Thegun's 50 Worst Sequels Ever Made (#15)

[75Live]

Just now, NuTella Lover of Sky Beams said:

 

I think they're good, but they have very little sticking power. I just don't that much about them -- nor care to revisit -- though I enjoy watching them when I first see them.

 

I can go along with this as well    I probably should have put not great either, instead of good.  I guess I'll edit that now  

[TalismanRing]

4 hours ago, John Marston said:

Mi2's production was very troubled I believe 

 

 

 

it's ok for the action still I feel but I get why it's the black sheep of the series 

 

It was a mess off and on screen.  The only plus side, at least for everyone not named Dougray Scott is that it went way over schedule and Hugh Jackman got Wolverine instead.

 

Scott no doubt still curses Cruise & Co every night before he goes to sleep.

[junkshop36]

MI 1 is really good but GP is my favorite of the series easy. 

 

And yes, MI2 is my least favorite of the movies. 

[TalismanRing]

46 minutes ago, 75live said:

 

it's such a weird series in that it peaked with the first one, went directly to the worst one in part 2, then the rest are just middling around in between those two.

 

I much prefer the 4th and 5th to the first (I'm still not OK with the Phelps as traitor shit) and find them far more re watchable.  I think the series hit it's stride with the 4th though even the third is solid.  

[Thegun]

28. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III (1993)

 

I was a kid right in the middle of the TMNT rise to glorious heights and fall to vomit inducing.  I had the toys, the VHS of the first two films.  And I'm sure to this day the reason I love pizza as much as I do probably has a lot to do with so much not so subtle advertising.  There are many horrible films I got a chance to watch during this period that I have a soft spot for.  And I tell you that at the ripe old age of six, I could tell this film was bad.  The first film is great looking, and some darkness to it that really worked, and The Secret of the Ooze was way too toned down for kids (But it still have Vanilla Ice, and Super Shredder for all of 30 seconds ) But hey I grew up enjoying Surf Ninjas as well. But enough about the trauma of my childhood.  You know your franchise is in trouble when you need to add time travel to what you know is going to be your final film.  The Turtles have a good amount of villains they could have used, but for some reason they decided to try some botched G rated Seven Samurai abomination instead.  The jokes are bad, the action choreography is a major step down. I mean it's like they just filmed the rehearsals, they are so slow. And my god this is a cheap looking film. At least they let them use their weapons again. The costumes and puppetry in particular are a major backstop for the series. At this point the studio didn't care at all and tried to just squeeze every bit of profit out of it. And they did actually. In fact it adjusts to 89 million which would beat the this year's sequel.  

 

 

 

[RandomCat]

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III is a movie I remember fondly. Though I have no memory of the movie, besides having seen it.

 

Maybe it's just cause I remember the toys I had were from III, and they were fun.

[Thegun]

27. Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989)

 

Only Star Trek fans can defend this film, and even the majority of them can't. This series has been solid overall after the failed experiment of TMP.  2-4 really work to the best of Star Trek, and the series was rewarded with some strong mainstream appeal in The Voyage Home.  Where 2-4 were seen as an inside trilogy, they really had no where else to go after they made it home.  The studio was also in a hole due to some strange contract where if Nimoy does something, Shatner gets the chance do the same.  In the case of Star Trek V, he came up with the story, and even was given the chance to direct.  What we have is a pretty big failure, on both the studio and the creative team.  The cast is obviously still up to the task (They've been these characters for 23 years) but even they are knocked a few points for some excruciating dialogue.  The villain is non threatening, and the dramatic moments are misguided.  Then there is the action and effects.  At this point Star Trek's action always been something a little more subtle, and by 1989's summer movie season, Final Frontier is easily the old dog in the race (The Next Generation happened between 4 and 5 and didn't help matters being very good.)  Look at the other action movies released within 6 weeks of it: Last Crusade, Ghostbusters II, Batman, Lethal Weapon 2, License to Kill (Another franchise known for it's holiday releases also got lost in the shuffle.  But LTK is a pretty awesome movie that at least could match the others.) And this is despite getting a huge uptick in budget and marketing support. The practical effects are really bad. Finally let's talk about the humor.  The Voyage Home was a huge huge hit for everyone involved, and it's easily the most accessible to mainstream audiences until the reboot.  The humor there works however because it's essentially a fish out of water comedy  (literally, they're goal is to steal whales. I know they are mammals but for the purpose of that joke it stays)  Once you put the fish back in the water, however, you can't up the humor even more.  They ham it up to ridiculous proportions.  A real low point in the series that it too would have ended the original cast's franchise.  They even wrote new treatments involving the academy, but they wanted to use the 25th anniversary angle, and found the original cast would sell it better.  Thankfully they went on a high note going back to what works. A true low point.  

 

Best Scene:  Shatner gives DeForest one well directed sequence and he acts very well in it. A glimpse of a better film.  God or fake God was just one bad journey.

 

 

 

[Thegun]

I think this would have been higher.  But always found The Voyage Home to be too light, and that film's success I've always kind of believed The Final Frontier never really had a chance.  Both stories are equally ridiculous.  But one just found a much better way to tell it.

[RandomCat]

3 minutes ago, Thegun said:

License to Kill (Another franchise known for it's holiday releases also got lost in the shuffle.  But LTK is a pretty awesome movie that at least could match the others.)

 

Dalton gets a really raw deal as Bond. Both his movies are pretty good, but he gets no recognition. Lazenby has more notoriety as the character than him, and that's kind of tragic.

[Thegun]

26. Hannibal (2001)

 

It took 10 years for the followup to Silence of Lambs.  Regarded as one the best films ever (The last film that has won the Big Five Oscars.  Only two other films have ever accomplished such a feat) Silence of the Lambs often finds itself on my people's "Best lists."  Hannibal Lecter is arguably one of the best movie villains of all time, expertly designed by Anthony Hopkins.  Needless to say there was a lot of hype for this film when it came out.  Sure there were some red flags along the way, Jodie Foster and Silence director Jonathan Demme had a lot of problems with the script no matter how much money they were thrown.  Decent replacements in Julianne Moore and hot off the success of Gladiator, Ridley Scott were picked instead.  The trailers were awesome, and there may be some Nostalgia in seeing Hopkins do his thing. Released in the rather dull February, the R rated Hannibal crushed the R OW record by over 15 million, adjusting today to nearly 90 million. Silence and Hannibal roughly adjust to the same final gross despite the 10 years difference, so the audience that loved the first definitely showed up for seconds.  This movie is overly violent (disgusting at times, not that that's a bad thing) yet is never as terrifying as Silence.  It's also pretty boring.  The plot just kind of rolls along from simple police work, a lengthy subplot involving an awful french police officer giving Inspector Clouseau a run for his money .  Gary Oldman is so ridiculous in his character that you can't help but laugh at him.  Lector's portrayal goodish, but definitely not the same.  Moore does her best, but Starling is pretty blandly written this time around. Ray Liotta's character is also pretty bad, though he does get to eat part of his own brain. Scott can clearly direct and has a great eye but in the end, it just doesn't cut it as even a decent follow up to Silence of the Lambs. Apparently Lecter and Starling fall in love in the original ending of the novel.  I'm not sure which would have worked better to save this movie.  In the end it comes down Thomas Harris.  His book was just not up to the same league, and the studio wanted to be faithful to it.  Apparently many agreed, the far superior Red Dragon, featuring a more convincing return to form from Hopkins, fell off significantly from the first two films.

 

 

[DeeCee]

Knowing the geography of Sydney quite well actually detracts from MI2 but it adds to The Matrix.

Edited September 1, 2016 by DeeCee

[ecstasy]

Hannibal was weird as hell. All the subtlety and nuance of the first was lost in the follow up.

[The Futurist]

 

15 minutes ago, DeeCee said:

Know the geography of Sydney quite well actually detracts from MI2 but it adds to The Matrix.

 

Matrix & Dark City were shot on the same sets in Australia I think.

It s crazy how these two movies have so much in common.

[Porthos]

 

3 hours ago, Thegun said:

27. Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989)

 

Only Star Trek fans can defend this film, and even the majority of them can't.

 

 

No, we really don't.   Or rather, I'll only 'defend' it when comparing it to the POS called Nemesis (which I maintain should have been on the list instead [and maybe it will! ]).

 

I gave my reasons earlier for why it's better than Nemesis earlier, so I shan't repeat myself.  

 

But when it comes to thinking about this film?  God is it terrible at times.  Just horriffic.  I mean. FFS:

 

 

People probably already can guess what part of the vid I timestamped to. 

 

I mean, who thought crossing This Way to Eden with Who Mourns For Adonis was a good idea?  HINT:  It wasn't.

Still, what's most depressing is that there is some decent ideas here.  The Sybok/Spock rivalry.  The core of the idea of a false god.  That it was just horribly written, directed and executed?

 

Well, I always maintained for a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG time that it was the worst ST film I could ever see.  

 

 

 

Then Nemesis happened. 

 

So, yeah.  Can't fault the placement on the list, as it's a terrible flick* coming off a great one.  But it isn't even the worst ST film out there.  Which makes the failure of this film all the more notable in a way. 

 

* It's so terrible that it was explicitly decalred NON-CANON by the production teams.  That's pretty terrible! 

Edited September 1, 2016 by Porthos

[Dementeleus]

Yeah, HANNIBAL is just awful. One of Ridley Scott's worst.

[Dementeleus]

2 minutes ago, Porthos said:

there is some decent ideas here.  The Sybok/Spock rivalry.  The core of the idea of a false god.

 

I don't really care for Sybok or the whole false god thing. The very premise of discovering god -- by the nature of the show -- meant it would always be false. There was no inherent drama whatsoever.

[Ozymandias]

I'm just gonna say this list is gonna need to have Alien Resurrection, Matrix Revolutions, Terminator Genitals.

 

Brief explanations:

 

Alien Resurrection:  This move is a mess from start to finish and it felt like a syfy movie.  Fuck you and your excuses Joss Whedon.

 

Matrix Revolutions:  We're totally out of ideas guys so enjoy this big battle for Zion and a big boring and over the top fight with Smith and Neo at the end like Obi Wan vs Anakin in ROTS.

 

Terminator Genitals:  After Terminator Salvation I had no exceptions for this and I was still shocked at how terrible this movie was.  Godawful acting/dialogue and probably the most incoherent/baffling studio release I've ever seen.

 

[Ozymandias]

4 minutes ago, NuTella Lover of Sky Beams said:

Yeah, HANNIBAL is just awful. One of Ridley Scott's worst.

 

Its much better than Counselor/Exodus 

[Thegun]

It was a major mistake to release it in June.  If it had been in late November, it would have only dealt with Back to the Future Part II.  It probably would have grossed closer to Wrath of Kahn and Search for Spock. 

[Porthos]

14 minutes ago, NuTella Lover of Sky Beams said:

 

I don't really care for Sybok or the whole false god thing. The very premise of discovering god -- by the nature of the show -- meant it would always be false. There was no inherent drama whatsoever.

 

I agree and disagree.  

 

I mean, yeah, you can't have the main cast even remotely credulous to the idea (at least not without around three or four seasons of build-up [*cough* The Sisko *cough*]).  On the other hand, playing with cults (either in Starfleet or without) and looking at it from THAT direction does have some juice, IMO.  That's more what I meant about the idea of a false god.  WE know it's not true from within the standpoint of the series.  And we know that most of the characters do as well.  How they react to it, and what reprecussions might occur has more room for an interesting story.  Especially if it starts off as non-threatening or helpful and only ramps up the danger as the film progresses.

In other words, the drama is not, "Is this God", because as you say, we already know how the show is going to answer the question.  The drama is more in "How do the characters react to the people who thinks it is and/or how to react to the Sufficiently Advanced Alien".  That, I maintain, can get a decent amount of milage out of a gifted storyteller.

 

Which, admittedly, Shatner isn't.

 

NB:  There are a few lines in the original series which points to several characters maintaining an active Christian faith. But I'm ignoring that for now.

Edited September 1, 2016 by Porthos