A movie will often live or die by its expectations. Some of the best movies are the ones you expected nothing from or viewed by chance. On the flipside of that is the movies you'd been waiting all year to see. The movies you couldn't stop thinking about and checking the internet every day for the smallest bit of news or information. They're the ones that really hurt when it comes to release day. It always feels like you've been sucker punched when you're let down and it's just as true in the movies. It could be your favourite novel being adapted or a sequel to one of your most cherished films, it's soul sapping when a movie that can clearly be great sucks so much in its finished version. Before release, movies can promise so much, with an extensive cast or world-class director, but it's the delivery that counts and so many films that have the promise to be great are terrible.
10. Quantum of Solace
After the sensational Casino Royale, we all believed the Bond franchise had entered a new era. An era that was more character based and darker with more focus on realism and less on fancy gadgets. Bond was relevant again in this post-Bourne world and Marc Forster's follow-up was the most anticipated Bond film for decades. Daniel Craig was on his way to being the best Bond there has ever been and there was hope Forster - known for his dramatic work in films like Finding Neverland and Stranger than Fiction - would further this new darker, tortured Bond. Sadly, we were all wrong. All good Bond film have a great villain and Mads Mikkelson's Le Chiffre in Casino Royale is one of the very best. In Quantum of Solace, Mathieu Almaric's (a fine actor) eco-warrior was less threatening than Jonathan Pryce's Rupert Murdoch impression. The Bond girls are poor - another drastic recession from Casino Royale - as Olga Kurylenko can't act and Gemma Arteton's infinitely more interesting Strawberry Fields is given about three minutes of screen time. Quantum of Solace is essentially a collection of badly directed, incredibly jarring action scenes. Character development and plot are only afterthoughts in Quantum of Solace, and as a result it's arguably the worst Bond film.