Hey guys, I’m Kya, and I want you to break out the bubbly,
put on the Post Malone and say,
Congratulations,
Because you made it through 2017!
It was a pretty huge year for us nerds.
Hollywood made some big moves,
and a lot of their gambles really paid off,
But for every ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming’ there are about six more ‘Geostorms.’
We’re going to talk about the bright spots later this week,
but we wanted to dish on all the bad stuff first.
That’s why our very first end-of-year awards are all about
The Worst of 2017
We’re not doing anything formal like ranking every movie,
Instead we’re going for the high-school yearbook approach with a few superlative awards,
Like our first category,
Shittiest CGI Villain
Nothing drags down a superhero movie like a weak villain,
and we’ve seen some extremely lame bad guys on both sides of the aisle.
But this year, Marvel bucked the trend with more memorable antagonists like Ego, the Vulture,
and Hela.
I mean more memorable than Faux Mandarin,
the dude with the yellow jacket,
and that Drow from Dungeons and Dragons.
I mean from 'Thor.'
They're taking one step but I'm still like 'talk to me when you get to Joker 'Dark Knight'
level.
Ta-da!
It's gone!
There’s no doubt this year’s MCU villains were a step up.
but DC hasn’t quite figured out that piece of the puzzle yet.
Even an awesome movie like ‘Wonder Woman’ boiled down to a CGI slugfest at the end.
Our runner-up Ares started out interesting.
He spends most of the movie in human form,
with a decent little mystery surrounding his true identity.
Then, when it’s time for the final battle,
he just transforms into a big Sauron knockoff for fifteen minutes of greenscreen punching.
At least we got to see Ares’ human side, unlike our winner
Steppenwolf.
I understand why they wanted to save Darkseid for a ‘Justice League’ sequel,
he’s basically the final boss of the DC Universe.
He’s also more-or-less the same character as Thanos, just without the buttface.
Even though Darkseid came first, I get that you want to avoid as much comparison to ‘Infinity
War’ as possible.
But it’s completely baffling to me why they chose his uncle Steppenwolf as the force that
unites the League.
Just imagine if the villain of a ‘Star Wars’ movie was some random Imperial general...
We were this close to providing peace, security for the galaxy.
You're confusing peace with terror.
Well, you have to start somewhere.
Alright, I guess they pulled it off,
but that’s because they were well-written roles performed by excellent actors,
not a dude yelling in a studio with a bunch of mocap dots on his face.
I mean, at least Snoke isn’t even trying to resemble Andy Serkis.
I think studios vastly overestimate the star power of a CGI villain that vaguely looks
like someone you’ve seen on TV,
but hopefully Thanos has some death--
I mean depth,
when we finally get to know him in 2018.
Up next is the award for
Failiest Franchise
After the MCU debuted ten years ago,
Every big studio in Hollywood wanted in.
2017 was the year we started seeing some of their plans come to fruition,
most of which hilariously shat the bed at the box office.
It wasn’t all bad.
Legendary Pictures ‘Monsterverse’ might have some legs,
thanks to a strong showing by ‘Kong: Skull Island,’
And ‘Justice League,’ while not being the ‘Avengers’ killer DC was hoping for,
has at least given the DCEU a decent platform to grow on.
But for every successful start there are a dozen more franchises that begin dead in the
water.
The bigwigs behind ‘Power Rangers’ must have been on a sugar high from all those Krispy
Kreme donuts,
Krispy Kreme.
This is a special place.
because they were talking about a six-movie story arc before their reboot bombed.
I give it two thumbs down!
Me too!
Meowth three!
Remember the Guy Ritchie ‘King Arthur’ film?
It was a beautiful movie with amazing fight scenes and Littlefinger and Dumbledore are
in it,
and I wish more people besides me actually saw it.
Maybe if they did, the studio would have gotten to make their planned cinematic universe with
every member of the round table.
Everything's so clear!
I can see!
I CAN FIGHT!
Here you go!
But even that’s not as tragic of a flop as our winner,
Tom Cruise’s two-hour long midlife crisis called
‘The Mummy.’
Yo first off, frick this movie.
It was supposed to jumpstart the ‘Dark Universe,’
a planned cinematic universe starring Universal’s classic stable of monsters.
That is way too many universes for one sentence,
which kinda tells you what a mess the whole thing is.
The studio had already figured out the concept back in the ‘40s,
with all kinds of crossover movies like ‘Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man’ and ‘House of Dracula,’
But this time around, they just decided to blatantly copy the Marvel formula.
Who are you?
I'm a doctor.
‘The Mummy’ introduced its own SHIELD knockoff called “The Prodigium,”
and revamped Dr. Jekyll as a second-rate Nick Fury.
Welcome to Prodigium, Mr. Morton.
From the Latin 'Monstrum vel Prodigium.'
A warning of monsters.
It’s bullshit.
This entire movie was bullshit.
Also frick you Universal for getting my hopes up, not once but twice.
Like first Dracula, now this.
Like, Christ, Jesus.
I just cannot believe they built this movie up and they're like:
'We're gonna launch the, this fricking uni--"
Can you imagine a horror movie cinematic universe?
This is what I wanted.
And this is what they took from me.
I'm sorry.
I was so excited and they ruined it!
‘The Mummy’ was laughed out of the box office,
and the Dark Universe was DOA.
Look, we’re never rooting for something to fail,
But sometimes it’s hard not to laugh at Hollywood hubris.
Welcome to a new world of gods and monsters.
When your movie is shitty, like the Mummy absolutely was,
you’re not going to change our minds by jamming a twenty minute infomercial in the
middle.
Our next award is for
Most Awful Adaptation
2017 wasn’t the biggest year for original ideas.
Besides awesome exceptions like ‘Get Out,’ Hollywood continued to mine existing IP for
ideas,
and the quality ranged from excellent to straight-up awful.
I don't remember much.
Just fragments.
Stephen King’s ‘It’ dominated the box office,
And despite big differences from the source material, it stuck close to the spirit and
the scares.
Meanwhile, ‘Ghost in the Shell’ sparked a lot of controversy, to say the least,
but the live-action anime felt completely sterile next to the trailblazing original.
‘Valerian’ was a noble experiment in translating a classic French comic to the screen,
but the execution made no sense to American audiences.
And Baywatch…
Well, not even the Rock could save the ‘Baywatch’ movie,
This has nothing to do with saving people!
This is Baywatch you wimp!
but plenty of adaptations made bank at the box office.
The completely unnecessary ‘Beauty and the Beast’ remake might have been the highest-grossing
movie of the year,
but it turned a crisp 80-minute story into a bloated slog that was twice as long as the
classic original.
I was still a beautiful movie and if anyone wants to fight me they can @ me.
Evermore was beautiful, okay?
You are the most gorgeous thing I've ever seen!
Nobody deserves you.
That’s why it’s only the runner up for Worst Adaptation,
just below another Stephen King joint called
‘The Dark Tower.’
Condensing a sprawling, 8 book series into a single film is no easy task,
but I can’t imagine a worse way to go about it.
The movie chops up bits and pieces from King’s magnum opus,
and sprinkles them on top of a generic story that shits on the lore and loses everything
that made the epic saga special.
It’s even more tragic because the casting is spot on,
and the trippy post-apocalyptic fantasy of the books is the perfect setting for a cinematic
epic.
Above all, ‘The Dark Tower’ is a huge waste of potential.
It could have been the birth of a massive series that tied every Stephen King adaptation
together,
but it’s gonna be a long time before we pass through the door to Mid-World again.
‘The Dark Tower’ just barely missed out on our last award,
The Biggest Disappointment
For the most part, movies in 2017 lived up to our high expectations
or, like ‘Logan’ and ‘Wonder Woman,’ blew them away.
But despite all the triumphs, the year crushed plenty of fans' hopes and dreams.
I know I was really looking forward to ‘Alien: Covenant,’
but all it added to the series was a baby xenomorph and Michael Fassbender’s sexual
chemistry with himself.
And, no spoilers, but judging from the extremely polarized reaction to ‘The Last Jedi’
a lot of fans are not happy with the way the Star Wars Galaxy is heading.
Still, the reviews are solid and it’s making plenty of money,
so it can’t be as big of a letdown as ‘Justice League.’
It was supposed to reinvigorate the stumbling DCEU, and there’s still a lot to like about
it,
but it will forever be defined by the utter fiasco around Henry Cavill’s moustache.
Not that I could notice, but hey I’m just there to see a movie, not analyze someone’s
facial hair.
I'm just here for a good time, guys.
Yeah!
I know there are tragic circumstances behind ‘Justice League’s’ uneven quality,
and I really hope we get to see the mythical 3-hour Snyder cut at some point,
but how can anything be more disappointing than some facial hair torpedoing an entire
cinematic universe?
Easy, just look in the mirror.
Because you’re part of the same species that created our winner,
‘The Emoji Movie.’
Spoiler alert: We still hate it.
Until 2017, Humanity had a pretty decent thing going.
We came down from the trees and learned to speak, to think,
we built great wonders and vast civilizations,
We even landed on the moon!
Then we made the ‘Emoji Movie,’ and, well…
We had a good run.
Where am I?
Candy Crush!
It’s one of the laziest, most cynical cash-ins ever committed to screen,
and while no one really thought it would be any good,
I expected more out of the human race.
I want to know how they have kids!
'Cause he has parents!
Like, I know how fricking food has kids because they hugged at the end!
It was an orgy!
That makes logical sense now!
I was bummed enough that nobody bothered to see the masterpiece that is ‘Blade Runner:
2049,’
and I’m a little freaked out by everyone being so giddy about Disney swallowing up
Fox,
I mean yes, I'm excited for the MCU but I'm also just like 'forget my wallet.'
but it took Patrick Stewart debasing himself as a pile of poop to make me lose all hope.
Yeah!
I'm gonna walk on the phone and I'm only ten!
That's because I believe in you!
Should we wash our hands?
We're number two!
It wouldn't be too hard to restore my faith in humanity, though.
Honestly?
This was actually a pretty awesome year for film,
and there’s even more excellent stuff on the horizon.
But even though 2018 looks like an extremely promising year,
I still think we’ll still have plenty of fodder for next year’s Worst-Of Awards.
I’m looking at you ‘Fifty Shades Freed.’