Live-action movies based on cartoons don't have to be bad. A lot of the time, however, they suck. Animation and live-action are very different mediums, and a complex understanding of what makes something work is more essential than a literal replication of drawings. Unfortunately, if you say that to a studio executive, he or she will likely go, "Huh?"
Most of the movies on this list of awful movies based on animated shows share at least one major trait: they were made not because anyone involved gave a damn, but because the studio wanted to milk an already popular brand, even, in some cases, when said brand's popularity had peaked decades prior.
And while you may correctly point out that some of the films on this list originate with source material other than cartoons, they're included if the live-action version incorporated anything that originated in the animated version. Fair enough?
The Worst Live-Action Movies Based on Cartoons,
Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties
Bill Murray narrowly saves the first Garfield by making the lasagna-loving fat cat into a version of the actor's Saturday Night Live lounge singer persona. The sequel rips off The Prince and the Pauper, and pettily names its villain after a film critic who was mean to the first movie (Billy Connolly's Lord Dargis is named for New York Times writer Manohla Dargis).
Sadly, that's the funniest joke in the movie.
Inspector Gadget 2
In the first live-action Inspector Gadget, Matthew Broderick makes for an okay substitute for the Don Adams-voiced incompetent detective.
French Stewart is NOT an okay substitute for Matthew Broderick in the straight to DVD sequel.
The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas
The first live-action Flintstones movie, starring John Goodman and Rick Moranis, is at least an entertaining restaging of Hanna-Barbera's classic Honeymooners riff. Replacing them with Mark Addy and Stephen Baldwin for a prequel is just blatant downsizing that disappointed most fans, though Alan Cumming's Great Gazoo is a minor highlight in an otherwise dull and cost-cutting follow-up.
The Smurfs
Peyo's Smurfs comics are set in a medieval time and a distant forest, something Sony Animation might just return to after two live-action duds that skim right over that and instead place the characters in contemporary New York.
Just watch the clip above, if you dare. The Smurfs singing their Hanna-Barbera theme song to the strains of "Walk This Way" on Guitar Hero might just mark the epitome of modern-day bastardization of childhood favorites. Yes, it's that bad.
Dragonball Evolution
Dragonball is a cartoon so stylized that making it in live-action is a fool's errand to begin with, and the moment anybody even attempted to style Justin Chatwin's hair into a Goku 'do, it should have been a red flag.
By the time he turns into a giant were-ape at the movie's climax (yes, seriously), the accumulated red flags ought to have summoned a herd of angry bulls. The video above sums it up best.
G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra
G.I. Joe! A real American hero! "It's G.I. Joe, against Cobra the enemy, fighting to save the daaaay..."
Except in the movie, G.I. Joe is an international task force, and Cobra doesn't exist yet. Maybe next there can be a Thundercats movie without thunder, or cats.
Scooby-Doo! The Mystery Begins
The Scooby-Doo movies written by James Gunn are surprisingly not terrible. So of course some studio executive somewhere had to say, "We're not screwing it up enough! Fire everybody and start again with a prequel!"
At least, you can assume that's what was said. It's the only explanation for the clip above.
The Last Airbender
From racial miscasting to barely coherent storytelling to bad 3D post-conversion to The Daily Show's Aasif Mandvi as an unconvincing arch-villain, The Last Airbender is like a perfect storm of badness, especially when compared to its hugely popular animated source material.
And everyone knows it except director M. Night Shyamalan, who still insists his trainwreck is and was popular with children.
Transformers: Dark of the Moon
A lot of people hate all the Transformers movies, but Dark of the Moon deserves special attention for neglect of the show's core premise: it forgets it's supposed to be about robots that transform, and in robot form look somewhat like the thing they become. New villain Shockwave never transforms into anything, nor does the giant robo-snake he rides around Chicago. Laserbeak, meanwhile, can become anything at any time. Other robots fly around in vehicles rather than simply becoming them.
Most damning is that every transformation in the movie, beginning to end, adds up to just over three minutes of footage. In a movie that runs 154 minutes.
Jem and the Holograms
If you can't give properties the budget they deserve, maybe don't do them at all. That's the lesson behind the Jem movie, in which a hi-tech sci-fi drama is translated into a low-budget faux-musical, with holograms provided by a cheap robot that lacks all the key character traits of the cartoon show's Synergy.
Using YouTube submissions and Google Maps for scene transitions, Jem and the Holograms is embarrassingly cheap and ridiculously eager to update the material for modern audiences. Fans can only hope a reboot is not too far behind.