4. Pacific Rim
Did It Succeed?: $344.2 million (boosted significantly by its appeal in Japan), and 72% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Why It's Disappointing: Expectations were unsurprisingly high for Guillermo del Toro's latest foray behind the camera, and for many, the film represented a rare Hollywood quantity; an original IP furnished with a colossal budget. del Toro's $190 million monster movie tracked poorly in the weeks ahead of its release, with many fearing that it would be another calamitous box office bomb in a summer that's absolutely chock full of them. Though its box office gross is hardly impressive, the film itself proved somewhat transfixing. It largely delivers on its promises of Jaeger vs. Kaiju mayhem, but any instance in which it defers to a remotely human element, it pretty much falls apart. Despite a few creaky performances, the real villain here is the script, which embraces its own goofiness - apparently intentionally so - but also tries to emotionally engage us with these one-dimensional characters. Del Toro is keen to pursue a sequel, but unless the international grosses push it over the $400 million mark, it's extremely unlikely.