The Worst Movies of 2013 Part 4

Here we are folks, we're nearing the end of this list of the year's worst movies. I've covered boring thrillers, comedies that aren't funny, big-budget fare that feels bloated and franchise-ruining sequels with Bruce Willis. But we're near the final five of movies I NEVER EVER EVER want to even think about again, or will even acknowledge exist.

But before I do, I want you all to know why I get angry at movies.

I get angry because when I see a movie in the theater, I want to know that my money is going to something worthwhile. The price of tickets these days are outrageous. I mean, when I went to go see "The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug" I was forced to pay an entry fee with a free ticket I had to go see the movie in an RPX theater (the only showing that was available that day I might add before they opened up more screens) and, even though I had a reward card to get a free small drink, I found myself convinced to get an extra dollar off if I got a small bag of popcorn, which cost me $5, in total, forcing me to pay $10 for the entire set up, basically, the price I would have paid if i saw a different movie at that theater.

And what do you know? I was left feeling like all the money I spent to that movie was a waste of my wallet as I felt that I could have waited until the movie was available to rent, which would have cost me $3.29 at my workplace and I have my own popcorn maker so I could have made my own bowl of popcorn without having to use artificial butter-flavored grease and use actual ingredients like shredded mozzarella cheese, garlic powder and real melted butter.

Plus, I at least have a remote control to stop the movie at any time, use the bathroom and then come back and not miss anything important.

THAT to me is what I deem important to a movie-going experience. To know that the money I spent was worth it. That I can go to a movie theater, see a movie and feel that the money I spent was rewarding to have spent it. Take a movie like "The Lone Ranger" where everyone seemed to hate on it to the point I flopped at the box office, yet when I saw it with my sister, we both had a blast even though I had expected a bad movie from what everyone was writing about.

And apparently, I wasn't alone in thinking the movie wasn't that bad:

"The first 45 minutes are excellent," enthused the director of Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs. "The next 45 minutes are a little soporific. It was a bad idea to split the bad guys in two groups; it takes hours to explain and nobody cares," he admitted. "[But] then comes the train scene—incredible! When I saw it, I kept thinking, 'What, that's the film that everybody says is crap? Seriously?'"

-Quentin Tarantino, Les Inrockuptibles Interview, October 2013

But I think I've delayed the inevitable far enough, let's finish this list so I can move on with my life after a rough month I've been subjected to…

- -

5. Grown-Ups 2

Good Job America, you managed to pay for this man to go on vacation with his friends and family under the pretense that they were "filming a comedy."

Give some credit to Rob Schnieder, he was smart enough to not get involved with this one.

In reality, you paid $10 to see this movie, you just paid Happy Madison Production for the creation of a movie that relies on bodily function jokes, racism jokes ("I think your mother is here from Mexico"), tired and yawn-worthy slapstick humor, unfunny stereotypes (one such example involves The Lonely Island giving a career worst by playing flamboyant male car wash cheer-leaders), jokes that are dated even for Adam Sandler (seriously, go into the street and ask any kid, without looking at their phone, who Flava Flav is. I guarantee, they'll think you're talking about a kind of juice) and the only thing that is guaranteed to make kids laugh: screaming…lots and lots of screaming, something I get on YouTube for free since people let Smosh and PewDiePie have careers online. Oh Adam Sandler stroking his fat ego while creating conflicts that could be easily solved by just, oh, I dunno, calling the police? Why should a bunch of frat boys be a problem that dictates a subplot of the movie when you could just call the police and charge them for disturbing the peace, harassment and intent. You have it in your legal rights, dumbass.

Every second of the movie is just one big "what the flying f**k" moment after another, asking yourself why you paid money for this, I still question how I talked myself into seeing this f*cking movie with the neighbor's kids when I should have been more adamant about seeing "Pacific Rim," as dull as it was, at least Guillermo del Toro doesn't try to insult your intelligence. Adam Sandler doesn't remotely give a sh*t and he counted on you to not care in the slightest about leaving your kids to go and see a movie that only juveniles would laugh at.

But you know what's the most insulting thing about this movie is? The piss-poor excuse it gives to try and make "characters" to try and keep you involved when even a casual movie goer would tell that there is so little effort or heart put into the scenes of "character development." There's a subplot of David Spade learning he has a son, played by Alexander Ludwig, that kid we thought would have a career after "The Seeker: The Dark is Rising" but turns out didn't cause he wisely decided to go back to school and get a theatre major (trust me bud, I don't blame you) and yet, here he is, clearly not giving a crap about his career playing the typical rebellious disconnected teenager who reconnects with his illegitimate father for the sake of forcing the audience to give an emotional reaction as though that's suppose to juxtapose all the lame and unfunny jokes we were forced to sit through.

Hell, that sums up literally everyone who was in this piece of sh*t.

"Stone Cold" Steve Austin? He clearly is only here for an easy paycheck and to play a character that could easily kick Sandler's ass, but doesn't cause "he wants him to look good."

Shaquille O'Neal?….well he stopped caring a long time ago, but hey, easy money.

Jon Lovitz? It's not like "The Critic" is back in production so what else is there for him to do but take an easy paycheck?

Patrick Schwarzenegger?  That just goes to show his father was too smart for Sandler.

All the behind the scenes clips I would see promoting this movie had the cast force smiles for the camera and say that "they were having fun," yes, having fun demeaning themselves by being in an unfunny Adam Sandler movie, you can just tell these people want to be here.

But hey, I think everyone in Hollywood has realized that they really have to try when it comes to Adam Sandler movies. They just have to appear long enough to get a paycheck and America will inexplicably make said movie a big hit.

Now I hear Adam Sandler is making another vacation video disguised as a movie called "Blended," how do I know it's a vacation video? Because the movie is set in Africa and, from what I'm gathering from the trailer, it'll have people calling each other names as though they're 5 year-olds, African stereotypes, and some of Adam Sandler's Happy Madison buddies coming in to collect on the paycheck and enjoy the hotel suites that America will be more than happy to pay for.

Why?

Because Adam Sandler treats you like idiots and somehow, you keep proving him right every time.

4. After Earth

You know something, I finally figured out why Will Smith chose M. Night Shyamalan to direct this movie.

And it had nothing to do with M. Night's abilities as a director or his last few movies.

He was chosen to be the movie's scapegoat.

Think about it, why would ANYONE choose M. Night Shyamalan when his name sends chills down any casual movie-goer's spine? Will Smith himself knew that and he intentionally called him so Shyamalan could take the fall while Will Smith would play the victim card.

But you don't fool me Will, you didn't cover your money trail which leads to your production house Overbrook Entertainment, the same company responsible for "Wild Wild West," "Seven Pounds" and "This Means War."

Also, Will Smith is credited for writing the story. A story that probably could have cost less money to make had it taken a more realistic setting and removed any of the science-fiction elements and gone with the idea Will originally intended of a man who sends his son out into the dangerous wilderness to go get help. But he figured he might be able to make more money if he made it a sci-fi film than a drama. I blame Will Smith for this because it's his money that went into making this movie and forcing his son to be into this movie and as this movie has demonstrated: Jaden Smith cannot act.

"But Alec!" you all say, "Jaden was actually pretty good in the Karate Kid remake!" Yes, he did all right in that movie, but that's because Jaden had an in competent director who could work with young people (as demonstrated with "Agent Cody Banks" (a movie that I am REALLY not looking forward to reviewing in the future) and his most recent failure, "The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones") and writers who at least took advantage of the material given to them and managed to combine elements of Chinese culture with the basic idea of the original film. But the fact that Jaden Smith got the part obviously had NOTHING to do with his parents being the producers of the movie who, in no way WHATSOEVER pulled any strings.

The major problem with this movie, more than anything, is that Jaden Smith lacks the experience to carry a movie like this. Whenever he's trying to be emotional, he comes off as whiney, whenever he tries to act tough, he looks like a kid who calls you names at school. 

His father is pushing him into becoming a leading actor, but unlike Will, Jaden didn't have a television show that ran for six seasons, allowing him to further his experience as an actor and explore the acting spectrum.

Jaden's only talent, or so it seems, is making lousy music that nobody cares to listen to, unless you count his sister who is only popular because she made a notoriously bad song.

But enough bashing on the Smith family.

Apart from incompetent acting, this movie is really stupid.

How can there be low oxygen on Earth when the planet is covered in plants, shouldn't that generate MORE oxygen?

How does a giant bird mistake a sky-diving kid for a baby chick when it's baby chicks can't even fly yet?

Why the hell were the humans carrying something that looks like lung cancer in their ship when it's so dangerous?

If this movie is set years after humanity left it, where are all the ruined buildings? 

Why would Jaden be stupid enough to climb on top of an active volcano to send out a beacon?

Why does giving a blank stare confuse the lung cancer monster?

UGH!

I forgot to mention, this movie was co-written by Gary Whitta, the guy who wrote "Duke Nukem Forever." I'd make a joke on expecting disappointment, but honestly, now I'm imagining if M. Night Shyamalan replaced Jaden Smith with Duke Nukem, it probably might have made the movie slightly cooler.

Slightly Cooler. He'd at least drop more one-liners than Jaden Smith.

3. The Purge

As someone who has had experience in the television and movie industry and their concept of marketing, it should be noted that calling a movie "original" is a fallacy since there hasn't been an original idea for over 300 years. The term "originality" is really just a way of repackaging the idea and selling it off as something different. If you look at any movie that has been hailed as "original" you can trace it's inspiration and origins all the way back to the early years of cinema and go back even further to literary inspirations.

Need an example? All right.

Take the movie "Inception," a movie people have claimed to be original when the director admitted to being inspired from "The Matrix," a movie that took numerous ideas from other movies, the most notable being the 1995 Japanese movie "Ghost in the Shell," a movie based off a manga which took inspiration from 1982's "Blade Runner," which was a movie that was based off a novel by Phillip K. Dick who wrote the novel based on his paranoia with the government.

What's the point I'm trying to make here?

The point I'm trying to make is that even a movie/novel/television show has had some inspiration from another source where that source took inspiration from something else, but it's about the presentation and the repackaging of that idea that can inspire people to want to do something just as good or annoy and anger people who see through the glitter and bows to see that the gift is nothing special.

But is that a bad thing?

Not always.

But for me, it is about how you repackage the idea and the people who repackaged the idea of a home invasion film did have a creative existing idea and combined it with the existing theme of the home invasion film. So for that, I do have to at least give them some credit for coming up with an interesting idea to sell.

The problem is, when you actually see the movie, the idea has enough holes in it that you do have to question if anyone actually thought this all the way through.

The movie is about a future where the government has managed to lower crime and unemployment in American through an yearly event where people are allowed to kill people in 12 hours…and right away you would be smart in comparing this to "The Hunger Games" meets "Panic Room."

Again, I applaud creative thinking, but this movie's idea of the Purge has so many holes in it. How is this annual event of mass murder supposed to keep order in the United States? If all services are closed off during the event, how would you be able to fence off the things you stole? If you raped someone during the Purge, would that rape still be legal when it's over? Could that person still sue the perpetrator after The Purge is over? The movie does explain that government officials are to be left unharmed, but then that just leaves another question; what if someone broke into your house to take their money and they left them unharmed and if they did murder a state senator or governor, how would anyone know? The police services are suspended during this time so it's not like they can run out and get the body. Also, for that matter, if emergency services are disabled, what if someone, like say the elderly, have a heart attack and yet none of the attackers did anything? What if someone was just sitting comfortably at home with their security systems on and they fell over and dislocated their hip or hit their head? Are you telling me they can't use a Life Alert or some kind of emergency call to help them when it's an action that wasn't caused by The Purge? What if someone killed themselves? It's an act that wasn't caused directly by The Purge, also, what if there's a child in the house? Are you just gonna let them fend for themselves? You can't at least end an armored police car out to go help a poor child whose parents were killed by these murderers of The Purge?Also, what if there's a fire? Are you just gonna let a building burn down? What if the building belonged to a senator and it was on fire and he was stuck inside? Are you saying you can't help the poor guy?

Another thing, how is THIS supposed to keep order? What if someone decided to kill someone even after The Purge was over? Are you really expecting us the audience to believe that this 12 hour period is enough to let everyone get their anger out of their systems and then they'll be fine for the rest of the year until next year?

You see? Questions like this keep from making a movie this illogical from being enjoyable.

I also find it rather depressing that this year had two terrible movies Ethan Hawke was in when the guy is a decent actor, just look at the movie he co-wrote and starred in from this year "Before Midnight." I mean, come on dude, how is it that you managed to get on this list twice?

Speaking of acting, it's terrible. The level of acting seems to go between "Obnoxiously Annoying" and "Sadistically Inhuman," there are no actual likable characters in this frozen turkey of a movie when the requirement for making a home invasion film is to have a likable main character that we, the audience, want to see succeed against their attackers.

These characters are so despicable I found myself calling up a friend if he could suggest a website where I could sign a form to get a new main character for a movie that doesn't use it's intelligent idea to it's full potential.

He suggested Craigslist.

2. 47 Ronin

Regardless of my criticisms for the previous movies on this list, we can take ease knowing the characters these movies came from were not real.

Giant Robots battling monsters may be exciting when it's not focusing on the more dull story-telling elements, but they're not real, so there's no harm done.

Carrie herself is just a fictionalized 

Superman is not exempt from moral punishment, but we can take comfort knowing he's not a real person and each version of superman comes from a particular vision of how someone draws him (which someone decided to make him a guy who really needs a hug). Again, no actual harm done.

A bunch of overly patriotic nutcases manage to take over the White House as the president and some secret service agent manage to evade them all, but they're not real, it's all fictional.

Adam Sandler…well he damages brain cells, but even he never takes himself serious enough to try and pass himself off as "deep" or "meaningful." Sure, there is pain to watching, but he's at least not playing anyone who existed in real life.

Ronin 47 is a different case.

The story of the forty-seven ronin is a tale of leaderless samurai (known as Ronin) who were trained by their master to follow the bushido code of conduct, which included complete loyalty to the feudal lords that owned particular land in Japan, they were also known as Daimyos. If the samurai failed to protect his master or afield to serve him properly, he was expected to kill himself to honor their lords, lest they live their lives in dishonor.

The story itself tells of a shogun official named Kira Yoshinaka who was assigned to train two daimyos in the ways of court etiquette, Asano Naganori and Kamei Sama. Although they offered gifts to Kira, he refused them as he found them inadequate gifts to be given to someone of his status (remember, this is shogun Japan, the class system was very important) so he took out his anger on Asano and tormented him during his lessons. It got to the point where Asano lost his patience and tried to kill Kira, but Kira did not fight back as he was restricted by law to draw a sword inside the wall of the castle. For breaking this law, Asano was forced to commit seppuku. This forced the shogun officials to confiscate all of Asano's belongings, leaving his family out in the streets and all of his warriors reduced to be ronins, which, in layman's terms, marked the samurais as homeless people who didn't even have a steady income to provide for themselves.

Now remember what I said about samurai being expected to kill themselves to follow their master into the afterlife? Well, of Asano's 320 warriors, only 47 refused and, led by Oishi Yoshio, decided to seek revenge on their master and kill Kira. But they decided to take their time until Kira felt safe knowing that nobody would kill him for what he did to Asano, each of them taking odd jobs to learn about the castle and find a way inside. 

After two years, the ronin finally attacked the castle, surprising the guards, all 50 of them, who ran out shoeless in the snow to fight. The ronin fought their way until they found Kira hiding in a storage shed, demanding he kill himself with the same sword used by Asano. When he refused, Oishi beheaded the tyrant. Afterwards, all the samurai returned to the grave of their master, being cheered by crowds who heard of their action, where they were arrested and tried and ordered to commit seppuku. Following the orders of feudal lords, Oishi Yoshio, his teenage son and the other 46 ronin all killed themselves and were buried along with their daimyo, with one anonymous ronin who wasn't there who went on to tell of the tale until he died a very old man.

And you know what's interesting about all this?

This all actually happened.

No bullsh*t.

This was about actual people who had decided to disregard their vows to kill themselves after their masters were killed to go and murder the man responsible for their master's death so that his spirit may rest. This was a story that had been passed down for generations in Japan as a story promoting courage and self-sacrifice to remind the people of Japan that samurai were still honor-bound 

This movie just takes a sh*t on that story and throws it at you, not even caring about the actual people who died.

It has characters named from the story, but it doesn't follow the story correctly, forcing in a white "half-breed" character who never existed, a Japanese witch who never existed, a daughter who was never in the actual story, fantasy elements that was never part of the story, giant monsters who were also not part of the story and a giant fire-breathing dragon that the Ronin never actually fought as well as killing off Ronin during the movie when the Ronin didn't die until they were all arrested and Oishi's son was not spared the fate of seppuku, he killed himself along with his father.

Choosing this movie to be on this spot isn't about over-bloated computer effects, it isn't about bad acting and it isn't even about it's half-assed themes or that, for all it's hot air, it's a really boring movie...

"47 Ronin" makes this list because it clearly does not care about the actual story of the people who literally risked their place in the afterlife just to avenge their master when he was unjustly forced to kill himself. 

It's not only the most boring movie of the year, it's also the most offensive one of the year.

This movie doesn't care to look at those elements, it's more interested with throwing in boring subplots to characters, CGI landscapes, fantasy elements like super fast Tengu monks, CGi witches who can turn into a dragon.

Yet despite all these elements, the movie doesn't dazzle or impress in the slightest and with the mindset that this movie is literally pillaging the graves of the actual people by forcing them into a movie that disregards all the hard work and precise planning they set themselves out to do for a fantasy movie that leaves the audience wishing they saw "The Wolf of Wall Street" or "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" instead.

So then, what is my pick for worst movie of the year?

Movie 43? Pff, if I was stupid enough to subject myself to this "thing" it would have made the list, but I didn't because I couldn't find anyone to watch this with. If I'm going to suffer through watching a bad movie, I prefer to have a victim suffer with me to prove I'm sane.

The Lone Ranger? I can't really put something on my list if I liked it. Just because everyone else hated it, don't mean I'll follow their example.

The Starving Games? Again, I never saw it and can you blame me? It never came to theaters. It was never advertised anywhere. It just goes to show that people are starting to catch on that these parody movies from these jokers is just a waste of your money, especially when we had to suffer from "Scary Movie 5" earlier in the year, why would anyone suffer through another one? Hell, I didn't even know it existed until December of 2013 when Dim432 wouldn't shut up about it, which only goes to show that hating on something that nobody has heard of, he pretty much did the advertising for Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer for them. Good work Dim, or "the reviewer," you just helped advertise a movie that got practically no major advertising or even made it's way to major multiplexes. Had you not said a word abbot this movie, I would have lived a happier life being ignorant of it's existence and not giving it any thought.

Diana? Again, I never saw this one, I didn't even know it existed until after the year was over, but I hear it's pretty bad.

Jobs? I almost included it on the list for being really dull and saying nothing remotely interesting about the guy.

Well I think I've delayed the inevitable long enough.

My pick for #1

Worst

Movie

Of

2013

IS…

1. Epic

I somehow knew as I walked out of the movie theater, I somehow knew…more than Adam Sandler, more than M. Night Shyamalan, more than Zach Snyder; this movie would be my #1 pick for worst movie of the year.

A Good Day to Die Hard is only insulting to Die Hard fans, but younger people who have never seen an action movie past 1999 would probably think little of it and might like it, but care so little about it's plot and characters.

Man of Steel is a case of beauty in the eye of the beholder (if you get the meaning) and, while it's not offensive on a grand scale, it only insults if you take the source material that seriously and you feel uncomfortable with the presentation.

Grown-Ups 2 was insultingly bad, but it knew that it had no wit to it and it treated you as such.

Ronin 47 was offensively bad to the graves of real people who died to get revenge for their master.

Epic is insulting because it tricks you into seeing a movie that makes no effort whatsoever to try to repackage an all-to-familiar idea that we've seen in movie like "Avatar" and "Ferngully: The Last Rainforest." 

It doesn't care, resorting to having to stoop to the lowest common denominator to entertain it's audience of 5 year-olds through flashy vibrant imagery, recycled character and story threads as well as obnoxious joke-telling Gastopoda who are NEVER funny and only serve to annoy the hell out of logical-minded adults.

The story is unoriginal though it tries to pass itself off like it's hip and cool, but come on, Avatar isn't even that old, I'm sure people remember four years ago the biggest movie rip-off to ever come and steal money from our wallets and convince us that "it had a deep message to make." Only this movie just seems to forget that message in favor of just having a conventional good vs. evil premise, only without making the good characters interesting enough to make me care about their cause or making the evil characters all that threatening. 

Really, if you kinda think about it, so what if they win? The entire location is set in just one forest that's far away from most major cities, so what's really at stake to lose? If the Leaf-Men lose against the Electric Boogaloo and they destroy the forest, so what? Their interests only seem limited to just the forest, I don't hear them planning to rule the world or anything, they just don't like the color green. This is a problem that could be solved through hiring an exterminator to spray the entire forest.

The characters are so stock and recycled that they're not even worth the money the celebrities were paid just to bring in audiences. Especially since none of them are worth the text they're paid to say. Amanda Seyfried doesn't do anything with her character other than make her seem shallow and uncaring towards her father, who also feels like a waste of money to hire the son of a bitch from "We're the Millers"….wait, he was also in Movie 43 wasn't he? Well that's another reason to hate him then. I had never really heard of Aziz Ansari before this movie but I hear he's supposed to be funny, you sure wouldn't get that impression from watching this movie playing a slug who makes some of the most groan-inducing jokes that make me want to find the bastard who wrote those jokes and smack them with a typewriter.

Would you ever look at this kind of movie and say "Yeah! The oh-so "memorable" character of Queen Tara could only be voiced by Beyoncé Knowles! She's perfect!" "What's that? We got Pitbull? Eh, let's have him voice a pointless character who has no real purpose in the overall story, but let's keep him in so we can officially have his name on our posters!" "Steven Tyler wants in on this? Well, he is a judge for American Idol, guess we need all the advertising we can get, let's just give him the character of a glow worm…it's the best we could do…"

It becomes obvious to me months after seeing the movie that the studio behind this movie, Blue Sky Studios, did not genuinely give a sh*t, but considering they made four Ice Age movies, when have they ever given a sh*t? They depended on the audience coming in to not give a sh*t about spending their hard-earned money to let their stupid kids eat a ton of sugar and laugh at all the candy-coated images while their parents would sit nearby, asking themselves why they didn't have a condom on before conceiving the nuisance that dragged them into this annoyance they paid $30 to go see, oh wait, I nearly forgot to add the price of concessions…

But you know what really bugs me about this movie? The inappropriate use of the title.

I was originally going to list off a definition of the word "epic" but it only seemed to counter my point, especially when, if you really think about it; how exactly is this movie epic?

Is it the large scale? Well, it's just a forest from the perspective of someone small, so, no, it doesn't really boast epic in the terms of being spectacular, in fact, it makes this big world feel restricted; kind of like a video game level that has invisible walls to keep you in one place. I had commented before that the animation doesn't feel very life-like as it makes the environment and characters look as though they had been made out of plastic. 

Not very epic, is it?

What is so epic about Beyoncé? Or Pitbull? or Steven Tyler? Or Colin Farrell? Or Josh Hutcherson?

F*cking nothing I'll tell you that, they're just in the movie to deceive people into coming to see it thinking if these big name stars are in it, it has to be ooh enough for my money.

And that's the main word I use to describe this movie.

Deception.

Deception because there is nothing to enjoy from this microwaved movie that has nothing new to offer.

Deception by throwing out big name stars who play characters that you could pretty much take from every other family movie and you would get this cast.

Deception because you could have seen something more worthwhile but instead, you were fooled into seeing this movie.

No, I refuse to accept that.

We deserve better than that.

I deserved better than that.

All these movies/TV shows I review, both good and bad, do I get ANY recognition or appreciation for putting myself on the line to try and inform and educate as well as entertain you all?

No.

I don't.

I get jack sh*t for all the research and time I spend for the content I write up.

You know what I do get for my trouble?

I get people who tell me I'm wrong for speaking my mind and only back up their argument with stealing the words of others to make themselves sound more intelligent

or people who can't stand to see someone else challenge their viewpoints so they passively aggressively try to coerce me to say I'm wrong and if I refuse to back down, I'm treated as the villain

or people who have nothing intelligent to say and they just throw around profanity like "sh*tbird" and "failed abortion" and go so far as to write a critical nitpick against my own outdated nitpicking on their own separate URL blog and literally bully friends and loved ones into agreeing with their opinions as well as sending out fellow fans to bully me because they can't accept differing opinions when they would never behave like this in front of me in real life.

That is what I get from you.

That is what my time is worth to all of you.

That is what 2013 meant for me.

…but I have confidence in the new year…sure, it hasn't exactly gotten off to a fine start, but I truly have confidence for the possibilities this new year will hold and, quite hopefully, we can get some much better movies this time around...