Prompted by the always a pleasure to read ranting stylings of , here’s a list of the worst movies I have ever seen.
(Note – Limited to: (a) Movies I have seen relatively recently since I tend to put bad ones out of my mind, and (b) Biggish budget stuff rather than Space Force Ninjas from Mars or whatever shit Troma is throwing together in an effort to make people believe it’s “cult”)
1) Attack of the Phantom Revenge of the Menacing Sith
Cheating here, compressing three movies into one, but fuck it, it’s my blog. Go get your own blog! That’s right, walk away!
You all know what I hate about these films by now, surely? Shitty stories, shitty acting, shitty characterisations, characters doing stupid shit just because the plot called for it (“I, the Emperor, am Evil! You should be too!” “No!” “Oh, go on, I implore you!” “Okay!” “Great! Now kill all your friends!”), absurd set pieces, shitbox pointless characters inserted for toy-related-reasons (“Dexter Jexter”, I’m looking at you), the ever-changing abilities of R2D2 (“Hey! Let’s take out these flight jets and install some kind of teddy-bear zapping device!”) and acting totally worthy of TV’s General Hospital, circa the mid-1980s. Someone is going to say “Oh, come now, you had years to get wound up about these sequels! They could never match years worth of expectations!” .. fuck you, if I had years to get excited about more Star Wars movies, Lucas had an equal amount of years to put the fucking things together in his head. And do it well. I’ve seen each of these movies exactly once, and that’s all I plan to see. And I’ve seen Howard the Duck twice. Lucas really tried to pull out some stops in Episode III, but even Yoda channeling Bruce Lee couldn’t save it. Even two jedi crash-landing a burning spaceship from orbit couldn’t save it. You couldn’t have saved it if Batman showed up in it.
2) Matrix II and III
Hah! I’m cheating again! And there’s nothing you can do about! Gonna whine, goth? Gonna be sad, maybe write a poem? Piss off! Go on, run! Hot Topic has a sale! Hahaha!
Okay, seriously, these two .. what the hell happened? I am a BIG fan of The Matrix. Always was. Always will be. Though like Phantom Menace, et all, the badness of the sequels is so great, it almost taints the original. Singing and Dancing in Zion? Sucked when it was Ewoks doing it in Return of the Jedi, and it sucks when it’s you, Zionites. Zionians. People of Zion. Yeah. Defending Zion against attacking machines with … EMP devices all around the edge of the city. They’re the only things that’ll work, as you told us in the first movie. … … No? What, then? … Walking robot things with machine guns? Of course. But this would have been sufferable, if there were cool fight scenes. There were not. Neo vs 1000 Smiths. A snoozefest. I can see crappy CGI fights on my playstation already. No need to go to the movies. Hell, someone Neo fought (I don’t even remember who – how sad is that?) said “In order to know someone, you must fight them!” … what the FUCK is that? Here’s an imaginary outtake from that script:
MAN: Let’s fight!
NEO: Where I come from, those are fighting words!
[They fight]
Seen each of these once, as well. Plan to keep it that way.
3) Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls
Ace Ventura – Pet Detective was a movie about a smart, sensitive guy acting like a dick as a defence mechanism. The sequel is supposed to be about the same guy, but this time he’s just a dick. Directed by Steve Odekerk, I guess maybe while on crack, because his movie Kung Pow – Enter the Fist is good enough to merit a permanent spot on my video ipod.
4) Dungeons and Dragons
The single worst edited movie I have ever seen on the big screen. I’ll wager the studio saw the final result and brought people in in an effort to lose a B-story, or to re-edit it into a different story altogether. The protagonist actually does a non-ironic Big No towards the end of the film. You know, the Big No? Also known as The Khan? Where you drop to your knees and raise your arms and the camera is craned up above you and you yell NOOOOOOOO as it moves up? Optionally, it may be raining when you do this. No-one seriously does this in a movie any more, it’s always done ironically. And yet D&D found a way.
5) Wild Wild West
Wikki-Wikki-Shit.
I had more to say, but even remembering these terrible movies is bumming me out. My comments are getting shorter and shorted as my will to live is sapped. I’m going to give up on this for now. Oh, Wild Wild West, a movie so bad a giant steam-powered spider couldn’t make you good.
April 11, 2007 at 2:14 pm
> 4) Dungeons and Dragons
That one I reached the end with absolutely no idea what was going on. The characters were all doing random things for no obvious reason and odd things were happening.
Then I watched the deleted scenes and it all came together and made sense.
It’s the worst case of “shouldn’t have deleted those scenes” I’ve ever seen in a movie.
– MugginsM
April 11, 2007 at 3:38 pm
Howard the Duck was good, you bastard!
Granted, Lucas wasn’t intending to make a B grade classic comedy, but it hardly matters what he intended because that’s what it is. Anyone who can claim that Evil Dead 2 is decent and deny that Howard the Duck is equally good is conflicted and needs therapy. (I think I’ve been in the US too long). How can anyone not like the spagetti western shootout scene?!
*&* I own it on tape with Japanese subtitles. Which just adds a whole new level of bizarreness to the thing when you read them against the English.
April 11, 2007 at 9:36 pm
Star Wars: bleh. I kinda like the third one, but mostly because it was the one that most effectively milked nostalgia for the original three.
Matrix Sequels: A case of the J.K. Rowling Syndrome – after their initial success no-one would edit them. The Wachowskis needed someone to tell them that maybe stuffing every idea they’ve ever had for a film into these two wasn’t a good idea, and that maybe they should put down the bong, stop going “whoa” over the nature of causality and get back to doing the cool action scenes they’d proved themselves capable of.
Ace Vetura 2: Never has a film so embodied the old “both original and good; unfortunately the good parts are not original and the original parts are not good” quip so completely.
Dungeons & Dragons: What the fuck were they doing to Jeremy Irons? Seriously, the way he was acting, it looked like they were dosing him up with amphetamines and flogging him in the testicles in between each take.
WWW: I say again: bleh.
Here’s my bottom four from — holy shit — six years ago. How old am I? But you know, I don’t feel that it really needs updating.
April 12, 2007 at 1:33 pm
LOL
it looked like they were dosing him up with amphetamines and flogging him in the testicles in between each take – dude, i just lost a mouthful of strawberry milkshake across my monitor reading that!! was not prepared for that at all 🙂
April 12, 2007 at 2:22 am
I think we’re forgetting the “large” animal movies.
Anaconda:
Great, you kill off the chick I thought was cute in the first 5 mins of the film for no good reason with no warning and made me feel physically ill in doing so, fuck you I don’t care how big the snake is now, you can go fuck yourself, I walked out of the Cinema on this one which is rare for me.
Mighty Joe Young:
Um what, theres a large Gorilla and umm yeah that seemed to be the plot right there, also walked out of the cinema I just got bored and wandered off.
Deep Blue Sea:
This looked so crap I didn’t even bother going into the cinema in the first place, plot line, we made these sharks really big, really intelligent and um they like escaped, doh!, yeah whatever I can go to my grave not having seen this and I won’t be sad.
April 12, 2007 at 4:04 am
Dungeons and Dragons is a masterpiece… especially when compared to the sequel.
April 12, 2007 at 1:42 pm
checkered list
1) Attack of the Phantom Revenge of the Menacing Sith – if I had years to get excited about more Star Wars movies, Lucas had an equal amount of years to put the fucking things together in his head. And do it well.
totally agree. i only really continued watching after phantom menace for ms. portman.
2) Matrix II & III – i think the original was way too much to live up to. and after they’d managed to paint themselves into a corner, they ideas started going a bit crazy.
3) haven’t seen. 4) hahaha, the big NO was funny…what was funnier was having marlon wayans in the movie- i didnt know black guys in medieval times sounded like black guys from southside jamaica queens, new york?