10 Summer Blockbuster Movies That Should Never Have Happened

Dan Brown’s potboiler sold 80 million copies and this hacked out adaptation made $758 million worldwide, so if you’re one of the three people who doesn’t know the story, it involves a treasure hunt where the prize is Audrey Tautou, the last living descendant of Jesus Christ. This secret is of such Earth shattering importance that in order to stop Tom Hanks from discovering it, a shadowy organization hires a monk-turned-hitman who looks like an albino Barney Rubble.

For all the chases, intrigue and supposedly blasphemous revelations there’s very little that’ll stick in your mind. The movie has no use for decent staging or cinematography, and there’s a noticeable lack of chemistry between the leads, but if you remember the film for anything, it’ll be how clunky it all is.

Ian McKellan spins a long story involving The Priory (not, it must be said, the London rehab clinic), Constantine, Jesus and Da Vinci’s The Last Supper, which by the way shows Mary Magdalene sitting next to Christ, thus proving beyond doubt that they were man and wife. This is interrupted when Barney Rubble appears, but even though his targets are Forrest Gump, Gandalf and Amelie, they still overpower him, at which point Hanks says they need to leave. “Well,” McKellan says, “actually, I do have a plane.”