Top 5 Most Disappointing 2023 Movies
Overall, I thought 2023 was a great year for movies. But every year there’s a couple of movies that left me wanting more, that left me disappointed. So here are the 5 biggest disappointments of 2023 (plus honorable mentions). Let’s get started!
HONORABLE MENTIONS:
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny: Now I’m a newer fan of this franchise, the only Indiana Jones I’d seen in its entirety was Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. But I watched all of them prior to this one coming out, but I was still very excited for it. I thought the trailers were great and it looked like a fun solid time at the movies. And there’s a lot of elements that I liked about the film, mainly Harrison Ford, the score, and the arc they gave Indiana Jones. But the movie is way too long with Harrison Ford is about 25-30 years older then what Indiana Jones should be. The escapism and magic of Indiana Jones is gone in this movie. So overall, it’s good enough. It’s not bad by any means, but it’s not great either.
The Creator: Now this is one of the most polarizing films of the year. I know some people have it in their top 10 of the year. Some people probably in the bottom half of 2023. For me, I’m right there in the middle. I think it’s a solid film that has elements I enjoyed. Mainly the production value and how the movie looks great since most of it was done on practical sets. It’s been about 2 ½ months since I’ve seen the film. I don’t remember much of the characters, I remember enjoying some of them. The film was very predictable at points, I was able to put some pieces together fairly early on in the film.
5. Napoleon: Ridley Scott’s war epic that stars Joaquin Phoenix and is about Napoleon, one of the most interesting historical figures of all time. This movie sounded like it was going to be great and a potential awards contender. And the movie…was so frustrating. There's absolutely things in here to love whether it’s the performance by Joaquin Phoenix and Vanessa Kirby. Or the sound here is great, it really does a great job of putting you in the war with the characters. And surprisingly enough it has a dry sense of humor about it, not big laughs but small little moments that do put a smile on your face. What holds this movie back is it felt like a Napoleon greatest hits album. It feels like they took all of the important events of Napoleon’s life but didn’t have a clear story in here. Didn’t have anything tying them together, so it’s hard to know what to latch onto and care about. I went into the theater not knowing much about Napoleon and left the movie…not knowing much about Napoleon. I so wanted this movie to be great because you have a great director, a fantastic lead actor, and source material to make a really good movie. But what we got was a good movie, that should have and could have been so much better.
4. Haunted Mansion: Now I was actually really excited for this movie, I get weirdly excited whenever they decide to adapt Disneyland rides into movies. Mainly Pirates of the Caribbean and Jungle Cruise. Both movies I liked and had a lot of fun watching. So when I heard they were doing Haunted Mansion, and based off of the trailers looked like they got the look right for the film. It looks like what the ride at Disneyland looks like. They got a great cast with some great comedy actors with Owen Wilson and Danny Devito. To be fair, I wasn’t expecting this movie to be fantastic. I wasn’t thinking this was going to be one of the best movies of the year. But I am at least expecting a solid fun time at the movies. And in a lot of ways, I had a solid fun time at the movies. But that “fun time” only lasted while I was watching the movie, afterwards I kind of forgot about it. I was driving home and was already starting to forget about it. So it’s a movie that has a big budget and movie stars and source material for a really fun spooky family summer movie. But all in a movie that has nothing super memorable about it.
3. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania: I believe going into 2023 this was in my top 5 most anticipated for the year. For whatever reason, I loved the first trailer we got for this movie and it only elevated my excitement for the film. I was so excited to get another Ant-Man movie with Kang as our villain. And establishing him as the next big bad for the next saga of the MCU. There was a lot of potential for this movie to be great and be one of the best MCU movies in the post-Endgame saga of the MCU. And unfortunately, it didn’t live up to what it could have and should have been. It’s been well documented that this movie was a victim of re-shoots and the people running Disney mandating certain things to happen. This movie’s ending was re-shot about a month before the movie came out. There’s a line in the trailer where Scott Lang tells Kang “I don’t have to win, we both just have to lose”, when you put that line in the trailer it sounds like this movie is going to have massive, massive stakes. And you watch the movie and it doesn’t have that, you don’t feel anything in the finale of the film. I really feel like Kang should have killed somebody in the finale and really establish him as a threat. Now I’d be very curious to see what the original pitch for this movie was and what the original script was, because I bet it was much better. Because of how lackluster this movie was, it helped lead Marvel to rethinking their future plans with Kang.
2. Ghosted: Another one of my most anticipated films of 2023, where I heard the genre it was in, the cast, and who the creative team behind it was. I was so excited to check it out. It’s an action romantic starring Chris Evans and Ana de Armas, getting a Knives Out reunion in here was fun. And it’s written by the writers of Zombieland and Deadpool. All of the pieces sounded like a movie I was going to love and have a good time with. However, the final product we got. The final version that dropped on Apple+ wasn’t very good. And I feel like it struggles with all of the same issues of so many modern day streaming service original movies. They seem to put out super lazy and generic films that won’t do well in theaters but if you put movie stars on a poster and drop it on a streaming service, suddenly people will watch it. And this movie and Heart of Stone with Gal Gadot on Netflix fall into this category for 2023 movies. So it’s a watchable movie, but it's a watchable movie because I like this sort of thing. I like big action movies with movie stars, but here it’s a totally generic version of it. It’s tough to know where this movie went wrong, because it’s written by Rhett Reese’s nd Paul Wernick, who I previously mentioned wrote Zombieland and Deadpool. Two films that are very funny with a great sense of humor, and here it’s not really all that funny. The characters are designed to be very unlikable, you don’t care about either one of them. The movie doesn’t do a good enough job explaining why they fell in love with one another so quickly. So it just feels like another streaming service original movie that comes and goes. And it’s frustrating that this is one of those movies.
1. The Flash: This is another film that seemed to divide audiences a good bit. Some people loved it and some people really didn’t like it. As for me, I’m right there in the middle and I saw a frustrating film that had things that I appreciated and things I really didn’t appreciate. This was in my top 5 most anticipated for 2023, once we got the trailers my excitement only went up. I loved that they were bringing back Michael Keaton as Batman here and I was excited to explore the multiverse inside of the DC universe. And the early buzz for the film seemed to be very positive, so I went into this movie with very high expectations. And I left with my expectations not even met. And that’s so frustrating, I shouldn’t be saying this about this movie with Michael Keaton’s Batman and Ben Affleck’s Batman in it. And unfortunately, the biggest disappointment of this movie was the inclusion of Michael Keaton’s Batman and Supergirl. They felt so underused, and they didn’t really serve a point in the plot. You could have cut them from the film and not much would change. That’s so frustrating to me, which is the big selling point of the film. The big thing that made so many of us so excited to see this movie doesn’t really serve a point in the actual plot of the film. And even the note they end this movie on with the cameo that’s at the end, it’s a fun surprise but that’s all it is. It’s not a satisfying ending to the movie itself, that’s a weird decision to end this movie on. I’m not the first person to say this…the CGI, not good. Some of the speed force stuff looks weird and wacky, but even other shots look like they weren’t fully finished. I didn’t hate this movie, but I didn’t love it either. I thought the film was good yet so frustrating.
Comments