While The Oscars lacked in excitement to the point of netting its own hashtag ‘#OscarsSoBoring’ on Twitter last Sunday, let’s not forget The Golden Raspberry Awards which might as well be considered better, at least this year anyway. The Oscars will only award the best of the best (e.g. Best picture, Best Actor/Actress, Best Sound Editing etc.), The Golden Raspberry Awards (aka “The Razzies”) highlight the absolute worst to come out of the film industry within the last year. Sometimes, a film will be so bad, that it will ironically get an award for it, just so everyone can appreciate how truly awful it really is.
If you’re not familiar with the awards you receive at The Razzies, it’s basically similar to the type of awards you’d get at The Oscars, but this time, just for being the worst of the worst. While there’s been a number of awards given out, we’re going to count the top three “best” Razzie Award winners of 2018.
The Mummy (Award: Worst Actor (Tom Cruise)
The Mummy is one of those movies that has sadly become a victim of terrible remakes. The project for a modern remake of the franchise was actually announced back in 2012, and it seemed it was destined to fail right at the beginning. The project went through numerous directors, including Len Wiseman and Andres Muschietti. Surely at some point during this period of time, someone must have realised this was a bad idea from the beginning, right? Apparently not, because the project finally came to the big screen five years later, and resulted in negative reviews from critics. The film was criticised for its narrative, tone, acting and plot points, and was subsequently nominated for Worst Picture, Worst Director, Worst Actor, Worst Supporting Actor and Worst Supporting Actress. Luckily, the film only managed to win one Razzie out of all of those prestigious awards, which was the title of Worst Actor for Tom Cruise. Bad luck, Tom!
Credit: TheMummy
Fifty Shades Darker (Awards: Worst Supporting Actress (Kim Basinger), Worst Remake, Rip-Off or Sequel)
The original Fifty Shades trilogy is often criticised for its writing, characters and poor depictions of BDSM within the story (which in itself sparked controversy from BDSM participants). It is also compared a lot to the Twilight saga, which, believe us, is not a compliment. When the first film came out, it wasn’t surprising to see that that also got bad reviews, so was the sequel an exception? Of course not. Unsurprisingly, the franchise failed once again with a garbage sequel, winning Kim Basinger an award for Worst Supporting Actress, as well as Worst Sequel. Perhaps the third instalment in the trilogy should just be boycotted? Wishful thinking, but it’s doubtful, since it’s all about the money game, and there are the odd few who actually do enjoy this franchise.
Credit: FiftyShadesDarker
The Emoji Movie (Awards: Worst Picture, Worst Director, Worst Screenplay, Worst Screen Combo)
This is both unsurprising and hilarious, because undoubtedly, this is probably the worst animation film of all time. Just like The Mummy remake, this film was doomed from the start. With so much negative reception from just the teaser trailer alone, audiences and critics alike knew the film was going to be worse than garbage, and they were not wrong. The film was panned for many things – the story (most notably being similar to the likes of Inside Out and Wreck-It-Ralph), the confused plot and message, the unfunny jokes, and for being a shameless cash grab that shoved popular, real-world apps in our faces for a whole 86 minutes. If you actually went ahead and paid to see this in the cinema, you essentially just paid for 86 minutes of advertising time, so congrats! The Emoji Movie was described as “a real stinker” at the awards, and the Worst Screen Combo Award was given to any two of its “obnoxious emojis”. Well done to The Emojo Movie for winning four whole Razzies! Not bad for a film that was definitely not going to win any awards for being good.
Credit:TheEmojiMovie
So there we have it! While it’s good to appreciate the best in cinema in the past year, sometimes it’s equally great to celebrate the atrocities in film in the last year, too. Sometimes these bad films will fall under the “so bad, it’s good” category (The Room, anyone?), but the majority of the time, they’re just plain awful, hence why it’s amusing to watch them get showcased at The Razzie’s in the first place. We’re laughing at you, not with you, The Emoji Movie.
However, in the film industry nowadays, it doesn’t matter if the film is any good, as long as it just makes a profit off the back of the marketing campaign into deceiving the public into watching it, then that’s all fine. As long as the film doesn’t lose the studio tons of money, then it doesn’t matter.
<Story by Emily Clark>
Featured Photo Credit: The Nerd Stash