The Most Disappointing Movies

Recently I wrote an article about my favorite cheesy horror movies. I said that the best cheesy movies are the ones that try so hard and fail utterly. When I talk about disappointing movies, I’m talking about the ones you wanted to be awesome and let you down so completely that you couldn’t even laugh at its awfulness. You saw the trailer and got goose bumps, you devoured every promo still, and you stood in line for the midnight showing. When you finally saw it, it sucked worse than that Christmas morning you woke up and found your dad passed out drunk under the tree.

(Side note: I won’t be including Star Wars: The Phantom Menace here. Yes, yes, I know, Jar Jar Binks and the force is bacteria or something. It wasn’t good. But since I really wasn’t looking forward to it anyways, it hardly disappointed me.)

1. The Last Airbender

Well, here’s the inspiration for this article. I can’t even call this thing a movie. This was not a movie, it was a slap in the face for the legions of fans of the cartoon it was based on. It was an piece of crap, so that’s what I’ll call it. Like I said, Crap was based on the cartoon “Avatar: The Last Airbender” which might be one of the best cartoons, nay, T.V. shows ever made. The story was about a powerful child who can control, or bend, air and must travel with his friends and learn to bend the other elements (water, fire, earth) to defeat the evil fire nation. While Avatar was meant for kids, it didn’t talk down to kids, tackling such issues as sacrifice, tragedy, loss, responsibility, growing up, and war, which made it enjoyable for adults too. When I say Crap was “based” off of the cartoon, I meant it in the same way a monkey is “based” off a human. There’s some familiar aspects, but if you invite it into your home, it’s going to rip up your carpet and start throwing feces around. The terribleness is all thanks to M. Night Shyamalan, who wrote and directed Crap. He said he was a fan of the show, but in his warped head being a fan means “I like it, but I bet if I change almost everything about it, I can make it better.” So what’s wrong with the abomination? Well, even though all the main characters are Asian, he decided to cast only white people in the main roles. Don’t worry though, it’s not racism, because he also casts minorities as extras. So you have two of the whitest people imaginable living in an Eskimo tribe. That makes sense. Oh, but he did cast Indians as members of the fire nation, probably just so he insert himself into Crap. I wouldn’t mind the casting so much if any of these people could act, but they absolutely can’t. The kid who played Aang (or Ong, because M. Night changed everyone’s name, because he is awful) had never acted in his life. And it’s not like they had a strong script to lean on, with such dialogue gems as: “We will show them we believe in our beliefs as much as they believe in theirs.” And the bending! It goes from a form of martial arts to bunch of awkward white people dancing for five minutes until something happens. I could go on and on, but the bile is already beginning to rise. Just don’t see this plague on humanity and pray M. Night is never let anywhere near the Avatar franchise again.

2. Halloween (Remake)

I don’t remember exactly what I did when I heard Rob Zombie was going to remake Halloween, but I imagine I jumped up and down. I’m not a fan of remakes, but the marriage between Halloween, one of my favorite movies, and Rob Zombie, the king of horror, couldn’t help but be awesome. While Halloween is good, it’s not exactly timeless, and a modern interpretation could have been fantastic. The characters were all there: Michael Myers, Dr. Loomis, Michael Myers, Annie, Judith, Michael Myers, Tommy, Lynda, and, last but not least, Michael Myers. It felt like someone was missing though. Oh, yeah, Laurie Strode! Apparently Zombie didn’t watch the first film very closely, because he didn’t pick up on the fact that Halloween was Laurie’s story. It was about how she is slowly stalked into a corner by an unknown evil until she’s forced to fight back with everything she has. Halloween was not the life and times of Michael Myers. While Michael’s back story could’ve been interesting in some context, devoting half the movie to it at the expense of what made the original great isn’t going to make any of the fans happy. Especially since Zombie decided building suspense is boring and just started hacking and slashing the teenagers. Were we supposed to feel sorry for Myers? Sure, he had an awful home life, but I started to lose sympathy somewhere between the 5th and 6th murder. Not that you could feel too bad for the characters, since there are species of plankton with more personality. It’s all okay though, because Michael just wanted to love his little sister. Not kill her, no, just hug her and kiss her and call her George. So, in this version Laurie is less of a tragic figure cursed by actions that were out of her control and more of a girl with a clingy brother. Scary!

3. The Matrix Reloaded and Revolutions

Wasn’t 1999 the best? The economy was good, we weren’t in any wars, and the legislative powers were officially transferred from the old Scottish Office in London to the new devolved Scottish Executive in Edinburgh. What a time to be alive! It was also a pretty great year for films, as The Matrix completely reinvented the action and sci-fi film genres. It introduced us to “bullet time” and long, involved fight scenes that were more than stunt men pretending to hit each other in far away shots. It was accessible to the average viewer, as the surface of the story was cool and easy to understand, but it also had deep themes like consumerism, perception of reality, the comfort of a lie versus the horror of the truth, and destiny. The Matrix could be any kind of movie you wanted it to be. Okay, the robots using humans instead of pigs as their batteries was kind of stupid, since pigs tend not to revolt….except for that one time. But overlooking the holes in logic, I haven’t found too many people who didn’t love this movie. I think Reloaded was one of the most highly anticipated sequels ever. Unfortunately, the creators of The Matrix decided to challenge M. Night to see who could shove their head further up their ass and we got Reloaded. It wasn’t a terrible film, but it wasn’t what anyone was expecting either. Over the years we had gotten used to the bullet time fight scenes from hundreds of other movies and were looking for something more in the action, which they didn’t really deliver. Some of the scenes, like the battle on the cars, were cool, but it was hardly groundbreaking. That was somewhat our fault, since we can’t reasonably expect them to reinvent the wheel in every movie, but hopes aren’t always reasonable. The real problem was the plot, which can only be defined as complicated and annoying. The Keymaker and the source and so on. I dare you to try and understand whatever the hell The Architect was talking about. Revolutions is when things got really bad, as they decided to throw out every thing from the first two movies and repeatedly kick us in the junk until we finally gave up. Although, if you think about it, if the matrix is real, it makes sense that the sequels would be so bad, since who would want to wake up and live through that?

4. Spiderman 3

The first two Spiderman movies were fantastic, so why shouldn’t the third one be? Same cast, same creative team, still plenty of famous stories to draw inspiration from, what could go wrong? It might be that Spiderman 3 violated the law of 3. If you have 3 or more villains in any comic book movie, it will automatically suck. For example, Batman and Robin. Or it could be that they had no idea what story they wanted to tell. Spiderman 1 was about Peter Parker finding himself and Spiderman 2 was about Peter accepting himself. Spiderman 3 was about….uh….Peter realizing he when he goes bad he’s a mix between an emo kid and a lesbian. Venom or Harry Osbourne on their own could’ve been fantastic, but neither had a chance to have their stories fleshed out. And why was Sandman there? What an obscure character. And he killed Uncle Ben? What?!? Also, if you’re going to introduce Gwen Stacey, the most important supporting character in comic book history, you have to do more with her than have her stand around. I question whether Spiderman is the right character for a gritty reboot, but after this train wreck, I’m up for anything.

5. How The Grinch Stole Christmas

It seemed like a good idea at the time. A movie adaptation of the classic children’s tale. We all loved the story of how a grouchy recluse learned the true meaning of Christmas from the indomitable spirits of the Whos. How could the live action version not be awesome? And Jim Carey! This was before we all collectively got sick of him (although I think that happened shortly after The Grinch.) Maybe if we had already suffered through the horror that was Michael Myer’s “The Cat in the Hat” we would’ve known better, but we were naïve back then. Young, so willing to hope and believe. And then The Grinch sucked, our childhoods were destroyed and we all became jaded shells of human beings. The thing is, adaptations usually suck because they have to cut out an endless amount of source material to make a 2 hour film. How The Grinch Stole Christmas had the opposite problem. They had practically no source material to draw upon. It’s a cute story, but it’s not exactly The Lord of the Ring epic. So they had to make a bunch of stuff up. I have no problem with this. I’m not some diehard Grinch fan (Grincher?) who will yell blasphemy when we find out the Whos live in a snowflake or whatever. The problem is that everything not from Dr. Suess was kind of dull, clichéd and, worst of all, not terribly funny. And this might’ve been the point that Jim Carey’s maniac shtick finally got old. After about a decade of watching him mug and spaz his way through comedies, it was hard to care. Also, did it seem weird to anyone else that this paradise was pretty much only white people? That’s…a different kind of message.

6. Sex In The City 2

When I heard that the girls were going to get out of New York City and strut themselves in a new location, I thought it was a good idea, until Carrie cheated on Mr. Big with-hahaha! I can’t do this. Sex In The City is cancer. At best it makes me want to kill myself and at worst sends me into violent fits of rage. Do you know what movie they should do? Golden Girls! Okay, 3/4ths of the cast is dead, but CGI can do wonderful things.

7. Terminator: Salvation

The sad truth is that franchises can’t go on forever. If they could the Friday The 13th movies would be getting better with each new release, the atrocious Batman and Robin would actually be brilliant, and The Simpsons would still be one of the funniest shows on TV (although, strangely, The Simpsons movie was hilarious and won’t be found on this list.) Sometimes things should just be allowed to die with a little dignity. Unfortunately, Hollywood producers don’t know the meaning of dignity, which is why you can look forward to a Scream reboot, Friday the 13th 18: Jason Goes To A Circus, and probably a extra gritty Terminator reboot somewhere in the future. I was weary when I heard that they would be making yet another sequel. Terminator 3 was okay, but not even in the same world as the first two, and the best definition of it is probably unnecessary. But when I saw the trailers, I became a quick convert. A Terminator film that broke away from the previous time traveling trope and showed us the bad ass robot apocalypse? Oh, God, yes. A thousand times yes. And Christian Bale?! After Dark Knight he was practically God. Although, after Dark Knight, he also seemed to lose a great deal of acting ability, at least for a short time, since his John Connor was fairly one dimensional. The whole thing came off as a flat action movie. Explosions, inspirational speeches, endless fights, and scenes ripped off from the earlier films. Well, if they are going to milk the franchise for all it’s worth, at least we got a cool TV show out of the deal.

8. The Godfather 3

‘Nuff said.

Do you think I was too hard on any of these movies? Have you been severely disappointed lately? Comment below.