Readers’ Poll: The 20 Worst Movies of 2013

Somehow or another, the combination of Michael Bay, the Rock and a ripped Mark Wahlberg didn't make for a classic motion picture. It aimed for comedy and action, but managed to fail on both ends. Our hopes are very low for the upcoming Transformers 4 that re-teams Bay and Wahlberg, but they could very well surprise us and produce a movie even worse than what we're imagining.

It's extremely hard to live up to the legacy of Borat, though Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa tried very hard by filming an outrageous character traveling cross-country as he interacted with shocked, real-life people. The film was a big hit, but many Jackass fans would have preferred to see the old gang finding new ways to horrifically injure themselves. 

The combination of Ridley Scott, Cormac McCarthy, Brad Pitt and Javier Bardem should have produced a winning movie, but this international drug thriller was needlessly confusing and hopessly boring. It was preceded by months of hype, and then it quietly opened to a collective shrug. Oh well. We still love Alien and The Road. 

What's that? Today's kids didn't want to see a movie based on a 1930s radio show? Even Johnny Depp and a $250 million budget couldn't convince them to take a cinematic journey alongside the Lone Ranger and his buddy Tonto. This fiasco is unlikely to damage Depp's career too much, but Armie Hammer may have trouble finding leading roles after this.

Spring Breakers is one of the most polarizing movies in recent memory. Some critics thought it was a brilliant commentary on today's youth, while others found it a sexist, boring, ludicrous exploitation movie. The truth probably lies somewhere in between, but we wonder how many people bought tickets to ogle young women in bikinis? Probably more than would ever admit it. 

Most people seemed to enjoy this thriller about a group of bank-robbing magicians. It was an enormous hit and a sequel is already in the works, but some critics felt the plot was extremely convoluted and ultimately incomprehensible. The sequel might clear up some lingering questions, but odds are it'll just raise more of them. 

There's probably a great movie to be made about the making of Mary Poppins, but Disney is not the studio to make that happen. They're too interested in celebrating their own history and further mythologizing Walt Disney to make a balanced film, and the decision to devote so much screen time to the horrible childhood of Mary Poppins creator P.L. Travers weakened an already shaky movie.  

This sorta, semi-true story about the Abscam scandal of the 1970s was a big hit with most critics and viewers, but a vocal minority found the characters irritating and the plot needlessly complicated. Oscar voters seemed to agree since it didn't earn a single award despite multiple nominations.

This wretched movie doesn't even deserve to call itself part of the Die Hard franchise. It's an insult to the memory of the great movies, and somehow it even made 2007's middling Live Free or Die Hard look great by comparison. The next chapter is supposed to be somewhat of a return to the roots of the series. Here's hoping. 

Alfonso Cuarón's space adventure was an amazing technical achievement and he fully deserved his Best Director Oscar, but some critics felt the Sandra Bullock character wasn't fully formed and the film was less than satisfying on an emotional level. Those people probably didn't see it in IMAX 3D. 

It's tough to make a great comedy sequel. (How many great ones can you think of?) Anchorman 2 aimed very high and packed in enough jokes for two separate cuts of the movie, but it did run a little long and didn't quite live up to the genius of the original. That said, we're still praying they make Step Brothers 2. (Bonus: read our full Anchorman 2 cover story here!)

Wait, didn't this come out in 2009? Oh, that was X-Men Origins: Wolverine. This one is The Wolverine. Excuse us. He heads to Japan in this one and gets into all sorts of adventures, ultimately setting the stage for yet another X-Men movie. Haven't we all been through this enough at this point?

After three hours of whores, drugs, white collar crime and more drugs and whores, some Wolf of Wall Street viewers simply felt numb. They also felt the movie was glorifying horrific behavior. We loved every second of the madness and long to see the original four hour cut, but to each their own.

By this point we're all pretty familiar with the Iron Man saga. Some new villain appears on the scene that threatens Iron Man's very existence and for a while all seems lost, but then he perseveres in the end during an endless action sequence. It's always a fun ride, but we understand why some people are ready to get off. 

After the disappointing retread of Hangover Part II, it was smart of the filmmakers to do away with the premise of the Wolf Pack trying to remember a night of debauchery in which a good friend disappeared. But this back-to-Vegas movie still felt like a rerun of the original. Three Hangover movies in five years is simply too many too soon. 

Where to start with this piece of shit? The fact the movie was one long blur of an action sequence? The fact that we're sick to death of the Superman origin story? The fact we saw this entire movie and can barely remember one frame of the thing? Sadly, it was a hit, setting the stage for a mash-up movie with Ben Affleck's Batman. If that's 500 times better than Man of Steel, it'll still be historically awful.

This is a little unfair since the filmmakers of Sharknado weren't exactly trying to make Citizen Kane. They made a movie about sharks that fall out of the sky staring Tara Reid and Ian Ziering. It's 86 minutes of utter insanity, and it got enough to buzz to guarantee a sequel that'll surely be 50 times nuttier than the original. 

For Adam Sandler's first sequel he could have shot a follow-up to Billy Madison, The Wedding Singer or one of his few other good movies. Instead, he went with Grown Ups, only this time we had to do without Rob Schneider. The rest of the gang were back, but it was still more fart jokes and 101 interminable minutes. 

Will "I'm Not a Scientologist" Smith wanted to make a sci-fi vehicle to showcase the acting chops of his son, Jaden, but instead he made the worst movie of his career that managed to embarrass his whole family and tarnish the brand of one of the most bankable stars in Hollywood. The only good thing to come from it was the funniest Onion article of the year, so we guess After Earth was good for something. 

Anthology movies like New Year's Eve and Valentine's Day have been stinking up movie theaters for the last few years, but those flicks seem brilliant when compared to the stunningly misguided Movie 43. It's a collection of unfunny comedy sketches that somehow attracted some of the biggest stars in Hollywood, including Emma Stone, Hugh Jackman, Chloe Grace Moretz and Kate Winslet. It won the Best Picture at the 34th Golden Raspberry Awards, and we're guessing nothing else even came close.