I get out to the movies so infrequently these days that I hardly ever pay to see something unless I already have reason to think it will be good. The worst thing I’ve ever seen on the big screen was probably The Lady in the Water.
I did see Star Crash in a theater, but 6 year old me appreciated it because spaceships. I remember being mad at my dad for saying it was terrible.
I never got to see the original trilogy movies on Opening Day, but certainly opening weekend. (I was seven for the first one). I actually stood in line at midnight Opening Day at the AMC in Burbank for Phantom Menace.
Did not stand in an actual opening-day midnight line again for sixteen years until The Force Awakens. TPM hurt hard.
I was around eight, so while the Munro aspect was kind of interesting, I was still paying attention mostly to the rest of the movie which I managed to find cheesy and confusing with lame special effects. Given that I found Land of the Lost and Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger’s special effects really incredible at the time (and Disney’s Candleshoe was a fond memory), I know in my heart that it blew.
Manos at least has some novelty value, I think. It’s supposed to be supernatural to some degree (I guess?) and can thus get away with just a teensy bit more than something that is supposed to be realistic.
Oh yeah that’s an Italian movie. Logic and consistency do not apply when watching Italian schlock cinema and that is part of the fun of it.
There are a lot of criteria for worst movie, but TPM is the worst for a lot of reasons. Some movies you expect little from and can be more forgiving with. Some leave lasting scars for what they should have been but weren’t. I know there’s no movie I obsessed over more for trying to understand why it was so bad than that one. That movie ruined Star Wars, a thing I thought impossible.
AotC was still worse, but I guess expectations were lower. I didn’t even intend to watch it but my housemate at the time insisted on the just after midnight showing on opening day.
Kinda funny how after all that, Revenge of the Sith felt like an actually-not-bad bit of entertainment. I went very halfheartedly, with my expectations in the basement, feeling like a worn-out completist grinding his last achievement trophy, and I left the theater feeling like I’d eaten a peanut butter sandwich with somewhat disappointing strawberry preserves on it, rather than the cold diarrhea on sourdough toast that was AotC.
As a movie, in terms of plot, dialog, Jar Jar still existing, and other general movie criteria, it was worse. But at that point I’d lost hope because of TPM and went to it a few weeks after it was released since I had kids and they wanted to see it. It was already clear from TPM that Star Wars was a burned out shell of its former self, the product of a man so addicted to CGI that he’d squandered everything else, except Jar Jar.
I’m sure there is a good film in there. You would have to cut two hours off it’s length though.
No, but if we’re talking about terrible Star Wars ripoffs, I have to mention StarChaser: The Legend of Orin, an awful 3D animated movie that’s a blatant ripoff, down to laser swords, droids, and a Han Solo stand-in with a cigar. I saw it with my dad in '85, because we were both big fans of Star Wars, 3D movies, and animation. It pretty much fails on all of those levels while being boring, ugly, and misogynistic.
The edited versions of all three that float around are definitely a lot better. They were recently on YT for a surprisingly long time.
Edit (they’re still up? The anti-cheese ones)
Example for TPM:
Here’s a brief listing of the edits:
- Nemoidian and Gungan voices are re-vocalized with alien dialect and subtitled.
- Journey to Gungan underwater city removed
- Jar Jar is now a useful character instead of an annoying tag-along
- Nemoidians are much more devious and less cowardly
- Childish Battle Droid dialog removed
- Queen Amidala’s voice is pitch-shifted back to her normal pitch. (Still could not remove her horrible British accent)
- Naboo pilot Ric Olié’s endless plot exposition removed when appropriate
- Midichlorian references removed
- Anakin immaculate conception removed
- All fart and poop jokes removed
- Anakin is edited to be a more deliberate hero instead of an accidental one.
- Removed as many “Yippe!” and “Whoa!” and “Whee!” exclamations as possible.
- Removed the two headed pod race announcer
- Shortened the podrace intro scene and tightened the whole race for more tension
- Removed the entire sequence of trying to capture the Viceroy at the end.
Final run-time? About 92 minutes.
(i.e. 40 mins of utter shite cut out)
The grumpy hero? on the movie poster totally sells it. Oh hey and on youtube, in 10 minute parts but there. I know what I am watching tomorrow night while babysitting servers getting patches.
Have you ever fired your gun up in the air and gone ‘ahhh’?
You’re a cinematic masochist, aren’t you?
Have you even jumped out of a flying plane without a parachute, just because?
Well for some of these the word watch is used very loosely. Does background noise while posting to the BBS, playing some stupid game, etc. sound better?
Is it true that there is a place in a man’s head that if you shoot it, it will blow up?
Just once place called kitty hawk. Some bike shop owners were pissed off about it though.