And in Wings, the first movie to win an Oscar for Best Picture, there's an awkwardly long scene in which two guys stare at a Hershey bar for like 20 seconds.

Even the great Stanley Kubrick wasn't immune to the thralls of ad revenue. In The Shining, those scenes in the pantry feature dozens of packages of Libby's, Heinz, Kellogg's, and Maxwell House -- the logos all neatly turned toward the camera.

Warner Brothers Pictures
All work and no flakes makes Tony a dull tiger.

Even classics like It's A Wonderful Life, Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, and The Day The Earth Stood Still were loaded with the strategic placement of brands like Coke, the Yankees, and National Geographic. Cecil B. DeMille's The Greatest Show On Earth, released in 1952, was found to have 19 instances of product placement -- that's only two fewer than Independence Day, and seven more than The Dark Knight. So one famous moment should've gone:

"I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille"

*Camera zooms in on can of Frankie Beenz Franks 'N Beans, lingers there for an uncomfortable length of time.*

Freddy Vs. Jason. Alien Vs. Predator. Batman V. Superman. Next out of the gate, G.I. Joe will be going head-to-head with the Micronauts. And for a while, it was looking like the guys from 21 Jump Street would be joining the Men In Black. No, really.

Whenever a big-budget crossover comes out, audiences flock to the theaters, initially excited to witness the last dying gasps of two belabored franchises, until they touch butt to seat and the death rattle starts playing. But disappointing franchise crossover experiments date back to 1943. Universal Pictures had already made dozens of movies starring classic horror monsters when some bright studio guy thought, "Hey, why don't we make them fight?" The result was Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man.

Universal Studios
While both ignore the Apathetic Lady sitting there wondering what Dracula's up to.

And much like with Batman V. Superman, fans were pumped right up until the moment they saw the tepid final result. According to a New York Times review by Bosley Crowther (the most 1940s newspaperman name possible), the studio used a weak narrative excuse to bring the monsters together, spent the entire movie building up to it, and when they finally fought, it wound up being nothing but a "little tussle." That sounds awfully familiar.

Universal Studios
Wait until they figure out their moms have the same name.

Crowther goes on to sarcastically suggest that Universal's next movie should team the monsters up with the East Side Kids (that classic franchise!). His prediction didn't end up being far from the truth, because Universal eventually made Abbott and Costello part of the expanded Monsters universe.

Universal Studios
There wouldn't be a bigger Expanded Universe joke until Marvel gave us Hawkeye.

Oh, and by the way, thanks to the current explosion in popularity of these team-ups, Universal is currently trying to do the exact same thing again. Probably without Abbott And Costello this time. Although ... the Minions are also a Universal property. We're just throwing that out there.

Then in 1977, the first King Kong remake hit theaters, and The New York Times published an article by prolific critic Vincent Canby lamenting that Hollywood was utterly out of ideas, beating list-based comedy websites to the punch by several decades.

Paramount Pictures
The third-worst thing to happen to the World Trade Center.

"Moviemakers love to get their hands on what they call the 'pre-sold' property," he wrote, "which is usually a best-selling book or a hit play, something that the paying public already has heard of advance of the film version." He then goes on to wonder if anyone would even dare to remake classics like Casablanca and Hitchcock's Notorious. Since then, Hollywood has found a way to do both ... though they got away with it by changing the titles to Cabo Blanco (really) and Mission: Impossible 2 (well, sort of).

RKO Radio Pictures, Paramount Pictures
Hell, Hitchcock even remade his own movies.

Today, Fritz Lang's 1927 epic science fiction blockbuster Metropolis is widely regarded one of the greatest movies ever made. Back in 1927, it was definitely the most expensive movie ever made, and that's about it. The critics were not impressed. Famous sci-fi author and Martian invasion faker H.G. Wells, in particular, gave it one of the most savage reviews ever published.

Paramount Pictures
Anthropomorphic robots are hacky garbage compared to millions of aliens croaking over a head cold, apparently.

In an epic 3,000-word rant for The New York Times titled "Metropolis -- The Silliest Film," Wells trashes every aspect of the movie, going on to say, "Never for a moment does one believe any of this foolish story; for a moment is there anything amusing or convincing in its dreary series of strained events. It is immensely and strangely dull. It is not even to be laughed at. There is not one good-looking nor sympathetic nor funny personality in the cast; there is, indeed, no scope at all for looking well or acting like a rational creature amid these mindless, imitative absurdities. The film's air of having something grave and wonderful to say is transparent pretense. It has nothing to do with any social or moral issue before the world or with any that can ever conceivably arise. It is bunkum and poor and thin even as bunkum."

Bunkum!? Let's not say things we can't back, H.

Yet another NYT review praised the film for its technical achievements, but hated its story. "It is a technical marvel with feet of clay," it claimed, "a picture as soulless as the manufactured woman of its story." The New Yorker hated it even more, calling it "laid on with a terrible Teutonic heaviness, and an unnecessary amount of philosophizing in the beginning."

Paramount Pictures
Whatever, dude. At least you didn't have to see Shia go to robot heaven.

In contrast, Roger Ebert would later praise it as one of his favorites, "one of those films without which many others cannot be fully appreciated." Who knows, maybe critics will look back on Transformers the same way in a hundred years or so, when the majority of films are made stupidly, for stupid people.