15 Most Disappointing Films Of The Decade (So Far)

7. Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes

Planet Of The Apes as a series has never been afraid of going a little off-point; the original sequel spent half of its runtime dealing with mutants who worshipped a doomsday device; the third sequel gave up post-apocalyptic landscapes for contemporary comedy hijinks; Tim Burton's reboot was more interested in monkey sex than cerebral sci-fi. But there's a difference between doing something else because it's the sevnties and f*ck it, it'll be cool and doing it because you're stalling for time.

That's, sadly, what Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes was doing. The surprisingly good Rise created super-smart simians and sent humanity down a path of virus-induced annihilation, and it looked like its sequel was going to pay that all off. Ha, nope.

20th Century Fox actually were all set to finally show the big fight between man and chimp, but director Matt Reeves convinced them to hold fire and instead look at the building of the ape society into a major threat. It's one of the few times in cinema history when a studio's original idea was ruined by a pretty competent director; Reeves created a realistic post-apocalyptic world that still had many of the remnants of society before the fall, but it was populated by a story of petty infighting.

There's promise in that idea, but the film didn't sell itself as that - the advertising, and even the first half of the movie, was building towards a major species confrontation, but in the final act plays a major switcheroo, leaving the audience with a bit of infighting amongst the apes and the vague promise of more conflict later on.