10 Most Hated Movies of 2011: Jack and Jill

10 Most Hated Movies of 2011

By Michael Lennon Email Author
December 26, 2011 |

"2011's movie roster was filled with the good, the bad and the mediocre. Some films wowed us, while some drove us out of the theaters.

Perhaps the only constant was the variety of personal tastes: One person's thoroughly enjoyable moviegoing experience was another's journey through cinematic hell. (You know what they say about opinions.)

Here at Wired, we take our entertainment seriously, so we polled our staff, gathering a list of least favorite movies of 2011. These are not necessarily the worst movies of the year; some of them were quite well-reviewed, on Wired.com and elsewhere. These are merely personal opinions and gripes ? a roundup of the little things that bothered us most about the past year's Hollywood creations.

Read all about our pet peeves, and share your own most hated movies in the comments below.

Green Lantern

This movie was so bad I almost completely blocked it out of my memory. If I had a ring that could make anything I dream up come to life, and I was battling some universe-destroying entity, I'd think of some crazy inventive weapons to battle him with, not boring things like a souped-up, oversize machine gun. Come on ? you think Parallax doesn't know how to handle a machine gun? Think outside the box, man! ?Christina Bonnington

Worst part: That the power ring was bestowed upon someone as stupid as Ryan Reynolds' character.

Redeeming feature: The CG for Reynolds' Green Lantern suit is pretty nifty."

 

I still have yet to see Green Lantern. I'm a huge fan of the character - Green Lantern being the series that got me back into comics in a big way - and just... aargh. It's not the cost, since it's available at Red Box, but I fear for the horrors that might await.

Still, can't be as bad as Steel.

 

It did have structural problems, but also giant plot problems and character problems. For details check this out.

 

I get the impression that a lot of people had high hopes for the movie, and that's why it gets more hate than it deserves.

 

Well, Green Lantern has been DC's #3 character for years now, so that would make sense.

 

I was basically entertained by GL, it was kinda fun, but if I had to judge it as good or bad then I choose bad. What sucks is that this was a missed opportunity to bring DC films in league with Marvel films. Batman got tender loving care from Nolan, it soundslike the next Superman film is geting a good treatment too. No one knows what do do with a Wonder Woman film, and now they dropped the ball with GL.

Also, and this is very important, the Marvel flicks are crossover. The DC stuff is stand alone.

 

It's completely and utterly appalling. And indefensible.

Actually, I take it back, Peter Sarsgaard is kinda amusing in a few scenes.

Beyond that, nada.

You've got Reynolds, who does a lot of his usual jokey schtick, which is fine. But then whenever he tries to do anything remotely dramatic...



Wide-eyed disbelief is pretty much the only setting that robot's got.

Then you've got Lively, who is poorly named.

And she tries to convey that she's a strong, authoritative woman that Hal is in love with.



And then you've got Mark Strong, whose MO in this film for whatever reason is to move his head for every single syllable.



Rounded out by all sorts of insane casting choices, like Tim Robbins as an authority figure and Sarsgaard's father (what. the. hell.) and Taika Waititi as "useless sidekick who drives Hal around for the first act and does nothing else after that"

The only two bits of casting that work are Geoffrey Rush and Michael Clarke Duncan as two hideous CGI things, and even they're only there for the idiotic video-game training montage in which Hal is given the idea to kill the giant cloud of Parralax poo, even though that never occurs to anyone else in this corps of supposedly awesome intergalactic superpolice.

Saying that Green Lantern has "structural problems" is a bit like saying that the bombing of Cambodia was "a bit naughty." I've never storytelling as completely inept as this. Character movements make no sense in later acts (the classic moment being Hal Jordan flying across the galaxy to ask for help, getting none, and then being satisfied by this, flying back home, and doing the job himself. That's some real Twilight stuff there), but the crowning turd in the waterpipe is the random-ass flashback that pops up when Hal is crashing his plane in the first 10 minutes or so of the film, robbing both the flashback of any real clarity or quality, and destroying the momentum of an action sequence.

But beyond the extremely poor casting and the inept storytelling, the film's theme of "fear" has been done to death and done better (why not focus on what makes GL unique, namely "willpower"?), and the film has absolutely no verisimilitude whatsoever. It's trying to be a somewhat serious origin story, and yet it can't even build any sort of common sense within its same universe, so that about 90% of character actions are unmotivated and just raise questions. It's the poorest writing of 2011 I think I've come across, and the film is only saved from the utmost doldrums by hilarious Sarsgaard-ness and some purty pictures from Dion Beebe.

It's such junk, though. At least the Marvel films this year had some real ideas that they were building on, and the filmmakers seemed to care. Not so here. Campbell seems like he'd rather be anywhere else. Even The Legend of Zorro and Vertical Limit are more arresting pieces of work from him.

 

That's fine, but if you're going to do a theme that's been done to death in superhero films, and done rather conclusively by Nolan, then you've really got to justify doing that theme with the execution, and they don't. Fear is a giant cloud of poo. Also, Hal's "fear" is totally perfunctory and completely inconsistent. What makes the GL property unique is the whole willpower thing. That's very interesting, and better filmmakers would have tried to delve into that, which could just as easily set up sequels.

 

While I'd agree that it's not the main theme of Batman Begins, the way that fear drives most, if not all of the action throughout the film is perhaps as organic as it's ever going to get for a superhero film.

What I don't get about Green Lantern is that DC allegedly used Batman Begins as their model, or at least Nolan's Batman franchise. If that's the case, why didn't they get a writer-director on board who has a clear artistic vision that would also be faithful to the source? Instead they got hack writers and uber-workman Campbell. Doesn't make any sense. Marvel's approach here has been much better - they get directors who have a certain aesthetic bent (Joe Johnston might be a hack, but at least his mini-Spielberg-ness is obvious), or in Fox's case with Vaughn they got a guy who can also write and reshape the material appropriately as he goes. Although the Marvel films are pretty disposable, this year's entries have at least worked, which is more than can be said for GL.

 

I really wanted Green Lantern to work, I really did. I like Ryan Reynolds a lot. I did his style of delivering jokes so I was hoping he would be a good balance of funny and hero. It wasn't. I will say I did enjoy a lot of the stuff that happened off Earth. The GL planet was pretty killer. Poor acting, a terrible script and just bad story killed it for me. It's not on my worst list but it would get an honorable mention.

 

Super 8

If I wanted to watch a condescendingly upbeat film about the overlit magic of aliens and adolescence, I'd jump in my hot tub time machine and watch some Spielberg schlock circa 1984. Spielberg at least knows how to keep his eye on his MacGuffin, while director J.J. Abrams builds Super 8's plot structure around a non-ironically meaningless object of pursuit. ?Shannon Perkins

Worst part: The drugged-out, enchanted look on the townspeople's faces when the citizen-devouring alien reveals himself.

Redeeming feature: The train wreck was mad cool.

 

"Super 8" was fantastic, Abrams understands that the characters are what make the sense of danger from the monster real. Loved this film, had a ring of early Spielberg in places.

 

Super Eight was easily the most enjoyable film I saw this year. It was a joy to see children actors acting like children, instead of how single adult apartment dwellers think children act.

 

This superb Darth Boba quote is worthy of consideration for Best Line of the Week in the Amphitheatre.

Just saying.

YMMV.

 

lol thanks.

 

I haven't seen this film yet, but the way some people talk about it you would think it was crime to have a whimsical sci-fi film outisde of the 80's and not be directed by Spielberg. Even if Super 8 isn't paticularly original surely that shouldn't get in the way of judging the movie on it's own merits.

 

Green Lantern struggled because the franchise is built around a fundamentally stupid power. Who in their right mind, granted an object of limitless power, would think the most intriguing use of the thing would be to make a bunch of imaginary funny shaped facsimiles of real world objects? This should lose novelty at about the same moment kids stop thinking it's cool that they can spell "AAAAHHHHH" with their alphabet soup.

 

This man speaks the truth. Most hated? It was actually the best movie I saw all year. This list fails completely.

 

Absolutely. In fact, when I saw "Super 8" in the subject line for a topic of most hated film, I looked twice
to make sure I hadn't misread it. Super 8? Most hated? I can understand someone saying it was good but not
a masterpiece, or saying it didn't live up to expectations. But HATED?

 

Well, yeah, I mean, the main kid was not able to summon the suitable transcendence for his face to face meeting with the monster. That felt like it was supposed to be on a par with the clearing scene in E.T. and it just wasn't. I mean, you could see that it could have been, but the "bad things happen" bit just wasn't as strong as it should have been and the kid didn't hit the emotional purity of Henry Thomas (though who can blame him for that?) But the rest of the film was pure gold and I actually thought the bit with the locket was so moving that it kind of erased the problem with the kid-alien scene not being that moving.