Friday Five – Most Disappointing Sequels

Welcome to the Friday Five! Each week I help you get to know me a bit better with the assistance of a classic top five list! This week’s topic: Most Disappointing Sequels.
 
Sometimes a sequel can be much better that the film it was spawned from. We’ll get to those later. But this week I examine those films that just suck in comparison to those that came before them, and in fact can make those first movies even worse just by existing.

1. Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen – I watch a lot of shitty movies, like, a lot of shitty movies. But this is the only movie I ever almost walked out on. It was too flashy, I couldn’t tell what the hell was going on, the plot holes were huge (the whole Army is just chillin’ in the desert for like 2 hours with Starscream flying around them, and they don’t have a single surface-to-air missile to shoot him with? And he never attacks them?), and being from Philadelphia, I know the fight scenes at the Naval Yard don’t make any sense. Where is there a forest like that for them to fight in near Philly. The Pine Barrens? But the worst offense? The total disrespect for all the historic spacecraft at the Smithsonian. As a space nerd I took huge offense at that. As soon as that happened I was like ‘Done!’ I’ll take the 1986 original any day, even if it still makes me cry.

 

2. Episodes I-III – Kinda goes without saying. I think Randall sums it up nicely.

 

3. Terminator Salvation – I’m a huge Terminator fan. I owned the directors cut of T2 on VHS. I have the card series. I forced my parents to take me to Orlando to see the T2 ride at Universal. I still don’t watch Fox because they canceled The Sarah Connor Chronicles. But this movie got almost everything wrong. It’s as if they never watched any of the other films. Kate Brewster, a veterinarian, performs a heart transplant on the battlefield? Really? It’s painfully obvious that the whole film builds towards the original ending, which would have been a disaster. In the original ending, instead of John Connor getting Marcus’ heart, they did the transplant the other way around. They cut off John Connor’s face and gave it to Marcus (which explains the scars old John Connor had in the T2 flash forward). Then Marcus would have used all the tapes Sarah Connor recorded to “become” John Connor, because John Connor was all about the myth, the actual “man” didn’t matter. So the savior of mankind is the first Terminator? There is just so much wrong with that. But they backed off that, but didn’t change anything else, so the whole thing is just a big mess. The Sarah Connor Chronicles did the T2 sequel right.

 

4. Superman Returns – I’m also a huge Superman fan, which if you’ve seen my comic collection you’d know. I went to the midnight showing of this at the big Imax, wearing my Superman shirt and a child sized cape. Even though Kevin Spacey was born to play Lex Luthor, the whole film just fell flat. The whole drama around who’s the father of that kid, I don’t care. The end just dragged on and on and on, and the movie as a whole was just boring.

 

5. Matrix Reloaded/Revolutions – Reloaded wasn’t so bad, but Revolutions was just terrible and needlessly complicated. It was painfully obvious the Wachowski brothers had no idea how to end what they started, so they just remade Return of the Jedi. The mecha battle against the sentinels is the Battle of Endor, with the mechs subbing in for ewoks, and the fight between Neo and Smith is the lightsaber duel between Luke and the Emperor. And then everything just sort of stops. The End. WTF?

 
Also goes without saying – The odds (minus Generations)

Comedy!

JohnScott is the proud owner of a life size replica Captain Kirk Chair. He is a hoarder of Comic Books, Transformers, and Star Trek action figures. He attended Space Camp as an adult. He has taken vacations to the closing of the Star Trek Experience and the final night Shuttle launch. He has been known to yell at his television when the kids can't put together the damn statue in the Shrine of the Silver Monkey. When not writing for InsufficientScotty, he is a Software Engineer for a major healthcare communications company. You can Email or follow on Twitter @NotEnoughScotty or Facebook