1. Prometheus (2012)
I know this being number one on a list of disappointing films of all time is going to be controversial but Prometheus is going to go down as one of the most wasted opportunities in the history of film making. After Alien: Resurrection and the awful Alien Vs Predator films, movie fans were crying out for Hollywood to stop degrading the Xenomorph and return it back to its place as one of the most frightening monsters ever conceived for the silver screen. James Cameron who directed Aliens already bowed out of a possible return to the series after AvP was given the go ahead, so only one man was left who could credibly do the job and make Alien special again, the man who was at the helm at the genesis, Ridley Scott. When news broke that he was planning a prequel to Alien, there was not one person who jumped for joy. Everyone thought it would open the door to a new series of Alien films, the franchise would be reborn and herald in a new era in SCI-FI. But there was one problem, Ridley Scott didn't want to make a prequel that involved the Xenomorph, he wanted to make a film that was set the Alien universe but take the story in a different direction. Alarm bells should have rung then. Jon Spaihts was brought in to write the thing and he produced a script that had all the elements you expect in an Alien film i.e Facehuggers and Xenomorphs. But then Demon Lindelof spent a year revising the script and removed all that to ''avoid telling a standard Alien story'' and injected it instead with a healthy dose of bulls**t. What we got was a great looking but badly told and pretentious story about ''where we come from.'' A crew that we didn't care about, a story that made no sense and Nostromo sized plot holes, Lindelof was to blame and he screwed up big time. It's just amazing that no one during Prometheus's development managed to figure out that the script they were working with was a total turkey. But Scott and Lindelof did clash over the film's title as Lindelof recalled on the DVD commentary;
Ridley would constantly bust my balls about calling it Prometheus because he thought it was pretentious and hard to pronounce, I said I agree it is both, but as I am a very pretentious person, I was able to sort of bludgeon him into it, and I think Fox thought it was cool.
So he admits himself, apart from being a poor script writer, he is pretentious as well. And calling the film ''Prometheus'' was probably the least pretentious thing in the script. Ridley Scott returning to the Alien franchise should have been a cinematic event to be celebrated but it will be best remembered for being a huge disappointment. Lucky for us, Lindelof will not be writing the script for the sequel as he announced in an interview;
So I said to 'I really don't think I could start working on this movie until I do this other stuff. And I don't always know when this other stuff is going to be done.' he was like: Well, okay, it's not like I asked you anyways.'
Ridley Scott made the right call by not asking him to write the sequel but unfortunately for us Star Trek fans, Demon Lindelof is very much involved in the script for Into Darkness.