I've always wondered how fans of Superman 1 & 2 reacted back in 1982 the first time they saw the poster for Superman III.







I know Richard Pryor was a big star back then, but did anyone want to see him in Superman? It must have been like if the poster for The Dark Knight Rises showed Batman standing back to back with Louis CK.

So funny you mention that because I actually had that exact one sheet up on my wall along with several others. That's how excited I was to see the movie. Yeah in retrospect Richard Pryor was a terrible fit for a Superman movie, but I guess I figured he'd be a cross between Ned Beatty and Gene Hackman and they would just make it work. I was young and there was no internet to warn me back then.
I still remember the first review I could find : At The Movies after Siskel and Ebert left. They opened the show with a clip where Pryor says "Superman's bad!" -- and then they said "So is this movie". They ripped it apart and my heart just sank.

We saw Richard Pryor in the trailer long before the poster came out. It was well-publicized that Margot Kidder would have a very small role in the movie and, as others have noted, Pryor was one of the biggest box office draws at the time...it wasn't such an obvious bad move then as it appears now.

I've never seen SUPERMAN III. Back in 1983, that poster scared me off and then the bad reviews confirmed it.

Are you saying you didn't like Eyes Wide Shut? Watch it again. It's a great film. One of Kubrick's best.

What? That movies sweet. You're talking about the aircraft carrier film right?

I wasn't much impressed by it when I saw it in the theater. But it gets better each time I watch it, and now it's also one of my favorite Kubrick films.

My choice is Gladiator. I had a friend who truly loved movies. He spent all week telling me how great it was, and I trusted him. Gladiator opened with a wonderful sequence of a battle in Germany, and I looked forward to a great evening. Then the plot started, and the rest of the movie was bad. So bad.

Mine is No Country for Old Men. Wasn't quite as enamored with it compared to others, though watching it again when the second Blu-ray came out, I liked it a tad better...

I felt the same. Probably the worst Best Picture winner in quite some time.

Godzilla (2014) -- advertised as a Godzilla film starring Bryan Cranston; the film had very little of either.

Godzilla (2014) was a definite recent disappointment in relation to my expectations. Just a flat, lifeless mess.

As far as the recent Hobbit films, I thought the first one was very good. The second was half-great, half-TERRIBLE, and the last one was just entirely BAD. Jackson cashed out and phoned it in quite early on in the process.

The biggest disappointment I ever felt in theaters was in 1999 and it wasn't Phantom Menace, Eyes Wide Shut (which I still think is a masterpiece), or Blair Witch Project. It was Magnolia. After Boogie Nights and (to a lesser extent) Hard Eight I was a massive PTA fan. The critical buzz on Magnolia was off-the-scale, on the level of a modern-day masterpiece and perhaps the best movie of the decade.

Absolutely hated it. We walked out about 90 minutes into it. Others did too. Someone gave the screen the finger and the audience erupted with laughter. I went to go see it again, thinking I might have been in the absolute wrong frame of mind that night. I wasn't. It was still that bad. A cheap, shallow mess of a film.

I don't hate it as much as I used to, but it probably remains my biggest disappointment.

Trail of the Pink Panther (1982). I knew before I saw it (theatrically) that it would contain previously unseen footage of Sellers as Clouseau. That was the hook for me. At least one critic noted that the opening credit, "Blake Entertainment Edwards", should've read "Blake Exploitation Edwards".

I realized that it would be difficult to make a story out of the footage, but I wanted to see the movie for the "new" Sellers material. What I didn't know in advance was that it was basically a "clip show". And they used the same gag from the previous movie (Revenge ...): Dreyfus delivering the eulogy. Plus, Trail ... had three urination gags.

Seeing it with an audience made it somewhat tolerable. But this was a theatrical feature, not an episode of a TV series.

I don't get this revisionist history. It was a deathly dull, plotless slog through an old man's masturbatory fantasies. And while I haven't watched it in years I doubt it will change my mind that it was the worst movie Kubrick made since at least 1960.

What revisionist history? It was fairly well praised upon its release in 1999.

I thought it was a near-masterpiece when I saw it in theaters the first time. Another theatrical viewing cemented that status with me.

Agreed, although I would say it was the worst film he made since 1953 (FEAR AND DESIRE).

Metascore 68.
http://www.metacritic.com/movie/eyes...critic-reviews

Rotten Tomato score 74%
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/eyes...earch=Eyes%20w

Not exactly panned, but not exactly what most of us were expecting either. I wanted to love that movie and ended up just hating it.

I still haven't seen Fear and Desire, but I'd easily rank EWS way over Killer's Kiss and Spartacus, ahead of Lolita, and slightly ahead of Full Metal Jacket.

Regarding Henry and Patriot Games. Harrison Ford's films took a turn from must sees to don't care anymore with these two...

Then The Fugitive came out and changed your mind.

No revisionism mate. Loved it on opening night. One year later Martin Scorsese picked it as one of the best of the '90s.

Aside from the obvious movies already mentioned I'll add The Haunting (1999). As a lover of haunted house movies and the original Shirley Jackson novel I can't tell you how disappointed I was with the CGI shitfest that unfolded in front of me in that theater!

Thank you, sir. This post gave me the biggest laugh I've had in months. I can't get a visual of Louis CK standing next to Batman out of my head now. Bravo. Someone needs to photoshop such a picture.

A couple of my biggest disappointments have been mentioned in this thread. I seriously thought the Matrix was going to enter the pop culture stratosphere like the Star Wars Trilogy when its sequels hit. Watching that first Matrix sequel left me numb and I literally fell asleep during the third one. That was the last time I ever expected anything great from the money machine that is Hollywood.

The first Hollywood Godzilla was another big disappointment. I remember taking my very young brother at the time to see it and seeing the disappointment on his face as we walked out.

I find that there's quite a bit going on beneath the surface of EWS. Particularly in the scene at the end with Ziegler and Bill discussing what happened at the party. What happened to Nick? Was Victor telling the truth, or was it something more sinister? Did Mandy really overdose or was she murdered by the cult? Was Alice one of the masked women at the party? Was Domino one of the women at the party as well? Was she meant to infect Bill with HIV?