What's the dumbest blockbuster movie you have seen that somehow received high praise?
I'm not saying the worst, otherwise I would need to include the star wars sequels or transformers movies... Just some really dumb movie that somehow got praised.
For me has to be Ready Player One. That movie message is so "uhuh" obvious that is stupid, the whole nerd that saves the world in a thing that otherwise would be useless to know in real life... The so over the top evil gaming corporation. The whole 80s and 90s movies and games references get old after half an hour... And it's so pandering towards the geeks and nerds, they really want the viewer feeling really cool for knowing that is the Shining hallway, or that is a Monty python reference... Or look a GUNDAM! YOU'RE SO COOL FOR COLLECTING THOSE GUN PLA! Look we have also overwatch and halo in the background! You're so cool modern gamer!
Also the obviously attractive "nerd" hacker girl that thinks she's ugly and deformed for having a small hard to see red tint in one side of her pretty face... Cmon man. In no universe anyone would think that actress is ugly.
And the message at the end is so hilarious: Look man, you're cool for getting these references and being a real gamer is cool, but go outside more!
For me, it was A Quiet Place. I found it incredibly dumb and impossible to believe that nobody on the whole of the planet ever considered that these aliens with ultra incredible hearing weren't somehow vulnerable to noise? Just dumb as fuck, especially when you consider that sonic weapons already exist and are used, and sound is routinely used in torture/incarceration scenarios.
I worked on the space shuttle program, and I found Armageddon almost unwatchable. I mean, those things go up with the big solid rockets and an external tank full of hydrogen and oxygen, all of which get jettisoned during launch, then they come down as a glider. But in the movie they're landing on asteroids and taking off again, smashing into things and still flying, etc. (remember how Columbia blew up because of a crack in the leading edge of one wing?). Plus the whole premise of it being easier to teach oil drillers how to be astronauts than to teach astronauts how to be oil drillers is a joke. Every astronaut I've met has been an amazing capable person - many are test pilots with multiple advanced degrees.
Aquaman. the visual effects were ridiculous, the characters were one-dimensional, the soundtrack was...something, and the overall tone was that of a testosterone firehose to the face. i said the eight deadly words about halfway through, and i was thoroughly bored out of my mind despite action scene after action scene after action scene...the only reason why i didn't just get up and leave was because i was watching with a group
The Purge. They're all dumb as fuck. "No lawz fur wun day. Halps soseyetti."
Yeah no, trust in the government would break the floor and anarchy would reign instead. Not to mention businesses would probably refuse to operate here.
La La Land. Musicals are already on thin ice, but a musical about some arrogant, self obsessed people complaining about how hard it is trying to be (and ultimately succeeding in being) successful?? UGH. Shut it all down.
Gravity isn't a space movie. It's just 2 hours of Sandra Bullock crying and hallucinating. It's probably the second worst movie I've ever seen after Open Water.
I'm a huge Tarantino fan and enjoyed every single one of his movies, except that one.
Maybe you had to have been in the Hollywood scene at the time to understand the humor, but I was bored out of my mind the whole time and wondered whether he's making fun of the audience and seeing if he can get away with a movie without a real storyline if he just includes his signature foot shots, long conversations about nothing and a massacre at the end.
James Cameron's Titanic. It's marketed as a romantic film, but the moment you start looking at other aspects of the movie, it just seems stupid. The antagonist is so cartoonishly evil, it's a wonder they didn't give him a mustache to twirl.
And then there's the ending. Oh dear lord, the ending. Spoiler warning and all that: at the end of the movie, The Titanic s(t)inks and the passengers try to get to safety. Rose finds a floating door or something to stay afloat and finds Jack swimming in the freezing ocean. Then Jack makes the most non-sensical decision in the entire movie: he sacrifices his own life for no good reason. The plot frames it as a necessary sacrifice, but it totally IS unnecessary, because there was enough room on the stupid door for two people. And then we flash forward to the present, where Rose is old, but still has that gem she wore throughout the movie... and then she tosses it into the ocean. WHY.
Basically the plot boils down to: two young people have a fling on a boat and then the boat sinks. It absolutely did NOT deserve all those academy awards it got that year.
I'm reliably informed there are people who like Michael Bay's Transformers movies. The most interesting part of the entire series to me was watching a Camaro get into a literal fist fight with a Mustang. Otherwise my memories of the movie were having eye rollingly childish catch phrases boomed down at me, or visuals that are basically just technicolor television snow.
I like Margot Robbie. I like Ryan Gosling. I like fun movies. But idk, it just didn't really appeal to me, and the plot felt predictable. I don't regret watching it necessarily, but I also have no interest in watching it again.
Crash the 2004 hit movie not the 1996 Cronenberg Cult-classic.
to elaborate, it was insincere corporate virtue signalling designed specifically to bait the academy awards by using a multi-character parallel storytelling style that is only ever celebrated amongst industry snobs.
Interstellar: just found it kind of ridiculous, outlandish, in no way believable or connected to anything even theoretically within reality. Pseudo-serious science fiction. Big budget blah.
Inception: I love Nolan but that was big swing and a miss for me. Went in excited, came out wondering where the fuss was all about.
Cloverfield. It was a monster movie where you barely saw the monster. Instead, we get the story of 4 characters with a camera trying to escape the monster but then going back to rescue their friend and may or may not have been killed by the monster. I don't know, the movie had no beginning or end and yet it managed to spawn a couple of sequels.
Lucy. I know a lot of people didn't like the ending, but the whole movie was utterly shocking I thought after she took the brain drug or whatever it was
I'm probably going to get some hate for this one, but Spider-Man: Across The Spiderverse. The story wasn't as tight as the first movie, they introduced too many new characters to keep up with, and it ended with a setup for the next movie.
Frozen was 3 hours worth of movie jammed into 1 and a half hours. So much stuff happens that either didn't need to happen or needed a lot more setup and motivation. I can understand why little kids liked it, I still have no idea why all the young women liked it too.
Dark Knight. Heath Ledger's Career defining performance can't save this tortuously paced, boring, dreary, washed out slog of a war on terror metaphor. I hate Christopher Nolan, all of his movies are like this.
The star wars prequels get a lot of hate, but honestly, all of the cracks were beginning to show in Return of the Jedi. 4 and 5 are indisputably good movies, and part of the cinematic canon. Jedi has a lot of small things wrong with it... and also Leah is Luke's sister randomly. This is a Lucasism, and as the people who were capable of standing up to Lucas fell away, and were replaced by people who grew up in star wars. Everything that makes the OT good is present in the prequels, and everything that makes the Prequels... contentious is present in Jedi. For the record, I like the prequels but I think they are flawed in really interesting ways.
Jedi is even in quality with all the prequels and sequels that came after, but has a better rep than it deserves because it stands next to the first (best) two.
american beauty. it was everywhere, and everyone seemed to LOVE it. feels like history kinda agrees though since all I hear these days is people making fun of it. guess I’m just ahead of the times.
For me it was Blade Runner. Everyone always talks about how great the movie is, and man, it was a struggle to get through. The setting was cool and that's about it.
The whole premise was that they're in danger and need to get to Canada to be safe (the bad guys don't have passports I guess 🤷), but have to wait just before they cross the border for everyone to show up seemingly for no reason.
I think that Ready Player One was terribly ported from the book format to the movie. The book went so much more over the top than the movie did, the latter turning down on a lot of nerd aspects. Having said that, different formats need different ways for conveying the same idea. The main character would literally get a "+1 blazing sword" in the book. +1. As if it were an MMO or something.
Having said that, Dune (book and movie) were terrible. The movie felt plagued with references to stuff I didn't get. Only recently did I read the book just to find it was as uninteresting as the movie.
I'll never forget those opera singers singing right to my ears when a ship would land... Now that's a way to startle a person.
On the bright side, reading the book has allowed me not see the second part of the movie.
V for Vendetta. For a movie with both Padme and Palpatine as actors, the movie is just an edgy construct. I'm sure V isn't totally without reason, but bro, you sabotaged a train just because you wanted real butter on toast.
There Will Be Blood. Wooden acting, almost nothing happens, the soundtrack is earsplitting noise, but everyone loves it because of the "milkshake" meme at the end.
Fuck that movie. Walked out on it halfway through, read about what "happened" afterwards later (spoiler: fucking nothing) and regret nothing.
Everything everywhere all at once. The hype made this a let down, it wasn't even that good and I love weird thought provoking sci fi. This was just a goofy movie that is forgetable
Mad Max Fury Road. I honestly don't understand how people like it. The storyline is paper thin to the point of being almost missing. I guess the steampunk motif is good if you're into that, but the rest of the movie was just trash.
Dark Knight trilogy. I firmly think between Nolan and Bale, Batman is forever scared. Every version I've seen of Batman sense has been this dark brooding boring character. Oh and that ridiculous voice. "The Batman", kept dark and brooding but at least he was a detective again. But that trilogy was terrible beginning to end. The slight glimmer of hope is Heath Ledger's performance which was great but still not enough to carry a trilogy.
Inglourious Basterds - One of the worst movies I've ever seen. About 2 very good scenes, the openeing and then another one in a bar and the rest was some kind of ridiculous Zionist porn garbage.