2017 is officially over, for better or worse. Now that we are in the beginning of a new year, we can take some time to reflect on last year and the joy, and pain, it brought us. More specifically, I want to take a look at the film industry. After a successful year with a string of great movies like Get Out, Beauty & The Beast, Dunkirk, Spider-Man: Homecoming and Star Wars: The Last Jedi, you’d think that there would be nothing to complain about. But, as Hollywood has proven time and time again, there will always be some stinkers. And 2017 was no exception. Here are some of the worst movies of 2017.
The Mummy
Tom Cruise’s reboot of the 1999 hit of the same name (which was a reboot itself) was destined for great things. Not only was The Mummy supposed to be one of the year’s biggest box office smashes, it was also meant to kick off Universal Studios’ Dark Universe, a connected series of films featuring famous Universal monsters like Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, and the Invisible Man, similar to Marvel’s Cinematic Universe. Unfortunately, after heavy criticism and lackluster box office receipts, plans for the cinematic universe have been put on hold.
The film was far too focused on setting up a franchise as opposed to telling a great (or even fun) story. Because of this, it’s characters, story and script suffered greatly.
Emoji Movie
Who’d have thought that we would live to see a day where a film based entirely on symbols used to communicate in text messages would make it to the silver screen? Emoji Movie is marketed as a fun and wacky children’s animated film, but it is nothing more than a quick cash grab full of product placement. What makes Emoji Movie so much worse is the fact that it could have been a success. For example, look at 2014’s The Lego Movie. That too could have simply been written off as a one-dimensional cash grab centered on selling toys, but because it had heart, a variety of loveable characters and a song that is still stuck in everyone’s heads (admit it), it was both a critical and commercial success.
Emoji Movie simply had nothing going for it. A simple story, bland and boring characters, and lack of passion behind the project made this film suffer.
Geostorm
With a film like Geostorm, you have to lower your expectations. You can’t expect Oscar-worthy performances, an amazing story or even decent acting, but you’d hope for it to at least be a fun, mindless popcorn movie. Geostorm is exactly none of that. It’s characters are rushed in their introductions, the story is convoluted and makes no sense whatsoever and, in the end, we don’t really get to see much of a geostorm. At least, not as much as we’d like for a film titled Geostorm.
Again, 2017 had some winners, but I wanted to focus on Hollywood’s worst offerings. Let’s hope that 2018 brings us a better year of film.