The most disappointing films of 2023
From lackluster blockbusters to overly ambitious flops, these are the films that really let us down this year
Film Features Jason Sudeikis
Left to right: Doona Bae in Rebel Moon (courtesy Warner Bros.), Ezra Miller in The Flash (courtesy Warner Bros.), Jamie Lee Curtis in Haunted Mansion (Disney) Graphic: The A.V. Club
Every year brings its share of ups and downs, and 2023 was no different. We get our hopes up for a few promising films, and invariably some of them let us down. Will we ever learn? Probably not. We’re optimists, and opinions can be subjective. So when we start hearing good things about the final cut of a troubled production like The Flash, we tend to throw logic out and hope for the best.
You’ll notice that this list doesn’t include some of the worst films of the year (looking at you, Winnie The Pooh: Blood And Honey), just the ones that didn’t measure up to our expectations. The higher the hopes, the bigger the disappointments. That said, read on for the complete list, in alphabetical order.
108 Comments
Mustn’t one have expectations in order to be disappointed?
Exactly. Movies like The Flash and Rebel Moon aren’t disappointments because nobody actually expected them to be any good.
ehhhhh, I think even by “generic super hero movies” flash really disappoints.
Maybe we’re all just disappointed that they even exist?
It’s more like a parental disappointment. They aren’t surprised, but they hoped for better.
I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed.
I thought they loved us enough to make better movies.
totally expected Expen4ables to be great!
totally forgot Expendables 4 existed.
Right? Most of these are “Yep, that was pretty much what I expected.”
Usually yes, but sometimes a thing can be worse than even the low expectations one has. That was me and The Flash, where the bad CGI, starting with the baby scene, left me aghast. With that kind of budget, this is what was on offer?? And how my hopes that I’d at least like Michael Keaton’s Batman didn’t really come true. He was also terrible. I guess I was disappointed more for the IP than for myself. The Flash had been in developments for decades maybe? The character deserved a greater movie debut than this.
The Flash is a really good example of a movie which, with every step of the production and release process, there were clear signs one’s expectations couldn’t be low enough.
i think its OK for us to be disappointed that so much money, time, and energy is poured into creating instantly forgettable mediocrities. I suppose that’s always been the case but sure feels like the scale is a lot larger in the 21st century.
That’s certainly fine; I think we both know this article isn’t predicated on that generalized, overarching disappointment. Maybe an earlier incarnation of the AvClub, but we’re in the “kicking ‘em while they’re down” phase of this site.
yeah i always found the av club’s old ‘least essential’ lists to be more pointed. saying something is bad/disappointing is one thing, saying it’s inessential is far more damning.
It also helps if the movies are visible. I’ve never heard of a lot of these – many of them seem to be films that would have been dumped direct to video or cable in the olden days, or in modern times would become “Netflix Originals”.
As a fan of olde timey A.V. Club snark, this is the list I’ve been waiting for! Now if we could just get a new The Year In Swag . . .
I’m sitting here waiting for a list of the year’s best band names.
There was this one band that released a song this year whose punny name was a reference to both Beat music, and The Crickets (Buddy Holly fucken slaps). Forget what they were actually called, but they definitely would’ve made the list.
“superhero fatigue”DRINK!
The Ant-Man one is confusing to me – not because I have any interest in the movie, but because of the phrase “adding fuel to the fire of superhero fatigue.” Fire seems like an inapt metaphor for fatigue. How does a person fuel fatigue? How does fatigue burn or illuminate? For a segment of the population, bad superhero movies add fuel to the fire of superhero antipathy, which is different, more active thing. But Emily Dickinson really captured most people’s feelings about the MCU: Remembered as freezing persons recollect the Snow – first Chill – then Stupor – and then the letting go –
Maybe an apt metaphor would be the way you feel after eating too much sugary, unhealthy food. It doesn’t matter how decadent the food looks now, you feel sluggish, a little nauseous, and just don’t have the appetite anymore.
I definitely watched the last half of Captain America Civil War for the exact same reason that someone eats the last half of a bag of mini-Snickers: I was already through the first half, so why stop?
Right on. I’ve always considered Marvel to be cinematic McDonalds. It’s bright and sweet and has a load of filling ingredients, but in the end offers no lasting nutritional value…
Hey now, buddy, this is AVClub.com: Apt metaphors can fuck right off!
Maybe it was “adding fuel to the dumpster fire of superhero fatigue”.
Don’t forget your dumpster. You pay good money to hire one these days.
Now I want a Dickinson/Hawkeye crossover where Emily Dickinson and Kate Bishop just kind of hang out and make fun of passers-by.
Adding additional ennui to the overall malaise of hero fatigue…
It’s pretty dumb. The DCEU comic book movies have been hit or miss at the box office for years now*, and the only real MCU flop that’s hard to explain is Marvels. Ant-Man 3 wasn’t a flop – it was just a box office disappointment that critics hated, and the Ant-Man movies before it weren’t big money-spinners either. * I know why James Gunn got the dominant creative position in the new DCEU they’re planning, but it amuses me that the one DCEU movie he’s made so far – The Suicide Squad – was a flop.
The weird thing is that it might’ve been a flop financially, but it was honestly one of the best films in terms of general audience reception. Birds of Prey was pretty high up there too in terms of reception despite also being considered a flop (and being released right as Covid shutdowns started)Though, I probably wouldn’t have given the reins to a guy who’s biggest successes weren’t actually because of their film’s plot so much as the character interactions between rarely known D-list characters (and Harley Quinn).
What are you smoking? Birds of Prey didn’t have a great critical or audience reception.
Depends on where you got your reviews.It has been pretty high up on the Rotten Tomatoes list for a DCEU film. Definitely lower on Metacritic.
How is the Marvels being a flop hard to explain? It’s a bad movie.
I thought 65 was just OK, but I actually preferred the ancient aliens idea to the time-travelling future humans one. One thing, though: since they just had the aliens be like English-speaking humans, why did they have the little girl speak some made-up language instead of, say, Spanish?
The Flash – surprisingly enjoyable.The Marvels – “There was a good movie in there somewhere, it just got tangled up in messy edits, bizarre plot detours, and an anemic story with an underwritten villain.” Translation: Almost everything about this movie pretty much sucked but if they did almost everything differently, it would have been good!Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania – underrated.
I fell asleep halfway through 65 and Ant Man.Flash was ok. I stayed awake to see Michael Keaton.
After the drubbing that Haunted Mansion received here and elsewhere, I thought we were in for a disaster when the kids wanted to watch it. It turned out to be much better crafted than I’d expected it would be, and I was glad LaKeith Stanfield didn’t just phone it in for a paycheck. Could it have used another pass through the script department? Sure. But you could say the same about most Disney movies lately. The biggest head-scratcher was what executive decided to release it in August instead of October.
The biggest head-scratcher was what executive decided to release it in August instead of October.THIS. Not only was this weirdly bad timing for a release, but it ended up being even more terrible timing because the strike was on-going when it came out. Comedies that turn on performances by famous actors really need those actors to be able to get out there and promote them, and they couldn’t.
I liked the movie. Granted I watched it on Disney+ and liked it for the price I paid (it’s my sister’s subscription…). It was fun though and better than the previous movie.
So they could drop it on Disney+ for October.
And attempt to save Marvels from Barbie
Why are all of these slideshows now? Surely it’s possible to fit everything on 1 (maybe 2) long, scrollable pages?
Narrow your browser window, and the slideshow turns into one long, scrollable page. Still annoying, just less-so.
It’s because it generate artificial clicks/engagement that they can use to get more from advertisers since it looks like there is more site interaction than there actually is.
seems like its designed to make it impossible for my phone to load the comments without crashing, and the comments are the main reason i come here!
I read that Helen Mirren said she had no idea what her character in Shazam was supposed to be doing. After watching the movie, I can see why she was confused.
Shazam 2 should’ve honestly been the introduction to Black Adam, with the Wizard having sealed him somewhere far from his kingdom. Even if his freedom was an accident that Helen Mirren’s character couldn’t account for, it would’ve at least provided a better focus than the… shenanigans we got. The Black Adam movie probably should’ve been him growing as an anti-hero once he returned to his home and found out about Intergang.
That would have been a better plot by far. Not introducing Black Adam in a Shazam movie was a huge mistake…well really, hiring The Rock to play BA was a mistake because he’d never be in a move where he’d take the fall, especially from Zack Levi.
Now that would have been worth seeing, could you just imagine the Rock getting rolled over by Zach on the big screen. O.o
Can we stop with the bizarre hang-wringing about The Marvels? Look at how apologetic the writers are about labeling it disappointing. “Perhaps no other film had a steeper road to climb this year than The Marvels,” it begins, unconvincingly. Then it blames the rest of the MCU (despite literally every MCU movie doing better than it) and the “whiff of studio interference” for the problems. “There was a good movie in there somewhere,” the author insists. Compare the summary of The Marvels to the one for Quantumania, which shows none of the same trepidation about acknowledging that the movie was bad.Movies with diverse casts and minority directors can be bad. It’s OK.
Speaking of hand-wringing…
Is what he said not true?
The thing with the Marvels is that I can’t actually say it was bad.
I can say it wasn’t ‘good’, that it was disappointing, and that it definitely wasn’t the Captain Marvel sequel I expected, but I can’t say it was outright bad. I just never felt like there were any actual stakes because it was the Marvel solo film formula personified. It was by the numbers and didn’t seem to actually care about Captain Marvel as much as it cared about moving Ms. Marvel to the big screen.
I liked it more than Quantumania (because I honestly couldn’t stand Cassie’s character and they went way too silly with MODOK). I liked it more than Thor: Love & Thunder (which seemed like it got butchered in editing to focus on silliness as an attempt to lighten the overall tone to the point where was only a threat due to offscreen feats) and Thor: The Dark World. It was a hell of a lot better than Secret Invasion. The problem is that it was essentially the equivalent of Ant-Man & The Wasp in that it just seems to exist to introduce a plot element for a future Avengers film. It was a step on the MCU ladder that seemed specifically designed to not make any waves. It was Marvel continuing the trend of trying to market Captain Marvel as an icon while simultaneously throwing her under the bus like they do whenever she’s in a comic crossover event.
Lol you’re mad again
It’s weird because you keep saying “bad” but this article is “disappointing”. Those are two different words that create two different expectations and two different analyses.I find your response disappointing.(See what I did there?)
Marvels wasn’t exactly bad. It had a lot of fun parts and good chemistry with the cast. But the villain was underwhelming and the plot was light. On the balance it wasn’t a bad movie, and not the worst MCU movie by far.
65 was weirdly disappointing, even though I didn’t really go into it with expectations other than “Adam Driver fights dinosaurs”. The film makes three major creative decisions, and none of them work well.
65 definitely didn’t deliver the premise it was marketed as having. They made you go in expecting future guns, dinosaur slaughter, and cat and mouse games with a T-rex equivalent. Instead we basically got an escort quest, language issues, sick kid drama, “it’s in the past despite the guns being futuristic!”, and a film that was a few steps away from being the spiritual successor to After Earth.
“it’s in the past despite the guns being futuristic!”, language issuesYep. The whole “in the past thing” doesn’t really add anything to the film – it just feels like they didn’t want to do another time travel movie (even though that’s what everyone assumed from the trailers), so instead we get this “ancient aliens” thing. Maybe if they were going to do something interesting with that it might be worthwhile, but they don’t. Same for the language barrier. I get why they thought it would be interesting, but it just made it harder for the kid and our protagonist to form a rapport, which you badly need for this kind of Escort Quest story to work.
I really wanted it to be good and it really wasn’t.
Marvels was great. Much more fun and decidedly less convoluted than Captain Marvel. Khamala Khan is a lightning bolt of charisma. There were laugh-out-loud funny scenes, musical numbers, and a villain that actually had legitimate beef. I can’t understand the pillorying it’s getting. My thought after watching it was, “If you don’t hate fun or women, you’ll enjoy this.It has as much of a convoluted story, unimpressive villain, and inconsistent tone as Thor: Ragnarok, and that one got praised to the moon and back.
Well, I guess women hate women, because the audience demo was like 70% male.
“If you hate fun or women.” Do you have any idea how ridiculously dumb that statement is? Women must hate women because none of them turned out for this pos movie.
I don’t know, I think Ragnarok’s significantly more charming—it has a clear stamp of one filmmaker, it’s tone is funny (even when the topic is death or Valkeryie is a slaver, etc.) Other than the Guardians movies, I think it’s the franchise with the most distinct flair—maybe you mean the other Waititi Thor movie? I didn’t see that.Marvels was good to me, not quite great though Kamala Khan was indeed great. I think it underperformed, coming in as it did at superhero saturation, the end of the strike so without the usual press junkets, and honestly, Marvel’s marketing is not great. I think it’s own thing, but it is a turn from Captain Marvel movie too, and usually sequels are more of the same. Lots of reasons for how it did, but I hope it gets legs when goes to streaming, but until then it there are a lot of easy narratives that can be spun about it.
Agree with everything you wrote about Ragnarok. It’s delightful and that is a very nice change.
“Prisoners with jobs” dude
I still don’t get the hang ups over ant man 3 either. The movie was good. It was fun, Kathryn Newton is excellent in anything she does.It didn’t like, change the world, but it was fun and is easily rewatchable. I just don’t get it
Ragnarok was extremely fun; probably the most entertaining Marvel movie in that respect. I think Waititi knew what he was doing. Maybe his style seemed inconsistent because we’re used to tighter scripts. Humor gets to be a little wild and unpredictable. And, c’mon, Hela is actually quite terrifying and Surtur’s fulfillment of Assgard’s fate created a satsifying denouement.
Marvels was odd in that it was better than its reputation suggests, but it’s also sort of hard to recommend. Like for all the hand wringing about the film* being homework, it mostly felt low-stakes. So mostly enjoyable for what it is, but hard to make a case for it as being totally worthwhile.*and the criticism surrounding it definitely feels more like it’s taking the brunt of criticism for the MCU/superhero films than any real problems in the film.
i dunno, i saw everything leading up to it and it STILL felt like they put in an entire movie’s worth of additional backstory in exposition. i know it was cut to shreds to maybe that’s is. all i know is that animated opening sequence made me wish the movie was just about them fighting a big robot.
Had a brief moment of terror when I clicked “Next slide” after the intro one and saw “65.” No way I’m digging through that many disappointing movies!
64. 65
I gotta say it, boss. 66!
I didn’t hate 65.
I can’t drive 55.
65 wasn’t terrible, it was just…boring. like, how do you have a movie plot of “Adam driver fights dinosaurs on prehistoric earth” have so little fighting of dinosaurs?
Same. I was actually intrigued for about 2/3 of the film, and was caught off guard by a revelation around the middle. But by the third act I WAS getting bored however with “and now they fight off some more dinosaurs” and sort of fought the urge to fast forward. Could have been better, but better than I expected for most of it.
They could’ve also gone all in on the fighting off dinosaurs thing. I mean, we could’ve had a film where the lead purposely made the choice to kill all the dinosaurs out of spite or some crazy sci-fi scenario where things on Earth evolve a lot faster than things on other worlds.
Same. Saw it with my sister in an empty theater and had a fun time. When we realized the story was literally taking place on Impact Day, we started howling with laughter. Top 10 gag of the year.
I didn’t hate it either – I just thought it was a disappointing movie that made some bad creative choices, but is paced well enough (and has some neat action scenes) that it’s not terrible.
I watched it by accident and I have to say it was terrible and also boring. What a humorless, hacky, stupid movie.There was only one scene that I thought was good, and it was so clever and affecting that it almost made me grateful I sat through the rest of it.
Flash was more than halfway decent, it just wasn’t great, like they liked to us and said. The special effects were ass but the movie was goodish. Marvel’s was meh but I don’t think there was a good movie in there somewhere. It’s hard to be good when the villian is so bland. I wanted it to be good because fuck those chuds who want it to fail because it’s “woke” but it wasn’t good.Shazam 2 was terrible. The 1st one was fucking lovely but part 2 was less rewatchable than Black Adam.
My problem with Flash is it really did a disservice to the Flash mythos especially from the comics point of view. The scarlet speedster is this larger than life everyman. And his powers are amazing in the frameset of a guy who is a pretty wholesome boyscout and a little bit of a goofball who canat can rival Superman on scales of speed and abilities. You didn’t get much of that coming off the screen.It did have touches but never really explored it….they kinda gassed Flash with this sorta half assed retelling of a major story in Flashpoint which had huge, huge consequences and really didn’t do as well as it could have (watch the animated version of it for true impact). And I sorry but they should have been staging Reverse Flash up better….that baddie is responsible for goddamn ending the world several times over and still vengeful enough to personally fuck with Barry’s life on a daily fucking basis.Above all, Ezra’s problems didn’t help either…..especially seeing how well Grant did on the TV version and knowing he could have done the movie so much better.
Omg, now I will be imagining a Grant Gustin led cinematic Flash experience for hours..
Yeah, Flash wasn’t bad, if it had been released in the late 90’s or early 2000’s, I imagine I would have loved it. It was fun to see Keaton back in the bat suit (come on guys, make a Dark Knight Returns movie with him while you have the chance), Supergirl was good, Affleck gave a good farewell performance as Bruce/Batman, and I even liked the Clooney twist ending. Unfortunately, it really couldn’t overcome its lead, even without all the weird stuff in their personal life, they just weren’t right for the part.
Yeah, no way it was gonna do well with Ezra as the lead.
I was actually really pleasantly surprised by The Flash. Ezra Miller was terrific, and the movie was loads of fun with just enough depth. It’s got to be in the top 3 for DC movies.
Being in the top 3 of the DCEU isn’t exactly a high bar to clear, but yeah, I enjoyed The Flash too. Michael Keaton looked like he was having a lot of fun, and I absolutely loved Sasha Calle as Kora Zor-El..
I find the existence of Paint super funny, since it’s so incredibly obvious they wanted to make a Bob Ross biopic but couldn’t secure his life rights and thus had to scramble to salvage something out of it. It reminds me of the “Jackie Jormp-Jomp” joke from 30 Rock–and of course the real life film that inspired it, Andre 3000’s unlicensed Jimi Hendrix biopic (which apparently actually got released, as I’m just finding out right now upon looking it up).
Talk to Me, Cobweb, and Five Nights at Freddy’s. Didn’t expect FNF to be good, but it was excruciatingly bad.
Wait, did people not get the premise of 65 from the trailer? I always figured it was humans discovering Earth. It still wasn’t great, because how do you mess up Adam Driver vs. Dinosaurs, but still…
not to defend te evil megacorp but if you think Disney truly had “decades as king of the box office” then you probably don’t know the history of that company very well because they had an especially rough 70s/80s and 00s, their unmatched run from Frozen until this year made everybody forget this. honestly right now isn’t even their worst flop era they’ve had if we’re talking $$$
Point of order – it can only disappointment if you expected it not to suck. The Flash was widely expected to be pure shiat.65 was perfectly fine film, heads and shoulders over the last 3+ Jurassic Park films.Rebel Moon has no organic demand for a uncut version, that’s pure Netflix fuckery to try and Jumpstart enthusiasm when instead I just skip until the R cut. Bet it’s still better than the last Star Wars film I suffered through.Foops Paradise WAS incredibly disappointing. I had really high hopes based of Day and crews talent, hearing about Del Toro giving him advice, I really wanted it to succeed. I don’t understand how it fell flat at almost every beat, baffaling. Hoping he gets to try again.And I haven’t watched either Marvel film but everyone has said Marvels is just OK, while Antman actively sucked.
Peter Pan and Wendy. I expected better from David Lowrey Napoleon. I expected better from Ridley Scott.
If by The Marvels being disappointing you mean it’s disappointing that incels tanked the film, than yes, that is disappointing.
Sometimes having low expectations going into a movie is a good thing, because I found myself enjoying Quantumania. I was hoping for the same thing with The Flash, but no. That movie was bad.
i’m the reverse, thought Quantumania was an abomination but liked Flash at least until the 3rd act
Quantumania is the ‘Battle Beyond The Stars’ of the MCU. The ending is kind of a mess, but I had fun with it along the way.And for that matter, I also really enjoyed The Flash. I know I’m not supposed to, and it didn’t change my life or anything, but yeah, it was fun enough for an afternoon. And that’s coming from someone who gets an obscene amount of pleasure from shitting all over the DCEU whenever they get the chance..
Oh crap, I’m replying to lift this out of the greys just for the top tier John Boy movie reference.
The one I didn’t even know I made? Sweet, thanks..
haven’t seen most of these as they looked as if they’d be disappointing. Esp the AntMan movie. Even the trailers couldn’t hide what a stink bomb that was going to be. Sad as it brought so much fun in first two.
Personally, I would throw in Beau is Afraid, Infinity Pool, Leave the World Behind, Silent Night (awful for a Woo comeback), but yeah, most of this list is dead-on.
As for strict box office failings, Aquaman 2 made 28M this past weekend…surely that counts as a fairly unexpected disappointment given the original’s take?
I’m still amazed that Haunted Mansion was so terrible, so lackluster at the box office, that it’s already been shown on Freeform.
I enjoyed both the Marvels and Shazam. No disappointment there! *shrug*
Did you watch all of these movies? This feels like a watchmojo list.