A large number of movies, split roughly equally between masterpieces like Alien and forgettable failures like Water World?

I don't think anyone who was around in the 90s will forget Waterworld, just not for the reasons the studio wanted!

The idea that the private sector is somehow more efficient at large-scale projects can only be believed by people who deliberately ignore the track record of large-scale private-sector projects.

> In 1993, FoxMeyer Drugs was the fourth largest distributor of pharmaceuticals in the U.S., worth $5 billion. In an attempt to increase efficiency, FoxMeyer purchased an SAP system and a warehouse automation system and hired Andersen Consulting to integrate and implement the two in what was supposed to be a $35 million project. By 1996, the company was bankrupt; it was eventually sold to a competitor for a mere $80 million.

> In 1998, two years after filing for bankruptcy, FoxMeyer sued Andersen and SAP for $500 million each, claiming it had paid twice the estimate to get the system in a quarter of the intended sites. The suits were settled and/or dismissed in 2004.

https://www.computerworld.com/article/2533563/it-project-man...

> Installed in 2003, the system promptly ran into what were then described as "horrendous" barcode-reading errors. Regardless, in 2005 the company claimed the system was operating as intended. Two years later, the entire project was scrapped, and Sainsbury's wrote off £150 million in IT costs. (That's $265,335,000 calculated by today's exchange rate, enough to buy a lot of groceries.)

Target's failed expansion to Canada makes for a fun read, too: http://www.canadianbusiness.com/the-last-days-of-target-cana...