5 Movies That Should Never Have Been Made
While Hollywood continues to churn out new movies week after week, it’s not a stretch to say that the quialty of those titles spans a wide spectrum. For every Dunkirk or Wonder Woman, we get an Emojii Movie or Gigli. But that’s life, we have to take the bad with the good. and when you are trying to fill 52 weeks of the year with content, there are going to be a fair share of misses.
That being said, there are some movies that really just should never have been made. Now I’m not talking about movies like The Last Airbender or Son of the Mask, movies that were just plain terrible. I’m talking about movies that should have just been stopped during the planning phase. Movies where someone should have taken a step back and said “You know, maybe this isn’t such a good idea.” So with that in mind, let’s get to it.
5 Movies that Should Never Have Been Made
1. The Crow: City of Angels
I was a huge fan of The Crow. This dark fantasy movie from the mid 90s had a great premise, a killer soundtrack, and amazing visuals. Yet due to a tragic accident during filming, star Brandon Lee was killed. Plenty has been said on that topic in the past, but it’s still something that should never have happened. So just out of decency to his memory, a sequel should have been a non-starter. Yet there we have it, The Crow: City of Angels. And to further add insult to injury, the movie wasn’t even any good!
2. Highlander 2: The Quickening
Ok sure, the originally Highlander movie was far from Oscar material. But it had a cool premise and still spawned a legion of fans. And then we have the dreadful, awful. Highlander 2. Just how bad is this movie? It’s so bad that fans of the franchise actually pretend like it doesn’t exist. But that’s not the reason it’s on this list. It’s not here because it’s bad (which it is), it’s here because it absolutely destroys the lore of the franchise. I won’t go into the specifics (search them out if you want to punish yourself), but it not only retcons much of the first movie, it adds on plenty of confusing premises in its own right. I have no idea what they were thinking with this one.
3. The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
There are actually a few movies that could probably have joined The Hobbit here (Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 for example). The main issue with the Battle of Five Armies was that it never really needed to be made. The Hobbit movies are based on a single book, and not even that long of one at that (~320 pages). So you are telling me that we needed 1 movie for every 100 pages of a book? Of course not. The Hobbit could have easily been two movies, maybe even one. Yet Peter Jackson went to the well one too many times and I think audiences lost interest. I never even bothered to see The Battle of Five Armies in the theater.
4. World War Z
World War Z was a great book that talked about life during the zombie apocalypse. The neat thing about it was that if used a multitude of perspectives. So instead of following one person around, the chapters were almost mini-short stories as they focused a spotlight on different aspects of life during the war. And then there was the movie which, had just about nothing to do with the book other than the name. I won’t bother going into the premise of the movie, but suffice to say, nothing about it lines up with the book. This movie would have been worlds better as a HBO series, but Paramount Pictures probably figured they could just trade off the title to get free publicity.
5. The Karate Kid (2010)
Never mind the fact that in the remake of The Karate Kid, the kid is actually learning Kung Fu instead of Karate (or the whole Sensei/Sifu thing). The Karate Kid makes this list because it was a remake that wasn’t needed yet. In my opinion, a movie remake should only be happen when the original no longer can make a connection with today’s movie goers. This is especially true for classic movies. The original Karate Kid was made in the 80s, and was still holding up quite strong. You could watch that movie and still understand the people, mannerisms and it hadn’t yet felt dated. This new version would have done much better as a reboot, where it can still draw on the original, instead of pretending that it didn’t exist.
