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My 100 Worst Movies of All-Time (50-26)

~ Barloq ~ Leave a comment

50. Halloween II (2009)

Credit where it’s due: Rob Zombie tries to do something completely new with the Halloween franchise for this sequel and he brings his own unique vision to the proceedings. Unfortunately, that vision fucking sucks. The first twenty minutes are absolutely wasted on a dream sequence, which feels like it’s been shoved in by studio mandate just to up Michael Meyers’ body count. Rob Zombie also had to force his wife into the film, so suddenly the entire Meyers family is getting visions of their ghost mother trying to bring them all together (yes, even Laurie Strode, who hasn’t seen her birth mother since she was a baby). The film wastes nearly an hour and a half before Michael even gets into Laurie’s vicinity, meaning that most of the film is a bunch of wheel-spinning, toothless kills, and spending time with straight-up unlikeable characters. It’s a senseless, nasty, nihilistic film that makes you feel like you’re punishing yourself by watching it.

49. Scary Movie 4 (2006)

In my initial drafting of this list, I nearly put every single Scary Movie entry in my bottom one hundred. I binged them all a few years ago, and it was one of the most torturous viewing experiences of my life. However, I know that the first two are kind of well-liked, and I didn’t remember exactly what I disliked so much about them (other than them being dumb and not very funny), so I kept most of them off. That’s not something I can say for Scary Movie 4 though. I’ve actually seen this particular entry a couple times over the years, and it was significantly worse on a revisit. It suffers the usual Scary Movie problems (a disjointed plot which is just a bunch of popular movie scenes mashed together and made “comedic” in the lowest common denominator way possible), but this one was also really lazy and offensive when it got to The Village portion of the plot. Of course these fucking hacks will make jokes about Adrien Brody’s character being autistic. And Bryce Dallas Howard’s character is blind, so they’ll have her walk into a crowded meeting hall and take a big dump, because she can’t see! Haha, fuck this piece of shit movie.

48. Batman & Robin (1997)

I distinctly remember seeing this film in theaters as a child, and my God, upon rewatching it, is is wild that they gave this a major release in the 90s. It was a different time, I guess. That said, Batman & Robin is a pretty entertaining watch, due to its very campy, Adam West-style humour, hammy acting, and wild production design. While I definitely think that moving Batman to a grittier style was a wise choice in response to this movie, Batman’s kind of missing this sillier side to the character after all these years, so Batman & Robin doesn’t feel nearly as blasphemous in 2024.

That said… still not a very good movie. There’s a reason it’s still on this list, after all, but it’s one of those movies that’s entertaining in its badness at least.

47. Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf (1985)

Oh and speaking of entertaining badness and insane theatrical releases, the only explanation I can think of for how we got Howling II is this: copious amounts of COCAINE. This movie is fucking batshit, and the only reason it isn’t completely unwatchable is due to committed performances from Christopher Lee and Sybil Danning, and its legitimately boppin’ New Wave soundtrack. That said, what other movies are you going to find where all the werewolves have wildly different makeup effects, a dude’s eyeballs explode out of his head, there’s a furry threesome, and Sybil Danning tears her shirt open in a shot that is repeated seventeen times during the end credits?

46. Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987)

The reasons for this film’s failure are well-documented, but to sum it up: The Cannon Group purchased the rights to Superman, brought back Christopher Reeve, Gene Hackman, and Margot Kidder, promised a big budget, and even gave Reeve creative control, which led to the optimistic nuclear disarmament plot. However, when it actually came time to make the film, Cannon suddenly slashed the budget in half, leaving them with a shoestring budget to try to bring this superhero film to life. The results were pretty embarrassing, looking significantly worse than the original film from nine years earlier (for that matter, don’t even get me started on how poorly it holds up to the bombastic action of Superman II). Even if that hadn’t been an issue though, The Quest for Peace would have been a letdown due to just being poorly written, easily as bad or worse than Superman III in that regard.

45. Halloween: Resurrection (2002)

Halloween: Resurrection is a bad movie in its own right, but it feels so much worse coming off of H20, which had been the first good Halloween movie in sixteen years. It’s like the Weinsteins made a good Halloween movie by mistake, said “Oops, gotta fix that,” and then immediately sent the franchise back to hell where it belongs. Resurrection commits the cardinal sin of bringing back Jamie Lee Curtis, putting her all over the advertising, and then kills her off in the opening minutes of the film. Oh, and they also undo the ending of H20 by making Michael’s titular resurrection one of the most ridiculous ass-pulls to force a sequel in cinema history (to be fair, this was planned at the time H20 was filmed, and you can kind of tell that that’s not Michael at the end of that film, but it’s so contrived).

And that’s just the first fifteen minutes! From there, Resurrection turns into a stupid, teen slasher movie which tries to riff on reality TV programs and livestreaming. The film is painfully early-2000s, with a kung-fu fighting Busta Rhymes, horror meta-commentary, found footage gimmicks, and a bunch of pretty, one-dimensional teenagers for Michael to carve up.

44. In the Name of the King 3: The Last Mission (2013)

I’ve seen a lot of Uwe Boll movies over the years. Most of his movies are utter shite, but occasionally you’ll get something from him which is borderline competent (Bloodrayne 2, Assault on Wall Street), or even good (Rampage… seriously, check it out), and you just want to give the guy a hug for pulling it off for once. One of those “good for a Uwe Boll movie” movies was In the Name of the King: Two Worlds, a decent action movie featuring Dolph Lundgren and Natassia Malthe (who I will always have a soft spot for due to her appearance in the best video game movie adaptation ever… also, a bit of a tangent here, but I have to give Boll major credit for keeping her employed, as she had been blacklisted in Hollywood by Harvey Weinstein after he raped her in 2008).

Anyway, all this to say, I actually had some hope for the third In the Name of the King movie going in. Unfortunately, The Last Mission feels like no one cared about it at all. Boll is clearly working on a miniscule budget, filming on location in Bulgaria with local, no-name actors, and over-utilizing an awful CGI dragon. Probably worst of all though, the film is in critical need of an editor because it has some of the most boring and drawn out action sequences I’ve ever seen.

43. The Santa Clause 2 (2002)

This movie deserves a special spot in my own personal hell due to how often my parents would put this stupid fucking movie on. I enjoyed the original Santa Clause as a kid, but this sequel was just worse in every way, with Tim Allen over-acting his ass off as an evil, toy Santa, an extremely contrived plot to force Scott Calvin to get married, and weird, talking reindeer who love to fart.

42. The Predator (2018)

The angriest I’ve ever been walking out of a theater may very well have been the time when I saw The Predator. I was pretty excited for this movie going in: it was being directed by Shane Black (fresh off of Iron Man 3) and featured Thomas Jane, Keegan-Michael Key, Olivia Munn, Sterling K. Brown, and Yvonne Strahovski? Colour me interested! Unfortunately, the movie has been butchered to hell and back by Fox, with some of the strangest editing I’ve ever seen (the way that Traeger accidentally shoots himself in the face with his back to the camera would never have been filmed this way if this was actually intended to happen). I do appreciate that it tries to do something a little different with the Predator formula, evolving our understanding of the Predators in an interesting way, but for every interesting idea there are a half dozen which are incredibly stupid. The new bounty hunter Predator is almost all-business, and isn’t nearly as interesting as the classic honour-bound Predators, or even the sadistic Super Predators from Predators. This new Predator just massacres anyone that gets in its way, which goes against the entire appeal of the character. Don’t even get me started on the idiotic characters, or the ending, which is so bad that I walked out of the theater saying that they either had to decanonize this movie, or Predator as a franchise was dead. Thankfully, it seems that everyone involved in the franchise agreed.

41. Halloween: The Curse of Michael Meyers (1995)

The title of “worst Halloween movie” is one that is fiercely contested, but I have to give the crown to The Curse of Michael Meyers. This is largely due to the film being butchered worse in the editing room than one of Michael’s victims, leaving the film largely incoherent. There are long stretches of the movie where stuff is happening, but none of it actually makes sense when you sit and think about it. The film also fails to deliver on the plot threads left dangling by the previous film, introducing the Cult of Thorn and then implying that it gives them power over Michael Meyers… for some reason. But that doesn’t matter, because Michael just decides to kill them all anyway. What an ignoble way to end the original Halloween franchise and Donald Pleasance’s career.

40. In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale (2007)

As bad as the third In the Name of the King is, the original is even worse for me, just due to how much more it has going for it. We’ve got a great cast (Jason Statham! Ron Perlman! Ray Liotta! John Rhys-Davies! Burt Reynolds! Matthew Lillard!), a much bigger budget, and some actual ambition on display. You can tell that Uwe Boll is trying to make this his very own version of Lord of the Rings, with some massive battles and there are even some legitimately cool moments, like the wizard’s duel in the finale. However, the film is plagued with utterly laughable dialogue, poor editing, bad acting, and a crappy script. It’s good for a few belly laughs, but after the first hour it just turns into an utter slog. This is one of those movies that’s only two hours, but feels like it’s nearly twice that length. Worst of all, one of my friends used to say that this movie was actually good, so I went in with some actual expectations, only to have them quickly melt away.

39. Against the Dark (2009)

I can’t remember if one of my roommates in university recommended this movie to me back in 2009, but I decided to check it out and was floored by how bad it was. It’s a blatant ripoff of I Am Legend, featuring Steven Seagal’s bitch ass occasionally fighting vampires, with basically no budget and TV movie production values. Suffice to say, it fucking sucks (and no, that’s not even intended to be a pun, this movie doesn’t even deserve puns).

38. Battle of the Bulbs (2010)

Battle of the Bulbs is a total piece of crap TV Christmas movie. Most of these low-budget Christmas movies feature terrible acting, a generic plot, and a totally forced resolution, but Battle of the Bulbs is so much worse and more predictable than you are imagining. My family are obsessed with these formulaic, Hallmark Christmas movies, to the point where they watch them year-round, so I’ve seen plenty of them. With that in mind, I can definitely say that Battle of the Bulbs is the worst Christmas movie I can ever recall seeing.

37. Atlas Shrugged II: The Strike (2012)

As bad as the first Atlas Shrugged movie was, part two is so much worse. At least the first part had the decency to just be cheap and boring, but part two doubles down and hammers you over the head with its shitty politics. To be fair, the movie has much higher production values, and Samantha Mathis put in a legitimately good performance as Dagny Taggart (despite a few shaky line deliveries), actually managing to make her feel sympathetic. Unfortunately, the film’s still shoddily made, has some of the worst special effects I’ve ever seen in a professionally-made movie, and most of its runtime is spent preaching at the audience to make sure they “get” the message rather than actually moving things forward. The politics are just plain stupid here, and I don’t even mean that in a biased way: I mean that you have to be a fucking moron to believe that America would ever implement something like the “Fair Share Law” or “Directive 10-289”, but that’s the sort of idiocy you have to float to make Objectivism seem morally justified.

36. I, Frankenstein (2014)

Some movies are so fundamentally flawed that you have to wonder how they even managed to get greenlit, let alone released. As you may have guessed, I, Frankenstein is one of those movies. The film is basically Frankenstein mixed with Underworld, and even features the writer of the Underworld films (and is co-written and directed by the guy who wrote the Pirates of the Caribbean movies and Collateral!?). The film is just ridiculously stupid at all levels. Maybe with a light tone it could have been enjoyable, but I, Frankenstein is embarrassingly self-serious, features Syfy channel-level production values, and makes you generally feel pity for the actors who ended up trapped making it.

35. Osombie (2012)

Man… 2012 was a wild year. America was fresh off of assassinating Osama bin Laden, and some chuckle fucks thought that it would be a great idea to make a movie where he comes back to life as a zombie and leads a zombie jihad. In case it wasn’t obvious, the film was pretty offensive considering that American soldiers and Afghanis were still dying in the War on Terror at the time. The only nice thing I can say about this movie is that the make-up and cinematography are pretty good considering the budget. Otherwise, this movie is dumb as dirt – you can tell that it’s the ramblings of a bunch of Call of Duty/Nazi Zombie players put to film. The “special forces” characters are stupid, and the civilians are somehow even stupider. It’s not even all that fun, campy, or over-the-top to compensate for this.

34. Paintball (2009)

The first review I ever published on IC2S was for this really shitty horror movie about a bunch of doofuses who go paintballing and find themselves getting killed one-by-one by a lone mercenary. Every good idea this film has gets completely wasted. Most egregiously, the characters are assembling parts for a paintball grenade launcher that fires acid-filled paintballs, but when they finally get all the pieces, it doesn’t fire. What the hell kind of bullshit writing is that, especially given how boring the rest of the movie is!?

33. Howling IV: The Original Nightmare (1988)

Howling IV is another victim of severe budget cuts. Originally intended as a more faithful adaptation of the novel, Howling IV had basically all its funding pulled just prior to filming, meaning that the cast and crew had to work with the smallest filming budget known to man. Unfortunately, this means that what we do get is fucking boring, with basically nothing happening for 90% of the runtime. When stuff does finally start happening at the very ending, it’s still a far cry from the original film in terms of quality (and I don’t even particularly like The Howling, so that’s saying a lot). Romy Walthal also puts in perhaps the worst lead acting performance I’ve ever seen, which is a feat considering this franchise’s pedigree.

32. Beyond Loch Ness (2008)

With Beyond Loch Ness, we’ve hit the point on this list where awful TV movies reside. Beyond Loch Ness sees the Loch Ness Monster coming to North America to snack on locals in surprisingly gory fashion. It’s laughably bad all-round, and the special effects are definitely what you’d expect from a TV movie, but at least it’s somewhat entertaining to make fun of.

31. Evil Bong (2006)

Man… this movie. I don’t even know where to start with it. Despite their miniscule budgets, Full Moon Features have made some reasonably ambitious stuff over the years (I watched this in a double-feature with Trancers, which was a pretty good time!), but Evil Bong is the polar opposite of ambition. Hell, it’s downright lethargic. The film is shot like a sitcom, with basically everything taking place in a one room apartment. The characters just mill about and get high, while the titular Evil Bong offs them one-by-one. We get some cameos by Tommy Chong and Full Moon Features regulars, and there’s some dancing strippers in the Evil Bong’s dream world to give the audience something to look at. It’s all just… so dumb. I was high when I watched this movie, and even then I was just sitting there thinking “what the fuck am I watching?” Clearly, no one involved gave a single shit when they made Evil Bong, they just filmed enough improvised bullshit to get to feature length, and then called it a day.

30. Game Over, Man! (2018)

This movie might have been the point where I just started to assume that “Netflix Original” meant “this movie is a stinking garbage pile that will give you cancer if you so much as sniff it”. I thought that the premise sounded intriguing: it’s a “homage” to Die Hard, starring three slackers trying to pitch their get their video game concept to an influencer who is staying at the hotel when terrorists break in and take everyone hostage. Unfortunately, within the first five minutes, we’ve got a cornucopia of cringy semen and closeted gay jokes, which make up the bulk of this film’s attempts at humour. Like… picture this scene: the terrorists are about to find the slackers, so they need to come up with a plan to slip past them. Two of them basically just hide behind the curtains, and the third pretends that he died of auto-erotic asphyxiation by hanging himself in the closet with his dick out. The two henchmen find him and… turns out they’re gay, so this causes them to want to fuck on the bed in front of him!?!!! Oh, and this also means that we get Adam Devine running around with his dick out for the next five minutes, which didn’t do it for me, but maybe that’s a plus for some of y’all. There are a few laughs to be had, especially when the film really does push the envelope (I legitimately laughed when the terrorists try to humiliate the influencer by forcing him to eat another man’s ass out, only for him to go whole hog into it, to everyone’s enjoyment), but for the most part, Game Over, Man! is either lowest-common-denominator levels of cringe or outright offensively bad.

29. Left Behind II: Tribulation Force (2002)

I recently went into excruciating detail about why this movie is so bad, but here’s the TLDR: it’s boring as fuck. To be fair, the book it’s based on also sucks, but at least it had the good grace to end with a big, exciting war. This movie doesn’t even have that, so it’s just ninety minutes of wheel-spinning and low-stakes drama, with awful evangelism tactics, and the worst romantic misunderstanding subplot I’ve ever seen. I fucking hated Left Behind: Rise of the Antichrist, so the fact that this movie is much further down on this list should really say something about how dire a watch it is.

28. The Cloverfield Paradox (2018)

The Cloverfield Paradox is, to date, the biggest movie disappointment of my life. A friend and I both really loved the first two Cloverfield movies, so we were excited to watch this movie when it shadow dropped during the Super Bowl. We had heard initial impressions that it wasn’t very good… but, c’mon, it’s a Cloverfield movie, how bad can it really be?

Turns out… really, really bad. To put it simply, in The Cloverfield Paradox, shit just happens for no reason. You either go with it, or the entire thing falls apart immediately. The movie sets everything up like we might get an explanation or reasoning for what’s happening. Why is a woman suddenly embedded in the walls? Why does the ship’s worm colony suddenly appear inside a dude and kill him? Why does a dude’s arm get detached and then start moving on its own volition? The answer: just fucking because. There’s no real rhyme or reason: they just went to an alternate dimension and everything is completely fucky here. I think there’s a reality wherein this could be satisfying, but here it just becomes frustrating, as nothing makes any fucking sense and is just there to look cool or spooky. As usual for J.J. Abrams, the mystery of it is most of the actual appeal, so the fact that there is no actual mystery is just a piss-off. Meanwhile, the entire time this is happening, we’ve got a gargantuan Cloverfield monster fucking up Earth and we don’t even get to see this until the final shot of the film, which is just infuriating. I hate this movie with every fibre of my being. It took a bourgeoning franchise of critically-acclaimed, loosely-connected, sci-fi originals and completely destroyed it in one, single movie. How do you fuck up an entire franchise that badly!?

27. Troll 2 (1990)

Troll 2 is legendarily bad, and as funny as it is, it definitely deserves its reputation as one of the worst movies ever made. I saw it in theaters as a double-feature with Best Worst Movie, and I even got to meet George Hardy, so I was primed to enjoy its brand of insanity. It did not disappoint. The film is a combination of low budget, bad acting, and legitimately weird writing, all of which is made worse due to a severe language barrier for the director, which makes everything in the film utterly bizarre to witness.

26. Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (1994)

Texas Chainsaw Massacre is an utter embarrassment and easily the worst movie in a franchise notorious for its bad sequels. Despite being written and directed by one of the co-creators of the original film, it completely misunderstands why the original film was so resonant back in 1974. The film makes all sorts of meta-commentary about bad horror sequels, but this falls completely flat because the film itself is even worse than most other bad horror sequels (which is saying a lot). This is largely due to the baffling script, which features the Illuminati controlling the Sawyer family to try to get them… to scare people, I guess (it’s stupid). About the only thing making this movie watchable is Matthew McConaughey’s unhinged performance as Vilmer, which isn’t exactly good, but it is certainly memorable for how over-the-top he gets.

And that’s it for part two. If you’re reading this the day it comes out, then my list of the 25 worst movies of all time will be out tomorrow!

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My Top 100 Movies of All-Time (50-26)

~ Barloq ~ Leave a comment

50. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)

The Last Crusade used to be my favourite Indiana Jones movie while growing up, but as I’ve gotten older I find that it’s somewhat uneven. The first act is pretty cartoonish and the film doesn’t actually get properly stellar until the last thirty minutes or so. That said, once Sean Connery gets involved, the film gets a major shot in the arm, and there are so many funny, iconic moments and some well-crafted action sequences which make it a real blast to watch. In terms of pure, unadulterated fun, The Last Crusade is definitely a highlight of the franchise.

49. Predator (1987)

At first glance, Predator seems like it’s just a standard, macho, 80s action movie. However, what really elevates it is its genre-bending horror twist, a star-studded cast, cool creature design, and underrated direction by John McTiernan. The way that the film slowly reveals the antagonist piece-by-piece is a masterclass in leaving the audience in suspense. The premise of having an incredibly powerful alien monster hunting the most dangerous men in the world is also just badass as all hell. For being an all-time great action movie and a surprisingly good horror flick to boot, Predator really stands out as something special.

48. Se7en (1995)

After years spent cutting his teeth on music videos and the infamously troubled production of Alien 3, David Fincher finally got the chance to show off his talents for Se7en, and the result was one of the bleakest, grimiest noir cop movies of all-time. The central mystery, revolving around the hunt for a serial killer who is theming their murders around the seven deadly sins, makes for a captivating watch. Seeing how each kill plays out also has a sick fascination to it and the ending twist is one of the bleakest in cinema history.

47. Fight Club (1999)

Fight Club is a film that seems like it should not work, especially coming from a major studio. The narrative is very post-modern, it has a punk edge to it, and the fact that half the audience seems to miss that it’s a commentary on toxic masculinity doesn’t really help matters either. However, David Fincher once again brings it all together in a mesmerizing mixture of violence, dark humour, and anarchistic political commentary.

46. Pulp Fiction (1994)

I used to be pretty unimpressed with Pulp Fiction, but my most recent rewatch gave me a lot more appreciation for the film. It is very disjointed by design, using Tarantino’s signature non-linear storytelling approach to dole out its narrative in bits and pieces (even going so far as to kill off a character and then have them back at a time before their death occurred in the narrative later on in the film). Each segment plays out like it’s own self-contained narrative, but each one is extremely memorable and cool. Quinton Tarantino is clearly just showing off with his dialogue writing, but who cares how extra it is when the results are this entertaining?

45. The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

The perpetual number one movie on the IMDb top 250, The Shawshank Redemption is an all-time crowd-pleaser of a movie. It is unquestionably one of the most hopeful films ever made, taking the audience through a journey of injustice and darkness, only to bring them through to a happy ending where everyone gets their comeuppance and our heroes are able to finally find some justice. While I certainly think that there are plenty of better movies than The Shawshank Redemption, I cannot deny that this is a great little narrative and the sort of movie you really need to pop on every once in a while for some motivation.

44. The Dark Knight (2008)

As good as Batman Begins was, The Dark Knight blows it out of the water. The narrative is more twisty and complicated than your average blockbuster, often cutting back and forth between multiple characters before it culminates in some big, shocking reveal that shakes up the narrative from that point onward. Much has been said about Heath Ledger’s Joker, and deservedly so, but what’s really remarkable is how well we he works compared to his countless imitators. Ledger’s Joker is definitely one step ahead of most of its foes, but it feels like he uses chaos to create opportunities for himself, whereas the Joker rip-offs just seem to have a supernatural knack for planning things they could not have possibly predicted (looking at you, Raoul Silva). Also, for as much as this film is remembered for being the dark, gritty take on Batman, hindsight has shown that the film was a lot more fun and measured than we gave it credit for.

43. Pearl (2022)

I liked X a lot. I LOVED Pearl. Mia Goth is so good as the titular Pearl that her performance alone elevates this movie to the stratosphere. The film shows Pearl’s slow-burn descent into madness as she desperately tries to become a Hollywood star to escape a life of rural, domestic drudgery. It plays out like a twisted, Technicolor fairy tale as she comes to realize that there is something fundamentally wrong with the way her mind works. Then, when you consider that this movie was basically made on a tiny budget, using left-over bits and pieces from X, and Pearl is a truly astonishing accomplishment.

42. The Bourne Ultimatum (2007)

The Bourne Ultimatum unfolds like a stealth-action video game. Each action sequence plays out like an elaborately-structured “level”, with Jason Bourne messing with the enemy agents, thwarting security, and using crowds of people to sew chaos so he can reach his objective. Then, at the end of each level, we get a big, climactic boss fight or vehicle section to cap that section off. It makes for a thrilling, constantly-escalating series of showdowns, thanks to expert direction from Paul Greengrass. I don’t even mind the much-maligned shaky cam here, I think it just adds to the chaos in this particular film.

41. The Terminator (1984)

Jason Cameron’s original sci-fi epic feels a bit aged thanks to its special effects and very 80s soundtrack, but that doesn’t really take away from what an accomplishment this film is (and especially considering the miniscule budget it was made on). It’s basically a high-concept, sci-fi slasher flick. The film absolutely nails Arnold Schwarzenegger’s strengths as an actor at the time, showing that he has more to offer than mere imposing physicality, and the action sequences are as thrilling as ever.

40. Kill Bill: Volume 2 (2004)

Kill Bill: Volume 1 is a balls-to-the-wall, irreverent, bloody action spectacle. Fans of that film likely expected more of the same for Volume 2, but instead, Quentin Tarantino pivoted to a much more subdued, contemplative, and philosophical tone for its follow-up. As a result, I can understand why Volume 2 is divisive, but for my money, it is so much better than its predecessor. Giving us more information about The Bride’s backstory makes her significantly more identifiable. She was cool before, and we sympathized with her desire for revenge, but getting more context about what led her to this point, and about the sort of person Bill is, makes the film so much more compelling. The climactic showdown with Bill plays out more through words than it does actions, and while that might be disappointing to some, it makes for a truly unforgettable finale.

39. Ratatouille (2007)

Pixar movies have, objectively, some of the stupidest premises for a major studio film, and Ratatouille might be the stupidest of them all. A rat wants to become a chef, so he hides under a fuck-up chef’s hat and uses his goddamn hair to direct him to become an elite cook…!? In what world does this premise make for a good movie? Well… this world, apparently, because Ratatouille is a triumph of cinema. It’s got everything you’d expect of a Pixar classic: charming animation, strong writing, fun characters, and lots and lots of heart.

38. The Descent (2005)

The Descent is, unquestionably, one of the best horror movies since the new millennium began. The film is already frightening enough when it’s just dealing in claustrophobia, paranoia, mental illness, and the tension between its cast of spelunking women, but then the monsters finally show up, all hell breaks loose. In particular, Juno is one of the most badass characters in any movie, to the point where you start off hating her, but really start to sympathize with her in spite of her moral failings when it becomes obvious that she really does care about her friends in spite of her actions. There’s an overbearing sense that you can’t truly trust everything you’re seeing, which leaves plenty of room for interpretation as well. This is especially punctuated by the film’s gender relations, which lend a lot of thematic depth to the proceedings (especially since nearly all the crawlers they encounter are male, and the lone female emerges after Sarah kills its child…).

37. The Founder (2016)

The Founder is one of those biopics that just shouldn’t work. Oh wow, a movie about the guy who turned McDonald’s into a national chain, how good can it be? Turns out that this movie is enthralling from start to finish. Even something as simple as the McDonald brothers explaining how they turned the restaurant experience into an assembly line is brought to life in fascinating detail. Michael Keaton is as great as you’d expect as Ray Kroc, and he gets truly sinister towards the latter-half when he goes from down-on-his-luck businessman to outright predatory monster. It’s also worth noting that this film came out in 2016 when America was first in the grips of MAGA fever, which lent the film an unintentional air of relevancy, as the parallels to Trump’s own sinister capitalist rise are palpable.

36. Jaws (1975)

Jaws is a movie you really need to see to understand just how good it is. The first half plays out as you’d expect a creature feature to: big shark goes around picking off swimmers, the sheriff tries to prevent this from happening, but is overturned by his higher-ups, until a very public attack forces the town’s hand. As good as the first half is, it’s the second half, where Brody, Hooper, and Quint try to hunt down the shark, that Jaws becomes legendary. The three characters have such clashing personalities and we get some of the earliest examples of Spielberg’s trademark sense of wonder, until we reach the bloody, tense finale.

35. Silence (2016)

Silence can be a pretty rough watch. A slow-burn, religious epic about the enduring power of faith in the face of intense persecution, the film poses some pretty serious theological questions about whether denying faith is more Christ-like than standing firm and allowing others to suffer as a result. The film ultimately leaves the answers up to you. I don’t imagine this will hit nearly as hard for the non-religious, but for someone like me, the journey is spell-binding, thanks largely to a committed performance from Andrew Garfield and deft direction from Martin Scorsese.

34. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)

This first Pirates of the Caribbean film is one of the funnest scripts ever put to screen. There’s just enough Jack Sparrow here to make his roguish antics charming, without being annoying (like in some of the sequels). Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley are also quite fun as the star-crossed lovers, and Geoffrey Rush’s Barbossa makes for a fantastic villain. The film is packed full of the requisite swashbuckling action, and the horror twist at the end of the first act makes for a devilishly clever way to up the stakes.

33. Dawn of the Dead (1978)

Dawn of the Dead feels like a big movie, with hundreds of extras, wild special effects, huge sets, and lots of gory action sequences. The fact that it was filmed on a budget around half a million dollars just makes the resulting film even more remarkable as a result. Much has been said about this film’s social commentary on consumerism, but it really does bear repeating, as it makes the film a lot more interesting than if it was just a simple zombie exploitation film. Night of the Living Dead set the template for the modern zombie, but Dawn of the Dead really cemented the concept, especially the prevalence of over-the-top gore and societal collapse which are staples of the genre now.

32. The Incredibles (2004)

The Incredibles plays out like a kid’s version of Watchmen, with some libertarianism thrown in for good (?) measure. The first Pixar movie to really feel properly mature in its storytelling, The Incredibles brings bombastic action, heart-felt emotion, and some really funny moments together inside its Art Deco-inspired setting to create a truly special film. As good as the action sequences are though, it’s the family drama that really makes this film so good. Seeing how Bob Parr’s mid-life crisis throws his family life into chaos, and how he comes to terms with that, is every bit as compelling as any battle with Syndrome or the Omnidroid.

31. Taxi Driver (1976)

Taxi Driver left me fucked up when I watched it. Another one of those films I watched for my film elective, I felt like I was having a mental breakdown watching this story of weirdo loner Travis Bickle descending into extremism. I definitely was not in the best headspace at the time (maybe due to university-related stress, or maybe due to being a lonely weirdo myself at the time), but the movie left an impression on me that few other films ever have. It’s a dark and scary film in unconventional ways, featuring an all-time great performance from Robert De Niro.

30. Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)

Pan’s Labyrinth is a haunting and beautiful film. My first exposure to it was at a movie rental place, where it was playing on one of the TVs there. Seeing the creepy makeup effects for the titular Pan, I instantly knew that this was a must-watch for me. Guillermo del Toro’s creature designs are so unique and frightening. The fairytale adventure we go on is decidedly dark, violent, and adult, but what makes it truly remarkable is how it is contrasted against the real-life horrors of fascist Spain during World War II.

29. Saving Private Ryan (1998)

Some people say that Saving Private Ryan‘s first twenty minutes are amazing and then the rest of the film is mediocre. Those people are wrong. Obviously, the opening carnage as Tom Hanks’ Captain John Miller and his squad storm Omaha Beach is harrowing and pulse-pounding, resulting in some of the most visceral war scenes ever filmed. However, their journey across Nazi-occupied France to try to bring home James Ryan, whose brothers were all killed in action, is still very compelling. As Miller’s squad starts suffering casualties of their own, they begin to question their role in what basically is a PR mission for the US army. Notably, James Ryan himself is left haunted by his unwitting and unwilling role in all of this, spending the rest of his life questioning whether it was all worth it just to save him.

28. The Iron Giant (1999)

It has been said that The Iron Giant is the best Superman movie of all-time and I can’t really disagree with that assessment. The story of a boy and his secret giant robot friend, things begin to escalate when a pesky government agent starts investigating rumours about the robot. As fun as those hijinks are, the film really gets good as the robot begins to learn about humanity, morality, the thin line between life and death, and the importance of choosing the kind of person you want to be. The ending makes me bawl like a baby, it is so beautiful.

27. Dredd (2012)

I gushed about Dredd more than a decade ago, about how it is such a well-constructed action movie that it transcends the sum of its parts. Like John Wick, a lot of this comes down to really efficient world-building. Dredd does not waste a lot of time explaining its dystopian sci-fi world and how it works. Instead, it manages to communicate everything with quick environmental details or background dialogue. The action is also just kick ass, featuring gorgeous slo-mo shots that put Zack Snyder’s filmography to shame. The characters are also great. Karl Urban’s Dredd is a stone-cold badass, but Olivia Thirlby’s Cassandra Anderson is the real emotional heart of the film. Lena Headey’s Mama is a blood-chilling villain, one who acts aloof, but is clearly a barely-restrained psychopath who will happily commit acts of brutality with little provocation. Hell, even Wood Harris’ Kay, a low-level thug who’d be cannon fodder in any other movie, leaves lasting impression here. The movie is also unexpectedly and subtly feminist, which is always nice to see!

26. Spider-Man 2 (2004)

Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2 is, hands-down, the best superhero movie of all-time. Doctor Octopus is one of the best comic book villains ever put to film, a tragic and sinister villain in equal measure. The action sequences are spectacular, featuring great special effects and swooping camera work which shows off the epic scale of these battles. What makes this film so goddamn amazing though is Peter Parker’s personal drama. He’s so down on his luck and his life is such a chaotic mess that you can’t help but sympathize for him, especially considering how much good he does for the city in secret. Seeing how he struggles to juggle his busy schedule, hold down a job, try to help Aunt May, and figure out how to deal with his feelings for Mary-Jane Watson is every bit as compelling as seeing him punch Doc Ock in the face. I used to really dislike Mary-Jane, but in my most recent rewatch, I really started to sympathize with her: she clearly loves Peter, but he can’t be honest with her and keeps giving her mixed signals, which forces her to give him an ultimatum to decide what’s truly important to him.

Oh, and the horror hospital sequence is one of the scariest and most intense non-horror movie scenes of all-time. It’s insane that Sam Raimi managed to put a three minute Evil Dead sequence in his family blockbuster.

If you’re reading this the day it comes out, then be sure to tune in again tomorrow for the third and final part of this countdown!

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10 Worst Movies of the 2010s

~ Barloq ~ Leave a comment

As you can probably tell if you’ve frequented this blog, you’ll know that I have a thing for bad movies. There’s a special sort of film-going experience that you can only get from a crap-tacular film, be that stunned disbelief or pure rage. Then there’s the true bottom of the barrel. Most of the films on this list are so bad that I would never want to subject myself to them again, and even several years removed from watching them they still leave an awful taste in my mouth. So let’s go down memory lane and exhume some of the worst movies of the entire decade and show off their rotting putridity for all to see?

Honourable Mentions

Birdemic: Shock and Terror (February 27, 2010)
You would be remiss to mention bad movies of the 2010s and leave out Birdemic, a rip-off of The Birds that’s so legendarily incompetent that it became a meme. Director James Nguyen really wanted to make a positive film about environmentalism and pacifism, all wrapped up in an epic love story, but good God he failed spectacularly. For the most part, the film is just boring, but then suddenly the clip art GIF-quality birds attack and it’s one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. I swear to God I laughed for at least a minute straight when they started dive bombing and literally exploding. Even with everything else wrong with this film, that alone made it at least hilarious and so-bad-it’s-good enough that it’s more enjoyable than any of the movies that made this list. Still, for the sheer ineptitude on display, this film deserves at least a mention on this list.

Dogman (November 6, 2012)
I’ve always been highly intrigued by the legend of the Michigan Dogman, so when I found out that someone made a movie about this creature I was excited to see what they would come up with. I even saw a Blu-ray copy of the film on sale and even though it was going for freaking $35 I was tempted. However, I ultimately decided that I’d better find out if it was good or not before dropping that much on it… and thank God I did, because I dodged a freaking bullet. Dogman is clearly a no-budget film and what we do get on screen is just boring. I can’t really remember much more about it than being extremely disappointed that nothing happens, so I can’t really justify putting it on the list proper (and like hell I’m rewatching it).

The Predator (Septemer 14, 2018)
The Predator isn’t *quite* bad enough to actually make this list, but it is easily one of my most hated films of the decade. I don’t often advocate for films to be written out of continuity, but the Predator franchise is absolutely dead in the water if this film is allowed to dictate the franchise’s future. And why did they feel the need to reboot the franchise anyway? Predators was awesome and went over most of the ideas this film tries to pass off as new anyway.

So with those dishonourable mentions out of the way, let’s get on to the list…

10) Atlas Shrugged Part III: Who Is John Galt? (September 14, 2014)
If you read my Atlas Shrugged retrospective series, you might have expected to see this film on here. Atlas Shrugged Part III fails on so many levels that it’s frankly impressive. Even setting aside the shitty philosophy and morality at this film’s rotten core, the filmmaking is distractingly bad. Like, almost every scene has something distracting – from terrible editing, to bad lighting, to bargain-basement props, to time wasting stock footage, one can’t help but feel like the filmmakers just didn’t give a shit anymore after losing more than $45 million on this franchise. Oh and the acting is the worst in the franchise, which is even funnier when you realize everyone was recast in all three parts. I’m not exaggerating when I say that this movie is on a level of filmmaking incompetence that rivals The Room. I saw a copy of this movie on DVD at a store once and I was sorely tempted to buy it, I had that much fun at its expense (the only reason I didn’t buy it is because like hell I’m going to financially support the bastards in the Randian community). Literally the only reason I didn’t rank this movie lower was because it was such a hoot to watch, but it is unquestionably one of the worst movies of the decade.

9) Pompeii (February 21, 2014)
I could say that this movie was a bigger disaster than the real-life eruption of Vesuvius which the film is based on, but that would just be insensitive, stupid and uninspired… coincidentally, all of those words could be used to describe Paul W.S. Anderson’s Pompeii adequately though. Pompeii is a disaster-romance in the same sort of vein as Pearl Harbour, where far too much time is dedicated to a dull romance and the disaster is just dumb spectacle. Kit Harrington is here at his absolute blandest and poor Emily Browning is saddled with a lifeless damsel in distress role. About the only notable thing about this movie is Kiefer Sutherland who seems to be having an absolute blast hamming it up as a cartoonishly evil Roman senator. I personally thought that he was the one entertaining bit in this film, but I can see others thinking that his acting is just plain bad so who knows – you might think that this film’s even worse than I did. Really though, there’s so much potential for a great film about the eruption of Vesuvius, even from the dramatic accounts that still survive to this day. Unfortunately, Pompeii struggles to even survive in the DVD bargain bin in 2019.

8) I, Frankenstein (January 24, 2014)
Some movies are so bad that you wonder how they even managed to get greenlit, let alone released. I, Frankenstein is just that kind of film. Who in their right mind thought that a 65 million dollar film about a monster-hunting Frankenstein’s monster would be a success? Turns out that that would be the production company and co-creator of the Underworld franchise, which should be incredibly obvious to anyone who has actually seen this film because it feels like a cheap knock-off of Underworld (which is, in itself, a cheap knockoff of White Wolf’s RPGs), only years after people stopped giving a shit about the franchise. Okay, fine, the idea is shit, but how did they then manage to rope Aaron Eckhart, Bill Nighy, Yvonne Strahovski, Miranda Otto and even Jai Courtney into this!?! Even then, there could be some campy enjoyment if the film was at least in on the joke, but the film is embarrassingly self-serious, full of mythologizing about angels and demons and the status of Frankenstein’s soul… it’s just bad, everyone who’s even heard of the film knows it, I’m not sure what else there is to say.

7) Osombie (May 5, 2012)
Okay, I remember being moderately excited for this movie back when it came out due to the bonkers premise alone, but my memory is a bit hazy at this point (and like hell I’ll watch it again). I do remember being incredibly disappointed by the film though, which just plays out like all of the other  lazy zombie movies which were infesting video shelves at the time. The zombie Osama bin Laden gimmick isn’t even that well utilized either – instead of having him as this Dead Snow-like monster, I distinctly remember that he kind of just shows up every once in a while and is ultimately pretty inconsequential, not to mention that the film isn’t really all that interested in having a campy or over-the-top laugh. The film’s characters are also incredibly stupid, with its “special forces” cast being clearly modelled from someone’s Call of Duty expertise. Oh, and in case it wasn’t obvious, it’s also pretty goddamn insensitive to make a movie like this when Afghanistan was (and still is) a warzone at the time. Osombie is one of those films whose premise should have just been a dumb laugh between a group of friends and then been allowed to fade into the night instead of something that everyone involved is going to have to explain to their grandchildren one day.

6) The Cloverfield Paradox (February 4, 2018)
The Cloverfield Paradox has to be one of the most deflating films of all time. After 10 Cloverfield Lane there was legitimate hype for Cloverfield as a franchise and then The Cloverfield Paradox gets surprise announced and released in the middle of the Super Bowl? Holy shit! But good God were we ever duped because this film sucks ass. Seriously, there are few films which I have hated with such vitriol more than The Cloverfield Paradox. To put it simply, in The Cloverfield Paradox, shit just happens for no reason. Early on it seems like they’re setting up a mystery with all the weird things happening, but no, it’s just happening because that’s what the writers want to happen. There are absolutely no rules to ground everything and it just makes the film frustrating to watch. Oh and don’t even get me started on that damn ending, which just makes for a cocktease since it reveals that we’re missing everything that we actually wanted to see. Ugh, fuck this film.

5) God’s Not Dead 2 (April 1, 2016)
Oh hey, another terrible film we covered in a retrospectives series! God’s Not Dead 2 is truly one of the most deluded and cloying films I’ve ever seen. Any attempt at nuance from the previous film is discarded entirely as atheists are outright portrayed as body snatcher-like monsters, all working to destroy Christianity in America, while the Christians are all portrayed as poor, innocent nobodies who never did anything to deserve such scorn. It’s just plain offensive and gets to the point of being conspiratorial. Even the evangelicals this film is directed at should feel dirty for getting their dicks sucked so hard by this film. That’s really the issue – you cannot separate this film’s politics from its story. It bashes you over the head with the message so much and demonizes everyone outside of its target audience that you either hate it or feel validated by it. There’s really no middle-ground and no other purpose to the film (other than, y’know, to sell bullshit Christian merch).

4) Project X (March 2, 2012)
I wrote a review about this film 6 years ago (!!!), and to this day I can still remember how much I hated it. A found footage teen sex comedy doesn’t sound like that bad of a premise (like… it sounds like shit, but not unbearably so, right?), but the main problem is that the characters in this film are all loathsome. I struggle to think of a character I hate more than Costa, a selfish jackass whose only concern is literally getting laid, everyone else be damned (even his “friends”). The unbearable characters are enough to tank this movie by themselves, but it also doesn’t help that this film is just plain offensive. Every female character exists only to be oogled by the camera, we get all sorts of mean-spirited gay and fat jokes, and there’s even a little person who only exists to get thrown into an oven while the teens just laugh about it. Wow. Did I mention that everyone in this movie sucks and I wish they all overdosed on the stolen ecstasy in the film? That would have probably earned a single laugh out of me in this deeply unfunny “comedy”.

3) Game Over, Man! (March 23, 2018)
Is anyone surprised that Neflix originals nabbed 2 of the 10 worst films of the decade? Game Over, Man! is easily the worst one that I’ve seen, which is especially criminal considering the fantastic premise – basically, it’s a comedic Die Hard knock-off where the “heroes” are a bunch of slacker hotel housekeepers. How can you screw that up? Well, by making a comedy which attempts to be so outrageously over-the-top that it’s just deeply unfunny. Like, let me paint the picture for you – the bad guys are closing in on our heroes. They need to do something to slip past them and Adam Devine announces he has a plan. Cue the bad guys finding him with his dick out in the closet, pretending he died of auto-erotic asphyxiation. I thought that he was going to use this surprising moment to get the drop on them, but no, they just think that auto-erotic asphyxiation is funny on its own merits, plus they get to have Adam Devine run around on screen for about 5 minutes straight with his dick flopping about everywhere. Oh, and then the bad guys start trying to make out, because oh my God guys, did you know that there are gay men who like other men! Yeah, there’s a shitload of gay jokes in this film and they’re all incredibly lazy. About the only funny part is when the bad guy tries to punish a dickhead celebrity by forcing him to eat out another hostage’s ass, but is then surprised and flustered when it turns out that they’re both into it. There, I’ve told you the one good part in this film, you don’t have to see it now, you can leave a thankful comment to me down below.

2) Noobz (January 25, 2013)
Noobz is kind of lucky that it came out in 2013, because in a post-GamerGate world, this already-painfully unfunny movie has aged worse than Bubsy 3D. Imagine a movie that takes the worst stereotypes about gamers – they’re all basement-dwelling nerds, they’re racist, they’re homophobic, they hate women and can’t believe that they play video games, etc. Now imagine that the movie plays this all straight and expects us to find it endearing. Bad news, Noobz, you suck and everyone in this movie sucks (except for poor Zelda Williams who finds herself in a hapless role as the personalityless, token object of affection for the douchebag “hero”). Like Game Over, Man!, Noobz thinks that there’s nothing funnier than a closeted gay character and the movie mines this one “joke” over and over to the point of insanity. Somehow, it even manages to one-up Game Over, Man! by also including a kid with severe asthma who almost dies several times when his breathing apparatus gets damaged (which is somehow less-offensive than how every aspect of his personality revolves around his disability). Everything in this film is just lazy, from the tired road-trip structure to the awful jokes. It doesn’t even have the decency to end in a satisfying manner, instead having the heroes all get a sponsorship from Mountain Dew… and then reveal 2 seconds later that the guy who signed them gets arrested for impersonating a Mountain Dew executive. It’s like an extra big middle finger to you, as if you didn’t already waste almost two hours of your life watching this movie to begin with.

1) Scary Movie 5 (April 12, 2013)
As you have probably noticed by now, there’s not much worse than a terrible comedy, hence why they’ve captured the top 4 spots on this countdown. Scary Movie 5 might just be the worst comedy I’ve ever seen, let alone one of the most unenjoyable films I’ve ever subjected myself to. Don’t get me wrong, all of the other Scary Movie films were already REALLY shitty, but they at least had the occasional laugh and the comedic talents of Anna Faris, Regina Hall and Leslie Nielson to at least keep things somewhat respectable. Scary Movie 5 has none of that, and the results are just pathetic to watch. The jokes are tired, stupid, predictable and just plain unfunny. There was no good reason for this franchise to come back to life after a 7 year hiatus and we are well and truly fucked if David Zucker decides to trot out the franchise again in 2020. Literally the only good thing that I can say about this movie is that, for once in this franchise, at least it doesn’t lean into mean-spirited homophobia, transphobia and making fun of people with disabilities… but, like, that’s not something I should have to congratulate the film for.

15 Best Movie Posters of 2018

~ Barloq ~ Leave a comment

If you’ve read any of my movie reviews, you might have noticed that I always have a whole blurb at the start of the review critiquing the design of the film’s poster. I really love a good movie poster, it’s a piece of art unto itself. Films that treat their poster as more than just a piece of marketing deserve special recognition, so what better way to do that than a year-end countdown?

Also… man, it’s hard to believe that the last time I did a movie posters best-of was 5 freaking years ago! I’ve always wanted to turn it into an annual thing, but it has never actually happened for whatever reason. Hell, I even had a folder with notable movie posters saved in 2015 or 2017, but the countdown just never materialized. So, with any luck, this will be commencement of the first annual IC2S Best Movie Poster countdown!

(Images come courtesy of the film poster database Internet Movie Poster Awards.)

Honourable Mention: The Predator

This poster deserves special mention just because of how weird it is. This is one of a series of stylized posters featuring the Predator living a “cool” lifestyle of playing basketball, skateboarding and break-dancing. It’s such a bonkers design, made even weirder by the tongue-in-cheek “ALIEN” brand on their computer and basketball jersey. The neon graffiti aesthetic is also so at odds with Predator that this whole thing becomes really interesting. I mean, it’s more respectful to the franchise than The Predator was at the very least.
15) Acrimony

Acrimony has a couple really cool posters, but in my opinion this one is the best of them. Maybe I’m somewhat biased (red and black are my favourite colour combination), but the poster itself is just quite striking and says a lot about the film and the dangerous nature of its protagonist through its use of imagery. Plus, if Acrimony‘s Tomatometer is anything to go by, its posters are higher art than the film itself.

14) Isle of Dogs

This poster works on a few different levels, any one of which could be enough to get someone to want to see the film. First of all, it shows off the film’s unique artstyle with each of its colourful characters on display. It also hints at Wes Anderson’s particular “flat” style of directing, something which would excite anyone who had seen Fantastic Mr. Fox. Furthermore, it also shows the film’s Japanese setting, not only with the title and sole human character, but with the way that the dogs are arranged vertically as if they were kanji. Character posters are an overdone trope with major releases these days (one that Isle of Dogs is not immune to), but it’s nice to get a poster like this which shows off all of the characters in the film in an equal light, from the major to the minor, while also conveying that the film’s style is as important as any singular element.

13) Goodland

This poster mainly makes the list because, I mean look at it, it’s a gorgeous composition. The reflection in the water also has some thematic significance for the film, representing how the events of the film turn everything upside down. It’s just a cool, visually striking poster, one that could easily be considered art unto itself.

12) Active Measures

Visually, this isn’t a particularly complex poster. Rather, this one succeeds for just how effectively it conveys the idea of the film through simple images. The sheer scale of the maze also goes to show that this isn’t a simple affair, rather things have been progressing and going in Putin’s favour for a long time to get them to the point where they could potentially have influence in the highest levels of the White House.

11) Ant-man and the Wasp

A list of the best movie posters of the year is never complete without one good Drew Stuzan-style poster and I had a few candidates to go with this year. While Black Panther, Aquaman, Deadpool 2, Solo: A Star Wars Story and Avengers: Infinity War all had posters competing for a spot, I ultimately went with Ant-man and the Wasp. I just thought that the red, gold and white looked far more striking than any of its competitors. The equal prominence of Ant-man and Wasp as the co-leads also helped as it lent the poster just a bit more flavour to the composition, splitting the cast in half down the middle. Ultimately, it just makes the film look like a ton of fun, which is exactly what the Ant-man franchise is going for, moreso than any other Marvel franchise.

10) The American Meme

This poster for The American Meme goes to show why taglines are so important. There are a few different posters for this documentary, but this one is definitely the most eye-catching of the bunch. The tagline and image alone are enough to convey the idea that one should be cautious on social media, which is enough to make me intrigued on what sort of angle the filmmakers are going to take. In fact, of the films on this list that I haven’t seen, this is one that I am definitely going to check out entirely because of the poster. I’m not sure what higher praise you could give a film poster than that.

9) Spider-man: Into the Spider-verse

This is another one of those posters on this list which earns its place mostly by just being really cool and well-composed. It does get some points as well for managing to convey that this isn’t “just another Spider-man movie”, with its animation style, different costume for Miles Morales and the clothing he’s wearing over the costume which helps convey his character. Oh, and to top it off, the poster just makes this film look like a ton of fun.

8) Beats of Rage

…and speaking of fun, we’ve got Beats of Rage. There were a couple films in 2018 with 80s arcade-inspired posters, but Beats of Rage takes the cake in my opinion. I have absolutely no idea what this film is about, but the poster is making me interested just due to how insane it looks. Is this like a mash-up between Mad Max and Dance Dance Revolution? I almost want to watch it to find out, but I feel like there’s no way it can live up to the insanity in my head.

7) The Endless

This is one gorgeously haunting poster. It almost looks like it could be a pretty cool desktop background, but the poster is also designed in such a way as to make it simultaneously unsettling to look at. The darkness encroaching throughout the image, the gigantic cosmic portal dwarfing the human characters and the humans all getting sucked into the vortex all make for a creepy image. This is another one of those posters that gets me interested on its own and having looked into the film more as a result, it sounds enthralling.


6) The Meg

The Meg had some of the funnest and most impressive marketing campaigns of the year, promising an entertaining popcorn film with a shark bigger than any other (whether the film delivered on that promise is up for debate). The posters helped to build up that hype, that this was a shark movie for the modern blockbuster age. I liked this poster the most, as it shows off the scale along with some humour in the process, while also riffing on Jaws.

5) Avengers: Infinity War

There were quite a few cool posters for Infinity War (even the obligatory, normally-boring character posters were pretty great), but this series of five posters were by far the best and most stylish. Thanos takes the center poster, but the two posters to either side of him feature stylized versions of all of the major characters in Infinity War. It just goes to show just how epically unprecedented the scale of this film is, while also just looking super cool in its own right.

4) Deadpool 2

Unsurprisingly, Deadpool 2 had a slew of great posters to choose from, but this one was definitely my favourite. For one thing, it just looks really stylish and eye-catching. Most importantly though, the meta aspect of it is just pure Deadpool, made even better with all the random extras in the audience super excited to see the movie and Deadpool’s own enthralled expression. The marketing really shows off the character’s unique sense of humour and why this isn’t “just another superhero movie”.

3) Truth or Dare

Man, it was super hard to pick between the top 3 entries on this list, they were all super close. Perhaps the most impressive thing about this poster is that it’s for freaking Truth or Dare. Look at that thing, it makes you flinch and promises a far more brutal film than what you would be actually getting into. Furthermore, the neon green and pink style of the poster is really interesting and eye-catching. If there’s one thing I don’t like about this poster, it’s the stupid “Truth or Dare” grin on the corners of the skull’s face, but that’s more of a failing of the people who made this movie rather than the poster itself. I really wish that this was a poster for a better movie, it it does go to show that sometimes the marketing can transcend the film it’s trying to sell.

2) The Clovehitch Killer

Everything about this poster is so unsettling, from the sleeping victim to the masked killer, the washed out colours, the incongruous domestic setting, the voyeuristic framing, even the title which contextualizes everything and makes it even creepier. This is another one of those films that I am definitely going to check out this year based on nothing more than this extremely unsettling poster. I mean, if the poster is this artfully disturbing, you’d hope that the film itself can capture some of that energy right? I look forward to finding out!

And now for our winner of the 2018 IC2S Movie Poster awards… Drum roll please!

1) Free Solo

OH GOD. If ever there was a poster that conveyed exactly what the film was about, this has to be up there among the most evocative. Like… how. How do you manage to make that climb? Can you even take breaks on the way up? How does he survive? Good God, how high is that cliff!? Has a poster alone ever given someone vertigo before? I have so many questions because of this poster and the only way I can get my answers in a satisfactory manner is to watch Free Solo. Again, there is absolutely no greater praise you can give to a poster than that and I have seen few posters that have pulled that off greater than this.

The “Other” Cinematic Universes

~ Barloq ~ Leave a comment

When it comes to cinematic universes, we all know the story: Marvel’s only getting better as they go, DC has struggled to get any sort of consistent quality going, etc. However, with as much attention as these franchises get, it’s easy to forget that they’re not the only ones making their mark on the cinematic universe trend. There are actually quite a few current cinematic universes out there now, some several films deep, that have continued to grow without the attention and scrutiny that Marvel and DC seem to inspire. There are also many more on the way (keep an eye out for Hasbro, they seem to be pushing the hardest), but even after 10 years of Marvel dominance, most have failed to actually get underway. With that in mind, let’s look at the less-appreciated landscape of cinematic universes.

Note: I’m only going to be looking at franchises which are still ongoing. To determine if it constitutes a cinematic universe, I’m only looking at major releases (for all I know, The Asylum has a Mega Shark cinematic universe, but I’m sure as hell not going to go digging for turds like that). I’m also looking for franchises which aren’t just following a normal, linear progression from film to film. Spin-offs don’t necessarily constitute a cinematic universe either, although if there are multiple spin-off films in a franchise then it could apply. Oh, and goofy cameos and tongue-in-cheek jokes don’t count either (so no, Transformers and Friday the 13th aren’t in the same universe). Ultimately, it’s all down to my discretion. Got it? Great, let’s buckle in.

Honourable Mentions:

Star Wars (image source): Again, this is down to my discretion, but I don’t feel like Star Wars is quite at “cinematic universe” level yet, at least in the way that that label gets applied anyway. For the most part, Star Wars in the cinematic landscape consists of films which follow on from one another (whether as prequels or sequels). Even the spin-offs we’ve had in Rogue One and Solo were just prequels to the events of the main stories and given less prominence, so I’m struggling to really count these on the same level as, say, your average Marvel or DC solo film in their respective universes. Now, with the groundwork laid by The Last Jedi and Disney’s desire to milk this franchise forever (…those are mutually exclusive ideas, I swear), we might actually be getting to a point in the next couple of years when Star Wars is an interconnected universe of various divergent characters and storylines, but until then I have a hard time viewing it as more than a very epic saga.

Alien vs Predator (…vs Blade Runner???) – I’m only not counting this one because there has been basically no official word on whether these franchises still are, or ever were, truly linked in the first place. Basically every Alien and Predator film since has ignored the continuity established by the AVP movies, although they have never completely separated. To make matters even more confusing, the Alien prequels went and made it official that Blade Runner takes place in this universe as well. Considering that all of these separate franchises take place nearly 100 years apart from one another, it makes the continuity pliable, but it would be awesome if we could give AVP another shot at greatness.

The Tarantinoverse(s) – Yes, these films all technically take place in the same universe (click the image on the side to see the entire, complicated breakdown as to how), whether as actual events (Inglourious Basterds, Pulp Fiction, Django Unchained, etc) or as films within that universe (Kill Bill, From Dusk Till Dawn, Death Proof, etc). There are also a number of characters who are related (most notably, Vic Vega aka Mr. Blonde in Reservoir Dogs and Vincent Vega in Pulp Fiction). Here’s the thing though: none of these connections really matter. I mean, is Vincent affected in Pulp Fiction by Vic’s death? No, it’s just an easter egg for fans, and that’s what everything in the Tarantinoverse is – there’s no actual crossover or overarching plot (especially when you can just say “eh, it’s a movie in that universe!”), so I’m not counting it. Like I said, my discretion.

And so, let’s move onto the actual cinematic universes, shall we?

5) The Dark Universe – Is there any surprise that this is the worst of the current crop of cinematic universes? I mean, let’s look at the situation: Universal had the first successful cinematic universe back when they were releasing their classic monster films. For almost 20 years now they have been trying to recapture that success with failure after failure. The Mummy laid a decent groundwork for this, but then Van Helsing failed and scuppered that idea. Then they tried once again to set up this universe with The Wolfman, but it was a commercial and critical failure (although I love it personally and feel like its reception will improve over time).

After so many false starts, suddenly Marvel’s cinematic universe model began getting successful and Universal decided that they wanted a piece of that pie. As a result, Dracula: Untold was produced with the explicit intention of aping Marvel’s formula to finally get the Universal monsters on screen again. The resulting film was just plain dull – the source material didn’t fit a PG-13 summer action tentpole treatment and the resulting universe it was selling (PG-13 grimdark anti-heroes facing some nebulous ancient evil) was unappealing, so once again Universal was left in a lurch with a stillborn franchise.

With yet another failure under their belts, Universal almost immediately jettisoned Dracula: Untold from memory and then got to work on what was arguably the most seriously committed effort to reboot their monsters properties: The Dark Universe. Universal clearly went all-in this time, snatching up some major star power with Russell Crowe as Dr. Jeckell and Mr. Hyde, Javier Bardem as Frankenstien’s Monster, Johnny Depp as The Invisible Man and Tom Cruise as (ultimately) this universe’s version of The Mummy. Since The Mummy was the only reboot Universal had any success with, perhaps it is natural that they’d try to launch their universe with it, along with the consistent quality that comes along with Tom Cruise. Unfortunately, despite the huge marketing push and the big talk about how this was going to be Universal’s big shared universe, The Mummy proved to be a rare Tom Cruise misfire which single-handedly put the future of the entire franchise into question. Things have been quiet on The Dark Universe front, with many assuming it is dead since its two main producers have departed the project, but there have been some occasional rumblings to suggest we haven’t seen the last of it.

I feel like the issues with The Dark Universe were twofold. First of all, I don’t think that aping Marvel’s formula and attempting to reboot the Universal monsters as quasi-superheroes is ever going to work, nor is attempting to shoehorn all of these movies into the PG-13 summer action blockbuster template a good idea. I understand that a smaller, more traditional horror series would not make as much money if The Dark Universe had met its ambitions, but at least it would not be competing with the juggernauts, would be carving its own niche in the cinematic landscape and would be a considerably safer investment. Dracula: Untold had already failed in part because of this. It doesn’t matter how much money and star-power you throw at a project, if the concept is rotten at its core, then it is going to have a very hard time gaining traction.

Secondly, I feel like The Dark Universe was hamstrung from the start by its two main producers, Alex Kurtzman (also director of The Mummy) and Chris Morgan. Both are blockbuster scriptwriters and producers, with Kurtzman being known for the modern Star Trek films, the first two Transformers, Cowboys & Aliens and the Now You See Me franchise, and Chris Morgan being known for the Fast & Furious franchise, Wanted and 47 Ronin. They’re both involved in big, successful action franchises, but none of those franchises are really known for their great scripts. To make matters even worse, Guillermo del Toro was originally asked to helm The Dark Universe, which could have been incredible if Universal would allow him to lean into these characters’ horror origins. There is some hope for The Dark Universe still: it’s being rumoured that renowned horror-producer Jason Blum is being given the reins of the franchise. However, as it stands currently, The Dark Universe is little more than a cautionary tale in franchise building.

4) The Monsterverse – This is the universe that inspired this list, because while Legendary hasn’t been subtle about the fact that they want to bring Godzilla and King Kong together once again, they haven’t been hammering audiences with their world-building (unlike, say, The Mummy or Batman vs Superman). In fact, you could easily be forgiven for not realizing that Kong: Skull Island was a part of the same universe as Godzilla, outside of the subtle references to Monarch and the post-credits scene. I feel like this will probably be emphasized more by the end of the upcoming Godzilla: King of the Monsters, but at least it’s refreshing that Legendary isn’t counting their chickens before they’ve hatched.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about the Monsterverse is that, like the Universal monsters, it’s building on a foundation that originated the shared universe concept in film in the first place. The Toho Godzilla films had their own colourful cast of monsters that would feature in each others’ films and the original Godzilla vs King Kong was one of the earliest and most notable major franchise crossover films (also, while I may not prefer the direction of this incarnation of Kong, I can’t deny that it’s a part of the character’s roots). Unlike the Universal Monsters, Legendary is succeeding by keeping the Monsterverse true to the roots which made them successful in the first place. Also, Legendary has been killing it in terms of direction and cinematography thus far – Kong: Skull Island is downright beautiful at times and Godzilla has some of my favourite direction of all time (seriously).

The Monsterverse has also had some pretty decent quality thus far, with both entries being quite fun, if disposable, entertainment. Granted, giant monsters are much easier to fit into a dumb action blockbuster mould, and neither Godzilla or Kong: Skull Island had much ambition to be anything other than that. Considering that they’re giant monster movies, they don’t really need to do much more, but some more interesting human characters would go a long way. Godzilla: King of the Monsters could theoretically improve this one aspect, but we’ll see. If Legendary can keep the quality up, the Monsterverse could easily move up a slot in this list.

3) Cloverfield Universe – This universe could have easily topped the list if not for the release of the absolutely putrid The Coverfield Paradox, which has soured the franchise’s name overnight and turned it into a punchline. That said, the quality of Cloverfield and 10 Cloverfield Lane can’t be denied, and the chance for more cool genre films with genuine surprise to them is too much of an allure to pass up after one misfire (even one as disastrous as Paradox).

Cloverfield was a very intriguing Hollywood experiment, forgoing a huge budget and star power in favour of an ingenious and mysterious alternate reality game (ARG) marketing campaign. I got caught up in the Cloverfield hype leading up to its release and had a lot of fun with the ARG, looking for clues and speculating on what the monster was going to be. Cloverfield was also one of the earliest modern found footage films and, I would argue, one of the best utilizations of the concept. Oh, and lest we forget, Cloverfield was also the film which brought us Matt Reeves (far and away one of the most ambitious and consistently good blockbuster directors in Hollywood). The film left plenty of unanswered questions and for years there were rumblings of a sequel, but nothing materialized (even though it looked like Super 8 was going to fulfil that promise).

Then, suddenly, franchise producer J.J. Abrams had an idea to use the Cloverfield name to promote smaller, quality genre films and loosely tie them together. The first film they tried this on was 10 Cloverfield Lane, which was originally a stand-alone film that underwent reshoots to make it fit into the concept of a “Cloverfield movie”. The film was announced quietly and with minimal marketing, relying on word of mouth, a couple teasers and a release date 3 months away to build hype. There was some talk about whether this strategy would work, but work it did – 10 Cloverfield Lane was another success for the franchise, in part because the film was so damn good that the cynical nature of its creation didn’t really matter. It didn’t really connect to the previous film in the franchise, but it didn’t need to: if Cloverfield was a signifier for a type of quality genre film that you could expect, then bring on more Cloverfield we all said.

Of course, it’s important to understand that this is the sort of goodwill which was paramount to the firestorm of hype that exploded upon announcement that the third Cloverfield film had secretly dropped on Netflix during the Super Bowl… and the resulting disappointment when it turned out that that film was utter shit. Like I said, when your shared universe is only loosely connected between films, Cloverfield becomes a mark of quality. Releasing a bad film taints that reputation. Worse, releasing an awful film throws all confidence in that franchise into the wind. Who knows, another Cloverfield film could be good, but it might take years of good films to get the bad taste of Paradox out of our mouths.

2) The Conjuring – The Conjuring universe is remarkable for a few reasons. One, it’s based primarily on the stories of one real-life family (although the veracity of those stories is suspect, naturally). Two, these are all full-on R-rated horror films, whose considerable success should put Universal’s attempts to reboot their monsters to shame. Three, this franchise’s shared universe it at a point where it’s becoming comparable to the MCU. Seriously, The Conjuring is the beating heart of this franchise, but Annabelle is almost on par in terms of box office success, and The Nun has just released with the franchise’s biggest opening yet, purely off the success of the character in The Conjuring 2.

In terms of quality, the films are generally solid. The Conjuring and The Conjuring 2 are both classic horror films in the vein of The Exorcist (I personally preferred The Conjuring 2), which do a good job of making the supernatural seem plausible and which are buoyed tremendously by solid direction from James Wan and the performances of Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga. The spin-offs have been more of a mixed bag, with Annabelle: Creation being generally considered quite good, while Annabelle and The Nun have been met with a negative reception. That said, as spin-offs in an explicitly niche shared universe, they seem to still have an audience who are interested in them. With smaller budgets and this built-in audience, The Conjuring universe manages to find success by marketing to its own niche, rather than going for the mass audience and viewing $800 million as a failure, such as Justice League. If more studios would realize this and try to find other genre niches, we might have more successful shared universes out there.

1) X-Men – And finally we have the other, other superhero shared universe, the long-running X-Men universe. In fact, thanks to the Disney-20th Century Fox acquisition, this universe is almost certainly reaching its death-knell with upcoming release of X-Men: Dark Phoenix, after 19 years of ups and downs.

Back before the MCU took the world by storm, X-Men was the superhero franchise of most consistent quality (next to Spider-man, anyway), and for a long time it was just that – a franchise, not a shared universe. But then the Wolverine spin-offs happened, which turned into a trilogy of its own with Origins, The Wolverine and Logan. And then Deadpool and Deadpool 2 were released, and suddenly X-Men had become the full-on cinematic universe it was so well-suited to become. Hell, you could even argue that the franchise’s main timeline fits in the shared universe idea, with two different eras of X-Men interacting in Days of Future Past (the best X-Men movie, in my opinion).

X-Men has had some major lows (The Last Stand and Origins), but it has also had considerable heights (X2, DoFP, Logan, Deadpool) which have allowed it to succeed for so long, and it was always good to have a serious competitor to the MCU. Lest we forget that this shared universe has also gifted us with one of the best superhero castings of all time in Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine, not to mention the Ryan Renold’s Deadpool or Michael Fassbender’s Magneto. I don’t have high hopes for Dark Phoenix, but I can only hope that it does this franchise justice and allows it to go out on a high note.

7 Ways AVP Inspired Recent Alien and Predator Movies

~ Barloq ~ Leave a comment

So when I wasn’t playing the shit out of Battlefield 4 on PS4, the AVP Miniatures Game I’ve been talking about the last two weeks inspired me to go back and revisit Paul W.S. Anderson’s much-maligned 2004 Alien vs Predator movie. It was actually worse than I remember it being, but while watching it I noticed something a bit… odd. Considering that Predators and Prometheus, the most recent Predator and Alien movies respectively seem to draw plot points and details from AVP liberally. This is especially surprising considering that they have done their damnedest to distance themselves from the AVP films. I’ve compiled seven examples of these instances here for examination.

As a note before we begin, I would like to mention that Prometheus and Predators are much better films than either AVP. I also figure that most of these similarities are coincidental, but find the links interesting enough to warrant mentioning. Oh and it should probably go without saying that SPOILERS ARE IN EFFECT.

Honourable Mention: Two expendable goofballs get separated from the main group and have very bad things befall them… (Prometheus)

I didn’t include this one because it seems more like a genre trope than anything, but in AVP… uhhh gimme a second to look up the names of the “characters” in this movie… umm so Miller and Verheiden get separated from the main characters and begin bumbling and freaking out. Neither have really done anything so far but they try to buddy up to get through things since they’re both “dads” and therefore can’t give up. If only they knew they were in a horror film they might have just turned the guns on themselves… Anyway, both end up getting captured by the Aliens and impregnated.

Meanwhile, in Prometheus, scientists Fifield and Milburn have had enough scary alien crap and so head back to the ship… but get lost like dumbasses despite having a digital map on them. They basically scream and hold each other until Milburn tries to pet a hissing serpent (no homo). They are mysteriously killed and/or weaponized soon after.

7) Predators Hunt in Threes (Predators)

I think there’s some precedence for this development in the Predator and AVP comics, hence why I rank it so lowly. However, to be fair, how often do films series respect extended universe stories? Just look at Alien 3, which took a dump on all the Alien comics which had been written as sequels to Aliens. I imagine that the new Star Wars movies will invalidate all the post-ROTJ fiction as well. In that regard, considering that all prior Predator films featured only a single hunter, this is a pretty interesting correlation.

In AVP a trio of Predator teenagers head off to their ritual hunting grounds to kill some xenomorphs (and any foolish humans who get in their way). In Predators, a trio of Super Predators hunt aliens and humans on their game preserve planet. In either case, three isn’t the magic number as they all get killed.

6) Mysterious Temple of Bad Things (aka Human Killing Grounds) (Prometheus)

Considering that both AVP and Prometheus are horror films, it makes sense that the mysterious, alien-built temple of doom that the protagonists come across would turn out to be something bad in the end. However, I think it’s more than a little odd that Prometheus features this trope at all, considering that it is trying to do something unlike the AVP films. If you really wanted to stretch it you could probably try to make an argument that both structures are pyramids, although the Engineer’s weapon facility looks more like a mound to me. There’s other similarities as well, such as the fact that the protagonists are able to conveniently read and translate the glyphs on the walls which are written in an unknown language. The owners of the temples also end up getting defeated by Xenomorphs/proto-Xenomorphs, both during and prior to the events of the films.

In AVP, the humans discover a temple 2000ft beneath Antarctica. It turns out that it is an ancient Predator hunting ground where humans are sacrificed to create Xenomorphs. In Prometheus, the humans travel to the Engineer’s planet to trace back to the origin of life. They end up discovering a weapon’s facility where the Engineers destroyed themselves with biological weapons before they could purge humanity from the stars.

5) Aliens Are Responsible for Civilization on Earth (Prometheus)

What’s with the recent fascination with the belief that humans were created/improved by aliens? I mean, they have a bloody TV show on “The History Channel” for goodness sake. Oh and of course there are people who think that Prometheus is a true story, but covered-up to look fictionalized (because as we all know, the best way to hide the truth is to give it a $130 million dollar budget and a wide release and then expect that absolutely no one will be crazy enough to believe it). Anyway, both AVP and Prometheus have this idea as a central plot point, even if it doesn’t make all that much sense.

In AVP, the Predators established the early civilizations and taught them to build pyramids so they could hunt Xenomorphs in them. They also apparently did a whole Tower of Babel thing too, because apparently the temple in Antarctica has all of the ancient cultures in its architecture and language, but somehow this singular origin didn’t muddy their own cultures, since they still remain unique (…AVP is really dumb). In Prometheus, the Engineers were the origin of life on Earth through a Christ-like sacrifice. They also came back later and helped civilize humanity, being worshiped as gods by us and leaving behind star maps for us to follow.

4) People Inexplicably Bring Weapons on a Scientific Expedition (Prometheus)

Scientific research is to the Alien franchise as archaeology is to Indiana Jones – if it can’t be shot at then it isn’t worth investigating. Supposed “scientists” in both films don’t do their jobs at all, generally acting like stupid tourists gawking about on their field trip. Also worth noting is the fact that the female protagonist in both AVP and Prometheus says that weapons aren’t needed, but are dismissed offhand. Guns are cool, but seriously… they aren’t really justified in either film very well at all. Of course, the weapons end up being useless anyways. In AVP I think a grand total of… two Aliens end up getting shot by the humans (and one of them was with some sort of sci-fi gun which just showed up out of nowhere). In Prometheus, only one creature gets killed by guns, but to be fair it was more because he ended up getting backed over by a huge-ass car.

As for justifications, AVP takes the cake for being more inexcusable. It’s a scientific expedition to a temple 2000ft beneath Antarctica… there’s not going to be anything alive down there. You could argue that they have the guns in case another team comes to investigate the site, but doesn’t that sound excessive? Obviously the only reason they have the guns is so that Paul W.S. Anderson can have his stupid action movie. At least in Prometheus they are venturing into the unknown to meet a potentially hostile alien species face-to-face… but still, considering that they had no reason to believe they harboured us ill-will (considering the Engineers created us and all that), it’s a tad tenuous.

3) The Hero Teams Up With a Predator (Who Gets Killed for His Troubles) (Predators)

LittleJimmy hates this trope, but I don’t have a huge problem with it myself. That said, Predators should not be seen as good guys, but rather as lawfully evil figures. Predators fits that criteria, while AVP ventures too close to making the Predator a hero. Oh and I could have swore to God that Paul W.S. Anderson was going to make Lex and the Predator kiss, it’s probably the most “WTF!?!!” moment in the whole movie. In any case, both Predators end up getting killed shortly after (is it too much to ask that a Predator actually survive a damn Predator film for once? They must have a ridiculous mortality rate).

In AVP, the humans steal the Predators’ weapons, which makes them get picked off easily by the Aliens. In the end, the last remaining human and Predator team up to bring down the temple and kill the escaped Queen. However, right at the end the Predator gets impaled by the Queen’s tail and dies. In Predators, Royce frees a captured Predator who begrudgingly directs Royce to a Predator shuttle in exchange. The Predator ends up getting killed by a Super Predator shortly after though.

2) Weyland (Prometheus)

This is another odd similarity for a series that was trying to move away from the AVP movies. Why is an aged and terminally ill founder of Weyland enterprises a commonality between the two? Even if you dismiss the rest of this article, this one’s pretty damn compelling to me because we get a really similar character and motivation in both films.

In AVP, Charles Bishop Weyland discovers the temple in Antarctica and wants to lay claim to the find. He is dying and wants to leave his mark on history by making the greatest discovery in human history (read: he wants to become immortal in a metaphorical sense). He also seems to have secret agendas and doesn’t heed warnings that he should let go of his hubris. He gets killed for his troubles of course. In Prometheus, Peter Weyland wants to lay claim to Elizabeth Shaw’s discovery of the Engineers. His crew have a secret agenda which hangs over the entire expedition. It turns out that Weyland was secretly in stasis aboard their ship and is close to death. He wants to meet the Engineers and have them make him literally immortal, even though Shaw warns him that they will kill him instead. Predictably, he ends up getting bitch slapped to death by an Engineer.

1) The Opening Briefings are Nearly Identical (Prometheus)

This is the plot point which really kicked off this article because when I watched it in AVP I thought “wait a minute… didn’t I already see this…?” Both scenes follow the same purpose and structure, they’re at similar points in the film, hell even the details are similar. They’re basically the early exposition dump to get the audience up to speed and set up what’s going to happen. Both scenes open with Weyland’s right hand man/woman beginning the presentation before giving the floor to Weyland himself (or a hologram of Weyland at least) to explain the finer details. The briefings are occurring in a wide-open chamber aboard their respective ships, while the attendees are sitting in cheap folding chairs (!).

The nature of the briefing scenes also create their own problems, because from what we’re shown all of these people apparently didn’t know where the hell they were going or doing until this briefing started (especially egregious in Prometheus). At least in AVP they try to create a sense of urgency, in Prometheus it’s just lazy. The whole scientific angle also gets thrown out the window in Prometheus because Shaw says that they’re on this expedition for Engineers is because “that’s what she chooses to believe”. Umm, good thing for you that Weyland’s a crackpot then I guess. Oh and then there’s another problem – why send a manned team at all? Why not send an unmanned drone to investigate first instead of pouring a trillion dollars into searching for Engineers who probably aren’t there in the first place (as the characters state on many occasions)?

Anyway, despite everyone hating AVP, it seems that it has managed to spread its influence to subsequent Alien and Predator films. Sure, it’s probably entirely coincidental, but the connections are interesting at the very least. I hope you enjoyed. Retrospectives should be beginning next week so stay tuned for that!