Entertainment
8 Bad Movies That Have Great Special Effects
Good special effects can obviously be like icing on an already good cake, but that cake has to be good. Otherwise, even the best special effects don’t really go far in making something worth watching for those effects alone. Good special effects can make a good movie even better, and then there are also some very good movies that don’t have great special effects, but those somewhat janky moments feel forgivable (like, maybe some instances of less-than-perfect de-aging effects… looking at you, that one slightly too physically demanding scene from The Irishman).
So, in the interest of showcasing how good special effects can’t really save a bad movie, here are some movies that miss the mark in most regards, but have special effects that were mostly impressive for their time (and maybe even to this day). Most of this will focus on movies with computer-generated imagery, but not exclusively; there are some films below that contain impressive practical or more old-school effects, too.
8
‘The Matrix Revolutions’ (2003)
If you look over all The Matrix movies, the first one is obviously a classic, being an introduction to a fascinating world, a great concept, and some spectacular action. The second movie is a little shakier when it comes to pacing, and maybe the story isn’t quite as interesting, but it still looks great, and much of the action is as good – or possibly even slightly better – than the action found in the first. That’s probably a massive hot take… The Matrix (1999) still wins out as a sci-fi movie, but The Matrix Reloaded could be a hair better as an action movie.
Skipping ahead to the fourth, that one is definitely ambitious, for better or worse, and has some wild and fairly interesting ideas you kind of have to admire. And then the third movie… uh… it looks quite good. All the movies in The Matrix series look pretty great, and even if the fourth has some weirder special effects, it’s still going for something bold, and has moments of eye-catching imagery. The first three all look and feel pretty consistent. That third movie, The Matrix Revolutions, does disappoint a bit when it comes to both the narrative and the action, but at least it looks good and is generally more than sound on a technical level.
7
‘Pearl Harbor’ (2001)
There is a movie about the attack on Pearl Harbor from 1970 called Tora! Tora! Tora!, and for the most part, it still holds up. It doesn’t have modern-day special effects, obviously, but the techniques used to recreate the attack are immense, to the point where it sometimes feels easy to forget you’re watching a movie. About 30 years later, there was a very different movie about the same attack, simply called Pearl Harbor, with it being less of a docudrama, more of a melodrama, and also a good deal longer (and Tora! Tora! Tora! itself wasn’t exactly short).
Tora! Tora! Tora! achieves more in a shorter runtime, with a Japanese and American perspective on the event given, and more effort that goes toward making it feel believable. Pearl Harbor might’ve got away with being broader and more romance-focused than you might’ve expected if that side of the movie had actually been good. There is a somewhat effective utilization of then-cutting-edge special effects for some of the bigger and more action-heavy sequences here, but that really is about all you get by way of genuinely good stuff.
6
‘Terrifier’ (2016)
The entirety of the Terrifier trilogy is the sort of thing that’s not going to be for everyone, since all three movies so far (it is threatening to be more than just a trilogy) are unapologetically brutal, and also pretty blunt with what they set out to do. It’s possible to see how people might be fans of the second and third Terrifier movies, because they have the sadistic violence and memorable villain of the first movie, but there is an attempt in both those films to have something of a story, some character development for the victims, and a bit by way of an overall mythology for certain things.
That first movie, though, is barely a movie. It’s hard to remember anything that happens beyond some of the exceedingly grisly violence. Yet the effects done to make Art the Clown’s sadistic tendencies come across as particularly brutal and bloody are impressive, and particularly so when you consider that Terrifier (2016) was far from expensive. Even by low-budget horror movie standards, it was low budget, if that makes sense.
5
‘The Golden Compass’ (2007)
The Golden Compass is sort of based on a very good book called Northern Lights, the U.S. name of which was The Golden Compass. Emphasis on “sort of based,” because The Golden Compass just stops short of actually having the interesting ending that the source material does, which sets up two even more ambitious sequels that end up rounding out the His Dark Materials trilogy.
Anyway, that ending – or lack thereof – is the biggest problem with the film adaptation of The Golden Compass, and it does also lack a certain magic and charm that the book has, quite effortlessly. Yet on a technical level, the special effects are strong for their time, and though the movie’s almost 20 years old, a fair bit of it holds up better than you might expect. It won Best Visual Effects at the Oscars, and then it was also nominated for Best Art Direction (with that side of things also contributing to the movie looking and feeling pretty great overall).
4
‘Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice’ (2016)
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is saved from being an outright terrible superhero movie on account of it looking quite good, and also for having some engaging action scenes. The problem is, there are really only a couple of properly good action scenes, and they’re buried within a movie that’s quite long, at 2.5 hours, and yet it’s paced in a chaotic way that makes it feel even more drawn out.
Throughout the whole thing, at least you get special effects that are well-executed, and an overall level of technical competency you can expect from most Zack Snyder movies. The problem comes about when Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice offers little else, and sort of doubles down on some of the problems already present in the flawed – but not as bad – Man of Steel. This was only sporadically entertaining as a movie about the titular showdown, and as a movie setting up the dawn of the Justice League, it really didn’t work very well at all.
3
‘Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen’ (2009)
Like Zack Snyder, Michael Bay doesn’t always make great movies (sometimes getting things right, though, also like Snyder), yet both directors are generally good at making their expensive movies actually look expensive. You saw it with Pearl Harbor, which was mentioned before and stuff… that was another Michael Bay movie. It’s not a high bar, and it’s not always enough to make the movie actually bearable, but it is technically better than nothing, and you do find it with Bay’s Transformers sequels, most of which aren’t very good (some might even argue the first is flawed, but it’s also easy to get nostalgic about parts of that one).
Of the sequels, Bay directed four, including the second film overall, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. It’s a technically impressive movie, in some ways, like the first, but it really falters when it comes to how it’s written, paced, edited, and acted. If you want to see impressively rendered robots transform, battle, and get blown up, that stuff does technically look more than technically sound, but you’re going to be digging pretty deep – and probably to no avail – if you want to find more than just that in a movie like Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.
2
‘Hollow Man’ (2000)
Of all the Paul Verhoeven movies, most are honestly quite good, some are pretty much great, and then a fair few are rather underrated, too. The worst of the bunch, though, would almost have to be Hollow Man, and that’s hopefully not much of a hot take. This takes on an invisible man premise, but with a good deal more outwardly shocking content than you’d see in those older movies about invisible people, with admittedly more impressive and up-to-date special effects here, too.
It got an Oscar nomination for Best Visual Effects, in fact, but it’s safe to assume that it wasn’t close to getting nominated in any other categories.
No, beyond that, the special effects were impressive for 2000. A lot of money went into making Hollow Man, and sure, some of that went to the cast (like Kevin Bacon, even if his character ends up being invisible a lot of the time), but it seems like a lot also went into the special effects, and that side of things paid off. It got an Oscar nomination for Best Visual Effects, in fact, but it’s safe to assume that it wasn’t close to getting nominated in any other categories, because outside the effects (for their time), Hollow Man just keeps on consistently missing the mark. You really are better off not seeing it.
1
‘The Lion King’ (2019)
Begrudgingly, it must be conceded that The Lion King (2019) does not look as garish as some other Disney remakes that have been in live-action, or have featured photo-realistic animation instead of the hand-drawn/2D variety. Some of those movies had a ton of money thrown at them with seemingly no gains from it, with Snow White (2025) being perhaps the worst offender, in that regard.
Don’t get it twisted: The Lion King (2019) still doesn’t look nearly as striking or timeless as The Lion King (1994), which is still one of the best-looking animated movies, and also one of the flat-out best animated movies quality-wise, too. The Lion King (2019) is lifeless and without the kind of color and expression needed for the emotional story at hand, but if there was an intent to have the computer animation here look pretty darn close to real life (well, real life if lions and other animals talked and sang and stuff), then mission accomplished. Yay?
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