The Most Disappointing Movies of 2012

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Here is the link.
http://movies.yahoo.com/blogs/movie-tal ... l?page=all

IMOO, this year's most disappointing movies are as follows:

Jeff Who Lives At Home
A corny, predictable disappointment from the Duplass Brothers, in which this movie had the feel of a sequelized remake of a Coen Brothers movie.

Taken 2
I wouldn't be very surprised if a third Taken movie is in the works. This has the recycled plot of the first movie and a bad case of what is known as "Jason Bourne Wannabe Syndrome."

The Three Stooges
The three leads were awful by delivering wooden performances, and even though this movie may get a sequel, this movie was pointless.

The Lorax
Even though Danny DeVito and Ed Helms were terrific as The Lorax and the Once-Ler, respectively, this was nothing more than An Inconvinient Truth for kids.

Wrath of the Titans
A crappy sequel to a crappy remake. Enough said.

Safe
This had the feel of a Transporter sequel that never got produced and/or was Transporter 4 in disguise.


So folks, what do you consider this year's most disappointing movies?

I was disappointed with "Brave" Maybe it isn't much different from other Pixar films, but I felt it just went for a conventional teenager/parent angst story where everything is neatly fixed in the end. I just expected something more interesting and complex.

Brave was okay, but the thing that impressed me the most about it. They didn't feel the need to fit in some obligatory love story. Seeing a movie about a parent/child relationship that actually focuses on the parent/child relationship is a nice change of pace.

To me, the most disappointing movie of the year is easy. The Amazing Spider-Man. We did not need a reboot this quickly, and Sony decided to outdo themselves with a Spider-Man movie worse than Spider-Man 3. I can't wait until Sony loses the license and Disney/Marvel can do their own Spider-Man that doesn't suck.

Rise of the Guardians
A rip-off of The Avengers, with each character in this practically having a watered-down personality of an Avenger.

I hate to nitpick but that article said that Tim Burton's "last foray into animation" (before Frankenweenie) was Nightmare Before Christmas, when in reality it was Corpse Bride.

Speaking of which, I agree completely with their assessment of Dark Shadows and Frankenweenie. Those were the two movies that I was most looking forward to this year, and they were the ones that wound up disappointing me the most.

In my opinion, Dark Shadows felt like it had no heart or soul to it. It felt like Burton and Depp were kinda just going through the motions. Plus the jokes weren't even that funny, mostly because a lot of them were used in the trailer. I have several theories as to why Dark Shadows failed:

1) Johnny Depp's performance could have been lackluster because he broke up with his longtime girlfriend Vanessa Paradis during the making of Dark Shadows. Reportedly, the break-up hit him pretty hard and everyone knows that sometimes personal problems can interfere with your job; even when you're an actor.

2) Tim Burton might not have wanted to actually direct it; the idea for the movie was originally Depp's and he could have agreed to direct just to appease his friend. However, I acknowledge that this is the least probable reason for the movie's failure as Burton has said that he was a big fan of the Dark Shadows soap opera, and I have found other movies that he supposedly made "for the sake of making money" such as Alice in Wonderland and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to be quite enjoyable and satisfying.

3) Seth Grahame-Smith wrote the screenplay rather than usual Burton collaborator John August. In my opinion, this is probably the biggest reason why the movie failed. Smith may have interesting ideas, but in my opinion, he poorly executes them, judging by the fact that Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (which he also wrote the screenplay for) was also a critical failure, as well as my own experience with reading his novel Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which I found to be quite underwhelming.

Frankenweenie's failures are easier to pinpoint: not only was the story rather weak (it was basically just a love-letter to monster movies), there were simply too many characters crammed into an hour and a half movie, which leaves little time for character development. Therefore we have a bunch of one-note characters rather than the story focusing on a smaller number of interesting characters, which I believe is what helped to partially contribute to the success of Burton's other animated flicks, Nightmare Before Christmas and Corpse Bride.

If you want to pick even smaller nits, Tim Burton was more recently a producer on the animated movie 9. Sure he didn't write or direct it, but he still had some involvement.

Taken 2 - If the rumours about the supposed violent scenes being cut are true, then don't bother with this and stick with the original.

Snow White and the Huntsman - Despite Charlize Theron's scene-stealing role, a lumbering plot and being more likely to be remembered for it's off-screen antics, this supposedly revisionist fairytale doesn’t do itself any favours.

About Dark Shadows, IMOO, it wasn't as bad as many said it was, but I have a few possible reasons as to why Dark Shadows wasn't the awesome movie it should have been.

1.} Caroline was an annoying teenage brat. Not even Chloe Moretz, who played Caroline, could make Caroline more interesting.

2.} In agreement with Idaho Rose, the script was written by Seth Grahame-Smith, not John August, even though John August was given story credit for the movie. Smith may have interesting ideas, but like what Idaho Rose said, he carries his ideas out in a very poor fashion. Could Dark Shadows have been any better if John August wrote the script?

3.} Dark Shadows was based off of a TV show from the 1960s. From what I've read about movies based off of TV shows, the majority of such adaptations tend to be awful movies. {Some exceptions include the Mission Impossible movies, The Fugitive, and The Simpsons Movie.}

Last edited by AnonymousAnonymous on 05 Dec 2012, 1:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.

While it's true that Dark Shadows wasn't exactly a disaster, per se, it felt like a huge disappointment to me because the expectations I had for it were astronomical, considering the fact that I was a die-hard fan of anything Burton and Depp did together and would defend their movies even when everyone else said that they were long past their prime.

1. I agree with you about Caroline. She was probably the least sympathetic character in the movie, and therefore my least favorite. The movie would have been better off without her, IMO.

2) I'm glad that you agree that Seth Grahame-Smith was probably the weak link in the story department. I guess we will never really know if August could have done a better job, unless an early script is leaked onto the Internet or something.

3. I somewhat agree with you about this, because I'm of the opinion that the Addams Family movies that were made in the 90s were inferior to the 60s television series.

I agree that Dark Shadows was shallow and uninvolving, and perhaps downright insulting to the original show.

Didn't see too many movies this year, but I thought John Carter and the Red Dawn remake sucked.

I'm surprised no one mentioned Ted yet. This was a really disappointing movie for me. I expected Seth Macfarlene to do something original in it, but it was like paying to go see an hour and a half of Family Guy, starring the personalities of Peter Griffin, Peter Griffin, and maybe a hint of other characters, instead of something memorable. Granted, there were jokes that were fantastic and even Flash Gordon making an appearance made it awesome, but I expected something a little more... in your face. :/

Dark Shadows I found was too...dark. I know Tim Burton directs some shadowy movies but Dark Shadows dipped a bit too deep on the dark side. Like black magic. I heard the same about Snow White and The Huntsman, though I never saw it. Call me too sensitive but the black magic and devilish atmosphere just creeps me out. And it goes for all movies with that. I don't even like The Sleepy Hollow because as much as a liked the headless horseman and the original idea when it tied into hell the charm vanished.

Another movie that I was disappointed in was Ridley Scott's Prometheus. I'm a huge alien/xenomorph lover and when I saw how poorly the origins of that creature was made, I can't say I'm impressed. It's just that when I pictured the Space Jockeys or Engineers, I pictured a less distructive barbaric creature. I imagined behaving a bit more cuoperative like Predator. Um, another thing I can't grasp is how does a deseased reproductive cell that fuses with another make some squid looking monster that grows over 100 times it's original size, attaches itself to another organism and plant an embryo which grows to a size almost as big as the host it's in! I know that the squid creature was the "ancestor" of the original facehugger, but it's uneccisary to make it grow big enough to take up an entire room. Also, the embryo it produced and planted grew into something that looked like it had none of the genetic make-up of either of the "parents". Basically, to make it short and sweet:

Man on ship gets deseased by a native virus, man has relations with one of the woman on the ship (who isn't infected), this inturns creates a fetus that looks like a squid, woman machanically preforms surgery on herself and removes squid, later squid grows big enough to take the size of a large room, squid attaches itself to one of the engineers, engineer dies but a spawn rips from it's carcass and reveals itself as an early form of alien (which takes the form of a human accept it's head looks like that of a freaking dinosaur). How did THAT happen?! Pff, screw logic apparently...
Well, they're making a second movie and I HOPE that they do better.

I was disappointed with the so-called twist in Brave. For a Pixar film it had so much potential but just came out feeling like a watered-down Disney flick.

I loved Ted! Yes, the stuffed animal did sound like Peter Griffin as a stuffed animal, but I was laughing most of the time while watching Ted.

Many who didn't like Ted will probably be happy if Seth Macfarlane doesn't go forward with a sequel.

The Amazing Spiderman - I seriously think it didn't live up to Toby McGuire Spiderman.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter - I don't know why I actually expected anything more than a mediocre, kick 'em in the head movie. But hey, it's Lincoln fighting Vampires - it could have been so much more!

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer