13 Awesome 2016 Movies Everyone Thought Would Suck

The consensus seems to be that 2016 has been a wildly inconsistent year on the whole for movies, especially after a disappointing summer that saw a number of widely-anticipated tentpoles fall far below expectations.

That said, it hasn't been all bad so far: we've had some great movies like Zootopia, Captain America: Civil War and The Jungle Book, and more to the point, we've also had some great movies that pretty much nobody saw coming. These films, due to the dubious talent attached, poor marketing or unsavoury premise, invited little but low expectations, yet in turn delivered far above what just about anyone hoped for.

From horror sequels nobody thought they wanted through to bizarre Sundance indies and big-screen TV adaptations, these films had all the hallmarks of absolute disasters, and yet, they categorically proved that people shouldn't always judge a movie without seeing it first.

Here are 13 awesome 2016 movies everyone thought would suck...

Why It Should've Sucked: Michael Bay directing an action movie based on a real-life terrorist attack sounds like its own kind of disaster. After all, when has he ever exercised restraint, tact or taste in his filmography to date?

Why It Was Awesome: 13 Hours proves what kind of movie Bay can make when a good script occasionally (read: very occasionally) slides across his desk. Sure, it brings the expected "America, f*** yeah!" imagery, but impressively Bay keeps politics mostly out of the fray, focusing instead on the humanity of the assault, and his characteristically visually stunning action.

James Badge Dale, John Krasinski and Pablo Schreiber give probably three of the best performances in any of Bay's movies, and though it's a little too long at 144 minutes, it's a brutal, unexpectedly emotional action flick.

Ironically, Bay's best movie in years in fact bombed at the box office. Go figure.