The 2010s was a great decade for fantasy. The Harry Potter saga went out with a bang, Game of Thrones captured our collective imagination (then broke our hearts), and millions of gamers spent countless hours playing The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. It’s safe to say that fantasy is bigger than ever, with enough shows, movies and games to keep audiences satisfied well into the 2020s.
But while there were a ton of fantasy highs in the 2010s, there were also a few lows. Below are ten of the worst fantasy movies of the decade, according to Rotten Tomatoes.
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (2018): 37%
A low point for the Harry Potter franchise as a whole, the second Fantastic Beasts movie is currently the lowest-rated film in the entire Wizarding World. What happened? Well, according to critics, the movie is one big info dump, that spends a disproportionate amount of time world building, at the expense of characters, plot, and dialogue that doesn’t sound like a giant lecture.
Seriously, if someone wanted to know the history of this or that wizard family, they’d save $15 bucks and visit the Fandom Wiki. At least then they wouldn’t have to endure this movie.
King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017): 30%
Guy Richie’s take on the King Arthur legend was intended to be the first in a multi-part epic. Unfortunately, we’ll never get to see what Richie had in mind because Legend of the Sword wasn’t so legendary after all. The movie’s attempt to try and infuse modern action movie aesthetics with medieval swords and storytelling left critics confused.
In the end, there was just too much pyrotechnics and CGI for critics to take the movie as a serious piece of Arthurian storytelling.
Warcraft (2016): 28%
The 2010s did little to break the curse of bad video game movies. The film adaptation of the fantasy role-playing series by director Duncan Jones, Warcraft underwhelmed critics by giving them a story they’ve heard one too many times.
Tired tropes and muddled plot elements hurt the movie’s appeal in North America, but it did prove to be massively successful in China, where Warcraft dominated the box office.
Pan (2015): 27%
From the moment the trailer dropped, and everyone got a look at Hugh Jackman’s horrendous Blackbeard, Pan was dead in the water. Critics weren’t kind either. They panned (pun intended) the acting and the bland, uninspired CGI.
Released amid all the live-action re-makes of Disney animated classics, Pan was viewed as Warner Bros. challenge to the House of Mouse. Sadly, the movie was a flop, and any hope of spawning a new franchise was quickly forgotten.
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 (2011): 25%
By the turn of the decade, critics and audiences were already fed up with the ongoing adventures of Edward and Bella. Twilight fans, however, couldn’t get enough, and gladly forked over $700k to see the first part of the last entry in the series that everyone loved to hate.
The lowest rated film in the Twilight Series, Breaking Dawn Part 1 is essentially a two-hour-long, PG-13 rated honeymoon video, combining everything people hated about the franchise and distilling it into a potent concoction. The fact that it took two movies to finally drive a stake through this franchise was an act of cinematic sadism through and through.
Assassin’s Creed (2018): 18%
Coming out when the Assassin’s Creed series was well past its prime, the film adaptation starring Michael Fassbender was doomed from the start. Fans could not have been angrier with the final product, which swapped out the game’s mature elements for a sanitized, PG-13 rated dud that could not have come out at a worse time.
Not only was it released at a time when the games’ quality was seeing a steep decline, but it also came out the week after Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Way to go.
Legends of Oz: Dorothy’s Return (2013): 16%
This one seems like shooting fish in a barrel. A poorly animated ‘sequel’ to the original Wizard of Oz that came out suspiciously close to Oz the Great and Powerful? One doesn’t need a BA in Film Studies to figure out where this is going. Critics were quick to thrash the film’s cheap-looking animation and lazy writing.
Worse, however, was how the movie patronized its young audience , assuming that they were either too stupid or naive to understand the basics of good filmmaking. Guess what, people, kids can smell BS better than anyone, and they didn’t fall for this boldfaced scam.
Robin Hood (2018): 15%
No, this isn’t the one starring Russell Crowe and directed by Ridley Scott. That adaptation may have been underwhelming, but it’s nowhere near as bad as last year’s offering. Like Guy Richie’s King Arthur, the movie went a bit overboard with the action and CGI.
Critics were irked even further by a scene that invoked images of modern-day riots, which was rightfully called out as a lazy and cynical attempt at social commentary. Not even Mel Brooks could find a way to satirize this dumpster fire, as that would require the movie to have anything worth mocking.
The Legend of Hercules (2014): 3%
Of the two Hercules movies to come out in 2014, this one (aka the one without The Rock) is the worst by a very large margin. A boring origin story, the movie is brought to even deeper lows by horrible production values that mirror that of some high school plays. How bad is it? Well, consider a now-notorious scene where a guy gets stabbed and the actor uses the old ‘tuck the prop blade under the arm’ trick to look like he was run through.
Yes, this apparently happened in a movie with a budget of around $70 million. No one really knew why The Legend of Hercules exists, other than to land at the top of ‘worst of’ lists from the year, and to give Dwayne Johnson a laugh.
The Nutcracker in 3D (2010): 0%
The only phrase that comes to mind when discussing this adaptation of Tchaikovsky’s classic is what? Had it just been another forgettable entry in the long list of Nutcracker adaptations, and it would’ve gotten away with little more than a ‘meh’ and a 40% score. But The Nutcracker in 3D goes completely off the rails and into the land of nightmare fuel, giving us a dark, ugly, and needlessly grim retelling that invokes Nazi iconography. No, really.
The Nutcracker in 3D is less of a movie, and more of an affront to the senses that seems tailor made to traumatize children, and make their parents question their ability to choose movies. The fact that everything’s in 3D makes the ordeal all the more torturous, and one should only watch this with their hands tied and away from sharp objects, lest they are overcome with the sudden urge to gouge their out their eyes.
