15 Sequels We Could Have Done Without

If you were wondering how many was too many…
15 Sequels We Could Have Done Without

Sequels are a tricky business. Sometimes they add genuine depth to a world, or act as another chapter in an amazing story. Otherwise they deflate the narrative arc of the initial movie, or just come off as cheap and cynical attempts to cash in on the success of the previous movie. It's always a roll of the dice.

With that in mind, we wanted to explore more than a dozen sequels we frankly could have done without. These are films that just didn't land for us, or worse, ruined our idea of the whole franchise.

For example, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. The original Indiana Jones movies were near perfect cinematic adventures. While the 4th installment sure made a lot of money, what it cost was the flawless legacy of the first three films.

We know a movie’s success breeds sequels. Sometimes the execution is way off, and sometimes the story doesn’t even warrant a sequel, but the money making machine keeps chuggin’. Whether it was number 2, 3, or 4, these 15 sequels were one too many! 

Spider-Man 3

SPIDER-MAN 3 CRACKED.COM Critics call Sam Raimi's Spider-Man (2002) & Spider-Man 2 (2004) some of the best superhero films ever made. In Spider-Man 3, Raimi was forced to add villains, Topher Grace was painfully miscast as Venom, and Spidey's jazz/emo phase had the trilogy's Rotten Tomatoes score read: 90, 93, 63.

Source: Looper

Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL CRACKED COM Fans thought 1989's Last Crusade was the, well... Last Crusade, because they rode off into the sunset! 19 years later, 2008's Crystal Skull made some people tons of money (grossing 790 mill), but poor CGI, aliens, the nuke & the fridge, and South Park's perfect critique, keep it far from the first 3.

Source: Screenrant

SPEED 2: CRUISE CONTROL CRACKED.COM Critics and audiences loved 1994's Speed, and it obviously made a ton of money (grossing 300 mill) or it wouldn't have warranted a sequel. The sequel failed in every way by replacing Keanu Reeves with Jason Patric, and setting Speed on a slow-moving cruise ship.

Source: cbr

SON OF THE MASK CRACKED.COM 1994's The Mask gave us Jim Carrey's cartoonish brilliance, and luckily we got so much more of him over the next decade, because he was sadly missed in 2005's Son of the Mask. The awful script, effects, and Jamie Kennedy's performance paled in comparison.

Source: cbr

X-Men: The Last Stand

X-MEN: THE LAST STAND CRACKED.COM The first 2 X-Men films were critical and financial successes, and gave us Hugh Jackman's Wolverine. The 3rd was rushed, and scheduling conflicts lead to strange character rewrites, tanking what could have been a solid trilogy. X-Men: First Class got X-Men back on track 5 years later.

Source: Looper

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