Zach’s Top 5 Worst Movies of 2017
2017 was a pretty great year for movies but there’s always at least a few movies that are terrible for any number of reasons. Here are the top 5 worst movies I saw this year.
- Transformers: The Last Knight: Another year, another mind bogglingly terrible Transformers movie. Somehow worse than Age of Extinction, The Last Knight is an incoherent mess that continues the Transformers franchise’s worst aspects like introducing new characters who do absolutely nothing, some sort of stupid Cybertronian MacGuffin, a complete contempt for continuity and so much more. The big selling point of evil Optimus Prime also only lasts about 5 minutes and the ending is one of the worst and most incomprehensible action sequences I have ever seen. Fortunately, it seems general audiences finally realized how awful these movies are, as The Last Knight is by far the lowest grossing of the franchise but there’s still at least two more movies on the way *shudder*
- Jigsaw: Perhaps one of the most unnecessary reboot/sequels ever made, Jigsaw is a terrible return to the grimy and gory world of John Kramer with uninspired traps and a terrible new villain who is revealed in the most shrug worthy “twist” of the Saw franchise. It also lacks any meaningful connections the original 7 movies, which considering how obsessive the movies are about continuity, is inexcusable and where it tries to fit itself into the overall Saw timeline just diminishes both the character of Jigsaw and definitely the impact of the first film.
- Geostorm: Gerard Butler, weather controlling space satellites, presidential assassination schemes, Geostorm should have been a completely bonkers but fun disaster movie but it was instead a slog of everything but fun disaster sequences. All the disaster porn is left until the last 20 minutes and it’s extremely uninspired and nothing you haven’t seen done better in other disaster movies. Gerard Butler also spends most of his time looking at logs or doing space station maintenance, which is not exactly riveting blockbuster entertainment.
- Baywatch: The Rock had a super fun reboot to a 90’s property this year. Unfortunately for Baywatch though, that movie was Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle. Baywatch, despite a dueling Rock and Zac Efron, is never really sure what the hell it actually wants to be. There are extended, unfunny bits involving dicks stuck in chairs or corpse goo but then it will cut to a serious, realistic rescue sequence that feels completely unearned and out of place. The movie is also way too long for a stupid R rated reboot of a David Hasselhoff vehicle.
- The Mummy: The Mummy was the birth (and probably death) of the Dark Universe over at Universal and it was unremarkable in pretty every way possible. It was maybe one of the worst cases of Cinematic Universitis where actually telling a solid plot was put on the backburner and instead it was all about setting up the extended Monster universe and setting up future films (Ooh, it’s a vampire skull in a jar!). Tom Cruise is also pretty miscast as a young, roguish dick and Russell Crowe is just hilariously terrible as Dr. Jekyll/soccer hooligan Hyde and overall it takes itself way too seriously and makes you long for the days of the tongue in cheek charm of Brendan Fraser’s version.
Dishonorable Mention:
- The Dark Tower
- Bright