Though it is part of a well-established and very successful franchise, Jurassic World Dominion, which came out on June 10, 2022, still earned a great deal of disdain from critics and even from some viewers (despite its financial success). For many, the movie was terrible, full of the excess viewers have come to expect from this type of blockbuster movie.
But Hollywood doesn't always get it right and many of these terrible movies continue to elicit strong negative reactions from viewers, as discussed on Reddit.
The Dark Tower (2017)
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The works of Stephen King have been adapted many times to screen, with very different results. Arguably one of the worst was The Dark Tower, which took many liberties with King’s beloved story about the gunslinger Roland and his fight against the Man in Black.
Mintibranch has this to say: “It's hard to follow, boring and left us very disappointed. I'm fine with a director taking liberties, but the only things remotely similar were that there was a blonde kid with a kinda sucky home life and a dude who shot.” Thus, despite its strong casting, it left many fans of the books unimpressed.
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes Of Grindelwald (2018)
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Even though Harry Potter is one of the most successful Hollywood franchises, the magic seems to have gone out of it with the lackluster performance of the various entries in the Fantastic Beasts movies. The second, in particular, has left a bitter taste in the mouths of many viewers.
It is a somewhat muddled movie, with the segments with Newt and his friends existing in tension with the higher-stakes drama involving Dumbledore and Grindelwald. Small wonder, then, that Toffee_Wheels calls it “ugly, low stakes, unnecessary and downright boring.”
Eragon (2006)
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Many successful fantasy novels have been translated into similarly successful movies (The Lord of the Rings being one of the most notable examples). Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case with Eragon, the hugely popular novel by Christopher Paolini.
Redditor RAWainwright notes: “Turns out that's literally the only thing they got even close to right.” It’s an unfortunate turn of events that shows the limits of studio wisdom. Though his novel features skillful storytelling and worldbuilding, little of this made it to the movie version, which is far too generic and bland to be successful.
The Happening (2008)
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M. Night Shyamalan has produced many notable movies, but they have varied significantly in their quality. The Happening, in particular, sets up a chilling premise: people begin to mysteriously die by suicide – only for it to come crashing down with the twist ending, which reveals that it was actually plants releasing chemicals into the air. It’s an unfortunate come-down and one that signifies the limits of the twist ending as a plot device.
Dolphin37 is unsparing in their criticism, stating: “I genuinely can’t imagine how a team of real people filmed some of those scenes and didn’t stop shooting out of shame. They must have known.”
World War Z (2013)
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The figure of the zombie is one that has appeared numerous times in popular culture, ranging from television to movies to comic books. While some of these have achieved iconic status, this is not true of World War Z. In large part, this is because the movie strips away the uniqueness of the book – an oral history of a zombie apocalypse – in favor of a paint-by-numbers zombie movie.
Kismet-Cowboy has many strong thoughts on the way the movie robs the book of its richness, writing: “The film is truly god-awful because it failed to adapt even one good thing and to this day I am so mad at the missed opportunity.”
Cats (2019)
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The stage musical Cats is, despite its weirdness, one of the most successful plays to have aired on Broadway. Some, thus, must have thought the movie adaptation would come to be seen as one of the great movie musicals. Unfortunately, the final product was hampered by many strange directorial choices, not least the decision to have the cats shot with CGI rather than traditional costumes.
Redditor Citizen_Kong writes: “I knew it was bad, but I thought it would be entertainingly bad, but nope, just boring and weird.” It fails, ultimately, to capture the magic that made the stage play such a delight.
Beauty And The Beast (2017)
Stream On Disney+
The live-action Disney remakes have met with considerable financial success, but audiences and their responses have been more mixed. Beauty and the Beast, for example, is almost a frame-for-frame remake of the original (and beloved) version from the 1990s, with the complication that many of the actors cannot actually sing.
House_T is particularly critical of the ending credits, writing: “I still consider the closing credits sequence of that movie to be nightmare fuel. People being happy in slow motion is weirdly terrifying.” Sometimes, it truly is best to leave the original as it is.
Jurassic World Dominion (2022)
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Even though the Jurassic World franchise has been very financially successful–and though the original is one of the best science fiction movies ever made–it has begun to show signs of wear. The final movie, in particular, is filled with plot holes and blockbuster excess, with the result that it fails to live up to the lofty expectations that many viewers had of a movie featuring dinosaurs.
Doppelfrio writes eloquently about the movie’s failings: “the entire movie was spent at a new “Jurassic Park,” just like the previous 5 movies. You know there’s a problem when your movie ends the EXACT same way as the previous.” Clearly, viewers identified problems that the creators could, or would, not.
Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise Of Skywalker (2019)
Stream On Disney+
The Star Wars sequel trilogy has been hugely divisive, with some hailing them as a success and others condemning them. The conclusion, The Rise of Skywalker has come in for particular criticism. Many took exception to the way it seemed designed to erase the events of The Last Jedi from canon.
Redditor Honeyrey, for example, writes: “Nothing makes a lick of sense when looking back to Last Jedi or even Force Awakens. Just a trashheap of 'how did we get here?'" It is clearly an example of a movie studio not exactly sure what to do with its most lucrative property and jettisoning the basic rules of narrative continuity.
Suicide Squad (2016)
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Though there are many great movies that are a part of the DCEU, it is almost universally acknowledged that Suicide Squad is not one of these. It very quickly jettisons its unique premise in favor of a very typical superhero movie, with a drab color palette and very lackluster fight sequences.
Redditor Vitrio writes: “It was so meh that I had watched like 90% of the movie and I would've been fine not finishing.” It has the dubious distinction of being a movie that works far better in theory than it ultimately does in execution.