Sunday, August 1, 2010

Movie Meme: Day 01

"31 Day Movie Meme"


Day 01 | Sequel that should not have been made

The first two films that popped into my head were Spider-Man 3 and X-Men: The Last Stand and since they both should NOT have been made for more or less the same reasons, I'll talk about them both. They both came after brilliant second installments of their super popular franchises and they both subsequently wasted all of that goodwill with an abysmal and bloated sequel. The sad thing is that it would've been so easy for them not to have made the sucky movie they ultimately released just by doing less. Did we really need the Goblin, Sandman, AND Venom in one movie, especially a movie where Peter Parker boogied on the street? Did they really think they could fit in the Phoenix, the Brotherhood, and the mutant cure storylines in one film and do a good job with it all?

It's particularly painful, because of how loved the movies/franchises were before these films came out and now it seems both franchises are trying to recover from those missteps. Thus, the Spider-Man franchise is getting an unnecessary reboot and X-Men, coming off a mediocre run with a stand-alone Wolverine film, is looking to go younger with a First Class version. Casting for both reboots (prequels?) are promising with Andrew Garfield set to play Peter Parker and James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender to play younger versions of Professor X and Magneto. Here's to hoping their downward slide don't continue.

I'm sure if I really think more about it I could come up with a better answer than those films. But really there are so many candidates that you'd be hard-pressed to really pick just one film to put here. So since I won't be talking about them, just wanted to list the sequels (or types of sequels) that I could've easily talked about:

  • Direct-to-DVD Disney - Did the world really need Little Mermaid 2 or Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas. No, it does not.
  • Sequels for the Sake of Branding - American Pie, National Lampoon, Bring it On, etc. The original film(s) do not deserve all the crappy sequels.
  • Different/Missing Actors - What's the point of a Mask movie without Jim Carrey or Terminator without Schwarzenegger? Or how about Cruel Intentions sans Reese Witherspoon or Sarah Michelle Gellar?
  • The Star Wars prequels - They really are their own category... of heinousness.

Hm, that's a shorter list than I expected. I'm sure there's a bunch I'm missing here. What say you?

5 comments:

  1. I was going to say either the Bring it On sequels or Cruel Intentions, but I changed my mind. Glad you mentioned them.

    And I don't mind all the X-Men sequels, but I think it's only because I have nothing invested in them. :)

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  2. I think I'll probably defend Spiderman 3 to my grave. Sure it's the worst of the three, but the other two are excellent. It has its issues, but I really do like it...

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  3. @Bunny - Looking forward to seeing which film you went with!

    @Andrew - I think those two films came to me because of the level of expectations I had. I *really* loved X2 and Spider-Man 2. They were almost perfect. The fall was just too much from that peak. For both films, I can pick out stuff I liked about them. Ultimately, I just believed both tried to do too much.

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  4. I don't count the third Spider Man/X-Men as sequels, really. And besides, they're so easy to ignore.

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  5. @Simon - I wish they were easy for me to ignore. But yeah, as I said already, I loved the second movies of both "trilogies" so I was hopeful for the third one, only to be let down.

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