2023 gave us some really stellar blockbusters; massive behemoth films with A-list talent and big name intellectual properties. Barbie was fun and smart and incredibly pink. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 brought Marvel’s best trilogy to a close in thrilling and moving fashion. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse expanded the scope of an already ambitious series with bold visual and narrative ideas. If you want to take the definition of blockbusters in a very literal direction, Oppenheimer was a pretty great example as well.
But you know what they say: Bigger isn’t always better. It’s true in life, and it’s true in movies.
2023 also gave us some hugely disappointing blockbusters, massive behemoth films with A-list talent and big name intellectual properties that collapsed under the weight of their bloated budgets, stale ideas, and limited ambitions. As we wind down our look back at the cinematic year let us bid a not-so-fond farewell to those blockbusters that went creatively (and sometimes financially) bust in 2023.
I’ve assembled this list of the ten worst offenders in ascending order of busted blockbusterness, starting with the tentpole films of 2023 that were quasi-watchable and then gradually arriving at the sad, intellectually-stunted heart of cinematic darkness. Join me, won’t you, as we rank the worst blockbusters of 2023…
The Worst Blockbusters of 2023
These big-budget movies did not live up to the hype.
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