Welcome back my loyal readers…all twelve of you. This episode is bringing us back to the moments where Hollywood decided to take a collective dump on all of us with horrible sequels to movies in which the originals were really likable.
There are a variety of reasons that a sequel can go bad quickly which include: the cash grab sequel, the star from the original is too famous now and doesn’t want to do a sequel, and the sequel that comes years later and all of the actors are washed up and clearly mailing it in. There are tons of reasons really why a sequel might suck, but we will cover these as we move along here. All of these movies with the exception of one or two of them were expected to be monster-hits and instead we were given crap…90-120 minutes that none of us will ever get back.
There have been a million sequels made, so I couldn’t include them all. This list is more personal, a list of WTF sequels that came from my own high expectations. Maybe I can be blamed for having high expectations on some of these when the writing was clearly on the wall. With that said, I give you the WTF sequels of my life.
13. Teen Wolf Too: The Search for Michael J. Fox
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30sYk9B4OqU
Yuck! I don’t even know where to start with this one. I guess we should start with the obvious… You know going into this that you’re not going to get Michael J. Fox…understandable. But you can’t get Stiles?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCEp9CSpaiA
…Or Booth? You get Chubs? Chubs is the guy that you bring back? I mean no offense to that guy, but was anybody thinking “Well, at least they brought back the overweight center from the basketball team.”? Apparently his kankles are deceiving because not only was he a “good” basketball player, but also a college-level boxer, a two-sport star. I guess he was the Bo Jackson of this world. They also brought back Michael J. Fox’s dad from the first movie.
Somehow he was available, along with the exact same plot, and character traits from every character in the first movie. I’m guessing they literally wrote Stiles into this movie and then were flabbergasted that the guy who played him in the first movie said no, just changed the character’s name to something else and then hired a poor-man’s Stiles to play a Stiles character (although I think Stiles might have made a small, uncredited cameo in this one).
The evil high school principal from part one is replaced with the evil college dean in this one, played by Gomez Adams. Just like the mean principal from the first movie, Gomez isn’t buying into the Teen Wolf hoopla,and quite frankly, he doesn’t like it and is going to do anything he can do to stick it to this furry jerk-off.
It’s not like the first Teen Wolf is the Godfather or anything in terms of quality, but I remember watching part one no less than thirty times….I loved the basketball scene at the end of part one so much that I dreamed of being on that team…maybe coming off the bench as the energy guy, sixth man of the team, playing on that bad red team with all of the players in their late 30s who were somehow still playing on a high school team.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30sYk9B4OqU
Who cares if they show the same five plays over and over again from different angles? …Just enjoy the beauty of the song.
Part two is just so low budget that it makes the first movie look like it had the Transformers’ budget. The plot points are literally identical to the plot points of the first movie. He doesn’t know he’s a werewolf, then he finds out and freaks out about it. Afterward, he loves it and takes it too far as he uses it to meet new friends and to get laid left and right, then he decides that it would be better if he were just himself. Again, nobody went into this thinking that they were going to see Casablanca, but you would hope the brains behind this movie would have tried to put at least a minimal effort into it…instead it’s just an unwatchable piece of shit…
12. Young Guns II: Shooting Blanks:
Just imagine if your grandfather had to sit down and watch this movie. Imagine if John Wayne were alive to watch this movie. This movie is like The Fast and the Furious of Western movies. It’s the skinny jeans, gluten-free, hipster vibe of Westerns. This movie feels like Emilio Estevez had a little too much creative control on the set. I would bet that on set he demanded that everybody call him “Billy” and I’d bet he stayed in character at all times like he was Daniel Day Lewis playing Lincoln. The first movie for Young Guns was pretty damn good and it spawned the start of one of the greatest rap songs of all time:
Expectations were pretty high for this sequel and the cherry on top was that they got Christian Slater for this one too, who was going to become the next Jack Nicholson…I guess we were all wrong on the Christian Slater thing, weren’t we? The whole movie just feels douchey, like I’m watching an elaborate Abercrombie & Fitch ad or something. This movie has nothing behind it. It did all right at the box office and now I can’t remember the last time I saw it shown on TV, and if it is shown, it’s on a random channel like Oxygen or the TV Guide Channel, the fate it deserves.
11. Nightmare on Elm Street Two: Freddy’s Bomb:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwWnlUQk67M
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yv4AFuOY9y4
It’s weird to look back and think that the Nightmare series survived this dumpster fire. First off…this:
Notice anything off besides this party of high schoolers?… eighty-nine percent of which look like they’re thirty-four or older–and no, I’m talking about the men wearing booty shorts. The whole point of the Nightmare movies is that Freddy Kruger is supposed to come in your sleep, not show up at the pool party from a deleted scene of Sixteen Candles.
The first movie was a big surprise hit, so you had to think that anticipation was pretty high when the trailer for part two first came out. Instead of following the same basic rules that they set up on the first one, they decide to make a homoerotic …Not that there’s anything wrong with that… horribly acted, atrociously written movie. You should treat this movie like we Sicilians treat The Godfather 3….It never happened.
10. American Pie: Take Your Pick:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9Or_Sp76zU
I picked the last movie in the series to use as the trailer, but in all honesty, take your pick of any of the sequels. There’s nothing worse than a movie that thinks it has more meaning to people than it does. American Pie (the first movie) was a good little movie. It wasn’t a special movie; it wasn’t the American Graffiti of its generation. It wasn’t a movie that’s quoted every day or anything. The only thing anybody really remembers from the movie is that homeboy humped a pie.
For some reason the producers of this franchise are trying to paint the picture that all of us have fallen in love with the movie and its characters…like the last movie got made so we could all properly say goodbye to these characters because we all apparently needed closure…ick! I don’t even think this franchise belongs on this list, but I just wanted to take the opportunity to vent about it because….well because it’s the principle of the matter.
Every single movie has the exact same beats and plot points. Jason Biggs has a contrived, ridiculous sexual encounter. Eugene Levy acts like a Saturday Night Live skit character. Stifler acts crazy and Stiflers-out. The movies end with the characters growing closer and realizing that life is beautiful and it’s all about the friendships you make. The first movie was a hit and did warrant a sequel, I guess, and so when the second movie came out, it was just a complete retread of the first movie… and then the third movie did the same and then finally the fourth and last movie in the series (for now). It sucks.
9. Rocky V: Rocky vs. A Horrible Premise:
This one really hurts. As a boxer…..as an Italian…as a man…this one hurts. I have to be honest, though…and…so….god does this movie f**king suck. How in the hell does Rocky lose literally all his money overnight? How would Paulie possibly be allowed to make “bad real estate investments” with Rocky’s money? This one makes my list here because the previous four Rockys were cinematic masterpieces…It’s science you can’t argue this point with me. Rocky IV was so powerful it ended the Cold War:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTOSd-6-fxk&feature=youtu.be
Rocky V picks up right after part 4, so it’s a little puzzling that Rocky… immediately after part 4 with no prior symptoms at all… gets diagnosed with brain damage and starts shaking and has to retire the next day. I mean, it’s really not that hard to screw up the format of a Rocky movie..: Rocky starts the movie feeling pretty good about life, out of nowhere a new foe emerges to challenge Rocky, Adrian tells Rocky:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dvcee2Dqk4I
Rocky tells Adrian that “He’s got to do what he’s got to do,” he trains really hard, he fights the scary bloke while yelling “Go for it!” and he wins…the end. In this movie, we get a street fight. Yeah, a street fight that means nothing.
This movie comes close to ruining the previous four movies because basically everything he has achieved is wiped away because Paulie made a bad investment. It’s a contrived plot devised to get Rocky back to his roots so he can go back to the streets of Philadelphia, all so that it can lead to a street fight with Tommy Gunn? In the following clip, pretend the president is Stallone and pretend that I’m Harrison Ford and pretend we’re talking about Rocky V….yes, it’s a lot of pretending, I know, but this is the conversation that would have happened if I had a chance to talk to Sly about Rocky V:
8. Three Men and a Little Turd of a Movie:
I mean, who didn’t love Three Men and a Baby? You had Tom Selleck at the height of his Tom Selleck late 80’s classy mustache vibe. You had Steve Guttenberg at the height of his Guttenberg-ness and you had Sam Malone, the best bartender in the world. That my friends is a recipe for success…and as all you thirty and older people out here know, the first movie was great. Then in a complete attempt at a money grab, they decided to make this piece of garbage sequel. The movie takes place about five years after the first one.
For whatever reason, three grown, single men are choosing to live in one place with Mary (the little lady) and her mother. As a bachelor myself, living with roommates that I’m not sleeping with at this point in my life seems like the biggest stretch in the movie.
Somehow the major aspect of this plot is that the baby mama is going to marry an evil British guy. The evil British guy plans to move Mary and mom to England for the wedding and to settle down and live there. This leads to everybody packing up and heading to England to stop this thing…and hilarity ensues mixed with some poignant moments.
It’s never really explained why the British guy is evil, but he just is as we find out that he has nefarious plans to send Mary away to boarding school. Well, the boys catch wind of the evil plan and decide enough is enough, plus Tom Selleck is secretly in love with Mary’s mom.
7. City Slickers Two: The Search for Billy Crystal’s Soul:
Gross. The First City Slickers was fantastic, then sadly Billy Crystal got a little too full of himself it seems. He hosted the Oscars like nineteen times, give or take, and started waiting for applause breaks when he forced some deep moment that we all had to be a part of. City Slickers part one worked so well because it really had a heart while part two really didn’t work because it had none.
Expectations were very high with this movie before it came out because part one, as cheesy as it sounds, really did appeal to people of all ages and so when you get an ego- driven sequel like this, it just leaves a bad taste in your mouth.
And what the hell happened to Daniel Stern? Has he ever been seen since? Do we need to call somebody or organize search parties? Let me know because I’m in no matter what we decide to do.
6. Aliens Three: The Illegal Alien:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vnjQPcrcZI
OK, Aliens was one of the greatest sequels of all time, which followed probably the greatest scary movie of its time in the original Alien. Even David Fincher’s directing this movie couldn’t save it and you want to know why? Well, because within the first two minutes of this movie they completely obliterate the ending of part two. Part three opens up with the deaths of Hicks and that dummy Newt. The whole plot of part two was basically centered around Sigourney Weaver saving the little unlikable child Newt. It’s stupid and now you pretty much have to believe that part three never happened. Another aspect of part three that I hated was that all of the characters have shaved heads and exaggerated British accents and you can’t tell any of them apart except for Rock (the guy who played the supervisor of the field crew in Rudy–his name is Charles S. Dutton) and only because he is the only person of color in the movie. The whole thing is not that fun to watch because you’re really not rooting for anyone. At this point I was okay with Ripley getting killed. This movie retroactively weakens part two, and because of that it deserves its place on this list and may god have mercy on the writer’s soul.
5. Major League II: The Big Giant Strikeout:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S60dt1Ryu-M
On a personal note, Major League is one of my favorite movies of all time. I can say every line in the movie…I mean… every line, even the mundane lines that nobody should remember. When I was a kid, my family would take road trips in our awful, maroon van, but we jimmy -rigged a TV so my parents wouldn’t drive me and my three siblings into on-coming traffic.
Major League was the movie we watched on every road trip for like eight years, so you can imagine the excitement I must have felt when I first saw the trailer for part 2. “Oh sweet… Major League II! Hey, there’s Charlie Sheen… He’s back…and Tom Berenger…and Pedro Cerrano…and wait…Omar Epps???…Where in the hell is Wesley Snipes? …I’m sure we will be fine…They can’t screw this up…Wait…It’s PG-13?”
The PG-13 rating was the first red-flag that something horrible was going to happen. Part one was Rated R because it had to be… It was about pro-baseball; that world is rated R. In a horrible mistake, I’m guessing the producers thought they could appeal to a wider audience if they completely neutered the script.
That choice is the fundamental reason why this movie sucked…and make no mistake, this movie sucked. They took every extreme they could possibly take with the main characters. Wild Thing Ricky Vaughn sells out and becomes a suit, forgetting his wild thing ways. Pedro Cerrano becomes a Buddhist instead of practicing voodoo. That is so over-the-top it’s insulting; his whole character is like a 12:27am Saturday Night Live skit that just barely makes the cut.
4. Jurassic Park III: Straight to Betamax Edition:
Seriously, doesn’t this movie feel like it has a straight to video vibe? It’s Jurassic Park for god’s sake and it feels small…like they had shot around a tight budget, which obviously probably wasn’t the case. Why does this movie suck? I mean, the first one is epic, the second one maybe wasn’t the greatest movie ever but it definitely was a solid C, and this one is just awful. Expectations were obviously very high for all of us with this movie and so walking out of the theater feeling like I just watched a made for Syfy Channel movie was probably not the feeling the producers of this movie wanted me to have. This is one of the movies on the list that was supposed to be a blockbuster, and when you miss with a blockbuster, it counts double against you in my humble opinion.
Everyone involved should get sent down to the “minor leagues” of movies, like they can only work on the Lifetime or Hallmark channels for five years or something before they get another chance to make a big movie. I think that’s only fair, right?
Kudos to Jeff Goldblum for avoiding this massacre because I’m sure he was offered a shitload of money.
3. Speed 2: Cruise Control that Crashes and Dies a Horrible Death:
Words really cannot do justice on how horrible this was. All of us are now stupider for having watched this trailer. It’s literally the exact same plot from the first movie with a f**king boat instead of a bus. Keanu should get some sort of award for turning down what I’m assuming was a huge sum of money offered. Sandra Bullock reminds you how overrated she is….I mean, quickly think of a Sandra Bullock film besides the Blind Side that you really love…..Exactly!
What’s even better is the lack of charisma from Jason Patrick playing the Keanu part and apparently also going to the Harrison Ford School of “looking like you’re squinting at cue cards as you deliver your lines”. He is just awful in this movie and really I think he’s been awful in everything he’s ever been in…well maybe The Lost Boys will give him a pass.
William Dafoe for having a great, prolific career has really had some awful performances in both acting and film choices and this is probably at the top of that list. This is really making me sound like bitchy blogger, but really this movie is the cliché example of why some movies should never be made into sequels.
Speed, the original, was a huge hit because it was original and the script was good and the acting was decent and we loved it. The producers for Speed 2 basically just spent 160 million dollars (I think that was the budget) on a lazy script and horrible acting….
2. Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Worst Movie Ever Made:
This one is so…so…so painful. Let’s all be honest here… It’s a safe place to share…All of us were excited for this one as we all watched the trailer with flashbacks of our childhoods in our minds…and then we go and watch this and we are greeted with two gigantic middle fingers…Dear lord, is this movie bad! For two-thirds of the movie you can literally see Harrison Ford squinting at the cue cards that are off to the side of the camera. I don’t know what happened to him, but it seems like right after Air Force One he aged forty years and became an incoherent stoner.
It was just sad to see him like this in this movie. It was like watching Muhammad Ali at the end of his career when he was done and got beat to a pulp by Larry Holmes in the early 80’s when he never should have been fighting. Harrison Ford has taken one too many punches.
The plot of this movie is convoluted and stupid and I couldn’t really tell you what was happening. I guess I was too busy trying to figure out how Indy survived a nuclear blast in a refrigerator…Almost as bad as a nuclear blast was Shia LaBeouf in this movie. Playing the part of Mutt, with I’m guessing the wish of the producers to have a “young, hot star” in the movie to counteract the walking dead acting of Harrison Ford and the “overexcited because she just got her first role in a major movie for the first time in twenty-seven years” Karen Allen. It’s a bizarre scene (literally) when all three are all acting at the same time because you have Harrison Ford completely mailing it in, you have Karen Allen overacting every line she utters and then we get Shia being a douche and probably eyeing one of the female members of the film crew. This movie was awful…There’s no other way to put it. This is the Godfather: Part III of the Indy series. What makes this so painful is the fact that expectations were so high and all of us were hoping that this wouldn’t be a bomb, but alas…it was.
1. The Godfather Part III: It Never Happened:
So I have written about The Godfather: Part III before:
I can’t believe I’m even acknowledging that this movie ever happened– because really it shouldn’t have ever happened. I mean, The Godfather and The Godfather: Part II are as close to two perfect movies as one can get. They’re fantastic, and even almost 45 years later still hold up so well. We can all blame Winona Ryder for this.
She was originally supposed to play this part, but backed out at the last minute claiming to be sick. So to recap, Winona Ryder’s responsible for ruining The Godfather Trilogy and almost derailing poor Johnny Depp’s career. As we all know, karma caught up to her in the late 90’s with her bizarre shoplifting scandal. Anyways, I put Part III on this list just so I can take another opportunity to bitch about how utterly awful Sophia Coppola is in the movie. I don’t want to sound like a prick, but even if she finds a cure for cancer one day, it still won’t make up for this movie (fast forward to twenty years from now when we’re standing with our hands held high with the announcement that Sophia Coppola has cured my cancer).
I mean, first off, she’s in love with her own blood, her first cousin, not some second cousin twice removed or something, but literally her first cousin…ewwwww…gross. Second, Andy Garcia is a somewhat respectable actor, and the fact that he had to act in scenes with someone who is that bad at acting must have been torture. I imagine him walking off the set quietly, going into his trailer, looking at himself in the mirror and thinking: “ I can’t do this… I can’t do this…No, Andy…you can…Just do your best…..F**king Winona Ryder. I will get back at her if it’s the last thing I do on this planet.”
It’s not as if he could go to the director with his concerns in this situation since the director was also her father. So we have first cousin gross love and we have the worst acted part in the history of cinema, yet somehow when it came out it was praised as a good movie and nominated for the Best Picture Oscar. Talk about an industry getting on their collective knees for Francis Ford Coppola…I mean, my god, what were they thinking.
Bottom line: the first two Godfather films are arguably the two best movies (literally) in film history. Expectations were going to be high for part three and it fell short, which is the understatement of our lives. You could take out the monstrosity of Sophia Coppola’s acting and the movie itself is still a zero. Why did they make this movie….Why….Why??????!!!!!!
So, there’s my list. I’m sure I left some off that deserved to be here, like Ghostbusters II …and probably part 3 in ten years. Caddyshack II comes to mind, but like I said, there are so many that I wanted to focus on the ones that are personal to me. You can share what your personal WTF sequels are in the comment section below. Thanks for reading!
