Copium is one hell of a drug.
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00:00Most moviegoers don't go out of their way to watch terrible movies, do they?
00:04But at the same time, they'll usually freely admit when they've accidentally ended up watching a bit of a dud.
00:09And yet sometimes, the collective audience denial is overpowering enough
00:14that viewers en masse will only actually fully admit that a movie was trash a good while later.
00:20For a ton of different and often quite understandable reasons,
00:24audiences just didn't want to face up to the fact that the following ten movies weren't merely disappointing,
00:29they utterly sucked.
00:31So I'm Gareth, this is WhatCulture, and here are ten movies nobody wants to admit suck.
00:36Number ten, The Matrix Resurrections.
00:38Just about every fan of the Matrix franchise desperately wanted to love the belated fourth entry, didn't they?
00:45Even if most knew deep down that it surely wouldn't be a patch on that statuesque original.
00:50As it turned out though, The Matrix Resurrections couldn't even hold a candle to the just pretty good sequel
00:55or even the wildly divisive third.
00:58With Lana Wachowski turning in one of cinema's all-time great instances of a creative firebombing their own IP
01:04with seemingly intentional abandon.
01:06Though the sequel's meta flourishes begin promisingly enough,
01:10this is ultimately self-aware to a fault because the film spends way too long hand-wringing over its own pointlessness
01:16than, well, just getting to the point.
01:18Beyond that, the story is just abject nonsense.
01:21And most disappointingly, the visuals are shockingly lackluster for a Matrix film,
01:25with specifically the fight scenes just being a bit forgettable and bland.
01:29The magic just wasn't there this time, sadly.
01:32And while an initial viewing of The Matrix Resurrections was bewildering enough that fans just needed a minute there to process it,
01:38a few years after the fact, it's much easier to admit now that the film was just a bit naff.
01:43Number nine, Clerks 3.
01:45Not unlike the fourth Matrix, the third Clerks movie was such a long-gestating affair
01:49that many fans were willing to overlook some serious issues because the film had just actually got made.
01:54They were like, yeah, it's here, finally.
01:56Kevin Smith's apparently final entry into the slacker comedy series coasted hard on dew-eyed nostalgia for the prior films.
02:03But once it was all said and done, the end result was a profoundly empty and oddly depressing experience.
02:09For starters, the film is bookended by two wildly divisive and questionable character deaths,
02:14clearly motivated by Smith's own near-fatal heart attack in 2018,
02:18and yet casting a hugely dark cloud over a threequel that was in desperate need of a few laughs, really.
02:24Elsewhere, the film's relentless shilling of NFTs has already aged pretty badly since the film released,
02:29and it's only going to get worse and worse as time goes by, isn't it?
02:32And while Clerks 3 will probably wring a few tears for those who are dedicated fans of the series and the franchise and all that good stuff,
02:38that still doesn't necessarily make it a great movie.
02:41As wonderfully off-the-cuff as the first two movies were,
02:44this one just feels like a bit of a forced victory lap that gets a bit too serious for its own good,
02:49a reality many fans are still struggling to accept in lieu of its rather shocking ending.
02:53Number 8, Blue Beetle
02:55Now, to be completely fair to Blue Beetle, it's far from the worst film that's ever popped up in the DCEU,
03:01but let's be honest, with that statement, we're quite comfortably setting the bar all the way down in hell.
03:06By far the most interesting thing about Blue Beetle is the fact it's the first major superhero live-action movie with a Latino lead,
03:13because outside its laudable representation, it's pretty much just another generic paint-by-numbers superhero cake flick.
03:20To put it simply, it doesn't really bring anything new to the table, does it?
03:23The plot, characters, and dialogue all feel largely boilerplate.
03:27Susan Sarandon gives such a snoozy performance as the lame duck villain that she was lucky to avoid a Razzie,
03:32and it's directed with little flair beyond being basically functional.
03:36In many respects, the Blue Beetle was the little superhero movie that could in 2023,
03:41a scrappier, lower-budget superhero movie that people actually wanted to be good.
03:45Yet in retrospect, it's painfully obvious now why Warner Bros. were initially considering sending this one straight onto streaming.
03:51Number 7, Warcraft.
03:53Of all the epic video game franchises to adapt into a movie,
03:57Warcraft certainly seemed like one that was absolutely overflowing with potential,
04:01because it was such a deep world, and it had so many fans, it was so popular.
04:05But once you get over the undeniably impressive CGI and visual effects that are seen going down within this movie,
04:10within like the first 10 minutes, the mask slips a bit,
04:13and Warcraft just reveals itself to be yet another soulless, mega-budgeted flick that's just trying its best to be the next Lord of the Rings.
04:20Much as many fans might swear that Warcraft wasn't really that bad,
04:24no, no, no, no, Warcraft was actually that bad.
04:27Beyond its yawn-inducingly formulaic plot, Warcraft is packed full of tiresome expository dialogue.
04:33The practical sets also look a little bit cheap, don't they?
04:36And the film somehow managed to coax a bad performance out of Ben Foster.
04:40I mean, I don't even know how you do that, that's crazy.
04:43Warcraft was so intent on laying the track for a new franchise that it forgot to make a single interesting movie first.
04:49And while many continue to bang their drum for this Warcraft adventure,
04:53the fact that it underperformed at the box office suggests that even few among the die-hard fandom truly vibed with it.
04:59Number six, Lightyear.
05:00Even with the lower batting average in recent years, Pixar is still one of the greatest animation studios of all time, isn't it?
05:07And it's never fun to come to terms with the fact that they've released yet another bad movie that isn't Cars 2.
05:12And on paper, it genuinely felt like Lightyear just couldn't miss.
05:16A Toy Story spin-off that primed to serve as a campy throwback to classic sci-fi adventures like Flash Gordon.
05:22Except that wasn't really the movie that Pixar decided to make.
05:25Given that Lightyear is supposed to be the very movie that Andy watched all the way back in 1995
05:30and inspired him to buy that toy or at least ask for that toy as a present,
05:34it's bizarre that it's relatively serious and not really that much fun and a bit boring at times.
05:40It's simply tough to come away from this movie and appreciate why Andy or any other kid for that matter would have ever fallen in love with it.
05:46Not even Pixar's signature visual flair can save this Lightyear.
05:50It's a bafflingly pedestrian adjunct to the studio's flagship franchise and one that's made infinitely worse by that divisive twist.
05:58Number five, Rustin.
05:59Blockbusters and franchise movies are one thing, but what about well-intended Oscars bait that also just misses the mark a little bit?
06:06In the current award cycle, there's no bigger example of that than Rustin.
06:10This is a biopic of civil rights activist, Bynard Rustin.
06:14And were it not for Coleman Domingo's Oscar-nominated performance in the lead role,
06:18which, while decent, is a little bit restricted by the bland script,
06:21this particular film probably would have been forgotten instantly.
06:24Rustin is a quintessential Wikipedia page biopic.
06:28A by-the-numbers, checklist-ticking exercise that's painfully lacking in soul or personality,
06:33no matter how well Domingo does in the lead role.
06:36The script is an expository barrage of information, yet doesn't really outline who Rustin was as a human being.
06:42And even its depiction of the 1963 march on Washington feels weirdly small and low-key.
06:47Though that was presumably hampered by a low-ish budget.
06:50Given that the film is spotlighting an important story centred around an underrepresented figure in history,
06:56nobody really wants to admit that it's bad.
06:58But once Oscar season passes, it'll be a lot easier to admit that, Domingo aside, Rustin was pretty lousy, to be honest.
07:04Number 4, IT Chapter 2
07:06The first chapter of Andy Muschietti's adaptation of Stephen King's classic horror tome, IT, was such a pleasant surprise,
07:13fans approached the sequel with fair confidence that Muschietti would once again knock it out the park.
07:17Because why wouldn't he?
07:18With a note-perfect cast playing the older versions of the Loser Club,
07:22including Jessica Chastain, James McAvoy, Bill Hader, and James Ransom.
07:27It seemed like all the necessary ingredients were there for Muschietti to just finish off this story in a great way.
07:33But IT Chapter 2 actually feels less a satisfying conclusion to this overall story,
07:38more a vocal warning about the dangers of letting a successful filmmaker run amok.
07:42With a budget almost double that of IT Chapter 1,
07:45this sequel was a 169-minute bloated mishmash of CGI-driven set pieces.
07:52And most of those set pieces just largely felt like warmed-over rehashes of what worked so well in the first film.
07:58Sure, the cast commits gamely to the material, but the film's tedious fetch-quest plot does them no favours at all.
08:04Chapter 1 was such a mesmerising adaptation that nobody really wanted to admit that Muschietti had fumbled the ball with the second half.
08:11Even though he categorically did, sadly.
08:15Though Ready Player One received broadly positive reviews when it released all those years ago,
08:20it's also a film whose shine wore off incredibly quickly too.
08:23As not even Steven Spielberg's directorial ingenuity could disguise its overpowering hollowness for too long.
08:30Some might dub it a high-calorie, switch-your-brain-off kind of movie.
08:33But its core is so empty and emblematic of Hollywood's worst current instincts,
08:38it's pretty tough to just accept this as dumb fun.
08:41A garish crash of pop-culture references may very much be the point of Ernest Cline's source novel,
08:46but does it a good movie or even a good story make?
08:50Certainly not, and for all the crap that clearly went into making it, Ready Player One's a resoundingly barren endeavour.
08:56One that evacuates itself from your mind very quickly and doesn't give you much of a reason to go back and revisit it either.
09:01It isn't easy to face up to the fact that Spielberg, of all people, made a movie that was so devoid of soul, but here we are.
09:11The fact so many people begin their assessment of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny by calling it, well, better than the last one, says it all, really.
09:19Every card-carrying indie fan, myself included, desperately wanted this James Mangold swan song to give Indiana Jones
09:26the exciting and dignified ride off into the sunset that he deserved.
09:30For the end result was a depressingly anodyne and seriously overlong slog.
09:35So much of the movie is focused on just how miserable Indy's life has become,
09:39a fact only compounded when we learn of the grim fate that befell his son, Mott.
09:43Did many Indiana Jones fans come to see this movie to see a meditation on grief?
09:48I know I didn't.
09:49Making Indy a bereaved, depressed and separated alcoholic didn't exactly lay the groundwork for another rip-roaring adventure, did it?
09:56Yet even the high wire set pieces that were present lacked the weight and intensity of the original trilogy.
10:02Were it not for Ford's game presence and a pretty nutty third act twist,
10:06it'd be pretty tough to rank this one that much higher than Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
10:10As it stands, it settles for decisive fourth place in the franchise.
10:14And when it comes to revisiting the series, are any fans honestly really gonna bother with any movie that's not a part of the original trilogy?
10:20The Dime of Destiny may have left Indy in a rather good place, but didn't the franchise already do that like 30 years ago?
10:26Yes, yes it did, Junior.
10:28Number one, World War Z.
10:30There's an almost impressive denial that Mark Foster's adaptation of World War Z isn't a bad movie.
10:35As if it's infamously troubled shoot indicated such an atrocious end product that it being merely bad in the end was a bit of a solid outcome?
10:43Brilliant though Max Brooks' source novel actually is.
10:46This adaptation in name only takes the book's branding to sell a shambolically by-the-numbers zombie actioner.
10:52One that's filled with inane dialogue and limply directed PG-13 violence.
10:57It certainly sounds like Paramount were cooking up a decidedly more daring film at one point,
11:01before they decided to scrap the entire third act and replace it with the safer slot that we got in the end.
11:06But all the same, this is maddeningly dull for a 200 million dollar blockbuster about Brad Pitt fighting the undead.
11:13That a sequel still hasn't materialized despite the fact that this movie somehow managed to gross 540 million dollars worldwide,
11:20perhaps speaks to how utterly beige and forgettable World War Z actually was from start to finish.
11:25Much as fans of the book above all others don't want to admit it.
11:29But whatever brings them joy I guess.
11:31Bye bye!