"worst 'big' film I've ever seen" thread – Take 2

Yep. Really, really dull.

I’ll have to defend the LOTR films, but then I’m a big fan of the books and I think that Jackson did a good job of translating the story to celluloid

What? He changed the freakin’ story!

Mission Impossible 2 was worse

Well you say that because you haven not seen the third…

the best thing in mamma mia is the blue landy at the beginging

What? He changed the freakin’ story!

Name me one film-of-the-book that doesn’t?

(ok, apart from Watchmen)

Doesn’t mean I have to like it!

I quite enjoyed it at the cinema but, in hindsight, Indiana Jones and The Crystal Skull was more of a let down than Star Wars prequels.

I’d forgotten the Crystal Skull! I seem to recall reading a quote from Spielberg about hwo it was going to be good old fashioned stunts rather than CG bull$hit, and what did he do?

Also the whole aliens bit stretched my suspension of disbelief just too far, but I’m not sure why- I could go along with the whole Ark thing and the supernatural stuff in the Last Crusade even though it’s just as hocus-pocus really, but the UFO stuff just didn’t feel right for Indiana Jones.

Think this takes some beating….

Inception – found it really hard to watch, had to force myself to continue watching, 2nd half is better but nowhere near as good as I was expecting.

sadly i agree inception was overrated. It wasn’t bad, but stuff like the snow cat chasing with machine guns unable to hit anything needlessly ruined it. Neat idea of a film, but the execution was sloppy and appeared to run out of steam.

2012. End of thread.

Lifer – Member

“What? He changed the freakin’ story! “

Course he did, if he hadn’t it’d have been 3 films in before anything happened at all. But it was still pretty close. No scouring of the shire, no tom bombadil but I can’t rememember anyone ever lamenting the lack of that knobber.

‘That knobber’ is pivotal to the story.

Avatar, no question. Dreadful.

LOTR films were great IMO.

Oh yeah, I second No Country for Old Men as utter dross.

I just have to ask… In what possible way is Tom ‘Knobber’ Bombadil pivotal to the story?

Most films mentioned here I’ve never bothered to watch, and those I have, like LOTR I’ve accepted the flaws and enjoyed them for what they are. I enjoyed the books when I read them thirty-odd years ago, but I couldn’t face reading them now. Inception I really enjoyed, and Sin City. Highlander is kind of daft but I really enjoyed it first time around and I’ll happily watch it if it’s on tv. Highlander 2, though! What a total crock, one of the worst sequels in genre cinema history. Let’s take an existing story, then throw away any connection with the original and fabricate a new backstory where the Immortals who had been here for centuries suddenly prove to be space aliens, and chuck in continuity errors so obvious they’re embarrassing. Funnily enough, Highlander 3 took up where the first one finished. I wonder why?

Titanic: The entire film is just about the ship sinking. All the bits before it hits the iceberg are just to show you the ship, it’s just a guided tour. Then all the running around inside the ship as it sinks is more of the same. So tune out the plot and it becomes massively better.

The sinking bit is great.

I just object to the idea that the sinking of the largest ship ever built and the loss of 1,500 lives is not enough of a story. You have to tack on a stupid romance to get people interested.

Historical films should stick to facts.

And let’s not get on the the Americans actually finding the Enigma machine in that U-boat film.

Highlander 2, though! What a total crock, one of the worst sequels in genre cinema history

No, as far as I can remember they only ever made one. Following a great film with one or even two steming heaped piles of shite, surely no-one would be stupid enough do that, especially not by desecrating the first by bringing back charactars who’d been killed as ghosts, no, that can’t have happened. They only ever made one

(guilty admission, I went to the cinema to watch Highlander 2 the day it came out. I was horrified. I’ve never seen it since.)

The Abyss especially the last half hour with the bloke just descending down and down and down

The Deer Hunter was also very tedious, but fell asleep so suppose it could have got better, but I doubt it

Amadeus didn’t get that at all, can’t really say if it was bad, but not my cup of tea

Van Helsing
Independence Day
Avatar

You have to wonder about the people who sign the cheques. But then millions of people paid to see them, so who’s the idiot?

Gangs of New York
Inception
Groundhog Day
Being John Malkovich

…all utter bilge.

Highlander 2 is an interesting one.

Like CZ and others have said, it’s a dreadful film. I was a huge fan of the first one at the time and was crushed when I saw the sequel. The problem right off the bat is that Highlander ends; it doesn’t lend itself to a sequel at all. I always wondered how they were going to make a follow-up and the answer turned out to be “really quite badly.” Between Highlander 2, AlienCubed and Escape From LA, I’ve learned the hard way not to get too excited about forthcoming sequels to beloved movies.

HL2 was a film with huge production issues. The main problem was, the movie company wouldn’t leave them alone and kept interfering and changing stuff, eventually pulling the plug on it entirely before it was finished and then hacking together a movie with unfilmed scenes missing. It had massive continuity issues and didn’t make a jot of sense.

Christopher Lambert reportedly tried to quit during filming but they wouldn’t let him leave, and the director was really unhappy with the entire thing (he famously walked out of the premiere screening in disgust).

Oh, and the cobblers twee ending where they all turn to stardust or whatever was a bolt-on for Europe and never part of the original release. How special do we feel?

However. When it came out on video, the director went back and tried to fix it. He got rid of a lot of continuity errors, threw out the “hey, aliens!” plot line completely and basically tried to turn it into the film he wanted to make in the first place, as best he could in post-production. It’s called the “Renegade Edition,” (I have it on NTSC VHS) and whilst it’s still not a great movie by any stretch of the imagination, it’s exponentially better than the theatrical release. (I believe he went back to it again for more tweaks when it went to DVD, though I’m less sure what was done here.)

I wouldn’t pay a lot for it, but for the curious it’s probably worth a rewatch if you can aquire a copy. It’s not the train crash you remember.

I forgot to mention Godzilla (the remake) and Blair Witch 2.

Completely terrible.

The Expendables. Even all the explosions failed to make the ironing exciting.

Blair Witch 2? The original Blurred Witch was bad enough. Tremendously overrated film.

The Expendables had me laughing all the way through, it was so over the top bad that it was good!

it was so over the top bad that it was good!

+1

Tried to watch that new tron film. Terrible. Utter rubbish.

Avatar also a big disappointment, could’ve just watched pocahontas with a pair of blue tint sun glasses on.

Die another Day. Managed to be better then you’d expect for a film with madonna in it, but still pretty rubbish.

Die another Day. Managed to be better then you’d expect for a film with madonna in it, but still pretty rubbish.

No, I’m not having that.

Die Another Day was utter rubbish, whose awfulness can be summarised in just two words: invisible car

‘Jarhead’ – truly awful self indulgent whiny American nonsense.

‘Platoon’, see above.
In fact, anything by Oliver Stone, with the possible exception of ‘Salvador’.
All his films are like being trapped in a bar with a shouty paranoid American drunk for three hours whilst he bangs on about how someone else ruined ‘the greatest nation on earth’.

The three ‘Star Wars’ prequels are terrible – truly awful films and the worst casting I’ve ever seen.

I really like ‘Independence Day’. Think of it as a kid’s B movie and it’s quite good fun, with some really good comic turns in it.

Oh, and ‘Big’ is wonderful.

‘The Deer Hunter’, awful?
Words fail me. I think it’s one of the most heartbreaking and powerful films I’ve ever seen.
Good job we’re all different innit?

whose awfulness can be summarised in just two words: invisible car

Yeah, good point. Forgot about that.

Realman – I watched Tron yesterday and actually thought it was good, not brilliant, but entertaining all the same.

Like RustySpanner says, it’s a good job we’re all different.

Big is brilliant though.

Cant believe Memento has been mentioned.

Also I though Peter Jacksons King Kong was fairly good fun.

Is Die Another Day the one where he surfed a tsunami on a missle or something?

That was cack, sorry.

Star Trek V is the benchmark by which all other terrible films should be judged

Although 2012 and Pearl Harbour are also pretty good benchmarks for being the nadir of Hollywood cinema esp when you consider the bothe cost in excess of $100million to make

What? He changed the freakin’ story!

Name me one film-of-the-book that doesn’t?

(ok, apart from Watchmen)

The main event in the ending of Watchmen was different!

Alien Vs Predator was ok, but “requiem” was utter toss

Oh god, I watched AVP Requiem last night. I have no idea why, having watched the first one.

Let’s never speak of it again.

i think putting a $15,000 movie into the ‘Big’ catagory is pushing it a bit…….. but yet the guy in it did deserve the bullet

I was thinking more about the hype it got, rather than the budget. It was supposed to be terrifying, but we were giggling through it.

I really liked the LotR films – as a huge fan of the books, I knew there was stuff that would have to be changed to make it filmable, so I knew that Tom Bombadil/Glorfindel etc would probably get the chop.

There were a few things that niggled mind – Eowyn being turned from a really strong female warrior character to a wet blanket, the bit where Galadriel goes all intimidating made a bit weird as if she didn’t know what she was doing, and the whole “Arwen’s fate is tied with that of the Ring” stuff. Oh, and Faramir being turned into a Boromir clone, whereas THE ENTIRE POINT of his character is that he was a bit estranged from his father because he wasn’t like Boromir. But I still loved the films. It had wizard kung fu and Eomer.

Mrs Toast – I actually thought the films are better than the books, I got half way through the last book and gave up. They were soooo boring. 😳

Surely the Pirates of the Carribean sequels need a mention? The first one was enetertaining, but the ones after that? Utterly appalling.