The amount of money that a product makes isn't always indicative of its quality. After all, a lot of objectively bad things end up being really popular, often because people sometimes want to just watch/listen to/play/etc. something simple and easy that doesn't require too much mental effort.
Still, the fact that some truly awful movies have managed to earn over a billion dollars at the global box office is confounding, especially when we often see great movies completely bomb. But so it goes, as illustrated by this list which gathers the ten worst (according to the website Rotten Tomatoes) movies to ever gross $1 billion+ worldwide. Just so nobody thinks that the moviegoers of the world only line up for bad films, we also went ahead and included ten billion-dollar movies that are great in order to balance things out.
20 Worst: Aladdin
Trying to step into the shoes of an absolute legend like Robin Williams isn't an enviable task for anyone— but Will Smith smartly ended up bringing his own unique spin to the character of Genie for the Aladdin remake rather than trying to imitate Williams' classic performance. Still, critics weren't too kind to the movie as a whole despite their praise for most of the performances, and felt that the new Aladdin was a bland and unnecessary retelling of one of Disney's best-loved movies.
19 Best: Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Fans have been all over the place on their thoughts about the most recent run of Star Wars movies, but critics have been pretty high on all of them. The long-awaited seventh episode in the "Skywalker Saga," The Force Awakens drew some of the strongest reviews in the history of the franchise, making us nostalgic for a time when the world seemed to briefly be united in their reignited love of Star Wars before things went sour among the fandom (again).
18 Worst: Minions
The Despicable Me franchise has been one of ever-diminishing returns, with none of the sequels able to recapture the fun of the original. But by far the worst of the series has been the spin-off that focused entirely on the minions characters, whose headlining movie was, not surprisingly, aimed squarely at the humor and sensibilities of toddler-aged moviegoers. The minions are much better in small doses— as a constant presence throughout an entire movie, it got real old, real fast.
17 Best: Finding Dory
Pixar's non-Toy Story sequels have been a mixed bag, though even at their worst, they tend to be reliably fun new adventures with old favorite characters at the center. Well, except for Cars 2— the less said about that, the better. Finding Dory sees the titular character and her friends going on a fairly cliched ride, but her irresistible charm— and the way it plays off Ed O'Neill's grumpy octopus— make it a ride well-worth taking nonetheless.
16 Worst: The Lion King
When a movie is built almost entirely with computer-generated images, is it still accurate to call it "live-action?" That is just one of the many baffling questions surrounding 2019's Lion King remake, a list of quandaries that also includes, "Why create animals that lack the ability to physically express emotion and put them in a story that absolutely requires animals to physically express emotion?" The general consensus was that The Lion King was a stunning technical achievement, but a disappointing artistic one.
15 Best: The Dark Knight
It's been over a decade since The Dark Knight, the second installment in Christopher Nolan's brilliant Batman movie trilogy, released. And despite the fact that something like 2,000 comic book movies have been released in that time, many people still consider The Dark Knight to be unrivaled among films based on comic books. Actually, many people consider it unrivaled among films, period. Grittier, more complex, and more mature takes on the comic book movie genre like Logan and Joker would've never been possible without the critical and commercial success of The Dark Knight.
14 Worst: Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
Remember when Pirates of the Caribbean movies were actually good? The last time the world seemed to unanimously love an installment of this series was the original— and it wasn't exactly a gradual decline after that given that this, the very first sequel, was already earning poor marks from critics across the board. Alas, knowing that a Pirates movie didn't actually have to be good in order to bring in boatloads of cash set the trend for the series that quality wasn't required for box office gold.
13 Best: The Incredibles 2
When original Incredibles was released, superhero movies hadn't completely dominated Hollywood yet— so it was still something of a novelty when a movie came out that starred superheroes and was actually good. The Incredibles 2 released into a marketplace that saw an embarrassment of riches for quality superhero films, and still managed to stand out and show a unique side to the world of superheroes that earned just as much critical praise as the first movie.
12 Worst: Star Wars: The Phantom Menace
Ah yes, this is where it all started to go wrong for Star Wars. After a nearly-perfect trilogy of sci-fi classics that wrapped up over fifteen years prior, The Phantom Menace had an amount of hype and anticipation behind it that no movie could've ever possibly lived up to. Still, even with those kinds of odds against it, Menace was largely viewed as a bad film even taking on its own merits. That the groundbreaking The Matrix also released that year didn't help matters much for the stubbornly old-fashioned prequel.
11 Best: Avengers: Endgame
There was a time when it seemed like there was no way that an Avengers movie would ever be anything but a huge disappointment. Past attempts at huge superhero team-up movies either fell flat on their face, or got stuck in years of development problems that they never escaped from. So, the fact that Endgame— the climax of over two dozen interconnected films— was deemed a smashing success by critics and fans alike is a feat we shouldn't take for granted.
