The grand old tradition of compiling worst films of the year lists has come in for a bit of a battering recently, as the Just Let People Enjoy Things lobby grows in size and shrillness on various online platforms. [Here’s our list of the 10 worst films of 2023]
The practice has been widely decried as vindictive and elitist, belittling to countless hardworking industry professionals, and a thin excuse to wallow in negativity for its own toxic sake. And to those criticisms I can only say: well, duh. But considering the current plight of commercial cinema, pointing out the gulf between the good and the popular has never felt like a more urgent task.
Between them, the ten films on the not-remotely contrarian list below account for $4.4 billion of the estimated $25.8 bn spent globally: simply put, we’re wolfing down absolute rubbish at a historically unprecedented rate. This is both depressing and worth noting, since it points towards an industry painting itself and its customers into a corner attests.
Anyway, here’s to a 2023 and beyond with less of all this. Oh, and you might notice a handful of the blurbs below have a few things in common. But if Hollywood’s franchise operations are content to churn out the same tired material with minimal adjustments between entries, surely, it’s only right that critics follow suit.
10. Lightyear.
Creatively speaking, a 38-year low for Pixar – and commercially too, if you set aside the wonderful Onward, which opened in March 2020, just as the world was shutting up shop. Everything Toy Story fans loved about Buzz Lightyear – the swashbuckling pomp, the endearing self-delusion – was nowhere to be found in this morose, sludge-coloured plod, in which the Space Ranger has to outsmart some robot invaders and escape an alien planet with some tiresomely clumsy pals.
9. Black Adam.
Perhaps not entirely dreadful in and of itself, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s foray into super-heroism earns its place on the list for the sheer Mr Bean-like haplessness with which it drove the entire DC franchise into a ditch. Promising a grand return for Henry Cavill’s Superman mere weeks before it was announced the role would be recast was just one of many entertaining unforced errors in this wholly brainless and generic exercise. “The hierarchy of power in the DC Universe is about to change,” the Rock promised, and he wasn’t kidding: within two months of release his film had turned into a $200 million redundancy scheme.
8. Morbius.
It’s Morbin’ Time, social media roared. But in truth, it was about 15 minutes past Morbin’ Time as soon as Jared Leto’s Spider-Man-adjacent passion project opened in cinemas. A blinding aura of Nobody Cares shone from every frame of this cod-gothic nonsense about a scientist who accidentally turns himself into a vampire after splicing his own DNA with that of a bat. The memes it prompted were the source of much online merriment, though the fun screeched to a halt as soon as Leto joined in.
7. Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore.
Even allowing for its Covid-troubled production, this was miserably ramshackle stuff: $200m of empty cinematic calories, with no obvious purpose beyond eking out a lucrative franchise. The plot is by turns incoherent and non-existent, while its beloved returning characters are reduced to gormless automatons. Shame about the visual effects too, which for all the skill involved amounted to little more than a barrage of expensive fakery, hastening Hollywood’s retreat into the CG void. Still, at least it had Jude Law’s knitwear.
6. Avatar: The Way of Water.
Even allowing for its Covid-troubled production, this was miserably ramshackle stuff: $400m of empty cinematic calories, with no obvious purpose beyond eking out a lucrative franchise. The plot is by turns incoherent and non-existent, while its beloved returning characters are reduced to gormless automatons. Shame about the visual effects too, which for all the skill involved amounted to little more than a barrage of expensive fakery, hastening Hollywood’s retreat into the CG void. Still, at least it had the bit with the whales.
5. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
Even allowing for its Covid-troubled production, this was miserably ramshackle stuff: $200m of empty cinematic calories, with no obvious purpose beyond eking out a lucrative franchise. The plot is by turns incoherent and non-existent, while its beloved returning characters are reduced to gormless automatons. Shame about the visual effects too, which for all the skill involved amounted to little more than a barrage of expensive fakery, hastening Hollywood’s retreat into the CG void. Still, at least it had a mildly amusing line about the word “cloak”.
4. The Nan Movie.
Yes, it’s the worst British comedy since Lesbian Vampire Killers: congratulations on retaining the title, Mathew Horne. But what makes this feature-length outing for Catherine Tate’s cantankerous OAP so distinctively punishing are the occasional tantalising glimpses of what might have been. An earlier version of the film, directed by Josie Rourke and set in wartime London, was scrapped and broken down for flashbacks, which have been jammed into a heinous present-day road trip, shot on the cheap and tonally much more in keeping with the Nan character’s sketch-show roots. Give the people what they want, the backers apparently said. And what they got was the only film this year to score zero percent on Rotten Tomatoes.
3. Bullet Train.
Brad Pitt plays Ryan Reynolds playing Ryan Reynolds, appallingly, in one of the most comprehensively dismal action comedies of recent times. Taking the interesting stylistic approach of ripping off early Guy Ritchie around 15 years too late, every detail of its depiction of Japan rings insultingly false, while each of its running gags lands with the grace of a dropped blancmange.
2. Jurassic World Dominion.
Even allowing for its Covid-troubled production, this was miserably ramshackle stuff: $200m of empty cinematic calories, with no obvious purpose beyond eking out a lucrative franchise. The plot is by turns incoherent and non-existent, while its beloved returning characters are reduced to gormless automatons. Shame about the visual effects too, which for all the skill involved amounted to little more than a barrage of expensive fakery, hastening Hollywood’s retreat into the CG void. Still, at least it had…actually, no, this one’s coming up blank.
1. The Bubble.
The only thing worse than Jurassic World Dominion was the film that spoofed its fabrication: Judd Apatow’s soul-disintegratingly dreadful Netflix comedy about mishaps on a quarantined blockbuster set. Petty, ugly and inane, and about as funny as a burning clown, it somehow squeezes all the boredom of a three-month lockdown into a single, relentlessly unbearable two-hour stretch.
