Disappointing Films of 2012

As I said in my Top 10 Films of 2012 post, it was a great year for film. There was a consistent stream of quality movies showing up at local cinemas throughout the year.

But, they can’t all be good. Here is a selection of some of the biggest disappointments in film in 2012.

My criteria for Most Disappointing Films of 2012 was similar to my selection criteria for Top 10 Films of 2012. Which films in 2012 should have been great entertainment but turned out to be horrible theater experiences instead? If you paid hard-earned cash to sit through these, then you probably wanted your money back.

10. Red Tails

Does anyone remember that this film came out in January? I’m guessing not.

This film, about a squadron of African American World War II pilots in the Tuskegee training program and their sweet P51 Mustangs, made no waves at all when it came out. That’s not because the events depicted in the film are unimportant – because they are. It’s also not necessarily a bad movie.

The problem is – the film is exactly like the HBO film The Tuskegee Airmen that aired on the cable network in 1995. The folks behind Red Tails made almost no effort to change the story being told from the HBO version. The Tuskegee Airmen is one of the best television films I’ve ever seen, and it won several awards when it came out, so maybe this was a case of “don’t-fix-it-if-it-ain’t-broke”. More likely, it was a case of “please-don’t-remember-HBO-did-this-exact-movie-17-years-ago”.

9. Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace

3D conversions are all the rage these days. Disney and Pixar are having a lot of financial success converting past films from their deep libraries to 3D and giving them mini-theatrical runs (Monster’s Inc. 3D is playing in theaters as I type).

Lucasfilm and 20^th Century Fox decided to get in on the action by converting their most profitable film franchise to 3D for the masses to consume. Unfortunately, the first film in that franchise is Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace. Awesome in 1999. Not so much now. The post-processed 3D version of Phantom brought in only $43 million during its run, which is surely disappointing to Lucasfilm and 20^th Century Fox, not to mention the poor saps who saw it and were annoyed by a whiny Anakin Skywalker and the existence of stupid midi-chlorians.

8. John Carter

Read my overly optimistic Review.

This one failed so completely that it ended a regime at Disney. Practically everyone involved in this film lost his or her jobs when all was said and done. John Carter is not a terrible film, at least not as terrible as others on this list. The problem with John Carter is that it is excessive in the areas it shouldn’t be and too thin in the areas it should be. It cost $250 million to make and another $100 million to promote. For that amount of money we get a film with three (3!) prologues and twenty minutes of runtime before the film actually starts, an average story, average characters, and average at best action sequences. They story, an adaptation of the Edgar Rice Burroughs “Princess of Mars” serials from the early 1900s feels tired. It’s not Burroughs’ fault that Disney made a boring film out of it. It IS Disney’s fault for failing to spruce up a story whose best moments have been copied in other films for decades. Disney wound up taking a $200 million hit on the film, so I bet they are just as disappointed as the audience.

7. Battleship

This was supposed to be a breakout year for Taylor Kitsch. With starring roles in John Carter, Savages, and this film, the Friday Night Lights alumnus was going to be a star. Problem is, all these films tanked. I don’t blame Kitsch necessarily (his agent, on the other hand…); he tries hard in each of these.

The problem with Battleship is that director Peter Berg tries to squeeze big-action, alien-invasion, dramatic love story, thanks-to-the-troops, comedy, science fiction, and more into a film adaptation of a board game.

Overstuffed is one word that comes to mind. Silly is another.

Battleship could have been a fun popcorn-muncher of a film, but instead it threw lots of important film elements, such as logic, coherence, and character out the window to make room for silly fluff. I even wrote a little article about some of the most egregious errors of the film.

6. The Watch

How can a movie with Jonah Hill, Ben Stiller, and Vince Vaughn be so painfully unfunny? Those guys are normally golden, but in The Watch, they were just brutal. Stiller was a complete moron, Vaughn overpowered and screamed his way through the movie, and Hill hid in the background the whole time, too afraid to compete against the other “comedians”. The concept – a neighborhood watch identifies a potential alien invasion – isn’t the worst idea, especially when good talent is involved. Here though, the talent completely undermines the film with over-the-top performances that were cringe-worthy. The fact that the film was a giant Costco advertisement didn’t help matters either.

5. Safe House

I like Denzel Washington. I sometimes like Ryan Reynolds. I didn’t like much about their pairing in Safe House.

It’s a bland action story about a couple of CIA spies, one of whom is rogue and potentially dangerous while the other is novice and doesn’t know anything about being a CIA agent. Honestly, these two actors shouldn’t be on screen together in this style of cat-and-mouse film. It’s like putting a Bengal tiger in the same room with terrified hamster. You know the outcome; you just want it to end quickly so that you can clean up the mess and move on with your life. Denzel sleepwalks through his role while Reynolds overacts his heart out trying to keep up. Most of the time during its agonizingly long 115-minute runtime, I was hoping Denzel would stop in the middle of yet another boring chase, look directly into the camera, and scream, “I’m a GOOD guy!” Smash cut to end credits.

4. Dark Shadows

What a mess. For a film that star Johnny Depp and director Tim Burton claimed was a “passion project”, they certainly turned out a lame movie. It was a really glossy and had high production values, but it was terribly dull. I can’t remember anything that happened in the film, except Alice Cooper showed up to lip synch a song at some point. I think I’m over Burton/Depp collaborations until they do something fun again.

3. Total Recall

Read the Review, if you dare.

Here’s a pointless remake. The original was a classic Arnold Schwarzenegger action film from 1990. It was an intense film with great special effects, a cool story, and good direction. The remake is none of that. Instead, it opts for glossy special effects, (which look… expensive), a boring, implausible story, and Kate Beckinsale in leather. The remake is a lifeless, flaccid affair that doesn’t add anything to the original. It exists simply because someone decided it was time to remake Total Recall, which is not a very good reason at all. It could have been a fresh, lively take on the Philip K. Dick short story on which it is based, but, instead, it was D.O.A.

2. Snow White and the Huntsman

This turned out to be a big-budget bomb of a film with very few redeeming qualities. None of the characters are likeable, Snow White is made a military commander for no reason, Snow White and the Huntsman escape the castle in one night but it takes the full company three weeks to get back (there’s no sense of geography, space, or time in this film), the ultra-secret plan to take back the castle is a full-frontal assault, the characters had no motivation for any of their actions, and the dwarves were there simply because they were supposed to be. I could go on with the dumb decisions from this film, but that will give me a headache so I won’t. The trailers and previews indicated a fun, original take on the Snow White story. Instead, we got a meandering, boring, and tone-deaf Lord of the Rings knockoff.

1. Prometheus

Loved the look, hated the story. It baffles me how a film with so much care put into the look and feel could come off so very, very wrong. Picking out the plot holes, dumb character decisions, and missteps along the way would take too much time and make me very angry. This was my most anticipated film coming into 2012, but the end product was just too flawed. A beautiful sci-fi setting and some cool ideas were completely squandered with a frustrating, nonsense script.

What did you think of these films? Did you find any of these films satisfying? Let me know in the comments or on Twitter!