Movies so bad that you were surprised they were in theaters

[Powerboy]

I admit they lack a cinematic look and should had been DTV but I like most of them but agreed none are as good as the original. But 2 is such a WTF and I'm a Michael Ironside fan, 3 would be an ok DTV movie, and I genuinely like Endgame. The Source is just garbage IMO to be watched once just to see the train wreck it is.

I personally thought H3 was a decent movie albeit just an excuse to do the same plot again. H2 was horrible. I haven't seen the others. From what I've heard, some of them were, like the television series, marred only in that they contradicted the original in extreme not minor ways.

[The Great Usagi]

Or as some FF fans call it, "the good one".

I wonder if you have actually seen Superman Returns.

I didn't, i told you i wasn't interested.

[Gaastra]

A hit? It made $10 million. And that robot was some of the worst FX I've seen. It was a truly bad movie.

Now I never said it was a good movie just it had Hercules fighting a robot on the moon. Also it did well enough to get a second film.

[Kirby101]

Now I never said it was a good movie just it had Hercules fighting a robot on the moon. Also it did well enough to get a second film.

People can judge how bad it was.

[Immortal Weapon]

Every video game adaption from Uwe Boll. His films has the production quality of a made for tv movie. I remember House of the Dead and Alone in the Dark being especially bad about this.

[Gaastra]

People can judge how bad it was

It's a cannon films movie. King of low budget. They made the chuck Norris and ninja films for cheap. You don't watch a cannon film for ET effects. Funny thing is they tried to do three big budgeted films to get away from that image. Put millions into them. All three bombed or did "ok" and it killed the studio!

The three films are over the top, superman 4, and masters of the universe. Spider-man and he-man 2 was next up but they could not afford to pay to rekeep the Spider-Man rights then lost the he-man rights also AFTER they had made all the sets! So they just took the he-man 2 script and changed the names, added stuff to make it R rated and used the Spider-Man and he-man 2 sets and called it "cyborg!" Ironic thing is it did ok at the box office but it was to late and cannon closed down and sold it's films. Funny thing is some tv channels aired cyborg on tv as "masters of the universe 2: the cyborg"!

Now playing talks about cannon here if you want to know more.

http://www.nowplayingpodcast.com/episode.htm?id=1390

[Kirby101]

It's a cannon films movie. King of low budget. They made the chuck Norris and ninja films for cheap. You don't watch a cannon film for ET effects. Funny thing is they tried to do three big budgeted films to get away from that image. Put millions into them. All three bombed or did "ok" and it killed the studio!

The three films are over the top, superman 4, and masters of the universe. Spider-man and he-man 2 was next up but they could not afford to pay to rekeep the Spider-Man rights then lost the he-man rights also AFTER they had made all the sets! So they just took the he-man 2 script and changed the names, added stuff to make it R rated and used the Spider-Man and he-man 2 sets and called it "cyborg!" Ironic thing is it did ok at the box office but it was to late and cannon closed down and sold it's films. Funny thing is some tv channels aired cyborg on tv as "masters of the universe 2: the cyborg"!

Now playing talks about cannon here if you want to know more.

http://www.nowplayingpodcast.com/episode.htm?id=1390

Thanks Gasta, good stuff.
Masters of the Universe actually wasn't bad. It was more an adaptation of Kirby's New Gods than He-Man, but a fun movie.
Superman 4 on the other hand, almost a parody, the villain reminded me of Mr. Neutron from a Monty Python sketch.

[sunofdarkchild]

Superman 4
Godzilla vs Megalon

Both of them have effects so bad even for the time it's amazing any executive thought they were in a state to be put out in theaters, even forgetting about how the movies were just bad at the conceptual level.

Star Trek Insurrection.

In terms of production it's all right, and it's an ok movie as long as you don't think about it, but the studio executives pointed out why the whole premise is flawed and still it was put out with nothing being done to fix those main issues. How a movie can be put into theaters without addressing the very real issues raised by the higher ups sounds like something that should be impossible for all but directors on the level of Steven Spielberg. It's less that the movie was that bad than that they knew relatively early on that they had a flawed project and did nothing to fix it.

[AJBopp]

Star Trek Insurrection.

In terms of production it's all right, and it's an ok movie as long as you don't think about it, but the studio executives pointed out why the whole premise is flawed and still it was put out with nothing being done to fix those main issues. How a movie can be put into theaters without addressing the very real issues raised by the higher ups sounds like something that should be impossible for all but directors on the level of Steven Spielberg. It's less that the movie was that bad than that they knew relatively early on that they had a flawed project and did nothing to fix it.

The tradeoff is calculating whether the extra expense of fixing those things will pay off at the box off. TNG movies were already struggling in theaters, so it's reasonable to take a "cut our losses" kind of approach and hope the name recognition does something.

[williamtheday]

The Giant Claw!

[Scott Taylor]

That's how I feel about the 2016 Ghostbusters. It's snazzy and flashy and has production values that the 1984/1989 movies could only dream of. But does it hold a candle to the originals? Hell no. It's clearly a big budget cinematic movie. A bad one, but still too cinematic for the thread.

Star Trek Insurrection, though, looks like it was made by the same team behind Voyager but with another $5k to spend. Terrible, terrible movie.

In truth I'm one of those cranky people who isn't very enamored with any of the GB films. The first GB (which I didn't have any desire to see at the time it ran in theaters) is barely good enough just due to the talent and a lot of improvisation. Second GB was dull and the 2016 GB had too much "planned improvisation."

So yah, you have a mediocre film that was good for all the wrong reasons trying to be duplicated twice.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Superman 4 on the other hand, almost a parody, the villain reminded me of Mr. Neutron from a Monty Python sketch.

And the special effects sucked. In one scene, you could actually SEE the wires supporting Christopher Reeve during one of the flying sequences.

[Robotech Master]

Prophecy (1979, not the franchise), an environmental horror film about a bear that mutates into a 9 foot tall monstrosity whose face looks likes made of warped, wrinkled caramel, and only ever walks upright because apparently that's the only way the guy could move in the suit. Hi-lights include the bear killing a boy in a sleeping bag by striking him so hard he flies forty feet and strikes a boulder with enough force to make the sleeping bag explode into a rain of feathers, a scene where it chases the main characters across a lake by walking along the bottom, and an extended scene where the main characters barricade every window and door in a cabin, only for none of that to matter because it rips the ceiling off. It comes across like one of *the* B-movies of the video market, but it was released in theaters.

Color of Night, a movie mostly known for its sex scenes and nudity, attempts to be some kind of noir psychological thriller but is so ineptly put together that its boring at best, and unintentionally funny at its worst. It is one of the only films I know of to have a golden raspberry nomination for "Worst Screen Couple" defined as "Any Combination of any two people from the main cast." It sounds and looks like a Cinemax original thriller, but it was a theatrical movie with Bruce Willis.

There was a Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer animated movie made by a company that specialized in cheaply animated, poorly structured direct to video cartoons. For some reason they decided to release their Rudolph movie in theaters, but almost all of the extra budget put into it just went to getting celebrity voice actors, so the animation was of the same quality as usual.

[WillieMorgan]

And the special effects sucked. In one scene, you could actually SEE the wires supporting Christopher Reeve during one of the flying sequences.

Not to mention the 'space' backdrop for the fight scenes on the moon that can blatantly be made out as just black curtains. Some of the creases are plainly visible.

Then there's the shot of Superman flying face on, as if into the camera itself and first seen in the scene in the subway, that they reused several times in the movie. As if we wouldn't notice the same shot used repeatedly.

I was just approaching 13 when that film came out. Even back then I could tell it was total rubbish.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Prophecy (1979, not the franchise), an environmental horror film about a bear that mutates into a 9 foot tall monstrosity whose face looks likes made of warped, wrinkled caramel, and only ever walks upright because apparently that's the only way the guy could move in the suit. Hi-lights include the bear killing a boy in a sleeping bag by striking him so hard he flies forty feet and strikes a boulder with enough force to make the sleeping bag explode into a rain of feathers, a scene where it chases the main characters across a lake by walking along the bottom, and an extended scene where the main characters barricade every window and door in a cabin, only for none of that to matter because it rips the ceiling off. It comes across like one of *the* B-movies of the video market, but it was released in theaters.

Are you kidding? I loved Prophecy, it's one of my all-time favorite horror/monster movies, not to mention an early cautionary tale about the dangers that comes from man poisoning the environment. Hell, I keep waiting for it to be released on Blu-Ray, but, sadly, that's yet to happen.