Winner of five Golden Raspberry Awards and the ire of hundreds of thousands of fans of the original Nickelodeon animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender, M. Night Shyamalan’s 3D travesty might prove to be the nail in his directorial coffin (but, knowing Hollywood, probably not). Although distributor Paramount Pictures spent nearly $130 million in marketing alone, scathing reviews kept audiences largely at bay. Complaints centered on bad dialogue, bad acting, a confusing plot, and poor use of tacked-on 3D, making an already dark film practically unseeable in parts. The Sun Times’ Roger Ebert summarized the critical response best when he wrote, “The Last Airbender is an agonizing experience in every category I can think of and others still waiting to be invented. The laws of chance suggest that something should have gone right. Not here.”
Top 20 Worst Summer Blockbusters
Maybe it's the heat, but there's something about the dog days of summer that sends people running to bad blockbusters in droves. TIME takes a look back at the worst big-budget flicks of steamy seasons past.
The Last Airbender (2010)
Full List
Top 20 Worst Summer Blockbusters
- The Last Airbender (2010)
- Knight and Day (2010)
- Hudson Hawk (1991)
- Avengers (1998)
- Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011)
- Stealth (2005)
- The Haunting (1999)
- Howard the Duck (1986)
- Speed 2: Cruise Control (1997)
- Green Lantern (2011)
- Pearl Harbor (2001)
- Catwoman (2004)
- Wild Wild West (1999)
- Waterworld (1995)
- Godzilla (1998)
- Batman & Robin (1997)
- Battlefield Earth (2000)
- Sex and the City 2 (2010)
- Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace (1999)
- Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)