With Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull hitting theaters this week and getting mixed reviews, it's becoming clear that it was an unnecessary sequel that may feel like an unsatisfactory end to the series. And let's be honest, it could be a great movie and still not top The Last Crusade. But that got us thinking, what are some of the sequels that have ruined an otherwise good franchise? Read on!
6. Live Free or Die Hard
Live Free or Die Hard is not a terrible movie. On it's own it could be a somewhat entertaining over the top action flick that you watch 15 minutes of on Spike TV while you eat a Hungry Man microwavable dinner. However, it is a terrible Die Hard movie. John McClane helped to re-define the action hero by being the reluctant, wise-cracking hero that got the crap kicked out of him a lot. When John pulled shards of glass from his bloody feet you felt his pain. In this fourth installment he still gets a fair share of crap beaten out of him, but he takes it like he's the Terminator. And rather than desperately jumping off a building with a fire hose as a bungee cord, this time around John is surfing around on a fighter jet. John has had it a lot better in the sidekick department as well. From Carl Winslow and Sam Jackson to....Justin Long? The movie would have been infinitely better if they went with the PC rather than the Mac to play the computer hacker. And finally, who let Kevin Smith into this? There's a reason why he only gives himself one line in his own movies.
5. Blade Trinity
There are a lot of problems with Blade Trinity. The plot does not fit in with the rest of the Blade series and acts as an underwhelming cap on two great vampire movies. But the real glaring problem is the cast, in particular Ryan Reynolds and Jessica Biel as two fellow vampire hunters that show up to work with Blade. Have these two ever starred in anything halfway decent? Biel delivers a typically boring performance that maybe passes for quality in Stealth but has no place in a Blade movie. And Reynolds uses the role as yet another means of pushing forth the Hollywood conspiracy that he is funny. It doesn't help that Parker Posey, of Christopher Guest movie fame, plays the evil vampire leader in this installment. How can I possibly see the woman who ranted about the "Busy Bee" in Best in Show as a threat? Actually I take that back. She was somehow more frightening in that role.
4. Superman 3 and 4
The first Superman is obviously a classic, and the second gave us the line "Kneel before Zod!" so it will always have a place in the pop culture heart of America. But when it came time for the third and fourth installment they really dropped the ball. First they made the mistake of combining two things that are great on their own but make no sense together: Superman and Richard Pryor. They decided to go a more comedic route in the third film with Pryor in a supporting role, but the result is a movie that is neither funny enough nor action packed enough to be worthwhile. Superman doesn't need a wacky comedic character, and a Superman movie definitely isn't the place for Richard Pryor's brand of humor. I'm sure Richard would have been more comfortable hanging out with the Human Torch (that's a Richard Pryor lit himself on fire free-basing crack cocaine joke!). Superman 4: The Quest for Peace, on the other hand, is basically just a weird Cold War era propaganda film with Superman fighting an evil clone of himself called Nuclear Man. Subtle!
3. The Godfather III
The first two Godfathers are some of the most widely respected films to ever get churned out of Hollywood. From fantastic directing to brilliant acting, they act as the watermark that most Mafia movies only dream of reaching. Then there's The Godfather III. Rather than just focusing on the struggles and inner turmoil of a crime family attempting to thrive, this film brings in the Vatican in a attempt to tie it into the real Papal banking scandal in the late 19th century and the death of Pope John I. Sorry Coppola, but this is not what the audience for a Godfather picture come in looking for. The acting is far inferior to the other films as well, with Pacino beginning to slip into his "If I yell all the time it means I'm a good actor" mode that has dominated his later career. And the movie acts as exhibit A as to why Sofia Coppola decided to go abandon acting and become a director.
2. The Star Wars Prequels
The Star Wars prequels are like a perverse experiment on George Lucas' part. After years of hearing his trilogy described as the best film franchise ever, the man must have become so drunk on his own power that he decided to see how quickly he could destroy it. Step 1: Remove any semblance of charm and wit that might still be kicking around from the first three. Step 2: Do as many scenes as possible in front of a green screen so that even the good actors in the cast deliver empty performances. Plus you can stick in all kinds of crazy CGI stuff to distract the viewer from the terribly written movie they're watching. Step 3: make Darth Vader, the most badass villain to cruise the cosmos, into a whiny and completely non-threatening emo kid. Step 4: wait for that Jar Jar action figure money to come rolling in.
1. The Joel Schumacher Batman Movies
With the critical success of Batman Begins and the highly anticipated The Dark Knight just around the corner, it could be easy for you to forget about the Batman movies that killed the first franchise. But I'm not going to let that happen. Like any national tragedy, we must never forget. The first Batman and Batman Returns may not have been perfect movies, but they delivered fun Batman stories with a Tim Burton style to boot. Then Joel Schumacher took over and turned Burton's dark, moody franchise into a colorful, cheesy, cartoonish nightmare. The casting is what perhaps sealed the fate of these heaps of cinematic slop. Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr. Freeze and Jim Carrey as the Riddler are clearly bad on paper, but even Uma Thurman and Tommy Lee Jones get into the spirit of the films by delivering what must be each of their worst performances ever. And Uma was in My Super Ex-Girlfriend, so that's saying something. Oh, one more thing: rubber bat nipples. Those costumes still give me nightmares.
