Each and every year, you’re going to have great movies, terrible movies, and pretty much everything in between. For every Black Panther, there’s a Ghost Rider, and for every Jaws, there’s a Sharknado. It’s just gonna happen. Movies of various quality are always coming out for one reason or another. Sometimes, the film is rushed to meet a certain deadline, or the film-makers don’t care enough about the project. On the flip-side, you’re also going to have movies that’ll just blow your mind at how awesome they truly are. Over the next couple of weeks, I’m going to discuss the best films of 2018, and I’m also going to start a new thing for each year called Lifetime Achievements. It is not related to the American Film Institute’s award program, it’s just going to be my personal view on someone’s achievements within their lifetime. But, I’m getting ahead of myself. 2018, like any other year, has had its ups and downs in terms of movie quality. For this post, I’m going to go over some of the movies that disappointed me the most. These will include anything from major theatrical releases to short films. I figure if one my posts is going to be pretty negative, I want to get this one out of the way first, so let’s get disappointed, shall we?
The Predator
This one hurts the most, as I’m a HUGE fan of the Predator franchise. The original Schwarzenegger film is one of the all-time 80s classic action films. The second film wasn’t as good, but I still enjoyed it, and even Predators was a pretty decent affair. So….what the hell happened here? I can’t be sure, but I believe that the sale of Fox Studios to Disney may have been a part of it, but there is some serious studio interference here. The entire third act was re-written and re-shot into the nighttime mess that we got in theaters. None of the characters are likable, and the kid is irritating. The big bad Predator is a CGI monster, and the dogs are just plain stupid. The movie definitely has its moments were it could be genuinely awesome, but Shane Black turned an action/horror/science fiction into a comedy where the humor doesn’t land. I wasn’t laughing at all. This movie is an embarrassment. Shane Black, who starred in the original film, should be ashamed. The only reason I would consider picking this up on Blu-Ray is to check out the deleted scenes, if there are any, and I would like to scope out the commentary track and see if Black is going to be forthcoming about what went wrong. Honestly, Aliens Vs. Predator: Requiem was a better movie.
Sicario: Day of the Soldado
Of all the films to make a sequel to, Sicario was NOT one of them. I was curious about it, but to me, the first movie was perfectly self-contained and ended with a solid, yet down-beat conclusion. It was a phenomenal film with amazing performances by Josh Brolin and Benicio Del Toro. I want to know who green-lit this movie so I can smack them in the face for trying to turn Sicario into a franchise. Why? It didn’t need to happen. It would have been one thing if the film was executed well, but the director they got was clearly way out of his league. Del Toro and Brolin are still really good, but the rest of the film is a complete narrative disaster. It’s violent and has fantastic action, but the story is awful.
Solo: A Star Wars Story
This was a serious miscalculation on Disney’s part. After Star Wars and Lucasfilm were sold to Disney, they announced that Star Wars movies would be released on a yearly basis after the release of Episode VII. I think a lot of people, at some point, knew that this plan was eventually going to backfire, and that’s exactly what happened. Solo ended up not only being one of the least-anticipated films of the year, it ended being the worst-performing film in the franchise. Having seen it a second and a third time, I see what they were trying to go for, but the execution was sloppy, with all sorts of behind-the-scenes issues, including the firing of Lord and Miller, the original directors. This one was doomed right from the beginning. I don’t hate it. In fact, there’s stuff in here that’s actually really good, and I’m learning to like Alden Ehrenreich as young Han. Unfortunately, the film’s performance has had a major effect on the films that were planned like the Boba Fett film and rumored Obi-Wan movie, neither of which is happening now. Right now, they have to focus on making Episode IX the best possible film that they can make, other-wise, Star Wars is going to end up on the back-burner. That breaks my heart, because I’m a huge Star Wars fan.
Braven
Jason Momoa has quickly become one of my favorite actors in the last decade. From his performance Game of Thrones to his turn as Aquaman in Justice League, Jason is a fantastic actor. The same can be said for Stephen Lang, who also stars in this film. On the surface, the film seems like your typical back-woods thriller involving drug dealers and a stowaway kid. When you begin to dig beneath the surface…..that’s all you’re getting. The only things that make this film stand out are the location, which is set in Newfoundland and the acting. That’s it. Everything else is pretty much run-of-the-mill and generic. Is it poorly done? Not at all, but the film doesn’t do anything new with the formula and instead chooses to be a predictable action flick that only does the bare minimum.
Venom
After the release of the first Deadpool and Logan, Venom was announced. That sounded awesome: An R-rated Venom film featuring Tom Hardy as Eddie Brock/Venom? What could go wrong? Sony is what went wrong. Sony and Reuben Fleischer, the director. Instead of the uber-violent film that we should have gotten, we ended up with a watered-down generic origin story that’s saved only by Tom Hardy’s performance. If it wasn’t for Tom Hardy, this movie would have bombed big time. I enjoyed the film, don’t get me wrong, but it could have been so much more if it had better writers. Honestly, an R-rating would not have saved the film. Venom is a hard R-rated character that likes to chow down on people. Holding that back was a big mistake. I don’t care if it was meant to appeal to a wider audience. The wider audience is not what Venom was created for. Since Carnage has been all but confirmed to be in the next film, they really need to step up their game and make it an R-rated film, because you can’t make Kletus Kassidy a PG-13 character. It won’t work.
Lucid, Thirsty, Bloodhunters, A Chase Sequence
When I was in London for the Fighting Spirit Film Festival, we got see a number of full-length feature films which were pretty awesome, but we also got to check out about 20 or so short films. In my post about my experience in London, I listed the short films that I really enjoyed, which included Steam, Dead End, and Punch Me. Well, here are some of the ones I didn’t particularly care for. Lucid was one that I thought was awful. The choreography, the concept, and the overall presentation was just plain….dull. A Chase Sequence disappointed me quite a bit, because I was expecting a bit more in terms of fighting from Max Repossi. He’s a fantastic martial artist, but this short film doesn’t do him any favors. Bloodhunters was a really bizarre supernatural kind of film that just didn’t work for me in terms of action and story-telling. Thirsty was basically nothing more than a demo reel. It was well made, but there was really nothing else to it. Now, I understand that most of these are short films and there’s a limited amount of things that you can do with a format like that, but some of them just weren’t that hot. I hope to see these guys do better next time, because there is a lot of potential here.
While I can’t say that 2018 is the most disappointing year in film, as I haven’t been able to see everything that I wanted to see, there was just enough to think that either these studios and film-makers overdid it, or under-cooked their movies. The results speak for themselves, but I’m definitely looking forward to seeing what comes our way in 2019.