My personal five worst movie sequels, these are the movies which i felt disappointed and didn't live up to the quality of the original movie. These films have their fans, but i'm not one of them.
Sequels have been around as long as film and you can go back to the 1930's and you will find sequels to King Kong, The Thin Man and Tarzan.
Take a look at my list below and see if you agree, feel free to post your own comments at the bottom of this post on the movie sequels which most disappointed you.
5) Speed 2
The first film is fab and appropriately titled, along comes the sequel and Keanu Reeves turns it down, Sandra Bullock signs up but later admits she made a mistake, her character Annie Porter is now with cop, Alex Shaw, (Jason Patric) they take a vaction on a cruise ship but didn't bank on John Geiger, a computer genius who is after diamonds locked in the ships vault, Willem Dafoe plays Geiger.
This film has good direction, cinematography and a memorable music score but setting this aboard a slow moving cruise ship and then calling the film Speed 2 seems wrong to me, i felt there was no chemistry between Sandra and Patric, Dafoe's motives seemed poor and it didn't have the quality script that the original film had, it's a misfire.
I would love Sandra and Keanu to make Speed 3.
4) Jaws: The Revenge
Jaws is a movie classic, it's sequel is ok and the third movie had 3D going for it, this fourth film in the series is just silly, they killed off Roy Scheiders Martin Brody character by saying he had a heart attack because he was so afraid of sharks, this insults the memory of the original film and i believe they did it because Scheider refused to do the movie.
We now have Ellen Brody (Lorraine Gary reprising her role from the original) who thinks the shark is deliberately targetting her family because it killed her son Sean and is after her other son Michael and herself, to sum up the script in one word i would say it's dumb, ok thats two words, truly though this is a movie that destroys the memory of the original and has an extremely dumb script, the writer did very little work after this, i wonder why!
Jaws 3D is no classic but Jaws: The Revenge is atrocious.
3) Conan The Destroyer
Conan The Barbarian has a raw powerful brutal quality about it with a truly fantastic music score by Basil Poledouris, the sequel replaces almost everything that made the original work so well and instead we get lame sidekicks and poorly placed humour and action scenes which are not that good.
Grace Jones plays Zula with no subtlety whatsoever, she has no acting ability, her model looks help her have some stature for a film like this but her acting skills are non-existant.
One thing i don't like about the Conan films is the animal cruelty, the first film had horsefall tripwire scenes and this sequel also has that and other cruelty scenes, it's a pity Arnold didn't flex those muscles to stop that happening.
I felt the acting, script and music score were all poor.
2) Howling II: Stirba – Werewolf Bitch
The Howling is a werewolf classic with good atmosphere, acting, direction and fabulous werewolf transformations. Howling II is a poor sequel because it has none of the above.
The werewolves in this film bear no real resemblance to the creations in the first film and the atmosphere just isn't there.
Christopher Lee adds a touch of class to the proceedings and is a familiar face but even he overacts at times.
The music score is dreadful and creates no atmosphere.
The ending is lame and i don't consider this film a real werewolf movie, it disappoints and it's one to avoid or better yet get totally drunk and it might just work better and entertain you.
The book it's based on is better. ( yes i have read it )
1) Batman & Robin
Joel Schumacher thought adding nipples to the batsuit was a good idea, well maybe in an alternate universe it might work but not this one. It just looks too camp.
Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr Freeze is ok but i think Uma Thurman was wrong for the part of Poison Ivy and the action sequences lack excitement, the music score is over the top and it's an indulgent, excessive and overblown production.
George Clooney as Batman is ok but the script gives him nothing to work with and this whole film feels more like an updating of the camp sixties show. ( with better effects )
Gone are the dark and moody sets from the first two films and now everything is too bright, I feel too many characters are in the film, Batgirl is unnecessary and too many characters can affect the quality of the finished product.
Even though I agree that Batman & Robin was not good, its certianly more watchable than Batman Forever, and hey Uma Thurman and Alicia Silverstone in skin tight costumes must be worth at least one point?
It was all too camp for me, Batman Forever was heading that way but kept things just about right, i also liked Nicole Kidman in Batman Forever, gotta say i think watching it today that Tommy Lee Jones goes way overboard as Harvey Two Face.
I’m not a fan of the sixties show and i feel Joel Schumacher was pushing the franchise in that direction, I love Tim Burton’s two entries in the series, especially Batman Returns, Michelle Pfeiffer was superb as Catwoman.
Another sequel which disappointed me and is not in my top five is Jurassic Park: The Lost World, Spielberg said he was bored while making that film, i felt it was a bit bloated and they could have cut the scene where the T-Rex gets loose in the city, stay on the island instead and the film would have been thirty minutes shorter and remove the scene where the girl kicks the Velociraptors, that scene was silly, I like Julianne Moore as an actress but The Lost World disappointed me a lot. I actually enjoyed Jurassic Park III though and felt it was a huge improvement on the second one and much more of a fun ride.
I could mention how bad Beverly Hills Cop 3 was but i didn’t really like the second one either, come to think of it i should probably have put Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull on the list in place of Speed 2.
Gotta agree with much of your additional bad sequels. I liked parts of The Lost World. That scene where Julianne Moore falls through the van and lands on the glass of the back door, slowly watching it crack was classic Spielberg though. Never saw Jurassic Park 3. Beverly Hills Cop 2 is not too bad, but part 3 – pathetic. Another bad sequel is Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles. Loved the first two, but that one was just terrible.