Part 10 – The Poor
Series Navigation
Part 1: The Masterpieces |
Part 2: The Near Perfect |
Part 3: The Excellent |
Part 4: The Very Good |
Part 5: The Solid Craft |
Part 6: The Dependable |
Part 7: The Watchable |
Part 8: The Flawed |
Part 9: The Mediocre |
Part 10: The Poor |
Part 11: The Failures
The most instructive failure in this tier is the film built out of references to other films. Deadpool & Wolverine is a recognition exercise. Dial of Destiny is a callback structure. Fast X reinserts a character into a heist from twelve years earlier.
The other group are films with one genuine asset and nothing to put beside it. Waterworld had a coherent production design and spent everything on it. Moonfall has a premise that would support a serious film and does not attempt one.
Every rating is the one carried by the review it links to. Ties are broken by year, and this is the tenth of eleven parts.
Deadpool & Wolverine is a recognition exercise and Dial of Destiny is a callback structure, and neither has anything of its own to spend. Build on your own work in the Plot Handbook.
1. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022) [full review]
► Read the full review of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022)
RLR: 3 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 6.7/10
"Made under circumstances no production should have to manage."
Ryan Coogler had to rebuild the film after Chadwick Boseman died in 2020, and the decision not to recast is defensible and correct. What resulted is a picture carrying a genuine grief it cannot integrate with the franchise obligations stacked on top of it. Coogler wrote it with Joe Robert Cole, as he had the first film.
The opening twenty minutes are the best material. A funeral staged as celebration, Shuri’s refusal to attend the body, and Angela Bassett delivering a speech to the United Nations that has more force than anything else in the running time. Letitia Wright, Lupita Nyong’o and Danai Gurira return.
Tenoch Huerta’s Namor is a genuinely strong antagonist with a coherent historical grievance, and the Talokan design work is the most distinctive thing Marvel had produced in years. The underwater sequences were built with practical rigs and dry-for-wet photography. Ludwig Goransson scored it and Autumn Durald Arkapaw shot it.
The structure then requires a war between two colonized nations over a mineral, the plot the franchise needed instead of the one the grief material was building toward. Both arguments are legitimate and the film cannot hold them together. Dominique Thorne appears as Riri Williams ahead of her own series.
It runs two hours and forty-one minutes and the length is the symptom. A succession, a grief, a new antagonist, an Ironheart introduction, a CIA subplot and a Wakandan political crisis, none of which has room to finish. It took over eight hundred and fifty million dollars.
2. Black Adam (2022) [full review]
► Read the full review of Black Adam (2022)
RLR: 3 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 6.3/10
"A protagonist with no arc available and a film that does not notice."
Jaume Collet-Serra made a film Dwayne Johnson had been developing for fifteen years, built around the announcement that the hierarchy of power in the DC universe was about to change. The universe was cancelled within a year of release. Adam Sztykiel, Rory Haines and Sohrab Noshirvani share the screenplay credit.
The premise is genuinely interesting and the film has no interest in it. An ancient champion from an occupied nation returns to a country under a different occupation, and the question of whether an American superhero team has any standing to arrest him is raised and dropped.
Pierce Brosnan’s Doctor Fate is the best thing in it. He is a man who can see his own death, he is tired, and the performance suggests an entire other film in which the character is the protagonist. Aldis Hodge, Noah Centineo and Quintessa Swindell complete the Justice Society.
Johnson plays the part at a single register and the film has no room to move. Black Adam kills people, the picture treats this as a characteristic instead of a problem, and the Justice Society arrives to object without any argument the film takes seriously.
3. Moonfall (2022) [full review]
► Read the full review of Moonfall (2022)
RLR: 3 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 5.1/10
"A premise that would support a serious film, played entirely for spectacle."
Roland Emmerich spent around one hundred and forty million dollars, largely independently financed, on a film in which the moon is an artificial megastructure falling toward earth. It is one of the most expensive independent productions ever mounted and it lost most of it. Emmerich co-wrote it with Harald Kloser and Spenser Cohen.
The premise would support a serious film. A hollow moon built by a lost civilization, an artificial intelligence that turned on its makers, and a survival story about the last remnant of humanity hiding inside their own satellite. Halle Berry and Patrick Wilson lead alongside John Bradley.
The execution is a disaster picture with a conspiracy theorist. John Bradley plays a megastructuralist nobody believes, the film treats him as vindicated instead of lucky, and the tone is closer to comedy than anything the concept suggests. It was financed largely outside the studio system through Lionsgate.
The gravity sequences are the one place the scale registers. A moon at close approach pulling ocean into the air, tidal effects on a city, and debris falling upward. Emmerich understands this kind of image better than almost anybody. Harald Kloser and Thomas Wander scored it.
4. The Gray Man (2022) [full review]
► Read the full review of The Gray Man (2022)
RLR: 3 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 6.5/10
"Two hundred million dollars and nothing in it you have not seen."
The Russos spent around two hundred million dollars of Netflix’s money on an adaptation of Mark Greaney’s novel, and the result is the most expensive generic action film ever produced. Nothing in it has been seen anywhere else at that price. Greaney has published more than a dozen Gray Man novels since 2009.
Ryan Gosling plays Six with the detachment the part requires and no material to apply it to. The character has a redacted history, a moral line and a protected child, and all three arrive as specifications instead of as anything discovered. Ana de Armas, Rege-Jean Page and Billy Bob Thornton fill out the cast.
Chris Evans is enjoying himself as the antagonist and the moustache is the most memorable thing in two hours. Lloyd Hansen is written as a sociopath with quips and Evans plays him considerably harder than the script suggests. Netflix announced a sequel and a spinoff before the film had been released.
The Prague sequence cost a reported forty million dollars and involves a tram, a square and enough explosives to register from orbit. It is competent, it is expensive, and it is impossible to recall a single shot from it afterward. Markus and McFeely wrote it after working with the Russos on the Marvel films.
Pluto Nash is set on the moon and derives nothing from it, and Waterworld gives its lead gills and uses them three times. Make the setting pay in the World Builder’s Handbook.
5. Uncharted (2022) [full review]
► Read the full review of Uncharted (2022)
RLR: 3 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 6.3/10
"A treasure hunt with no sense of place."
Ruben Fleischer directed after seven other directors had cycled through a development process running more than a decade. Tom Holland plays a version of Nathan Drake who is roughly twenty years younger than the character in the games. Naughty Dog published the first game in 2007 and the series has sold enormously.
The cargo plane sequence is lifted directly from Uncharted 3 and it is the best thing in the film. Crates falling out of an open ramp, a man climbing across them at altitude, and the geography stays legible throughout. Mark Wahlberg plays Sully and Sophia Ali and Tati Gabrielle complete the cast.
The casting problem is structural. The games are built on a relationship between two men who have known each other for twenty years, and the film makes Drake a novice and Sully a recruiter, removing the history the entire dynamic runs on. Ramin Djawadi scored it and it took over four hundred million dollars.
The treasure plot is generic and the film knows it. Magellan’s lost gold, a rival with mercenaries, a key in two halves, and a finale involving two ships suspended from helicopters that the picture presents without any pretence of physics. Nolan North, the voice of Drake in the games, appears briefly.
6. Cash Out (2024) [full review]
► Read the full review of Cash Out (2024)
RLR: 3 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 4.7/10
"A heist that becomes a hostage situation and never generates tension from either."
Randall Emmett directed under a pseudonym after a period of substantial public controversy, and John Travolta leads a heist crew in a film shot quickly and cheaply. Two sequels were produced back to back with it. Kristin Davis and Lukas Haas appear alongside Travolta. It was shot in Serbia over a short schedule.
The premise is a bank robbery that becomes a hostage standoff when the crew is betrayed, a shape with a long history and a proven structure. The film has the pieces and no interest in assembling them carefully. Dmitri Rassam and a Serbian production company financed it.
The crew dynamic is the only material with any life. A brother, a hacker, a driver and a safecracker, each with a single trait, and the film moves through them at a speed that prevents any of them from registering. Two sequels were shot back to back and released across the following year.
The production limitations are visible throughout. A single bank location, a police perimeter that never changes, a negotiator on a phone, and the film has no resources to open the situation up once the siege begins. It went to video on demand with almost no theatrical release.
7. On Deadly Ground (1994) [full review]
► Read the full review of On Deadly Ground (1994)
RLR: 2 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 4.6/10
"Closes with four minutes of the star lecturing a conference."
Seagal’s only film as director cost Warner Bros. around fifty million dollars and closes with him addressing an environmental conference for roughly four minutes. The studio cut the speech down from eleven. Ed Horowitz and Robin U. Russin wrote the screenplay. It was released in February 1994.
Michael Caine is the antagonist and appears to have made peace with the situation early. He plays an oil executive with a ponytail, delivers his lines with total professionalism, and has never discussed the film at any length since. Joan Chen and John C. McGinley appear in supporting parts.
The Alaskan photography is genuinely beautiful and the film treats it as scenery for explosions. There is a spirit vision sequence, a wise elder, and a structure that positions Seagal as the person best qualified to save an indigenous community. Seagal never directed another feature after it.
The action is competently staged and the film has no interest in it. The bar fight is the one sequence with any energy, and the picture spends the rest of its length on a message it delivers by having a character stand at a lectern.
8. Armageddon (1998) [full review]
► Read the full review of Armageddon (1998)
RLR: 2 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 6.7/10
"Maximum volume, minimum coherence."
Michael Bay made the highest-grossing film of 1998 and NASA shows it during management training, asking trainees to identify the technical errors. The count is commonly given as over one hundred and sixty. Jonathan Hensleigh and J. J. Abrams share the screenplay credit. Touchstone released it in July 1998.
The premise inverts the obvious solution and the film says so out loud. Instead of training astronauts to drill, it trains drillers to be astronauts, and the film treats this as clever instead of as the reason the plan should not work. Liv Tyler and Ben Affleck play the couple at the center of the human plot.
The editing is the most aggressive in mainstream cinema to that point. Individual shots run under a second across long stretches, the asteroid surface sequences are close to unreadable, and the technique became the house style for a decade. Trevor Rabin scored it and Aerosmith supplied the single.
The cast is doing better work than the film deserves. Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton, Steve Buscemi and Will Patton all commit completely, and the Harry and Grace material works despite everything surrounding it. It cost around one hundred and forty million dollars and took over five hundred and fifty.
Deep Impact arrived two months earlier with the same premise and a fraction of the noise, and the comparison is instructive. One film treats an extinction event as a human situation and the other treats it as a deadline with explosions. Criterion released it on laserdisc, a decision that has been a joke ever since.
9. The Adventures of Pluto Nash (2002) [full review]
► Read the full review of The Adventures of Pluto Nash (2002)
RLR: 2 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 3.8/10
"A man runs a nightclub on the moon and will not sell it, at feature length."
Warner Bros. spent around one hundred million dollars on a lunar comedy starring Eddie Murphy and released it two years after it was shot, to a worldwide gross of roughly seven million. It is one of the largest losses in studio history. Neil Cuthbert wrote it and Ron Underwood directed after Tremors and City Slickers.
The premise is a nightclub owner on the moon refusing to sell to the mob, a serviceable comic setup with a long history behind it. Nothing in the execution takes advantage of the setting at any point. Rosario Dawson, Jay Mohr and Peter Boyle appear across the cast.
The lunar production design is expensive and generic. A domed city, a monorail, and interiors that could be anywhere, and the film never derives a single joke or obstacle from its lunar setting. It was shot in 2000 and shelved for two years before release.
Murphy is playing it straight and the film gives him nothing to react to. Randy Quaid’s robot bodyguard is the only element with any comic construction, and the picture treats him as a running gag instead of as a character. Underwood has said the studio changed its mind about the film repeatedly.
Eternals splits one hundred and fifty-six minutes ten ways and Rebel Moon introduces its cast through trauma instead of skill. Build an ensemble in the Protagonist Handbook.
10. Jurassic World Dominion (2022) [full review]
► Read the full review of Jurassic World Dominion (2022)
RLR: 2 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 5.6/10
"Dinosaurs loose in the world, and the film is about locusts."
Colin Trevorrow closed the six-film sequence with a film built on the promise of dinosaurs loose in the world, and then relocated most of it to a research facility in the Dolomites. The premise the previous film set up is abandoned in the first act.
The locust plot is the substitute and it is a genuinely strange choice. A biotech company engineers crop-destroying insects, a real agricultural thriller premise and has nothing to do with dinosaurs. Trevorrow wrote it with Emily Carmichael and directed the first and third entries. Nothing in it needs dinosaurs at all.
Bringing back Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum is the film’s commercial justification and all three are well used individually. The problem is that the picture then has six protagonists and no room for any of them. Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard return alongside the original three.
The Malta sequence is the best action in the sequel trilogy. Atrociraptors pursuing a motorcycle through a walled city, shot practically with animatronics wherever possible, and the geography holds throughout. Michael Giacchino scored it and John Williams contributed themes. Trevorrow has cited practical work as a priority.
The film has no argument. The previous entry ended with an actual thesis about what happens when the creatures cannot be contained, and this one resolves by having the dinosaurs and humans coexist through a closing montage. It took over one billion dollars despite the reception.
11. Morbius (2022) [full review]
► Read the full review of Morbius (2022)
RLR: 2 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 5.1/10
"A film with no reason to exist, released twice."
Daniel Espinosa made a film Sony produced to retain character rights, and the release was delayed six times across two years. It was re-released to cinemas after internet jokes suggested demand existed, and took under three hundred thousand dollars the second time. Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless wrote it, as they had Gods of Egypt.
Jared Leto plays a biochemist who cures his own blood disorder with bat DNA and acquires an appetite, a premise with a genuine horror film inside it. The picture treats the condition as a superpower with an inconvenient side effect. Adria Arjona and Jared Harris appear in supporting parts.
The visual signature is a smoke trail that follows every fast movement, and it is the only distinctive choice anywhere in the film. Every action sequence is shot in darkness against grey backgrounds with the trails filling the frame. Sony released it in April 2022 after six separate delays.
Matt Smith is the only performer who worked out what film he was in. Milo is delighted by his own transformation, he dances, and the performance belongs in a picture that was willing to be what this one is. Jon Ekstrand scored it and Espinosa had directed Life and Safe House.
12. Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (2023) [full review]
► Read the full review of Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (2023)
RLR: 2 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 5.6/10
"A franchise conclusion made while the franchise was being cancelled around it."
James Wan closed the DC sequence with a film shot during a studio transition, rewritten through reshoots, and released as an obligation. The first film took over a billion dollars and this one took under a third of that. David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick wrote both films.
The buddy structure is the one genuine idea. Arthur is forced to break his brother out of prison and work with him, Patrick Wilson is enjoying the antagonism, and the two-hander material is the only part of the picture with any energy. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II returns as Black Manta and Nicole Kidman as Atlanna.
Wan’s horror instincts show in fragments. The Black Trident possession, the frozen kingdom under the ice and the Deserter’s Island sequence all have a texture nothing else in the DC sequence attempted. Rupert Gregson-Williams scored it and it cost around two hundred and five million.
The plot is an environmental thriller with no conviction. Black Manta melts polar ice to release an ancient kingdom, the world warms as a consequence, and the film states the argument instead of dramatizing any of it. It is the last film released under the previous DC leadership.
13. Fast X (2023) [full review]
► Read the full review of Fast X (2023)
RLR: 2 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 5.7/10
"A flashback inserts a new character into a heist from twelve years earlier."
Justin Lin left the production days into shooting and Louis Leterrier took over, and the seam is visible throughout. The film cost a reported three hundred and forty million dollars and ends mid-scene on a cliffhanger. Leterrier had directed The Transporter and the first Now You See Me.
The opening restages the vault heist from Fast Five and inserts a character who was not there, filmed from angles the original did not use. Twelve years of continuity are rewritten to supply the antagonist with a grievance. Brie Larson, Alan Ritchson and Rita Moreno join the cast in this entry.
Jason Momoa is doing something genuinely different and is the only element of the film worth discussing. Dante is theatrical, camp and openly enjoying himself, and he belongs in a better picture than this one. It is the tenth film in a series that began in 2001 as a street racing picture.
The franchise has reached the point where nobody can be hurt. Characters return from confirmed deaths, physics has been abandoned as a constraint, and the film’s stakes consist of announcing that somebody is in danger. Vin Diesel has produced the series since the fourth film in 2009.
The Rome sequence with the rolling bomb is well staged and impossible to invest in. A sphere of explosive moving through a city, three vehicles trying to redirect it, and no possibility that any of the people involved will be harmed. A further entry was announced and repeatedly delayed afterward.
Fast X rewrites twelve years of its own history and nothing in the series is fixed afterward. Protect what you established, using the Conflict and Tension Handbook.
14. Waterworld (1995) [full review]
► Read the full review of Waterworld (1995)
RLR: 1 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 6.3/10
"One genuine asset, and everything else spent."
Kevin Reynolds and Kevin Costner spent around one hundred and seventy-five million dollars, the most expensive film ever made at that point, largely because they built floating sets in open ocean off Hawaii and the sets kept sinking. Peter Rader and David Twohy share the screenplay credit.
The production design is the achievement and it is genuine. The atoll is a real structure, the trimaran is a working vessel, and the world is assembled entirely from salvaged twentieth century material with a visible logic to every piece. Jeanne Tripplehorn and Tina Majorino play the pair he ends up carrying.
The premise has a fatal arithmetic problem the film never addresses. There is not enough water on earth to produce the flooding shown. That matters because the picture presents itself as extrapolation instead of as fantasy. James Newton Howard scored it and Dean Semler shot it.
Dennis Hopper’s Deacon is the only performer operating at the scale the film needs. He runs a cult on the Exxon Valdez, he has one eye, and he is genuinely funny in a picture that is otherwise entirely humourless. It eventually turned a profit on video and television sales.
Costner’s Mariner is a mutant with gills and the film introduces this early and then does almost nothing with it. He can breathe underwater, an ability that should restructure every sequence, and it is used about three times. A stunt show based on it has run at Universal parks since 1995.
15. Eternals (2021) [full review]
► Read the full review of Eternals (2021)
RLR: 1 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 6.3/10
"Ten characters, seven thousand years, and no reason to care about any of it."
Chloe Zhao won Best Director for Nomadland and was handed the largest ensemble Marvel had attempted, with ten protagonists, seven thousand years of history and a location shoot across four countries using natural light throughout. Zhao wrote it with Patrick Burleigh and Ryan and Kaz Firpo.
The photography is unlike anything else in the franchise and it is the reason the film is worth discussing. Real landscapes, magic hour exteriors, wide lenses, and almost no coverage shot on a stage. Gemma Chan, Richard Madden, Angelina Jolie and Kumail Nanjiani lead the ensemble.
Ten protagonists in one hundred and fifty-six minutes is the structural failure and it was visible from the announcement. Each character receives roughly twelve minutes, none of them completes an arc, and the flashbacks compete with the present-day plot continuously. Ramin Djawadi scored it and Ben Davis shot it across four countries.
The central premise is genuinely good and arrives too late. The Eternals are machines built to protect a planet so a Celestial can gestate inside it, so every civilization they preserved was livestock. It took over four hundred million dollars and is the lowest-rated Marvel film.
The film asks why they did not intervene in the Snap and answers it with a directive. That is the question the whole premise raises and the picture treats it as a plot obstacle instead of as the argument it should have been built around.
16. Ms. Marvel (2022) [full review]
► Read the full review of Ms. Marvel (2022)
RLR: 1 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 6.0/10
"The family material is good and the superhero material is not."
Bisha K. Ali created a six-episode series about a Pakistani American teenager in Jersey City, and the cultural specificity is the best thing in it. The family, the mosque politics and the Partition material are all handled with genuine care. Marvel published the comic beginning in 2014 with G. Willow Wilson writing.
Iman Vellani is excellent and the series is built correctly around her. Kamala is a fan before she is a hero, the animation overlays externalize her interior life, and the tone is closer to a teen comedy than to anything else in the franchise. Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah directed two episodes each alongside two other teams.
The power change from the comics is the decision that damaged it. Kamala’s stretching is central to her visual identity and the series gives her hard light constructs, largely for franchise reasons the show cannot explain inside its own fiction. Matt Lintz plays Bruno and Rish Shah plays Kamran.
The Partition episode is the strongest hour Marvel has produced for television. A train station in 1947, a family separated, and a sequence that treats a historical atrocity with more seriousness than the format normally permits. Vellani had been cast from an open call and was a genuine fan of the comic.
The Clandestine antagonists are the structural weakness. They arrive in episode three, they want to return home, and the series resolves them so quickly that the last two episodes have to introduce a second threat. She returned for The Marvels the following year. Farhan Akhtar appears in the Karachi episodes.
17. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023) [full review]
► Read the full review of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023)
RLR: 1 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 6.5/10
"An ageing professor in 1969, in a film assembled from callbacks."
James Mangold took over from Spielberg and made a film about age with Harrison Ford at eighty, the correct subject. It cost a reported three hundred million dollars and lost a substantial amount of it. Jez and John-Henry Butterworth wrote it with Mangold and David Koepp.
The de-aged opening sequence runs about twenty-five minutes and the technology works better than anything previously attempted. It is also the film demonstrating that the version of the character audiences want is one it cannot sustain. Phoebe Waller-Bridge plays Helena and Mads Mikkelsen the Nazi physicist.
The 1969 material is genuinely good and nobody discusses it. Jones is retired, divorced, his son is dead, and the neighbours complain about his television. A man whose entire life was adventure watching the moon landing parade from an apartment. John Williams scored it, his final film score after five decades.
The callback structure is the problem. A rival archaeologist, a Nazi, a young companion, a globe-trotting chase and a supernatural artifact, assembled from four previous films with the emphasis on recognition instead of on anything new. Spielberg and Lucas both retain executive producer credits. Disney released it in June 2023.
The ending is the one genuinely bold decision. Jones asks to stay in the ancient past and has to be physically removed, and the film is honest that the offer was the only thing he actually wanted. Phedon Papamichael shot it and it was filmed largely in Britain and Morocco.
On Deadly Ground stops for four minutes so its director can state the argument, and Aquaman delivers its position as information. Do it properly in the Showing and Telling Handbook.
18. Rebel Moon (2023) [full review]
► Read the full review of Rebel Moon (2023)
RLR: 1 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 5.6/10
"Seven Samurai with the specificity removed."
Zack Snyder developed the premise as a Star Wars pitch in the early 2010s, and Netflix financed it as an original after Lucasfilm declined. Two films were released in 2023 and 2024, with extended cuts following each. Snyder wrote it with Kurt Johnstad and Shay Hatten.
The structure is Seven Samurai and the film says so openly. A farming settlement under threat, a recruitment sequence across several worlds, and a defense that requires training the villagers. The shape is proven and the execution never uses it. Djimon Hounsou, Charlie Hunnam and Ed Skrein fill out the cast.
The recruitment is where the comparison becomes damaging. Kurosawa introduces each man through a demonstration of a specific skill. This film introduces each through a flashback explaining their tragedy, and none of them acquires a capability the audience can track. Tom Holkenborg scored both films.
The visual style is committed and exhausting. Slow motion across almost every sequence, shallow focus that keeps most of the frame unreadable, and a color scheme so desaturated that the production design cannot register. The extended cuts run substantially longer and carry a different rating.
Sofia Boutella is doing genuine work and the film gives her a backstory instead of a character. Kora has a past as an imperial soldier, a massacre she participated in and a princess she failed to save, all delivered as flashback instead of consequence. The extended cut adds more of the same.
19. Deadpool & Wolverine (2024) [full review]
► Read the full review of Deadpool & Wolverine (2024)
RLR: 1 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 7.5/10
"It is Ryan Reynolds again, in a different costume."
Shawn Levy made the highest-grossing R-rated film ever released, taking over one and three tenths billion dollars, and it is structurally a recognition exercise. The picture is built on the audience identifying characters and rights acquisitions. Ryan Reynolds shares the screenplay credit with four other writers.
Hugh Jackman returning is the entire commercial proposition and the film knows it. The yellow suit arrives, the claws are used properly for the first time in an R-rated picture, and the material between the two leads is genuinely funny in places. Levy had directed Reynolds twice before in Free Guy and The Adam Project.
The Void is a structural device for cameos and the film does not disguise it. A wasteland where discarded characters exist, populated with performers from cancelled franchises, and each appearance is applause instead of plot. Rob Simonsen scored it and Jackman had retired the part in 2017.
The Wolverine material is the one place the film reaches for something. This version failed to protect his own X-Men, he is drinking, and Jackman plays the self-loathing with more weight than the picture around it supports. It took over one and three tenths billion dollars worldwide.
Matthew Macfadyen’s Paradox and Emma Corrin’s Cassandra Nova are both underserved. Nova in particular is a genuine antagonist with a coherent method, introduced in the second hour and resolved inside thirty minutes. Wesley Snipes and Channing Tatum both appear in the Void sequence. Both are introduced late and exit quickly.
20. Captain America: Brave New World (2025) [full review]
► Read the full review of Captain America: Brave New World (2025)
RLR: 1 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 5.6/10
"Watched in fast forward, and the rating reflects it honestly."
The film was extensively reshot, with a substantial portion of the running time replaced, and the assembly shows it in every transition. It is the thirty-fifth film in the sequence and five writers share the screenplay credit. Julius Onah directed and Danny Ramirez plays the new Falcon.
Anthony Mackie is a capable performer given a film with no confidence in him. Sam Wilson carries a shield, an inherited legacy and a political thriller structure the production appears to have abandoned partway through shooting. Giancarlo Esposito and Shira Haas appear in supporting parts.
The Winter Soldier comparison is unavoidable and the film invites it. That picture had a surveillance argument, a compromised institution and an elevator fight. This one has a presidential conspiracy resolved by a transformation sequence. Laura Karpman scored it and Kramer Morgenthau shot it. Disney released it in February 2025.
Harrison Ford plays Thaddeus Ross and the transformation arrives as an obligation. The character was a political antagonist, the film converts him into spectacle in the last act, and neither version is given room to work. Ford took over the Ross part after William Hurt’s death in 2022.
Honorable Mentions: Action Films Without a Review Here Yet
No review on the site for any of these so far. Every one of them is better than most of what is above and each is on the list.
Legend of the Drunken Master (1994)
The American release of Drunken Master II, cut and redubbed, and the final twenty-minute fight is still the most technically demanding thing Jackie Chan ever staged. He crawled across genuine burning coals for one shot.
Police Story 2 (1988)
Chan escalates the first film with a playground sequence, a bomb plot and a fireworks factory finale. The bus stop fight is choreographed around scaffolding and the stunt team took genuine injuries throughout.
Police Story 3: Supercop (1992)
Michelle Yeoh rides a motorcycle onto a moving train and Chan hangs from a helicopter ladder over Kuala Lumpur. Yeoh performed her own stunts and several of them are more dangerous than his.
New Police Story (2004)
Benny Chan gave Chan a serious role as an alcoholic officer whose unit was killed under his command. It is the darkest thing in his filmography and he is genuinely good in it.
Shaolin Soccer (2001)
Stephen Chow combined kung fu and football with effects work that was ridiculous on purpose, and it became the highest-grossing Hong Kong film to that point. The tone holds completely across the running time.
Kung Fu Hustle (2004)
Chow again, with a slum full of retired masters and an assassin who kills using a guqin. The Axe Gang dance number and the landlady chase are both extraordinary and the film never settles into one register.
The God of Cookery (1996)
Chow made a martial arts film about cooking competitions, a premise that sounds like a joke and is structured exactly like a training-and-tournament picture. The commitment is what makes it work.
A Chinese Odyssey (1995)
Chow adapted Journey to the West across two films that begin as farce and end as tragedy. It was a commercial failure and is now among the most quoted works in Chinese-language cinema.
Detective Dee (2010)
Tsui Hark built a Tang dynasty mystery around spontaneous combustion, a giant buddha under construction and a detective recalled from prison. The design work is the best of his late career.
Dragon (2011)
Peter Chan gave Donnie Yen a village papermaker whose fight against two robbers is reconstructed forensically by an investigator. The premise turns martial arts choreography into evidence.
The Grandmaster (2013)
Wong Kar-wai spent years on an Ip Man film that is more concerned with time and loss than with fighting. The train station sequence in the snow is among the most beautiful things in the form.
Raging Fire (2021)
Benny Chan died before the release of his last film, with Donnie Yen against Nicholas Tse in a Hong Kong action picture made the way they were made in the nineties. The final fight runs close to twenty minutes.
Dishonorable Mentions: Action Films That Failed
Also unreviewed here, and each belongs on this page. Premises worth the budget, lost somewhere between the pitch and the edit.
Cowboy Bebop (2021)
Netflix adapted an anime built on tone, silence and jazz into a live action series that explains its own characters constantly. It was cancelled three weeks after release.
Ultraviolet (2006)
Kurt Wimmer followed Equilibrium with a film so heavily processed that faces lose detail in most shots. The studio cut roughly thirty minutes and Wimmer has disowned the released version.
Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (2011)
Neveldine and Taylor were hired for their kinetic style and delivered a film where the camera never settles long enough for any image to register. Nicolas Cage is committed and the picture gives him nothing to be committed to.
Dark Phoenix (2019)
The second attempt at the same comic storyline by the same writer, reshot after test screenings to change the entire third act. It closed a twenty-year sequence and lost around one hundred and thirty million dollars.
Fantastic Four (2015)
Josh Trank has publicly disowned it and described studio interference in detail. The finished film has a visible tonal break where the reshoots begin and a final battle lasting under ten minutes.
King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017)
Guy Ritchie applied his London crime register to Arthurian legend with a planned six-film sequence behind it. It lost around one hundred and fifty million dollars and the sequence was cancelled immediately.
What Do You Think?
This tier is where a film is built out of other films. Deadpool & Wolverine took over a billion dollars doing it and is rated a 1 here. Tell me whether recognition can carry a picture on its own.
Continue the Series
Part 1: The Masterpieces |
Part 2: The Near Perfect |
Part 3: The Excellent |
Part 4: The Very Good |
Part 5: The Solid Craft |
Part 6: The Dependable |
Part 7: The Watchable |
Part 8: The Flawed |
Part 9: The Mediocre |
Part 10: The Poor |
Part 11: The Failures