Top 10 Worst Movies from Great Movie Franchises
This whole blog is me talking about my love for some great movies from great movie franchises. But even some really solid to excellent movie franchises have their weaker movies. Today, I’m going to share the top 10 worst movies from good movie franchises. Just so you know, the movie I have at number 10 I think is the best of these movies, and the movie at number 1 is the worst of the bunch. So instead of going from worst to best, it’s best to worst.
10. The Incredible Hulk: I love The Marvel Cinematic Universe, it has some of my favorite movies of all time, and it is my favorite movie franchise of all time. But I think that The Incredible Hulk is the lowest point of the franchise. It’s not bad, it has some great moments inside of it but it’s just mediocre and boring. Honestly, I don’t care about anything going on inside of this movie, whether it’s the army, Bruce trying to stop being The Hulk, or Tim Roth’s character. Also, this movie was produced by Universe, and not by Paramount which produced Phase 1 of the MCU. And you can tell that, it’s a much darker movie with it’s colors and the tone, and so it feels like the black sheep of the MCU. I think what they should have done is push this movie back to 2009. This movie came out about a month after Iron Man came out, so I think if they did push it back they could have changed it a bit to make it feel more like Iron man, and maybe it could have had the success that Iron Man had. And therefore, it wouldn’t feel like the black sheep of a fantastic franchise.
9. Jurassic Park III: This is a movie that isn’t good, I wouldn’t go positive on this movie. But I still find it very watchable and enjoyable. Jurassic Park 2,3, and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom people criticized for being ok sequels. Certain parts of them are ok, and not good but they are still watchable. This movie has plenty of dinosaurs eating people that I get a good enough time watching it. It’s on this list, so it isn’t a fantastic movie, it's not nearly as good as some of the other movies in the franchise. Tea Lioni’s character is pretty annoying, and they basically have her screaming for 90% of the movie. I don’t buy her relationship with William H. Macy’s character, they don’t feel like husband and wife. It is nice to see Sam Neil return as Grant, but honestly besides that, the idea of the movie, and the entertainment value it’s not a great movie. But I think they had the pieces to make a very solid edition to this franchise.
8. A Good Day to Die Hard: A movie that when I first watched it in 2020, I heard from everybody that it’s awful and a trainwreck. The Rotten Tomato score is 15%, which is really really bad. I went to check this movie out, and I didn’t hate it. Totally mediocre, and bland, but like Jurassic Park III I can get some solid entertainment out of it. I was never bored while watching it. I think having a Die Hard set in Russia is a nice change of pace. But I just don’t care for Jai Courtney as an actor, and I don’t care about him as John McClane’s son. And it’s not just Courtney’s performance that ruins the character, but the writing for the character isn’t very good. Basically for 70% of the movie he is talking down to McClane about him being a screw-up dad, and even then John is messing up with the mission as a whole. And it’s a bit of a shame that this might be Bruce Willis’ final Die Hard movie, because this is just such a dud. But it’s still a watchable movie for me.
7. Justice League (2017): If I was to make this list prior to the release of Zack Snyder’s Justice League, this movie wouldn’t have been on this list. And honestly, Batman v Superman might have been here. But after the release of Zack Snyder’s Justice League, this movie dropped in my DCEU movie ranking, because now I just view this movie as a corporate product that Zack Snyder was kind of involved with, but not really. And honestly, I haven’t re-watched this movie since I watched Snyder’s version, but I’d assume that I would like it less. Even then, now that we know what went on behind the scenes, and how awkward it was for the cast. And just a couple days ago, Gal Gadot revealed what Joss Whedon said to her during filming of this movie. “What I had with Joss, basically, is that he kind of threatened my career, and said if I did something, he would make my career miserable. I handled it on the spot.” That quote was something that Gal Gadot said, and when you hear that, it just puts a nasty taste in your mouth. And in a lot of ways, puts a nasty taste on the entire movie.
6. Men in Black: International: I love the original 1997 movie with Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, and even Men in Black II which gets a lot of hate, I still have a good bit of fun with it. And I think Men in Black III has some interesting ideas inside of it. And when they announced this movie, a 4th Men in Black movie starring Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompason, with Liam Nesson thrown into the mix. And directed by the guy who did The Fate of the Furious, and that sounds like it could be the best sequel since the original. WRONG! For me this is easily the worst Men in Black movie, it’s so bland and boring. And doesn’t have an unique style that Steve Soderbergh brought to his movies. So you watch it, and it’s just generic and not very interesting. It’s also very predictable, you know where certain plot points are going by the end of the movie. Kumail Nanjiani is fun in this movie, like he always is. And I’m very excited to see him in The Eternals later this year. But this was such a big disappointment for me, that didn’t really work on any of the levels that it is going for.
5. Jason Bourne: I love the original Bourne trilogy, I think Identity and Ultimatum are fantastic action movies. Supremacy, I think, is the weakest one of the original trilogy. And I enjoyed The Bourne Legacy well enough, it wasn’t terrible but it was just fine. But for me, this is easily the worst movie of the franchise. I was so excited it had been 9 years since the last Matt Damon lead Bourne movie, and I watched the movie and thought it was meh. Went to the theater again to watch it, and thought it was meh. Re-watched it in March for my Bourne ranking, and thought it was meh. It’s a movie that isn’t very exciting, and it’s a movie that doesn’t add anything new. It follows the Bourne formula, but it doesn’t do anything new or exciting with the formula. Tommy Lee Jones is pretty solid in this movie, some of the action is fine. But even then, the action isn’t nearly as memorable as the stuff in the original trilogy of movies. And that’s the thing with this movie. Everything about it is just very blah and boring.
4. The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift: I recently reviewed this movie as a part of my review series leading up to F9 at the end of June. And this is a movie that I’ve never enjoyed, and thought it was meh. It’s nice to see the introduction of the Han character, Sung Kang is very good when he plays him. But I don't think they got a good actor to portray a high school, Lucas Black just doesn’t give off a highschooler vibe about him. He doesn’t look or act like a high school kid. And like The Incredible Hulk and Jason Bourne, I just don’t care about anything that is going on inside of this movie. And I think a big part of that is that this movie feels like 2 movies. You have one story which is about a high school boy trying to start over in Tokyo with his dad, and gets involved with street racing. But then you have a movie about the mob in Tokyo, and they are the villains of the movie. The two of them don’t really go together, and therefore there are some tone issues in the movie. I think it’s a movie that would have been received better if it wasn't called Fast and Furious. But it was a cheesy knock off of Fast and Furious, where they don’t say that it’s in the same world, but you could definitely see how it could be.
3. Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones: This is my least favorite Star Wars movie, and this is a movie where there isn’t much about it that I enjoy. The movie has two main plot lines that aren’t very interesting. One is Obi-Wan investigating Padama’s killer, and also investigating new threats that are appearing in the galaxy. The other one is about Anakin being assigned as Padame’s bodyguard, after she is attacked. None of them are engaging or really interesting at all. Hayden Christensen is given a whole bunch of George Lucas’ lines that it’s weird to see the future Darth Vader talk about that he doesn’t like sand. Like the prequels, it’s so obvious that all of these actors are on green screen, even when you have Anakin and Obi-Wan chasing a villain in speeders in the sky, it’s so obvious that Hayden Christensen and Ewan McGregor are on in fake car in front of a green screen, therefore it just takes you out of the movie. I think the little sequence when Obi-Wan meets Jango is good, the little fight afterward is pretty cool. But in general, this is my least favorite Star Wars movie, live action or animated.
2. X-Men: Apocalypse: Now I love X-Men: Days of Future Past, it’s my favorite movie in the entire franchise, and I think X-Men: First Class is a great movie. So when they said that the follow-up movie is going to be X-Men: Apocalypse, that sounded awesome. And that this could be the best franchise inside of the larger X-Men franchise. But boy was I wrong, this movie is such a disappointment and such a meh movie. I actually remember walking out of the theater, and really liking this movie. But after re-watching it, and thinking about it, I thought this movie was a total disaster on every front. First up, the movie is way too long. At 2 hours and 27 minutes, it can get really boring at points in time. And they could have easily trimmed 10-15 minutes from this movie. I think a big part that you could have just cut was the scene where some of the team gets captured by Stryker. They could have found a better way that wasn’t as long and boring of an excuse to have them be captured. The design for Apocalypse in this movie is horrible. He looks like the ooze guy from The Power Rangers movie from the 90s---and that’s definitely not a good thing. So in general, this movie should have been one of the high points of the X-Men franchise. But instead we got a bland, boring, and forgettable edition.
1. Fantastic Beasts the Crimes of Grindelwald: Now, I think the 8 Harry Potter movies are pretty good to amazing. And the first Fantastic Beasts movie is fine, it’s enjoyable enough. But this movie is shockingly BAD. And if you have paid attention to my blog, I don’t call very many movies BAD. This is a movie that executes all of it’s ideas horribly, where there is so much going on. They start introducing characters from the Harry Potter universe, but that doesn't make sense. They didn’t need to be there, and that’s the case with half of the character in this movie. They introduce a character that ties into this character, that then ties into this character, that then ties into this character. So there is so much going on that it’s so hard to follow what is actually going on here. They did that so they could set up future Fantastic Beasts stories. THey were so focused on setting up future movies, that they forgot to come up with a complete story in this movie. Beyond that, there is like a 15 minutes flashback scene about Newt in Hogwarts, but it didn’t need to to be there. To be honest, while I was watching this movie. I debated walking out of the theater, and this might be the only movie that I’ve thought about that with. So easily, without question that is the worst movie from a GREAT movie franchise
Hope you enjoyed me trashing a lot of movies. What are some of your worst movies from great movie franchises? Thanks for reading!
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