Baffling sequels

One of those things is not like the others. Temple of Doom was just okay and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was awful, but The Last Crusade was very good as sequels go.

 

I've never thought much of 'The Last Crusade.'
It is better than 'Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,' but that is damning with faint praise.

 

I thought that the original question was not about sequels so bad you wish they hadn't been made, but sequels where the original was so unsuccessful that you wonder why they would have made it at all.

 

One of the most embarrassing ads ever to appear in my paper was one that advised moviegoers 'Ernest Scared Stupid' had been held over.

 

Revenge of the Sith was good, but will agree with you on the other two.

 

Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2, anyone?

Watch The New Trailer For 'Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2'

 

I saw a commercial yesterday for "The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel."

What the fuck?

 

Wow. Sat through that movie with one of my kids in the theater and that was a painful waste of two hours.

 

Some of these were obvious sequels made from successful movies that just stunk. Others were head-scratching sequels made from crappy/mediocre movies that didn't seem to do well.

Here was the strategy of Elvis' manager, Col. Tom Parker, on why Elvis made so many cheap, crappy movies (even though Elvis had dreams of being in big-budget, well-received movies).

The Colonel knew that if they spent well under $1 million on a film they would always make money. So he thought it was stupid to spend more than that and possibly lose money. He could give a crap about the quality.

 

Star Trek (2009) was tolerable as far as reboots go.

Star Trek Into Darkness had some of the laziest writing I've seen in years. I'm normally not that great at predicting plot twists, but I knew exactly what would happen at some point during a scene in sickbay.

 

There's nothing baffling about why they made the movie, though.

 

i once heard roger ebert remark that hollywood shouldn't remake good movies, they should remake the bad ones. his logic: the good ones captured some special chemistry that can be difficult to replicate, which in most bad movies you can see the seed of a good idea that was ruined through poor execution. so you take the bad movie and fix it. rather than take a good movie and ruin it.]

the logic would never appeal to a business person who is just looking to capitalize on a brand name, but from an artistic angle it makes sense