Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Top 5 Worst Sequels

Sequels. Some movies are made with the idea of having one or many sequels, others are intended as a one shot deal, but of course when a movie does well, if a sequel that be made it will be. Sometimes, sequels outdo the original ("Superman II", "The Empire Strikes Back", "The Godfather Part II"), other times they are just as good as the original, or not quite as good but still a worthy follow up. Then we have the ones that are just completely awful. These are the sequels that take everything that was good about the original and just totally destroy it. The following movies are what I consider to be the worst sequels ever.

#5 - "Beverly Hills Cop III" - Total disappointment is the nicest way to say how I feel about this movie. I absolutely loved the first two movies, and I was really hoping for a third. I was excited to hear that one was finally being made 7 years after part II. Needless to say, I walked out of the theater scratching my head. I kept wanting to walk out during the movie, but I stayed, wanting and hoping it would get better, but it never did. First off, John Ashton (Taggart) was absent, that was the first mistake. Second, the setting was an amusement park, and that was lame. Third, the bad guy was boring. The action was boring. The story was OK, Foley avenging his boss's murder, but it just didn't feel like a Beverly Hills cop movie, gone was Axel Foley goofy con man cop, instead we got Axel Foley SUPERCOP!!! The only thing that sort of made me smile , aside from the credits, was Bronson Pinchot's brief scene as Serge, and that itself is pretty lame.

#4 - "Caddyshack 2" - No Ted Knight+No Bill Murray+No Rodney Dangerfield=No Laughs. That pretty much sums up this lame follow up to the original. If you are going to wait 8 years to do a sequel, at least bring back what made the first one great. Sure Chevy Chase was in it (when he was still sort of funny) but even he seemed to know the movie sucked. Crass rich guy gets rejected from a country club, buys it, turns it into an amusement park type golf club. Then comes the inevitable "showdown" on the golf course. Jackie Mason has been good in supporting roles (really funny in "The Jerk") but this movie showed that he can in no way carry a movie himself, because that is what he had to do with Murray, Knight and Dangerfield absent. It was the combination of those actors that made the first one work. Without them, and without a strong enough comedic actor to take the place of THREE actors, not to mention a lame story, this just fell flat on its face.

#3 - "Jaws The Revenge" - "Jaws" is the gold standard of blockbusters and changed movies forever, so why this was even made is beyond me because there was simply no way to measure up to the original. "Jaws 2" was just a retread of "Jaws" and even Roy Scheider's presence could not save it from sucking. Then we had the awful "Jaws 3D" which was even worse than #2. The minute I heard the title of this I knew it was going to suck. A shark that takes revenge? They tried to make it like the original, bringing back Lorraine Garry as Ellen Brody, and having Michael Brody (Brody's son, who in the original, was almost taken out by the shark) all grown up and being some kind of marine biologist or something. Even going so far as to copy the cute scene in the original when Brody and his little son Sean are at the dinner table mimicking each other. The shark follows the family to the Bahamas (follows?) I guess in an effort to exact revenge for his cousin , brother or whatever being killed by Martin Brody in the first movie. How incredibly stupid is that? Then, to top it all off, at the end when they are trying to kill the shark, it roars in pain or anger or something. Sharks CANNOT make sounds of any kind!!!!! That is just an outright insult to the viewers intelligence. Terrible, terrible movie, everyone involved had to be desperate for a paycheck to sign on to this dead fish.

#2 - "Grease 2" - I am really not a huge fan of the movie musical, but "Grease" just happens to be one of my favorite movies. Everything about the movie worked, and you cannot deny the chemistry between John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John. The songs, and the numbers that accompanied them, the rest of the cast, all came together and made a memorable movie experience. Why try to top that? Money of course. "Grease 2" follows the exact same story as the original, but the geniuses behind this movie thought it would be neat to reverse the roles. Good boy meets bad girl, and must become a bad boy to win her. One of the things about "Grease" was the fact that none of the actors looked liked they belonged in high school, but it was easy to suspend disbelief because of how well everyone worked together. That is gone in "Grease 2", and mostly because the lead actors are weak, and bring everyone else around them down. There is ZERO chemistry between Michelle Pfeiffer and Maxwell Caulfield, I never once believed they had a connection. Adrian Zmed was a piss poor replacement for Jeff Conway, they brought back some of the original actors from the original, but none of it worked. The songs were lame. The comedy seemed forced. The producers didn't even bother to make it seem like they were in the 50's, looked more like the 80's to me. This movie took everything that was great in the original and reduced it to a steaming pile of crap. A completely, embarrassingly awful movie.

#1 - "Superman IV The Quest For Peace" - This hurts to write this, because I loved the first two Superman movies. Sure, "Superman III" was bad, but it was at least fun. So, where to start with this turkey. The story. Superman thinks if he rids the world of nuclear weapons, the world will be at peace. But of course, Lex Luthor steps in to mess up Supe's plans. Luthor steals a lock of Superman's hair from a museum, and proceeds to make what is the single most dumbest bad guy in the history of movies, Nuclear Man. Nuclear Man's weakness (can't function without the sun) is a huge one and is never exploited until the end. The acting. Everyone is horrible in this, even though it's a comic book movie, everyone phoned in their performances. Jon Cryer is a total waste as Luthor's stupid bumbling nephew (Lex Luthor does NOT need a comic sidekick). The whole thing with the Daily Planet being taken over by a tabloid owner was dumb and added nothing to the already lame story. Christopher Reeve had to be desperate for money, as well as Margot Kidder, and gosh I can't believe Gene Hackman signed on for this either. The special effects. Terrible, the whole movie was obviously shot on a shoestring budget, and it shows in every frame. There are some shots where you can actually see that Superman is a toy doll, and the other shots of him flying are just so fake looking. There is nothing about this movie that could be called good, nothing. The comedy is not funny, there is no excitement, the action is as lame as it gets. Worst super hero movie ever, worst sequel ever. This movie could be singled out as the greatest example of everything that is wrong with sequels, because everything that can be done wrong in a sequel was done in this lame brained stinker.

Well, that's my choices for the worst sequels ever made. There are so many, I could have easily made a top ten. Here are some other turkeys that deserve to be avoided at all costs- "Highlander 2", "Speed 2", the aforementioned "Jaws 2" & "Jaws 3", "The Next Karate Kid", "Porky's 2", "Batman & Robin". What are your most hated sequels? What do you think of the ones I just talked about?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hola amigo, Giario from the Spider-Man 4/5 talk-back here. Like the blog, keep it up. Controversial I know but I have always felt that when it comes to less than impressive sequels Back To The Future Part 2 is pretty high up the list. Bit long for a comment perhaps (And I won't be offended if this doesn't make your comments page) but for your interest/amusement here is an ok but quite badly written review I wrote years and years ago that pretty much states my feelings re: BTTF2, albeit in the language of a very, very average sixteen year old. Please note that I was much meaner and angrier back then...

For my money the final scene in Back To The Future is perfection. Intended as a joke, a riposte to the neat, happy endings we are usually offered, it completely blew me away (a similar, though less effective, ending occurs in Joe Dante's 'Inner Space'). In 1989 virtually the same scene opened Back To The Future Part II. I was worried. As an ending the sudden shift in tone, the zaniness, works. It is unexpected and yet welcomed. As an opening scene it is a disaster. We end up with a follow up to a joke ending as opposed to a follow up to a film. Suddenly Doc Brown is shouting all the time, racing around and looking absurdly maniacal. He behaves not how he did throughout the first film but how he did for the first film's ending. Jennifer goes from being a cool customer ('How 'bout a ride Mister?') to the most annoying and offensively realized female character in a film since Willie Scott ('I wonder where we live, I bet it's a big house with lots of kids...'). Why does she have to spend most of the film asleep? Surely she could have been involved in the adventures? Her role could have been similar to Marty's in the first film. Humour could have been derived from her unwillingness to treat it all as another day at the office as Marty and Doc are now able to. Instead, to the film's detriment, she is treated like a prop and written as an idiot ('You should be able to convince her that it was all a dream'). Marty, who had already completed his character arc, suddenly has anger issues and an unsettling desire to be rich. It all feels very forced because that's exactly what it is. Biff Tannen was ideal in the first film as a supporting character. Now the entire plot rests on his shoulders. Watching the moment in the opening scene where he comes out to see the Delorean taking flight and disappearing, the sudden transformation he goes through from subservient lackey to sinister bad guy, makes you realize just how desperate the whole endeavour is. Lorraine McFly has to be one of the least independent female characters ever committed to celluloid. Apparently her appearance and personality is controlled by which type of man she is with ('You were the one who wanted me to get these things...'). On her wedding day we see that she is extremely uncomfortable with Biff which begs the question as to why she is going through with it. Is she so weak that she needs a man in order to know how to live her life? George is a wimp so she's an alcoholic, then George is a successful writer so she's healthy and happy, then Biff is evil and rich so she's a mess. What does this say about the filmmaker's view of women? A lot of the problems came from the decision to not pay Crispin Glover what he was asking to reprise his role as George McFly. I would love to know how much he wanted since the film loses much through his absence. Bob Gale looks extremely pleased with himself in the making of the Back To The Future trilogy documentary when he talks about his power as a screenwriter and how he was able to simply kill George McFly's character off, as if he'd done it in such a creative and subtle way that we'd hardly noticed. It's funny then that the whole thing seems so contrived and obvious and that it was necessary to use footage from the first film of Glover (without asking his permission) to fill in the gaps. Expertly done Bob. So confident is he of his writing prowess he fails to notice the one glaring error in his masterpiece. Doc is more than happy to tell Marty about problems his offspring will have thirty years from now but unwilling to tell him about a car accident he'll have the following day that will ruin his entire life, apparently to teach him a lesson. What a pal. It is all of these inconsistencies and miscalculations that make the second film such a disappointment. There are countless other problems, such as the terrible editing, the obvious, set-bound, artificiality of Biff's penthouse and the road by the Lyon's Estate billboard, Michael J. Fox and Thomas Wilson, both fine actors but neither of them exactly Alec Guiness, being forced to pull off multiple roles (And Fox's portrayal of a female corresponds with the depiction of female characters in the film), and the fact that Marty McFly is apparently some kind of silent, invisible entity throughout the last third of the film that only the audience can see and hear, but these things could have been forgiven if more thought had gone into the characters and the story.

In the DVD documentary Robert Zemeckis states that the sequels were going to be made whether he was involved or not. The fact that he decided to be involved shows that he didn't want someone else to make them. He needn't have worried. Back To The Future Part II feels like it was made by completely different people anyway. There is a smug laziness to the film, as if everyone knew the film was going to make money so why bother doing one's best. It is interesting to note the drop off in U.S. ticket sales between Back To The Future Parts II and III, once again proving that audiences aren't as dumb as the studios think. That Bob Gale has not enjoyed any success since also speaks volumes as to his talent. Overall I view the second part of the Back To The Future trilogy as a wasted opportunity and an insult to the fans of the first film.