The 25 most disappointing movies of the decade

Disney thought getting the "National Treasure" gang of Jerry Bruckheimer, Nicolas Cage, and director Jon Turteltaub back together again would result in another successful franchise. But that's not what happened with "The Sorcerer's Apprentice." 

In trying to create its own magical franchise after Warner Bros.' success with "Harry Potter," Disney's live-action adaptation of part of "Fantasia" was not what fans were looking for. Critics found the film generic and dull with too much CGI. After marketing failed to drum up much interest in the movie, Disney offered two-for-one tickets opening weekend to get audiences to theaters. It didn't help as the film opened to a $17.6 million opening weekend on an estimated $150 million budget. The film grossed $215 million worldwide.

"Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time" was another big-budget summer Disney flick produced by Jerry Bruckheimer. It was based on a popular video game franchise and starred the likable Jake Gyllenhaal as the lead, but neither critics nor fans cared much for this adaptation. It sits at a 37% on Rotten Tomatoes.

This was a big risk. Disney expected "Prince of Persia" to spawn a film franchise similar to the video game franchise. It was probably expected to be the new "Pirates of the Caribbean." It often came up in interviews with Bruckheimer at the time. Bruckheimer made a franchise of a theme park ride, so why not a video game? Though "Prince of Persia" became one of the highest-grossing video game movies in the world, $336 million worldwide was not the same as the over $600 million each "Pirates" installment grossed. (Two of the five films crossed $1 billion.)

It was a slightly unrealistic expectation considering video game movie adaptations have never been terribly good nor have they performed well enough at the box office to warrant sequels.

After the success of Christopher Nolan's "The Dark Knight" trilogy, it seemed like DC could do no wrong and the Marvel Cinematic Universe had its work cut out. Then came DC's "Green Lantern" adaptation starring Reynolds as the pilot-turned-lantern Hal Jordan, which was supposed to launch its own franchise.

Filmed on a reported $200 million budget, the superhero movie grossed $219.8 million worldwide. The Hollywood Reporter called it one of the biggest flops of summer 2011. In a 2016 interview with Entertainment Weekly, Reynolds said "Green Lantern" failed because the film never knew what it wanted to be.

"That isn't to say the hundreds of men and women didn't work their fingers to the bone to make it as good as possible," said Reynolds of why the DC movie failed while "Deadpool" succeeded. "It also fell victim to the process in Hollywood which is like poster first, release date second, script last."

As "Deadpool" took off, "Green Lantern" became a running gag both in the franchise and in Reynolds' life. It's one that he seems content bringing up on late-night shows and while marketing other films like "Free Guy." Reynolds is probably OK with the flop though. He can probably agree that the best thing that came of "Green Lantern" was meeting his future wife Blake Lively.

It's rare for Disney to release complete misfires. One of the company's biggest bombs — and one of the biggest box-office failures of all time — was a high-budget production ($175 million) from producer Robert Zemeckis ("Back to the Future") about a young boy who sets out to save his mom when she's kidnapped by aliens. The film grossed just under $39 million worldwide.

What went wrong? 

A New York Times article from 2011 suggested the uninspiring story idea was partly to blame while studio executives suggested it was the animation style, in which motion-capture filmmaking techniques were used. Honestly, anyone who has seen the characters themselves can tell you they're not visually appealing. Audiences and critics alike agreed. Critics referred to the characters as grotesque while viewers similarly said the designs were terrifying with bad animation.

"The Hangover II" was criticized for being far too similar to the first film so it seemed like the final film in the trilogy could only get better from there. Unfortunately, having the main cast of Bradley Cooper, Zach Galifianakis, and Ed Helms didn't do anything for the Warner Bros. sequel. 

"The Hangover III" received both poor audience and critic reviews for breaking away from its comedy roots and becoming a gritty road trip gone awry that tried too hard to be funny. The poor reception resulted in a much lower box-office opening weekend than forecasted, leading to the lowest-grossing film of the "Hangover" franchise.

Coming off of NBC's hit show "Friday Night Lights," "John Carter" should have been Taylor Kitsch's breakout in a leading role. It had Andrew Stanton, the director behind "Finding Nemo" and "Wall-E," behind it and was something Disney tried adapting in the past as its answer to "Star Wars," funny enough.

But the very expensive adaptation of the "A Princess of Mars" book series failed to hit with audiences. The film grossed $284 million worldwide. "John Carter" was reported to cost between $307 million and $350 million to make and market. 

According to the New York Times, Stanton was given too much creative control over the marketing for his first live-action film that failed to connect with fans. The film wound up becoming one of Hollywood's biggest bombs with Disney taking an estimated $200 million writedown on the film and canceling two planned sequels. A few months later, Disney wound up purchasing Lucasfilm, the company that owned "Star Wars." 

After the success of "The Hunger Games," most studios were on the hunt for the next big YA adaptation to turn into Hollywood gold. "Ender's Game" seemed like a good bet with Harrison Ford, Viola Davis, Ben Kingsley, and Asa Butterfield ("Hugo") on board. 

"Ender's Game" was a fine movie, but it tried to cram so much of the book into less than two hours that it lost some of the magic of what made it a great young-adult novel.

Author Orson Scott Card said the series was unadaptable because the entire story takes place in the main character's head. The film itself grossed $125 million worldwide and cost and estimated $110 million to make. Instead of becoming a franchise, Lionsgate never moved forward with a sequel. Actor Aramis Knight told Hypable a script was written and he had even read it.

Three years after the "Sorcerer's Apprentice" flop, Bruckheimer returned as a producer on his Johnny Depp-starring movie "The Lone Ranger." After multiple delays, Disney's Western was already costly with an estimated $250 million budget and another $150 million in marketing. But that shouldn't have been a problem for Depp who had a few billion-dollar grossing movies under his belt at Disney between "Pirates" and "Alice in Wonderland," right? Wrong.

When reviews for the Depp and Armie Hammer film came out, they were awful with many hammering away at the film's convoluted plot and meandering runtime. For a movie attempting to appeal to families, there was a lot of adult material and over-the-top violence, including the silhouette of man's throat being slit and a brothel. 

The movie ended up grossing $261 million worldwide. THR reported at the time Disney could lose more than $150 million on the film.

You can read Insider's review here.

Yes, "Need for Speed" was technically a Disney movie, too, with DreamWorks. It was one of the company's final films under its Touchstone umbrella.

After "Prince of Persia," the Mouse House attempted adapting another popular video game franchise. This time it had the very marketable Aaron Paul who just came off of AMC's acclaimed TV series "Breaking Bad." Disney gave the film prime ad spots during "The Bachelor" and the Super Bowl. Unfortunately, the movie just wasn't that good.

"Need for Speed" received bad reviews for having a dull, silly revenge story. The real problem was that the film felt more like a two-hour ad for the Ford Mustang than one that was invested in being a love letter to the video game people grew up adoring. That was probably because DreamWorks had an extensive partnership with Ford in the production of the film. For a movie based on a game about racing, there were only two real races that bookended the film. 

Disney's racing film posed little threat to Vin Diesel's franchise about fast cars and family. It was a "Fast and the Furious" wannabe.

You can read my review here.

There's a scene early on in "Taken 3" where there are at least 10 cuts used to show Liam Neeson's character, Bryan Mills, jump over a fence to evade a dog. It's painful to watch.

We still remember the crowded theater we sat with opening weekend eagerly awaiting to see this film and how we all felt duped afterwards because the film was so bad. Laughably bad. The reviews matched the sentiment, referring to it as a "mind-numbing, crash-bang misfire" with a "lame" concept and execution. In other words, it felt phoned in.

We don't blame Liam Neeson for cashing in on the fact that he became an accidental action star in his 60s. Neeson reportedly earned 20 times more for the threequel than he did for the first film in the franchise. But if you're going to cash in, at least make sure the story is decent to warrant an audience.

When "The Good Dinosaur" was pushed back from a May 2014 release for a year, Pixar probably should've just pulled the plug on this one instead of carrying on. In 2013, Bill Hader, Judy Greer, and Neil Patrick Harris were originally cast as voices in the original film but their parts were eventually cut out.

Parts of "The Good Dinosaur" felt derivative of other Disney classics. Notably, a scene of the young dino, Arlo, running through grass with his father at night before plunging to his death felt like scenes ripped from "The Lion King." Dinosaurs seen later in the film felt reminiscent of "Ice Age." Another sequence showed Arlo and a seven-year-old boy, Spot, eat berries and go on a strange drug trip. Overall, the film didn't feel like it was on par with the level of storytelling that came to be revered in other Pixar films. It became the studio's first box-office bomb.

Somewhere in the "Fantastic 4" reboot was a good movie, but it wasn't what was seen on screen. The movie, starring Kate Mara, Michael B. Jordan, and Miles Teller had potential, but was bogged down by focusing on too much background and failing to deliver enough time on screen with its superheroes. 

The film skipped over the most interesting part where we should have witnessed the characters experiencing each of their new powers for the first time. Before the film came out, director Josh Trank blasted the movie on Twitter in a now deleted tweet saying he had a "fantastic version" of the film a year ago, but we'll probably never see it. In November, Trank reviewed his film, reiterating that the version of the film released was not what he envisioned.

The film grossed $167.9 million worldwide on an estimated budget of $122 million.

Even with Arnold Schwarzenegger back, the sixth "Terminator" film failed to revive the franchise. The silly spelled "Genisys" relied too much on the nostalgia factor by unnecessarily recreating scenes from the 1984 original film instead of delivering a cohesive story. 

The film was supposed to kick off a new franchise, but it lost some of its "Terminator" edge by going for a PG-13 rating and received poor reviews from critics and fans for its muddled concept. 

The film's underperformance resulted in a reboot of that reboot that scrapped the last three "Terminator" sequels from canon. Clarke told Vanity Fair she was "relieved" there wouldn't be sequels to "Genisys" because "no one had a good time" making the film. Despite Linda Hamilton and Schwarzenegger reteaming in an R-rated "Terminator" movie this fall, that also became a box-office bomb.

You can read Business Insider's review here.

We're still on 2015, because there were a lot of disappointing movies that year. 

Warner Bros. and fans alike had big expectations for the film. Not only was the sci-fi epic from the Wachowski siblings, the duo who brought us the "Matrix" movies, but it also starred two big names in Hollywood at the time. Mila Kunis was recently in "Ted" and "Oz the Great and Powerful" and Channing Tatum was coming off of WB's "Magic Mike." 

It was supposed to be a big 2014 summer release for the studio, but then it was abruptly pushed back 10 months just weeks before its release because of poor test screenings and to finish visual effects.

While a lot of the movie was visually stunning, the entire movie is based around the silly concept of aliens who want to preserve their youth by killing humans (a point glossed over in the film, but better explained in the production notes). The Wachowski siblings said they wanted to put together a bunch of genres — a sci-fi film mixed with a thriller, an "action epic," and a "love story" — but in doing so, it was a very overstuffed space opera with terrifying-looking creatures, a love story between Tatum and Kunis that wasn't believable, and bad dialogue.

After an Oscar-nominated performance in "The Theory of Everything," poor Eddie Redmayne played a character so bizarre that he only reacted in calm, creepy whispers or outright screams that caused audience members to laugh every time.

Some of the reactions from my screening mixed with fans and press alike elicited responses including, "It was embarrassing" and "That's what they spent $150 million to $200 million on?" The film, which cost an estimated $200 million to make, grossed $183 million worldwide.

You can read our review of "Jupiter Ascending" here.

One of the other most awkward screenings of the past decade we attended occurred at the Warner Bros. premiere for DC's "Suicide Squad." David Ayer opened the film yelling out, "F--- Marvel," on stage. By the time the movie ended and the audience clapped, I sat there wondering if we all watched the same film. It simply wasn't great. 

Aside from Margot Robbie's spot-on performance as the Joker's main squeeze, Harley Quinn, and Will Smith's Deadshot, the film was forgettable. DC has a great, enviable roster of villains, but the film tried packing so many into the film without making you care about many of them. Most of them weren't even necessary and barely received screen time. By the film's end, you were supposed to see them as a family, but you probably had a tough time recalling who everyone was in the first place.

By inserting Jared Leto's poorly-received Joker into the film, "Suicide Squad" also felt like a Harley/Joker film. The villains, including Enchantress, were too generic, confusing, and honestly, the least interesting part in a movie that's about villains. Despite terrible reviews, the film grossed over $746 million worldwide. But WB didn't follow through with a sequel. 

Instead, Warner Bros. is carrying on with a new "Suicide Squad" reboot from "Guardians of the Galaxy" director James Gunn. Despite bringing back Robbie as Harley along with a few other actors, it's expected the film won't acknowledge the 2016 movie.

You can read my review of "Suicide Squad" here.

The film based on the popular Blizzard Entertainment game took a decade, and a number of delays, to get made. It wasn't lost on director Jones that films based on video games don't usually fare well at the box office. 

But he was such a passionate fan of the game that he figured if anyone was going to make a movie based on the lore, that he should take a stab at it. 

"As a fan, I actually reached out. They weren't looking for me, but I actually went looking for them to see whether they'd be interested in me at least coming in and giving them a pitch," Duncan told Insider in 2016. "Fortunately, they did and it all worked out really well."

Duncan had a clear vision for future installments, picturing it as a "Lord of the Rings"-type saga. His passion made it all the more disappointing that the film wasn't well-received by critics with many comparing it to "Battlefield Earth." My colleague, and video game reporter, Ben Gilbert said one of the film's issues was that it was only made for people who love the games.

You can read his review of the movie here.

The first sign that the "Independence Day" sequel wasn't destined to be great was that Will Smith wasn't in it. (He opted to do "Suicide Squad" instead.) The second red flag was that 20th Century Fox didn't have press screenings for the film until after it opened in theaters. 

Without Smith, some of the magic of the original film was missing in this pretty silly and dumb alien romp-fest. Liam Hemsworth's lead character felt like he was just basically there for eye candy and to get in a fight with another main character. More disappointing was that the franchise killed off Smith instead of leaving his character's story open-ended for a potential sequel.

Earlier this month, director Roland Emmerich said he thought the film wasn't well-received because he didn't get to make the movie he wanted with Smith in it. Emmerich said he wished he didn't make the film because the original version with Smith had a better script.

You can read our review here.

After more than a decade of delays, one of the most-anticipated films of summer 2017 debuted to just $19 million opening weekend.

"Done in a brisk 90-minute running time, the movie feels like a bunch of scenes cobbled together," wrote Jason Guerrasio in his review for Business Insider. "With a disregard to character development, or even simply giving the audience a moment to breathe in the world, the feeling of watching 'The Dark Tower' is like racing through a meal because you are late to an appointment."

King himself admitted it's tough to fit the book series into a 95-minute movie. Maybe the TV adaptation reboot will be better.

Read Guerrasio's full review here.

Though it introduces some fun characters in Ezra Miller's Flash and Jason Momoa's take on Aquaman, the superhero movie gets bogged down by a silly plot and a villain trying to take over the Earth. And then there was poor Henry Cavill's CG mustache.

The movie cost an estimated $300 million and underperformed so much at the box office that Warner Bros. restructured the plan for its DC movies moving forward. Though WB has had success with standalone films for Wonder Woman, Aquaman, and Shazam since then, it's unclear how Affleck's absence will be addressed, if at all, moving forward. 

Though critic reviews for the film were unkind, audiences favored the film better. Since its release, fans have been hopeful for a director's cut of the film which Zack Snyder has confirmed exists.

You can read my full review here.

It was easy to be excited over "The Golden Circle." Not only was the original cast members Taron Egerton and Colin Firth returning, but it added Halle Berry, Channing Tatum, and Julianne Moore. 

Unfortunately, the movie mishandles and wastes its talent. Moore plays one the worst villains in cinematic history. Tatum is barely in the film because of scheduling conflicts, lying limp on a table most of the movie. There's also a bizarre extended cameo from Elton John. Hopefully, next year's prequel is better.

You can read our review here.

When Rooney Mara and Daniel Craig starred in the first "Girl With a Dragon Tattoo" movie,  there were a few sequels in the works. None of them ever came to fruition after script rewrites and delays. When the new film came, neither star returned.

But when we knew "The Crown's" Golden Globe-winning Claire Foy was playing computer hacker Lisbeth Salander, we were interested. Unfortunately, the film focused more on the action than the storytelling, resulting in a reboot that doesn't live up to the original Oscar-nominated movie. 

The biggest problem with this movie may have been in its marketing. It wasn't clear if this was a sequel, a reboot, or an attempt at a "requel." Unless you were familiar with the books, it wasn't even clear this movie was part of the "Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" franchise. Only the very end of some trailers noted briefly it was "A New Dragon Tattoo Story." 

When the film came to theaters, it bombed. This movie was supposed to kick off a new franchise. Instead, it grossed $34 million worldwide.

Netflix sure knows how to get people talking. 

Fans of the "Cloverfield" franchise were caught off guard when Netflix announced a spin-off to the J.J. Abrams hit during the Super Bowl. The big news was that the movie would launch on the streaming site right after the big game causing a lot of excitement online. 

It seemed like a truly interesting way to disrupt Hollywood by dropping a movie hours after announcing it. Then we all quickly found out why it was streaming on Netflix and not in theaters. "The Cloverfield Paradox" is pretty awful! Critiques ranged from calling it a trainwreck to illogical.

We barely found it watchable. That's unfortunate because "Cloverfield's" other spin-off, "10 Cloverfield Lane," was very good and "Paradox" has a solid cast, including David Oyelowo, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, and Elizabeth Debicki.

"Solo" was a lackluster effort from Lucasfilm that felt phoned in, giving us answers to questions we never really needed like how Han received his last name (It's a pretty lame answer.). The film may have had the look and feel of a "Star Wars" movie, but it was missing the heart of one. The best thing we got out of "Solo" was Donald Glover's performance as a dashing, young Lando Calrissian and his many luxurious capes. 

You can tell us you loved "Solo" all you want, but at the end of the day the film was a theatrical disappointment for Disney. You may not have realized this though because of Disney's decision to release "Solo" in May.

By releasing it between "Avengers: Infinity War" and "Incredibles 2," two very successful films which grossed over $2 billion and $1.2 billion worldwide, respectively, the studio was able to offset any losses it may receive from the "Star Wars" spin-off in its quarterly earnings. That was very good for Disney because "Solo" wound up becoming the lowest-grossing "Star Wars" movie. It didn't even cross $400 million worldwide. After its performance, Disney CEO Bob Iger said it was going to slow down on releasing a "Star Wars" movie every year. (This is why we're getting an Obi-Wan TV series instead of a movie.)

You can read our review here.

Sony didn't have Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones back for another time around, but that shouldn't have mattered. The studio had built-in anticipation for the film by having Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson working together.

These were two people fans wanted to see together after Marvel's hilarious "Thor: Ragnarok" had the two team up. All Sony needed to do was deliver a film with a decent story. It was too bad that this "MIB" requel (a franchise reboot staged as a sequel) didn't live up to the hype. 

Thompson and Hemsworth do what they can with a predictable, uninspired script, but more effort seemed put into making sure the gadgets and tech looked sleek than delivering an interesting enough story to match.

More time is spent telling Hemsworth's Agent H throughout the film that he seems different (but no one can put their finger on exactly what has changed about him) than fully explaining the film's mystery villains. The addition of a tiny alien sidekick, voiced by Kumail Nanijiani ("Stuber"), weighed this one down as it seemed like nothing more than a corporate mandate to appeal to kids. 

Even Sony's studio boss, Tom Rothman, told sister site Business Insider there probably "was not a strong enough idea in the story." Audiences were probably quick to recognize that and as word of mouth spread, decided to wait for the film's home release instead. The fourth film had the worst opening in the franchise's history and grossed less worldwide than any of the three films before it. 

Fox's final big "X-Men" movie wasn't the worst in the franchise, but it left a lot to be desired. "Dark Phoenix" revisited the Jean Grey story line that was previously brought to screen in 2006's maligned "X-Men: The Last Stand." 

The movie mainly suffered because of poorly fleshed-out villains and a completely reshot ending. Viewers probably would've gotten better versions of both if it wasn't for another movie. 

In an interview, James McAvoy told Yahoo Movies UK the movie's entire ending was changed in order to avoid similarities to another unnamed superhero movie. According to another interview with Tye Sheridan, the film's vague alien villains were supposed to be shape-shifters named Skrulls. If that name sounds familiar, it's because those are the aliens who appear in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and who were a big part of Disney's "Captain Marvel." 

It's worth noting Disney acquired 20th Century Fox ahead of the film's release and was in charge of its final marketing and theatrical release. The movie had the lowest box-office gross worldwide of any "X-Men" film with $252 million worldwide and is set to lose over $100 million.

It's unfortunate because this is possibly the last outing with some of these actors before Disney eventually reboots the property into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The "X-Men" really helped define and influence the direction of popular superhero movies today.

You can read our review of "X-Men: Dark Phoenix" here.