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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.

I’ve spoken at great length about sequels and reboots; about the kinds of reboots and why they exist.  I’ve also talked about marketing and about the timing of marketing.  What I want to go over for this post, is the timing of sequels, reboots and remakes.  Now, if a movie is well-received and makes enough money, a movie studio may try to get a follow-up film made.  For movies that are one-and-done, we usually don’t see sequels.  Obviously, there are exceptions to the rule; Independence Day Resurgence is a prime example.  I’ll talk about that movie later.  When there is a possibility of a sequel, there’s a window of opportunity that can be taken advantage of to make that sequel and have it out to audiences in a relatively timely manner.  Now, what is the length of time between a movie and it’s follow-up/s?  Depending on the technology available, the window could be anywhere from 2 years up to a decade.  Making a movie is a lengthy process and it takes up to a year and a half, usually, to produce and put out the film.

The best opportunity for a sequel is generally about 3-5 years after the release of the original picture, if the technology permits it, of course.  Let’s take Terminator 2, for example:  When the original movie was released back in 1984, people loved the hell out of it.  The ending of the film left it open for the possibility of a sequel.  But the tech at the time really couldn’t allow for something on T2‘s scale to be made.  James Cameron has always been one to really push for the advancement of technology, so in 1991, we got Terminator 2.  That was about 7 years after the original film was released.  Now, you would think that people would have moved on from The Terminator, but when the sequel was released, people ate it up, and it was the biggest movie of the year.  So, people got a sequel that they didn’t know they wanted.  But again, it was still less than a decade from the original film, so interest in the franchise wasn’t all dried up yet.

Let’s take a look at a more recent example: Independence Day Resurgence.  Now, here is a sequel that nobody asked for.  The rumors had been out there for years of a possible follow-up to the 1996 smash hit, but nothing had materialized until a few years ago.  Here’s the problem:  This is a movie that was about a decade too late.  The actual problem is that the original Independence Day was self-contained.  It had a beginning, middle, and end.  The ending seemed pretty final to me, at the time.  A lot of people agreed.  So, the idea of a sequel was pretty much left to fan-fiction and the imaginations of the people who loved the movie.  Had Resurgence been released about 10-12 years ago, it might have made more sense, and they would have been able to get Will Smith to come back.  This is an example of a sequel that was made outside the window of opportunity.  It also would have been better received than it was.  Star Wars had about 3 years between films for each trilogy, so Star Wars gets a bit of a pass from me on this one.  Now, certain movies like Lord of the Rings Trilogy are unique, because they were all filmed at the same time.  It took about a year and half to film the trilogy, but they split up the movies and released them one a year.  That’s a special case, because of the story that Peter Jackson wanted to bring to the screen.  It made perfect sense to release the movies that way.  It gave people enough time to process the movie by the time the follow-up came out, but it wasn’t a very long turnaround for each film.  Now the timing for sequels depends generally on the kind of movie that they want to make a sequel to.  Some movies warrant a sequel, but others don’t.

Reboots and remakes are a whole different beast.  A remake is generally made for an audience that may be unfamiliar with the source film.  The time between a film and its re-make or reboot can be anywhere from 7 years to 50 years.  The reason I bring this one up is because we are getting a couple of high-profile re-makes this year.  The first one I bring up is Ben-Hur.  The original film starred Charlton Heston in the title role and was one of the greatest Biblical epics to be filmed.  This year, we’re getting a re-make starring Jack Huston and Morgan Freeman.  The original film was released in 1959.  I have an issue with this one, because it seems like a shot-for-shot re-make.  So, why now?  I guess the film-makers assume that audiences want it, but I’m guessing it’s more for the money.  I realize that a re-make of Ben-Hur wouldn’t have made sense thirty or so years ago, but it still seems odd that they would make a new movie nearly 60 years after the original film.  The other one, I want to mention is the new The Magnificent Seven film starring Denzel Washington and Chris Pratt.  I’m a fan of the original film with Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen, but it looks really good.  This is about 56 years since the original film was released, so it seems natural that the film-makers want to make a new movie for a new audience.  They did the same with 3:10 To Yuma.  That turned out to be phenomenal.

You generally want to give a movie time before you reboot it, but there have been cases recently where a movie franchise has been rebooted not even a decade after the last film.  Spider-Man is a perfect example.  It took Sony only 5 years to reboot the franchise and they’re doing it again with Spider-Man: Homecoming.  The Amazing Spider-Man starring Andrew Garfield wasn’t well-received.  Most people really didn’t need another origin story for Spider-Man so soon.  It was about 6 years between Star Trek: Nemesis and the Star Trek reboot.  But that one was an exception because Nemesis wasn’t particularly liked by critics or audiences and the box-office returns reflected that.  The new Ghostbusters film is another example of bad timing.  That movie was released about 20 years too late.

Timing is very important.  Like I said before, there is a window of opportunity to take advantage of an audience’s need for more.  When you miss that window, people are not likely going to favor a follow-up film.  That window of time changes for each movie and it’s franchise, so it’s never the same kind of window.  Re-makes and reboots can have a larger window of opportunity.  It’s usually about decades-long, but even then, if you take to long to re-make a movie, audiences aren’t going to reciprocate.  Film-makers can sometimes under-estimate or over-estimate an audience’s patience.  That’s something that film-makers need to take into consideration.

The character of Superman has been embedded in the American consciousness since the early 1930’s when Kal-El made his first appearance.  He first appeared as the cover feature of Action Comics #1 which was published on April 18, 1938.  The reception of the character was a resounding and immediate success.  In 1939, DC Comics(then Detective Comics)began a sister series specifically for Superman.  So, why is he so popular?  There are multiple reasons.  Obviously, because he’s a superhero, but that’s kind of missing the point.  Superman resonates with people because he represents what is supposed to be the best of humanity, event though he’s an alien.  Many of us aspire to be something greater than ourselves, and that’s what Superman represents.  He’s the one character that many people have looked up to for decades.  Even in today’s world, Superman represents the one thing that a lot of people don’t seem to have a lot of anymore:  Hope.  His desire to do what’s right for mankind is extraordinarily inspiring.

There have been MANY interpretations of the character since his debut in 1938.  Some of the more recent incarnations with Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel and Batman V. Superman have courted some controversies among fans, but I’ll get to those later.  While actor Kirk Alyn would be the first actor to portray the superhero on screen, it was George Reeves who really made the character more popular with a series that started in 1951.  The actor boldly wore the iconic red, blue and yellow outfit with the signature S on the chest.  The character would also be featured in an animated series during the 60s.  In 1978, the first real serious live-action film of Superman: The Movie took the world by storm.

Superman: The Movie was essentially the first real comic-book movie to be taken seriously.  And how.  It featured an all-star cast with Gene Hackman, Marlon Brandon, Ned Beatty, Terence Stamp, Margot Kidder, and Jackie Cooper.  However, it was the performance of Christopher Reeve that turned people’s heads.  With that one iconic performance, Christopher Reeve shot to nearly instant stardom.  Superman: The Movie is by far one of my favorite movies of all time, because it embodies all the elements of the character so well, and Mr. Reeve really brought that out in the character.  The film would see a decent follow-up and two horrendous ones during the 80’s.  We would not see another live-action Superman movie until 2006, when director Bryan Singer would give the character another shot.  Since Christopher Reeve had since passed away, it fell on the shoulders of newcomer Brandon Routh to don the red cape.  The movie was decent enough, but it was too similar to the original film, and not everybody really bought Brandon Routh as Superman.  As a result, it would be another 7 years until we got a new movie.

In 2013, Zack Snyder’s re-imagining of the character, Man of Steel would be released to mixed but mostly positive reactions world-wide.  It took a darker and grittier look at the character and how he fits in with today’s world.  Henry Cavill would be the first non-American to play the character, but you would never know that unless you already knew that he was British.  It was certainly a different take on Superman, and while many people complained about the character’s departure from the big blue boy-scout of yore, I feel that this interpretation of Superman is far more relevant to today’s world.  With the recent release of Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice, we see Superman still struggling to adapt in a world that is connected  and very skeptical about him.

Now that I’ve gone over a little bit of history with Superman, I’m going to tell you why I really like the character.  It goes back to my first paragraph about what the character represents:  Hope.  In Man of Steel, that’s what the S on Kal-El’s means.  As Jor-El puts it, it represents the fundamental belief that there is potential in everybody to be a force for good.  THAT is the essence of Superman.  Yes, I like the fact that Superman flies and has super-strength and can see through everything(except lead), but there’s this absolute desire from the character to do the right thing, even if it isn’t the most politically correct.  While previous films have portrayed the character as absolutely sure of himself and as a boy scout as Lex Luthor puts it, Henry Cavill’s character is not as certain.  He even admits to a priest in Zack Snyder’s movies that while General Zod can’t be trusted, he’s not sure the human race can be trusted either, because of what he’s seen.  This is actually why I like the newer version of the character so much, because he has doubts.  Not just about people, but himself as well.  He’s not perfect and he makes mistakes.  I find that approach to be rather refreshing.  While a lot of people would accuse the new Superman movies of feeling to much like Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight trilogy, I feel that in today’s world, a movie with the tone and color of Superman: The Movie would feel somewhat out-of-place.

As I said before, Superman: The Movie is one of my favorite movies of all time, so don’t think that I’m ragging on it, because I’m not.  It’s just that a movie like that really can’t be made today without coming across as cheesy or cynical.  Comic book movies, like the comics themselves, are often a reflection of the decade in which they are released.  The looks of the characters and movies tend to change over the years.  I can certainly understand why people don’t particularly care for the new movies, but I love them.  The actions that Superman takes in the new movies have severe consequences as exhibited in the Battle of Metropolis at the end of Man of Steel.  The consequences of that battle would become the focal point for Batman V. Superman.  People are afraid of Superman and they feel that he has too much leeway in doing things.  There is a political aspect of the new film that addresses those questions.  I really do like that about the new movies.  There are consequences and Kal-El himself has doubts about how he fits into that world.  I think that makes the character even more compelling.  He’s not perfect and he knows that his actions have hurt people.

Is the character of Superman still relevant?  Absolutely.  Truth be told, Superman is needed now more than ever, considering the current political atmosphere.  Yes, he’s a fictional character, but what he stands for is as important today as it was nearly 80 years ago.  No matter your age, your creed or your ethnicity, Superman still remains one of the most inspirational and amazing superheroes ever, and he is willing to help everyone, regardless of where they are from.  Call me naive, but I believe we, as a species, can aspire to be something more; to be something greater.  This is why I love Superman.

Born in Amsterdam in the Netherlands in 1938, Paul Verhoeven experienced the horror of war almost first-hand during World War II.  Living in a house near a German base with V-1 and V2 Rocke Launchers, the base was bombarded by Allied aircraft.  His parents were nearly killed when bombs fell on a street crossing.  The fact that he survived World War II, considering where he lived, was a minor miracle.  After the liberation of the Netherlands, Mr. Verhoeven and his father went and saw American movies on a regular basis.  While the man had majored in math and physics, he would devote his time and energy to film-making.  After making a bit of a splash during the late 60’s, Mr. Verhoeven moved to Hollywood during the 80’s for a variety of opportunities.  It was during this time that Paul Verhoeven would create some of the most memorable movies that are iconic, even by today’s standards, so I would like to celebrate the man and his career by talking about his best work.

RoboCop

In 1984, James Cameron burst onto the scene with one of the greatest science fiction movies of all time, The Terminator.  There were a number of imitators that followed, but one of the films that really took the world by storm was Paul Verhoeven’s RoboCop.  The trailer used the main music theme to The Terminator, so it felt like a rip-off, but the film was so much more than that.  It was a blatant commentary on certain social issues like rampant consumerism, as evidenced by the numerous faux commercials that would play during the movie.  This was also one of Peter Weller’s most memorable roles as Detective Alex Murphy, who gets killed in the line of duty, only to be brought back as the mechanical RoboCop.  It was violent, bloody and surprisingly funny at the same time.  It got hammered by critics because of it’s excessive violence, so much so, that the film had to be edited to take some of that out.  It was still really violent and that would become one of Paul Verhoeven’s trademarks.

Total Recall

Paul Verhoeven comes back with an astounding “adaptation” of Philip K. Dick’s We’ll Remember It For You Wholesale.  Featuring an all-star cast that includes Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sharon Stone, Michael Ironside and Ronny Cox, Total Recall took the world by storm when it was released in 1990.  Like most of Verhoeven’s American-made movies, it featured gratuitous violence.  The visual effects were out of this world, in terms of puppetry and make-up effects.  It was a spectacular film.  Again, critics attacked the film for its ultra-violence, but it was so over-the-top, that you couldn’t take it seriously.  It had great action, memorable characters and a fairly decent story to back it all up.  I highly consider this to be one of my personal favorites.

Starship Troopers

This is the movie where things get….interesting.  Starship Troopers is LOOSELY based on Robert A. Heinlein’s book of the same name.  By loosely, I mean, almost not at all.  It has some elements from the book, but for the most part, Paul Verhoeven’s adaptation is essentially its own entity.  When I reviewed the movie, I mentioned that the audience was pretty divided into two groups:  The people that read the book before the movie came out and the people that read the book after the movie came out.  The people that read the book first, generally hated the picture because it deviated so far from the source material it was unrecognizable.  Where were the power suits?  Where were the bugs that shot lasers?  Where was the queen?  These elements were left on the floor, although a prototype suit was built for the movie, but was never used because the budget didn’t allow for it.  But the people who saw the film first actually really liked it.  I was one of those people.  It was visually spectacular, had an awesome cast and a fairly decent story.  It also had a bad-ass score by the late Basil Poledouris.  The visual effects and CGI in the film were ground-breaking.  I hadn’t seen anything like it, and the visuals still hold up after nearly 20 years.  Then, I read the book.  I understood why a lot of people didn’t like the movie.  A lot of the elements in the book were left out.  When it was discovered that Verhoeven didn’t actually like the book, that pissed people off even more.

Had the movie been called anything but Starship Troopers, I think it would’ve been better received by the majority of the audience.  As it stands, however, it’s still a very solid piece of science fiction and movie with a great visual effects and memorable characters, and that’s what Paul Verhoeven delivered.  As was the norm with Paul’s movies, there was a level of commentary throughout the entire film against blind patriotism and use of the military.  The use of propaganda in the film was particularly intelligent, because of Paul’s personal experience with the Nazi government.  He poked fun at a lot of things in the movie, and a lot of people didn’t get it.  It’s smarter than most people give it credit for.

While Verhoeven did other movies like Basic Instinct and Hollow Man, these ones were the ones that really stood out for me from Paul Verhoeven.  He’s crafted some of the most iconic and memorable movies that I’ve ever seen.  I think the man will be remembered as influential as well as controversial.