I mentioned in my review of G.I Joe (yo check it out) that this Summer movie season has been pretty terrible. With so many big franchise movies being released and flopping all over the place, I figured why not make a best of the worst list. All the below mentioned films are entries into an existing franchise. So without any further a-doo…
WATCHMEN
Alan Moore’s Watchmen is one of the most important novels of the 20th century. You would be hard pressed to find someone who has read the graphic novel who would disagree that this book helped shape the comic industry into the monster that it is today; both from artistic and distribution aspects. Zack Snyder’s feature film adaptation of this important and intelligent piece of pop fiction does the book justice…but only for about 30 minutes or so. The opening of the movie is strictly awesome and it does itself a service by guiding the clueless audience members (seriously people, read the book) into the world of Watchmen with the alternate history montage. Even though the fight between the Comedian and his attacker almost ruins the whole ending of the film (and more importantly, the book), the first 20 minutes of the film is royally faithful to the graphic novel. This faithful relationship that Snyder has with the source material is short lived as the rest of the film contains terrible slo-mo fights, a terribly awkward sex scene, and a horrendous soundtrack (by Tyler Bates) deteriorate the Watchmen-experience until you feel as if a fantastic old storyteller was illustrating the book beautifully until a 9 year-old steps in and starts adding his own shit to make it more “exciting”.
The ending of the movie is what truly sullies the narrative of this adaptation and no, I am not crying about the lack of squid. I rather enjoyed the mass-bombing idea that Snyder came up with. *Spoilers for the rest of paragraph* What I hated was the change in the “culprit” of Adrian Veidt’s plan. Snyder’s treatment of the book’s ending makes the human race look dumb and leaves the world in a very dangerous place. Why a man who has control of all matter in the universe would punish the earth with bombs is beyond me. If Dr. Manhattan was going to strike against Earth, he would have simply turned the planet into a tasty breakfast sandwich or something more logical to better the universe. An adversary such as Dr. Manhattan would put humanity into a time of peace. Snyder should have recognized that humans start wars to appease divine figures enough as it is, and adding Dr. Manhattan as the new vengeful god of the universe would cause even more bickering to subside his anger with humanity. However, the greatest shame of all is the fact that the mass audiences who saw this film and enjoyed this blatantly idiotic ending will probably not pick up Alan Moore’s masterpiece. sigh.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
I do not think there was another franchise film released this year that had a shit-ton riding on it to deliver the goods like this one. I mean this movie had to impress the comic audiences, the X-Men movie fans and the general audience simultaneously. Hugh Jackman really did try to get this picture going in the right direction. Nearly every shot in this film bridges on good but never makes it there. Poor Jackman, as he was a producer on the movie, poured a great deal of himself into this and he only ran into problem after problem. An uninterested director and a really bad FX team working on this must have been enough to deal with, but then there was the piracy problem. With all of these things gone wrong for the movie, it is almost like the wounded underdog of the summer; you really want to like him and nurse him back to health but he is too contagious to get near without being sick to your stomach.
Plain and simple X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Terrible title) tries really hard to capture all of its intended audience, but it just…well…sucks. Even despite the great cameos of Gambit and Ryan Reynolds embracing his inner Deadpool, the script does not work cohesively with the rest of the films in the X-Men franchise or the comics. This is the least of the movie’s problems though as the special effects for this film are awful. During some moments of the film you can see the harnesses of some of the stunt guys and often enough Wolvie’s claws look like plastic in Jackman’s hands. This is inexcusable when the film’s budget is 150 million. I have no idea where that money went as it certainly did not go to the FX department. However, now that a sequel has been announced with Wolvie in Japan, it makes one wonder if Jackman is more determined than ever to get this franchise back on track or is he just going to add more casualties to the already established train wreck.
Land of the Lost
Personally, I am not a fan of the original Land of the Lost 1974 TV series, but I did grow up with the 1991 reboot. It really does not matter whether you are a fan of any incarnation of Land of the Lost as this film has almost no association with it other than the title and the setting. This is simply a Will Ferrell comedy with dinosaurs instead of ridiculous sports athletes. I suppose the main component that the TV incarnations and this film have in common is a campy atmosphere. But, with Ferrell’s character being clearly based on stupidity, the campy moments turn into a sad display of incompetence. Everything in the movie mocks Ferrell to the point where you want to get in on it too because its awesome to watch this guy’s life get ruined by prehistoric creatures. Land of the Lost works more to make fun and destroy the qualities of the original series. In all seriousness the movie should be called Ferrell vs. Dinos with the tagline being, “oh how the mighty have fallen”. What more would you need to stay away from this movie? How about the film was a commercial disaster, which Universal is trying to recover from, and it is one of the worst reviewed movies of the summer? Even though this movie firmly places another iteration of Land of the Lost into the depths of oblivion, there still is one more movie which commits far worse crimes against humanity…
AND THE WINNER FOR MOST RUINED FRANCHISE OF 2009 (so far) IS……
Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen
This is the worst movie of the summer and an arguable contender for one of the worst films in the past decade. Being a fan of Transformers since I first developed a cognitive memory, I have enjoyed nearly every single iteration of the franchise and mostly loved everything that has been released. I loved watching the original series with my far older brother, and making him watch Beast Wars in the late 90′s. When the first Michael Bay-formers movie was released, I cringed but did not hate the film with a fiery passion. I was even hopeful that they would fix everything wrong with the first one with the sequel. Little did I know what Michael Bay and his writers were doing to my favorite fictional robot friends.
First of all, what isn’t wrong with this movie? I’d say the threesome of death forest scene is the only piece of running time worth watching. Everything else is a complete, giant, incoherent, intolerable, franchise-destroying mess. Because this film is such an atrocity to cinema and an insult to organisms with eyeballs, a list of awful needs to be made.
List of Awful
- Shia Lebeouf is almost raped by a decepticon who takes the form of a hot and horny dorm room slut. Yes, a decepticon robot can transform into a hot 20-something. How the hell does a 100% metal robot turn into flesh and blood? More questionable is if any of the transformers could turn into humans than why wouldn’t they all turn into humans? Probably because that would make them Terminators like that sluticon basically is.
- The movie ruins its own established mythos in the first 20 minutes of the film with the all-spark shards. These shards still give life to robots like in the first movie however, they even bring Megatron back to life. The very same shards to the same all-spark that killed him in the last movie resurrect him. Need I say more?
- Michael Bay seriously does not care about anything that happened in his previous Transformers film. In this film, the existence of the transformers are still not known to the public. Even though in the conclusion to the last movie there was a city wide fight with news crews reporting and thousands of people running around as giant robots leveled their city.
- The Transformers mythos itself is ruined as Michael Bay does not care about what a transformer does. Case in point, the robot Jetfire can teleport anywhere he wants. Transformers do NOT teleport, and why would they take on the form of vehicles to get around when they have the ability to teleport?
- Plain and simple, this movie is pretty racist. The autobot twins Skids and Mudflap are two of the most racist characters that have ever entered cinema. Even more intolerable is the fact that these two racist, illiterate, and urban caricatures are the comic relief for children.
- There are so many inappropriate sexual innuendos in the movie with robots that one can not help but question if Michael Bay has a fetish. Whether it is a pair of giant robo-testicles or Megan Fox getting sexually assaulted by a Joe Pesci-bot, this is just all wrong. Does this still sound like a Transformers movie?
This list can go on and on about how this pile of crap annihilates the Transformers franchise. I feel bad for the kids who are exposed to this god forsaken film franchise because that is the worst part of it all. This new series is so MTV friendly and mainstream that the current general audience actually enjoy trash like this. And this is why Transformers 2 is responsible for making Transformers the most ruined franchise of 2009 (so far).
For more on how Transformers 2 is awful please visit Topless Robot’s hilarious FAQ located here
