10 Upcoming Movies You Couldn’t Make Me Watch With A Gun To My Head

Like it or not, John Wick Chapter 2 = Taken 2

Fifty Shades Darker
Universal Pictures

There's absolutely nothing wrong with watching bad films: in a way they actually improve the good ones by proximity. But there's a limit to what anyone can endure, just as there's absolutely no limit to what Hollywood will subject us to in the eternal hunt for money. That's why there's another Smurfs movie coming out. And why Nicolas Cage is still an A-lister.

it's almost like a perverse joke, like they're testing our resolve by peddling out sequels in the hope that the quality comes back around to being good (a la Fast & Furious), or repeatedly releasing the same Happy Maddison movie every year thinking we won't notice they're just cobbled together monsters.

After a year of disappointing blockbusters, lying trailers and so much empty hype I've now got actual movie diabetes, this is where the line is drawn. This is where I make my stand. And i heartily encourage you to take a stand and boycott the worst offenders along with me.

Even for a cinephile who watches hundreds of bad movies a year (sometimes even on purpose), there are some frustrating upcoming releases that already look unwatchable. It's like they're consciously trying to be offensively unappealing...

10. The Wonka Prequel

John Wick 2
Paramount Pictures

The Film

How Wonka got his chocolate factory, convinced the Oompa Loompas to work for him for less than minimum wage and rose to be the world's chief purveyor of childhood obesity and diabetes. Basically, Willie before Charlie.

Why Not Watch It?

Because it's the most unnecessary thing ever: it's another of those prequels that utterly ruins an important part of the mythology of the original. Wonka is supposed to be a mysterious figure driven underground by his competitors - that's the foundation on which his magic is built. Going back and picking that apart is ruinous to his appeal - it makes him too human before the revelation of his vulnerability in the original film.

In other words, it spoils the original in a way that is already unforgivable before you take into account the fact that Gene Wilder has only just died. Nice timing that. One might even say cynical.

Hollywood needs to stop obsessing about anthology movies that present iconic characters as younger versions: it didn't work for Darth Vader, it didn't work for Wolverine... It won't work for Wonka.

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