Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION The Anywhere Machine Movies that disappointed you!

Aaron Williams beat you to that one Bri.

I mentioned this thread to my roommate. The film he felt was a disappointment was "Independence Day"

10,000 BC. After what Roland Emmerich did with Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow. Like a DnA storyline falling apart in the third act.

"E.T., Close Encounters and 2001: A Space Odyssey are examples of movies that I *wanted* to like, being a fan of sci-fi, but found terribly disappointing."

Let's see... saw E.T. once... ONCE!! More than enough.Bordered on nauseating. CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, if I hadn't read the comic-book adaptation first, and knew the ending and was waiting to see the ending, I swear, I would have walked out halfway thru. That's how annoying that film was. (My sensibilities and Steven Spielberg's must be so far apart, only a tiny handful of his films I've ever gotten to really like at all...)

Now 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY I saw when it first came out, in a theatre equipped for C I N E R A M A (curved screen & 3 projectors!). Could barely follow it, but was highly amused when, halfway thru the "star gate" sequence-- HALF the audience walked out! HALF!!! Outrageous. Then I read the novel, and was able to better figure out what was going on. I went to see it again EACH time it was reissued in the 70's (it got reissued more often than FANTASIA) and really enjoyed seeing it on a big screen in one theatre in Moorestown equipped way back then with a STEREO sound system. But when ABC ran it, it disappeared from theatres... and over the years, all the "big" houses got cut up into shoeboxes...

Now 2010-- that I love without reservations. Sometimes I'll watch the 2 of them back-to-back (a day or so apart). 2001 is an amazing technical achievement... but 2010 is a great MOVIE.

All of the National Lampoon's Vacation movies. Probably the movies I hate more than anything else. 5 minutes of one of those and I feel like the Hulk when Rick Jones is killed every few years--ready to start punching people in the face!

A girlfriend took great umbrage to the fact that I hadn't seen E.T. and made me sit down and watch it. We're not together anymore.

Excruciatingly boring movie (and I say this as a big fan of Star Trek: the Motion Picture and A.I., which are widely panned as being boring).

The only thing that made me wake up was when the dude started sculpting Devil's Tower out of mashed potatoes. I thought 'I've been there' and then I thought 'bastard is ripping off Call of Cthulhu...'

Different setting, I saw it while traveling Indonesia, in a little Kinabalu movie house not much more than a painted white wall. I marveled at the reaction of a peoples barely a full generation out of the longhouses, bones in the noses and stretched ear lobes, freaking out when a Pawnee showed up. And Buffaloes (Bison)? They LOVED those.

I still really don't know what the movie was about but the visuals were stunning.


OT: for me I guess, Caddy Shack but then I'm not a huge Bill Murrey fan.

Ironclad. One sentence movie review: Awfully bloody and bloody awful.

I'll agree with you guys that it's not the most engaging movie ever, and I don't personally enjoy it either, but I do think it is justified in the praise it gets solely because it's level of innovation literally changed the way films are made. There is so much in terms of tracking shots, narrative structure, shot composition, etc. that really seem commonplace when you watch it now, but were absolutely unheard of at the time. That it seems pedestrian now is a testament to just how much it set the standard for film.

Biggest disappointments for me:

The Crow: The book was such an amazing piece of dark and uncomfortable poetry, and then this "MTV KEWL Dark" thing comes along and turns it into something completely different. Even more frustrating because Lee looked GREAT.

Lord of the Rings (particularly Two Towers): I understand that things needed to be cut, but to add stupid BS and arbitrarily change plot points really frustrated me. Jackson could have stayed more faithful and still achieved what he wanted.

Watchmen: Awful, Awful. awful. Snyder completely missed the entire point. Total letdown.

Guess I'm just a purist at heart.

Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. The actor playing Caspian was FAR too old. The addition of the slight romantic interest between Caspian and Susan made me want to puke. The addition of the failed attack on the castle wasn't needed.
Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Where do I start? They cut out nescessary scenes, changed the order of how things occured in the book, added a scene with the White Witch that was totally unnescessary and basically just butchered the entire story.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows part2. C'mon... I can't be the only one that was dissapointed (despite knowing full well they would never do it) that Harry wasn't nude (as he was in the book) when he met Dumbledor in the 'Kings Crossing' afterlife.

See also its influence on comics, particularly via Bob Kane's Batman artwork.

One of the most important or influential movies of all time I'll grant it, but one of the greatest? Not by a long shot, imo.

I saw the ending of this when my roommate watched it. I noticed right off that the vampire they ground up appears at the end. I hope the continuity person on the film never worked in continuity again.

I agree with the Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

Regarding the non-nude scene in Deathly Hallows part 2, after Rowling revealed that Dumbledore was gay do you really think they would have a young guy that many would still consider a kid be nude with him?

That was really the least of the continuity problems w/that film. The entire premise (that there is an overnight switch from a normal day to a month long period of sustained night) is a continuity error. It just doesn't work that way. And while I'm railing, why was it imperative that all planes out had to be off the ground before the sun set? Can planes not take off at night?

In any case, the movies in which I've been disappointed have been mostly of the sequel/prequel types... movies that by their creation actually decrease my appreciation for the original film(s). The Godfather III, both Matrix sequels, the entire Star Wars prequel trilogy.

But my absolute most disappointing film was Tim Burton's "Sleepy Hollow". Perhaps it's not fair, because I had absurdly high expectations for this film. I grew up in Kinderhook, NY... the basis for the fictional Sleepy Hollow. I went to "Ichabod Crane High School" for Pete's sake! At the time, Johnny Depp was my absolute favorite actor, I was a huge Christopher Walken fan, and I thought that Christina Ricci was about the hottest actress in existence (not to mention the fact that she bore an incredible resemblance to my girlfriend from my Kinderhook days). I felt like this movie was tailor made to be exactly what I wanted in a film...

...but it wasn't. I hated the liberties taken with the story, I found the performances to be almost caricatures, and the "horror" reminded me of nothing so much as "Large Marge" from "Pee Wee Herman's Big Adventure." All hallmarks, I found out as the years went on, that would typify so much of Tim Burton's output for me.

Cool World!!

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Arial, Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Arial, Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by Quislet, Esq:
<strong> </font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Arial, Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Arial, Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by Pov:
<strong> Debbie Does Gitmo was low-class, even for porn. Not even worth a Sexflix rental...

I find most movies, disappointing, TBH. And the more they get hyped up as being some transcendent experience of either the high or lowbrow variety, the more disappointed I usually am.

Probably the main reason I enjoyed Thor recently was because I don't regularly read the comics, so I wasn't constantly comparing the movie to the comics and feeling shorted. It also helped that I avoided most of the discussions about it before watching, and that I paid three bucks to get in rather than whatever ridiculous amount they charge for first-run films these days.

As for "THE HAPPENING"... I enjoyed it.

It was creepy but also unintentionally funny. I've seen in 2 times in fact.

ALso, I read on ew.com that there is a "cult" audience growing for the film, who seem to dig it for its uniententionally funny scenes.

Transformers: The Movie, the animated one from 1986. It wasn't released theatrically in Ecuador, and I didn't see it until after I moved to the States in 1990 and rented the video.

Having LOVED the majority of the post-movie episodes, I was expecting crazy Frank Welker Galvatron, and his awesomely evil lieutenant Cyclonus, not boring Leonard Nimoy Galvatron and speechless nonentity Cyclonus. Hell, ALL of the celebrity voices sucked, especially that talentless waste of flesh Judd Nelson.

Other points of contention -- I had no problem with the old-school Autobots getting massacred, but there was no character build-up, and we hardly even saw any of them die on screen; the plot, or what passed for it, was weaker than even the worst episodes of the TV show; and Optimus Prime stood around and LET Megatron kick the #$@#$@ out of him.

I honestly used to be like this as well. I actually forced myself to stop expecting too much from movies and now just want to be entertained. If a movie can entertain me...it's a good movie for me. If not, then it really sucks and I will never bother with it again. I have no problem with Comic movies taking liberties with back-story and histories...as long as it makes sense internally.

Lol, me too! My wife and I thought we were the only ones! In fact, I have a hard time taking Mark Wahlberg seriously on film--he's so unintentional funny sometimes.

Hangover 2 was a big dissapontment.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom - as a kid I imagined it was going to be so awesome. Then when I saw it, I thought it was crap. 15 years later I gave it a rewatch, thinking maybe I was too harsh. Nope. It is a damn awful. Unlike Raiders and Crusade (which was entertaining) Temple had no charm to it.

I do believe I already said I knew they wouldn't do it: (despite knowing full well they would never do it).
However, I am still disappointed that they didn't. The forced choreography to keep his 'bits' off camera would have been hillarious. Or maybe odd, stray banks of fog?

GREEN LANTERN: SO disappointed. Bad. Like ... BAD bad. Like your football team losing by 50 points in the Super Bowl kinda bad. Like seeing your sister in a porn kinda bad. Just ... ugh - it gives me a knot in my stomach just thinking about it...