A step-by-step guide for how to make one of the worst movies ever
It might seem hard to believe at times given the abject quality of certain offenders, but there hasn’t been a filmmaker in history to have set out with the intention of making a movie that goes down in the hall of shame as one of the worst ever made.
Sometimes it can be easy to spot a stinker from a mile away, but they’ve always been made with the best of intentions. Not everybody is cut out for the cutthroat world of directing, though, and there are a number of recurring themes that have plagued the bottom of the cinematic barrel.
Even someone as blatantly terrible at their job as Uwe Boll would be willing to defend his filmography to the death despite anyone with two eyes and a brain having plenty of evidence to the contrary, but he’s largely self-funded and thus unable to be stopped, which is a desperate shame for the artform.
Still, if anyone harbours intentions of deliberately mounting an ode to cinematic wretchedness, there’s no shortage of tried-and-trusted methods to accomplish a goal that flies directly in the face of what celluloid is all about.
Build the entire story around a popular singer
There are plenty of singers to have made a hugely successful transition into acting, and there’s box office bonanzas and awards season clean sweeps to prove it, but the best way to achieve the complete opposite is to build an entire narrative feature around the lead’s status in the music world.
Mariah Carey’s Glitter, Britney Spears’ Crossroads, Kelly Clarkson’s From Justin to Kelly, and Vanilla Ice’s Cool as Ice have one thing in common beyond being abhorrent examples of the art of the motion-picture-gone-horribly-awry; each of them were designed as star vehicles to capitalise on what their subjects were best known for, and every single one of them without fail was risible.
Succumb to the grubby paws of studio interference
Not every filmmaker who signs on to work under the watchful eye of a major studio is allowed Christopher Nolan-levels of freedom, and it often shows when the dirty fingerprints of studio interference have been allowed to meddle at the expense of creativity.
Highlander II: The Quickening was taken over by the film’s insurance company when the economy of Argentina collapsed following the end of production in the country, while the blame for the diabolical Batman & Robin can at least be partially laid at the door of Warner Bros. wanting to sell more toys.
Nelson Peltz shoehorned his daughter into a lead role in M. Night Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender as part of sweeping Paramount-mandated changes. Josh Trank’s Fantastic Four is one of the worst comic book movies ever made due to a combination of his erratic behaviour and being continuously overruled by 20th Century Fox, and Renny Harlin’s Exorcist: The Beginning only exists because the boardroom decided Paul Schrader’s Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist wasn’t cutting it.
Let vanity and ego run wild
Tommy Wiseau and The Room are the pre-eminent examples of what happens when there’s nobody to reign in an egomaniacal director, with cult favourite born entirely of his unfiltered creative vision and mysterious – and seemingly unlimited – source of income.
John Travolta’s career never recovered from Scientology love letter Battlefield Earth, Guy Ritchie made a near-fatal misstep partnering up with then-wife Madonna for Swept Away, Tom Cruise exerted his influence over The Mummy to a disastrous degree, and nobody dared tell the star-studded roster of Movie 43 that what they were doing was irredeemable.
M. Night Shyamalan and Will Smith were tarnished by After Earth (which is the latter’s only career story credit for obvious reasons), and Kevin Costner took decades to come back from The Postman, underlining why big stars and their even bigger egos are a recipe disaster when they go unchecked.
Focus on the brand, not the story
Most major mainstream movies are trying to sell the audience something through product placement and brand awareness, but tipping the scales heavily in favour of crass commercialism yields despondently soulless works that don’t even try to hide their true agenda.
Not to name any The Emoji Movie, Space Jam: A New Legacy, Mac and Me, or The Wizard in particular, but when the driving force behind a film is to convince kids to download apps on their phone, subscribe to HBO Max, eat at McDonald’s, or purchase a new Nintendo, then they’re already beyond salvation.
Adam Sandler’s Jack and Jill is the only movie in history to completely sweep the board at the Golden Raspberry Awards, and it’s telling that the Dunkin’ Donuts hagiography contained therein was the subject of so much entirely well-merited scorn.
Give the director complete creative autonomy
If Paul Verhoeven hadn’t been responsible for RoboCop, Total Recall, and Basic Instinct, then there’s no way he would have been allowed to mould the NC-17 Showgirls in his own image. It might have become a camp classic, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a terrible movie.
Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate altered the complexion of the entire industry due to his oversight crippling the production. Oliver Stone’s Alexander was a decades-in-the-making passion project that couldn’t be saved by any of its multiple cuts, Richard Kelly decided to follow up Donnie Darko with Southland Tales to the detriment of his entire career, and Tom Hooper’s Oscar-winning status hardly worked wonders for Cats.
Having one hit parody allowed Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer to make their living on celluloid monstrosities, and he may not have been the director, but Howard Hughes funding John Wayne’s The Conqueror gave rise to both a turgid misfire and an alarming number of deaths among the cast and crew in years to come.
Some directors work better when they’re unshackled, but that isn’t true for all of them, especially when there’s nobody to whisper in their ear that some ideas are better off left unrealised.
Just because you can, it doesn’t mean you should
Some movies only exist because they were cobbled together with nothing more than a dream and the requisite amount of funding, with such pivotal aspects of the profession as talent, ability, and a basic understanding of the fundamentals being left at the door.
Mark Region’s After Last Season was so strikingly bad that a widespread theory believed it was a prank being pulled by Spike Jonze, James Nguyen’s spent years making Birdemic: Shock and Terror for no other reason than he could, and Manos: The Hands of Fate only exists because writer, director, and producer Harold P. Warren took a bet that he could make a horror film.
The entire filmography of Neil Breen is proof that having an appetite to make movies doesn’t mean it should be allowed to happen, but when money talks louder than anything else in the industry at the end of the day, having no discernible skills whatsoever can’t stand in the way of cinema’s worst offenders.
