FEATURE: Ror's Best & Worst Of 2014 - Part 2
With just a few hours left in the year, it's time to point and laugh at the comic book movies that left us underwhelmed, disappointed, and seething with rage and hatred (just me?) in 2014. Click on to find out what my top bottom 5 are, and leave your thoughts in the usual place.
Before we get into it, I should point out that although this is a "worst of" list, I didn't hate or even particularly dislike all of the movies on it (with the exception of my #1 pick), but there's no doubt that even the ones I derived some enjoyment from were very disappointing and that's why they're on here. First up is the most disappointing of all..
5: THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2
I didn't love The Amazing Spider-Man, but there was plenty of potential for Sony and Marc Webb to knock a sequel out of the park...and instead they knocked it under a bus. TASM 2 has its good points (strong cast, some decent action set pieces, a pretty good ending) but overall it's a bit of a sporadically entertaining mess with a crap villain (make that 3 crap villians!) and a plot that's all over the place. A shame, because Andrew Garfield is a very good Spidey/Peter Parker, and Emma Stone might just break your heart as Gwen Stacy in a diffrent movie.
4: TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES
Again, didn't hate this, but it could and should have been so much better. The Turtles themselves are handled pretty well, and you even get used to their monstrous size after a while, though there really is no logical explanation for it. There's a couple of laughs, a smashing cliff-face action scene, and even Megan Fox is decent enough, but...it's just all so bloody stupid. The sequel has a new director so hopefully we get a significantly better movie outta him.
3: 300: RISE OF AN EMPIRE
A tedious, repetitive sequel nobody wanted which just happens to feature an excellent turn from Eva Green. She plays a ruthless, bloodthirsty, incredibly sexy villain who's so entertaining that you'll still root for over the boring, shouty bunch of cardboard cut-out male strippers she's up against. Saved from one-star ignominy by a smattering of inventive action, a sex scene for the ages, and of course, Miss Green - but it's a mess in pretty much every other respect. I looked at my watch twice during a 90-minute movie full of blood, boobs and battles. Says it all really.
2: I, FRANKENSTEIN
We, expected a pile of shit. We, got it. With absolutely no expectations for this, it was hard to care about it at all one way or the other, but it was a bad 2014 CBM and so must take its place on this list. Any redeeming features? Well, the special effects are decent enough, and....no, that's it.
1: TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION
Oh how I loathed this movie. A noisy, incoherent, unintentionally hilarious pile of garbage. It seems to have been written and directed by a 9 year-old, and edited by a rhino. Michael Bay actually seems determined to keep making these flicks worse and worse, to the point that this fourth instalment is almost bizarrely inept in every way imaginable -- and it goes on for almost THREE F*CKING HOURS! I'm going to keep watching these monstrosities, if for no other reason than to see if my theory is correct, and by the sixth or seventh sequel we will be sitting in a theatre staring up a a picture of Bay squatting over a film can, giving us the thumbs up while he counts his takings.
Agree? Disagree? Think I was too harsh/not harsh enough? Give us your worst of 2014 lists in the comments section, and, on a more positive note, Happy New Year from all of us at CBM.