Hello all. Its been a very, very long time since I've posted an article here. Recently a friend and I were chatting on what movies disappointed us the most. After giving it some thought, I was conflicted over making a top 10, but a top five was a slam dunk.
Don't you hate it when a movie comes out that you've been dying to see for over a year turns out to be a disappointing dud? It happens almost every year...there's always that movie that produces a beautiful teaser trailer a year prior to its release that'll make you cream in excitement. Then when the film is released and it destroys all that you were expecting, it just pisses you off. Here are some notable titles that did not make my top 5 list:
-A.I. (Artificial Intelligence)-The only spielberg movie I can't watch. Although its beautiful special effects and stunning cinematography were grand to look at, they couldn't save the movie from its messy plot, underwritten characters and weird pacing.
-Green Lantern. I really was excited for this movie. I love the Green Lantern Universe and when I heard that Martin Campbell was directing the film I felt nothing could go wrong. Boy...did I look like a dumbass. Even though I kinda liked the film in the end, it just wasn't even close to what I was expecting it to be in the first place.
-X3...I know what you're thinking, "what??? you mean X-men the last stand isn't in your top 5??" Shocking as it may seem, There were five other movies that pissed me off more than this turd. X3 had some good visuals and some cool action sequences but Brett Ratner just couldn't find the right path he wanted for this movie. The film isn't all over the place, its just dis-focused. Oh well. At least there was First Class that came afterwards.
Now here we have it. My top 5 MOST DISAPPOINTING MOVIES:
#5. STAR TREK: INSURRECTION
Now, I am a huge fan of Star Trek. I love all the series except for Deep Space Nine (I just 'like' that spin-off). I feel that Star Trek planted the flag for all the deep space adventures. When the movies were released, the even numbered ones received high praise from both critics and audiences and the odd number ones got the exact opposite. (with the exception of Star Trek 3: The Search for Spock; that was a solid flick). Star Trek Insurrection is an odd numbered Star Trek movie.
At that point I should've realized this movie was going to be below average but since it had the crew who made the phenomenal First Contact two years prior, I couldn't help but get excited. Generations was a weak movie; it had a forgettable villain with a stupid ploy, and the ending was just WTF. First Contact, Directed by Jonathon Frakes, who happens to play Riker, picked up the slack and 'generated' a much, much better movie. Insurrection had big shoes to fill and the finished product felt like a made for TV movie. Honestly, Insurrection was like an episode off of the TNG series. That is probably the worst part of it, the fact that it didn't feel like a movie. And the crew behind the scenes constantly said how Insurrection was going to top First Contact; it was as if they were too lazy to even care in this situation. A lot of what happens in the film is just weird and doesn't make any sense whatsoever. In the end i didn't hate hate the movie, and I honestly don't think its a god-awful dogshit film. Its just flat out mediocre at best.
My Grade: C (mediocre)
#4 Spider-man 3
I'm sure this is on everybody's most disappointing list. Spider-man 1&2 are two of my favorite Superhero movies of all time. So, just like Star Trek Insurrection, Spider-man 3 had some big shoes to fill. And at that point in time, superhero threequels were notorious for sucking. But at the time, I wasn't gonna let that stop me. From the early trailers and promotions it seemed like the filmmakers had everything under control and that they were going to deliver us a dark, haunting and scary Spider-man movie. But in fact what we got was the exact opposite. Spider-man 3 is a mess; the pacing is off, the characters are quirky as hell, and the Villain(s) are worthless. What made the first two films so good was that the tension between the hero and supervillain was very high; there were moments where the villains had things under control and Spidey was left with minimal options. When a film does that, its boosts the audience view on the main hero and gets them to cheer for them more. This made the climax to the first two films way more enjoyable. With the third installment, there was no tension; mainly because the writers didn't know what to do with Spider-man except make his girlfriend a selfish bitch. Now this will be hard to explain but I'd rate Spider-man 3 higher than Insurrection in quality however, it pissed me off more. Insurrection was like a car accident; it was quick and you walked away saying, 'that sucked'. Spider-man 3 is an avalanche of disappointment; it starts at the top and everything goes down hill from there until it crashes at the end. At least Insurrection felt like the same movie unlike Spider-man 3 which felt like it was directed by 2 different people. I get that Raimi had problems with the studios not letting him do the film the way he wanted but the blame still goes on him for not putting enough effort and breaking the three movie curse.
My Grade: C+ (AVERAGE)
#3. IRON MAN 2
Its the rules of making a trilogy that the second film has to be the darkest in which the main characters are put through the ultimate test in order to combat evil and realize their true place in life. They also have to look within themselves and figure out what really drives them so in the end they can face their nemesis and defeat them with us the audience rooting for them all the way.
After the craze and hype of Iron Man slowly died down, it was sure that there would be a trilogy. And the teaser and theatrical trailers really hyped up the sequel. Iron Man 2 looked to be a darker, heavier, and more action packed than its predecessor. But just like the other films on this list, we were terribly disappointed. Iron Man 2 is a disjointed mess; while its not all over the place like Spider-man 3 was, its pacing and lack of character development really weigh the movie down on itself. It was good to know that Whiplash was wasted; all he was there for was to show us what Mickey Roorke really looked like in his years as a crack head and not to mention 2 extremely short fight scenes that last probably 2 minutes in length. That was another problem too; Now I generally do not go into movies like this wanting to see things explode, but I was hoping at the very least there would be good action with substance behind it much like the first film. Unfortunately Iron Man 2 is a really dull film. Nothing happens in this movie whatsoever other than Tony conveniently discovering a new element to get rid of his heart problem. In the comics Tony Stark was an alcoholic, and the filmmakers tried to touch on that here, but they do a poor job. They should’ve visited an AA meeting to get some perspective on how alcoholics really are. At no point did I feel any sympathy for Tony’s depression…mainly because it was poorly written. The first film was a classic; it was a movies that caught people by complete surprise and it kicked whole sorts of ass. Tony was a very likable character throughout; you cared about him. In Iron Man 2 he just pisses you off to the point where you wanna punch in him the face. And the interactions between him and Pepper were really convoluted too. A lot of the dialogue in this movie is just overlapped between two characters and its hard to keep track of what they’re saying.
In the end, Iron Man 2 was wasted potential; it was slow to start and wrapped up really quickly. Porn has better pacing than this. While not dogshit, Iron Man 2 is easily forgettable.
MY GRADE: C (medicore)
#2. TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN
Whatta know??! Another sequel to a great movie disappoints! Like Iron Man, Transformers caught people by surprise. It was the first Michael Bay movie in a long time that had a good story that didn't revolve around explosions. The first film set the standard-good characters, solid humor, and heart-throbbing action. So just like the three films listed above, Transformers 2 had some big shoes to fill. And just like those three movies, it gave arguably the best teaser trailer ever. I remember when I saw that trailer in the movie theater back in 08 and it left me in awe. Bay promised the audience a darker action movie that would go even deeper into the whole lore.
And once again we were fooled.
Transformers Revenge of the Fallen is a colossal disappointment. I felt bad for the people in this movie when I walked out of the theater four years ago. The first half of this film is very exciting; I remember the first time I watched this movie the first hour I loved. It felt like the first film but after Optimus died, and they meet up with John Tuturro’s character the movie takes a shocking nose dive into shit. Every passing second the movie loses intelligence; it’s a shameful outrage. This is the only movie where I’ve watched where the first half is an entertaining popcorn movie and the second half is an illogical, confusingly written, poorly directed piece of shit. I’m curious as to what happened behind the scenes to this movie. Someone had to have questioned Bay on where this movie was going. But Bay, being the absurd director that he is, just wanted to have dozens of pornoish shots of Megan Fox and explosions in this movie. In the end, this movie failed on almost everything-script, dialogue, character development, story, direction, etc. Every time I watch this movie, the lower the rating gets. As the climax ensued, I wanted to walk out of the theater. I about did when Sam goes to ‘robot-prime heaven’, but then I stuck around and hoped for at least something to come out of this shitfest…and I was wrong.
Ultimately Transformers 2 killed everything the first worked so hard to achieve.
MY GRADE: C- (terrible)
#1 JURASSIC PARK 3
After two fantastic films adapted off of the brilliant novels, Jurassic Park 3 had a lot to live up to. I remember clear as day how excited I was when I first heard that a new Jurassic Park movie was coming out. The first two films are my favorite movies so naturally why wouldn't I be excited for another one? However, warning signs went off early; Spielberg was not returning for this third outing but instead the studios got Joe Johnston director of the mediocre Rocketeer, the horrible Honey I shrunk the kids and the solid October Sky. Not only that, but the film wasn’t based off a book so my question was, ‘where can they go with the story?’ That raised some concerns for me, but I was still excited nonetheless.
No movie on this list pissed me off more than Jurassic Park 3; the movie lacks any form of creativity and logic. Yeah the first two films really had a lot of ‘oh bullshit, that wouldn’t happen’ moments, but not as bad as this turd. The story is thin as hell, there is literally no character development and the direction lacks taste. The only thing this movie has going for it is the dinosaurs.
The dinosaurs look beautiful no doubt; the best in the trilogy hands down in my opinion, but they’re bogged down by horrible storytelling and lazy dialogue. I never thought I’d be laughing at moments in this movie that were supposed to be serious. I mean honestly, what the hell were the writers thinking with the whole Velicoraptor communication subplot? I understand they were trying to throw in some sort of cool twist to make the raptors more menacing but it didn’t work in the end. It just made them cartoony as hell and Johnston’s direction didn’t help at all. Now when Spinosaurus came onto the screen something seemed fishy, and after watching the behind-the-scenes footage for this piss-poor production, it became very clear to me. Spinosaurus was only in the film in an attempt to push T-rex aside as best carnivore. Granted yes there have been few skeletons of Spinosaurus that exceed the size of most Rexes, but this idea should’ve been left on the cutting room floor. Yes the monster looked cool, but his whole purpose of being there was a whole marketing ploy. And it’s a fact that Jurassic Park 3 sold the most toys out of the entire trilogy. The more and more I think about it, Jurassic Park 3 is the batman and robin out of the series; while not as near as corny, it was made solely to sell toys.
The best part of it all is watching the behind the scenes and watching the cast and crew lie through the interviews. Seriously, you can tell Spielberg is bull-shitting his way through; even Johnston doesn't sound 100% honest when he comments, ‘This is a fun popcorn movie’. Most of life on the planet disliked Jurassic Park 3, and half of that population hated it, while the other half more than likely forgot that it even existed.
What happened to this beloved franchise? The first two films had solid stories-filled with characters you cared about. Now both don’t follow the books entirely but they get the basic outline right. They were novelty films; ones the whole family could enjoy. Spielberg is an expert for tugging at people’s heart strings. The man knows how to make a good movie (aside from A.I.) Johnston, however, is not expert in that field. We movie goers were fortunate that Captain America didn't suck.
In the end I can at least sit and watch Insurrection, Spider-man 3, Iron man 2 and Revenge of the Fallen and roast the shit out of those movies but I can’t bring myself to watch Jurassic Park 3. When I watch it, I feel like its prostitution; because its [frick]ing me. I have even burned my VHS and DVD copy of this movie; that’s how much I despise this piece of shit.
MY GRADE: D (dogshit)
So there you have it; my top five most disappointing movies to date. I’m sure no film will steal JP3’s crown, but I’m sure that #5 and #4’s spot might get a makeover in the future. So tell me, what is your top five most disappointing movies of all time?
Comment and let me know!