We didn’t know how good we had it in the 2000s. Sure, some things were awful, but the movie industry was something special. Every year felt like it held something new and fantastic: the Bourne movies, Avatar, Gladiator, Lord of the Rings, Pan’s Labyrinth, Lost in Translation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Mulholland Drive, just to name a random handful. On top of that, There Will Be Blood, Michael Clayton, Atonement, Juno, and No Country for Old Men were going head-to-head at the Oscars. And as far as the eye could see, studios were funding ridiculously ambitious, ill-fated sci-fi blockbusters that no one really bothered to watch until they hit cable.
These movies arrived at the perfect moment to be fascinating without necessarily being all that good. Hollywood was ready to spend loads of money on original ideas, and after The Matrix and Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, sci-fi was having a moment. So, inspired by those movies, and smaller, more manageable examples like Alex Proyas’ Dark City and The Crow, directors set out to make their sci-fi dreams a reality. The only problem was that CGI was nowhere near advanced enough for the worlds these creators wanted to build, especially not at the budget they wanted to build them at. So, an entire micro-genre of unashamed, strange blockbusters was born, with high aims, moderate budgets, buckets of creativity, a bit of star power to get the green light from studios, and only the loosest semblance of a script to hold it all together.
The recent release of Paul W.S. Anderson’s tremendously fun film In the Lost Lands felt like a perfect throwback to that era, with its complex mythology of a Christian cult and a ruined world full of magic — made up mostly of brown and gray CGI and anonymous metal beams. Anderson is a master of this particular type of movie (though audiences generally showed up for his Resident Evil movies), and his latest got us thinking with fond nostalgia on this bygone era of bizarre and unique movies.
In that spirit, we put together a list of some of the very best of the 2000s (and early 2010s) era’s overly ambitious sci-fi movies, each one of which bombed — commercially, critically, or both. Despite their failings, though, the “flopbbusters” on this list have stuck in our heads and hearts for nearly 20 years, and that alone is a feat worth celebrating.
Ghosts of Mars
Most 2000s thing about it: Ice Cube’s character is named “Desolation Williams.”Where to watch: Free with ads on the Roku Channel, or for digital rental/purchase on Amazon, Apple TV, Fandango
All of John Carpenter’s movies have a delightful B-movie flair to them. But Ghosts of Mars takes the cake in the category. It’s a pseudo-Western on Mars with an all-star cast, including Ice Cube, Pam Grier, and frequent flopbuster star Jason Statham.
The premise is great and allows for a lot of Carpenter narrative creativity: When a freight train on a mission to pick up a prisoner (Ice Cube) returns with only one survivor (Natasha Henstridge), she is interrogated about the series of events, unfolding through a series of interweaving flashbacks.
The performances are strong, and Carpenter scores the movie well as always, but the real strength of Ghosts of Mars is right there in the title. The Martian atmosphere is extremely spooky, and the red tones of the planet’s surface are gorgeous, an effect created by dyeing the gypsum mine they filmed in with red coloring. —Pete Volk
Equilibrium
Most 2000s thing about it: Gun Kata.Where to watch: Free on Hoopla, or for digital rental/purchase on Amazon, Apple TV, Fandango
This entire trend in Hollywood owes its life, and its budgets, to The Matrix, but few movies on this list took that inspiration as seriously as Equilibrium. The movie is a pretty blatant rip-off, but I say that with nothing but love in my heart for it. Equilibrium takes place shortly after the end of World War III, in a city where emotion and art have been outlawed entirely. However, when John Preston (Christian Bale) suddenly finds a book of poems by W.B. Yeats, he discovers his own emotions and decides to fight back against and destroy the fascist government that has stripped people of the ability to feel.
To do all this rebelling, Preston has to call upon his mastery of Equilibrium’s most incredible invention: Gun Kata, a gun-based martial art that is equal parts extremely silly and totally sick. All of Equilibrium’s shootouts and fights scenes involve Preston pulling off incredible feats with guns, doing Matrix-style wire work while shooting dozens of rounds a second out of his semiautomatic pistols, or beating people to death with retractable gun spikes. It’s all bizarre and incredible, and in certain ways feels like a precursor to the John Wick style that dominates action movies today. The exceptionally ridiculous Gun Kata action, combined with one of the bigger and more well-thought-out worlds on this list, makes Equilibrium an absolute flopbuster classic. —Austen Goslin
Paycheck
Most 2000s thing about it: Matt Damon turned down the lead part because he had just done an amnesia role with The Bourne Identity.Where to watch: For digital rental/purchase on Amazon, Apple TV, Fandango
Even many of my fellow John Woo die-hards won’t go to bat for this one. The movie that led to Woo’s temporary exile from Hollywood filmmaking, Paycheck is based on a Philip K. Dick story and follows a highly skilled engineer (Ben Affleck) whose work is so secretive that he gets his short-term memory wiped after every job. But when a job goes wrong, he has to try and retrace his own (forgotten) steps to get to the bottom of a mystery.
I remember seeing this movie for the first time on cable when I was in high school, and I fully believe that’s the best way to watch Paycheck (on TV, with commercials… high school might be harder to recreate). And yes, it does have one of John Woo’s trademark doves. —PV
The Chronicles of Riddick
Most 2000s thing about it: The fact that the best version of the character only exists in the Xbox tie-in game.Where to watch: Prime Video or Starz
Perhaps the best example of this trend, The Chronicles of Riddick is a sequel to Pitch Black, a wonderful sci-fi slasher that’s something like Alien, except if the xenomorph was played by Vin Diesel and he was sort of a good guy. But while the first movie is low-stakes and even lower-budget, the second movie blows the whole thing out to a universal scale.
While we last saw him as a space outlaw on a backwater planet, when we next catch up with Richard B. Riddick, he’s pulled into a conflict with an intergalactic empire. The series pulls off its turn toward space opera surprisingly well, building out a whole spacefaring civilization that feels straight out of Warhammer 40K, complete with massive armor and weapons, a giant capital city, and incredibly convoluted lore. All of this is presented with a terrific blend of seriousness and camp, and while Riddick caring this much about the fate of the universe never quite makes sense, it is one of the most entertaining examples of Hollywood’s sci-fi excess you can find. —AG
Death Race
Most 2000s thing about it: Roger Ebert called it “an assault on all the senses, including common.”Where to watch: Max, or for digital rental/purchase on Amazon, Apple TV, Fandango
If there’s anything that makes more sense than video games as Paul W.S. Anderson adaptation material, it’s a Roger Corman movie. The 2008 Death Race updates the great premise of Corman’s cult classic — prisoners compete in a deadly race to try and earn their freedom — and amplifies the vehicular action with some terrific car stunts and flips. You will truly feel the presence of Hollywood car action maestro Spiro Razatos, best known for his work on the Fast and Furious franchise.
So many of Anderson’s movies would fit in this category: the (very good!) Resident Evil movies, Alien vs. Predator, and even some of his newer movies that don’t belong to this specific era. A key element of the mid-2000s flopbuster is a lack of embarrassment over the nerdy stuff in the material, and throughout his decades making video game adaptations and other seemingly silly projects, Anderson has never once flinched. He knows what you’re here for, he knows what he’s here for, and he delivers.
All the 2000s flopbuster notes are here: plenty of CGI to build out the largely gray environments of the prison and the racetrack (but also for some grisly deaths), a villain whose plan makes no sense and whose motivations seem to flip on a dime, and a goofy, violent, fun time in a surprisingly well-realized dystopia. —PV
Doomsday
Most 2000s thing about it: The villain dresses like The Prodigy’s Keith Flint with a big ol’ biohazard symbol tattooed on his back.Where to watch: For digital rental/purchase on Amazon, Apple TV, YouTube
If your idea of a good time is listening to Malcolm McDowell ominously monologuing over a faux-John Carpenter synth score and post-apocalyptic motorbike rallies that function like Burning Man meets Cirque du Soleil, then boy, do I have a movie for you! Doomsday was critically panned when it was released back in ’08 as a derivative and uninspired riff on Mad Max and Escape from New York. And while this is true, it does very little to detract from its appeal as a damn satisfying, albeit very cheesy, action movie.
Rhona Mitra kicks all kinds of ass as Major Eden Sinclair, a special ops soldier with a drone camera for an eye who is sent on a mission into a quarantined Scotland in search of a cure for a deadly super virus. Don’t focus too much on the plot. Instead, just soak in the gloriously over-the-top violence, gladiatorial spectacle, and at times shockingly striking cinematography and lighting. Hell, the climax even essentially boils down to an all-out road war, complete with leather-bound, man-eating ravers and slow-motion explosions. What’s not to like? —Toussaint Egan
Daybreakers
Most 2000s thing about it: Action/horror vampires.Where to watch: Free with ads on The Roku Channel or on the CW app, or for digital rental/purchase on Amazon or Apple TV
Vampires were all the rage in the 2000s, and while it’s tempting to credit Twilight with the whole thing, it’s important to remember that it really started with Blade in 1998, then the Underworld movies (which would be on this list had they not made as much money and as many sequels as they did) kept the bloodsuckers alive long enough for Bella and Edward to give them a second life. Amid all of that, though, were half a dozen or so smaller vampire movies of various genres. But not a single one of the vampire movies from this era was as big or bold as Daybreakers.
Daybreakers takes place in a post-apocalyptic world ruled by vampires. Ethan Hawke plays a vampire hematologist who’s trying to solve for the fact that now that vampires rule the world, the world’s running out of blood to drink. In the middle of his research, he comes across a former vampire named Elvis (Willem Dafoe), who thinks he has a cure for vampirism that could save humanity, and maybe the vampires, too. From there, the movie turns into a pretty great little action thriller in a fascinatingly drawn world. Think Children of Men (a movie that could also be on this list but is simply a little too good for it) but with vampires and Willem Dafoe. —AG
Gamer
Most 2000s thing about it: The Neveldine/Taylor style of chaos cinema editing.Where to watch: Peacock, or for free with ads on Pluto TV
During their six years making movies together, onetime filmmaking duo Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor made some of the most chaotically shot and edited movies of the century. This is a good thing: The Crank movies, their Ghost Rider sequel, and Gamer are all among the most visually distinct movies of their generation, with a palpable energy underneath the frantic editing style.
In this one, prisoners on death row compete in a third-person shooter where they are the characters, controlled by gamers behind the scenes. The most popular and successful prisoner in this game (Gerard Butler) works alongside the teenager controlling him (Logan Lerman) to attempt to gain his freedom. Gamer was also ahead of its time when it comes to its satire of people’s time in virtual worlds, and features a delightfully over-the-top villain performance from mid-Dexter-era Michael C. Hall (that casting choice is a runner-up for most 2000s thing about Gamer). —PV
Priest
Most 2000s thing about it: A band of militant post-apocalyptic priests who are the good guys (also action/horror vampires).Where to watch: USA Network, or for digital rental/purchase on Amazon, Apple TV, Fandango
Perhaps the wildest movie on this whole list, Priest is going to take some explaining. The movie is set in a world where humans and vampires spent hundreds of years at war, almost completely destroying the Earth’s surface. Finally, humans banded together in a theocratic society under the rule of The Church, which creates a specially trained group of warriors called Priests who can defeat the vampires.
When they do defeat the vampires, The Church rounds up the surviving monsters and puts them in special reservations, but then immediately begins to enact tyrannical totalitarian control over the remaining humans. To escape this, many humans move outside the safety of The Church’s walled city, where they’re more susceptible to bands of roaming vampire survivors. Living outside the walls long after the end of the last war, one particular Priest (Paul Bettany) finds his niece has been kidnapped by vampires, and he has to cross the post-apocalyptic landscape — mostly made out of gray CGI slop — to return to his vampire-killing ways. It’s among the most ambitious and fun premises on this list, and it mostly results in an excuse for some pretty kick-ass vampire-killing action, all of which makes this an excellent addition to the flopbuster canon. —AG
Dredd
Most 2000s thing about it: A soundtrack consisting entirely of industrial music.Where to watch: Max, or for digital rental/purchase on Amazon, Apple TV, Fandango
Another update of an existing franchise, the 2012 Dredd is a crisp sci-fi action movie equal parts The Raid (which happened to shoot almost simultaneously) and ’80s sci-fi throwback. Karl Urban stars as the violent Judge Dredd, on an assignment with his rookie partner (Olivia Thirlby) to take down a drug kingpin (mid-Game of Thrones Lena Headey, another strong casting-from-TV choice in this era that also qualifies as a runner-up for most 2000s thing about this movie) who rules over a skyscraping high-rise.
The verticality in the 200-story building allows for tense and at times shockingly violent action augmented by the visual effects (especially the slow-motion sequences), and the lead performances are all strong. There are plenty of gray tones within the movie, fitting with the era, but the kinetic direction and strong performances hold it all together. Of note: Pete Travis is credited with directing the movie, but Urban has made it clear screenwriter Alex Garland is the one who really directed Dredd. —PV
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