Part 9 – The Mediocre
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
Two failures dominate this tier. The first is assembly instead of story: several entries here exist to move characters into position for other films, and a picture whose job is logistics cannot also be about anything.
The second is compression. The Dark Tower puts eight novels into ninety-five minutes, the later Pirates sequels keep expanding a premise that was complete after one film, and Speed 2 removes the single rule the original derived everything from.
Every rating is the one carried by the review it links to. Ties are broken by year, and this is the ninth of eleven parts.
The Dark Tower compresses eight novels into ninety-five minutes and Infinity War ends on a loss everybody knew was scheduled to be undone. Two failures in the Plot Handbook.
1. The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (2021) [full review]
► Read the full review of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (2021)
RLR: 5 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 7.1/10
"A genuinely interesting premise handed to a series that will not commit to it."
Malcolm Spellman created a six-episode series about who carries the shield after Steve Rogers, and the premise is genuinely strong. A Black man is handed a symbol by a government that has never treated him as part of what it represents. Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan lead and Emily VanCamp returns as Sharon Carter.
The Isaiah Bradley material is the best thing in it and it is contained in about two scenes. Carl Lumbly plays a super-soldier who was experimented on and imprisoned for thirty years, and the argument he makes is the one the whole series should have been about.
The Flag Smashers are the structural failure. A group whose position is that the world was better during the five-year disappearance, a real idea, delivered by characters the series never develops and resolved by having them become terrorists. Kari Skogland directed all six episodes for Disney.
Wyatt Russell’s John Walker is well constructed and badly served. A decorated soldier given a job he is not equipped for, who kills a man in public with the shield, and the series pivots him toward redemption within two episodes of that. Henry Jackman scored it, as he had The Winter Soldier.
The six-episode format shows the same strain every entry in the run has. The plot arrives fully formed, the middle two hours have nowhere to go, and the finale resolves three separate threads with a speech. Julia Louis-Dreyfus appears as Valentina Allegra de Fontaine. Disney released it weekly in 2021.
2. Moon Knight (2022) [full review]
► Read the full review of Moon Knight (2022)
RLR: 5 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 7.3/10
"The dissociative material is excellent and the franchise requirements are not."
Jeremy Slater created a six-episode series about dissociative identity disorder, a mercenary, an Egyptian moon god and a museum gift shop worker in London. Oscar Isaac plays both identities and the accent decision has been argued about since. Mohamed Diab directed four of the six episodes and Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead two.
The first two episodes are the best material Marvel produced in that period. Steven Grant losing time, waking in other countries, restraining himself to a bed at night, and the series treats the condition as frightening from inside instead of a power. May Calamawy plays Layla and becomes the Scarlet Scarab in the finale.
Episode five is the one that works completely. The two identities in an afterlife asylum walking through their shared history, the origin arriving as something neither wanted to look at, and the series stops being an action show for forty minutes. F. Murray Abraham voices Khonshu throughout.
Ethan Hawke’s Arthur Harrow is underused and the performance is good. A former avatar who concluded the god he served was wrong, walking with stones in his shoe as penance, and the series gives him a conventional world-ending plan. Hesham Nazih scored it and it was shot largely in Budapest.
The last episode abandons everything. Two computer-generated deities fight above Cairo, the psychological material is resolved by an offscreen decision, and the series that spent five hours on interiority closes with scale. It is loosely adapted from the Jeff Lemire and Greg Smallwood comic run.
3. Domino (2005) [full review]
► Read the full review of Domino (2005)
RLR: 4 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 5.9/10
"Tony Scott’s most aggressive style applied to a life he could not tell honestly."
Tony Scott made a film about Domino Harvey, the daughter of Laurence Harvey who became a bounty hunter, and shot it with the most aggressive technique of his career. Cross processing, jump cuts, saturated color shifts inside single shots and burned-in text throughout. Richard Kelly wrote it after Donnie Darko and before Southland Tales.
Keira Knightley is well cast and the film is not interested in the actual person. Harvey died of an overdose before the release, the family objected to the portrayal, and the picture opens with an on-screen card announcing that it is based on a true story, followed immediately by a qualifier.
Mickey Rourke and Edgar Ramirez are the best thing in it. The bounty hunting crew has a working dynamic, the procedural material about skip tracing is genuinely interesting, and the film keeps abandoning it for a plot about a Las Vegas armoured car job. Christopher Walken and Mena Suvari appear in the reality television subplot.
Richard Kelly wrote it and the script has recognizable ambitions. A reality television crew, a mescaline sequence, a hostage standoff and a DMV subplot about ethnic identity that has no connection to anything else in the picture. Harvey Keitel, Lucy Liu and Delroy Lindo fill out the cast.
4. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) [full review]
► Read the full review of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)
RLR: 4 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 6.2/10
"Everything anybody remembers is contained in one refrigerator."
Spielberg, Lucas and Ford returned nineteen years later after a development process that ran through multiple scripts and a decade of disagreement. Frank Darabont wrote a version Spielberg wanted and Lucas rejected, and David Koepp wrote what was filmed. Karen Allen returns as Marion after twenty-seven years.
The period shift to 1957 is the right instinct. Serial adventure gives way to atomic anxiety, the Soviets replace the Nazis, and the opening sequence in a nuclear test town is a genuinely good idea executed with real craft. Cate Blanchett plays Irina Spalko and Ray Winstone the double agent.
The refrigerator is the moment the film loses the audience and it happens twenty minutes in. Jones survives a nuclear detonation inside a lead-lined appliance, and the franchise’s own physical logic, punishing in all three earlier films, is abandoned in one shot. Janusz Kaminski shot it and John Williams returned for the score.
Shia LaBeouf’s Mutt is the succession plan that did not survive contact. The character is introduced as a greaser with a motorcycle, the reveal about his parentage is handled well, and the vine-swinging sequence with the monkeys ends any argument for him. It took over seven hundred and ninety million dollars.
The digital work is the deeper problem. The first three films are built on practical stunts with visible consequence, and this one replaces them with rendered jungle chases and a computer-generated waterfall sequence nobody can be hurt in. A fifth film followed in 2023 with James Mangold directing.
The Last Witch Hunter introduces four institutions and develops none, and the multiverse retires consequence outright. Count what you can pay for, in the World Builder’s Handbook.
5. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Later Sequels (2011, 2017) [full review]
► Read the full review of Pirates of the Caribbean: The Later Sequels (2011, 2017)
RLR: 4 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 6.6/10
"A premise that was complete after one film, extended twice more."
On Stranger Tides in 2011 and Dead Men Tell No Tales in 2017 both cost more than the films they followed and neither has a reason to exist. Together they took over two billion dollars. That is why they were made. Rob Marshall directed the fourth and Joachim Ronning and Espen Sandberg the fifth.
The first sequel removes the ensemble entirely. Bloom and Knightley are gone, Barbossa is repositioned, and the film is Jack Sparrow with new characters who have no history with him and nothing to react against. Penelope Cruz plays Angelica and Astrid Berges-Frisbey the mermaid. Depp is the only returning principal in both.
Ian McShane’s Blackbeard is a genuine antagonist wasted in a plot about a fountain. He has a daughter, a ship he controls by sorcery and a legitimate menace, and the film gives him a quest structure nobody in the audience was invested in. Brenton Thwaites and Kaya Scodelario lead the younger cast in the fifth.
Dead Men Tell No Tales makes the central error the series had avoided. It supplies Jack Sparrow with an origin, explains the compass, the hat and the name, and converts a character who worked because he was unreadable into somebody with a file. On Stranger Tides cost a reported three hundred and seventy-eight million dollars.
Javier Bardem’s Salazar is well performed and structurally redundant. A vengeful supernatural captain pursuing Sparrow for a past slight, the same antagonist the second and third films already used twice. Terry Rossio wrote both alone after Ted Elliott left the series. The series has not produced an entry since.
6. The Last Witch Hunter (2015) [full review]
► Read the full review of The Last Witch Hunter (2015)
RLR: 4 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 5.9/10
"A world worth more than the plot running through it."
Breck Eisner made a film Vin Diesel had been developing personally for years, built on a character he had played in tabletop campaigns. The passion is genuine and it does not reach the screen in any form. Cory Goodman, Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless share the screenplay credit.
The premise is decent. An immortal hunter cursed with eternal life by the witch queen he killed, a modern New York where witches live under a treaty, and an order of priests who serve as his handlers across generations. Rose Leslie plays the dreamwalker and Julie Engelbrecht the witch queen.
Michael Caine and Elijah Wood are both in it and both are given nothing. Caine plays the retiring handler, Wood the replacement, and the film’s central reveal about which of them is compromised is visible from the first scene they share. Lionsgate released it and it took around one hundred and forty-six million dollars.
The world-building keeps gesturing at material the film has no time for. A witch council, a black market in memories, a plague origin and a treaty nobody explains, all introduced and abandoned inside a hundred and six minutes. Steve Jablonsky scored it. Diesel has said he still wants a sequel.
7. Captain America: Civil War (2016) [full review]
► Read the full review of Captain America: Civil War (2016)
RLR: 4 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 7.8/10
"Poses a genuine question and resolves it with a videotape."
The Russos followed The Winter Soldier with the film that began the franchise’s transition from thriller to ensemble management, and the two pictures are separated by two years and an enormous drop in discipline. Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely wrote all three Captain America films.
The central argument does not hold. The Sokovia Accords propose oversight of enhanced individuals, a real question, and the film assigns the position to whichever character the plot needs on that side. Tony Stark’s reversal is written from the requirement backward. It took over one billion dollars against a budget around two hundred and fifty.
The airport sequence is the reason the film exists and it is choreographed with considerable skill. It is also a fight nobody in it wants, between people who have no reason to be there, staged so that nothing permanent can happen to anybody. Tom Holland and Chadwick Boseman both make their first appearances in it.
The actual thriller is buried underneath. Zemo’s plan is patient, personal and entirely achievable by an ordinary man with no abilities, and it works. That film is a good one and it has about twenty minutes of the running time. Trent Opaloch shot it and Henry Jackman returned for the score.
Daniel Bruhl is the best thing in it and the character is almost incidental to the marketing. A Sokovian intelligence officer who lost his family, who never fights anybody, and whose entire method is a recording and a room. Bruhl returned for the Disney Plus series five years later.
8. I Am Wrath (2016) [full review]
► Read the full review of I Am Wrath (2016)
RLR: 4 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 5.5/10
"Christopher Meloni is doing more than the script asks."
Chuck Russell directed John Travolta as an engineer whose wife is murdered and who turns out to have a black ops background, the most predictable possible version of this premise. The film does not vary it once. Russell had directed The Mask and Eraser earlier in his career.
Christopher Meloni is the entire reason to watch. He plays the old colleague who runs a barber shop, he gets every good line, and the film is visibly more alive whenever he is on screen than when he is not. Paul Sloan and Yvan Gauthier wrote the screenplay.
The plot connects the street-level killing to municipal corruption in a way that requires several coincidences, and the film treats the escalation as inevitable instead of as something it needed to construct. Amanda Schull and Sam Trammell appear in supporting parts. Nothing in the plot could not have been simpler.
Travolta produced it himself and the film went out with minimal promotion. It is competently shot, the action is legible, and there is nothing anywhere in it that has not been done better by a dozen other pictures. It went to a limited release and video on demand at the same time.
9. Gods of Egypt (2016) [full review]
► Read the full review of Gods of Egypt (2016)
RLR: 4 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 5.4/10
"A genuinely strange world, and nobody in it is interesting."
Alex Proyas spent around one hundred and forty million dollars on Egyptian gods who transform into metal animals and stand nine feet tall, so every scene between deities and humans had to be composited. It lost a substantial amount of money. Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless wrote it, as they had The Last Witch Hunter.
The scale problem is structural instead of technical. Gods and mortals are different heights, so almost no two characters were photographed together, and the film has a conversational stiffness it never overcomes. Nikolaj Coster-Waldau plays Horus and Gerard Butler plays Set. Proyas has discussed the difficulty since.
The casting was protested before release and Proyas responded publicly in terms that made it worse. Lionsgate issued an apology, an outcome that almost never happens, and the controversy was the only sustained attention the film received. Proyas had made Dark City and The Crow earlier in his career.
The design work has genuine ambition underneath the execution. A flat earth with a sun barge crossing it, an underworld with a weighing ceremony, and Geoffrey Rush as Ra fighting a serpent at the edge of the world every night. It was shot in Australia and Lionsgate released it in February 2016.
The fifth Pirates film explains where Jack Sparrow got the hat and the name, and the character shrinks in every scene afterward. Protect the gap in the Protagonist Handbook.
10. Avengers: Infinity War (2018) [full review]
► Read the full review of Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
RLR: 4 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 8.4/10
"Assembly at enormous scale, and it functions as half a film."
The Russos assembled the largest cast in commercial cinema and the film is the payoff for eighteen previous pictures. It took over two billion dollars and the structural achievement of keeping that many characters legible is genuine. Markus and McFeely wrote it and the Russos shot it back to back with Endgame.
Josh Brolin’s Thanos is the protagonist and the film is honest about it. The structure is his quest, the emotional arc is his, and the Gamora sequence on Vormir is the only material in the picture given room to develop. Alan Silvestri scored it and Trent Opaloch shot both films.
The problem is that nothing in it is a film on its own. It opens mid-situation, it closes mid-situation, and the entire last act is a reversal the audience knows will be undone because four more pictures were already scheduled. Zoe Saldana plays Gamora and the Vormir sequence is the film’s emotional center.
The Titan sequence is the best action and the closest it comes to a self-contained idea. A plan stated, executed, and failed by one character’s specific emotional weakness, the only time consequence attaches to anybody’s decision. It cost a reported three hundred and twenty-five million dollars.
The snap is the most discussed ending of its decade and it works entirely on production scale instead of story. The audience knows it is temporary, the film knows the audience knows, and the effect is spectacle instead of loss. Peter Dinklage appears as Eitri in the Nidavellir sequence.
11. Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018) [full review]
► Read the full review of Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018)
RLR: 4 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 7.0/10
"Competent in every department and consequential in none."
Peyton Reed returned with a film released two months after Infinity War and structurally required to ignore it. The plot concerns retrieving Janet van Dyne from the quantum realm and the stakes never rise above a family matter. Five writers share the screenplay credit including Paul Rudd.
The scale comedy is still the best thing the sub-series has. A building shrunk to luggage size and wheeled away, a salt shaker used as an obstacle, a Hot Wheels case full of vehicles. Reed understands what the premise is for. Laurence Fishburne plays Bill Foster and Walton Goggins the black market dealer.
Hannah John-Kamen’s Ghost is a genuinely sympathetic antagonist the film cannot commit to. She is in constant pain from an accident caused by the protagonist’s mentor, she is dying, and the picture resolves her with a treatment instead of an argument. Christophe Beck returned for the score.
Michelle Pfeiffer arrives in the last twenty minutes after a film built entirely on retrieving her, and the material she is given is a summary. Thirty years in a quantum realm delivered in about ninety seconds of dialogue. It took over six hundred and twenty million dollars.
12. Avengers: Endgame (2019) [full review]
► Read the full review of Avengers: Endgame (2019)
RLR: 4 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 8.4/10
"Among the most commercially successful films ever made, and it is a reunion."
The Russos closed twenty-two films with a three-hour picture that took over two and three quarter billion dollars. The scale of the achievement is real and the film is closer to a ceremony than to a story. Markus and McFeely wrote it and the Russos left Marvel afterward.
The first hour is the best material and the most unusual. Five years have passed, the loss was not reversed, Thor is broken and Hawkeye is murdering people, and for about forty minutes the film is about failure instead of a plan. Robert Downey Jr. had been playing the character for eleven years by this point.
The time heist is the structural device and it is a tour of the franchise. Each team returns to a previous film, the audience revisits eleven years of production, and the sequence is nostalgia deployed as a mechanism. It runs one hundred and eighty-one minutes, the longest in the franchise.
The final battle is the largest thing ever staged and almost none of it is legible. Hundreds of characters, a rendered landscape, and a sequence where individual action is impossible to track because the frame contains too much. Alan Silvestri returned and the Portals cue is the most-used in the sequence.
The Tony Stark ending is earned by eleven years and the film knows exactly what it has. The funeral is the most affecting five minutes in the franchise, and it works entirely on accumulated investment instead of anything the picture itself built. It cost a reported three hundred and fifty-six million dollars.
13. The MCU Phase 4 and Beyond (2021-present) [full review]
► Read the full review of The MCU Phase 4 and Beyond (2021-present)
RLR: 4 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 6.5/10
"Thirty-one projects across two phases, built to fill a streaming service."
The period after Endgame is the clearest demonstration available of what happens when a shared universe loses its organizing objective. Thirty-odd films and series with no stated destination, released at a rate nobody could follow. Kevin Feige has run Marvel Studios since 2007 and remains in charge of it.
The volume is the mechanism of the failure. Streaming series became required viewing, the release schedule moved to four or five entries a year, and the audience that had committed to eleven years of appointment attendance was asked to commit to considerably more. Disney Plus launched in 2019 and the series became part of the sequence in 2021.
Several individual entries are genuinely good and none of them accumulate. Werewolf by Night, the first two episodes of Moon Knight, Guardians Vol. 3 and the Wakanda Forever opening are all strong work inside a structure with no shape. Jonathan Majors was removed from the Kang role in 2023 following a conviction.
The multiverse premise removes consequence as a category. If every outcome exists somewhere, a death is a local event, and the franchise spent its own central asset, an audience that believed things happened permanently. Robert Downey Jr. was announced as Doctor Doom in 2024. Nothing in the run has felt permanent since.
The Kang plan collapsed for reasons outside the fiction and the recovery has been improvised in public. Doctor Doom was announced as a replacement with a returning actor in a different part, the multiverse being used to solve a casting problem. Deadpool and Wolverine took over one and three tenths billion dollars in 2024.
Speed 2 removes the one rule the original derived everything from, and Crystal Skull survives a nuclear blast in a fridge. Keep the constraint, using the Conflict and Tension Handbook.
14. Beyond the Poseidon Adventure (1979) [full review]
► Read the full review of Beyond the Poseidon Adventure (1979)
RLR: 3 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 4.6/10
"The same ship, upside down, with none of the reason to care."
Irwin Allen made a sequel to a film whose entire premise is that the survivors got out, and the solution is a second group entering the same overturned ship hours later. Michael Caine leads a salvage crew and Telly Savalas a rival one. Nelson Gidding wrote it from Paul Gallico’s own sequel novel.
The original works on a single mechanism. A ship is upside down, up is down, and every decision is about geography the audience can hold in their head. This film uses the same set and none of that discipline. Karl Malden and Veronica Hamel appear alongside Caine and Field.
The cast is extraordinary and wasted. Sally Field, Peter Boyle, Shirley Knight, Jack Warden and Slim Pickens all appear, and the film gives each of them a single trait and a position in a corridor. Warner Bros. released it in May 1979 and it lost money.
Allen directed it himself after producing the original, and the shift is visible. Ronald Neame had made the 1972 film a survival picture about ordinary people, and this one is a heist with a gun-running subplot inside a hull. Jerry Fielding scored it, six years after The Wild Bunch.
15. Avenging Angel (1985) [full review]
► Read the full review of Avenging Angel (1985)
RLR: 3 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 4.9/10
"Four years on, and the premise has nowhere left to go."
Robert Vincent O’Neil returned for the sequel to Angel with Betsy Russell replacing Donna Wilkes, and the recasting is the least of the problems. The character is now a law student and returns to the Boulevard to avenge the officer from the first film. Joseph Michael Cala co-wrote it with O’Neil as he had the first film.
The supporting cast from the original is the only reason it holds any interest. Rory Calhoun, Susan Tyrrell and Ossie Davis all return, and the film is at its best when it is simply letting them occupy the same street. New World released it in January 1985, a year after the original.
The tonal problem from the first film is worse here. The original could not decide between social realism and exploitation, and this one adds a revenge structure to the confusion without resolving either of the earlier registers. Two further sequels followed with a different lead each time.
It runs ninety-three minutes and the plot is a straight line. A mob boss, a series of confrontations, a rescue and a shootout in a construction site. Nothing in it develops and nothing in it surprises. Barry Sonnenfeld shot second unit early in his career.
16. Speed 2: Cruise Control (1997) [full review]
► Read the full review of Speed 2: Cruise Control (1997)
RLR: 3 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 3.9/10
"Speed works because a bus cannot slow down. A ship cannot do anything else."
Jan de Bont directed his own sequel, Keanu Reeves declined to return for a reported twelve million dollars, and the premise moves from a bus to a cruise liner. The change removes the one rule that made the first film work. Randall McCormick and Jeff Nathanson wrote the screenplay.
Speed is built on a bus that cannot drop below fifty miles an hour. A ship can slow down, stop, or be evacuated, and it moves at a speed that permits conversation, deliberation and a helicopter. There is no clock anywhere in the picture. It cost around one hundred and sixty million dollars and took under one hundred and seventy.
Willem Dafoe plays the antagonist as a man with a grievance and leeches, and the performance is committed to a character the film cannot make threatening. Jason Patric plays a different officer entirely and Sandra Bullock is the only returning principal. It won Razzies for Worst Remake or Sequel among several other categories.
The dock sequence at the end is a genuine practical achievement. A real ship driven into a real port set at speed, built at scale, and it is the only thing in the film with any physical weight to it at all. Mark Mancina returned for the score.
17. Batman & Robin (1997) [full review]
► Read the full review of Batman & Robin (1997)
RLR: 3 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 3.8/10
"Every character is a pun delivery system."
Joel Schumacher has apologized for it publicly more than once. That is both unusual and creditable of him. Warner Bros. wanted a toy-driven picture after Batman Forever outsold Batman Returns, and the studio got exactly what it asked for. Akiva Goldsman wrote it, as he had Batman Forever.
The Schwarzenegger casting is the central decision and it determined everything. Freeze was written as a tragedy about a man preserving his dying wife, the performer could not carry that, and the character was rewritten into a delivery system for ice puns. Chris O’Donnell returns as Robin and Alicia Silverstone plays Batgirl.
Uma Thurman is the only cast member who found a workable register. Poison Ivy is played as deliberate camp, the performance is pitched to the film that actually exists, and she is the sole element that reads as deliberate. It cost around one hundred and twenty-five million dollars and took over two hundred and thirty-eight.
The design is the durable legacy. Neon Gotham, the nipples on the suits, an ice truck, a motorcycle with no visible function, and a Batman credit card. The film’s own production team has described the mandate as selling toys. Elliot Goldenthal returned for the score.
George Clooney has spent thirty years making jokes about it and the self-deprecation is the film’s most successful afterlife. It killed the franchise for eight years and made Batman Begins possible, a genuine contribution. Warner Bros. cancelled the planned fifth film immediately afterward. Nolan rebuilt it from nothing in 2005.
Mr Freeze was written as a tragedy and rewritten into puns when the casting could not carry it. Write the part before you fill it, using the Antagonist Handbook.
18. The Mummy (2017) [full review]
► Read the full review of The Mummy (2017)
RLR: 3 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 5.4/10
"A franchise launch that forgot to be a film first."
Universal built a shared universe announcement into a single film and the picture spends its running time establishing an organization instead of telling a story. The Dark Universe was cancelled immediately afterward. Six writers share the screenplay or story credit on the finished film. Universal announced six films and made one.
Tom Cruise is miscast in a way that is structurally instructive. The part requires somebody who can be overwhelmed, and Cruise’s entire screen presence is competence under pressure, so the horror has nothing to work against. Annabelle Wallis plays the archaeologist and Jake Johnson the dead sergeant.
Sofia Boutella’s Ahmanet is genuinely good and given a plot that keeps interrupting her. The character has a coherent motive, the makeup and movement work are excellent, and she spends the middle hour in a containment cell. Alex Kurtzman directed and it cost around one hundred and twenty-five million dollars.
Russell Crowe’s Jekyll sequence is the clearest symptom. A twenty-minute detour explaining an organization the film has no other use for, delivered as exposition for sequels that were never made. Brian Tyler scored it and Universal cancelled the Dark Universe after release. The sequence exists purely to introduce Prodigium.
19. The Dark Tower (2017) [full review]
► Read the full review of The Dark Tower (2017)
RLR: 3 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 5.6/10
"Eight novels compressed into ninety-five minutes."
Nikolaj Arcel compressed eight novels into ninety-five minutes, the shortest adaptation of a major fantasy sequence anybody has attempted. The production went through multiple directors and a decade of development before this version. King published the first novel in 1982 and the last in 2004.
Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey are both well cast and both stranded. Roland is a man who has lost everything across a lifetime and the film gives him no time to have lost it in, and the Man in Black is charm with no established history.
The structure discards the books entirely. King’s sequence is a slow accumulation of a world, a language and a relationship between a gunslinger and a boy, and the film is a conventional chosen-one story with a portal. Tom Taylor plays Jake Chambers and Katheryn Winnick appears briefly.
The gunslinger material is the one thing that works. The reload, the creed recited, and the mechanical competence with a weapon are all handled properly, and the film has about four minutes of them. Sony released it in August 2017 and a planned television series never proceeded.
20. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022) [full review]
► Read the full review of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022)
RLR: 3 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 6.9/10
"Structurally compromised, and it requires a television series to make sense."
Sam Raimi took over after Scott Derrickson left and the film contains recognizable Raimi construction inside a franchise assignment. Dutch angles, a possessed corpse, and a genuine horror sequence involving a mirror dimension chase. Michael Waldron wrote it, having created Loki for Disney Plus. Derrickson retains an executive credit.
The Wanda decision is the film’s central problem. WandaVision spent nine episodes on grief and accountability, ending with her choosing to release a town she had enslaved, and this film opens with her murdering people to acquire children. Elizabeth Olsen plays Wanda and Benedict Wong returns as Wong.
The Illuminati sequence is well staged and structurally hollow. Five characters are introduced and killed within about eight minutes, the deaths are the point, and none of them exists for any reason other than to demonstrate a threat level. Danny Elfman scored it, a Raimi collaboration going back decades.
Xochitl Gomez’s America Chavez is given a power, a trauma and no characterization. She can punch through realities, she cannot control it, and the film resolves that by having somebody tell her she can. It took over nine hundred and fifty million dollars. Raimi had not directed since 2013.
The Raimi horror material is the best thing in it. The Wanda pursuit through the mirror dimension, the musical duel with notes as projectiles, and the Defender Strange corpse sequence are all more inventive than the franchise usually permits. Bruce Campbell appears in a cameo, as he does in every Raimi film.
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.
Butterfly and Sword (1993)
Michael Mak made a wuxia film with wire work so aggressive that performers travel through trees instead of past them. Michelle Yeoh and Tony Leung are both in it and the plot is close to impossible to follow.
Naked Killer (1992)
Clarence Fok made a Hong Kong assassin film that was banned and cut across several territories, with Chingmy Yau trained by an older killer in a school for exactly that. It is genuinely unlike anything else.
City Hunter (1993)
Wong Jing directed Jackie Chan in a manga adaptation that includes a Street Fighter sequence where Chan transforms into Chun-Li. Chan has disowned it and it is the strangest thing in his filmography.
Thunderbolt (1995)
Chan made a racing film with Mitsubishi providing the vehicles, and the pachinko parlour fight is the sequence everybody cites. He broke his pelvis during the shoot and the production continued around him.
Who Am I? (1998)
Chan co-directed and performed a slide down the sloped glass face of a Rotterdam office tower with no wires. The Netherlands sequence is the most dangerous thing in his late catalogue.
Mr. Nice Guy (1997)
Sammo Hung directed Chan in Melbourne and the horse carriage chase and the construction site finale are both well staged. The film exists mostly as a delivery system for two enormous set pieces.
Gorgeous (1999)
Chan made a romantic comedy with two fights in it, and both of them are against Bradley James Allan, who later choreographed Shang-Chi. The second is one of the best one-on-one bouts Chan ever filmed.
Twin Dragons (1992)
Chan plays twins separated at birth in a film directed by Tsui Hark and Ringo Lam together as a charity production for the Hong Kong Directors Guild. The car testing facility finale is inventive.
Dragon Lord (1982)
Chan spent months on a shuttlecock sequence that holds the record for the most takes of a single shot, and the pyramid climb involves dozens of performers. It failed commercially and he abandoned the period setting afterward.
Armour of God (1986)
Chan fractured his skull falling from a tree during production and nearly died. The cave finale with four fighters and a wind tunnel jump is the most ambitious thing in his eighties work.
Wheels on Meals (1984)
Chan, Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao in Barcelona, with a final fight against Benny Urquidez that is frequently cited as the best one-on-one sequence ever filmed. A candle is extinguished by a kick passing it.
Rumble in the Bronx (1995)
The film that finally made Chan a star in America, shot in Vancouver standing in for New York with mountains visible in several shots. He broke his ankle and finished the shoot in a painted cast.
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.
Aeon Flux (2005)
Charlize Theron adapted a stylistically radical animated series into a conventional dystopian thriller, and broke her neck during production. The source was built on ambiguity and the film explains everything.
Blackthorn (2011)
Sam Shepard plays an aged Butch Cassidy who survived Bolivia, a genuinely good premise attached to a pursuit plot that gives him nothing to reckon with. The landscape work is the only thing that lands.
Dylan Dog: Dead of Night (2010)
A long-running Italian comic about a supernatural investigator, adapted into a film that explains its own mythology in narration for most of its length. Brandon Routh is stranded in it entirely.
R.I.P.D. 2 (2022)
A prequel to a film that lost around a hundred million dollars, released direct to video nine years later with an entirely new cast. It exists for contractual reasons and reads that way.
The Marine (2006)
A wrestling promotion produced an action vehicle with no sense of geography and a protagonist who survives an explosion in a lake by swimming. Robert Patrick is the only person in it who looks like he is trying.
Ballistic Recoil (2011)
Steve Austin plays a former officer hunting a gang leader in a film where the entire town is complicit for reasons nobody states. The fights are competent and attached to a plot with no working logic.
What Do You Think?
Two things kill films in this tier: assembly instead of story, and compression instead of adaptation. Infinity War and Endgame are here on the first count and people will object. Tell me whether logistics can also be a film.
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