After one month of polling, over 21,000 votes from New Zealand’s film fans have been tallied.
Here we list 1st to 10th placings, SEE THE FULL TOP 20 IN OUR ORIGINAL FEATURE HERE. And see our breakdown of the Best & Worst Movies here, showing which directors and genres appear most
1. Battlefield Earth
Here it is, the worst film of all time: the John Travolta-starring adaptation of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard’s 1982 novel Battlefield Earth. It ticks all the right boxes: commercial failure, critical failure, any-reasonable-measure failure. Criticisms reach every facet of production: the acting, the script, the score, the camerawork and the art direction. The story here covers only half of Hubbard’s book, Travolta planned on a sequel to cover the second half.
Widely regarding as one of the worst ever, screenwriter J.D. Shapiro even penned an open apology. “Let me start by apologising to anyone who went to see Battlefield Earth“, he says, “The only time I saw the movie was at the premiere, which was one too many times… Now, looking back at the movie I can’t help but be strangely proud of it. Because out of all the sucky movies, mine is the suckiest.”
2. Sharnado
Here’s a bad movie that wants to be bad, and excels. The story sees sharks unleashed on the streets of Los Angeles after a waterspout plucks them from the ocean. Cue flying sharks, a screaming Tara Reid, plot holes big enough to fit a… shark… and CGI created by Satan himself. Features this gem of an exchange – Baz: “Storm’s dying down.” Nova: “How can you tell?” Baz: “Not as many sharks flying around”.
3. Twilight
This is somewhat unfair, people. Twilight, the beginning of a film phenomenon, is not that bad. We suggest it appears on this list by proxy. For a film to be universally hated, it also has to be seen by a lot of people. So it’s either a ready-made blockbuster a lot of people go to (see the two Transformers movies on this list), to be watched precisely because it is terrible (see The Room, Birdemic), or be watched under duress. The latter is what is going on here – despised by a large group of disgruntled boyfriends and eye-rolling parents.
4. Batman & Robin
It’s easy to forget (actually it’s not) that Batman – who can reach the dizzying heights of The Dark Knight – can also sink so low. Returning to its high-camp screen origins, Joel Schumacher ‘s 1997 version chose bat nipples over verisimilitude, and excessive puns over being good. There’s a lot wrong with it. Schumacher apologised, and so did George Clooney this year on Graham Norton: “I always apologise for Batman & Robin, let me just say that I’d actually thought I’d destroyed the franchise until somebody else brought it back years later and changed it. I thought at the time that this was going to be a very good career move. It wasn’t.”
5. The Room
Even with The Room being an inadvertent cultural treasure, it still manages to surprise on both first and subsequent viewings. A testament to blind ego and an indictment of the “evils” of women, Tommy Wiseau may now try to retrospectively paint this vanity project as a black comedy, but the reality is that it’s both an often-inept trainwreck and compellingly watchable. The only thing stranger than the film is the story behind it, as recounted in the book The Disaster Artist.
6. The Last Airbender
An adaption of the popular Nickelodeon animated TV series, this had a fanbase ready to pan it from day one and also suffered from that time when studios just slapped 3D on everything. Critics didn’t hold back, sticking the boot into the acting, the script and especially poor M. Night Shyamalan. Said Roger Ebert: “It bores and alienates… an agonising experience in every category I can think of and others still waiting to be invented”.
7. Jack and Jill
It would be too easy to proverbially slap this 90-minute crossdressing brain fart from Adam Sandler, though he could easily slap back with the $150mil of cold hard cash this film grossed worldwide. Aw screw it, we’ll take the hit: this movie is thumbs-to-the-eyes awful. The only good thing? Al Pacino delivering one of the almighty meta lines in cinema history: “Burn this. This cannot be seen. By anyone.”
8. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
If you placed a potato-coloured model in hot pants shaking her ass next to a dryer with car engine shrapnel in it while playing continuous audio of Shia Labeouf screaming “No no no no no no no no!” for two and a half hours, then you would have faithfully recreated this hilariously bad sequel from Michael Bay. (But hey, it’s still one of the highest grossing films of all time.)
9. Movie 43
Thirteen directors team up with an eclectic mass of all-star actors and actresses in this horrific collection of R-rated comedic shorts.
10. Disaster Movie
The latest spoof-orama in the long line of Hollywood parodies that started with Scary Movie way back when. A blue print of low-brow humour and lampooning of recent releases has been a big success at the box office, despite the scorn of lofty critics. And, people everywhere.
SEE THE FULL TOP 20 IN OUR ORIGINAL FEATURE HERE.
