10 Reasons The Dark Tower Bombed

2. Critics Absolutely Savaged It

It never helps its box office prospects when any movie gets a critical battering, and The Dark Tower ended up one of the worst-reviewed blockbusters this summer, scoring the same percentage approval as Tom Cruise's widely-derided The Mummy, and a slightly lower average rating. It even scored lower than Baywatch. Ouch.

Though studios are getting increasingly cagey about protecting their dubious movies by screening them last-minute or gagging the press with late embargoes, reviews for the film were nevertheless available before release day, largely destroying any last-minute hope fans and casuals alike had that the movie might be a pleasant surprise.

While bad reviews won't sink all types of films (kids' movies and the Transformers franchise, for instance), when it comes to a project that already left most people on the fence, the vocal pannings really just delivered the killing blow.