Science fiction films are a staple of modern Hollywood’s slate of blockbusters, with franchises that feature space-faring adventure, futuristic technology and other-worldly creatures being some of the highest-grossing movies of the last few decades. Science fiction movies also have a long history in Hollywood, dating all the way back to the classic films of Geroge Mellies like A Trip to the Moon.
But many science fiction films do not stand the test of time, or fail to meet the expectations of audiences on release, as evidenced by Roger Ebert’s scathing reviews of many of the films he had to see in that genre. The worst that science fiction movies have to offer throw away the genre’s roots in telling tales about deep themes, replacing human stories with cheap thrills.
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen Was a Bad Direction for the Franchise
Michael Bay frequently incurred the ire of film critics for basically the majority of his career, with many pointing to his maximalist style and MTV music video roots as a step backward for Hollywood blockbuster storytelling. But audiences disagreed, making movies like Bad Boys II and The Rock huge financial successes that fundamentally reshaped the tone and structure of summer blockbusters for the next decade.
Bay’s biggest financial success came with the Transformers franchise, a box office juggernaut that irritated critics as much as it delighted fans, placing CGI-heavy action spectacle at the forefront. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen was one of the worst reviewed of the series, with Roger Ebert saying in his review calling the film “a horrible experience of unbearable length, briefly punctuated by three or four amusing moments.”
Wing Commander Is a Video Game Adaptation Gone Wrong
Adaptations of video game narratives on the big and small screens have typically been disasters, only recently being saved by pieces like HBO’s The Last of Us, Amazon Prime’s Fallout and the Sonic the Hedgehog film franchise that have finally cracked the code. Almost every attempt to turn a video game into a movie has been a huge failure, and Wing Commander is no exception.
The film, an adaptation of a series of computer games about a far future humanity engaging in space wars with an alien race, stars Matthew Lillard and Freddie Prinze Jr. in the second of what would be many on-screen collaborations, but angered fans of the games by diverging too far from their world-building and plot. Ebert was also unimpressed, citing the film’s “submoronic script and special effects that look like a video game writ large.”
Death Race Is a Bad Remake
Paul W. S. Anderson is another director who comes under the fire of critics frequently, with his silly and nonsensical films like Mortal Kombat, Pompeii and the Resident Evil film franchise being subject to critical scrutiny for decades. One of Anderson’s more hated films, at least by Roger Ebert, was his attempt to loosely remake a classic B-movie of the 1970s.
Death Race, which acts as both a kind of remake and prequel to the Paul Bartel movie Death Race 2000, takes place in a Hunger Games-like dystopian future, where criminals are forced to perform in deadly street races for entertainment. Ebert was not happy with the results of the film, saying in his review that “Walking out, I had the impression I had just seen the video game and was still waiting for the movie.”
Doom Is a Bad Attempt at Putting a Classic Video Game On-Screen
One of the pioneers of the now dominant first-person shooter video game subgenre, Doom is an iconic piece of gaming history that continues to stand the test of time. The game franchise has spawned many iterations and reinterpretations, with the newest entries in the genre being considered some of the best single-player shooter games of the last decade.
Andrzej Bartkowiak’s attempt to capture the world of Doom in a movie, which takes place in a world where a group of future marines encounters demonic monsters during a rescue mission on the moon, was a huge critical and commercial flop. Roger Ebert did not like the film, saying that the latter portion of the movie especially “abandons all attempts at character and dialogue and uncannily resembles a video game.”
Resident Evil: Apocalypse Is Another Bad Entry in a Bad Franchise
One of the longest-running video game adaptation franchises ever, the Resident Evil series has continued to, inexplicably, generate revenue at the box office. Based on the classic survival horror video game franchise of the same name, the series follows a group of heroes and police officers as they attempt to stop various zombie outbreaks.
Resident Evil: Apocalypse, the second film in the franchise and the directorial debut of Alexander Witt, follows a group of heroic characters as they attempt to stop the evil Umbrella Corporation from removing all traces of their involvement with the disease that caused the zombie outbreak in the first place. Ebert despised the film, saying in his review that the movie is “without interest, wit, imagination or even entertaining violence and special effects.”
Transformers: Dark of the Moon Is the Worst Film in the Franchise (That Ebert Reviewed)
Intended to be the last movie in a trilogy of Michael Bay-helmed Transformers movies, Transformers: Dark of the Moon continued the tradition of the franchise throughout the late-2000s and early-2010s. The film was a massive success at the box office, earning $1.124 billion at the worldwide box office and continuing the dominance of the series as a summer blockbuster.
Transformers: Dark of the Moon is the third movie in the Transformers franchise and the last film to follow Shia LaBeouf’s obnoxious leading character Sam Witwicky, who is forced to once again help the heroic Autobots defeat the nefarious Decepticons, who are trying to activate ancient technology on the moon. Ebert hated the movie, saying that, “The series exists to show gigantic and hideous robots hammering one another. So it does.”
Dune Was a Failed Attempt at Adapting an Important Novel
With both the recent passing of legendary director David Lynch and the hugely successful Denis Villnueve-led adaptations just coming off of several Academy Award nominations, it can be hard to remember that the original attempt to adapt Frank Herbert’s classic novel Dune was such a colossal failure. The film, starring Kyle MacLachlan as Paul Atreides, has been positively reappraised in recent years, especially due to its incredible special effects and gorgeous set design.
The movie, which attempts to summarize the entire tale of young Paul Atreides’ growth from the eager son of an intergalactic lord into a tragic figure of religious and magical power, failed to meet audience expectations at the time of its release. Roger Ebert was among the many who were deeply underwhelmed by the movie, saying in his review that the movie “looks like a project that was seriously out of control from the start.”
Jason X Severely Jumped the Shark
Horror movie franchises are notorious for getting increasingly ridiculous, straying further from what made the original work affecting and successful by upping the ante with each new iteration. Perhaps the most infamous example of this trend came with the Friday the 13th franchise, which strayed incredibly far from the first film into completely ludicrous waters.
Perhaps the worst and most ridiculous film in the Friday the 13th franchise was Jason X, the tenth movie in the franchise which merges horror and science fiction tropes by telling the story of a chronologically frozen Jason Voorhees waking up on a spaceship deep into the future. The movie was panned, especially by Ebert, who said in his review, “This sucks on so many levels. — dialogue from Jason X. Rare for a movie to so frankly describe itself.”
Rollerball Got its Director Thrown in Jail
John McTiernan is one of the most fascinating directors of the 1980s and 1990s, crafting some of the best action movies of all time with Die Hard, Predator and The Hunt for Red October. But his fall from grace is equally legendary, with the latter half of his career featuring a movie so cursed that issues with its production eventually landed McTiernan in federal prison for a year.
Rollerball, a remake of the Norman Jewison film of the same name, takes place in a near future dystopia where a dangerous, more violent version of roller derby is a popular sport around the world. The film was certainly not worth McTiernan’s criminal activity, panned by critics like Roger Ebert for being “an incoherent mess, a jumble of footage in search of plot, meaning, rhythm and sense.”
Battlefield Earth Is a Confusing Mess
Based on a novel written by L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of the church of Scientology, Battlefield Earth is undeniably one of the worst and most confusing science fiction films of all time. Considered by many to act more as a piece of propaganda to promote Scientology than a functional piece of fiction, the movie was awarded the Worst Picture of the Decade prize by the Golden Raspberries in 2010.
The movie takes place nearly 1,000 years in the future, where an alien species rules over Earth with an iron fist and a group of rebel humans must try and wrest control of the planet back. Ebert despised the movie, stating in his scathing review that “Battlefield Earth is like taking a bus trip with someone who has needed a bath for a long time. It’s not merely bad; it’s unpleasant in a hostile way.”
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