10 movies that feel like they were deliberately made to piss you off
Making movies isn’t easy. There are so many people to please: the cast, the crew, the producers, the distributors, the critics, the merchandising people and, perhaps above everyone else, the audience.
With some films, you can see why certain decisions were made. There was a choice between pleasing one section of the audience and letting another one down. A perfect outcome simply wasn’t possible. However, for these ten disasters, choices were made that those in charge had to know would rub everyone up the wrong way.
Some of these movies are part of larger franchises and have brought shame upon their names and legacies. Others are remakes of pre-existing classics, so a high standard was already set before a single second of footage was even shot. As for the rest, well, they just straight-up suck.
Prepare to face-palm a lot over the course of this list, as we attempt to answer one simple question, ‘What the hell were they thinking??’
10 movies that will piss you off:
‘Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’ – JJ Abrams (2019)
While the Star Wars prequel movies get their fair share of flak, none of them are as brazenly offensive as The Rise of Skywalker. Rian Johnson did an amazing job with the previous entry, bringing in new characters, building up existing ones, and setting the stage for a worthy finale. Unfortunately, Disney had other ideas.
The mistreatment of Finn and Rose, the return of Palpatine, everything about Rey and Kylo Ren—all of it felt like a massive middle finger to everyone who had gotten invested in the previous movie. The end result was an embarrassing husk that is still roundly mocked by anyone with a functioning brain.
‘Ghostbusters’ – Paul Feig (2016)
There is every chance an all-female supernatural comedy could have worked fabulously. But why did it have to be Ghostbusters? When it was announced that Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon, and Leslie Jones would be remaking the classic 1980s hit, it immediately began a discourse that was never going to end well.
On one hand, you had the unreasonable aggressors, thinly masking their disdain for female-fronted movies of any kind. On the other hand, you had the very reasonable complaints that Ghostbusters didn’t need to be remade at all, by anyone. When the movie flopped, it proved everybody right, including the bigots. Sadly, this well-meaning project with a stellar cast was doomed from the get-go.
‘The Last Airbender’ – M Night Shyamalan (2010)
Adapting a beloved TV show into a feature film is always a tricky task. Unfortunately, it becomes even harder when you let M Night Shyamalan do it. His version of The Last Airbender —‘Avatar’ was removed from the title to reduce confusion with James Cameron’s mammoth hit—got just about everything wrong.
It tried to cram an entire season of the beloved kids show into just over 100 minutes, cutting corners with reckless abandon. To make matters worse, the casting was all over the place, with white actors portraying the Asian and Inuit-inspired heroes and other characters, and the only actors of colour were cast as villains. The Last Airbender was equally despised by fans of the show and people who had never seen a second of it. At least it was consistent in garnering disappointment.
‘Dragonball Evolution’ – James Wong (2009)
This space is reserved for all bad-intentioned, money-grabbing attempts by Hollywood to cash in on popular anime series, and nothing exemplifies this trend more than the dire Dragon Ball Evolution movie, which set the genre back years with its horrific stench.
A thunderingly poor attempt to bring the iconic anime to the big screen, the film reeks of laziness, from its bad dialogue to its deviation from the source material to its whitewashed cast. Barely anyone saw it, and those who did wished they hadn’t. A planned sequel was canned, which might just be the kindest act in all of human history.
‘The Emoji Movie’ – Tony Leondis (2017)
It’s long been established that Hollywood will make a movie out of anything, but that philosophy was pushed to its limits when it was announced that a feature-length film about emojis was being produced.
The likes of Maya Rudolph, Jennifer Coolidge, and Patrick Stewart all got caught up in this total and utter waste of time and resources. It had no plot, no script, and no redeeming features. Astonishingly, it made bank at the box office, but for every dollar it brought in, it killed about a thousand brain cells amongst the general population.
‘Psycho’ – Gus Van Sant (1998)
Remaking movies is a contentious business at the best of times, but Psycho? Widely established as one of the greatest films ever? Get out of town. That’s the task Gus Van Sant set himself in 1998, and, with the greatest respect in the world, the man is great, but he is no Alfred Hitchcock.
The primary bone of contention with this rotten redo is Vince Vaughn as Norman Bates. While he wasn’t the clown (again, respectfully) he is today, he wasn’t nearly in the league of the great Anthony Perkins, either. Then again, Olivier could have taken the role and come up short. Perkins is, for all intents and purposes, and forever, Bates, simple as. Poor Vince never stood a chance.
‘Freddy vs Jason’ – Ronny Yu (2003)
Why ruin one classic horror franchise when you can ruin two at the same time! That was clearly the thinking behind Freddy vs Jason, which brought together the iconic villains from Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street for a slasher smackdown for the ages. At least, that was the plan.
Instead, the movie was total garbage. Neither baddie got a chance to shine, and every scene not involving the two psychopaths might as well have been a blank screen. Shameless corporate fan-baiting through and through, this crossover was so bad that it effectively killed both series stone dead.
‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine’ – Gavin Hood (2009)
Before Ryan Reynolds turned the character into box office gold, the only live-action movie depiction of Deadpool was in this hunk of junk. Wade Wilson (also played by Reynolds) was completely neutered by X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which attempted to make good on Hugh Jackman’s popularity, but instead overexposed the Aussie to a dangerous degree.
This version of Deadpool was a horrible mash-up of various other mutants with his mouth sewn shut. It was so bad that the red-suited version of the character even travelled back in time to kill him at the end of Deadpool 2. Ryan Reynolds never forgets, and we wish we could.
‘Joker: Folie à Deux’ – Todd Phillips (2024)
The original Joker film was controversial enough. Some saw it as a masterpiece, with Joaquin Phoenix even scooping an Oscar for his performance as the DC villain. However, in the eyes of others, it was a morally backwards abomination that vindicated some of the worst elements of modern society.
You know what this project didn’t need, though? Singing! As soon as it was announced that the sequel, Folie à Deux, was going to be a musical starring Lady Gaga as Harley Quinn, alarm bells began to ring. For most people, those alarms were justified when they saw the result, which somehow ended up being even more divisive than its predecessor.
‘The Dark Tower’ – Nikolaj Arcel (2017)
Movies based on Stephen King books nearly always do well, but the problem with this 2017 adaptation of The Dark Tower was that it was ‘based’ on King’s novel in name only. In an attempt to cram several stories into a limited runtime, the film ended up being nothing like the series that had enthralled so many readers.
If you’d never read any of The Dark Tower books, then you had no way of ever understanding what was going on. Dull and disappointing for the diehards, lethally complicated for the casuals, let’s just say nobody is going to be comparing this to Carrie or The Shawshank Redemption any time soon.
