You will notice a lot of Jan de Bont, Roland Emmerich and Michael Bay on this list. This is because they are awful. But you know what? I still go see their movies. I think Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen was one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen, but will that stop me from seeing Transformers: Dark of the Moon? Of course not. You may be asking yourself: “But where is Independence Day?” To that question, I have no answer. It’s one of those crappy movies that I have some sort of nostalgic love for. I cannot bring myself to publicly ridicule it. Now, allow me to don my snobby black beret and stroke my skinny, pretentious goatee as I list, and insult, some of the worst movies ever made.
The cold chases Jake Gyllenhaal down a hallway. That’s right, the cold. Chases him. Down a hallway. Also, in order to create some sort of quasi-deep commentary on survival, the characters discuss the merits of burning books in a library to stay warm, while being SURROUNDED by wooden tables and chairs. This movie made me wish that Global Warming would hurry up and put us out of our misery already.
This guy sums the plot up much better than I could, so, take it away hilarious, random internet movie snob: “So, Billy Bob Thornton is, like, the Boss of NASA or whatever (LOL), and he is like “we have got to fuck up this asteroid,” and some guy is like “we’ll just nuke it,” and Billy Bob Thornton is like “we can’t nuke it because of some made up reason,” and so they decide that the only way to destroy the asteroid and save the Earth is to talk to Bruce Willis, the Best Oil Driller in the World. Oh boy, here we go. Meanwhile, out on the oil rig, Bruce Willis is hitting golf balls at a Greenpeace boat because he is a MAN. It’s hilarious and stupid how you work to make the world a better place based on deeply held personal beliefs when you should be shooting at Ben Affleck with a shotgun because he is having sex with your daughter, Liv Tyler. The army is like “Mr. Bruce Willis, please come with us, asteroid time,” and Bruce Willis is like, “Ben Affleck is fired.” And I don’t even know what the big deal is anyway, because if we learned anything from Deep Impact it’s that when the asteroid hits Earth you just need to run up a tall hill. So, NASA is going to send a team of astronauts into space to land on the asteroid (sure) and drill a hole in it (yes) and fill the hole with a nuclear device (absolutely). But Bruce Willis is like “you guys are so stupid, the only way to do this is to send me into space.” OH, HOLD ON, WHAT? Nevermind, because it gets so much better a few seconds later when Bruce Willis is like “and I want to take my own team with me.” Take your own team with you? Into space? To land on an asteroid? And drill a hole in the asteroid and put a nuclear bomb in that hole? Better bring Daniel Farraday with you. You don’t want things to get ridiculous. So, Bruce Willis hires all his pals, and surprise: they are so wacky and out of control! Oh, and he hires Ben Affleck, even though he just fired Ben Affleck? Also, Ben Affleck already has his own oil company but it has been literally 24 hours since he was working for Bruce Willis? How did he get an oil company so fast? These are the types of questions we might have time to wonder if that asteroid wasn’t coming straight for us! Of course, it’s hard to imagine a group this ragtag going into space, but they are the only chance we have. Most astronauts train for years to go into space, but these oilmen will only have 12 days. Insert 45 minute training sequence. Now they are ready to go into space! First stop is the international space station where there is a kooky Russian cosmonaut who has space cabin fever and then there is another 45 minute sequence involving fuel lines and space fires and oh no Ben Affleck almost dies but then he doesn’t die at all phew but then a few minutes later he almost dies again but he still doesn’t die. But some people die. Because his ship (one of two!) gets hit by a meteor and crashes on the asteroid. (You know how things in space are always crashing.)” -courtesy of Gabe from videogum.com
Waterworld won 4 Razzies for Worst Picture, Worst Director, Worst Actor (Kevin Costner) and Worst Supporting Actor (Dennis Hopper). It cost something like $200 million to make back in the mid-90s which, adjusted for inflation, is about $45 billion today (I think my math is right). Kevin Costner was coming off the huge critical and commercial success of Dances With Wolves, so the studio was going to back him on any crazy-ass idea they came across, including Mad Max with Jet-Skis.
Battlefield Earth is consistently ranked as one of, if not THE worst movie ever made. Unfortunately for science fiction, it was based on a classic novel, so anticipation was fairly high when the bomb dropped. It went on to be nominated for 8 and win 7 Razzies, in 2000. It won for worst picture, director, screenplay, actor, actress, etc. It also won for Worst Screen Couple, which they gave to “John Travolta and anyone sharing the screen with him at any given moment.” And then, to put the icing on the cake, in 2010 it won the Razzies coveted “Worst Movie of the Decade” award.
Boy that trailer looked promising. It was, perhaps, the most incongruous movie-trailer-to-actual-film relationship in history. This one was nominated for 8 Razzies, including worst picture, worst actor and worst director for Michael Bay, who decided to make a national tragedy into another one of his super slo-mo action movies. I think Team America: World Police sang it best – the clip is above and the lyrics are here: I miss you more than Michael Bay missed the mark, When he made Pearl Harbor. I miss you more than that movie missed the point, And that’s an awful lot . And now, now you’ve gone away, And all I’m trying to say, Is Pearl Harbor sucked and I miss you. I need you like Ben Affleck needs acting school, He was terrible in that film. I need you like Cuba Gooding needed a bigger part, He’s way better than Ben Affleck. And now all I can think about is your smile, And that shitty movie too, Pearl Harbor sucked and I miss you (Interlude) Why does Michael Bay get to keep on making movies? I guess Pearl Harbor sucked Just a little bit more than I miss you.
If you want the perfect example of the unnecessary Hollywood remake, look no further than Wild Wild West. This movie managed to take two otherwise great actors (Kevin Kline and Will Smith) and drain them of any joy or talent for 2 hours. You can almost see them NOT wanting to be in the movie while you are watching it. It won 5 of the 9 Razzies it was nominated for in 1999, including, hilariously, worst song. That picture nicely captures Will Smith likely thinking, ‘what the hell am I doing in this movie’?
What did we learn from Twister?
- Hold on to a water pipe and a tornado can pass directly over you with no physical consequences.
- If you are only feet from a tornado, but you have something really dramatic to say, wind will not affect you or your ability to hear.
- It rarely rains near tornadoes.
- Mentioning an f-5 will cause everyone in the room to go silent and spill their drinks.
- Bill Paxton can predict where tornadoes are going to hit by picking up a hand-full of dirt and letting it fall through his fingers.
- Jan de Bont is a terrible director
David Sheega from CultureLab.com does a nice job of describing this disaster of a movie: “…A car speeding through a city in the grip of terrible earthquakes makes insanely unlikely maneuvers, one after the next, then drives straight through an office building as it crumples and emerges unscathed. This sets the tone for the film. We learn not to worry too much for the characters’ safety. We know that if they get on a plane, it will always manage to take flight just as the runway collapses. The unlikely occurrences continue so relentlessly that we are numb to later scientific offenses, among them a tsunami that overturns a ship in the open ocean despite the fact that real tsunamis are tiny before reaching shore, and tropical animals that miraculously avoid freezing to death as they are flown through snow-covered mountains while suspended from helicopters.” This movie was just so ridiculous I was completely distracted for the entire thing. The part where the mountains mysteriously MOVE to EXACTLY where they need them before crash landing was one of the most forehead-slappingly stupid things I’ve ever seen in a movie. This actually works much better as a comedy.
Jan de Bont strikes again with this horrifying movie. They decided to take the same premise from the first movie, and apply it to the SLOWEST form of transportation imaginable. This was like a really long SNL skit, or like that scene in Austin Powers when the stream roller is slowly approaching the screaming guy. I loved the 10 minute crash scene into the cardboard village at the end. Speed 2: Cruise Control was nominated for 8 Razzies, but, astonishingly, only won a single one, for Worst Sequel. But to be fair, that particular year saw perhaps the worst stock of blockbusters in history; it was up against The Postman, Anaconda and the #1 WORST BLOCKBUSTER OF ALL TIME, I give you…
Nominated for an earth-shattering 11 Razzies, this movie sucks so much that it will actually give you a headache if you attempt to watch it all in one sitting. It has been voted the worst movie of all time by Empire Magazine, and deservedly so. It actually received 3 times as many votes as the #2 selection (Battlefield Earth). There is really nothing I can say to do it justice, so, instead, watch the 3 minute clip above, it’s hilarious. This list is courtesy of Chris Rau.
