10 Movies From 2017 That Deserve Razzie Awards (But Weren't Nominated)

They make The Mummy look good.

Josh Trank Fantastic Four
Fox

Dedicated to recognising the worst in film, The Golden Raspberry Awards began on Tuesday, March 31, 1981 – the same night as the 53rd Annual Academy Awards.

Founder John Wilson and co don’t make movies, they just make fun of those who do and you have to question their logic on occasion. It’s hard to believe now, but Danny De Vito was up for Worst Supporting Actor for Batman Returns while The Blair Witch Project was a Worst Picture nominee in a year that included Wild Wild West and The Phantom Menace.

Then again, they have a proven track record when it comes to singling out the tat they thought would amuse future generations. Long before they handed out gongs to Fifty Shades Of Grey and Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2, the Razzies recognized the potential of Donald Trump, who won Worst Supporting Actor in 1990 for Ghosts Can’t Do It.

The 2018 Razzie nominations have so far proved typically divisive, though it’s hard to imagine anyone wanting to defend this year’s Worst Picture nominees, which include Baywatch, The Emoji Movie, Fifty Shades Darker, The Mummy and Transformers 5.

For ten movies that missed out, step right this way.

10. Ghost In The Shell

Josh Trank Fantastic Four
Paramount Pictures

Accusations of whitewashing aside, if you watch the Ghost In The Shell trailer with the sound muted, it doesn’t exactly look like the cutting edge sci-fi actioner it thinks it is. It’s a bit Blade Runner and a bit The Matrix and a lot like how you imagined a big bucks Americanization of the source material might look.

Astounding, it is not. Factor in that the director’s last film was Snow White And The Huntsman and you have two perfectly good reasons to nominate the movie for Worst Picture.

The fact that the lead characters are played by Caucasians while the supporting cast is made up of Asian actors puts the movie on the same level as the live-action versions of Fist Of The North Star and Crying Freeman, both from 1995. Ghost In The Shell’s Takeshi Kitano was also in Johnny Mnemonic, another futuristic flop from 1995, so the future clearly isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

Contributor

Ian Watson is the author of 'Midnight Movie Madness', a 600+ page guide to "bad" movies from 'Reefer Madness' to 'Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead.'