The Big Picture: MovieBob's Worst of 2013

[wooty]

I mostly agree with this list, with the exceptions of ST: Into Darkness (which I do rather enjoy as a fun film), Man of Steel (because its nice to see Superman actually have action) and ...... "that sitting around the table one with Streep" (because I've never even heard of it so can't make a judgement).

Personally I'd of replaced those three with Kick Ass 2, The Wolverine and The Hangover part 23,452. But thats down to taste and how bored I was in the cinema at the time.

 

[hentropy]

...it's not just about being a bad movie, it's about also being disappointing, or if otherwise good resources were wasted, or if the film is intellectually offensive one some level...

Oh you mean like Pacific Rim?

*rimshot*

 

[Zen Bard]

Finding "American Hustle" on this list surprised me. I saw it recently and really enjoyed it.

But, as Bob said, a major criterion for his selection is a the disappointment gap between his expectation of a film and its actual execution.

Which is why no one was surprised to find "Man of Steel" at the top. Honestly, I really, really want to know what Bob was expecting.

I had no real expectation from the movie when I saw and and genuinely liked it. There were a few quirks that bugged me. But honestly, I liked the perspective the film took of a man in search of his identity, place and destiny.

 

[Jeyl]

I think everyone is getting the wrong impression when Bob says that he'd like to go back to the Prime Timeline of Star Trek. He's not asking for more bad movies with huge mid-direction, bad directors, bad writers and convoluted plots. He's asking for a Star Trek movie based in the universe where Star Trek actually existed. Think about it. The original time line has all the classic, timeless stories and all the diverse characters that didn't overly rely on Kirk, Spock, the Enterprise ect. Star Trek was able to be something more than just about the original series, where as now that's all it wants to be by pandering to things that even the most general audience would assume should be in Star Trek even though they're wrong.

I understand that the TNG movies are pretty bad and that Nemesis did what even Star Trek 5 couldn't do (i.e. Kill the franchise), but the people who were in charge of the films are no longer associated with Star Trek. Rick Berman's taint on the franchise will ensure that he will never come back, Stuart Baird has quit directing all together after making Nemesis and even the cast all agree that Nemesis was just a really bad departure. Ron D. Moore refuses to even comment on the film (See "Tapestry" and see how the clone Picard plot is completely wrong).

And here's probably the most important thing about wanting to go back to the Prime Timeline. We can still take Star Trek into new, unfamiliar territory. When most assume that we want to go back, we just want to go back to what's familiar and recognizable when in fact it's the exact opposite. JJ's Star Trek is taking such great pains to be familiar that it recycles various stories, styles and even 60's style of behavior right down to the misogynistic view of women. Even under the watchful eye of Rick Berman, Star Trek as a franchise got way better. Characters got to act like people in a drama and not a lecture on how awesome humanity is, women got to have a bigger and more important presence and the series even got less serialized, with stories spanning whole seasons.

If the Prime Timeline could recover from Star Trek 5, it can recover from Nemesis.

 

[Childe]

Both man of steel and lone ranger i thought were good. Not oscar winners but not bad. For lone ranger i saw it as more of an metaphysical film

 

[Azahul]

Hold the phone...
Who thinks Movie 43 sucks? No seriously who. Point me at 'em I'll show um what what for!

Along similar lines, in what universe was Walter Mitty bad? I really quite enjoyed that movie. Not one of my favourites of the year, but I walked out of that movie with the biggest grin on my face. Just a really sweet movie with a positive message.

 

[zeejaybay]

Could not agree more with you on Man of Steel. This year felt like an completely awful year to be a fan of that character. If anyone told me that becoming invested in Superman would feel like utter shit I would have avoided him.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

MOS and ST:ID were not that bad, yes they were disjointed but I have seen much worse done.MOS only really needed to be made into 2 films.

 

[I Love Lamp]

One thing / thought that bugs me a bit. You dislike Man of Steel's tone, but then praise the Hobbit, which takes a light hearted novel and makes it (and bleeds it out in my opinion) into a dour, moody trudge, where the character of Thorin is so miserable, he would more than likely die if he smiled. Along with a lot of other pointlessly shoehorned in drama. Just seems a touch incongruous to me.

 

[Sonic Doctor]

Remember Bob, the last star Trek film before the reboot was this:

Spoiler

Do you really want to go back there?

I do, because that was when Star Trek was still what it was suppose to be.

Sci-fi stories that had some depth that make you think. Nemesis's question was, what would a man be if he was raised somewhere else under different conditions. You get action, but it is properly paced.

New Star Trek is pandering action shlock to the everyday action movie loving drone that thinks of nothing else except, "Boom explosions yeah, pew pew awesome, eeeww talking and story boooo!"
New Star Trek pandered as well to the youth, with absurdly young looking(for the parts and positions they play) actors, and make them have horribly angsty looks about them when they talk about things.

The new movies have no place in the franchise. Nothing would be lost if they were to be destroyed and forgotten, if anything it would be a huge gain to the franchise to lose them.

What the franchise needs, is a new TV series, with proper actors of the right ages, with the traditional sci-fi story telling like the past few Star Trek series have had. Only then can we pick back up and make some proper Star Trek movies.

Good Star Trek has a balance of story telling and action, where the action is the lower percentage part.
If movie makers want to pander to anybody, then they should be pandering to people that actually watch Star Trek to be watching Star Trek and it's universe, not hipsters, action nuts, and young people that don't know what real Star Trek is(I'm betting we are at the point that there are people that think Star Trek is a new franchise and the new movies are it).

And really, going through and seeing people complaining about the TNG movies is hilarious, considering they were universes better than these new ones.

New Star Trek comes off as people that read the cliff notes, of the cliff notes, of the cliff notes, of the cliff notes, of what Star Trek is, made the movies, and during the process a yappy little dog walked in and fell asleep on the script writer's keyboard, then woke up and took a dump on the design board.

If I had the power, I'd erase new Star Trek from existence. And considering I'm also a fan of Star Wars, I'd remove Abrams and anybody that works for him from the project. The man and his people don't know how to respect a franchise.

 

[Crazy Zaul]

Agree with them all except Stark Trek, still think it was good even though it used common tropes and some silly bullshit. Can't even remember whether or not I watched that die hard film.
Man of Steel is so bad I dunno how the hell Joe watched it 3 times in a week.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Remember Bob, the last star Trek film before the reboot was this:

Spoiler

Do you really want to go back there?
Also, Number one should not be there. Only God Forgives should be there because it sucked more.

Hey even Star Trek: Nemesis was better than Star Trek: Into Darkness.
Whoever designed those bloody dress uniforms for Star Trek: Into Darkness should be shot.

 

[Dark Knifer]

One thing / thought that bugs me a bit. You dislike Man of Steel's tone, but then praise the Hobbit, which takes a light hearted novel and makes it (and bleeds it out in my opinion) into a dour, moody trudge, where the character of Thorin is so miserable, he would more than likely die if he smiled. Along with a lot of other pointlessly shoehorned in drama. Just seems a touch incongruous to me.

I think the only reason is he has more love of comics then tolkien lore. Just bias really.

Hold the phone...
Who thinks Movie 43 sucks? No seriously who. Point me at 'em I'll show um what what for!

The vast majority of people who think it's an aggresively unfunny piece of garbage. 'Movie 43' belongs in the same boat as Adam Sandler comedies, and the 'parody' movies like 'Vampires Suck.'

I thought that was the general opinion as well.

OT: I get most of those, maybe if I'd followed superman I would feel the same way about it. But I don't and I think the series hasn't died yet.

 

[Not G. Ivingname]

Remember Bob, the last star Trek film before the reboot was this:

Spoiler

Do you really want to go back there?
Also, Number one should not be there. Only God Forgives should be there because it sucked more.

Spoiler: OR this

If we go back to the prime universe, a jump to the next next Generation would be a must. I would love to see them explore the aftermath of things like the Borg attacks or the Dominion war, which Star Trek Online has only made baby steps towards exploring, but I rather not have to deal with the stupid things, like the aftermath of Janeway's voyage.

 

[tzimize]

My biggest problem with Man of Steel is that I was just...bored. It's not a feeling I can say I usually exhibit during movies, but that's how I felt during Man of Steel. I was just bored. It was like flipping through a mediocre comic book in a Dentist's waiting room. Not necessarily BAD just...boring.

And considering the spectacle on screen...that is saying something of the creators failure.

I have to agree with bob on this one. Even if Man of Steel was not the worst movie of 2013 it certainly was the most disappointing.

One thing / thought that bugs me a bit. You dislike Man of Steel's tone, but then praise the Hobbit, which takes a light hearted novel and makes it (and bleeds it out in my opinion) into a dour, moody trudge, where the character of Thorin is so miserable, he would more than likely die if he smiled. Along with a lot of other pointlessly shoehorned in drama. Just seems a touch incongruous to me.

The thing is, there really isnt a lot to ruin in the hobbit. Both the Hobbit and LOTR is pretty awful, and even if you like the universe (which I really do) there is no getting around the fact that the books are pretty bad. The Hobbit works as a childrens book, but lotr is just plain bad. Both books have flat characters and a pretty dull story with WAY too much descriptions of green grassy knolls.

The hobbit (2) was a stupid adventure movie, but it was a fun and cool adventure movie. I didnt walk in and get something completely different than I expected.

Man of Steel was an action spectacle, but considering Superman is as important in comics as Jesus in the real world (culturally) I think its not too much to ask for a movie with a LOT more soul than Man of Steel. Or any soul really. Man of steel was...dull and uninteresting and completely without heart. Which really is what the character is all about. The Hobbit is not a missed opportunity, Man of Steel is the definition of a missed opportunity.

 

[Jennacide]

Gotta find it weird that there was so many bad flicks this year that 47 Ronin didn't even make the list, and it's the biggest box office bomb in history now.

 

[Callate]

*sigh*

I'm disappointed. Not surprised, not angry, just disappointed.

I don't feel some intense need to defend Man of Steel. It was a not-unpredictable result of filtering Superman through the mind responsible for 300 and Watchmen. I watched it, I found it overall fairly enjoyable if in places somewhat underwhelming. It had a few interesting ideas and was trying to do some different things (or in part, as noted in prefacing the "mind responsible for 300 and Watchmen" thing, some of the same things in a slightly different milieu), some with success, others not. After I finished it, it didn't burden a lot of space in my mind. I certainly wasn't looking forward to it like I was further entries in the Avengers canon, but I wasn't dreading its successors as unavoidable botches, either.

This scratching of an old wound, I'm starting to dread. I've said before and I'll say it again: I generally like Moviebob. Most of the time, even if I disagree with him, I'll at least think he had something interesting to say, and his knowledge in some areas of "geek" lore certainly surpasses my own.

But I'm not looking forward to a year of snide side-references to Zack Snyder or Man of Steel; I'm not feeling like anything is going to be illuminated or improved by this particular rut. If I could even feel there was some sense of a thoughtful understanding in why MB felt Avengers worked in ways that MoS didn't, that would be worthwhile, but I don't. It just seems to be this very surface-level "Why did the nineties have to make everything brooding and gloomy, why do all my silver-age superheroes suddenly have to be dark and violent, why do you have to try to be 'realistic', why can't we bring back Robin."

I had occasion to watch the Chrisopher Reeves Superman on television with my daughter a while ago, and in some ways, it holds up pretty well. But I was given insight on a whole new level about how hard it is for an adult to explain to a child why going around the world really fast makes time go backwards, at least with a straight face.

It was fun. It was melodramatic. And, yes, it was of a very different time. It had its part to play in how we got here, just as the 1989 Burton Batman did, just as Nolan's Batman did, just like X-Men did, and Spider-Man did, and Iron Man and The Avengers did.

But seeing it now reflected the fact that doing superheroes isn't easy. There is no crankable x+y magic formula. Saying "do it light" doesn't automatically get you The Avengers; sometimes it gets you Batman and Robin. You can play fast and loose with things like physics and the likely human consequence of super-battles in big cities, but you're as likely to create a sense that nothing that occurs, however grand, has any real stakes as you are to create something airy and light and "fun". Plenty of comic books continue to struggle with this problem, even among the "Big Two"; never mind a production that has to balance real-world actors with CGI masterminds who assure the creators that they can do almost anything. And the burden of capturing the actions and personalities of (sometimes literal) demigods in ways that reflects and resonates with audiences of your current era is a topic that could probably fill a whole book on its own.

I would like to see more of the superhero movies that come out be solid entertainment. But I feel like "simple fixes" and grudging resentment from fans of older versions of the heroes isn't going to do the field any service; it all comes out like so many more "high concept" pitches. If that's all that's on offer, the next wave is as likely to flub it up trying to imitate Avengers as it is to succeed trying to imitate Man of Steel.

 

[VoidWanderer]

Aren't there two more die hards confirmed?

Oh God, I hope not. The next Bruce Willis movie I want to see is the sequel to Unbreakable.

I actually enjoyed Star Trek Into Darkness. I felt it gave a lot more character growth to most of the cast, and it actually explores more of the human side of Spock.

But since this is a subjective list based on Moviebob's point of view, I will respect his opinion.

 

[Tim Chuma]

On the upside, the Raid 2 is coming out in 2014. The director almost got killed filming the car stunts
http://id.omg.yahoo.com/blogs/blog-editor/-eksklusif--trailer--film--the-raid-2-berandal-041859846.html