Topic: What's the Worst Thing You've Ever Seen in Cinema?

Greetings!

The question at hand is, "What's the Worst Thing You've Ever Seen in Cinema?". We mean this in a technical or artistic manner, not "what's the most morally dubious thing ever displayed on film", but rather, "what's the biggest artistic mistake you have ever witnessed in a movie". This can be poorly done opening titles or closing credits, it could be a terrible green-screen job, maybe it's a terrible acting job, or anything else which just screams to you that this doesn't seem like the quality one can expect from Hollywood's around 100 years of experience in the field of making movies.

If you want to describe a particular scene, or post a screenshot either would be great.

Hopefully this turns out to be an interesting discussion! mini/smile 

Thanks,

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Re: What's the Worst Thing You've Ever Seen in Cinema?

Good question!

Honestly, I haven't seen one movie in the cinema that I haven't at least enjoyed. It's not that I'm easy to impress, quite the contrary. It's just that I don't go to see movies unless I'm sure it's going to be my type of thing. The vast majority of the movies I watch, I watch at home. I didn't like the look of Doctor Strange from the trailer and I'm pretty fed up with Harry Potter movies at this point, so I'll wait to stream both Doctor Strange and Fantastic Beasts, rather than go and see it in cinemas. I hate the thought of watching something awful, and being stuck watching on the big screen. At home, if I find myself hating something, I'll just turn it off, and that's an option I like much more!

Re: What's the Worst Thing You've Ever Seen in Cinema?

Thanks for the response, and just to clarify,

This topic doesn't have to be about an entire film one doesn't like, but just the worst artistic mistake in a film. One mistake, however, doesn't mean one dislikes the whole film. For example, I greatly enjoyed the period film "Hugo" 2011, but I thought the opening title sequence in which the letters of the title just flashed onscreen in a font which seemed sort of futuristic was, to me, an artistic mistake, especially when today, we live in an era where beautiful and imaginative title designs are not just a possibility but are almost commonplace.

Re: What's the Worst Thing You've Ever Seen in Cinema?

Generally speaking the worst 'mistake' in films I've seen is bad pacing. That tends to be pretty unforgivable. I have gone to a few movies at Seattle International Film Festival where I didn't know anything about the pictures that were pretty bad, it's sort of the price of discovering hidden gems.

I think one of the worst screenings I ever saw was 'Alt World' in 2014, which was a collection of animated and live action experimental films, most of them were basically unwatchable, some of them induced physical pain with extremely questionable sound choices.

I can't find the other awful example but it was an Iranian film that used the Radiohead song 'Hunting Bears' for basically the films whole sound track, besides just reusing Hunting Bears over and over again the film wandered aimlessly and was just not engaging to watch.

Re: What's the Worst Thing You've Ever Seen in Cinema?

I feel like the entirety of the Last Airbender movie was the worst thing I've ever seen in cinema.  Almost everything about it was terrible.  I feel as if there was no decision made during the planning or production of the film which involved any sort of rational thought.  There are so many problems, the casting, the script, the cinematography, and such disrespect to the source material.

The only part of the film which is any good is the effects, which look remarkably lifelike.  It's almost as if some bad filmmakers just happened across some real benders.

But, other than that, I feel like the worst mistakes in movies are usually the more persistent ones, ones which you see in multiple movies, and several times in that same film.

One thing that really bugs me is editing errors.  For instance, two characters will be speaking, and the speaking character can be seen from the back of the head, however, the motion of their head and jaw do not quite match up to what you are hearing, as the sound and the visuals here are both from slightly separate takes.  I understand that the editor wants you to see the other actor's face and how they are reacting to the speaker's words, but I just can't stand such an obvious mistake right there on screen.
This happens in all sorts of films, although I remember noting it especially in Iron Man 2.  Even some of my most favourite film have this mistake.  Although, because of the nature of animated films, I don't think that they ever have this issue.

Another thing is overused stock sound effects.  In particular this specific horse vocalization, which can be heard in a great many films and TV shows, and oft times more than once in the same production.  I love Mulan, but I think that they use the same horse sound about seven times.  It also pops up in Pan's Labyrinth, and almost any movie featuring a horse.

Re: What's the Worst Thing You've Ever Seen in Cinema?

So it's like the Wilhelm of horses? The Wilhelm scream is another one of those sounds that's used in everything, admittedly as a joke between sound designers, that I'm sort of on the fence about. I like hearing it in something like Indiana Jones, Star Wars, super hero movies, that sort of thing. Films that aren't at all realistic, and you're always aware you're watching a movie anyway; I think it's fun. But when it pops up in really heavy films it annoys me how hard it takes me out of the experience. Just the other day I heard it used in WWI re-creation footage, and I was kind of appalled.

Re: What's the Worst Thing You've Ever Seen in Cinema?

There's a baby equivalent of the Wilhelm scream. I always refer to it as the '20th Century Fox' baby sound effect, because the 2 films I remember hearing it in first were Robots and Ice Age 3. Since then, I've noticed this overused sound effect, and I can't help but find it quite annoying.

Re: What's the Worst Thing You've Ever Seen in Cinema?

there's a cute baby's coo that I hear often.  Its glissandos very high and resolves with a pleasing cadence.  Anyone know what I mean as I try to describe this sound?

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Re: What's the Worst Thing You've Ever Seen in Cinema?

I've seen trailers for some films like Trolls, which looks like a terrible movie (but then I guess it's not targeted at my age range), but other than that I have enjoyed every film that I have ever seen.

In terms of particular scenes from movies, here is a list:

Note: I could go on for a while about the CGI mistakes in the Star Wars prequels, so I will forget about those just this once mini/wink

The opening of Star Wars: Rogue One was a bit disappointing for me, as you could easily tell that they used a model for Krennic's shuttle, and tried to use force perspective.

The Force Awakens had several scenes which strayed too close to the OT, like the locations, characters etc.

Lots of Marvel/DC films seem to have Superheroes who can survive 1000 punches, kicks, falls and still have the energy to run a marathon, which can sometimes take away the joy of watching a film.

There are also aspects of the film industry in general which I dislike, such as the tendency for characters to come out of water completely dry, a phone case changing colour between shots, handheld accessories appearing in the opposite hand etc.

About the Wilhelm scream, I don't really mind it being used in films (yes it is probably overused), although I have noticed that I can pinpoint the point of time in any of my favourite movies where there is a Wilhelm scream, so I have either seen them too many times or it is just used too much! mini/lol

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Re: What's the Worst Thing You've Ever Seen in Cinema?

In my opinion, Dreamworks only made one really good movie, The Prince of Egypt (How to train your Dragon isn't terrible, but it's not great.)
Probably some of the worst things I've seen would be some newer Dreamworks films. I don't like talking bad about films because I'll watch behind the scenes and they're really proud of it and did a lot of work.

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Re: What's the Worst Thing You've Ever Seen in Cinema?

Jack & Jill. I can't believe I allowed my parents to pick which movie to watch mini/bigsmile it was awful.

Re: What's the Worst Thing You've Ever Seen in Cinema?

I think the worst film I saw was the new sponge bob square pants movie it felt real rushed a lot of the scenes were cut out from the trailer, also the whole time traveling thing was really not important at all, I would of had them spend more time on the land and less in the water. But there still was some funny parts I just think they could of done better

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Re: What's the Worst Thing You've Ever Seen in Cinema?

Lucy. The film lost all dramatic tension when the main character became fundamentally unchallenged by the world around her. The film bases it's premise on the overused "Humans only use 10% of the brain" cliche and hypothesizes that once that percentage is breached, we basically become gods.

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Re: What's the Worst Thing You've Ever Seen in Cinema?

Haha, I only watched that yesterday! mini/lol I agree that it was a bit far-fetched, and kind of lost the plot quite a lot. I found it hard to keep watching it to be honest! I wouldn't say it was completely terrible, though.

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