Photo: Twentieth Century Fox
Alita: Battle Angel, the new Sci-Fi epic from James Cameron and Robert Rodriguez, is better than many would expect. The special effects are revolutionary and the film has refreshing action sequences in a time when drawn out superhero battle scenes seem to blend together. While the effects and fight scenes are the film’s strengths, its plot, particularly a laughable love story, is the film’s weakness. In celebration of the film, we decided to go back and revisit our Top 5 Unintentionally Funny Sci-Fi Movies. After seeing any of these, Alita: Battle Angel will quickly look like The Godfather.
See them all: The Top 50 Best Sci-Fi Movies of the 1990s
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Alita Battle Angel
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'Battlefield: Earth'
Was it ever going to be anything else? This movie will remain the No. 1 most unintentionally funny sci-fi movie for as long as Thriller remains the best selling record (translation: forever). This movie was honestly the beginning of the end for John Travolta's career, and for a movie written by the inventor of Scientology, there wasn't much to not laugh at with this film. From the bad makeup and the overly dramatic performances, Battlefield: Earth is a Hall of Fame bad movie.
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'Jupiter Ascending'
We do want to make sure to give the Wachowskis the credit for this movie, because they did go all-in on this world building sci-fi fantasy epic. Unfortunately, the movie missed its target. Eddie Redmayne's villain performance really stands out as laughable here, but Channing Tatum and Mila Kunis also give dull, uninspired character portrayals. The best part about the whole project is that Redmayne won an Oscar for The Theory of Everything and a Golden Razzie for Jupiter Ascending within a year of each other.
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'Johnny Mnemonic'
Johnny Mnemonic actually has some interesting sci-fi elements in it. Well, actually one: the laser rope. After that, you get a psychic dolphin and Ice-T as a kangaroo human hybrid. Fortunately, we had The Matrix to cleanse our pallets after this one, because otherwise this movie could have defined Reeves' career more than he would have liked.
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'Mac and Me'
There isn't much to say about this movie, an unapologetic E.T. rip-off (that came out a full six years after E.T.). Mac and Me features none of the heart and tenderness that Steven Spielberg's classic had and instead gives us cheap gags for laughs and terrible one-liners.
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'The Happening'
After the first half of this movie, you might be thinking that it's not so bad, and at first it isn't. Around the halfway point is when everything changes. The Happening dives off the deep end with Mark Wahlberg performing like Andy Samberg doing an impression of Mark Wahlberg. He has stoic reactions to major events and doesn't seem to know what movie he's in. We don't know either.
