Worst:
10. Surrogates
This film could have been terrific — based on a brilliant graphic novel written by Robert Venditti, this “shut-ins go out in robot bodies” epic is a potent metaphor for our relationship to technology. Unfortunately, the film version, starring Bruce Willis, is a cluttered, clunky mess. It’s every dumb action-movie set piece jammed together with bits of chewing gum, plus an incredibly preachy screenplay that doesn’t trust the audience to reach conclusions on its own. And that’s really the worst sin a dystopian movie can commit: force-feeding us messages, because the dystopia isn’t powerful enough to reach us on its own.
9. The Fourth Kind
Even as Paranormal Activity was making the Blair Witch-style “real-life recordings” vibe seem fresh again, The Fouth Kind was trying to pass off fake alien abduction tapes as real, and unfortunately the film-makers put more effort into trying to hoodwink the press than they did into crafting a compelling movie. The actual film is a mish-mash of bad “archival” footage, unscary alien abductions, and flaky plot twists like the idea that a professor can speak ancient Sumerian because he’s seen some texts.
8. New Moon
There’s something to be said for a book and movie franchise that has converted so many new people, especially girls, into SF/fantasy lovers. But still, this movie slathered us with cheese and bored us with long stretches of Bella moping after Edward, who’s decided they can’t be together. Edward starts appearing to Bella, Obi Wan-like, as she becomes an adrenaline junkie and runs around with shirtless Jacob. The moments where the film winks at the audience, or veers into outright self-parody, can’t quite make up for the goopiness of much of the rest.
7. X-Men Origins: Wolverine
If we had a crane with a camera on it following us around all the time, we would feel tempted to look up at the ceiling and howl as well. Where can we get one of those? The fourth film in the X-Men saga continued X3’s slide into mediocrity, with too many random mutant cameos and a campy mutant self-discovery plot that felt instantly forgettable, even without a memory-erasing magic bullet. At no point in this endless film do Logan and Sabretooth feel like brothers, and we don’t really care which one of them kills the other. Is there any way that Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool movie can make up for this disaster? We can only hope.
6. The Time Traveler’s Wife
We loved Audrey Niffenegger’s clever, disciplined time-travel novel just as much as we hated the schlocky, smug movie version. The film excised some of the coolest parts of the novel, and substituted a lot of cookie-cutter romantic-dramedy whininess and angst. What was a classic love story, as well as a insightful look into the way in which we’re all time-travelers because we’re constantly reliving our pasts and dreaming of our futures, becomes a mindless (and heartless) exercise in pouting as character development. All the more disappointing, because it had such great material to work with.
5. 2012
It’s tempting to give this film a free pass, because who expected greatness, or anything other than explosions, from Roland Emmerich’s umpteenth disaster film? But it’s worth calling out this film for its brain-dead destruction porn and focus on special effects to the total exclusion of characters, or anything really. Bad science, bad writing, bad acting… but most of all, it’s kind of boring, and you really have to turn off your brain to enjoy any of it. To quote from some of the comments in our review: “I didn’t care who lived or died,” “I felt dead inside,” “My problem with this movie isn’t the rampant destruction, but the boringness in between.”
4. Knowing
Making fun of a Nic Cage movie these days almost feels like challenging a dyslexic to a spelling bee. But really. This film was so insultingly bad, that we can’t let it slide. Cage plays a college professor, whose idea of teaching astrophysics is to hold model planets and say stuff like, “Hey, man. The sun is like, really, really hot. Did you ever think that maybe things happen for a reason?” It’s like stoner astrophysics 101. And then he gets hold of a time capsule from the 1950s that’s full of numbers which somehow predict every disaster, including the end of the world. Even if you can ignore coincidences like a plane crashing next to the highway where Cage is driving, you’ll be clutching your head by the time this movie’s final plot twist is revealed. If this is Knowing, then ignorance really is bliss.
3. Pandorum
Zombies infest a spaceship — how could that be bad? Well, um… how about if it’s zombies on a spaceship where Dennis Quaid is doing a crappy pastiche of Fight Club? How then? We never knew space madness could be so boring. Actually, the biggest problem with this film isn’t Quaid’s endless freak-out, or the random cannibal guy who’s diagrammed the entire plot in graffiti, it’s the boredom. The makers of the film seem to have mixed up suspense with “nothing happening for long stretches,” as our heroes skulk around dark tunnels endlessly. It could have been so much better, if the themes of reclaiming your pride as an officer and sticking together had been foregrounded. Even a cool ending can’t save this stew.
2. Terminator Salvation
We debated whether to include T4 among the worst letdowns of the past decade — but there were already so many from 2009 on the list. It’s shameful to admit it now, but we expected more from this film, thanks to the reunion of The Dark Knight’s star and writer, Christian Bale and Jonathan Nolan. Instead, what we got was the giant head of Helena Bonham Carter delivering exposition. Sam Worthington does his best with the role of Marcus Wright, who discovers he’s a cyborg, but he’s hobbled by a nonsensical plot. And Bale is a major disappointment as John Connor — it’s hard to believe anyone could make us miss Nick Stahl.
1. Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen
We celebrated this film as the ultimate apotheosis of Bunuel-style surrealism, but if you’re expecting it to make a lick of sense, you might as well expect ants to climb out of your hand. Honestly, 2012 only wishes it could be as dumb, as massive — and yes, as boring — as this clunker. These robots can turn themselves into anything — except for compelling characters. And unlike 2012, in which the action set pieces are the punctuation in between long boring sequences, this film’s action sequences are the most boring part, because it’s hard to tell what’s supposed to be going on, and we don’t really care anyway. If 2009 was the year that giant CG rainbow showers finally conquered movie screens, then Transformers 2 was the worst offender.
