Substandard Sequels

You would think with my recent posts about sequels, that I would be obsessed with sequels.  To a certain extent, that is entirely true.  I love movies, which includes sequels and remakes.  For this particular list, I’m going to be leaving off remakes entirely, as that is a different list for a different day.  One of my previous posts was about unnecessary sequels, which you can check out by hitting the Opinions and Such button at the top of the page here.  While I didn’t feel that those movies were absolutely awful, they just felt completely out of place and didn’t really need to be made.  For this particular post, I’ll be focusing on those sequels that should have been good, but weren’t.  This is my personal opinion, so if you get offended, oh well.  Some of these sequels aren’t necessarily bad movies, per se, but as sequels they just get it completely wrong.  Let’s begin, shall we?

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny

This is a sequel that failed on so many levels.  Yeah, it’s beautifully shot with some decent acting and fight scenes, but the movie really misses the point of the original movie.  The first Crouching Tiger was more of a drama than an action film that focused more on the characters and story.  Sword of Destiny does the opposite and focuses on the spectacle and fight scenes rather than the characterization.  The story is supposed to drive the action, not vice versa.  The film is competently made, but the whole is done in English, rather than Mandarin or Cantonese, which hurts the film considerably.  Objectively, this is just not a good movie and an even worse sequel.

Highlander II

Oh, boy.  Where do I begin with this one?  I’ll be truthful with you:  After the stellar first movie, it was highly unlikely that any sequel would be as good, but Highlander II was an absolute train-wreck.  The Immortals came from the planet Zeist?!  What genius came up with that?  That was REALLY stupid.  The movie does have some interesting ideas, but it’s all so poorly put together, that it doesn’t matter.  Bad fight choreography, forced humor and the original release had this really irritating red aura throughout the whole thing which gave people headaches.  This one could have and SHOULD have been better than it was.

Spider-Man 3

 

This was the last Spider-Man film to be released before they rebooted the franchise.  Spider-Man 3 was definitely a result of studio interference.  Sam Raimi, the director, wanted to have one particular villain, but Sony insisted on throwing not two but three additional villains into the mix.  Having Sandman and the New Green Goblin would have pushed it a bit, but it still could’ve worked.  Nope, Sony HAD to have Venom in there somewhere.  Too many villains, too many subplots and some really awful Emo Peter Parker crippled what could have been an epic Spider-Man film.  This is a movie that NEEDED to be good, but Sony botched it completely.  That’s not to say that Raimi doesn’t share some of the blame, he does, but the whole thing was a mess.  Also, Topher Grace as Eddie Brock/Venom?!  Seriously?  Talk about piss-poor casting.

X-Men: The Last Stand

Another comic book movie on the list, X-Men: The Last Stand suffers from the director not understanding the previous movies.  The first two movies had a point to be made about being different in a world that doesn’t necessarily accept that.  The Last Stand is a straight-up action movie that eschews any form of good storytelling in favor of explosions.  That doesn’t necessarily mean that I didn’t enjoy it, I did, but as an X-Men film, this sucker just fell flat on its face.  Again, this could have been epic in so many ways, but Brett Ratner just didn’t know how to handle it.  A bad script along with some really poor writing just brought this movie to its knees.

Tom Yum Goong 2 a.k.a The Protector 2

This was supposed to be Tony Jaa’s comeback film after the disastrous release of Ong-Bak 3.  There’s a problem:  It’s not that good.  Why? There are a lot of reasons.  Let’s start with the horrendous visual effects and 3D.  The green-screen effects were blatantly obvious.  Another is the fact that Tony Jaa used wires in this movie.  The whole reason why people started watching movies like the original Ong-Bak and The Protector was that Tony Jaa didn’t need wires to be able to all those wild acrobatics.  The action in the film is pretty watered-down compared to Jaa’s previous efforts, although there are some pretty decent highlights, like his fights with Marrese Crump.  Those were actually pretty damn good.  Even with those, this was NOT the movie that was going to get Tony Jaa back on top.

007: Quantum of Solace

This is the first James Bond movie that was direct sequel.  Casino Royale was a reboot of the entire franchise and was a great James Bond movie with Daniel Craig in the title role.  It focused on Bond being a newly-minted 00 Agent, and as such, he ended up making mistakes.  The character was far more human than a lot of the other movies.  The idea of having a direct sequel to a James Bond is a good one, but Quantum of Solace was a disaster.  Terrible editing, lousy villain and a host of other problems really brought the movie down.  At 106 minutes, Quantum of Solace was one of the shortest James Bond movies ever.  They also tried to introduce a new criminal organization called Quantum.  The recent Bond movie, Spectre actually addresses this issue, but back in 2008, Quantum just felt like a cheap version of SPECTRE.  Quantum of Solace just wasn’t a good movie.  It should have been, but it wasn’t.

The Bourne Legacy

This was the first Bourne film without Matt Damon.  When you have a Bourne movie WITHOUT Jason Bourne, you’re in for an uphill battle that you can’t win.  I understand why Matt Damon and director Paul Greengrass didn’t return for this entry.  The script was bad.  It was not up to the standards of the first three movies.  So, when Matt Damon decided not to return, the film makers had to scramble to find somebody who could play NOT-Jason Bourne.  This one was doomed right from the beginning.  Don’t get me wrong, Jeremy Renner does a great job with what he’s got, but what he’s got isn’t very good.  The whole film feels like a cheap Bourne movie knock-off with the name attached to it.  Don’t get me started on the film’s non-ending.  This movie pissed off a lot of people.

These were the sequels that really had potential, but completely missed the mark.

 

 

 

 

 

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