What movie franchise gets worse with each new film?
(midwest.social)
AsklemmyThe first Jurassic Park movie is all time one of the greatest films ever made with the special effects still holding up to this day. The 2nd film was still very enjoyable in my opinion but it was just a cookie cutter sequel not bad, not good. The 3rd film wasn’t great at all. But compared to the rest of the series the 3rd film is basically the godfather.
As another personal pick the 1st blade movie is a hood classic good. The other 2 not so much.
Serenity.
Anime has entered the chat.
Tokyo Ghoul. Amazing first season. Body horror, depression, and zombie stuff all rolled into one. Masterpiece. Season 2 came out ahead of the rest of the books and it sucked. Seasons 3 and 4 adapted the second book series, but they speed ran it and only hit highlights and it was confusing AF.
Promised Neverland. Also amazing first season. Thriller with children trying to escape an orphanage that has a dark secret (revealed in first episode). They had like 5-7 seasons' worth of content and started to do a second season, but the funding (and creativity!) ran out so they speed ran the rest of the manga, and it was so bad, the directors had their names taken off the billing.
"Second season when?" has become a trope due to so many with excellent first seasons followed by terrible ones. Attack on Titan almost counts. First season was awesome, we called it Japan's answer to The Walking Dead when TWD was decent. Second season took 4 years and sucked, but season 3 more than made up for it. Season 4, "the final season," "the final season part 2," "the final season for realz this time", "the final season trust us we can see the finish line" and "the final chapters" sucked, though.
Is AoT actually finished and released at this point? I stopped watching after the final season part 1 because I felt so betrayed and said to myself I'd only ever watch it again when I can actually finish the storyline
Yeah the last episode came out in November '23
Ghostbusters. Some late 80's exec in tv and film was obsessed with putting babies in everything and the second movie got shanked in a dark alley by them.
Meanwhile, in 2016...
2016 was great. Unpopular opinion, but true.
Nah, Blade 2 still fucks.
Blade Trinity is just as rough now as it was when it first released.
John Wick.
Also Star Wars, but they had at least three good movies.
Marvel movies.
I thought John Wick maintained the same level through all the sequels.
Also, you're telling me that Thor (1) is better than Infinity War?
I'll grant you Marvel, but the end of JW4 was epic.
The actual question should be: which doesn't?
Terminator 2 is always the classic example, been downhill since then though
- The Lord of the Rings was very consistent. Many people think that Return of the King is the best one.
- Knives Out had a rather disappointing second part but the third one is amazing.
Yeah, that's all I can think of right now.
Lord of the Rings barely counts, because not only were all three books out and classics before the movies started (obviously), but the three movies were basically worked on at the same time. It's nuts, but somehow they managed to do it.
So it's not like they released the first, got crazy hype, and then phoned everyone up and said "electric Boogaloo, you in?". They'd already shot most of the second and third by the time the first came out, as I recall.
Also I really liked Glass Onion 😛
Knives Out 2 is by far my favorite and I love all three. I've only laughed that hard at a movie a handful of times.
My main criticism about Glass Onion is that the twist only works because Blanc knows something from the start that the audience can't really figure out on their own. I prefer detective stories where the main character has the same opportunities to gather information as I have and if I pay close enough attention, I can figure out most of what happened before the big reveal.
But I'm glad that you liked it. Shows that the series caters to different tastes.
The planet of the apes movies, it’s a trilogy and actually very good
Saw. The first one is a brilliant psychological horror movie. The rest drift more towards body horror, but each one gets worse and dumber than the previous one (except maybe Saw X, the last one)
Star wars
Just let characters die.
Long ago, in a galaxy far away...
...in this specific area, only pertaining to these 2-3 groups of people and no one else, anywhere else, ever despite there being an entire galaxy to fuck about in and about 20k years worth of lore.
Which is why I liked Andor and especially Acolyte so much. Finally a new perspective.
Mad Max?
1 - OK as a prelude 2 - Brilliant 3 - .... 4 - Not bad, not bad at all 5 - The Furiosa one was too much CGI. I was far too annoyed by how the vehicles had armour but exposed tyres
Idk, 1 and 3 are the worst ones and imo 4 is the best. Even in your list it's not exactly a decline.
Highlander. The first is cheesy but fairly enjoyable, and all the sequels go downhill in fascinatingly bad ways. Unfortunately, I'd like to find the theatrical version of Highlander 2: The Quickening, because I like bad movies and the renegade cut cuts some of the bad
Pretty much all of them. Successful first movie, sequels that repeat the formula while entirely missing the point.
Aliens.
Was one of the few exceptions to this for a long time.
I agree, there are a few sequels I liked on their own merits. But the majority of the ones are just as you said.
That said, I have a weakness for space ship drama. Can’t be too much of that. So some sequels really don’t need much of a plot, rhyme or reason. I’ll spend my money on them.
Is there any what gets better? There are good sequels, but once it becomes movie franchise, it all turns to shit. Sometimes faster, sometimes slower.
Evil Dead, at least for me. I enjoyed the first movies but absolutely love Army of Darkness.
The James Bond franchise gets better over time arguably. It has ups and downs, but I definitely wouldn't say it's downward trend overall.
Mad Max.
Terminator 2 was better. Ouija 2 was better. Empire strikes back. Back to the future 2.
I can't think of any more.
Mad Max
Sure, but there are like 6 more movies. And they do not get better
Terminator 2 was better.
I see this view everywhere all the time, but personally I strongly disagree. Terminator 2 is good no doubt, but the original had a sense of dread and urgency literally from start to finish that is unmatched in any of the sequels, in my opinion.
OK it's worth a rewatch then
Alien and Aliens. But only because Aliens was deliberately a different genre: so it's a bit of a stretch.
I’m sure there are people who will argue that Back to the Future Part II was the worst of the trilogy. Part III might be the best.
Here I was thinking the OG is where it's at. TIL
I can agree that part 3 might be the best one as an adult, but as a child that flying DeLorean and hoverboard was the shit in part 2 even though it did have a darker tone.
Definitely terminator 2. As well as the original Star Wars trilogy and back to the future trilogy are the few that I consider good all the way through.
I'm of the opinion that the Austin Powers series got better with each film.
Yeah, 2 was just 1 again, with all the same jokes but in reverse. But 3 was legitimately different and better, so it saved the whole thing!
Are you trolling? I cant tell, i guess.
I'd argue the original Evil Dead trilogy get progressively better with each movie.
Dark Knight
It being filmed together is it being a 6+ hour movie in 3 chapters. I think it's a single project not successive films. Just how I frame it, I concede to technicalities if you must
I watched them back to back once and can confirm. They work perfectly as a single long movie.
The Sergio Leone trilogy with Clint Eastwood arguably gets better. The first one was almost a shot-for-shot remake of Yojimbo - good but derivative. The third movie stood up well against the early ones and the music was maybe the best.
Not a fan of the Scream movies, but just saw a video of a guy talking about how each one gets better than the last one mainly because they are self aware of being sequels and use that to enrich the narrative
Guessing from the reviews on Scream 3 and Scream VII, I'd say there are exceptions.
Theres an argument that The Godfather Pt 2 is the best of the 3
James Bond. Because each bond had it's fans.
Bronson, Moore and Connery are my Bond trifecta.
I lost interest after Brosnan and haven't seen another Bond film since Die Another Day in 2002. I'm cool with it.
You should watch Casino Royale, even if you don't watch the others.
Ouija 2 Origin of Evil by Mike Flannigan is the rare exception where the sequel trounced the OG in every way.
The Librarian also all three movies are good, with the third being arguably the best.
Top gun I guess. Second one was better than first one.
So long as you can put yourself in the headspace, the fast and furious movies do get better when you realize that every movie is the exact same film (besides Tokyo drift anyway), but with higher stakes than the last one, to kind of absurd levels - starts with street racing, ends up in space, through so many movies.
But that's kind of a meta analysis based on what they are, not the actual quality, none of them are amazing, but fine if you can turn your brain off for a bit
Not true at all.
I felt bad for Lost World, because Crighton went out of his way to write a novel that was a sequel to the first movie, not the first book, and then Spielberg just basically ignored it like it never happened.
I wanted to not see the chameleon dinosaurs, damn it!
The upside is that the movie is good and the book is great and one won't spoil the other.
I'm tempted to say the Rocky series, given Rocky V. But the fact is, III and particularly IV rocked!
Taken 3 makes Taken 2 look like Taken 1.
People talk about Taken like it's a good movie. I saw it recently for the first time, and just the fact that they tried to make the protagonist scary and capable is just hilarious to me. Yeah okay let's pretend he can run and fight, as a goof.
I also dont care for any of the John Wick movies. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
I loved the first one - thank goodness he saved his daughter and got her back to the safety of the good ol USA!
It was like a 1.5 hour long ioke with that as the punchline
Tron. It ends with tossing out the one before and letting Jared Leto get his stink all over it.
Marvel Cinematic Universe should have stopped sometime before Phase 4 (Eternals, Black Widow, Wakanda Forever, Multiverse of Madness).
The Matrix should have ended at 1.
The Jason Bourne movies should have ended when Jason Bourne's story was concluded, without extending it to Aaron Cross's story, played by Jeremy Renner.
Animatrix is cool as fuck tho
Endgame was iconic, genuinely fun and an incredible accomplishment. I would love to have ended there, even have the spiderman movie to show the repurcussions and coking to terms with what happened and showing that the universe continues. It would be a great cap to end with what ended up being a spiderman origin film.
I liked Loki and a few others, could have been considered spinoffs in the vein of dealing with the aftermath.
Then reboot
The Matrix should have ended at 1.
1000000000000%.
It was supposed to be.
They wanted to make 3 movies but they were told to do one so they squished it into a single movie. When it did really well they were told they could make the other two and they had to come up with new stories.
Transformers, the Bay ones.
You can argue that the very first one was an honest attempt. But things immediately goes down hill once you get to Revenge of the Fallen. And it just doubles down and doubles down every entry that you would think it is a contest of how many stupid ideas can they get away with and do get away with per entry. I got off at Dark of the Moon because I've seen enough stupid that I didn't care of the other ones.
The Hobbit Trilogy
If you continued on, like I did, into the trilogy of this series, you'll know. An unnecessary, shoe-horned angle of a dwarf and a elf affection. I don't need to say more.
I enjoyed the 4 hour Hobbit fanedit though I cannot remember which, or the name
I watched the M4 and the Tolkien cut and while the M4 version has done really nice changes, it cuts out so much that many scenes are confusing. The Tolkien cut has a few non-book scenes left in just for the rest to make note sense.
Tbh, the first Transformers is one of my favorite watch-it-when-it-rains-blockbuster, the story is not that bad and the score is just perfect.
Home Alone
Home Alone: In New York
Home Alone: No Macauly
Home Alone: There's a fourth one?
Home Alone 5.
Home Sweet Home Alone: Exclusive to Disney+
You forgot Home Alone: Fallout (the Macaulay comeback)
Rome Alone
2 Home 2 Alone
The Home Alonity
Home Alone: The Movie
Home Single Rated-X
KISS saves Home Alone
Home Alone meets The Blue Falcon and Wondermutt
the list goes on, lotta spinoffs
Oh my, I watched one of the newer ones once and it was awful.
Pirates of the Caribbean, I turned the last one off after 15 minutes
I thought Dead Man's Chest was mostly as good as the first one, but after that — meh.
Yeah, #2 and #3 I actually liked (I think of them as one movie split in two episodes), #4 I managed to endure the Disney™ Silliness™ til the end, but #5 was way too much right from the start
For some reason as a kid one of the two original sequels was too fantastical for me. I rememer coming with a group a birthday party and saying how it seemed less realistic.
Like it never was realistic, skeletons captaining a boat and such but damn one of them took me out of the vibe I guess.
Did you all know that there are three Sandlot movies? Oh, and the third involves time travel.
Land Before Time
Resident Evil, Underworld
Evil Dead, Evil Dead 2, Army of Darkness.
Do these count as a counterexample?
2013 slaps you shut your whore mouth! /s
Also Evil Dead is something that has never had a bad iteration. Fight me.
Machete.
Machete was masterpiece.
Machete Kills was so bad that it killed the franchise.
So Machete Kills did exactly what it promised, it sounds like!
Terminator? T2 is regarded as that franchise's best flick and it's only downhill from T3 onward.
Robocop as a franchise also infamously went down the toilet after the first movie, each sequel degraded in quality until the complete mess that was Robocop 3 happened.
Also Alien and Aliens were good, the rest not so much.
Desperado?
Was pretty popular when it came out but I haven't heard a peep about it since. The first movie "El Mariachi" was low budget af
Guardians of the Galaxy, The Hangover, Star Wars, The Fast and the Furious, there are so many. Once that cash cow starts squirting powdered milk out of its teats they just keep squeezing.
See, The Hangover is hard to categorize like that, because it's the same movie every time.
I really like guardians. At least when it came out. And i dislike everythimg CP is in generally. But it kinda works. I love the colourful space, the places they go, the aliens, the humor is barable, because it's not overplayed yet. The rest of the franchise feels like it was written by AI that scraped twitter to see what people who also like minions liked about it.
All of them and no one can convince me otherwise.
Alien and Terminator have absolutely amazing second films, after that it slides off.
Godfather II
All of them.
