Image via Complex Original
Cinema has a special kind of magic, one that's best served by a gifted, visionary filmmaker and even stronger when said filmmaker teams up with an equally talented visual effects maestro. It's Steven Spielberg and Ray Winston joining forces to bring dinosaurs back to life in the wondrous Jurassic Park, or John Landis and Rick Baker physically transforming an average guy into a monster in An American Werewolf in London. Or, for a more current example, it's Academy Award-winning director Ang Lee and his team of FX specialists who, together, are set to wow audiences this Thanksgiving weekend with Life of Pi, the Oscar-ready adaptation of author Yann Martel's acclaimed 2001 novel.
Life of Pi (which opens today, in 3D) follows a young guy named Pi (played by Suraj Sharma), the sole human survivor of a shipwrecked freighter who's stuck on a floating lifeboat with an injured zebra, a rat, an orangutan, a hyena, and an aggressive Bengal tiger. Through flashbacks and visually stunning action set-pieces, Lee tells an intimate story with an effects-heavy scope and lush cinematography. Per numerous critics who've been praising the movie since its New York Film Festival premiere in late September, Life of Pi is a huge leap forward for both 3D technology and special effects as a storytelling device.
So what better way to celebrate Ang Lee's artistic triumph than by laughing at all of those who've been unable to reach similar creative heights? That earlier statement about cinema being magical? In these cases, a better word would be "painful," or even "comical." These are The 50 Worst Special Effects in Movie History—as you're watching Life of Pi this weekend, keep in mind how bad it could have been.
Written by Matt Barone (@MBarone)
50. The Hulk
Movie: Hulk (2003)
Ang Lee's divisive 2003 version of Marvel Comics' Hulk story is a truly strange film. It's a superhero movie featuring showy visual effects that, in essence, is an art-house drama with very little action. Fans of the comic books, no doubt looking to see Hulk smash everything in sight and be a total badass, wouldn't have been so angry with Lee's picture if the green giant looked remotely lifelike, or even cool. However, the effects—a glaring example of CGI in its most unrealistic state—are bad enough to leave audiences preferring the film's exceedingly emo presentation of David Banner's (Eric Bana) unhappiness.
49. The Mountain Troll
Movie: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (2001)
At their best, the Harry Potter films represent modern-day CGI and visual effects in their strongest, most eye-pleasing forms. In some cases, though, Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), Hermione (Emma Watson), and Ron (Rupert Grint) grapple with questionable foes, namely the ticked-off mountain troll that terrorizes the young wizards in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. As the kids jump onto the beast and try to subdue it, Harry and his pals briefly turn into pixelated avatars clinging to a Playstation 2 villain.
48. The Talking Werewolf
Movie: Red Riding Hood (2011)
Talking animals are, by definition, hokey. If dogs and cats were supposed to speak, damn it, they would, so anytime a filmmaker tries to give animals the ability to converse, it's unnatural and impossible for viewers to take seriously. In last year's confused, wannabe Twilight horror-romance Red Riding Hood, director Catherine Hardwicke gives chatty werewolves the old college try, an ill-advised move that further derails any sense of tension whenever it's lycanthrope time.
47. CGI Jeff Bridges
Movie: Tron: Legacy (2010)
When Tron: Legacy debuted in December 2010, after years' worth of speculation and anticipation, much fuss was made over Jeff Bridges' on-screen doppleganger counterpart, meant to look like the younger Bridges seen in the 1982 original, Tron. The response, believe it or not, was mostly positive, meaning that many people somehow were able to look beyond the CGI Bridges' robotic, non-emotive facial expressions and perpetual, seemingly frozen-in-place scowl. More power to them, we guess.
46. Attack of the Spider Woman
Movie: Spookies (1986)
Everything about the botched 1986 horror flick Spookies simultaneously reeks of stupidity and awfulness. Take your pick: There are the muck monsters that inexplicably fart like they've eaten nothing but beans for a month, the climactic Grim Reaper that's little more than a prop you would've seen in a Halloween store back in the '80s, or the buffoonish, comic relief character Rich, a jackass who wears a T-shirt with his own picture on it and plays with a hand puppet.
At least Rich gets killed off in a grandiose, albeit horribly staged, manner: The Spider Woman, one of the film's various monsters, sucks Rich's life clean out of his body, leaving only a deflated dummy, not actor Peter Iasillo Jr., slumped against a large web.
45. Scooby Doo
Movie: Scooby Doo (2002)
Scooby Doo—that iconic, Great Dane paranormal investigator who's really just a big scaredy cat—deserved much better than what director Raja Gosnell did to it in the 2002 live-action flick Scooby Doo. As if it wasn't bad enough that they cast Freddie Prinze Jr. as alpha male Fred, the filmmakers made no discernible efforts to give old Scoob any sense of realism, giving the animated pooch a distractingly computer-generated aesthetic that never appears to be in the same world as best friend Shaggy (Matthew Lillard, doing a commendably good job of playing against nothing).
44. The Cat Attack
Movie: Let the Right One In (2008)
Swedish director Tomas Alfredson's vampire masterwork Let the Right One In is so universally adored by horror fans that it's undoubtedly strange to see it on a "worst" list of any kind. And, in the end, the film's lone moment of shoddiness is excusable, being that it doesn't ruin Let the Right One In's overall impact in any way.
Still, the sequence where a bunch of freaked-out cats attack their owner, who's been bitten by a vampire, is a definitely low point in angry cat puppetryand computer animation. They would have been better off smearing crushed Alpo bits on the actress' legs and letting real felines have at it.
Also worth ridiculing: The 2010 American remake, Let Me In, an altogether excellent and seriously underrated film that's briefly sullied by some crappy CGI whenever Chloe Grace Moretz's pre-teen vamp attacks people. Blame the cartoonish facial alterations and sudden jumping abilities that make it seem like someone's jamming down on the Fast Forward button.
43. The Ravenous Hyenas
Movie: Exorcist: The Beginning (2004)
Give the Exorcist: The Beginning team this much: They really went for it. In the movie's craziest scene, a pack of bloodthirsty hyenas strategically corner a young kid and then rip him apart. It's a disturbing moment—well, at least the idea of it is unnerving. As it exists, the forgettable cash-grab, meant to pull audiences in off its connection to The Exorcist, is home to a provocative sequence ruined by CGI hyenas that look like rabid dogs with cartoon heads.
42. E.T. in the Bathtub
Movie: E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (2002; 20th Anniversary Special Edition re-release)
No, that's not the E.T. we all knew and loved as kids that you see above—it's the unfortunate byproduct of Steven Spielberg's foolish decision to emulate old friend George Lucas and tinker around with one of his cinematic classics for an anniversary re-release. Discontent with keeping the lovable extra-terrestrial in its original prosthetic form, Spielberg recreated E.T. using CGI for the scene where young Elliot (Henry Thomas) plays with his new friend after the latter washes up in a bathtub. Fuck phoning home—someone should have called the fuzz on Spielberg back in 2002 for such a criminally stupid act.
41. The Martian
Movie: Mission to Mars (2000)
Congratulations! You've miraculously made it all the way through Brian De Palma's lifeless science fiction clunker Mission to Mars without either falling asleep or tossing the DVD out of the nearest window. The film is almost over, and, in the back of your mind, you've been reserving hope that the Martians will look cool whenever they finally show up.
Well, it sucks to be you, doesn't it? Yes, that amazingly shitty cartoon character above is the best that De Palma and his cohorts could come up with for the film's big finale. Is that nearby window still open?
40. CGI Jeffrey Jones
Movie: Howard the Duck (1986)
If Howard the Duck were, you know, real, he'd definitely want to give Jeffrey Jones an appreciative hug by the end of their disastrous 1986 box office bomb. Howie's own inefficiencies and disturbing eccentricities (including, amongst other things, having sex with a human) are tolerable in comparison to Jones' alien-possessed character's abilities to radiate with glowing lights and shoot fireballs and laser beams from his eyes.
39. The Walking Statue of Liberty
Movie: Ghostbusters 2 (1989)
Call her the fifth, honorary Ghostbuster: In an effort to kill baddies with positivity, the four paranormal-minded good guys (Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, and Ernie Hudson) bring the Statue of Liberty to life using a Nintendo controller, slime that makes whatever it touches giddily happy, and the song "Higher and Higher." Walking down the streets of Manhattan, Miss Liberty is greeted by energetic, patriotic New Yorkers cheering her on, and we'd love to applaud along with them, but she's just so obviously a woman painted green and wearing a Liberty costume.
38. The Hoover Dam's Collapse
Movie: Superman (1978)
For most of director Richard Donner's superhero classic Superman, FX overseer Derek Meddings is at the top of his game, and, rightfully, the film won an Academy Award for its visuals. But, as the story goes, Meddings had to leave the production before its conclusion in order to work on the 1979 James Bond flick Moonraker, and when it came time to execute Superman's climactic destruction of the Hoover Dam, Meddings' expertise was gone. And the sequence ended up with a cracked bathtub degree of cheapness.
37. All of the Jumanji Animals
Movie: Jumanji (1995)
Industrial Light & Magic has a great reputation, but the special effects company George Lucas founded doesn't always get it right. One of ILM's worst jobs was the 1995 film adaptation of Chris Van Allsburg's thrilling children's book Jumanji, featuring tons of computer-animated animals running amok. There's not a single animal in director Joe Johnston's movie that's even halfway realistic-looking, from the cheaply digital monkeys trashing a kitchen to the stampeding elephants plowing through the center of town.
36. The Wolfman
Movie: Van Helsing (2004)
An unpleasant kick to the balls of every lover of old-school Universal Monsters, director Stephen Sommers' 2004 travesty Van Helsing does every single thing wrong. Don't even get us started on the bitchy, whiny, tear-soaked Frankenstein's monster—instead, let's focus on the film's sorry excuse for a Wolfman, which is better described as Bigfoot conceived by Konami. Like many other filmmakers, Sommers failed to acknowledge the "man" part of the monster's title and opted for expensive, shitty CGI over practical makeup, a la Lon Chaney Jr. in the 1941 classic The Wolf Man.
35. The Electronic Lawnmower Man
Movie: The Lawnmower Man (1992)
Stephen King isn't a fan of The Lawnmower Man, which uses the name of one of his tremendous short stories, as well as its main character, but bears little resemblance to King's work. One can imagine that the author, probably already angry over the film's existence, bought a ticket to see it for himself, was indifferent about director Brett Leonard's output for awhile, and then wanted to rip dude's head off once the film's depictions of a computerized landscape displayed its rampant silliness. Another person who would've been ready to avenge himself against Leonard: Max Headroom.
34. The Domed City
Movie: Logan's Run (1976)
As the camera descends downward into the domed city at the beginning of Logan's Run, it's impossible to not notice how the special effects team—which, somehow, won an Academy Award for the film—were a bit off their game. Parts of the background sky are visibly painted, while, from afar, the domes themselves are comparable to flattened silicon pancakes, just waiting for some insecure woman to pay for breast augmentation.
33. Stop-Motion Tom Hanks
Movie: The Polar Express (2004)
By 2007, Robert Zemeckis had mastered the art of stop-motion animation, and that year's impressive Beowulf is visual proof, particularly Angelina Jolie's lifelike (and naked) interpretation of Grendel's mother. The same goes with 2009's equally commendable A Christmas Carol, which convincingly turns Jim Carrey into Ebenezer Scrooge.
But 2004's The Polar Express? Eight years removed from its initial release, Zemeckis' valiant attempt to bring author Chris Van Allsburg's popular children's book to life can now be viewed as a practice run. Not yet fully proficient with stop-motion technology, Zemeckis inadvertently made a nightmarishly creepy version, due in no small part to Tom Hanks' unsettling, zombie-like conductor.
32. Arnold Schwarzenegger Sheds His Fat Woman Disguise
Movie: Total Recall (1990)
Look, we love Total Recall as much as the next fanboy, and, for the most part, the effects throughout are admirably campy and imaginative. Take a closer look at the image above, though, from the scene in which Arnold Schwarzenegger emerges from his fat woman disguise—notice anything off about Arnie? As in, that's not actually him, but, rather, an artificial model of Schwarzenegger's head. And, no, it's not supposed to be another meta Philip K. Dickian moment of, "Is Douglas Quaid really himself anymore?"
31. Mr. Hyde
Movie: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003)
Written by the great Robert Louis Stevenson, the 1886 novella Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a sparse but chilling account of a man's darkest inner impulses manifesting themselves in a scary-looking, disheveled, but still human alter-ego, best portrayed in 1931's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
In the universally panned The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (based on, and immensely inferior to, Alan Moore's 15-issue graphic novel series), director Stephen Norrington and screenwriter James Dale Robinson gave Jekyll and Hyde an exaggerated makeover, abandoning all human attributes and changing Hyde into the Incredible Hulk's long lost, English, slightly handicapped brother.
30. Snakes in the Bathroom
Movie: Snakes on a Plane (2006)
In all fairness, a movie of Snakes on a Plane's caliber doesn't need top-notch special effects—low-budget campiness is one of its charming strengths. But several images in the 2006 flick are too bad to overlook, especially considering that director David R. Ellis' crapfest was a big-deal theatrical release, not some SyFy Channel movie-of-the-week (which it should have been).
The worst moment of all happens inside the airplane's claustrophobic bathroom, where a CGI monstrosity slithers its way out of a toilet. You're basically waiting for Samuel L. Jackson to yell, "Get this motherfuckin' straight-to-video bullshit off my motherfucking plane!"
29. The tentacles
Movie: The Mist (2007)
For his adaptation of Stephen King's excellent novella The Mist, writer-director Frank Darabont's initial plan was to release the film in black-and-white, in order to give it the look and feel of an old 1950s monster movie. In the film's two-disc special edition DVD package, viewers have the option of watching The Mist in that de-colorized format, and it's remarkable how much better its CGI creatures all look as a result.
In shiny palettes, some of The Mist's antagonists are still impressive, namely the pterodactyls and acid-spewing spiders. But the mostly unseen, tentacled beast that kicks off the film's horror early on is an unfortunate victim of Darabont's limited budget and inability to convince the studio to go black-in-white.
28. The surfing sequence
Movie: Die Another Day (2002)
One of the many agreeable things about Daniel Craig's series of James Bond movies is their gritty realism, marked by brutal hand-to-hand fights, limited-to-no CGI, and practically executed action set-pieces. Which, of course, is all a far cry from the Pierce Brosnan-led, 2002 Bond film Die Another Day, with its humorously goofy scene where 007 surfs down a melting ice-cap with a parachute. The crumbling ice is very clearly low-grade CG and Brosnan's Bond is, delicately stated, a reject from a Die Another Day spinoff video game.
27. The Werewolf in Paris
Movie: An American Werewolf in Paris (1997)
Doing his part to tarnish the good name of John Landis' 1981 horror masterpiece An American Werewolf in London, director Anthony Waller ignored all that made Landis' film so great and churned out the pointless, all-around shitty 1997 "sequel" An American Werewolf in Paris. The original is known for having some of the most impressive practical effects work ever done; Waller's movie, on the other hand, is only notable for demonstrating some of the worst CGI flourishes in all lycanthrope cinema, of which there are plenty.
26. The Weed Caterpillar
Movie: Freddy vs. Jason (2003)
Throughout the Nightmare on Elm Street film series, dreamland killer Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) has come up with dozens of imaginative ways to kill characters, always focused on the respective person's biggest weakness.
In Freddy vs. Jason, Mark Davis (Brendan Fletcher) is a hippie stoner, so, naturally, Freddy waits for Mark to indulge in a marijuana cigarette (read: blunt) before making his move. Said move, inexplicably, is to take the form of a bizarre caterpillar-like creature that's also part canine with Freddy's ugly mug. You'd have to be higher than Wiz Khalifa chilling in a dressing room to actually be scared of that thing, whatever the hell it's supposed to be.
25. Young Jabba the Hut
Movie: Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope (1997 restoration of the 1977 original)
George Lucas loves tampering with his Star Wars films, much to the chagrin of the franchise's devoted fans. Of the many examples of his after-the-effects bastardizations, one from the 1997 re-release of Return of the Jedi is especially egregious. It's a forgotten scene that Lucas was able to restore thanks to modern-day CGI, featuring Han Solo (Harrison Ford) chatting it up with a young Jabba the Hut that looks absolutely nothing like the Jabba Star Wars lovers first met in the original 1977 incarnation.
24. Garfield the Cat
Movie: Garfield (2004)
Since 1978, cartoonist Jim Davis' popular strip Garfield has delighted newspaper readers with its tales of a fat, wisecracking cat underachieving in every way possible. But since 2004, the live-action movie adaptation has been a running joke in Hollywood; hell, even voice actor Bill Murray disses it whenever given the chance.
Why? Because the CGI-rendered feline looks faker than a dog's squeaky toy. Just look at the differences between Garfield and the real-life dog in the above picture. Aside from being ridiculously big for a cat (in that pose, Garfield resembles Godzilla), the film's chubby orange pussy (sorry) is way too digitized.
23. Jaws Crashes Through a Window
Movie: Jaws 3-D (1983)
The concept, in theory, is pretty cool: Through those plastic 3D glasses, audience members are given the impression that Jaws, one of the greatest movie monsters ever, is about to bite their faces off as the Great White opens its chompers and extends out of the screen. Back in 1983, though, the properly advanced three-dimensional technology wasn't quite there yet, and the already bad shark effects in Jaws 3-D—particularly a shot where the fish crashes through a control room's glass walls—are made all the more apparent.
22. Superman vs. Nuclear Man on the Moon
Movie: Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987)
In terms of suitably high-concept places for Superman (Christopher Reeve) to fight a supervillain, it doesn't get much better than the Moon. To trade blows with Nuclear Man (Mark Pillow), the Man of Steel steps foot on the large satellite's surface, yet younger viewers watching Superman IV: The Quest for Peace would be forgiven for thinking that the fight is taking place inside Liberty Science Center, on a handmade, not-so-epic, and toy-like representation of the Moon.
21. Surfing the Tsunami
Movie: Escape from L.A. (1996)
Escape from L.A., writer-director John Carpenter's purposefully campy sequel to 1981's far superior Escape from New York, is revered by genre enthusiasts for its gonzo energy and weirdness, which, one could imagine, was Carpenter's plan all along. How else could you describe the cheesy-looking sequence in which Snake Plissken (the great Kurt Russell) hangs 10 on an enormous tsunami wave alongside old, fun-loving salt Pipeline (Peter Fonda)? It's easy to picture Russell and Fonda playfully flailing around in the world's biggest bathtub in front of a green screen.
20. The Langoliers
Movie: The Langoliers (ABC, 1995)
If you thought that Stephen King's stories have only been bastardized by big-screen filmmakers, think again. Several of the prolific author's best novels and short stories have been made into crappy TV miniseries, the worst one of all being director Tom Holland's May 1995 two-parter The Langoliers, about airplane passengers confronted by sky-dwelling monsters from another dimension.
Starring Bronson "Balki Bartokomous from Perfect Strangers" Pinchot, The Langoliers assaulted viewers with bad acting, sloppy pacing, and zero tension before unleashing its crowning achievements of lameness: the Langoliers themselves. It's as if Holland took pictures of skeletal shark jaws and lazily superimposed them onto his shots.
19. The Death Bed
Movie: Death Bed: The Bed That Eats (1977)
Admittedly, including the 1977 see-it-to-believe-it junk pile Death Bed: The Bed That Eats here is really just an excuse to provide readers with the ultimate "smoke and watch" cinematic experience, assuming you can actually locate a copy of the film somewhere. If it's found, though, Death Bed is totally worth the effort, with its abysmal acting and sublimely ineffective scenes in which the eponymous mattress devours people. Though we never really see anyone get eaten—all that's visualized are shots of fizzy liquid that's some kind of soda carbonation combined with Cheeze Whiz.
18. Blarp
Movie: Lost in Space (1998)
Outside of Friends and Showtime's Episodes, Matt LeBlanc hasn't fared so well in Hollywood. There's the failed, punch line status Friends spinoff Joey (which is both one of the worst TV show spin-offs ever and one of the worst sitcoms ever), his embarrassing one-on-one interactions with an animatronic, baseball-playing chimp in the cinematic dud Ed, and, worst of all, his scenes alongside the simian CGI misfire Blarp in 1998's Lost in Space. Blarp, putting it kindly, appears to be a forgotten, unfinished Looney Tunes character that went rogue and somehow ended up in director Stephen Hopkins update of the popular 1960s sci-fi television series.
17. Dancing Dogs
Movie: Marmaduke (2010)
Years from now, Owen Wilson will once again come face-to-face with Lucifer himself, the latter ready to collect the debt owed by the once-floundering, troubled actor, who, in 2010, desperately reached for box office success by voicing the titular pooch in Marmaduke. Hopefully when Satan does reemerge, he first makes Wilson watch every scene in which the rambunctious, poorly CGI-made Great Dane awkwardly talks and spastically dances. Satan, we'd imagine, will laugh in the actor's face; Wilson, meanwhile, will start crying and call Woody Allen begging for a Midnight in Paris sequel.
16. The Angry Dinosaur
Movie: A Sound of Thunder (2005)
When the wholly bland and uninteresting Edward Burns is your supposedly blockbuster-esque film's leading man, you should already know that's it's going to suck. Yet, somehow, director Peter Hyams talked some moronic studio heads into thinking a Burns-led adaptation of Ray Bradbury's adventurous time travel story "A Sound of Thunder" was a good idea. They even gave Hyams a reported $80 million to create the film's many dinosaurs.
The set's craft service table must have been covered with caviar, filet mignon, and bottles of Dom Pérignon, then, because none of that money went to A Sound of Thunder's visual effects team.
15. Death by Face-Smudge
Movie: Star Trek: Insurrection (2007)
Granted, we've never seen someone's face getting smudged, so who are we to judge? Well, come to think of it, we're smart enough to notice an awful CGI employment when we see it. And in Star Trek: Insurrection (arguably the worst of all Trek films), what's supposed to be Admiral Matthew Dougherty's (Anthony Zerbe) skin being pulled in a torturous machine comes across as a graphic designer playing around with Photoshop's stretching functions for the first time.
14. The Plastic-Looking Spaceship
Movie: The Shape of Things to Come (1979)
Legendary English author H.G. Wells was responsible for several sci-fi classics, most of which have been turned into memorable movies: The Island of Dr. Moreau, The Invisible Man, The Time Machine, War of the Worlds. Unfortunately, Wells' 1933 story The Shape of Things to Come didn't fare as well as those properties when director George McCowan took the title, kept a few characters' names, but then totally abandoned the book.
Actually, on second thought, Wells' work is better off not having any narrative connections here. The effects in The Shape of Things to Come are of the lowest budget, unable to match Wells' vivid imagination and never looking better than plastic toys being dangled in front of still-life paintings.
13. The Stuff's Screaming Victim
Movie: The Stuff (1985)
In writer-director Larry Cohen's inventive yet cheaply made horror satire The Stuff, a strange white goo is mistaken for a tasty dessert by consumers, ingested, and starts pouring out their orifices and turning some into zombies. The damaging, fatal effects of the goo are goofily seen when one character (the poor bastard you see above) suddenly starts to convulse and howl as the stuff bubbles out of his mouth. And by "his," we do mean an actual human being, even though it's anyone's guess as to what the hell that hot woman is holding onto.
12. The Anacondas
Movie: Anaconda 3 (2008)
It's not that Anaconda and its sequel, Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid, sport excellent visual effects in comparison to 2008's made-for-TV follow-up Anaconda 3—the reason why this David Hasselhoff-starring installment earns a place on this countdown is that its filmmakers adhered to the old horror movie philosophy that sequels need to amplify the showiness.
So as Anaconda 3 stumbles to the finish line over 91 hilariously dire minutes, the humongous snakes receive tons of screen time, calling more and more attention to their poorly rendered "realness." Anytime the creatures move, Anaconda 3 feels like a glossier, modernized version of Snafu.
11. The Gaping-Mouth Vampires
Movie: Van Helsing (2004)
It's one of the more common CGI effects images out there, and it's always incredibly unrealistic: the extending, inhuman mouth. Mainly used with vampires, the protruding jaws and elongated teeth signify something that's very ready to horrifically chow down, like the otherwise sexy female bloodsuckers who provide a little positive eye candy in Stephen Sommers' altogether putrid Van Helsing. As you can see, the effect is more "Mr. Ed laughing" than "scary vampire ready to strike."
10. The Virus-Infected Humans
Movie: I Am Legend (2007)
Richard Matheson's harrowing 1954 novel I Am Legend is one of the best horror fiction novels ever written. So why can't any filmmakers stick to its script and not change the story for the worst? It's been adapted four times now, and, while none of them are awful, each one has its own glaringly poor elements. In the case of Francis Lawrence's 2007 blockbuster, it's the ravenous packs of mutated, virus-infected humans, which are supposed to, you know, seem human, not like Gollum's even uglier, older cousins who are desperately in need of Andy Serkis to breathe life into them with a motion-capture suit.
9. Jar Jar Binks
Movie: Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999)
Subtly racist? Yes. A thorn in every Star Wars fan's backside? Indeed. A visual reminder that George Lucas' not-so-glorious 1999 return to the Skywalker saga isn't very good? Check. Those are all universally accepted beliefs about Jar Jar Binks, the clumsy, utterly annoying Rastafarian alien sidekick in The Phantom Menace, but one aspect of the character's ineptitude that often goes untouched is its distractingly unconvincing CGI work.
The image above presents a perfect example as to why Jar Jar Binks, um, stinks: Whenever buddies Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson) and Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) chat with Jar Jar, they're never able to make direct eye contact. The reason: Lucas' effects team completely bungled Binks' ability to interact with humans in a realistic manner.
8. Mega-Shark Skies to Eat an Airplane
Movie: Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus (2009)
You have to love the audacity of all involved with 2009's epically idiotic Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus. Clearly, they knew what they were making, and the film is filled with images that put the shoddy effects front and center, as if to announce to viewers, "We're low-budget and proud of it!"
They're also wonderfully imaginative, a fact that's emphasized during the scene where a ludicrously athletic shark jumps hundreds of feet into the air and takes down an airplane. The best part: A shot of the approaching shark seen through a window and accentuated by one passenger's apt response of, "Holy shit!"
7. Shia LaBeouf Swings on Vines with CGI Monkeys
Movie: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull ( 2008)
As if Indiana Jones die-hards needed another reason to decry Shia LaBeouf's presence in their beloved franchise, Steven Spielberg and company felt the need to add insult to injury during Harrison Ford's disappointing return to the iconic fedora-wearing character. In the midst of a huge action set-piece, LaBeouf's awkward greaser-punk character Mut Williams swings through a jungle on vines.
The problem? Or make that "problems"? Everything about the sequence looks amateurishly fake, from the monkeys themselves to the forest background. It's mind-boggling to think that what you see above was the combined effort of Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, not Uwe Boll.
6. The Flying Saucers
Movie: Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959)
Any list of the "worst" anything in movies feels incomplete without the presence of Ed Wood, who's widely considered to be the worst filmmaker of all time. The funny thing is, though, that cinephiles have always held Wood warmly in their hearts, because, god bless the poor guy, he really believed in himself and made piss-poor flicks like Glen or Glenda and Plan 9 from Outer Space with the passion of a much better director.
In addition to possessing zero talent himself, Wood was also stricken by minuscule budgets, so when it came time to show a bunch of flying saucers hovering above a cityscape, he endearingly made a bunch of toy ships with do-it-yourself, kid-friendly kits and dangled them from cheap wires. Unfortunate, hopeless ingenuity at its finest.
5. Neo Fights Agent Smith Clones
Movie: The Matrix Reloaded (2003)
Despite the series' reputation for having groundbreaking visual effects, which, for the most part, it does, the Wachowski siblings' run of The Matrix films aren't without their embarrassing moments. Case in point: The big set-piece in the second flick, The Matrix Reloaded, during which Neo (Keanu Reeves) brawls with a swarm of Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving) clones. In a few shots, one can see that it's actually Reeves fighting, but those Smiths? They're laughably computerized.
4. The Birdemic Birds
Movie: Birdemic: Shock and Terror (2008)
When making 2008's infamously cheap Birdemic, writer-director James Nguyen took inspiration from Alfred Hitchcock's seminal nature-gone-awry film The Birds. Upon hearing of this through beyond-the-grave telekinesis, Hitch promptly rolled over in his grave.
Made for only $10,000, Birdemic is mostly a dull romance picture, so when the killer birds finally show up and wreak silly havoc, it's a welcome distraction. Especially considering that the CGI vultures and eagles look like stickers moving around on the camera's lens, and the poor actors shamefully flail their arms at the air, obviously clueless as to where Nguyen will place the birds in post-production.
3. Shark Dines on Samuel L. Jackson
Movie: Deep Blue Sea (1999)
Sometimes, bad special effects are wonderful, as in Deep Blue Sea's notoriously shitty send-off for Samuel L. Jackson's character. The scene plays out brilliantly: Giving a defiant, call-to-arms monologue while standing dangerously close to water, Jackson achieves a Janet-Leigh-in-Psycho moment of fatal surprise. After all, he's the biggest name in the film's cast, so he can't die yet…right? It's not even an hour into the movie.
But, alas, Jackson's overlong speech gets cuts short when a fake-looking shark grabs what looks like a Samuel L. Jackson action figure in its jaws and pulls him into the water.
2. The Scorpion King
Movie: The Mummy Returns (2001)
There's definitely a hint of Dwayne Johnson in the Scorpion King seen at the end of 2001's The Mummy Returns—an essence of The Rock, if you will. The same kind of essence that Madden NFL 13 users see when their favorite players walk across the screen. Except with much less realism.
Hoping to present a half-human, half-scorpion hybrid, director Stephen Sommers went the fully animated route. Rather than take inspiration from, say, Electronic Arts, he and his effects crew apparently went back to the days of Atari. You'd be excused for mistaking The Mummy Returns for Dungeons & Dragons.
1. The Dinosaur Stampede
Movie: King Kong (2005)
Peter Jackson's audacious and emotionally potent 2005 King Kong remake isn't without its fair share of masterful CGI and dazzling action. Not to mention, Andy Serkis' stop-motion creation of the mighty Kong is awe-inspiring in and of itself. But when Jackson's lofty ambition gets the best of him, King Kong suffers cruelly.
Holding little back, Jackson attempts to stage a massive dinosaur stampede during which the film's human characters are running downhill with the beasts. Aside from the absurd fact that none of the explorers get crushed, the likes of Jack Black and Adrien Brody are so obviously running in front of a green screen that you're practically waiting for the action behind them to rapidly alternate a la Wayne's World's traveling postcards sequence.