The Emoji Movie — Yellow emoji character Gene with a tired, uneasy expression beside the words 'Not Easy Being Meh'

The Emoji Movie

2017viral movie / mockery targetclassic

Published October 1, 2026

The Emoji Movie is a 2017 Sony Pictures Animation film that drew one of the most hostile pre-release receptions in modern animated cinema, racking up tens of thousands of dislikes on its trailer before earning a 6% Rotten Tomatoes score. The savaging it received from critics and audiences spawned years of copypasta, trailer-dislike pile-ons, Patrick-Stewart-plays-poop jokes, and a dedicated subreddit devoted to mocking the film.

backfire memes animation memes so bad its good memes moral panic memes 2017 memes

Overview

The Emoji Movie mockery operates on a few recurring beats that fans of hating the film kept hitting across 2017 and after. The first is the trailer-dislike dogpile: the official YouTube trailer was flooded with tens of thousands of thumbs-downs before release, turning the video itself into a signal of the film's reputation3. The second is the Patrick Stewart angle, with the Shakespearean actor cast as the voice of a sentient poop emoji, a bit of casting so absurd that it generated jokes on its own before anyone had seen a frame6.

The third beat is the product-placement critique. Reviewers hammered the fact that the film is largely set inside apps like Candy Crush, Just Dance, and Dropbox, which Vox's Alissa Wilkinson called "one giant ad, dressed up as family-friendly entertainment"2. That framing fed copypastas and Reddit threads that mocked the movie as cynical corporate output rather than a kids' film3. The fourth is pure insult comedy, including a widely cited Urban Dictionary entry calling it "the epitome of the disgusting pile of garbage Hollywood has become"9.

Together these threads kept The Emoji Movie alive as a cultural punching bag long after it left theaters, with the title functioning as internet shorthand for a lazy, cynical, product-stuffed studio release4.

Origin & Background

Platform
Theatrical release (Sony) / YouTube and Reddit (viral mockery)
Date
2017

The project traces to July 21, 2015, when Deadline reported that Sony Pictures Animation had won a near-seven-figure, three-studio bidding war against Warner Bros. and Paramount for a pitch by writer-director Tony Leondis and co-writer Eric Siegel1. Leondis had pitched studios with storyboards for the film, and Sony chief Tom Rothman moved aggressively to beat the rival bids1. The movie was officially unveiled at CinemaCon 2016, with Sony framing it as a chance for product-placement partnerships with the apps that would appear onscreen2.

The mockery itself began building during the marketing cycle in 2017. On January 18, 2017, @SonyPictures tweeted that Patrick Stewart had been cast as the Poop emoji, which immediately became a running joke online6. On May 16, 2017, Sony Pictures Entertainment uploaded the main trailer to YouTube, and it drew more than 70,000 thumbs-down ratings as the first wave of pile-on built7. The film opened July 28, 2017, and critics savaged it; Vox's review ran under the headline treating the movie as a 2017 regret generator2. The r/theemojimovie subreddit for mockery and discussion had actually launched on October 10, 2016, well before release3, and a promotional copy for the film was posted to r/copypasta on January 1, 20178.

▶

Watch Video

X

How It Spread

Mockery of The Emoji Movie built in waves tied to Sony's marketing beats. The r/theemojimovie subreddit was created on October 10, 2016, giving the online hate a central gathering spot months before the trailer dropped3. On December 20, 2016, the teaser trailer went up on YouTube and became an early target5. The January 18, 2017 Patrick-Stewart-as-Poop tweet from @SonyPictures seeded a joke that outlived the film's release cycle6, and on January 1, 2017, the r/copypasta subreddit got a promotional-copy post that treated the film with mock reverence8.

The backlash spiked around the May 16, 2017 trailer upload on YouTube, which drew over 70,000 dislikes and became a reference point for trailer-dislike pile-ons7. Character-focused trailers for Gene, Poop, Hi-5, and Smiler had gone up on May 5, 2017, feeding more mockery5. By release on July 28, 2017, pans were lined up: Vox called it "one giant ad, dressed up as family-friendly entertainment" and said "everyone involved should be ashamed"2. Urban Dictionary entries from users piled on with increasingly extreme insults, framing the film as the "epitome" of corporate rot in Hollywood9.

The mockery outlasted the theatrical run. In January 2018, The Verge covered the surreal detail that The Emoji Movie was part of the first commercial film program in Saudi Arabia after the country lifted its 35-year ban on movie theaters, pairing it with Captain Underpants at a Jeddah screening4. That absurd afterlife, a widely panned film serving as a historic first screening, gave the online community a fresh round of jokes about the film's place in cultural history4.

Timeline

2015-07-21

Deadline reports Sony Pictures Animation won a bidding war against Warner Bros. and Paramount for the Emoji movie pitch by Tony Leondis and Eric Siegel[1].

2016-10-10

The r/theemojimovie subreddit is launched for discussion and mockery of the upcoming film[3].

2016-12-20

The teaser trailer is uploaded to YouTube by Sony Pictures Entertainment[5].

2017-01-01

A promotional-copy post for the film is uploaded to r/copypasta, treated as mock-serious fodder[8].

2017-01-18

@SonyPictures tweets that Patrick Stewart has been cast as the Poop emoji, kicking off a running joke[6].

2017-05-16

The main trailer is posted on YouTube and gathers over 70,000 dislikes[7].

2017-07-28

The Emoji Movie opens in theaters; Vox and others publish scathing reviews[2].

2018-01-15

The Verge reports The Emoji Movie was part of the first public cinema screenings in Saudi Arabia after a 35-year theater ban[4].

Loading tweet...

How to Use This Meme

The Emoji Movie usually gets invoked as internet shorthand for soulless corporate cinema or as the baseline for how bad an animated movie can be. Common conventions include: posting the trailer's dislike ratio when a new unloved trailer drops7, comparing a new flop to Emoji Movie numbers, quoting Patrick Stewart's poop casting as proof the film exists6, and copypasting mock-promotional text that treats the film as a serious artistic achievement8. Reaction-image users often screengrab Gene, Hi-5, or Poop with ironic captions.

Frequently Asked Questions