshadowed by the other horrible films that John made in the 1980s so let's forget about all those and just focus on below out yes blowout and who cares that this is the only good movie John made in the 1980s it's that good so good that it can fix an entire decade [Music] then came look who's talking which was his first commercial success in years he plays a taxi driver who becomes a father figure to a baby Bruce Willis who talks look he's talking oh my god but the adults can't hear him it's a Rugrats kind of thing but with real live babies I actually really like this film it's funny it's clever and John Travolta's playful chemistry with Kirstie Alley is delightful and he reminds us how he became a movie star in the first place and then came a sequel - look who's talking called look who's talking to t oo like also cuz there's another baby talking - but this time it's a baby girl and this time she's voiced by the soothing sounds of Roseanne Barr the reviews were not great on this one but if you liked the first look who's talking you'll like this look who's talking to the unstoppable force that is the look who's talking franchise was the only thing keeping this guy afloat barely so he had to do another one with look who's talking now this time the dogs are the ones talking now and it's a Christmas movie John Travolta fights wolves with a Danny DeVito dog and at the very end spoiler alert Santa shows up and teaches everyone the true meaning of Christmas and you know that saying third time's a charm well not this time because the third installment of this film franchise was not very successful I loved this entire trilogy because I was pretty much a baby when I first saw them and so I've got them nostalgia goggles when I watch it so I can't really give an honest critique other than yay it's good but everyone else seems to hate look who's talking now because it has zero percent on Rotten Tomatoes and in those tomatoes we trust was this the end of John Travolta was his career dead on arrival the universe given up on our hero no the answer was no and it's all thanks to a man named Tarantino Quentin Tarantino I mean do you think that God came down from heaven and stopped it in 1994 came the cinematic masterpiece Pulp Fiction it was John's big comeback one of the biggest comebacks of all time everyone thought that it was impossible for John Travolta to carry such a film but he carried it he carried the whole damn thing all the way and it was fantastic and he looked so cool while he did it like the coolest guy ever John Travolta was nominated for another Oscar for his performance in Pulp Fiction he plays the coolest junkie ever and he gets to shoot people and talk about burgers and dance with Huma Thurman so who everybody wanted this part everybody wanted to play Vincent Vega even Daniel day-lewis was up for the role that's right Daniel day-lewis and of all people a has-been loser named John Travolta took the role and made it his own and perfected it and now you can't imagine anyone else playing this part he owns it John Travolta and pulp fiction that's that's a true Hollywood underdog story right there he was on his way out and then suddenly BAM back on the a-list Vinnie Barbarino was saved by Quentin Tarantino and after the great success of pulp fiction John Travolta turned to Quentin Tarantino for career advice because he seems to know the right way to use John Travolta on screen and Quentin suggested that next John take on the film's white man's burden and get shorty this was another huge comeback for John he is fabulous as the character chili Palmer and he got another well deserved Golden Globe nomination he was back on top again everybody wanted a piece of that Travolta and at this time John Travolta the action heroes slash villain was born he worked with John Woo in the action-packed in 1996 movie Broken Arrow and John played the villain because it's more fun and that same year brought us the films phenomenon and Michael in both of these movies he plays magical charming characters blessed with a heavenly touch one being a man with new mysterious phenomenal powers and phenomenon and the other is an angel who dances and smokes and does other sinful things these films did not do very well with critics but my mom likes him so there's that and then John Travolta blew all of our faces off with face off one of the best action films ever made of all time in the history of action films being made he teamed up with director John Woo again and Travolta worked closely with his co-star Nicolas Cage to become each other they studied each other's moves and styles understanding how and why John Travolta and Nicolas Cage are John Travolta and Nicolas Cage their spirits became one it was beautiful beautiful thing and then they got to kill each other these two took swapping their performances very seriously it needed to be believable depending on whatever your definition of believable is but faceoff proved that John Travolta could kick butt no matter whose face he's wearing now he could ask for twenty million dollar paychecks and that's exactly what he did for his next film the movie was mad city which was not as successful as everyone had hoped he also did the film she's so lovely it was alright but he kept his winning streak up with the hilarious political comedy primary colors where he plays a sex hungry politician from Arkansas who is not I repeat is not Bill Clinton he is perfect at being not Bill Clinton and got another Golden Globe nomination well deserved John is great in this one and it can be enjoyed by any from any political party and this is not just a cheap impression no John really creates an in-depth troubled mysterious character in primary colors check it out next he joined Terrence Malick's ensemble cast in The Thin Red Line where every actor in this film thought that they were gonna be the lead only to discover in the final edit that no one was the lead except maybe Jesus but it's always good to be in a Terrence Malick film so good job John then came the powerful dramas a civil action and the generals daughter which can be seen as another slight comeback in the career of Johnny boy but that comeback would not last very long in the year 2000 the John Travolta flew his multimillion-dollar spacecraft a little too close to the Sun and it crashed and burned and it was called Battlefield Earth this is one of the worst and I do mean the worst films ever made look at any list of bad movies this one is always on it Travolta produced and starred in this bizarre mess of a movie which was based on Scientology founder l ron Hubbard's epic sci-fi novel it features ridiculous makeup a stupid voice and a lame story in dumb action everything in this is horrible it's not cool this is one of the few times when John Travolta was not cool this film is so bad that it's single-handedly overnight ruined John's good name what was left of it having John Travolta's name on your movie poster was no longer a good thing example his next film lucky numbers nobody saw nobody in the entire world in the entire universe saw this movie but people in the universe did watch swordfish in the year 2001 I haven't seen this movie since it came out but it was cool when I saw it in the year 2001 then there was domestic disturbance which has its moments but audiences didn't really care for this one and a hilarious cameo in Austin Powers Goldmember [Music] and even though the hits were not coming in he was still charging twenty million dollars a movie and that made many Studios hold off on hiring John this quite possibly definitely hurt his career because of his price he missed out on many potential comebacks but he was still able to get work though like the military drama basic and the firefighter drama ladder 49 which did pretty well at the box office then John Travolta did the comic book movie thing with the Punisher you know not that Punisher no not that one no not that one either yes that Punisher this was a Marvel movie before Marvel movies were Marvel movies and once again John played a bad guy because fun even though it was harshly and violently punished by the critics in 2004 came the film a love song for Bobby long it was a smaller art film and he did it because he loved the script and he could really relate to this down-and-out character John Travolta is very proud at bringing this complex character to life on screen this is one of his artsy fartsy passion projects not everybody loved it but John Travolta loved it and that's all that matters hashtag art then there was be cool it was a sequel to get shorty ten years later and he got to dance with uma Thurman again that was nice to see John Travolta got to be cool and be cool and he got to be a wild hog in wild hogs it's one of those silly dumb popcorn movies that every once in a while you just gotta sit down and watch the cast had fun making this movie and you can definitely feel it on-screen it's fun movies are fun well they should be and even though most of the jokes fall flat you can still feel that they're trying and the comedy chemistry is it's still there wild hogs went to number one at the box office it's opening weekend next was his gangster film lonely hearts it was a big flop it lost millions upon millions of box-office buckaroos millions it seemed like once again John's career was over and gone forever can't just throw things away but then like he always does out of nowhere he is blessed with yet another comeback and this comeback came in the form of the film hairspray a musical remake of the John Waters film he played a female a human person who struggles with weight issues in other words John Travolta is in drag wearing a fat suit and it's fabulous I really love this movie and I really love the John Travolta took the risk to do such a fun motion picture 5 hours in makeup to transform into this character and this unique performance earned John another Golden Globe nomination I was a movie theater projectionists when those things still existed during the summer that this movie came out so I had to listen to the cheerful singing and dancing for weeks upon weeks and you know what I was totally fine with it I loved watching all the people tapping their toes and bobbing their heads as they left the movie theater filthy filthy movie theater hairspray made every audience that summer come alive and I loved it it's a wonderful musical about people of all colors and all weights coming together to dance on local television to stop racism forever and they did right and let us not forget the romantic chemistry between John Travolta and Christopher Walken it will excite and confuse you it's just a toe tap and good time hairspray is fantastic and John Travolta is fantastic in hairspray you could say he was divine then he did the Disney Voice thing with bolt where he played an animated dog with Hannah Montana that is totally unrealistic absolutely ridonculous you could say that again and of course I want these WTF videos to be fun but when you examine the life of a real-life human being you find that life is not always fun and sometimes sad things happen in 2009 tragedy struck the Travolta family when John's 16 year old son jet passed away John was lost devastated hopeless and he even thought of retiring understandably so but his friends his family and even his church inspired him to get back to work and to keep moving forward and of course the pain will always be there but he has learned to keep going in the memory of his son he was still mourning the loss of his son and did not attend the premiere of his next film the Taking of Pelham one two three Tony Scott directed John in this remake and once again he plays a bad guy because like I said before it's more fun [Music] then there was the Disney film old dogs where he teams up with Robin Williams he was a box-office failure in displace pretty much the worst of Disney movies the worst of Robin Williams and the worst of John Travolta it has no heart no soul just like here insert joke there but since I enjoyed wild hogs so much and since Disney Plus was just like sitting right there I was tempted and I clicked on old dogs one night and it was awful so awful awfully good at times though 2010 brought us the film from Paris with love another fun bad guy but this time he's bald then he worked with Oliver Stone in savages and a nice little supporting role and in the apocalyptic year of 2012 we got a Greece reunion that nobody wanted he released a horrible Olivia newton-john Christmas duet album and it was accompanied by pretty much the worst music video ever made it's so bad that I can't tell if it's a parody or not look is this a parody I don't know like if someone was trying to make fun of a bad music video they still they still couldn't make it this bad unhuman ly bad impossibly bad I think it was just shot in John's driveway after his family was eating brunch or something like hey oh we got to make a music video here dance in the driveway Olivia newton-john's come on over be on your best behavior the power of griefs had worn off over the years and the album only sold 36,000 copies which is nothing compared to the numbers Greece was bringing in a couple decades ago this was followed by another stretch of stinkers with films like killing season the forger I am Rath and life on the line then he did the film criminal activities which is Jackie Earle Haley 's directorial debut John at least gets to have fun in this one and the story is quite interesting check it out and he did the acclaimed Ethan Hawke Western in the valley of violence john was tossing us hints that he was gearing up for another huge comeback and it came in the form of television the medium that first allowed John to shine and many say that TV is actually better cinema than actual movies nowadays and that next comeback came when he joined the cast of American crime story he was perfectly cast in this OJ Simpson drama as Robert Shapiro another comeback for John way to go how many comebacks will life give this man there are so many ups and downs in this man's career but American crime story is his most recent up and boy howdy is it way up the big up the show won a ton of Emmys and John was nominated this show showed the world that there were still amazing roles out there for John Travolta roles that fit nice and snug like a glove and he just needs to find those roles but it's easier said than done then came one of the worst John Travolta missteps of his entire career the film was called Gotti and John Travolta played the gangster Gotti and I believe the real mafia was involved in making this one but I better not say too much because I ain't no rat but the movie Gotti was embarrassingly bad nominated for lots of Razzies because that's what happens when your movie sucks and this infamous film sparked a rotten tomatos scandal leading some to believe that the tomato people have tampered with the ratings system but Gotti still rests at 0% yet another series of cinematic failures followed with the film's speed kills trading paint and the poison rose all 0 presenters on Rotten Tomatoes which totally tampers with the ratings so don't believe it this is the life then he did a film produced by red box called the fanatic it won worst actor at the Razzies and this film is directed by limp Biskit Sohn Fred Durst because that's what you do when your career is headed for a kamikaze nosedive you team up with limp Biskit in the year 2020 he plays a bizarre disturbed mentally ill man named moose who's obsessed with devon Sawa but I mean who isn't and to top it all off the fanatic was the worst box office opening of John's entire career this movie feels like Fred Durst just turned on the camera and said hey John Travolta act crazy and John Travolta did that times a billion I would say this biscuit of a movie is very very limp the fanatic is pretty much a career killer no actually Gotti is the career killer and the fanatic is pissing on the rotting corpse but it was not just horrible movies that took down the great Travolta many believe that his controversial beliefs could have played a part in his decline some people really care and judge the followers of the Church of Scientology and others don't really care and just want to watch good movies which are you does the personal life of an actor affect how you see them on screen or do you just want to see John Travolta make movies comment your comment in the comments I might read them one day but Scientology always brings scandals and scandals always hurt John is a unique person he has an unearthly charm and he gives off a strange spiritual energy in Travolta even claims to have superpowers he says that he has the ability to control energy space time and matter like stuff straight from phenomenon it's phenomenal if it's true and I'm gonna believe it because it makes me happy so it's true well all of things around us are made of matter and we're living in space and we're registering time yeah and the better you can control it the better off you'll be but John scandals don't only come from his religion they also come from his hands and his lips ban his pants allegedly he has had some creepy moments involving women and their faces even though later Scarlett Johansson said that it was totally fine it was just a friendly little smooch that the camera caught the wrong moment and in that instant it seemed more awkward than it really was but you can't deny it it looks it looks pretty pretty bad and now because of mr. John Travolta I will never remember how to properly say the wicked frozen lady's name and he creepily touched her face - I deserve that but you you darling my beautiful my we could be talented idina menzel but it's not just the ladies who bring John controversy no it's also the dudes massaging dudes to mail massage therapist brought on sexual assault charges on the actor but John and his attorneys deny the claims and call them absurd and fictional as fictitious as John's movies they say and the lawsuits were eventually dropped but win or lose the case did it harm his career I don't know or was his career already too low to even harm the real question here is how many massage therapists does it take to ruin John Travolta the world may never know for Travolta some industry insiders say win or lose in court the real test will be the potential damage to this megastars reputation in a town or image is everything Karine Winter CNN Los Angeles but even though I just said that John Travolta's career is dead my hope for another comeback is still staying alive I know that if John truly believes in himself he can cook up a few more cinematic comebacks for us John Travolta comes back every decade or so so why give up the pattern now we are due another legendary Travolta performance any day now stay tuned it's coming right around the corner someday but even if another final final final comeback never happens it won't matter because John's legacy is secure just look at all those hits those classics in his filmography the bottom line is that nobody should give a [ __ ] about what the [ __ ] happened to John Travolta because he is John Travolta he is more than a man he's a figure a symbol that surpasses how we perceive good or bad movies with John Travolta there is no such thing as a good or a bad movie it's just a John Travolta movie which is always good no matter what [Music] a buttload of bad movies another buttload of scandals and a buttload of craziness slowed down John's career but it's like slowing down a bullet no matter what it's gonna leave a mark and John left plenty of marks on the movies thank you John Travolta for making all of those John Travolta movies the good the bad and the gaudy and that is what the happened to John Travolta but before I leave you I just want to say one little thing to John Travolta one final thing please please PLEASE John Travolta work with Quentin Tarantino again thank you [Music] [Music] you

Channel: JoBlo Videos

Views: 613,661

Rating: 4.772161 out of 5

Keywords: joblo videos, joblo, wtf happened to John travolta, what happened to John travolta, John Travolta young, John Travolta bald, welcome back kotter, Saturday night fever, grease, urban cowboy, blow out, staying alive, perfect, look who's talking, the experts, look who's talking now, pulp fiction, get shorty, face off, face/off, broken arrow, John woo, Quentin tarantino, the bee gees, Olivia newton john, kelly preston, phenomenon, the fanatic, gotti, battlefield earth, hairspray

Id: smTsoCfDBs0

Length: 32min 18sec (1938 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 03 2020