When it comes to this Howard the Duck, it makes more sense to talk about the production values than the actual plot. Produced by Gloria Katz and George Lucas, this movie based on an seventies comic character was first to be made as an animated feature, the plans were changed late during the planning to shoot the movie with live actors instead with state of the art effects done by ILM. The hottest actors of the time were cast, John Barry got hired to compose the soundtrack and Thomas Dolby composed a number of original titles for the fictional in-movie pop band called The Cherry Bombs. Howard the Duck was destined to be the biggest blockbuster of the summer 1986.
You guessed it. It was pretty much a total failure.
Howard the Duck barely covered its production cost, the movie was bashed by the critics and got the dubious honor of winning the Razzie Award for worst picture of the year.
To me the biggest problem here is the title character who couldn't carry through a trailer, much less a full length feature film: A visually off putting humanised duck who is constantly sarcastic, but never actually witty, a bit of a jerk, but rarely a loveable one. If you can overlook a flaw that big, the rest of the movie is not actually that bad. Production quality is top of the line everywhere and the stop-motion special effects in the film's final sequences are amazingly well executed.
It's hard to make drastic changes when a huge production is already underway - but this is surely a case where they should've cut their losses, ditched the duck and replaced him with something else.
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