For me it might be the Hobbit Trilogy.
The LotR Trilogy are my all time favorite movies and the contrast couldn’t be greater. Really goes to show what a perfect storm it was that we got the movies we got with LotR.
Omg yes. The Hobbit movies were so terrible.
Imo worse than just them being bad is the gap between their quality and the potential of what could have been.
Absolutely and factor who made them.
True. Although to his defense my understanding is that Peter Jackson came in late as a replacement and at least partially did it because otherswise many people would have been out of a job (presumably people in new Zealand that he knew well). Watching the behind the scenes extras imo show a quite stark contrast compared to the LotR trilogy.
The problem with the Hobbit movies was that they were too much like the Lord of the Rings movies.
Maybe in the sense that they were aiming to be a long epic similar to the LotR, rather than the fun adventure the book that the Hobbit book is. But i’d say that there are far more issues than just that.
I know that knocking on it is overdone, but Phantom Menace. I was 13 when it came out, huge Star Wars fan, absolutely target market. Walked out so sad and confused.
I never understood this. What’s wrong with it?
Basically? It was a kids movie. Characters were one-dimensional and not very likeable to teenage me. Exposition by dialogue, and not great dialogue. Slapstick bits that really didn’t land (Jar Jar). Etc, etc.
Even as a child when I first saw Phantom Menace, I thought it was off. Maybe I would have rated the film lower if it weren’t for the fun pod racing segment and the fight with Darth Maul. I think the Star War prequel trilogy excel more on the editing and choreography of action scenes than actual story telling and drama.
And the originals weren’t kids movies?
I guess the massive amount of Star Wars toys I had as a child somehow led me to believe otherwise.
Original trilogy are also kids movies, fight me.
The Empire Strikes Back is definitely not a kid’s movie in my opinion. The Return of the Jedi is more kiddie because of Ewoks.
I say less “kids” movie and more family movies.
Granted, I was like 4 when it came out so it still holds some fondness in my view. Qui-Gon was like the father figure I always needed but never had, and Jar Jar laid the foundation for my sense of humor. Maybe that’s why no one thinks I’m funny…
But imo at its core it still has a good idea, unlike the sequels, which really are just style over substance. Which is why i can forgive the prequels quite a bit more, especially considering Geroge Lucas did try to get other directors onboard to make them.
Dull dialogue. Wooden acting. Jar Jar Binks. What a disappointment.
The Matrix Resurrections. I already had a feeling it would suck but it managed to be worse than I could ever imagine, they weren’t even trying to hide how much of a cashgrab it is.
The previous two were utter dogshit… how could you expect anything different?
Matrix 2 & 3 were masterpieces by comparison, not as good as 1 but they were at least enjoyable.
They were steaming piles of dogshit…
There was nothing enjoyable about those dogshit movies.
Gladiator 2. If anyone can do spectacle, it’s Ridley Scott. But good goddamn, the action in that movie sucked so hard. And all the best lines were quotes from the original. Denzel was the only half enjoyable thing because I think he realized how bad the movie was and just had a blast with it.
“Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow.”
The beginning is great. Giant robots attacking New York.
Then it just becomes boring and ridiculous.
Posters promised Angelina Jolie. she shows up for five minutes and doesn’t do anything.
Not saying you’re wrong, but praising the giant robot attack on New York before swerving into critiquing the latter half of the movie for being ridiculous is a funny juxtaposition.
Here’s the way I look at it.
A fictional story should follow its own rules. Let’s take “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.” The idea that someone would let himself be hung, trusting the other guy to be able to make that incredible shot over and over and never miss, is nonsensical. But we in the audience accept that premise for the sake of the story. We’d be disappointed if, halfway through the movie, an orchestra appears in the middle of the desert and they do a big musical number.
“Sky Captain” was ridiculous because of the way the story kept shifting and the rules kept changing.
I admit that I saw Sky Captain once, many many years ago, so I’m not going to be able to back this up with too many specific citations, but you’ve also not said specifically what rule they set up and fail to follow, so we’re even.
It’s a pastiche of pulp fiction concepts from the 30s-50s. Giant robots, airships, Nazi scientists, Shangri-La, dinosaurs, android assassins, the works. The whole thing is like a loving homage to Doc Savage’s greatest hits. I don’t see how any of that “breaks rules”.
Like I said, I won’t dispute your overall finding of the film being, “meh”. I watched it once 20 years ago and haven’t gone back since, so I’m not exactly leaping up to defend it’s execution, but I also think “the rules kept changing” is an empty critique, as it stands currently.
I’m not going to argue about a movie neither one of us has seen in over 20 years.
Have fun.
You’re under no obligation to continue the discussion, sure, but it seems disingenuous to me to open a thread saying “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is a bad movie because it fails to follow it’s own internal logic”. Then, upon having that assertion challenged, you jump to, “I’m not gonna argue about this.” Like, why comment at all if you’re not interested in discussing, and yes, maybe even defending, your take? Regardless, if that’s not what you’re here to do, have a good day.
If you actually thought I was under no obligation, you wouldn’t have sent your note, which I consider a masterpiece of passive aggressiveness.
I throw it back at you. You had all afternoon to actually watch the movie and present extensive notes.
Like, why did you comment at all?
The Avatar the last air bender ( live action ) movie. I was a child when the movie came out so I had no clue who the director was and how shitty of a movie I was in for. The ending recked me since it didn’t even have a satisfying conclusion. Just pure garbage
I was in genuine shock of how bad of a movie I’d gotten into. Never again
Honestly same, left it early and was genuinely sad because we almost never had a movie we wanted to go out for
Kinda weird to mention a movie that doesn’t even exist.
Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker. I went in with very low expectations and it still managed to disappoint so badly that it makes me angry. I hate how the Palpatine plot point retroactively ruins the entire original trilogy.
World War Z.
i was do hyped. and it single handedly ended the zombie movie genre that was popular at the time
Should have stuck to the book. Doing vignettes about how the invasion affected people would have been far more interesting.
the sad part is that few people will read the book because the movie was so bad.
I kinda liked it, not great by any means, maybe 3/5. But i liked the book way better
the book and the movie have absolutely nothing in common besides the name. it was such a disapointing mediocre zombie film, based on a really good book that used “zombies” to explore war, survival, refuge crisis…
Fury Road 2: They got rid of a lot of the practical effects that made the first one great. The plot and pacing was off. I was just annoyed because of how much I liked the first one.
The Matrix. The 1st two movies seemed to set up the perfect twist for the 3rd movie…that Zion was still inside the Matrix, and there was no escape. But, then they went in a completely different direction, that made no sense, instead. Then they came out with the 4th movie, and still never fixed it. Why?
Violet Evergarden: The Movie. My heart sank when I realized exactly where this was going, after all of her character development that’s the ending they decided to undermine it all with.
It made me want to never re-watch the series, too. The pedophilic undercurrent to the movie makes parts of the show so, so, much worse.
Once Upon a Time in America. Maybe I watched a bad version but it made little sense and the ending was dreadful.
Reading about it right now on wikipedia I probably saw the ‘condensed’ version which was savaged by the critics:
Some critics compared shortening the film to shortening Richard Wagner’s operas, saying that works of art that are meant to be long should be given the respect they deserve. In his 1984 review, Roger Ebert gave the uncut version four stars out of four and wrote that it was “an epic poem of violence and greed”, but described the American theatrical version as a “travesty”. Furthermore, he gave the American theatrical version one star out of four, calling it “an incomprehensible mess without texture, timing, mood, or sense”.
It is the most overrated movie of all time. Four hours of nothing… every single scene is 5times longer than it needs to be.
X-Men Phoenix - such a great grafic novel arch and solid movies before that flick. Phoenix writing and acting saddens me.
The Village followed closely by Joker: Folie a duex.
Fantastic four 2015, great first half and Phillip Glass soundtrack! But studio/publisher meddling destroyed the second half
I saw the Phantom menace on release, that was a huge let down
I actually agree that the first half was great and there were some solid bones and performances but I don’t think there was a break movie just below the surface of FF. Nothing we have seen or heard from that third act suggests Trank’s cut would have been demonstrably better.
