There is no getting around the fact that sequels to popular movies are a way of life in Hollywood. If a movie has a strong box office showing then, inevitably, a sequel (or two) won’t be too far behind.
A sequel to a film based on a series of books is to be expected: The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Twilight Saga, as are films that are usually cheap and easy to produce: Saw, Friday the 13th, or Nightmare on Elm Street. Also films that have a well established mythos: Spider-Man, X-Men, Batman, Superman are almost always expected to have multiple sequels.
Typically, most of these sequels have one thing in common – the amount of time between films is usually no more than roughly three years. With the noted exception of Pixar’s smash follow-up Toy Story 3, which enjoyed eleven years between parts 2 and 3, virtually every franchise that has waited six or more years to release a new sequel is widely considered to be either a critical or financial failure.
With Tron: Legacy set to take a crack at box-office greatness this weekend, we’ve put together a list of every sequel made in the past 70 years which we felt failed as a proper follow-up to the previous film. This isn’t a list designed to merely point out the multitude of bad sequels in existence – that conversation could go on all day. Rather, we sought to look at the correlation between great original films whose belated sequels floundered many years later – as a result of drawn-out release dates longer than the standard three year mark.
Criteria
To make the list a film must meet a certain criteria:
- 1. There must be at least six years between the sequel and its predecessor.
- 2. The sequel must have been released in theaters (no direct-to-video films).
- 3. The film must continue the story and/or characters from the previous films.
- 4. The previous film had to be considered a success.
There is no way to rate which sequel is worse than another because, in most cases, they’re equally terrible – so we’ll just list them, pick the one we feel was the worst of the bunch and let you make your own decisions from there.
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Continue to 6 – 10 Years Between Films »
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I also liked Return to Oz. My sister also liked it. A co-worker went out of his way to get it on DVD. Everyone I’ve talked to who’s seen it has liked it.
Saying a cult film is crap is a bit poor for an article isn’t it? That’s misleading the audience. That’s like saying Rocky Horror Show is crap. Of course it’s crap, and it’s just the sort of crap some people really like.
You’re trying to turn people off something they might be genuinely interested in.
I personally like Return to OZ more than the Wizard of OZ. Let me Rephrase that…I love Return to OZ. Maybe i’m weird, but who cares.
And with that. The entire article was null and void
I’d say that the Alien/Aliens franchise falls into that category of each film after those two classics getting progressively worse. Prometheus was just as bad as the last two even if it had a more slick, modern feel, and with a huge span of years between it and Alien.
Terminator’s fall from grace is the most painful to watch. Like the two Alien films, the others are pale imitations (or obvious cash grabs) of their former near-masterpieces. And now they’re set to do a Terminator 5 with yet another subpar director at the helm. Gaaaaaaaaah!!!!!
The thing is, if the studios actually put some effort into these sequels, they could be just as good or better than the originals.
Except Tron Legacy ruled. I also have to say while it was by no means anywhere near the original, Boondock Saints 2 was enjoyable.
I, personally thought Boondock Saints 2 was great and I can’t wait for number three.
Now you got A Christmas Story 2.
I didn’t like KotCS when it first came out, but it’s slowly grown on me. It wasn’t as bad as others have made it out to be. (Or even me when I first saw it.)
They remake crappy movies all the time, they even brought out a third men in black, and I don’t know anyone that liked the first one, don’t think I’ve heard anyone say they saw the 2nd one
while i agree on most of the the movies in the list, like dumb and dumberer, and son of the mask, it’s all a matter of personal choice, like one person here commented about the Men in Black series, which i personally loved all three movies, i don’t know anyone who doesn’t like Men in Black, while he and his friends doesn’t like them,
some people might not be into some movies or genres, or some, especially kids and teenagers, just don’t want to try something that other kids aren’t doing, for fear of being cast out of their own society,
in the list, includes star wars episode 1 : the phantom menace, which i love, simply because it WAS STAR WARS, though i liked the original trilogy’s special effects better, since 1999 made use of CGI, which was a relatively young back in 1999 for a Star Wars film to make use of, however, TRON legacy’s CGI was a great update to the original TRON movie, i don’t think people would have liked the movie if they used the same 1980s special effects for the sequel just so they could remain 100% true to the original movie
I will never understand the hate for The Phantom Menace, I loved it when it came out and I still love it… It has the best race in any movie so far with the pod race, and a great standoff with Darth Maul. Sure Jar Jar can be annoying, but to say that a whole movie sucks because of one character is to harsh.
If there was one sequal to Indian Jones that should be on this list, it should be Temple of Doom, if you think Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is more silly than this one, then you should not critique movies. I don’t get why people are so angry about the alien aspect, the previous movies had lots of religious nonsense. Aliens are much more realistic than religious nonsense.