10 Characters That Single-Handedly Ruined Recent Movies

Indiana Jones and the goddaughter from hell.

By Robin Baxter /

In any movie, whatever it may be, good characterisation always matters - even if it's a big, bombastic blockbuster. After all, many of Hollywood's biggest franchises first became popular partly thanks to their skill at crafting memorable, fleshed-out characters - the original trilogies of Star Wars and Indiana Jones, as well as the Marvel Cinematic Universe's Infinity Saga, are fantastic examples of this.

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Alternatively, on the other side of the coin, you have many movies which were ruined by getting their characters wrong. In fact, there are plenty of cases where a single character manages to fatally undermine their entire movie all on their own. These following ten movies are all epitomize this, for a variety of different reasons.

Some bungled their heroes or villains, while others contained irritating supporting characters that took the film's story in an ill-judged direction. Regardless, all of these films are particularly frustrating as one can easily imagine a far better movie if you were to take these characters out.

More than anything else, these movies all show how important it is for studio films to get their characters right - getting just one character wrong can spell disaster...

10. Little Rock - Zombieland: Double Tap

In the decade between the Zombieland films, the careers of leads Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson and Emma Stone have gone from strength to strength. All three of them have made many, many brilliant movies and Emma Stone even has an Oscar to her name now.

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For Abigail Breslin, it's a completely different story. She's just as talented as she has always been but she frequently hasn't got the stellar roles she's deserved in recent years. Therefore, many no doubt hoped that the long-delayed Zombieland sequel would give her an opportunity to really show off what she can do.

Unfortunately, things didn't work out like that, since Zombieland: Double Tap fatally mishandled Breslin's character, Little Rock. Not only was the character annoying as hell this time around - she suddenly ditches the three people she's been with for the past decade for no clear reason - but she spends most of the film separated from them in a pointless, chemistry-free romance with a hippie (Avan Jogia).

The parts involving the other three leads are perfectly fine yet the Little Rock subplot drags the whole film down and makes it quite a slog even though it's only 90 minutes long. It would've been so much better had the film just kept the four characters together; their dynamic was the best thing about the original, after all.

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