10 Most Insufferable Movies Since 2000

By Ian Watson /

10. John Carter

disney

As choppily edited and incoherent as a 1980s Indonesian fantasy film, this $250 million epic fail was Disney'€™s attempt to wring a franchise out of the Edgar Rice Burroughs character. With its Avatar-like aliens and expensive action sequences, John Carter must€™'ve looked like a great €œpackage€ to studio executives, but the lack of character motivation and backstory, coupled with an editing style that reduces every shot to three seconds (or less), means the film plays more like a 2 hour long trailer.

Advertisement

There'€™s a shapeshifting alien, a beautiful Martian princess and some hoo-hah about a medallion, but the filmmakers don€™t want to give the viewer any more information than that for fear of slowing the movie down. The resulting picture keeps the audience at arms€™ length throughout, and when the critics proved predictably unkind (USA Today called it €œbloated, dreary and humourless€), the film struggled to a $73 million domestic haul in US cinemas.