Summer movie flops revisited: Just how bad were these big-budget disasters?

The Adventures Of Pluto Nash, starring Eddie Murphy as the titular Moon-dwelling businessman, is one of the most notorious box office bombs in history with a budget of $100 million and a worldwide gross of only $7.1 million. The jokes in this 2002 sci-fi comedy consistently flatline and age poorly, like the currency bearing Hillary Clinton’s face and the signage for Trump Realty. Murphy is uncharacteristically restrained, as if he already knows how bad the movie is going to be. Indeed, director Ron Underwood was quoted as saying Murphy “wasn’t feeling that funny.” Elsewhere, Randy Quaid is irritating as an obnoxious android, and Pam Grier, who is only 11 years older than Murphy, is wasted in a small part as Murphy’s mother. Also, the year is 2087 and Italians on the Moon are still depicted as—you guessed it—Mafia members. In a later interview with Barbara Walters, Murphy said of Pluto Nash, “I know the two or three people that liked this movie.” So, yes, the movie was bad then and it’s bad now.

The Adventures Of Rocky And Bullwinkle is a 2000 live-action/animation comedy in the vein of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, but the similarities end there. Starring Robert De Niro as Fearless Leader, Rocky And Bullwinkle had a $76 million budget and only grossed $35.1 million worldwide. Part of the reason is that too much of the humor went over the heads of younger viewers: two of the cartoon leads joke about their show being cancelled in 1964, while others namecheck the Cold War and President Lyndon B. Johnson. Remove those comedic lead balloons and you’re left with groan-worthy puns, lame slapstick, and cameos by people like Randy Quaid to sell the movie to a preteen audience. Older audiences were crestfallen at seeing De Niro in a buzzcut and sporting a monocle. The movie hasn’t improved with time, even if the bar was set pretty low upon its initial release.

Battlefield Earth is a 2000 sci-fi movie based on a 1982 novel by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. The box office bomb starring John Travolta and Forest Whitaker as alien Psychlos had a worldwide gross of $29.7 against a reported budget of $73 million, which bankrupted Franchise Pictures. Battlefield Earth also “won” eight Golden Raspberry Awards, but was it really THAT bad? Barry Pepper is fine as the leader of the human resistance and the actors who play aliens do their best work under awkward dreadlocks and domed prosthetic heads, but it’s the turn-of-the-millennium CGI that is most egregious here. A climactic air-fight sequence between spaceships, for example, looks like the cut scene from a CD-ROM game on a Compaq computer. If it looked laughable on the big screen in 2000, imagine what it looks like today. Actually ... just don’t.

Event Horizon is a 1997 sci-fi/horror directed by Paul W.S. Anderson and starring Laurence Fishburne, Sam Neill, Kathleen Quinlan, and Joely Richardson. Set in 2047, the movie follows a rescue crew tasked with investigating the missing spaceship Event Horizon, which has reappeared in orbit around Neptune with its crew MIA and replaced by a sinister force from the depths of space that makes the ship itself seem alive. The film grossed $42 million worldwide against a $60 million budget, and critics panned it. Since then, the movie has developed a cult following and has enjoyed a new life on home video. We rewatched it in 4K UHD and, surprise, it’s much better than its dated reviews suggest. Event Horizon feeds on our fear of the unknown and is genuinely, deeply frightening. The gradual descent of Neill’s character into madness feels authentic, and his performance wriggles under the skin long after the end credits. This is one sci-fi/horror gem that didn’t deserve to flop at the box office, so we’re pleased that fans helped bring it back from cinematic oblivion.

Hudson Hawk is a 1991 action-comedy starring Bruce Willis as the titular safecracker and cat burglar. Riding high after two hit Die Hard movies and his on the smash TV series Moonlighting, Willis seemed like a sure bet to carry Hudson Hawk to box office glory. However, a film filled with slapstick comedy and cartoonish violence was marketed as a straightforward action movie like Die Hard, which left audiences feeling duped. The studio lost an estimated $90 million on the film. Today, if you go into Hudson Hawk knowing beforehand that it’s an absurd comedy, you might be charmed by Willis’ patented too-cool-for-school shtick, which has worked in many other movies and TV shows. But if you rewatch it looking for some classic John McClane yippee-ki-yay action, you’ll be as disappointed now as audiences were thirtysomething years ago.

There may be no more notorious summer flop than Ishtar, starring Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman. The Elaine May-directed adventure-comedy, about two untalented NYC songwriters who book a gig in Morocco and get caught up in a Cold War conflict, lost an estimated $40 million for its studio and was panned by most critics. Is it as bad today as it was in 1987? Not at all ... it’s much, much worse! Beatty and Hoffman—who were each circling age 50 at the time of Ishtar’s release—seemed hopelessly unhip in 1987 with their characters’ references to Simon and Garfunkel as well as their old-timey nightclub singing, which happens too often on-screen and is torturous. Although Ishtar was shot on location in New York and Morocco, the movie doesn’t look as costly as it cost. Except for one helicopter action sequence, it’s a mystery where the bloated budget went, aside from the pockets of its two leads. When award-winning French actress Isabelle Adjani has to pull up her garment and expose her breast in an airport to prove to Hoffman that she is a woman, you cringe in embarrassment for her. If Ishtar got what it deserved, all copies of it would have been buried in the desert in the 1980s alongside those infamous Atari 2600 E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial game cartridges.

The 2009 film Land Of The Lost is based on Sid and Marty Krofft children’s TV series from the 1970s. The PG-13 sci-fi/adventure-comedy stars Will Ferrell as a so-called “quantum paleontologist” who discovers a way to transport himself to a warped dimension, where creatures and items from many eras coexist at the same time, including dinosaurs. The movie grossed $68.8 million against a $100 million budget, won a Razzie for Worst Prequel, Remake, Rip-off, or Sequel, and was panned by critics. Watching it today, you can’t overlook the lame Polish and homophobic jokes, stupid gags like characters drenching themselves in dinosaur urine, and a horny ape-man named Chaka who just makes you squirm uncomfortably. There are some nods to the original show (“This is not a routine expedition!”), but the tone is off. Gen Xers who grew up watching the TV show won’t feel nostalgic watching this campy parody. Fans of Ferrell and Danny McBride might enjoy a few cheap laughs (especially under the influence of ... something), but everyone else will want to get lost in any number of better dinosaur flicks.

Director Gore Verbinski’s 2013 big-screen adaptation of The Lone Ranger stars Armie Hammer as the titular ranger and Johnny Depp as Tonto. The movie had a massive budget and reportedly ended up losing Disney between $160 million and $190 million, making it one of the biggest box office disasters of all time. Rewatching it today, you can appreciate the beautiful desert scenery, which was filmed in six Western states. Then you notice that Depp’s performance as Tonto is almost interchangeable with his Jack Sparrow character from the Pirates Of The Caribbean movies—they just have slightly different costumes. The movie’s action trends towards the cartoonish, with characters falling hundreds of feet or tumbling off fast-moving trains and barely suffering a scratch. Yet it also includes a dream sequence where Hammer eats a human heart, a jarring scene given that Hammer has since been accused of having a cannibalism fetish. The movie’s biggest problem, however, is its bloated runtime of 2 hours and 30 minutes. By the time you get to the climactic train sequence and the familiar The Lone Ranger score, you’re already over two hours into the “sitting challenge.” At least at home, you can just watch the final train sequence and skip the dusty two-hour setup.

The Mummy starring Tom Cruise was supposed to kickstart a new Dark Universe for the Universal monsters such as Frankenstein, Dracula and, yes, the Mummy. That clearly didn’t happen ... or at it least delayed the concept indefinitely. Due to the movie’s high production and marketing costs and its poor performance at the box office, Universal lost an estimated $95 million on the gamble. Unwrapping The Mummy today, it’s obvious that there is one fatal flaw: its tone. The Mummy and Dr. Jekyll (Russell Crowe) are classic Universal horror characters, but here they’re shoehorned into an action-adventure-fantasy film in which characters crack jokes when their lives are in danger. This might have worked wonderfully for Brendan Fraser in 1999’s The Mummy, but the 2017 movie lacks the charm of the Fraser-starring trilogy, which was more of an adventure series à la Indiana Jones. The flippant reactions to life-threatening scenarios in the Cruise version don’t mesh with some gory special effects that lean into the horror elements of the story. What’s left is a mess.

R.I.P.D., aka Rest In Peace Department, is a 2013 supernatural comedy starring Jeff Bridges and Ryan Reynolds. Surely inspired by blockbusters such as Men In Black and Ghostbusters, the makers of R.I.P.D. probably hoped for a similar box office tally. That didn’t happen, and the movie, which reportedly cost between $130 million and. $154 million, only grossed $78 million. Watching it today, you’re reminded of supporting players (Mary-Louise Parker!) who deserved more. R.I.P.D. isn’t completely unwatchable and the effects are decent, but the two leads just don’t have the chemistry of, say, Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones in Men In Black. Plus, Bridges talks with the same peanut butter-in-mouth delivery as he did in 2010’s True Grit and 2014’s Seventh Son, which was about as well-received as R.I.P.D., which means it was probably time for Bridges to let his Rooster accent rest in peace. We’ll do the same for R.I.P.D.

Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World is a 2010 fantastical rom-com action movie based on a series of graphic novels by Bryan Lee O’Malley. The movie stars Michael Cera as the titular character, with Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Kieran Culkin, Chris Evans, Anna Kendrick, Brandon Routh, Brie Larson, and Jason Schwartzman rounding out the talented cast. Scott Pilgrim didn’t come close to recouping its $85 million budget, but it has since developed a devoted cult following. Watching it again today, it’s easy to understand why: the dialogue crackles, the practical and digital effects meant to evoke video gameplay are imaginative and visually appealing, and it’s fun to Evans and Larson before they became, respectively, Captain America and Captain Marvel. An added bonus is a hilarious early performance by Aubrey Plaza, whom we’d forgotten was even in Scott Pilgrim until we rewatched it. There is so much happening on-screen in Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World that you’ll discover something new if you haven’t seen it since it was in theaters. Even though it “Bob-ombed” at the box office, it’s a winner at home.

Last but certainly not least is 1995’s Waterworld, starring Kevin Costner as a man trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic world after the polar icecaps have melted and very little dry land is left. Playing out like a sopping wet The Road Warrior, Waterworld struggled to recoup its massive budget but, many years later, it eventually turned a profit thanks to home video and TV broadcast rights. Watching it today, there is much to like about this movie, which was the butt of a lot of jokes at the time of its release. First of all, the Mad Max-style action is almost entirely practical effects, whereas today it would all be rendered on a Mac and look like a video game. Also, look more closely at the “Smoker Plane Pilot”—yes, that’s Jack Black in an early role. Waterworld may not be as good as a Mad Max movie or even Avatar: The Way Of Water, but it still has its fans, which is probably why Waterworld: A Live Sea War Spectacular is still being featured at four Universal Studios theme parks around the world to this day.