8. Hiring Paul Giamatti...For A Cameo - The Amazing Spider-Man 2
The Scene: Two scenes, in fact. Russian gangster Aleksei Sytsevich (Paul Giamatti) appears in book-ending scenes in The Amazing Spider-Man, at the start as a criminal who is apprehended and embarrassed by Spidey, and again at the end, when he is broken out of prison and given the Rhino robot armour. Just as the two prepare to fight...the movie ends. Why It's Dumb: Oh, how excited we all were when it was announced that an actor of Giamatti's caliber had been cast in a Spider-Man movie. Giamatti has proven in movies like Shoot 'Em Up that he can ham it up with the best of them, so he'd surely bring a little goofy fun to a franchise that, with its gritty new sheen, occasionally threatens to become too serious. Still, he's in the movie for 5 minutes tops, and though we were at least made aware of this ahead of time, it did little to cushion our disappointment. Sure, Giamatti's obviously going to appear in Sinister Six and maybe even The Amazing Spider-Man 3, but teasing us with a world-class talent like that just wasn't fair, especially when the movie's main villain was so terrible.