Opened: May 22nd
Disney has experienced varying degrees of success attempting to bring parts of their theme parks to the big screen. With Pirates of the Caribbean and Haunted Mansion serving as the measuring sticks for success and failure respectively, Tomorrowland rests comfortably near the bottom. It was billed as an adventure story about a young girl, Casey Newton (Britt Robertson), who finds herself in a place where all the “smart” people have been collected to solve the world’s problems. Instead, the movie comes off as a preachy, conceited mess that was too interested in shaming its audience for not believing enough in hope, rather than trying to entertain them.
Director Brad Bird (The Iron Giant) and writer Damon Lindelof (World War Z) are better than this convoluted, change-the-world story they’ve presented. Tomorrowland should have been a fun, early-summer blockbuster movie about what the future can look like when good, intelligent people, no matter their age or background, put their minds to it. But rather than take that approach, Bird and Lindelof thought it would be better to use (read: waste) the acting talents of George Clooney and Hugh Laurie to embarrass the audience into making a difference… or something.
12. POLTERGEIST
Poltergeist 2015 Creepy Clown 20 Movies So Bad You Forgot They Released in 2015
Opened: May 22nd
In 1982, Steven Spielberg wrote what is possibly,his scariest movie to-date: Poltergeist. Even after three decades, the movie continues to scare audiences in such a way that it was recently ranked by the Chicago Film Critics Association as the 20th scariest movie ever made. Unfortunately, Hollywood has a hankering to remake lots of great horror movies from the eighties, and it was inevitable that Poltergeist would eventually get its turn. Though the names of the lead characters have been changed to Eric and Amy Bowen (Sam Rockwell and Rosemarie DeWitt), the story for the remake is essentially the same – and that’s the biggest issue.
In order to be successful, a remake must introduce some unique element or storytelling technique that makes it stand out, while still paying homage to the original source material – Poltergeist failed to do that on just about every level. The trailer for the film got fans’ hopes way up (especially the last scene) but then it turned out to be such a letdown. Even the infamous clown scene from the original [Ed. note: I still can’t watch that scene with my eyes open] was somehow botched and manages to be an eye-rolling moment in the film, instead of a truly scary experience.