Best of the Rest: The 5 Worst Summer Blockbusters of 2014

Welcome back to The Best of the Rest.  Today I’m following up my “Best” list for 2014 summer blockbusters with one that highlights the worst of the summer in the same light.  Hope you enjoyed hating these movies as much as I did!

Before we get started I must remind you that I’m using the same criteria for this list as I did for the previous one (which can be read here.)  Basically I will only include high grossing movies that have come out in the summer movie season on this list.

So here we go, what movies made me want to cry (for all the wrong reasons,) or tear out my hair?  What summer 2014 blockbusters failed to cause much but pain?  You’re about to find out! let’s get this list a-rockin!

#5  Lucy

Lucy is probably not the movie audiences were expecting to see when they went to the theater this weekend (The movies going to finish the weekend with an estimated 44 million.) It’s weird, stylish, dark and thoughtful. But unfortunately it’s also really stupid.

I’m no scientist, but the leaps in logic here are distracting and unnecessary. This is strictly science fantasy, and the movie’s unfortunate decision to display the (flawed) logic behind the movies terrible hypothesis make this incredibly apparent to anyone who is willing to put even a modicum of thought into it.

I call the movies base concept (That someone could be able to control minds technology and even shape-shift if their cerebral capacity was reached,) the movies hypothesis, because it’s the only part of the movie that really gets through to its audience. Lucy acts like its big and cerebral, but when you tear away the pieces all you see is an attempt to make a silly core concept deeper then it actually is.

#4  Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

I’m not a movie insider. I don’t know how the studio process works, but it seems to me that things like this shouldn’t happen. Movies have been around for a long time, we know how to make action movies enjoyable. In a sane logical world there would be no reason that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles couldn’t be an entertaining diversion, but we do not live in a sane logical world.

Everything here is so weak, half the time it’s not even that bad, just remarkably unexceptional. From the characters to the animation, it almost feels half finished. William Fichter and Will Arnett turn mind blowingly awkward dialogue into nothing, just like you’d expect them to do. And the turtles themselves are often more annoying then fun. To be fair a couple of the action sequences were really fun (especially in contrast to the Michael Bay Transformer movies,) but that’s not enough to make up for all the stupid.

Also did I mention that Will Arnett’s character is useless? Because he is. And he isn’t the only useless character either, there are loads of them in this flick. William Fichter doesn’t play Shredder (as I assumed he would,) but shredders partner in crime. why did they need two villains? Both of these two characters have the exact same motivations and traits, why did they both need to be in the movie? Why was Whoopi Goldberg in the movie? Why are there four turtles? Is one giant mutant turtle ninja not sufficient? The “Turtles” media I’ve seen always centers the story on the relationship between the four of them, but here it’s only glossed over making the extra three turtles naught but plot clutter. This script should have been tossed in the garbage can.

#3.  Maleficent

Angelina Jolie makes the perfect Maleficent, It’s really too bad that she is mostly forced to play someone else instead. The Maleficent of this movie has very little in common with the movie villain that was one of the saving graces of the Disney animated original. Instead of getting the “Mistress of all evil,” we get a wishy washy hero character.

“I really wish that they’d make a Sleeping Beauty movie where Maleficent is the good guy,” said no person ever. It’s like the filmmakers didn’t understand the reason people remember and love Maleficent from the animated picture; she’s scary as hell, and her voice actress and dialogue in that movie make it clear that she’s evil, pist off and loving it. I understand that this new flick is a re-imagining, but the choice to change this is just as confusing from a story telling perspective as it is from a marketing one.

Making Maleficent a good-guy would have been okay if they had had a strong compelling story to back up the concept, but the offering here is really week. The idea sounds workable on paper, but there are some baffling decisions made that numb the whole thing to a crisp. Maleficent motivations in the end are revealed to be a big pile of nothing, and her power seems to switch off whenever the plot dictates it. The movie fails to do one of the fundamental things a movie must do: convince the audience that the characters would be motivated to do the things we’re seeing them do on screen.

#2  The Amazing Spider-Man 2

There are surprisingly few good things that one can truthfully say about The Amazing Spider-Man 2.  It sucks in a very profound way that kind of goes beyond just bad character development and story telling.  What we have here is a movie without a soul.

Marc Webb clearly did not want to make this movie, he wanted to make a romantic comedy.  The producers and studio heads clearly did not want to make this move either, they just wanted to sell the next seven or eight spider-man spin-offs that that are on Sony’s production schedule.  There was not a single major participant in the filmmaking process for “Spidey 2” that actually cared about this story or these characters, and you can tell.  This isn’t so much a movie as it is an exceptionally bad commercial for spider-Man toys that you have to pay to see.

I don’t think the unofficial title, “worst Spiderman ever,” would be inappropriate.  Nor do I even think it would even be contestable.

#1  Transformers:  Age of Extinction

Even before the summer started, I never doubted this would be the worst movie to come out of it.  People say that the second Transformers is terrible and the rest okay, but I think they’re all of roughly the same quality;  aka zero.

These movies are almost like deviously conceived torture devices. They start out okay, but they all end up overstaying their welcome by about an hour and a half. At the end of “Extinction” you’ve been sitting and watching stuff you couldn’t care less about for so long that the events on the screen have no effect on you other then psychological pain. There’s an alternate universe were Bay was able to keep all of his Transformers flicks down to an hour an a half; Causing the critics (and myself) to shrug in apathy instead of groan in pain. The movies many other sins might actually be somewhat forgivable, if only Bay could cut a few action sequences and a few secondary plot lines.

When you’re watching a movie for this long you need to se a likable character, and interesting theme.  Just something to distract you from the barrage of terrible, but there is no reprieve.  I don’t think that calling this a three hour torture device is as extreme an exaggeration as you probably think it is.

Thank you all for reading!  If you have your own opinions feel free to tell me via google+ Twitter, Facebook or email (www.atchleyosaurus@gmail.com.)  Check back this weekend for new reviews, and possibly even some more Behind the Effects!