Friday Five – Most Disappointing Sequels/Prequels

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Welcome to the Friday Five! Each week we give you a little insight into the minds of our writers with the assistance of a classic top five list! This weeks topic: Most Disappointing Sequels/Prequels.

 

I never fell into the Episode I hate. Just like the rest of the franchise I thought it was a cool movie. It had space ships, aliens, laser swords, magic, parasites that allow us to use magic, and an incredibly awkward “teen queen falls for 8 year old boy” love story. Was it the greatest movie ever? No. But it did have Darth Maul! You have to imagine the weight on George Lucas’ shoulders with this film. He had to take a franchise that had been, for all intents and purposes, dormant for over 15 years and revitalize it for a fresh young audience. He had to meet everyone’s insane expectations. And on top of that he was always a pretty mediocre writer/director. I’m sorry, but the original trilogy isn’t all that much better then the new shit! Just because you get a sense of nostalgia from something doesn’t necessarily mean it’s good. Anyway, we have a way of over idolizing our favorite things to the point that newer iterations will never meet the standards that we’ve come to fantasize over. Instead we’re being constantly let down by sequels and prequels to movies, and other media, that we see as perfect despite the limitless number of flaws throughout. Conversely, that doesn’t mean that some sequels and prequels aren’t just terrible. Unfortunately, this is far more common then we’d like it to be.

Chris
There have been some great sequels and prequels: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2; Batman Returns; Empire Strikes Back; Temple of Doom. But for every good one, there is probably 10 bad ones, and it seems a lot of times it comes as a third or fourth installment.

1. Batman Forever – The only thing worse than Batman Forever was Batman & Robin.
2. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3 – The first two were great, fun movies which could really entertain anyone. The third one, not so much. They brought back Casey Jones who was great in the first movie and didn’t really use him other than as a babysitter. The whole feudal Japan thing wasn’t that great either.
3. Underworld: Rise of the Lycans – The first 2 movies were entertaining, not great but entertaining none the less. The third one took all the characters you knew and enjoyed watching and threw them away so you could find out about the past focusing on two characters that died in the first god damn movie.
4. X-Men: The Last Stand – I thought this movie did a terrible job of everything. It killed off a bunch of popular characters only to allude to them not being dead. It took away powers, only to allude to them coming back. It was just a lot of foreshadowing, which is great and all but not in the third movie. There is so much X-Men history they could have picked from and made a really interesting story instead they gave us this. Thankfully X-Men First Class was a lot better even if the characters didn’t really make sense.
5. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen – I thought the first movie was…interesting, it wasn’t great but at least it kept me entertained. The sequel was pretty bad though, I was bored most of the time, they added a bunch of transformers I didn’t really care about and the main actors are pretty bad. I will say at least the third movie improved some, it still wasn’t great but way better than the sequel.

Anthony
Well it’s hard not to repeat movies that the other guys have said. Matrix, Turtles, Batman, and X-Men, all these franchises were tarnished by sequels or thirds and fourths. I’ll try to be different.

1. Spider-Man 3 – I’ve heard numerous attempts at the defense of this movie. It was horrible, I blame this movie for the underwhelming hype of the new film, which comes out on July 3rd. Does anyone even know that? I know Avengers just happened, and I know Batman is coming, but it seems everyone is just kinda waiting to see how Amazing Spider-man turns out before they go see it. Fk Spider-man 3 and fk Sam Raimi.
2. Halloween 2 (Rob Zombie Edition) – There are many people that hate on the Rob Zombie remake of Halloween in general. I personally loved the first one, I like the idea the Michael Myers was a real person with a fked up family. He was neglected, had an abusive step-dad, a stripper mother, a whore sister, and he was fked with in school. That is the recipe for a disturbed little bastard. John Carpenter didn’t give Michael the background like that, people loved that he was “born of pure evil”, with no explanation for why he kills. Some believe it was scarier that way. Rob Zombie put a nice twist on this classic, the second one was garbage though.
3. Rocky V – Although most say IV was the worst, due to it being “unrealistic”, I say hogwash, IV was entertaining! Rocky V was a street fight…lame.
4. Mighty Ducks 3 – They took away Emilio! Nooooo! The ducks are nothing without Gordon Bombay! He shows up for a brief cameo that’s it. Couldn’t find the real trailer…this sums it up though.
5. Speed 2 –  Back in the day Keanu would turn down bad sequel opportunities, as he did with this film. Although not a completely terrible movie, it had nothing to do with Speed. It was diamond thieves on a slow moving boat. This could have been a completely different movie altogether. They simply should have renamed the movie and Sandra Bullock’s character and called it a day.

Drootin

Don’t you just hate when a sequel comes out to a movie or game or whatever thing you really enjoyed and it just blows? That’s what this week is all about, crappy ass sequels. So here’s my 5 most disappointing sequels.

1. The Matrix Revolutions – The original Matrix is one of my all time favorite movies and when the sequels were about to come out in 2003 I was super excited for them. Then Reloaded came out and was okay but nowhere close to the greatness of the original and that dampened my expectations for Revolutions but hope was still there they would finish strong. And yeah, that didn’t happen. It seemed like the more money the Wachowski brothers had to make the movies the worse they got.
2. Spider-Man 3 – Spider-Man 2 was awesome, I don’t think anyone can deny that, and when I heard Venom was finally gonna show up in 3 I was expecting even better things for the film. But then emo-Peter Parker happened and they pretty much fucked everything up in that movie.
3. Final Fantasy Tactics Advance – I’m not sure if this is really a sequel in the proper sense as it’s not “Final Fantasy Tactics 2” but I’m putting it anyway. Final Fantasy Tactics is my all-time favorite game, between the job system’s massive amount of customization and the deep twisting plot it’s just amazing. FFTA removes pretty much all of that. Different races were limited in the jobs that were available to them and the story was too simple.
4. Star Wars Episode I – This pretty much has to be on the list right? I don’t think I have to explain why this movie was disappointing.
5. The Crow: City of Angels – I love the original The Crow, and to be fair I’ve never actually seen City of Angels, but when the actor playing the lead in the original dies, during filming no less, I think that should be the end of it.

Eric
I love a good franchise as much as the next person, but there’s always that one entry that’ll make you cringe. Not necessarily for being bad, but for just being different. In no particular order:

1. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater – Don’t get me wrong, Snake Eater was an excellent game, it just wasn’t what I was expecting. MGS and Sons of Liberty were both really awesome games that slowly got me more invested in the idea of the shadow corporations running the world from behind the scenes, the La Li Lu Le Lo and the Patriots. Sadly when you booted Snake Eater you’re taken to a prequel telling the rise of Big Boss, and not furthering the plot of the MGS franchise. Sure it helped shed light on some scenarios and such, but it just felt out of place…
2. Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core – This is a prequel to Final Fantasy VII, and as such the end of the story is known to anyone interested. Which is totally OK! We can know an ending and still be excited to play through. It’s the journey that matters after all, right? Not in this case. The story was laughable, it introduced too many meaningless characters for the sake of telling its’ story, the game environments repeated too often, enemy types were uninspired, and the combat couldn’t figure out if it wanted to be turn based or an action game. It was all around depressing…
3. Command and Conquer 4 – I’ve been playing this franchise since C&C:Tiberium Sun. I’ve played every game in the franchise through to completion because I find the silly, overly dramatic FMVs hilarious and the gameplay was phenomenal. At least it was… C&C4 was supposed to wrap up the Tiberium Wars saga (consisting of C&C, Tiberium Sun, C&C3 and 4) and finally answer our questions about Kane and the Tacitus. Instead the gameplay was changed into some shitty rock paper scissors style RTS, and the campaign lasted 10 whole missions. At the end Kane walks through a door to his Ascension, and we see nothing else. You fuckers thought waiting 5 years for the ending to ME3 was bad! Try waiting 15 years for this shit!
4. Marvel Zombies 2 through 5 – I loved the first series. It was actually my first comic purchase, and so I hold a special place on my shelves for these books. I let 2 be lame because not all sequels are as great as their predecessors. Then 3 happend and I cringed. 4 made me cry. 5… I never finished buying them all. This series sadly stopped being awesome after it was first introduced…
5. Prometheus – Prometheus is less horror/thriller, and more philosophical suspense. It asks questions about life, like where we come from and why are we here, but never amps up the tension like Alien, to which Prometheus is the prequel. Unfortunately director Ridley Scott and the studio heads had different visions on what this movie was meant to be. Thus a really cool movie that has you thinking days after you’ve left the theater is met with below average reviews due the mis-marketing tactics used solely to generate more revenue.

Eric is not a boss. You can Email Eric or follow Eric on Twitter @EricSweeten or Facebook

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