10 Movies Everyone Wanted To Hate Before They Even Came Out

Okay first things first, Kevin Costner’s infamous flop is not as bad as people make it out to be. That said, it would be difficult for any film to be.

Wildly expensive and needlessly long, Waterworld is notable for being a flop which didn’t actually cost its studio—despite what the critical consensus would have you presume, the film not only broke even but actually made a profit at the box office. So why is the post-apocalyptic poor man’s Mad Max considered so infamously awful?

Well, it didn’t help that, for a cheap rip-off, the project was a pretty damn expensive and ambitious flick. The film’s troubled production went so far over budget that they managed to inject 35 million dollars into the economy of Hawaii, eventually resulting in a flick which cost over 175 million. Combine this rapidly growing price tag with the growing self-importance of star/ producer Costner and it becomes easy to see why critics wanted the film to be a disappointment, given what a spectacular ego check it would be for Costner.

The eventual release was critically mauled and satirized in the Simpsons classic X-Files crossover The Springfield Files as a frustrated Milhouse paid a huge price for a few seconds of gameplay of its (fortunately fictional) arcade tie-in.