Today, I’m asking you what official movie sequel had the biggest drop in quality from the previous film in the series.
Pop Culture Theme Time is a feature where I put a question to you to see what you think about a particular theme. I might later revisit the theme for a future Drawing Crazy Patterns or Top Five.
Obviously, very often, sequels to movies are not as good as the original movie. However, typically, the drop-off between one sequel and the next one is not THAT big, it’s typically a case where the sequels just get progressively worse, so the drop-off is gradual. Note that I’m talking about OFFICIAL sequels, meaning that this wasn’t just a Direct-to-DVD sequel or anything like that, but rather that this was a legitimate attempt to do a sequel. It might have been a MISGUIDED attempt, but it was a legit attempt. So we’re not talking some unrelated people doing a sequel years later, like, for instance, Mary Poppins Returns (not that that movie is bad, but that’s just not what we’re talking about here).
For my pick, it’s tricky, since obviously, the drop-off from The Godfather Part II, one of the greatest movies all-time, to The Godfather Part III, an okay movie, is pretty darn steep, but, again, The Godfather Part III is a pretty okay movie. Similarly, The Two Jakes is not nearly as good as Chinatown, but it’s still a pretty good movie. So I don’t think I can go with either of those films.
I am going to go, then, with Beyond the Poseidon Adventure. The Poseidon Adventure is a surprisingly good disaster film produced by Irwin Allen. Allen the directed the sequel, which is insane. Remember, the first film is about a boat that is knocked over by a tsunami and sinks, and so the second film is about some salvagers trying to take control of the ship, but wait, there’s MORE survivors, too! And plutonium! Oh man, it is so stupid. So we went from a pretty darn good action film to a terrible, terrible action film. That’s the biggest drop I can think of between sequels, bigger from all-time great to pretty good…it’s a close comparison, though, I’ll admit!
Okay, that’s my pick. How about you?
Everyone, feel free to suggest future Pop Culture Theme Time topics to me at my new, much shorter e-mail, brian@poprefs.com!
Men in Black is one of the greatest summer blockbusters of the ‘90s – a near-perfect blend of science fiction, action, and comedy. Men in Black 2 is nigh-unwatchable.
The Sting II gets my vote. Awful in every imaginable way.
I always felt the drop from HIGHLANDER to HIGHLANDER 2 was almost shockingly steep.
And I vividly remember Roger Ebert in 1989 saying, “GHOSTBUSTERS 2 is as bad as GHOSTBUSTERS 1 was good.” Such a great quote.
How about “JAWS: The Revenge”? It ignores the continuity of the previous movie, made little at the box office, is a popular choice for “worst movie ever made” lists, and asks us to believe the shark is a stalker who followed the police chief’s widow from Amity to the Bahamas.
I think Brian is crazy because neither The Godfather Part III nor The Two Jakes were very good, and I think Rob London is crazy because Men in Black 2 was okay.
Highlander and Ghost Busters are good picks but for me it has to be the Hobbit films. same source material, same director, many od the same cast and almost unwatchable
Spider-Man 2 to Spider-Man 3 was a pretty steep drop. The X-Men franchise has had some roller coaster ups and downs too.
I walked out of Caddyshack 2, it was atrocious, but I think I’m going to go with Rocky V which I would have walked out of had I not kept thinking it had to get better based on its pedigree
Highlander. Simply because it was a great movie that had a horrible sequel, it was a great movie that spawned an entire less than mediocre franchise.
Ohmygod The Matrix. The first one was genius, and it just got worse from there with each iteration. The way it unraveled makes me not want to re-watch the first one, as good as it was.
lots of sequels had drops
I’m assuming the Godzilla film “Godzilla’s Revenge” AKA “All Monsters Attack” is disqualified
“The Chronicles of Riddick” felt pretentious and nowhere near as enjoyable as Pitch Black
and then there is Speed 2
and Batman Forever
and…
If we’re looking at movies by the same director, I’d have to point at Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. None of the original movies were perfect, but they were all enjoyable. Then TPM came. My brother was five or six when the movie came out, and he asked me “Why did they put the reactor right next to the docking bay?”
When Kindergarteners are finding plot holes, it’s not a good movie.
I said Godfather Part III was “pretty okay” and The Two Jakes was “pretty good.” I agree that neither of them are very good.
Bad News Bears 3. Very few of the original cast members signed on for this bomb. The studio has to package the DVD with the original and part II (aka Breaking Training) so that someone would buy that dreck. It’s the definition of unwatchable.