Ok, what happened in the book? Did the whole Congressional whitewash thing never happen? That seemed awkwardly tacked on to me – as well as something impossible to to keep secret.
I’m still torn about Superman Returns. The story is crap, Lois is unbelievably young, and Kal-El is actively unlikable, but the visuals are gorgeous. Usually that wouldn’t outweigh the rest for me, but here it does – if only because there are four wonderful sequences that DVDs make easy to watch detached from the rest of the movie.
But you usually know a film’s not going to be very good. Tim Burton’s “Planet of the Apes” was terrible, but I knew there was a 95% chance it would be bad and was just rolling the dice on a weekend where we’d seen all the other movies worth seeing.
“The Phantom Menace” is the easy winner of this contest for me.
There was still hope after Matrix 2 that an interesting rabbit could be pulled out of the hat for 3 that would make 2 worthwhile. That’s what makes 3 so unforgivable. When 3 finally came out, it proved that 2 wasn’t a bad sequel, it was a mediocre first half of a terrible sequel that was split into two films and got way worse in the second half.
But my all time disappointment has to be Highlander: The Source. I was a fan of the original movie, I was a fan of the series, I even liked Highlander: Endgame, the film that passed the torch of the Movies from the original Movie sequels (which are well-known to be crap) to Movies based on the TV series, which is actually quite good. I was soooo looking forward to seeing the next movie in the theater… then it was going to go straight to DVD… then it was going straight to the Scifi channel. That should have sent off the alarm bells… but I still looked forward to it. Made myself a bowl of popcorn and sat down to watch… And saw suckage like nothing had sucked before. And in a franchise that contains what is widely regard to be one of the worst sequels of all time, that’s saying a lot.
Monsters Vs Aliens
Fun idea!
Great voice cast!
Engaging character designs!
Stephen Colbert!
And then…bleh.:smack:
Not just his character. I actually liked the Commodore who was the romantic rival of Will Tuner. Not only was he competent but he was also a pretty good guy. That was all lost in the second and third movies.
Spoiler for book and movie Contact
[spoiler]In the book, Eleanor Arroway never said “take me on faith”, she said “I’ll prove it” and did.
When she went in the spaceship and saw her father, he gave her a clue that would prove that there was a creator to the universe and told her she could find it in Pi. She went through the Congressional hearings and other debriefings, but kept to her guns that they did go on the trip, that it wasn’t a scam, etc.
The hubbub finally died down and she set her computer to finding this anomaly in Pi, which it does, taking months to do so. The book ends with the computer finding this anomaly, thereby proving scientifically that a “God”, i.e., a creator of the Universe of some sort, exists (or existed).[/spoiler]
If you’re referring to Episodes 4,5 and 6 I’m completely in agreement. What a let-down!
The third Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie tore a hole in my childhood soul.
Blindness: Interesting concept, but horrible execution and incredibly dull.
You’re dead to me! Dead!
I will second Star Trek: The Boring Movie, and add all Stars Wars movies after the first one. Also Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull. My daughter dragged me to see Transformers, but I didn’t expect much (and got it) so that doesn’t count.
Regards,
Shodan
Alien: Resurrection.
I was lukewarm on the Alien movies, but I freakin’ loved Delicatessen, and City of Lost Children was my favorite movie ever. So when I heard the director was making an Alien movie, I was beside myself.
And then I saw it.
Bleah.
Also, being a big William Gibson fan, and loving the short story, I was looking forward to Johnny Mnemonic. What a waste.
I forgot about Transformers 2. I liked the first one alright and didn’t see why everyone hated it. I nearly walked out of 2. I rewatched the first one and no longer care for it either.
The Matrix 3 sucked. When Matrix 2 ended, I thought, “They’re still in a Matrix, within a Matrix!” Nope, Neo had magic powers.
That was like me with Borat, sometimes the movie is an aquired taste and it takes a fresh look to see it, especially if its the second or third movie of the night that you have seen.
Im still gonna destroy that DVD of napoleon dynamite, when I find it again.
Declan
Seriously, Office Space and Napolean Dynamite. Clue me in here guys. Is it like a world-wide snipe hunt? A RickRoll sort of thing where entire countries conspire to trick the newbies into seeing this crap?!?
Have to reluctantly agree. My husband is a huge Superman fan, so I get to see all kinds of Superman shows, and this one just wasn’t anywhere near as good as it should have been. I can’t even put my finger on why.
I walked out of it, too, when the Penguin bit someone’s nose and it started spurting blood. Oh, please. I’ve since watched it all the way through, and my first instinct was the right one.
You know, when you mash up those two names together, it changes everything. 
I like “Johnny Mnemonic,” but I’ll admit that I have an unusually high tolerance for Keanu Reeves movies. 
Bad Tom Hanks movies? I’ll see your Bonfire of the Vanities and raise you Punchline. How could this movie go wrong? (Apart from having Sally Field in it.) It’s got Tom Hanks! And it’s about stand-up comedy! So there will be lots of hilarious stand-up in it!
This is the only movie I have ever seriously considered getting up and walking out in the middle of, and the only reason I didn’t was because a friend took me to see it for my birthday and I didn’t want to seem ungrateful.
Alice in Wonderland, Tim Burton version: I usually love his work but this one left me so cold. It looked fine but I cannot remember anything that happened in it, not even the ending. What a disappointment.
I was a big Ali G fan but Borat was not funny and was uncomfortable to watch.
Oh, yes, this. Letdown of the decade, for me. The only point that began to engage me at all was when the Red Queen was being banished, and she began to cry or whatever, and I started to feel a twinge of sympathy for her–it would have been interesting if they had explored the backstory of her character; how she came to be the way she was. But yeah, the script sucked and, except for Helena Bonham Carter, the performances were phoned-in rehashes of old tricks (aHEM, Johnny Depp), and the girl who played Alice was downright boring.