What big budget movie had absolutely no buisness getting made?

The Last Jedi.

I left the theatre angry that they spent enough money to take mankind back to the moon on something that stupid.

I can't leave it at that. I have to add some details.
Both the empire and the rebels repeatedly made tactical decisions so stupid a five-year old would know better. The opening battle involved sending unprotected bombers against a ship with anti-bomber defences and keeping the enemy commander talking on the phone to delay his response. That works in a Mel Brooks movie, not in Star Wars.
They killed a fan-favourite character off-screen. What, was the puppet too old to reprise its role?
The empire's main guy decided to chase the rebels down instead of destroying them immediately. For fun, I guess.
Phasma's a badass. Except that she capitulates at the first sign of personal danger.
All Holdo had to say was "yes, there's a plan. Not telling you what because of operational secrecy". Instead she expected Poe to blindly follow orders when he'd already shown he couldn't do that.
"Oh no, the sacred texts!" ...that you attempted to burn a moment ago.
- My favorite bit:
  Leia gives Rey a pendant and tells her that she can use that to track them wherever they go.
  In the SAME SCENE, with NO CUTS, they are tracked by the first order and shout "THAT'S IMPOSSIBLE!"
  You just described, IN THE SAME SCENE, how it is, in fact, possible.
  Bonus: Putting a tracker in the Falcon was how the Death Star found Yavin IV in the very first movie.
- All Holdo had to say was “yes, there’s a plan. Not telling you what because of operational secrecy”. Instead she expected Poe to blindly follow orders when he’d already shown he couldn’t do that.
  Well, he did fine following orders in the first movie, and then they changed the entire character in the second movie but kept the same name. I have no idea why they did that.
- I highly highly recommend this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuuDTnMPMgc
  I think you'll like it a lot. I realized that bathos is what I hated about the Last Jedi. They killed so many truly deep moments to have stupid jokes. They couldn't let anything just be serious. It ruined the tone of the movie, couldn't decide if they wanted to be a comedy or a drama, and so they did neither.
- You expect a movie director only interested in pretty scenes to write a good plot!?
  ... your name must be Kathleen Kennedy...
And yet... it's my favorite post-OT movie. It could've used another draft to tighten a couple things up here and there, but it was good.
Now... TRoS is one of the worst films I've ever seen in my life and is the only Star Wars property I've only seen a single time and never will watch again. Hell I watched Book of Boba Fett twice. Shit, I've watched In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale twice. I'd have to go back to Battlefield Earth to think of an equally terrible film.
But when watching The Last Jedi I feel nothing but joy.
Is this the one with horses in space?? I fuckin hated that. Perfectly encapsulated the overdone-ness of it all
- No, the horses were in Rise of Skywalker.
  The Last Jedi was the one with the "Can you hear me now?" gags, and Luke tossing the lightsaber away.
Rogue One.
- WTF Rogue One is awesome
- You take that back! It spawned andor which is also amazing. Rogue one proves they can actually make a gritty star wars film that shows a broken universe wouldn't be all good vs evil bullshit.
- I tried watching new star wars and they were all so boring. I remember from childhood pod racing and that red guy with double light sabers.
  I now see that people liked star wars for it's story, but for me it was just a cool space fantasy. That nostalgia didn't transfer for me.
  I don't very well remember the plot of the first three of the new movies, but I remember being bored, they felt slow and there were no hooks to make me care. After watching the third movie I just said fuck it and gave up.
  I might try and watch the old movies as a grown up, but at this point I'd rather rewatch Shrek after work then gamble on a franchise I probably won't like.
thats the 2nd best star wars movie
- I've given my reasons, how about you give yours?
I see why they made it but really the ip must be toxic because there's no reason they cant make these movies.

'Live action' remakes of animated classics, or any remake of an already good film.

Remake the ones that had potential. but failed in the execution.

All those Disney live action remakes are sooo bad. People just don't have the expressiveness of cartoon characters. The Lion King was the worst. The characters were animated and still wooden
- I think Christopher Robin and maleficent were good. As long as they're telling a new story it's fun to see the old characters. When it's just the exact same plot but a little darker and live action over animation it's so dumb. Our CGI just ain't good enough to justify that.
  They're remaking Moana already, and still a new movie, relative.
- The Cinderella one slapped. But that was the first one, and it was successful because it was made with care and thoughtful intention. Disney has been chasing that sucess ever since
- I hated aladdin, the monkey and parrot were two of the best characters and without the comically over-the-top 'acting' they are completely different characters.
It's how Disney retains the trademark on the product. Like, Snow White, for instance. If the trademark was coming up, they'd rather crap out a bad movie then let the IP go to public domain.
- And the only IP of any note we got out of it is :: checks my notes:: a Winnie the Pooh slasher pic.....
Live action remakes are the end point of capitalism in media. Take something that ~~people liked~~ made money, and do it again with the same formula but a fresh coat of paint. No need to hire writers or spend time making a good story, just use the last one. No risks were ever taken.

Borderlands. How did they spend that much money and none of the decision makers stop and think "nope this is crap"

Still have to see it. I'm in no rush, but since I am a Borderlands fan, I have to know.
- It’s really bad. Like, nearly unwatchable.

Battleship. It's just such a bizarre license for a movie, and certainly one nobody ever asked for. (Well, outside Hasbro execs clearly desperate for another Transformers-level hit.)

Oddly watchable in a big dumb fun kind of way, at least. And hey, it has Jesse Plemons not playing a total sociopath, so that's neat.

I'm still waiting for the film adaptation of Checkers.
- Like the Queens Gambit but checkers would be hilarious
All I need to know is, does anyone say, "You sank my battleship!"?
- Yes, they work in the line "they're not gonna sink this battleship!". When you're committed to this absurd premise, you pretty much have to say it.
It's shit but also entertaining. I kinda wanna watch that one again.
- I like it. It's like junk food, you know it's bad, but it's still nice when you get the craving for something bad.
Yeah I’m not even sure why I watched it, it looks so bad. But it’s entertaining as heck, and well worth watching again
Ikr‽ That like Mike movie really painted him into a corner at an early age. His career still hasn't escaped the type casting....

Cats

What, you didn't like the butthole cut?
- I'd rather have my butthole cut
The moment they announced Cats I knew it wasn't going to work.
First, the story sucks. A bunch of cats prancing around and learning not to be a dick to that one cat.
Second, Cats is a spectacle. The reason you go see Cats in a theater is for the spectacle. Everyone is dressed up and dancing around. It's meant to be an experience. You can't translate that to film.
I support the idea of making a cats movie. Just not like that. Should have been more costumes then cgi. Youre audience is furrys... so do furrys..
- Just watch the Andrew Lloyd Webber theather version. It's by far the best.

Avatar.

You mean, "Dances with Smurfs"?
- It's clearly ripping off Pocahontas, not Dances With Wolves.
Avatar at least had the excuse of existing to push 3D and mo-cap technology.
Not sure about Avatars 2-5...
- There's five of them???
- Yeah, I watched it in a 3d cinema at the time and it was a great experience. Not the pocahontas story, but the cinematics. Avatar 2 was just shit. It's like they're pretending to be a real scifi franchise by building an entire world.
- Same thing for the sequels. Here's an article about it. Maybe it's the passage of time, but I'd say 2 is much more visually stunning than 1
Alien pocahontas
- Smurfgully
- Incredible summary. 10/10.
At first I thought you meant the first Airbender movie. Which also fits the criteria here.
This but nickelodeons avatar live action remakes.
I know it's just rehash Pocahontas but I enjoyed it. Suspend all that crap for a second and just enjoyed it
I love the first movie, everything after is just more of the same. It feels uninspired.

The Minecraft Movie

It _could _ have been great. But it ended up - like the Mario movie - being a formulaic piece of drek.
- I'm curious why you watched it

The Emoji Movie

Yes. You look at the title of the movie and you go, nope.
You just know there's some producer out there who is salivating over minion merch.
- It honestly was fine for a kids movie. The story was so generic that it was impossible to mess up and would work with any character/setting.
  I was disappointed with how boring it was. They should’ve leaned way more into the emoji aspect.

A lot of the Movies Sony makes now. Morbius, Kraven, etc.

I'd like to add Uncharted to that, please.
How dare you slight the cohesion and vision of the Whatever Sony Has The Rights To Cinematic Universe?
- FWIW I much prefer Sony's Spider-Man over Disney's.
I was playing Spider-Man 2, where Kraven is a major character, when this movie came out and I wasn't even aware of it. It is also now available on Netflix.
- i first heard of kraven from the game, spiderman instead of the movie, i think the GAME cutscenes are better than the movie.
Those are big budget? I thought they were great low budget movies

Every Jurassic Park movie after the 2nd one.

JP3, yes. I liked the original Jurassic World, but they're getting a bit tiresome now. It's clear it's a money grab.

Ohh i forgot another one of my favorite. Ghost in the Shell live action. I love that movie because of Scarlett Johansson, but if you watch the original anime, everything just feels better, and the live action is simply unnecessary.

Waterworld. At the time the most expensive movie ever made and the most spectacular flop of all time.

But I like Waterworld.
I "think" John Carter beat it, but yeah.
- John Carter suffered from an awful title.
  "Princess of Mars," would have resonated better with marketing. And is actually one of the book titles.
- Neither of those movies were really all that terrible. I enjoyed John Carter. But clearly they didn't connect with audiences.
- I must be on my own. I know John Carter flopped phenomenally, but I really liked it. Thought it was a great movie. Was very annoyed when I found out that there may never be a 2nd. Even if there was, at this stage it is very unlikely to be the same cast. IIRC, a lot of the blame was on Disney marketing. But IDK about these things.
- I did some digging and apparently Waterworld somehow broke even. I remember a lot of the hype around the film at the time was wanting to see if it was really as bad as people said it was.
You fucking take that back right now...

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

At least it was better than Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
- Did we watch the same movie? I marathoned all the films and Dial of Destiny is dire. To be honest, only the first film is truly great. I'd probably rank them 1, 3, 4, 2, 5.
- Is it worth watching though?
  I couldn't sit through Grandpa Pants and his Crystal Skull.
lmao
- That's literally why it was my choice. It's one of the biggest budget films ever... and also one of the biggest flops ever.
If they had cut about 45 minutes of useless chase scenes, it would have been great. There was just so much untrimmed fat on that film.

There's a distinction to point out between "absolutely no business getting made" vs "the final product turned out to be shit". I can't really think of anything that belongs to the former... I haven't actually seen most of the films mentioned here so far, except the SW sequels... which turned out to be shit, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't have made SW sequels at all: they just shouldn't have made them shit.

I was more curious about the former but got a lot more of the latter. Unfortunately, it would be difficult to phrase the question to get only the desired result. Oh well.
- If you want the former, I'll say Arcane. They poured money into that and it shows. They will never be able to count money made by that, though it was great word of mouth and I'm sure increased sales. But they spent like a half-billion dollars on that with no hope of any return. But damn that was a hell of a series.
Makes me think of the Warcraft movie. Warcraft actually has some good lore to get into, it could totally be made into a good movie. Of course they botched it though.
- I weirdly don't hate the warcraft movie. It sucks in some ways but it does a good job feeling like it's in the warcraft universe.

not sure if it was "big budget" but Madame Web.

It was, essentially, a Spider-Man prequel that simply didn't need to happen story wise. It introduced a bunch of characters from the comics that do indeed have Spider-Man like powers but in the film they simply "suggest" it. You had a villain whose entire purpose for doing what he did was he had a dream where said "spider people" killed him. You had Uncle Ben shoed in to simply say to the audience 'hey, HEY ASSHOLE! look...It's a Spider Man Prequel!" and THAT was the ONLY connection to Peter Parker.

It's like having a Star Wars Prequel where Uncle Owen is in it and he's hanging out with a bunch of people who could potentially be Padawans but we're not sure and they're being hunted cause some random Sith had a dream that sure, they could potentially be Jedi one day. Now none of them actually are but they COULD be one day, just not in this movie.

I know your Star Wars comparison was to reinforce your point, but that does sound like a plausible plot for a legit Star Wars movie that I'd watch.

Pearl Harbor. 5 minutes of cool CGI, rest of it being absolutely forgettable.

Id rather watch earl arbor. Its about a guy named earl who is also a tree.
- To be fair that could be a wild movie
It was so bad that Team America World Police had a song about how bad it was as their ballad.
I was in the Navy and my ship visited Pearl Harbor in the 90s. We gave honors to the ship monuments and it was a great honor to be apart of that. It was a memory I really cherish.
When the bad reviews started coming out almost immediately, I knew I could never watch that movie and hold my personal memories in the same regard.
so I have never seen it and will walk out of the room if someone insists on watching it around me.
- Take Titanic, where the movie is a romance that happens to be set in a historical event.
  Now imagine that instead of a director who really loves the ocean, it's a director who really loves blowing shit up. That's Pearl Harbor, and you would be correct for avoiding it with violence if necessary.
- You're not missing much. I saw it around the time it came out and will not watch it again. There are just too many things that are a better use of my time, like shampooing the family dog or taking a nap.
What's the CGI? The attack scene itself is way longer than that

Morbius

…But then we would have seen the main character morb all over everyone!

Dragonball

I bought it on DVD just because I didnt want to scare investors away from every trying the IP again...

I dunno what counts as big budget, but 30 Minutes or Less was seen as tasteless in how it was based on a real-life serious event that had occurred.

On a false advertising note, the movie's run time is 1 hour, 23 minutes. Bullshit.

That happened where I grew up, and the details are so fucking bonkers.
I've seen the video of that dude getting blown up. Pretty crazy

Gods of Egypt is tone deaf CGI bloated slop and I fucking love it. Just a fun movie for me.

I know it's utter garbage to most, not even fun bad. I'm just a total sucker for fantasy derived from Egyptian gods/lore no matter how cheesy.

$140 million budget and just barely made it back at $150.6 million.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

All of them.

Hot take! We've got a hot take over here!
Yeah, but which
- Hollywood hasn't produced anything original in 10 years or so. Everything has been reboots or adaptations from books.

marvel

they're really cashing in on the MCU, that much is true.

Mortal Engines

It seemed like a prime IP to get its time on the big screen, being that it's got a lot to build off of. But the sheer number of characters that were introduced throughout the movie and the 'all of this and more awaits,' really had me overwhelmed with having any continued interest in the "main characters" as the movie entered its third act. There were more issues, but that was the one that really sealed its fate imo.

Im pretty sure I watched this movie but I cant remember how it went
I wouldn't say it was great

The SW Sequels. I admit that I didn't hate TFA, but the other two were very very very shit.

The prequels as well.
- I would disagree. The prequels told a story that deserved to be told and was mostly internally consistent. The tone was different from the original trilogy, but they are still decent, if flawed, works.
  The sequels are fanboy level writing.

Perhaps, Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star. I have a weird relationship with this movie. I know it's shit but I can't help but be fascinated by it. It's a fun movie to make your friends and family watch with you so you can watch their reaction. I wouldn't even say it's so bad it's good. It's bad but entertaining at the same time. I watch it and think "how the fuck did this get made?"

I'm not sure how big the budgets were 20ish years ago, but these 2 for me:

the Royal Tenenbaums
Sideways

Both are very well reviewed by the public/reviewers and I cannot fathom why.

I personally love the royal tenebaums but the first watch i was like you. Wes Anderson is weird. Its like first you need permission to like it because its so different but once youre granted that permission, and can suspend disbelief, the world opens up to you.
- He's like blue cheese, not for everyone and still an acquired taste.
- I like Royal Tenebaum too. That intricate relationship between family members is so good to watch

Americans are not a monolith, and the fact you act as such says a lot more about you than you'd ever care to admit.
I dont think black people existed in the 50s. At least according to maga
I'd pay good money to see an animated adaptation of Truth in the Kyle Baker art style...
Try bothering to name a movie. And then I'll still downvote you ʘ‿ʘ

Cowboys and aliens.

Man pitched this fever dream of an idea in 97, was laughed out of the room.

Folks only agreed with the same guy to make it in 2006 after seeing it was based on a best selling comic book.

That comic book was written by the person who initially pitched the idea in 97. He practically paid comic book stores to carry and give away the comic book so it'd be a "best seller".

Movie execs got hoodwinked lol

I can't find it now but I remember finding it pretty funny at the time when Uwe Boll said Leatherheads was a completely unnecessary movie. He's right, but he also made the Postal movie.

Postal is probably his best work and he'll fight you if you say differently.

All MCU films after Endgame, also all Ant-Man films.

Cats (2019)

Directed by Tom Hooper, a guy who doesn't know shit about cinematography but somehow had two previous films gain critical ablation despite this.
Released years, even decades after the West End and Broadway shows had been discontinued.
Relied heavily on a star-studded cast featuring Ian McKellen, Rebel Wilson, James Corden, Idris Elba, Judi Dench, Jason Derulo and Taylor Swift.
Horrifically bad CGI which costed an absolute tonne to produce because Hooper was an arrogant arsehole and didn't listen to the people on his crew who actually handled special effects for a living.
Most of the songs are significant downgrades compared to the original stage show, i.e. musical vs film version of Magical Mr Mistoffelees.

the tv series of skylanders