The Worst Blockbusters of 2024

Few things in life get graded on a steeper curve than blockbuster movies. If they’re projected in focus, the movie theater’s air conditioner is working, and the popcorn is hot and buttery, audiences tend to be incredibly forgiving. And if you dare to point out how their characters don’t make sense or their stories are a little lacking, odds are their fans will tell you to turn your brain off and chill out.

To their credit, many of the biggest hits of 2024 were solidly okay to downright good. Inside Out 2, the #1 film of the year, is a charming animation movie that also happens to be one of the better works of art about what it feels like to live with anxiety. Deadpool & Wolverine was a fun road trip superhero flick with two charismatic stars. Wicked was so damn entertaining people started taking pictures of the screen in the movie theater for some reason. Twisters … well, it sure did live up to its title!

Those were the positives. The negatives … well, the negatives were a lot of the other big movies that came out this year. In 2024, studios spent tends (or hundreds) of millions of dollars on dopey action movies and absolutely infuriating sequels with ridiculous stories and shockingly bad special effects. (Seriously, why do movies that cost $250 million suddenly look like rejected AI art?) As we tie a bow on the movie year that was, let’s look back at the titles that genuinely made us want to turn our brain off … because watching them hurt our eyeballs.