Five Anticipated Movie Sequels...THAT SUCKED!

The other day I talked about movies which spawned sequels that were totally unnecessary. I said that while once in awhile this works, overall these sequels are just lame cash grabs. But there was one kind of sequel I did not talk about. What happens when a sequel is expected, because the first movie just naturally lends itself to a follow-up, but in the end it still sucks?

These can be even harder to accept because the sequel was a given and if a little effort had been put in it would have been great! It is amazing, you get the same cast and basically the same creative team, you would expect a movie on par with the original. Right? Not always. Here are five exmples of much anticipated sequels which turns out to be huge let down's :

Karate Kid II

You could argue the first Karate Kid was a good movie on its own and did not need a sequel. Fair enough, but I could see how a sequel could have worked. And this movie had the right idea, it starts off immediately after the first movie ended and continued the story just focusing on Mr.Miagi. What went wrong? IT WAS BORING AS HELL! My lord, this was one of the dullest films ever and I remember nothing except the opening scene.

MIB II

You can just tell this was rushed with no thought put into it at all. Just do the same jokes as the previous movie, no one will notice! Men in Black was a great little movie starring Wil Smith and Tommy Lee Jones. A sequel made perfect sense, but rather than coming up with a new take the creators created a horrible script with no thought put into it. The movie was just awful. I don't know which was worst, the contrived way they brought Tommy Lee Jones back or the total waste of Lara Flynn Boyle. I know MIB III was better but I still haven't seen it.

Charlie's Angels-Full Throttle

I really kind of liked Charlie's Angels. Yeah it was eye candy with no substance, but it was a lot of fun. The female leads Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz, and Lucy Liu had good chemistry and the pacing moved fast enough to make for an enjoyable ride. That film should have led to a whole series, instead we got one horrible sequel. The plot was just dumb and the far fetched stuff which the first movie got away with just didn't work in the sequel. Demi Moore did make a kickass villain, but the story was just bad and the film just a big flop.

Ghostbusters II

I haven't talked about how much I loved Ghostbusters. It should be on a my list of top 10 films (I should really make that list sometime). It's got just enough blend of character, comedy, action, and is even scary as hell in moments! A sequel was inevitable, and five years later we got one. And it was awful! Now I will be fair, I have not watched this in a long time and it's possible it's not quite as bad as I remember it. But how do you botch this up, especially after having so much time to work on it? The story was dumb, and animating the Statue of Liberty at the end? C'mon! Peter McNichol was a terrible bad guy and advancing Rick Moranis's role didn't work for me. I want to see the real ghostbusters! (no pun intended). It was reported that the creators were pressured into making this sequel, and man does that show in this lifeless product. The worst thing was Bill Murray who clearly didn't want to be in this.

Star Trek V-The Final Frontier

Imagine it's 1986. Star Trek IV has just come out, and exceded all expectations. This film was a monster hit, attracting audiences that couldn't care less about Star Trek. I was 12, and LOVED Star Trek IV. When that film ended it practically promised new adventures would be coming. I was very excited at the prospect of the next movie. Two things happened to kill it. One, Next Generation came on the air which diluted that excitement a bit. Two, and worst, was that William Shatner came up with the story and directed. I already did a whole article on this so I don't think I need to get into much detail. The plot was full of holes, the special effects were weak, the characters were all wrong, and the worst thing was the awful "humor" in the movie which just made the whole thing feel like a parody of a Star Trek movie rather than an actual Star Trek movie!!!!

Those are five examples, sure I could come up with LOTS more. Before I go.....

Last time I talked about how I hated the latest Indiana Jones movie. I was surprised to see how many people like it! Now I stand by my opinion but I also kind of felt bad. So to make things square I am going to admit to liking a movie that most people hate. It is something that I have never admitted to anyone.

I kind of liked Batman & Robin

Now don't get me wrong, it's a bad movie and deserves all the criticism it gets. But I just dont remember hating it when I saw it. I liked Uma Thurman as Poison Ivy, the action was ok and some of the gags worked. Alicia Silverstone did a decent job and the story was sort of clever. Yeah George Clooney as Batman sucked, hard, and that story about Alfred was LAME...but it had it's good points. It's not  a great movie, in fact if I rated all of the Batman films this would be the bottom of the list, but I just can't bring myself to outright hate it.

So there, I admit liking a movie most do not. Next time I will talk about why I liked Spider-Man 3. Just kidding.