Photo courtesy of the Golden Raspberry Awards Wiki.
It’s officially Oscars season, time to award some of 2024’s best and most memorable films, and what they have achieved with their cinematic excellence. But we’re not talking about the good here. In addition to giving us some real masterpieces this past year, 2024 has also given a fair share of terrible films, and that’s where the Golden Raspberry Awards, or the Razzies, come in.
We asked some people around SAU if they have ever heard of the Golden Raspberry Award, or if they ever saw any movies in 2024 that they found particularly bad. Junior Marko Angels didn’t have anything to say about the Razzies, but commented on several films that came out in 2024, including Kraven the Hunter, and said that the film had “horrible cgi and wanted to make a cinematic universe with Spider-Man,” He says Alien Romulus was “just a copy and paste of the first with new effects”, Joker: Folie a Deux “ was an “unnecessary sequel with musical elements that did not progress the story and was just there as pop culture key jingles.” Ruining the story of the first movie by not allowing the question left to be pondered by audience imagination”, and finally, Angels said Borderlands was a “horrible video game adaptation with incorrect casting choices.”
We also spoke with Vinnie DeVore, an SAU student in Art History, and although they also had no prior knowledge about the Razzies, DeVore told us about some films that they saw in 2024, such as Dear Santa starring Jack Black. In fact, the Razzies nominated Black for Worst Actor for his role in the film. DeVore said. “Granted it may be for middle schoolers, but the story did not make sense until the end of the movie.” They also made mention of some films from the 1930’s, including Wonder Bar (1934), and Parlor, Bedroom and Bath (1931), saying “two stars because the story did not make sense but for the most part, it was a decent Pre-Code film”.
Not a lot of people know about the Razzies. They started back in 1981, by John J.B. Wilson and Mo Murphy. The whole idea of the awards was, instead of awarding some of the best films, they awarded some of the worst films, with categories like Worst Picture, Worst Screenplay, Worst Actor, and Worst Actress.
It all started when Wilson saw a double-feature of the 1980 films, Can’t Stop the Music and Xanadu, which were both received very poorly at the time, and Wilson thought the films deserved awards for their general low quality, and additionally thought of other films he terrible during the year of 1980.
So, within the coming months of 1981, he invited all of his friends to a ceremony that was held in his living room, and announced Can’t Stop the Music, as the first Worst Picture recipient of the Golden Raspberry, and the makeshift ceremony was a success, as the event was even covered by local newspaper stations.
The Razzies are separated into nine main categories, including Worst Picture, Worst Director, Worst Actor, Worst Actress, Worst Supporting Actor, Worst Supporting Actress, Worst Screen Combo, Worst Remake, Rip-Off, or Sequel, and Worst Screenplay, and they all have around four to five recipients each.
Over the years, the Razzies have had a lot of repeat actors and actresses for their ceremonies, including Sylvester Stallone who currently holds the record for the most Razzie wins, with a whooping twelve wins, and forty nominations, and the film with the most Razzie wins belongs to the universally panned 2011 comedy, Jack and Jill, with 10 wins, making it the only film in Razzie history to get every single category. Although, in recent years, the Razzies have had a special award called the Razzie Redeemer Award, in which a filmmaker or actor, have managed to redeem themselves with either a career comeback, or landing a critically acclaimed role, after they’ve previously won or have been nominated for a Razzie, and the most recent person to be awarded was Fran Drescher, who was previously nominated for her role in the 1998 film, The Beautician and the Beast, but received the Redeemer Award for “her brilliant shepherding of the actors’ guild through a prolonged 2023 strike with a successful conclusion.”
The Razzies have received their fair share of criticism, from members of the Razzies not required to watch the films nominated, some sources seeing the organisation as a form of heckling, to nominating child actors, but one of the biggest controversies came in 2022, when the Razzies gave actor Bruce Willis his own special award called “Worst Bruce Willis Performance in a 2021 Movie,” after he had starred in a number of poorly received action films in 2021, but after it was revealed in 2022 that Willis was diagnosed with aphasia, and later frontotemporal dementia. The Razzies immediately retracted the award, deeming it too inappropriate to give someone such an award whose performances were affected by a medical condition, and at the same they also retracted Shelley Duvall’s nomination for Worst Actress in the 1980 horror film, The Shining, after they found out how badly she was treated during the production. Another controversy they got flack for was nominating then 12-year-old actress Ryan Kiera Armstrong for her role in the 2022 horror remake, Firestarter, and from this moment forward they decided they would not nominate actors or actresses under the age of 18, and a result of the criticism, they decided to give the Worst Actress award that year to themselves.
This year’s Razzies nominations involved a lot of critically acclaimed actors, more specifically Oscar winning or nominated actors, such as Cate Blanchett, Joaquin Phoenix, Ariana DeBose, Lady Gaga, and Jon Voight, and the film to receive the most nominations was Joker: Folie a Deux, including Worst Picture, Worst Director, Worst Actor, Worst Actress, Worst Screen Combo, Worst Remake, Rip-Off or Sequel, and Worst Screenplay. Zachary Levi, who had been nominated for Worst Actor for his role in Harold and the Purple Crayon, responded by posting on his X account taking it as “a front-handed compliment”.
In conclusion, although not everyone knows about the Razzies, people voice their displeasure with some of 2024’s worst films.
