Ten and a Half: Worst Sequels

As you now may know, the Giggaheim.com Podcast attempts to piece together a definitive top ten list within thirty minutes at the end of an episode. The list nominated for episode 21 was: Top Ten Worst Sequels. We decided that since we covered the best in Episode 20, we should hit the other side of the movie spectrum, and decide what the worst are. Hold your nose, ‘cause here’s the stinkers we came up with:

10) Blade 2 - From very bad CGI, holy crap bad CGI, to a downright horrible story Blade 2 takes a promising series of films down the toilet with its cheap animations that someone did on their personal time at home to leaving the user asking “WTF?” the entire time. I mean honestly; lord of the vampires??, genetically engineering perfect vampires that are just like Blade (daywalker) and reject engineered vampires that kill and drink the blood of other vampires before humans; really cause this movie to be very disappointing when compared to Blade 1. HOLY CRAP BAD CGI!!!!

9) CaddyShack 2 -

CaddyShack 2 is the reason Studio Executives have been fired. It’s sequel to the 1980 hit Caddyshack is a pale imitation of the wacky genius that made a parody of golf culture. Jackie Mason takes over for Rodney Dangerfield as an owner of a construction company who is pulled into the snooty Bushwood Country Club from the first film. A teenage daughter tries to fit in with the “cool crowd” (Stereotypical 1980’s theme) and her father tries desperately to help her (doomed plot line). Robert Stack takes over the role of antagonist, and tries to keep the weird family out of the club by…wait for it…challenging him to a round of golf.

And just when you thought you have seen this movie before (because you have), Bill Murray’s brilliance was replaced by Dan Aykroyd? What? Feel like you are in the Bizzaro World yet? Me Am excited. Naturally, the movie producers couldn’t Have Aykroyd doing Aykroyd, but a shallow impression of the burned out brilliance of Bill Murray. And just when you want to scoop out your eyeballs with dull spoons, the film continues to imitate the original with the same gags. Luckily, this movie’s lack of originality and piss-poor casting further elevates the genius of the original.

Gremlins 2: the New Batch – Holy crap what was that? Sure, Gremlins isn’t a shining example of a creature-based horror film, but the originality and creepy gags they used were great. So why not make a sequel that takes place in a city Skyscraper/Shopping mall? The offensive list:

• Hulk Hogan guest appearance
• Product placements to choke a horse
• Same old gags
• Moronic, repeated story
•Talking gremlins

The only clever bit in this movie is when the flying gremlin turns to stone, and winds up a gargoyle. Ugh.

7) Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace – Where to begin? Well let’s go from the obvious. This sequel was one of the hottest anticipated movies with 16 years of anticipation. What’s worse is the trailers were incredible, and I myself must have downloaded them about 1,629 times (over a 56k dial-up connection mind you). The offensive list:

• Trade routes and Taxes = fun
• Obi-man’s mysteriously growing hair
• Thinly veiled, racially-offensive, dumbass sidekicks
• Midichlorians (really?)
• Slow pacing
• Poop jokes
• “Yippie”

Tarrifs? Trade routes? Senate debates? Where the @$# are the battles? The jedi fighting? Where’s the “wars”? With slow pacing, we were able to tell some new horrible details. Obi-Wan’s hair shifted in size from scene to scene. The princess (ice queen) was about as loveable as a vile of herpes, and the tag-along sidekick was so ridiculous even children though he was too dopey to ingest. Various ethnic groups were outraged, and the solid fan base that spanned at least 3 generations collapsed as the idea of force-imbued blood cells are responsible for a Jedi’s power. Gaaaaaahhhh! Not even fast paced, bad-ass lightsaber duels could save this sequel. If you want a brilliant play-byplay of how this movie became an epic example of suck, check out Red Letter Media’s treatment of this film.

6) Matrix 3 – Revolutions -  The movie that ended with the entire audience saying: “What the !@#$”. The directors ended the film with a giant middle finger as a non-exciting final battle ended the series, and everything just restarted as if nothing happened, and the 3 movies you just watched were a waste of time. The offense list:

• Anti-climatic ending battle
• Dark, dark movie. Can’t see a damn thing
• Main Character blinded
• Repeated special effects gags
• Main Character’s love interest written off like a cheap soap opera
• Ends in a stalemate/restart

The special effects that made the first film a brilliant break-through couldn’t save the film from its mediocre script. Sure, it’s more realistic to kill off the characters, have the main hero blinded, and have a stupid bureaucracy call the shots. But is that what your audience really came to see? No. No it wasn’t.

5) X-3: X-men the Last Stand – This movie kicks off the top 5 worst, and it qualifies by ebing such a wild departure from the previous two movies, and ruining what could have been a solid trilogy. Bret Rattner is blamed for many of the misguided steps in this film, and earned himself a nickname: The Ratt. Let’s look at the offensive list:

• Wet Phoenix
• Xavier written off
• Cyclops written off
• “I’m the juggernaught bitch!”
• De-powered Mystique
• De-powered Magneto
• Weird end-battle timeline

Alright there’s a lot to cover here. The Phoenix is probably the most beloved storylines in the X-men mythos. After taking in the commentary for X-2, the audience learns that the Phoenix storyline was concluded there. Instead of a battle on the moon with the Imperial Titans and a giant cannon, the decision was made to use a dam. Fair enough. But the Ratt resurrected our character (why not? She is the phoenix) so that she could go on a shockingly appalling homicidal bender and exterminate the two better characters on screen. Poor Cyclops is written off as if he was dismissed from the set for bad behavior. Then the special anti-mutant serum taken from the pages of Joss Whedon’s Astonishing X-men run depowers Mystique, and becomes the focus of the story.

A battle in San Francisco begins at dawn, and then switches directly to night without explanation.  Magneto get’s depowered (Not a bad comeuppance rally) which was appalling to most X-men fans, but the Ratt couldn’t stop there. Then we get the wet phoenix. Apparently flame effects cost too much, so we had to settle for waves. Blech. Then Logan kills the Phoenix even though the fans watching the movie know from years of reading that for Wolverine to do so is @#$ing impossible.

4) Star Trek V – The Final Frontier As if killing Spock, crazy Klingon battles and saving whales wasn’t enough, William Shatner writes a screenplay that pits our famous Enterprise crew against a goofy priest, and some weird-assed creature that thinks its God.  Offending qualities:

• Birth of Spock
• A marooned God
• Foam boulders, rocks, sets, everything
• Naked-dancing Uhura
• The Enterprise still doesn’t work
• Drag-ass story
• Spock’s brother?

So among the chief complaints we all had were the unnecessary story to go see God. Really? Spock being born was awkward and silly, and his relation to a zealot was just as much of a stretch. Then The Enterprise still doesn’t work right. You can pull this gag once in a Sci-Fi universe, but did this ship ever work? Then we have “God” stuck on a planet, and the whole audience joins Kirk by throwing out Bullshit flags. Then Kirk has to fight his way through the planet of foam props in order to make ti safely to the Enterprise. Jeebus….Lousy.

3) Spider-Man 3 – Another movie from Marvel Entertainment that just killed what could have been a great trilogy. Sam Raimi gets overpowered by the Marvel/Sony brass and has to squeeze 40 pounds of dung in a ten pound bag. Here’s the list:

• Too Many villians
• Emo Dancing Spider-man
• Eric Forman returns
• Harry’s redemption?

This movie felt too full. That’s really the chief complaint. Aside form all the problems fans have with Venom, The movie felt like a bloated mess. You could tell this was a project riddled with last-minute entries, and silly executive ideas. The smooth storytelling that Sam Raimi had established in two movies had been dumped all over, and felt like a disjointed mess. Sure, Sandman’s origin and transformation were great. Hob-goblin’s fight scenes were great, but he looked nothing like the original goblin. And Harry’s sad redemption at the end was just silly. “I cleaned his wounds” speech by the butler….ugh. Now you say something?!! What the hell Geeves? And then there is the addition of Topher Grace. Now, I liked him a lot in “That 70’s Show”. And his comedic timing is singularly polished. But the poor guy is the same smart-assed character we knew on TV. (He wasn’t half bad in Predators. Check that one out. We’re pulling for your Topher) And the Emo effects of the Venom-symbiote suit were just….unbearable.

2) Batman & Robin – Where, where, why, what, where, huh?

• Bomb! Bomb! Bomb!
• The power of mirrors
• The Over-actor’s Guild
• Worst. Screenplay. Ever.
• Bat-nipples
• Ass-shots
• Neon…everything

This movie continued the Gawd-Awful Batman series that began with Batman Forever. Let’s take this one at a time. Bat-nipples. So we have nipples on the suit. Why? They are no use on a man normally, so why put them on a suit? What is the ultimate function? And if you put them on those two, why not on Batgirl’s? that would be distracting. Speaking of, Uma Thermon is damn un-watchable in this film. How can the actress who had to act so campy in this film pull off a bad ass in Kill Bill?

Then there’s Bane, treated like a dumb-ass monkey boy with the mental prowess of a 3-year-old. What happened to the fighting tactician who broke Batman’s back? And then the coup de grace, Arnold (Aw-nold) Schwartzenegger as the brilliant scientist, sympathetic anti-hero Mr. Freeze.

Holy Crap.

This movie took so many bad turns, it’s hard to numerate and explain them all on this list, so I think the Giggaheim will have to preserve this exhibit for another day.

1) Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

There’s a sketch on Robot Chicken that concerns the Muppets, and at one point Dr. Teeth says:

“Ah, holy @#$% kid, you made me piss myself”

And that sums up this sequel. Another in the line of disappointing blockbusters that we waited for over a decade for, and it turned out to be a really sad affair. Here’s the short list:

• Aliens? Really?
• Heavy handed write-offs
• Aliens?
• Let’s revisit everything that was cool
• Nut-shot jokes
• Aliens?
• Refrigerator shelters
• Aliens?
• Rubber snakes
• Mutt
• Mutt vs. monkeys
• Mutt to inherit the mantle
• Mutt and Aliens
• Giant CG Ants
• Aliens?

You may be surprised to learn that I (Pete) don’t particularly hate Shia LeBouff. I think He does well in films, much like Leonardo DiCaprio, and I don’t understand where all this hate comes from. With this movie, I hate the character, but the actor playing him has nothing to do with a crappy screenplay. The kid’s doing his best to portray the thinly-veiled crappy character that is supposed to be the son of the world’s favorite archeologist.

Now this movie sucked. A couple of people on the Giggaheim Podcast crew left the theater. That’s how bad it sucked. The awe-inspiring film making that made us grab a whip and fedora in the 1980’s officially died when this movie came out, and showed the faithful audience that Hollywood wants our wallets, and they do not care if we go to movies to be entertained or to share fantastic adventures.

So this movie recalls the earlier, cooler movies by visiting the one place on Earth we thought we would never see. Then in an escape attempt that puts Wile E. Coyote to shame, Jones escapes on a rocket to the desert and hides in a refrigerator while the desert is nuked. At this juncture we began to doubt the movie, and began to look for the annoying Chinese kid. That’s when Mutt appears, making this a “fun” family film. Indy has to save an nutty professor to save Marion from the Communists who are after aliens so they can have psychic powers to….do whatever the hell they want…I don’t remember anymore.

At this point we are treated to rubber snakes, Monkeys, nut jokes, and giant CG ants. The end of the road is a Myan temple that aliens built so they could die there, and then launch their spacecraft in the 1950’s before the world goes ape with satellite technology that would discover them? This “adventure” wandered so wildly, that the audience is finally taken out of their misery by watching a wedding, and the final credits. And after all that, it’s hard to watch these movies anymore without a deep sense of regret. Sometimes, you can never go home.