Twelve Sci-Fi Movies We'd Like to Go Back in Time and Erase

Time travel movies always raise such interesting paradoxes. Would you kill Hitler as a baby? Would you attempt to profit from your knowledge of the future? Or would you prevent some of the worst movies ever made from coming to fruition? The science-fiction genre has long been a haven for the mediocre, even the awful, usually due to the belief that everything else is secondary to the sci-fi concept, and while the 1950s and '60s are famous for their goofy schlock as well as their timeless masterworks, there are plenty of high-profile targets from the past few decades that could disappear, and nobody would care. The day we get perfect our source code technology, we're going back and killing these in the script stage.

Zardoz (1973)
A giant stone head dispenses guns and talks about genitalia a lot, men wear embarrassingly tiny outfits, and Sean Connery sports a glorious mustache in this bizarre, post-apocalyptic tale, and only one of those things is a positive. We're sure crazier things have been done with a million dollars, but we can't think of any.

Howard the Duck (1986)
This George Lucas production pulled a talking alien duck through space and stranded him on Earth, where he worked in a bath house, hooked up with Lea Thompson and managed a rock band. Granted, it is actually less ridiculous than the Marvel comic book of the same name, but that doesn't mean it should have been made into a movie.

Cherry 2000 (1987)
Melanie Griffith is Edith Johnson, gun-toting post-apocalyptic wasteland guide and tracker. If that description doesn't sound right to you, then you were one of the many who found her quest to help a man find a replacement sex-bot as lacking in realism as her voice is lacking in inflection.

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989)
Out of all of the Star Trek movies, this one is the most useless and insulting with a plot that would barely have held up an episode of the classic series. Its three claims to fame are introducing Spock's half-brother (who is never seen again), showcasing Nichelle Nichols' erotic dancing (she was 57 at the time), and finally showing us what a futuristic toilet looks like. How fitting.

Robocop 3 (1992)
No Peter Weller in the suit, once-great Fred Dekker directing, and future The Spirit director Frank Miller on writing duties? Even a jetpack and ninja robots couldn't save this disappointing threequel.

The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996)
The tale needed updating, but we're not sure a white-faced Marlon Brando, a pill-popping Val Kilmer and the world's smallest man were the best route to take with this nightmarish acid trip to Furryville, hosted by Fairuza Balk.

Wing Commander (1999)
Matthew Lillard and Freddie Prinze Jr. are gung-ho pilots in space, shooting machine guns at a race of cat-people, and even fans of the video game it's based on take issue with the movie's awful dialogue and bad science. And how did former fashion model Saffron Burrows get cast as the hard-ass of the title?

Battlefield: Earth (2000)
People criticize this movie for its bad science, its awful acting and its terrible script, but I think it's the visual of a two-thumbed, dreadlocked John Travolta with a breathing tube that may have been the main obstacle this movie was unable to overcome.

The Adventures of Pluto Nash (2002)
A noir film set on the moon sounds good in theory, but when your hero is Eddie Murphy, his sidekick is a robotic Randy Quaid, and the sets look like a lunar-themed amusement park at Six Flags, it starts to look like a vast conspiracy against good movies. Quaid was right!

The Core (2003)
A film deemed by NASA to be one of the least scientifically accurate movies ever -- not that anybody needed them to tell them that -- finds Hilary Swank piloting a drilling machine to the center of the earth to start the core spinning again, thereby ending the various ridonkulous disasters happening on the surface.

Aeon Flux (2005)
"Hey, you see this really dark, interesting, sexy and visually inventive cartoon? Let's make it into a bland, safe, dull sci-fi movie that bears little to no resemblance to the source material! Think we can make the creator cry? How about the fans? Perfect!"

Ultraviolet (2006)
The follow-up from the director of Equilibrium, this Milla Jovovich vehicle cast her as a vampire assassin, fighting to protect a young boy from the medical doc-tatorship long enough to extract a cure for vampirism from his DNA. And somehow, the end result was even sillier than the silliest installment in the Resident Evil franchise.

What are your "must destroy" sci-fi films? Let us know below, then see our list of the best and worst time travel movies!

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9 Comments

March 30, 2011 4:35 PM
psykins
Reply

Zardoz is a gift to stoners everywhere. It should be considered a national treasure.

March 30, 2011 4:44 PM
Tulse
Reply

Zardoz is truly awesome. It is a travesty to include it on this list.

March 30, 2011 6:44 PM
Kristen
Reply

I own Howard the Duck on VHS.

LOL at Nichelle Nichols's erotic dancing.

March 31, 2011 10:14 AM
Ray
Reply

I LOVED The Core. If you watch it as big budget 50's sci-fi film, it's tons of fun! And Stanley Tucci as pseudo Carl Sagan was great.

March 31, 2011 11:59 AM
Geoff Shotts
Reply

However, without "Howard the Duck", we won't get the best joke in "George Lucas in Love".

March 31, 2011 6:34 PM
Terri
Reply

Oh, come on! I LOVE Howard the Duck! Classic campy Sci-Fi!

March 31, 2011 11:00 PM
Holly
Reply

The Core was AWESOME! Yes I mean truly terrible but that is half the fun. As far as I'm concerned the true value of a bad disaster movie is in how well it can be turned into a drinking game and believe me, The Core is shot city!

April 1, 2011 10:00 AM
tinaw
Reply

Zardoz shouldn't be deleted. It's an awful, way-too-full-of-itself-and-it's-"message", kind of movie, but it is highly entertaining. Plus, it's got Sean Connery in a red speedo! How could you NOT want that to stick around?

July 27, 2011 3:07 AM
JEREMY
Reply

"THE ISLAND" would make a good
addition,along with "I, ROBOT",a total bastardization of Isaac Asimov's classic novel;mainly ,it really had NOTHING AT ALL TO DO WITH THE NOVEL.
This excuse for a movie,along with "Wild Wild West" are the major screwups of Will Smith's career. Maybe he should just be a stage dad for Jaden and Willow from now on.

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