Zach’s Top 5 Worst Movies of 2020
There were too many bad things about 2020 to count but alongside everything else, here are the top 5 worst movies I saw over this horrible year.
- Welcome to Sudden Death: Before I get into it, we adore Michael Jai White here at Everything Action but not even his charisma or martial arts prowess could save this lifeless, cheap-looking atrocity. A sequel/remake of the Van Damme classic Sudden Death, Welcome to Sudden Death transplants the action from a hockey game under siege to a basketball game but doesn’t have any of the over the top action or charming idiosyncrasies (like Van Damme becoming a goalie to make the game-winning save). Besides Jai White, everyone else in the cast is either bland or horrifically terrible, including some of the worst kid actors in recent memory and a horrific “comedy relief” sidekick in Gary Owen. The action, save for one lone fight scene with Marrese Crump, is also bland and bad and Michael Eklund, who could have been a great over the top villain, is given a cliche villain backstory and nothing to work with as far as his character and he’s certainly not up to the level of Powers Boothe in Sudden Death. Forgot this came out and go watch Falcon Rising, Black Dynamite, or Triple Threat instead.
- The New Mutants: The long, long delay was not worth the wait for The New Mutants. While not the worst X-Men movie, it’s still not good, although instead of the over the top badness of something like Apocalypse or Dark Phoenix, it’s more boring and lifeless as a group of teen mutants mope around a massive hospital that is somehow run by only one doctor and they eventually learn that they aren’t there to learn how to control their powers and join the X-Men but instead are being trained as killers for the Essex Corporation, a plot thread that will never be followed up on now that the X-Men are under Disney’s control. The characters are not interesting and it doesn’t live up to its billing as the “horror” X-Men movie either, as the scary, horror elements are sporadically sprinkled through randomly and is outnumbered by the teen angst and TV level set and cinematography quality.
- Bloodshot: Unlike the two movies above, Bloodshot could be enjoyable in an ironic way if you want to revel in its stupidity but as a superhero movie and the first attempt to make a movie from the venerable catalog of Valiant, it’s kind of a failure. Vin Diesel basically just plays himself instead of trying to inhabit the role of Bloodshot and nanobots are the only thing that distinguishes him from Dominic Toretto and the movie hinges on him being too stupid to realize what’s happening until the third act. There are some glimpses of cleverness throughout, like the first time you find out exactly what is happening, but the finale is a dumb CG slugfest against lame “super soldiers” with cyber enhancements and it breaks its own rules in baffling fashion to set up a sequel. Ninjak vs The Valiant Universe from Bat in the Sun is a more accurate and cooler take on the Valiant universe characters, including Jason David Frank as Bloodshot.
- Mulan: China apparently didn’t really like the new live-action Mulan and I didn’t really either. I appreciated the attempt to make it more of a wire-fu/wushu action movie but the idea of “chi” and making Mulan essentially a Jedi from birth is kind of stupid and completely undermines the journey of the character from the animated classic. It’s also way too grim without the songs and comic relief from Mushu and the fact that they got rid of “I’ll Make a Man out of You” for the training montage is unforgivable. Also, if I hear someone say “loyal, brave, and true” anytime soon, I might lose it.
- Unhinged: Russell Crowe’s large psychopath almost saves this movie but everything else in this movie is pretty generic and uninteresting. The lead character isn’t the most compelling heroine and there are some cringy elements like a character mentioning a Fortnight strategy that factors into the climax that feels like a classic, “what are the kids into?” move from the writers. There’s also a vague yet heavy-handed message about everyone being too angry in the current day, which, yeah, what’s your point?
Dishonorable Mentions
- Money Plane
- Legacy of Lies