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At least with Episodes II and III, you can make good use of the FF button and skip through every scene with Anakin and Padme, and the remainder is actually pretty good, at least watchable.

With Episode I, you really just can't get away from Jar Jar and child Annakin....but if you can bury your natural repulsion of these characters deep enough within you, the film can be enjoyable.

 jasper76 wrote:
At least with Episodes II and III, you can make good use of the FF button and skip through every scene with Anakin and Padme, and the remainder is actually pretty good, at least watchable.

With Episode I, you really just can't get away from Jar Jar and child Annakin....but if you can bury your natural repulsion of these characters deep enough within you, the film can be enjoyable.

Or, you could just pick an episode of Clone Wars and get better acting, better writing, awesome scenes they could never do with live action and your faith in Star Wars restored. I'd much rather watch even some of the middling CW arcs than EP:I-III

I really do enjoy the Clone Wars show, for what it is. I could do without the little girl paduan, but I understand Star Wars is first and foremost targetting kids.

 jasper76 wrote:
I really do enjoy the Clone Wars show, for what it is. I could do without the little girl paduan, but I understand Star Wars is first and foremost targetting kids.

Yeah, she does get annoying, but features a little less in the last couple of series, which I reckon are the best. Things like the return of Darth Maul and the Krell arc are leagues ahead of the prequels even for adults to enjoy.

Anyone who hasn't given Clone Wars a look, I really do recommend it.

To get back on topic one film that did die critically and at the cinemas (although public reception for the DVD release was a little better) was John Carter of Mars. A massively underrated film, if you ask me, and yet according to critics it's terrible.

John Carter was friggin horrible. I still want Disney to refund my ticket and compensate me for time! (just my opinion)


Although I didnt personally like the movie, I'm surprised Annie was considered...I thought that movie was like a sacred cow among fans of musicals.

Rocky IV was cheese, but it is actually interesting to watch as a Cold-War era propoganda film.

I actually enjoyed Waterworld and The Island of Dr. Moreau, and to a lesser degree even Battlefield Earth, although objectively I'm aware that they're all bad movies. I'm willing to forgive alot when it comes to sci-fi flicks, I think.

Alexander was also IMO sort of underrated. It was a dissapointment in terms of what Oliver Stone could have done with it, but if you settle in to what he did decide to do with, I think its enjoyable at times.

I'm curious if the Lone Ranger was as bad as critics said.

 jasper76 wrote:

I'm curious if the Lone Ranger was as bad as critics said.

It's not actually that bad. I found it pretty enjoyable.

A bit predictable and cliched, but enjoyable enough nontheless.

Hayden Christiansen is not a terrible actor. He was pretty strng in Life as House or somethign like that prior to his role in Star Wars. However, he is probably one of those actors that is only as good as his director, and George Lucas is a terrible director for actors to work with.

Also, Razzies are for weaklings. If you want true pain you need to go to the DTV market.

I can't speak to Hayden Chris..., but Natalie Portman is capable of good acting, as displayed in Black Swan, so I'm inclined to agree that alot of the problem was with Lucas' directing. It is probably also hard to act out an entire movie in front a blue screen (or whatever they use nowadays).

I mean, even Samuel Jackson was pretty bad in those films, and we all know he's capable of laying down a good performance.

 Paradigm wrote:

The final fight is too much about showing off special effects and not enough about the characters (compare it to Luke vs Vader in V or VI and you'll see what I mean.

This was also my problem with the fight in I with Darth Maul.... There was no emotion to the fight (unitl a Man with a Special Skill Set dies)... but the music for that particular fight was pretty good.

I sorta liked the Darth Maul fight scene (both of them really). Maybe it was just because the rest of the film was so bad. I thought it was cool to see the dude use a two-sided light sabre, and bust out some actual martial arts stuff, rather than just the clash of swords from the original movies.

Attack of the Clones as a Razzie?

Bite me you bunch of ers

How can they put First Blood: Part II on there? It is literally the Rambo movie everyone thinks about when they think about Rambo. If there's a Rambo cliche (or a Marbo joke) its based on something from this movie. Yeah, its not a powerful film like the first one was, but its pretty good for what it was: a mid-80s action movie starring Stallone before he started to parody himself. While not a great film, First Blood: Part II is too good and too influential to be on ths list.

Now, Battlefield Earth? The Star Wars prequels? Oh yeah, they belong here.

I will say that I kind of enjoy Battlefield Earth, despite knowing how absolutley crap it is. I saw it in the theater, for free, with a buddy of mine, and we spent the whole movie pointing out every rookie villain mistake John Travolta make, as if he were an aspiring villain in one of the RPGs I run.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Frazzled wrote:
Attack of the Clones as a Razzie?

Bite me you bunch of ers

Oh please, the only good parts of that movie were the parts Lucas stole from other, better films (the Searchers, Fifth Element, Braveheart, Gladiator, etc).

I can't believe the Desolation of Smaug wasn't considered in 2013.

Ensis Ferrae wrote:

 Paradigm wrote:

The final fight is too much about showing off special effects and not enough about the characters (compare it to Luke vs Vader in V or VI and you'll see what I mean.

This was also my problem with the fight in I with Darth Maul.... There was no emotion to the fight (unitl a Man with a Special Skill Set dies)... but the music for that particular fight was pretty good.

To me, it finds the balance between the two just right; there's enough skill involved to show the fact that trained and peak-fitness Jedi (Something we don't really see in the original trilogy; Obi is old, Luke is too inexperienced and Vader is a shadow of the fighter he used to be) are very dangerous, but you also have Maul's sheer hatred (especially in the Ray Shield bit), Obi-wan on the edge of giving in to anger after Qui-gon dies, and Qui-gon calmly accepting his fate.

Frazzled wrote:Attack of the Clones as a Razzie?

Bite me you bunch of ers

AOTC was the absolute depth of Star Wars for me. The Arena Battle was awesome stuff, and the 'car chase' bit is pretty cool, but that's 15 minutes of a 2 hour film, the rest of which is a Boba Fett rip-off, waay to much Anakin/Padme rubbish, and the eponymous Clones were hardly in it.

Again, though, it was a huge part of my childhood, so I can't completely hate it. (After all, hate leads to the Dark Side)

jasper76 wrote:I can't believe the Desolation of Smaug wasn't considered in 2013.

While I had my issues with the film (really only the rushed opening which I hear the extended edition will fix and the set piece at the end), it was still a great film. Not on par with LOTR or Unexpected Journey, but still awesome.

 Paradigm wrote:
While I had my issues with the film (really only the rushed opening which I hear the extended edition will fix and the set piece at the end), it was still a great film. Not on par with LOTR or Unexpected Journey, but still awesome.

I had to fight to stay awake in the theater, and the only things I remember were things that made me mad (especially the non-cannon and poorly executed love triangle). Maybe I just have Peter Jackson-fatigue at this point.

I liked the happenings, transformers, and starwars films.

I agree with about 80% of that list, but a good chunk weren't that bad.

PhantomViper wrote:

 Cheesecat wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:

 Cheesecat wrote:
I don't get why The Blair Witch Project is up there isn't that movie a bit of an innovator?

Not everyone was a fan of that particular innovation.

Yeah, I hear a lot of found footage films are crap.

Found footage films have been around since the 80's at least (go watch Cannibal Holocaust)! The only thing that Blair Witch "innovated" was in its exclusive use of shaky cam!

Yeah I know, but I believe it was the first one to get mainstream recognition and start a new trend in the horror genre.

Like most people here, I kinda liked some of those movies, although my choices are a bit odder than most.
I really like Hudson Hawk, and I actually think The Final Frontier isn't a terrible movie.
I think Rambo II mostly catches as much flak as it does because of how it isn't even close to First Blood in tone and depth. As a simple action movie, it ain't half bad
I also kinda liked Showgirls, Indecent Proposal, Armageddon and, for some reason, Congo.

...

There's a lot of movies on there that I've never heard of though, and quite a few that I'm surprised aren't on the list. AvP, anyone?

Finally, someone actually made a Basic Instinct II? Why?

 Leigen_Zero wrote:
Thing that frustrates me about critics is that most of them think that unless a movie is intelligent, thought provoking, and has some deeply-hidden meaning that would put a hipster making abstract-performance-art-via-interperative-moustache-styling in a starbucks to shame in it's cryptically-hidden message, it must be a crap movie...

I'm not sure that's really true about critics like "The Avengers" (the 2012 not the horrible 1998 one) got a lot of positive reviews from critics and it's a simple story to follow (mind you it doesn't make you feel dumb for the most part) then again unlike the transformers movies it actually had

well-choreographed action scenes, interesting characters and for the most part had a logic that made sense in the context of movie and genre.

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/marvels_the_avengers/

 Cheesecat wrote:
I don't get why The Blair Witch Project is up there isn't that movie a bit of an innovator?

Yes, and the innovation with Blair Witch that's lost in time is that it was a found footage film with a hoax attached. It sounds silly now, but having seen it on opening night I can tell you that there were people in the theater that were unsure if the movie was fake or real.

The viral and guerrilla marketing for the film (again, promoting the authenticity of the footage) was pretty groundbreaking, and the Sci-Fi Channel special "telling the real story behind the movie" (and done in the vein of those old In Search Of-type shows) was the icing on the cake.

But again, all that stuff that really frames the movie is lost in time. The movie suffers more when viewed now in isolation AND when you consider the relentless diet of low budget found footage imitators that it spawned.

 KingCracker wrote:
They seem to really hate Stallone Costner and Swarzennegger. Granted their movies aren't great but that's the thing.... they really aren't supposed to be. That's like getting upset that you laughed at a comedy. I dunno, that list is full of bad, but it's also full of not the worst by a long shot.


Also I love Water World. Such a fun movie

A lot of the Costner 'hate' is knee-jerking to the fact he took the Best Director Oscar for his directorial debut film, Dances With Wolves. He was seen as too young and stepping on the toes of long time directors.
Pretty much anything he does gets nit-picked for the stupidest and/or smallest things simply because some to this day think it was utter BS that he won that Oscar...

Waterworld was just a good fun, popcorn sci-fi with a mix of post-apoc near future'ness to it. (IIRC, the movie hinted at the setting likely being around 2100-2200) It was never meant to be taken all that seriously or have any super deep 'meaning of life' crap shoehorned into it. (but then all sci-fi suffers from that to a decent extent)


Star Wars episodes I-III on the other hand deserve their Razzies, though it would be much more appropriate to simply call them the "George Lucas clusterfeth Razzies."

Everything wrong with those films is purely because he's a crap director and the world's worst screenplay writer!

Yeah, objectively the Transformers were badly choreographed and messes that constantly went for cheap or lowest common denominator 'jokes' (I mean really, pot brownies mom getting high stuff? Your kid is in college in 2010 or whatever, that means at least you were college age in what, the early 80s? And you don't know about pot?), or robots 'peeing' on people? That's just a laugh riot.

And don't get me started on the illogical messes that the plots were.

"Only a prime can kill a prime." - uh? Why is that again? If we throw him into the sun it won't do anything because the sun isn't a prime?

Why is the Autobot Matrix of Leadership the trigger for a machine that will blow up the sun and turn it to energon? What does that have to do with Leadership?

Why, when trying to prevent the use of said Matrix of Leadership, would the leaders of a space faring empire 'hide' it on the same planet as the machine they were trying to stop, and then - especially in light of the aforementioned invulnerability of the guy they were trying to stop from using the machine to anything except themselves and one other guy - kill themselves to make an ineffectual prison for the Matrix of Leadership?


The movies were nothing but 'splosions, jets taking off, and people running way more than they should when they are hanging out with a bunch of cars.

Oh, and lens flares. A kings ransom of lens flares.

 Cheesecat wrote:

 Leigen_Zero wrote:
Thing that frustrates me about critics is that most of them think that unless a movie is intelligent, thought provoking, and has some deeply-hidden meaning that would put a hipster making abstract-performance-art-via-interperative-moustache-styling in a starbucks to shame in it's cryptically-hidden message, it must be a crap movie...

I'm not sure that's really true about critics like "The Avengers" (the 2012 not the horrible 1998 one) got a lot of positive reviews from critics and it's a simple story to follow (mind you it doesn't make you feel dumb for the most part) then again unlike the transformers movies it actually had

well-choreographed action scenes, interesting characters and for the most part had a logic that made sense in the context of movie and genre.

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/marvels_the_avengers/

I think that's actually a good example of how critics can get swept up by a movie just like the rest of us. I had a lot of fun watching the Avengers, but at the end of the day it had a basic, formulaic plot, a lot of superheroics, and very little depth. RDJ (as usual) and some snappy, classic Whedon-style dialogue covered over some of the weaknesses.

Experiment 626 wrote:
A lot of the Costner 'hate' is knee-jerking to the fact he took the Best Director Oscar for his directorial debut film, Dances With Wolves. He was seen as too young and stepping on the toes of long time directors.
Pretty much anything he does gets nit-picked for the stupidest and/or smallest things simply because some to this day think it was utter BS that he won that Oscar...

Nah...he's just a horrible, monotone, generic actor. He does seem to have talent on the directing end of things.

Experiment 626 wrote:
It was never meant to be taken all that seriously or have any super deep 'meaning of life' crap shoehorned into it. (but then all sci-fi suffers from that to a decent extent)

I wouldn't say ALL sci-fi suffers from this... Blade Runner, to me, is a prime example of a story based around "what is life" and thus, it doesn't have that theme "shoehorned" into the movie.


I'd agree if you had said, "Most" sci-fi, because there are some great films out there that do have deep meanings associated with them that aren't shoehorned in for the sake of.... something.

This thread provides me with an opportunity to ask a question I've wondered about now and then.

When I was younger, I used to like the Adam Sandler movies. Specifically Billy Madison, Happy Gilmore, The Wedding Singer, 50 First Dates, and to a lesser extent, Mr. Deeds.

Later, his movies because increasingly bad. I remember watching Click and being unable to finish it. I haven't really bothered with anything after that*.

So that has led me to wondering - did his movies actually become significantly worse on an ongoing basis, or did I just get older, and they were always really bad?




*Reign Over Me was terrific, but it wasn't "an Adam Sandler movie", it was a movie with Adam Sandler in it.

 Ouze wrote:


So that has led me to wondering - did his movies actually become significantly worse on an ongoing basis, or did I just get older, and they were always really bad?

I personally think something has "changed" somehow within him that many of his movies now aren't quite what Billy Madison, Happy Gilmore and his more famous works are... I remember watching an interview he did for "Grown Ups" where, he specifically stated that he realized his kids were getting old enough to watch his movies, and he somehow realized that he didn't really like the idea of his kids watching Dad play Happy Gilmore on screen anymore.

 Ouze wrote:
This thread provides me with an opportunity to ask a question I've wondered about now and then.

When I was younger, I used to like the Adam Sandler movies. Specifically Billy Madison, Happy Gilmore, The Wedding Singer, 50 First Dates, and to a lesser extent, Mr. Deeds.

Later, his movies because increasingly bad. I remember watching Click and being unable to finish it. I haven't really bothered with anything after that*.

So that has led me to wondering - did his movies actually become significantly worse on an ongoing basis, or did I just get older, and they were always really bad?

You just got older. His movies always had some good laughs, but were never that great.

 Ouze wrote:
This thread provides me with an opportunity to ask a question I've wondered about now and then.

When I was younger, I used to like the Adam Sandler movies. Specifically Billy Madison, Happy Gilmore, The Wedding Singer, 50 First Dates, and to a lesser extent, Mr. Deeds.

Later, his movies because increasingly bad. I remember watching Click and being unable to finish it. I haven't really bothered with anything after that*.

So that has led me to wondering - did his movies actually become significantly worse on an ongoing basis, or did I just get older, and they were always really bad?




*Reign Over Me was terrific, but it wasn't "an Adam Sandler movie", it was a movie with Adam Sandler in it.

I'd say a combination of the two - his movies have a general range of okay to terrible and we've not only gotten older but also more and more bored by his schtick.

I also liked Funny People, and had hoped in vain that it was a move away from making 'Adam Sandler Movies'.

The Adventures of Ford Fairlane is one of my all time favorite movies. Wild Wild West was pretty good, too.