Worst Science Fiction Movies

I think I’ve said in the past that science fiction tends to be either awesome or horrible – there is very little in between.  Unfortunately, the horrible tends to outnumber the awesome.  For every TheEmpire Strikes Back, we get three or four Battlefield Earths.  That’s why it’s easier to put together a list of terrible sci-fi movies than to put together a list of great sci-fi movies.  Maybe one day I’ll give that other thing a try, but for the moment, let’s look at the worst science-fiction movies of all time(in my opinion).

1.   BattlefieldEarth – this one set the standard for horrible science fiction.  Basically a Scientology advert in movie form, this monstrosity’s terribleness depended on who watched it.  Having read the book when I was 19, I understood that whoever made this movie not only read, but loved the book.  There was far too much content and context taken for granted, and the over-the-top acting by John Travolta made me wince.  The concept – Earth overrun, humanity on the verge of extinction, clawing back against an arrogant alien race – all had potential.  Unfortunately, the movie had all of the arrogance of the Psychlos and none of the humility of Johnny Goodboy Tyler.

2.   Star Wars: The Last Jedi – I’ve detailed this one previously.  Not only is it one of the most convoluted, hammy movies of all time, but piling it into the Star Wars saga makes a bad movie truly atrocious.  From casting off fan favorites(Admiral Ackbar was just a throwaway) to turning our beloved Luke Skywalker into an asshole to trying to make so many uber-woke statements as possible(did we really need an animal rights narrative in this thing?), I was actually pissed off leaving the theater.  I don’t particularly care for The Force Awakens(I think it’s essentially a remake of A New Hope), but I’ve still seen it several times, if out of nostalgia than anything else.  I’ve seen The Last Jedi exactly once, and I promise I’ll never watch that horror-show of my own volition ever again.

3.   WingCommander – Talk about a disappointment.  The Wing Commander books are among some of the most riveting science fiction out there.  Humanity, outgunned and outclassed in straight up fights against the Kilrathi, finds a way to use its cunning to make it a great fight, even while trying to keep the enemy from irradiating our worlds.  Sounds like a great movie, right?  WRONG!  It took an action movie and turned it into some perverse love story(like a commander several grades above her subordinate is going to be so submissive) with terrible special effects and overwrought plot points about bigotry.  I came within a hair’s breadth of walking out of this one, and cheap as I am, that’s saying something.

4.   Final Fantasy VII: The Spirits Within – Speaking of walking out, this is one of the half dozen movies I actually have walked out of.  One of the top three worst movies of all time, it was a Gaia worshiping bunch of new age bullshit.  I couldn’t have made a movie so cliched if I’d wanted to.  From how evil the military was(you know…just because the military must be evil or something) to the lone scientist finding out how it’s all about Mother Earth interconnecting all of us, I couldn’t make it through this abomination.  When a sci-fi fan goes to Hell, this movie is on a loop for all of eternity.

5.   StarTrek V: The Final Frontier – Let’s face it, the first Star Trek movie was pretty terrible.  However, the series found its legs with The Wrath of Khan.  Star Trek 3 was so-so, but number four gave us all a light-hearted laugh.  Yet for some reason, the producers thought they could slap Star Trek onto any piece of claptrap and it’d be a winner.  Uh, not so much.  Plot points that makes no sense, a villain who isn’t a villain, random Klingons(you know…just because), and a trip to the center of the galaxy(that has never been repeated and seems to fly in the face of all space exploration in Star Trek up to now) make for one of the worst Star Trek movies.  I found myself hoping the Enterprise would blow up again, this time from stupidity.

6.   StarTrek Nemesis – Going back to claptrap stupidity, Star Trek Nemesis was the worst of The Next Generation movies, and that’s quite an accomplishment given Generations and Insurrection.  It was the first time I saw Tom Hardy, proving that a decent enough actor can overcome bad movies.  Hardy plays a cloned version of Jean Luc Picard, and then promptly proceeds to emasculate the Romulan Empire with a kiddy-clown version of Data and a space battle so unrealistic I’m surprised he didn’t shoot flying monkeys from the cannons.  It’s the only Star Trek movie I’ve only seen once and will not watch a second time.  Just awful.

7.   TheMatrix 3: Revolutions – The Matrix movies had such potential.  The first one was awesome.  It made us think, and the special effects were groundbreaking.  Even The Matrix 2: Reloaded had some decent parts, with us wondering whether or not Neo being able to affect “the real world” meant that the real world as we knew it was possibly just another part of the Matrix.  But Revolutions was so over the top that it lacked depth.  Agent Smith’s maniacal laugh as he absorbed the Oracle made me wonder if I was watching an old 1950s Flash Gordon movie.  The story, rather than having substance, seemed made solely to showcase special effects.  Special effects are great, but they should enhance rather than be the story…something a lot of sci-fi movies miss.

8.   Terminator:Dark Fate – Let’s face facts that no Terminator movie has been good since Terminator 2.  This one flipped the entire story on its head by killing John Connor at the very beginning and going into woke territory by pushing someone we’ve never heard of before as the new savior.  Sorry, but if “next man up” is a thing in the Terminator universe, then why the hell was it so important to save Sarah Connor in the first place?  And you can’t just slap a machine gun onto Arnold Schwarzenegger’s chest, give him a cheesy line or two, and think that makes it a good movie people will pay for.  Like most uber-woke things out of Hollywood, it destroyed the original storyline to make people who wear ribbons in Hollywood feel better about themselves.  Fans like new and exciting, but they tend to get pissed when you shit all over their favorites.

And that’s my list for now.  I know I’ve probably left off some bad movies, so let me know what you’d have included.