I was playing Zen Pinball 2’s Alien series for a bit the other day and it made me think out how every movies since “Aliens” really damaged my enjoyment of the original 2 movies. I wish I get the crappy ones out of my head when I re-watch the originals but I can’t.
What sequels have done this for you and your enjoyment or memories of original great movies? I’m kinda worried Blade Runner 2 might end up in this category.
Picking the low hanging fruit here, but The Matrix hits this hard. The Bourne series flirted with that too. The killing of the girlfriend at the start of the second movie as the obvious ‘motivate the protagonist’ moment just pissed. me. off.
The Star Wars prequels really bummed me out to the point that re-watching the originals was a lessened experience. It’s not so bad now because you have a new generation of folks moving the stories forward and they seemed to have jettisoned everything that really sucked about the prequels, but they’re still sitting there as the chronological foundation of the saga. The mere mention of midichlorians killed it.
The Matrix sequels didn’t ruin the original for me. I just pretend they don’t exist. Same is true of Highlander - I still like the original movie, and I just pretend the others don’t exist.
So I’ll go with the X-Men movies. X2 was so much better than X-Men that it kind of ruined 1 for me. And X-Men: The Last Stand (aka 3) was so terribly awful that it tainted X2 for me because of the (then awesome) Phoenix tease at the end, which means I can’t watch the movie again without being reminded of the third one.
People keep claiming that there were Star Wars prequels, but does a Podracing video game and some cartoon series really constitute prequels? I mean, it’s not like we got any feature films in there.
(which is to say, good point. However the Clone Wars series is so good that they have replaced the 1-3 movies in my mind, as well as justified their existence.)
I have Matrix trilogy. The second two movies are really that bad? I just wanted so much more matrix than just the first movie, and my curiosity… you know how it goes. I have not seen the second two movies yet,
How about 3 Hobbit movies…does that count?
Dunno, I only saw the first. How can you ruin something you lost interest in?
The second is not terrible, mind you… just… clumsy? It has issues with narrative and pacing (and character development), but it could be saved by a third movie that would properly tie all the loose ends and such.
Unfortunately, the third movie is one of the worst “Hollywood action movies” I’ve seen, despite looking pretty good. Even the few good moments (visually or otherwise) don’t make up for the egregious line of cliches everywhere. And thus it “unmade” the second movie, which means only the first exists for many people.
That said… YMMV. If you watch without expecting much, you might have a good time. Who knows? Just don’t expect them to be as good as the first one.
Peter Jackson forever lost me after King Kong, so I never even watched the Hobbit movies.
I’ll pretty much agree. The second Matrix movie had potentials, but was not, in and of itself, a complete film. It was merely half of a film. Really Matrix 2&3 were one single film, that ended in the middle of act 2 for some reason.
No resolution, no closed character arcs, just stopped.
And it could have been saved, but it never can be viewed on its own merits. The quality of the second is completely contingent upon the third. Going home from the second film I remember sitting in my cousin’s living room in St. Paul (we were visiting them, and had seen the movie together). We sat down and we laid out two alternate arcs for the trilogy. One was for ways they could wrap this up in an amazing manner, ways they could blow us away.
Then I said that they would do none of that, and proceeded to lay out, almost point for point, how the third movie would break down, right to the lazy and terrible sacrifice scene. Given how the first movie broke with so much of conventional Hollywood, and was stylish and intense, the third was supremely disappointing.
And since the second merely ends mid scene it fails by dint of the third movie failing.
I agree with @CraigM wholeheartedly about the two movies. I would like to add, however, that the Animatrix still works. The original movie is still amazing if you just view it as a single movie, followed by the short stories told in Animatrix.
By the way @CraigM, I was the curmudgeon in my own group after we came out of the 2nd movie. My friends were laying out all these scenarios under which the second movie could still be considered amazing, but I was the one saying, “you guys are giving them too much credit, they didn’t think of any of that, it’s just a terrible movie, and even though I’d loved to be proved wrong, you’ll see after the third one comes out”. And I kind of liked the 3rd movie just because it was better than my expectations of it, but it still retroactively proved that the 2nd movie was crap, so I was sad about that.
Ong Bak is fantastic. “Ong Bak 2”, aka Warrior King aka Tom-Yum-Goong, was terrible. The actual Ong Bak 2 was pretty mediocre. I’ve not seen Ong Bak 3 but I hear it’s awful.
Almost all of the Disney films also qualify here. Walt Disney Animation Studios makes the block busters, then the cartoon and home video teams make the sequels, and in most cases theyre terrible. The Lion King 2 is, without a doubt, the worst cartoon I’ve ever seen. The Lion King 3 is actually pretty decent, so it’s subverting this trend.
Aladdin 2 and 3 also suck
Good call. I picked up Fox and the Hound from the library recently, and it was a double disk with Fox and the Hound 2… . ugh, just pure garbage. Aladdin 2 I recall liking, but I also haven’t seen it in 20 years. My son loved Aladdin, so I’m going to rent it soon, and we shall see.
However one sequel of theirs I’d argue surpasses the original is The Rescuers Down Under. Admittedly a bit of a nostalgic pick for me, but it was the first movie I recall seeing in theaters (either that or the special limited theater run of The Jungle Book, both were when I was about 5).
Totally agree. I do remember some of those shorts, even now, and they were universally better than the sequels.
And I agree with @Rock8man with regards to Animatrix. What is funny to me is that the kid-character from the second Matrix movie makes NO sense what-so-ever if you don’t watch Animatrix.
For me, the best Matrix sequel is I, Robot, serving as a prequel. At the end of the movie you have Sonny, the next generation AI with human emotions, leading his AI robot peoples to a new promised land. There they evolve themselves until eventually there is tension and war with humans. You have to forget both Matrix sequels and, unfortunately, Animatrix as well, in order for this to work, but it does.
As for movies that ruined the original, I have to echo @rhamorim about the original X-Men trilogy. The 3rd movie truly damaged the 2nd movie, which in turn was so good that it damaged the first.
The Hobbit could have been good as a single movie. Having it be a trilogy ended up letting Peter Jackson go all…Peter Jackson on it. He’s too self-indulgent when it comes to his movies. Without a strong editorial process, he unleashes rambling crap like all 3 Hobbit movies. He’s the movie version of Stephen King.
Dark Knight Rises kinda damaged The Dark Knight for me. At the end of The Dark Knight, I had this story of the next steps in my head, knowing that Batman continues to do what he does, but he’s hunted by the police at the same time. Instead we end up with Emo Bruce Wayne in the sequel, which hurts me to think about every time I see the end of The Dark Knight.
As both a kid and an adult, I was never supremely thrilled by The Rescuers, but The Rescuers Down Under was pretty delightful.
Fully with agreed with everyone re: Star Wars Prequels, latter Matrix flicks, and the entirety of The Hobbit trilogy, too!
I’d add Pirates of the Carribbean to the above lists. Jack Sparrow was a neat character - but after three more movies he has more than overstayed his welcome. The sequels’ effect is lower compare to say Matrix 3 or the Star Wars prequels since there was less lore to be damaged, but it’s difficult to watch the first one and not remember that three movies followed. I have no interest in watching the fifth one unless audiences are praising its quality.
With the exception of Matrix 3 sort of dashing my hopefulness after Matrix 2, I generally don’t get turned off a good flick by a poor sequel.
There are plenty of disappointing sequels though!
Personally, I’d count Indiana Jones 2, 3 and 4 as unneeded and uninspired.
Well, 3 was pretty fun. Other than that, agreed.
There are plenty of sequels I can just pretend don’t exist (the Jaws “franchise” for example) but in terms of sequels that made the original retroactively worse, Kiss Ass 2 leaps to mind. Not that the first was a masterpiece or anything but it was fun. The second just demonstrated everything that the original’s detractors said originally.
On the flip side, I wasn’t a fan of Rocky 3 (sacrilege, I know!) or 4, (5 was unremarkable), but Creed was so good that in my mind there is now a perfect Rocky Trilogy in 1,2 & Creed.