Movie Sequels that need to die in a fire.
 

S. Darko (2009) (V)

wtf.

More like F.U. Darko fans.

The Matrix Reloaded (2003)
The Matrix Revolutions (2003)

Highlander 2 and The Chronicles of Riddick

Personally, I feel that Poison Ivy 2 missed all the subtleties of the original.

Leonard Part 6.

Blues Brothers 2000 and Caddyshack 2

Rocky V

Teen Wolf, Too

College boxing? Really?

Bachelor Party 2. On comedy central now, for reference.

I think this is one of the better sequels going, actually.

I think these movies are so unfairly maligned. This goes for the 2nd and 3rd Pirates of the Caribbean movies, too, and I think there are a lot of parallels.

Are they as good as the first: no. Both first movies were uniquely high quality movie experiences. Is the movie world better for them having been made? Yes. In one series (Matrix), you have to explain the unexplainable while in the other (Pirates), you have to expand a universe that is probably too small to expand. Unfortunately, due to sequel-itis, the sequels aren't edited nearly as well as the originals so the flow isn't quite right. And most importantly, for this argument, the pedigree was too difficult to live up to. Reloaded still has, to this day, the best action sequence in any move I've ever seen.


Riddick- I love what they tried to do. They had this schizophrenic vision of something part space opera, part gritty action movie and kindof failed on both accounts. But I love that the tried.

Highlander 2 was awful. I have nothing good to say about it.

SI

When I saw Highlander 2 in the theater opening weekend, the person running the projector left out an entire section of the film somehow. No one complained.

How was he to tell ;)

SI

Highlander 2 remains the worst movie I have ever seen in a theater. Ever.

Sorry, SI, those Matrix sequels are properly maligned. They are god awful films. Just abysmal. They complete sucked the life out of the series. Those movies are as awful as the first movie was great.

Indiana Jones 4, Terminator 3.

First off.. I also kind of agree with you regarding Matrix.. they were stuck in a situation where, if they wanted to make sequels, they "had to" do something completely different than the original.. explaining what it was all about. The magnificience of the first movie was it's sort of veiled theme; in the sequels this couldn't be done.

Unfortunately, they suffered from having too much money and too high expectations.

For Riddick.. Pitch Black really didn't need a sequel.. it's an excellent small-budget horror/thriller that doesn't need an explanation or anything else.. Chronicles really has NOTHING to do with Pitch Black other than the main character's name...

T3 I agree with wholeheartedly

Indiana Jones 4, I'm going to have to watch it again- I only saw it the once in theaters and I need to rewatch it.

SI

Oh, duh.

Star Wars Episodes I-III.

While techniquely "prequels", they are still easily among the worst things ever.

I didn't really mind T3. I think I was in a pretty good mood that day. I really like how it ended. I didn't see that coming and thought it was great.

Spider-Man 3.

X-Men 3.

Superman III and IV.

And how. Those movies need to be Eternal Sunshined.

Malcolm X

Hated it but to be fair I never saw any of the first nine.

Spider-Man 3 never happened.

I would like that very, very much.

Agreed. It could have been called Chronicles of Fist Rockbone! (ok, not quite) and accomplished the same thing. It was a completely different beast than Pitch Black. One was a great sci-fi horror movie while the other was a space opera crossed with a gritty action movie- all completely different beasts and they didn't have any major continuity to keep them together- just some cameos from characters in the previous movie.

SI

But John Connor is due up in the bottom of the 9th.

Aliens 3 & 4
Batman & Robin
Blair Witch 2

What is this, "pick trendy-to-hate-on sequels day"?

Ok, to be fair, they're all pretty bad, but I want to give a little more thought to them than just be overly dismissive because they're easy.

Frankly, the X-Men series in general never gel'd with me. I don't know what it was. They had some very cool moments but most X-Men stories worth telling are too long to be told in 2 hours or too complicated for the general movie-going audience. Not only that but the ensemble casts seemed to be disparate parts who never really felt like they fit together as a team. 3 was easily the worst but even 2 wasn't all that good.

Superman III and IV are like shooting fish in a barrel. But, the quintessential Superman movie has never been made. Even I and II have serious flaws. I really wanted Superman Returns to be it. It was note perfect for the first 45 minutes from the opening credits that were a 70s homage to the re-introduction of characters, especially Lex, to Superman catching the plane and landing it in the stadium. Then it fell downhill as they didn't quite know what to do with it. Lex just didn't quite seem right- he vascillated between an injured puppy and being Lex. They made Superman/Clark morally ambiguous, which is a cardinal sin- he's Superman, he has to be perfectly lawful good. It just fell apart.

Spider-Man 3. Easily worse than the first two but Spider-Man 1/2 were easily my two favorite comic book movies (Dark Knight now also resides in my top 3). How about a feeble defense for it?



SI

I agree with a lot of the movies mentioned. Indy 4, X-Men 3 in general (although having Ellen Page in it was good), Spiderman 3... I'll even say Spiderman 2.

Every odd-numbered Star Trek sequel. With "The Final Frontier" as king-of-the-crap-hill Trek film.

I love Alien 4.

I don't get the hate for Indy 4. I think this comes from folks trying to stack it up against modern movies rather than the original 3. It fit right in with the other 3 Indy movies with the same campy action / comedy.

Highlander 2, on the other hand, didn't listen to itself. THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE! It's right there in the movie! It was a complete experience!

I believe that's where the Matrix movies fell down as well. It was a complete movie, deal with it, and they only made it worse by trying to explain the backstory which was absurd to begin with. Sure, there were some good action bits, but that's about it. The Rave scene drove the final nail in the coffin for me.

No, this is a threat that asks people to identify shitty sequels, which is exactly what I've done, trendy or not.

The first X-Men movie was all right, not great, the second one was quite good, much better than the first, the third one was aboslutley attrocious. It killed the franchise. It was awful.

Superman II is one of the best sequels ever. It's one of the few sequels that if not better than, is at leat on par with the original (see, e.g., Aliens, Godfather II). Superman III and IV were ridiculous farces.

I thought Spider-Man II was pretty good. Sure, there is a bit of Sam Raimi madness in it, but it worked as opposed to how it completely failed in Spider-Man III. Like you said, they had some decent premises, but the execution was horrible. There was just way too much going on.

me too (to both items).

actually, I haven't been able to bring myself to see Matrix 3. Other than the car chase, #2 was an absolute drag.

My problem with the 2nd and 3rd Matrix movies is with the writing. It seems to me that the 1st movie told a very interesting, "new" story, but the writers fell on their collective face after that. They painted themselves into a figurative corner in the 2nd movie (primarily with the conversation between Neo and the Architect at the end), but were never able to properly answer the questions that were asked.

and yeah, I don't think we need those spoiler tags.

Spider-Man 3 was doomed to not be good when they decided to pack the entire black suit/Venom storyline into one movie. It always should have been two movies, with the first ending just like Amazing Spider-Man 300, with Spidey realising what the alien is doing to him, getting rid of it via the church bells, Eddie finding it and becoming Venom, and then the final scene is the scared MJ "Peter??" scene with the Venom shadow looming over her. Second movie is then a full-out Spidey vs Venom story.

That said, even with the all-in-one script, they didn't have to do so many retarded things to make the Good Peter/Bad Peter so lame (the hair and emo thing was about the worst bit of film making I've ever seen). That's what took the movie from a let-down straight into worst movie ever territory.

Sorry- my post needed a smiley. After re-reading it, it comes off overly harsh.

Again, I agree with most of your picks (Matrixes? Matrices? excluded) but I'm at least trying to throw some defense down on some of these that I think have been unfairly maligned. Maybe they're not up to par with their predecessors but still better than most of what gets put out on an average year.

Hell, I'd even take on the Star Wars prequels a little- tho I absolutely can't stand Episode 2, in particular. People talk about them like they're awful movies that are worse than anything ever made.

Here are the movies at the closest theater to where I live:
17 Again
Crank High Voltage
Duplicity
Earth
4 Fast 4 Furious!
Hannah Montana: The Movie
Knowing
Monsters vs. Aliens
Obsessed
State of Play

Can you say with confidence that any of those are better than Episode 1? Really? I know this is a bad movie time of year, but except for early summer and a couple of big hits at Christmas- this is what movies look like typically.

I just think that sequels have such high standards to live up to that people are invariably going to be disappointed. If the first was not good, why was a second made (there are some exceptions, I realize). I think there needs to be a distinction between let-down sequel and bad movie.

Oh, and T2 definitely belongs on the "best sequels" list

SI

I agree on T2. I really like that movie.

Yes, sequels are absolutely judged by higher standards (assuming the original movie(s) was/were good). The better the original the higher people's expectations are raised. That's what makes a discussion on bad "sequels" unique from a discussion on bad films.

For example, I did not see the original "Scooby Doo" or the sequel or any of the Flintstones movies, or any of the "Scary Movie" movies, and I assume all of the various sequels of those movies are worse than, say, "Alien 3", "X-Men 3", "Spider-Man III", "Star Wars: Episode I", either of the Matrix sequels, but no one cares because the original movies were complete garbage, so everyone just expected that the sequels would be garbage.

Sequels are not judged just on their individual merit, but rather are compared (rightly so) to the quality of their predecessors. This is what makes sequels so difficult to get right and why so many fail.

I hope you didn't go see any of those movies at your local theater. They are abysmal. Still, the fact that they are horrible films, doesn't make Star Wars: Episode I (or the Matrices sequels) any less attrocious.

Weekend at Bernie's 2
Aliens 3 & 4
Bachelor Party 2
Dirty Dozen 2 (The Next Mission)
Any Police Academy movie after part 4

(I sadly have to admit that my wife and I saw Monsters vs Aliens... but it was in DC. And I had an AMC gift card and we don't have an AMC in Richmond. And it was in 3-D, which I'm a sucker for. As well as animated, also a sucker for. And we were looking for something low-impact to do in DC since she had just gotten over being sick and I was sick the week prior so we were still a little tired. *breaks down sobbing* ;) )

SI

You are forgiven. Go in peace. :)

I'm not a big fan of the Star Wars prequels, but my kids prefer them to the originals.

I don't see why the thread didn't just end right here really.

Are you sure he actually left it out? I think that is the way the movie was...

The Crow 2

I win.

Agreed.

Nightmare on Elm Street 2

They completely changed Freddie in that one! They went back to him killing kids in their dreams in the third one.

Halloween 3 - Season of the Witch. I watched this when I was 12 and remember thinking 'What the fuck does this have to do with anything before it?'

I actually might have said what the fuck...