Bottom Twenty Worst Films of the Decade (2 of 2) (1/11/2020)
- Heather German
- Jun 26, 2020
- 4 min read
10. Lucy
Lucy is probably one of the most idiotic “smart” sci-fi movies I’ve seen. The film starts with a ridiculous premise and then jumps the shark almost immediately. It flips between cheesy action thriller and poor attempts to be intellectual without any attempt to smooth the gap between the two, and it makes tremendously leaps of logic in order to prove a nonsensical point. It’s an insufferable, pretentious experience that I never want to sit through again.
9. The Dark Tower
The Dark Tower is one of my favorite book series ever, and this film adaptation disrespected it in nearly every way. It presents its mythology in as confusing and dense a way as possible while still over simplifying it, and removes every ounce of character and intrigue from the books in favor of a bland, boring action thriller. There are some decent scenes, but the heart and soul of the story have been thoroughly expunged, and even as a stand alone film it’s only marginally entertaining.
8. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice
Oooh boy, there’s a lot to unpack with this one. DC tried desperately to do all of the setup Marvel did for the Avengers with a single film, stuffing what felt like dozens of plotlines into one while simultaneously trying to continue the grimdark feel of Man of Steel. The result is a shallow, edgy caricature of everything that made DC’s past successes good, with an overbearingly cynical worldview and a plot that’s simultaneously confusing and boring. They seem to have learned from their mistakes since this, but it’s been rough, and this wasn’t even their worst film of the decade.
7. Terminator Genesys
What Hollywood has done to the Terminator is unforgivable. The first two Terminators were great sci-fi action films telling an intriguing humanistic story, but since then the timeline of the franchise has become more and more corrupted with less and less inspired installments. Terminator Genesys retcons every movie in the franchise since the original and almost serves as a remake of the first two and a continuation at the same time… it makes no goddamn sense at all. And on top of that, it’s one of the most boring and ploddingly paced films of the decade.
6. Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald
You know, I’ve seen worse scripts than this one, but most of those are in movies where it’s clear nobody has any idea what they’re doing. In massive budget productions like this one, the plots are normally thematically coherent if nothing else. Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald might be among the worst big budget franchise scripts I’ve ever seen, and considering Rowling herself wrote it, there’s no excuse for it (though let’s be honest, does Rowling’s name really mean much anymore?). Plot threads come and go, getting progressively harder to follow and more thematically inappropriate while simultaneously contributing nothing to the overall story, which is composed of people walking around Paris looking for Macguffins, until finally ridiculous character and plot resolutions are seemingly conjured out of nowhere in the end. Even the name itself is betrayed; neither Grindelwald nor the fantastic beasts do anything particularly noteworthy. At least the first movie actually used the fantastic beasts to make it somewhat entertaining. Not this one.
5. The Hangover: Part II
What do you do after you make one of the most commercially successful comedies of the 2000’s? Make a sequel that’s exactly the same plot but edgier and less funny! The Hangover is the worst kind of sequel, existing solely for the sake of itself while upping the ante in ways that alienate the audience its original brought in. It reminds me far too much of my edgy teenager phase for me to ever look back on it with anything but disgust. It also contains one of the most overtly transphobic scenes in recent cinema history, so that’s a point in the bad category as well.
I never bothered with the third one, though I’ve heard that’s even worse.
4. Suicide Squad
Suicide Squad seems to take a look at The Crimes of Grindelwald and one up it; what if, instead of just our script being a disaster, everything was a disaster? Batman v Superman and Joker were bad, but I can at least see what they were going for. With this, DC’s worst film of the decade, every single aspect of it not only fails but was completely misguided from the get go. The characters are either completely bland and useless or far too likeable to be anti-heroes, the editing and cinematography is atrocious on every level possible, there’s virtually no plot structure to speak of, and the villain is such a poor match up for this kind of character team up that it’s ridiculous. Oh, and of course there’s Jared Leto’s joker, who needs no words to describe his badness at this point.
3. Jack and Jill
Please God will somebody stop Adam Sandler before he hurts anyone else?
2. Vampires Suck
Vampires Suck only qualifies as a film in the loosest sense possible. I’m not sure if I can say anything more about this film and the directors behind it that haven’t already been said. Yet somehow, it’s still not the lowest movie on this list.
1. The Emoji Movie
The bottom film on my list may not be the worst from a cinematic craft perspective. It’s not the least coherent or the most offensive. But it’s the absolute pinnacle of the greed filling the corporate film industry in recent years. No thought whatsoever was put into this movie by anyone calling any sort of creative shots, and it shows. It was an offensively bad product packaged lazily by studio execs after getting a marginal glimpse at what kids are into these days and then shoved out the door. I’m so glad I didn’t pay money to see this, and my heart goes out to anyone who was forced to work on this movie by Sony so that they could eat. I can imagine there are few fates worse than having your name in the credits of The Emoji Movie.
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