It's been said that the third time is the charm. Well, not always.
While trilogies in film can be grand in scale
and execution, more often than not a film franchise will end up in troubled
waters by the time the third film entered into the series arrives. Whether due to pre-production problems,
principal cast and crew members dropping out or plain old studio interference,
these are films which singlehandedly took great franchises down either by a peg
or completely under. For whatever
reasons, these are the third films which managed to destroy a franchise and the
fanfare with it.
Alien
3:
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| "Perhaps shaving my head will take attention away from the movie." |
Worse still, as production crawled onward, 20th
Century Fox vetoed each and every one of Fincher’s demands before eventually
pulling the plug once costs ran over budget.
After Fincher was fired, damage control assembled what they managed to
get in the can, not unlike Robert Altman’s experience with Paramount Pictures
when he was making Popeye. Expensive reshoots not involving Fincher
including a $10,000 hairpiece worn by Sigourney Weaver drove whatever hopes
executives and fans of the saga had for the film further and further into
oblivion. Instead of a terrifying and
exciting science fiction thriller, Alien
3 is a depressing and ungainly mess of a movie, an insult to fans of both
the series and its leading lady.
Strangely out of character, Ellen Ripley is quick to bed her doctor ally
when she’s not uttering some of the clunkiest dialogue in the franchise’s
history. Equally distracting are the
prisoners’ thick British accents and cockney dialect. In the years since its release, a rough extended
cut of the film was released in 2003 to little avail or interest from Fincher,
who casually told Jean-Pierre Jeunet these wise words when Alien Resurrection came about: “run like Hell!”.
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| "I am Rambo. I am bigger than this mountain, bitch." |
Rambo
III:
John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) is back to wage a
one man war once again, only this time the battle being fought is a ridiculous,
overblown bore that strays far from the character’s roots of a Vietnam Veteran
suffering from PTSD towards a Terminator impervious to bullets and
explosions. Living quietly in Thailand,
Rambo is approached by his old mentor Trautman (Richard Crenna) with a proposed
mission to fight Russians occupying Afghanistan, which Rambo promptly
refuses. Going in alone, Trautman is captured
and tortured for information. Learning
of his mentor’s incarceration, Rambo promptly enlists to take on the whole
Russian army by himself and rescue him from captivity. Very quickly, the film devolves into a mind
number bloodbath of explosions and bodies, with reportedly 221 scenes of
violence and 108 onscreen deaths within its 101 minute running time.
Originally helmed by Highlander director Russell Mulcahy before being replaced two weeks
in by Peter MacDonald, Rambo III is
all pyrotechnics and noise with little in between. Rambo is reduced to an overgrown avatar with
little personality resembling the character from the previous two films, and
whatever story and character arc the first two films had is jettisoned in favor
of dull conflagration. Fishier still is
the use of Afghanistan occupied by Russian antagonists, who in reality pulled
out of the region just before the film was released, outdating it before people
could pay to see it. There’s a curious
trend in action movies where the titular hero will be adorned with a
prepubescent sidekick. Although
Short-Round in Indiana Jones and the
Temple of Doom was tolerable, this trend seems to be the kiss of death as
far as the respectability of a franchise goes.
While some will attest this is the most of the relationship between
Rambo and Trautman we’ll ever see (Richard Crenna died not long after the film
wrapped), Rambo III is an
interminable orgy of fire, machine guns and Sylvester Stallone sleepwalking his
way through the legendary character. At
least Stallone had the good sense to redeem himself and the character with a
fourth film simply titled Rambo. Contrary to what critics may say, there’s far
more going on upstairs in Rambo than
in this uninspired stink bomb.
Teenage
Mutant Ninja Turtles III:
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| No comment. |
While the first
two films sported impressive visual effects to make the Turtles look and feel
alive, what’s used here could well have aired on television as opposed to
mainstream theaters. The plot itself is
barely involving, sans any of the characters from the cartoons and comics in
favor of random Samurai warriors of no significance whatsoever. If that’s not enough, April O’Neill is recast
for a third time and Elias Koteas’ Casey Jones is hastily shoehorned in to try
and keep this sinking ship afloat. Somehow
Casey Jones has an ancestor also played by Koteas who joins O’Neill and the
turtles’ side, a ludicrous contrivance which makes no sense whatsoever nor
promotes any bearing on the plot itself.
During battle sequences, viewers will notice a litany of Looney Tunes
sound effects superimposed over the sounds of kicks and punches, recalling Joe
Dante’s Gremlins 2: The New Batch without
the comic timing or self-awareness of that film. The time travel gimmick has little to do with
anything, feels tacked on, and is even used twice, rendering everything leading
up to its secondary application pointless.
Not unlike Superman IV: The Quest
for Peace, Ninja Turtles III is a
film dogged by cutting corners, a franchise film thrown together that’s far
less than a sum of its parts. While the
argument can be made the first two Ninja
Turtles films were no masterworks, at least they resembled a 2 hour film.
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| "Ooooh. This movie smells like Fat Bastard's sweaty skin flaps!" |
The third installment to the spy parody series Austin Powers starring Mike Myers in the
titular role arrived three years after the immensely successful The Spy Who Shagged Me. Things were looking up for Mike Myers
with his James Bond parodies almost rivalling the success of the films being
satirized. However, it would all come
crashing down with Goldmember, the most financially successful but
instantly forgettable (and regrettable?) final chapter to the comedy
series. By and large a precursor to The Cat in the Hat and The Love Guru, Goldmember represents the moment when Myers would peak commercially
before his inevitable downfall. At this
point, people tired of seeing the same shtick being repeated by Myers, hiding
behind hours of makeup work to rest on his laurels and perform a variation of
the obese Scottish guard Fat Bastard again.
When he’s not shoehorning Britney Spears into the opening montage, he
hires Beyoncé Knowles as his new sidekick.
There’s a certain contempt the makers of the film have of their audience
with respect to casting Knowles, as if no one should care whether she can act
or not. They already got our money from
the ticket sales, so who cares? One
would figure the casting of Michael Caine as the father of Austin Powers would make for a brilliant comic platform for the two
to play off of each other as well as take the series to a whole new level of
acting caliber. But even Caine can only
do so much to provide viewers with something somewhat interesting. While no one will deny there are some moments
in Goldmember that do manage to
inspire old fashioned chuckles, as a whole the film is far below average. There’s just not a lot left to do with the
character other than pour money into production values and cameos. Goldmember
made its money during the initial theatrical run, DVD sales did well, but
clearly the studio took notice that this was where it needed to end once and
for all. It isn’t a film with the same
replay value as the first two and comes across as lazy and uninspired. There are those who will tell you you’ll
enjoy it if you liked the first two movies, but what gave Austin Powers solidarity was the ability to be funny without
overreliance on the almighty dollar to sell the comedy. Although Mike Myers and crew may think
otherwise, money isn’t everything.
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| "You mean to tell me that I'm not even funny in this crap. Yeah, great." |
The first Hangover
was a comedic powerhouse. It created a
novel formula and deftly blended physical humor with some very clever
dialogue. It had an excellent box office
showing for an R-rated comedy, and a sequel was inevitable. Enter The
Hangover 2, perhaps the clearest embodiment of the “If it ain’t broke”
mentality in a film, the second Hangover followed
its predecessor’s formula to an almost embarrassing degree; black-out night of
debauchery, a missing friend in the morning, a day spent piecing together the
mayhem from the night before, even Ken Jeong’s absurd character “Chang” (and
his penis) make another appearance.
Even with the sheer laziness of the writing, The Hangover 2 still worked, and was somehow still a charming, if at times disturbing, comedy. The third attempts to deviate from the formula, thankfully, but somehow manages to lose all of the magic that was in the first two. It ends up being a confused caper still utilizing much of the same shtick as its predecessors, and yet ends up being completely forgettable. Perhaps President Obama put it best – “If I ran a third time, it’d be like doing a third Hangover movie.”
Even with the sheer laziness of the writing, The Hangover 2 still worked, and was somehow still a charming, if at times disturbing, comedy. The third attempts to deviate from the formula, thankfully, but somehow manages to lose all of the magic that was in the first two. It ends up being a confused caper still utilizing much of the same shtick as its predecessors, and yet ends up being completely forgettable. Perhaps President Obama put it best – “If I ran a third time, it’d be like doing a third Hangover movie.”
The Matrix Revolutions:
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| "I didn't say whoa." |
Why create an action movie within a world without limits when you can have a post-apocalyptic grimy dance orgy? The second film got lost in its own mythos, weaving to and fro with prophecy and destiny, and had massive set piece action scenes that seemed to have little interest in the rest of the universe. But the final chapter, Revolutions, completed what Reloaded began – the total destruction of a franchise with insane potential. Its narrative became increasingly opaque and inconsistent, and again, spent very little time in its trademark Matrix world, instead opting for the generic “real world,” but still managed to somehow to remain inconsistent within this mythology as well. Perhaps ambition hamstrung this series, but Revolutions undeniably placed the final nail in the coffin of potential.
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| "Garble. Garble. Marble. Marble. Blech." |
Any rational person whether you somehow enjoyed Dark Knight Rises or not, must admit to its staggering ridiculousness. Nolan inexplicably managed to let two of today's finest actors get away with the most ludicrous conflict of laughable voices ever heard in a film meant to be taken seriously. DKR is a failure in just about every possible regard.
Screenwriter David S. Goyer couldn't have any less of an idea of who Bane is, employing an origin story pulled 95% from his ass and the remaining 5% being as loosely faithful as possible. At least the character was intelligent, white, and evil. He got those three things right at least. Tom Hardy's immense talents are not just wasted, but intentionally broken with Nolan shoving just one more marble in Hardy's mouth with every take in the recording booth.
The film wouldn't be too bad if it weren't for Goyer's monumental travesty of a script which is at constant odds with attempting to make sense of itself. It's like three rough drafts from three different gorillas were turned into Goyer who then stapled them together and handed it over to Nolan who was too bothered to read it until the camera started rolling. Rises is bursting with a record breaking avalanche of conveniences and plot holes such as Bruce Wayne's global teleportation magic, and conveniently getting all 3,000 of Gotham City's police officers stuck underground because that's the only way we can get the nonsense to move forward and not have the audience question anything.
I'm still not convinced that Dark Knight Rises isn't just a big joke to see how inane a film can get before an audience collectively realizes their intelligence is being insulted. Apparently, this hilarious experiment worked.
Spider-man 3:
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| "I'm feeling so very emo right now. Someone get me some eye makeup and a dance routine." |
The one and only redeemable factor in this tumbling boulder of randomly collected debris rolling down a hill of crap was Thomas Haden Church's Sandman. Removing the unnecessary Gwen Stacy, Venom, and black-suit emo Peter might have saved this mess. Focusing on Church's fairly strong Sandman story and giving it more room to breathe probably would have made for a great conflict for Peter Parker ala Alfred Molina's Doc Ock in Spider-man 2. But, no. Let's turn Peter Parker into a douche bag doing his best white guy dance number, and have Topher Grace spend more time crying about his broken camera and jealous teen rage than actually being Venom. In hindsight, it's probably a good thing that we didn't get to see much actual bad Venom than have an actual good version of him constantly shoved aside by Grace's poorly directed, half-assed performance.
They even managed to make James Franco bad.
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| "I am Juggernaut?!!! Who writes this crap?" |
Brian Singer’s first two X-Men films were pretty good
adaptations of the beloved comic book franchise. They came out at a time when
superhero movies were just coming into the mainstream and stood out because of the
high production values and (somewhat) faithful depictions of the characters. Both
films made a boatload of money and the studio couldn’t crank out the third film
fast enough. Unfortunately, Singer was busy with Superman Returns and they replaced him with effin’ Brett Ratner,
who’s claim to fame were the Rush Hour
films. Why in the hell would they do that?!
Money, that’s why.
So now that they have the mediocre director choice out of
the way, they could work on the screenplay. Instead of picking one great story
from the bazillion that have been
written since the 1960’s, they decide to combine (and I use this term loosely)
two together into one giant mess. Chris Claremont’s The Dark Phoenix Saga, which is widely regarded as one of the
finest X-Men story arcs ever written and is so epic in scope that it could be
made into a film trilogy and Joss Whedon’s amazing Gifted which he wrote for his Astonishing
X-Men run.
Let’s just ignore the fact that these two stories were
written 15 years apart and have nothing to do with each other and are both
super complex and nuanced. We can just smash them together into an
incomprehensible mess that does neither of them justice and simultaneously
confuse the casual movie goer and enrage the comic book fans! They literally had
to have the fourth movie X-Men: Days of
Future Past undo all of the jacked up continuity in the previous film;
that’s how bad it was. The sad part is, X-Men:
The Last Stand still made a whole bunch of money at the box office even
though it had a terrible script and mediocre acting.
Robocop 3:
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| "Teacher says every time a bell rings, a Robocop gets its wings. Wait. Where's Peter Weller?" |
The hard nosed and brutal violence of the first two films is lost here on a wasted budget, an uninspired performance from Nancy Allen, and corny action sequence after corny action sequence in which Robert John Burke struggles to do his best Peter Weller impersonation. This Robocop entry took all the good qualities of the first movies and flushed them down the toilet and killed the franchise for twenty years. And the soulless remake didn't do much to reinvigorate interest either.
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| "Is this the bullet that ends my acting career?" |
While The Godfather 3 is nowhere near as bad as a lot of movies on this list, it is hailed as one of the worst sequels ever made. Lacking the heart of The Godfather 1 and 2, audiences got an older Michael Corleone that is doing his best to go legit. It shares almost no qualities with Coppola's first two epic masterpieces.
As he says in the film, "Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!". It's true. But, they pull him back in to a mediocre third act that struggles to live up to its predecessors while allowing Sofia Coppola to ruin what's left with one of the most wooden and emotionally vacant performances ever put to screen. Her bad acting here is what legends are made of.
The Godfather III also features an annoying and bratty Andy Garcia over acting and making himself look like a total buffoon. That's not to mention the uncomfortable incestuous undertones and a Francis Ford Coppola that is quite obviously losing his magic touch. He's only made 6 movies since the release of this swan song, two of which have been smaller features that no one has seen. Not only did this tarnish the Godfather legacy but it's also one of the last movies from a legendary director.
Halloween III: Season of the Witch:
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| "Stupid pumpkin mask. Won't....come .....off. If Michael Meyers were here he'd cut it off." |
This film has
its defenders who will insist that no one can dislike it without focusing their
entire critique on the fact that it doesn’t feature Michael Myers. Challenge
accepted. This is one of the most nonsensical horror films ever made, featuring
yet another villainous performance by Dan O’Herlihy, playing the same character
he plays in every film (see Robocop 2). He plays a mask-maker with the
intent of bringing Halloween back to its sacrificial roots by stealing an
entire block from Stonehenge, transporting it over an ocean and two continents
undetected (just go with it), and using small specks of it in his merchandise.
These pebbles are somehow supposed to react with a special television signal
and cause a prepubescent Halloween-ocaust. A scheme this remarkably stupid
makes Ulric Goldfinger look like Hannibal Lector. Not only did this almost kill
the Halloween franchise as a whole, but its film canisters served as the
coffin for an anthology that Season of the Witch was supposed to begin.
The final product was so bad that the original screenwriter successfully
petitioned to have his name removed from the credits. We don’t blame him in the
slightest.
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| "Flippin' crackhead ruining my movie. This is where you get off." |
Superman 3:
Never has such a
funny man seemed so unfunny. Richard Pryor appears to be in physical pain
trying to deliver some of the most hackneyed dialogue ever concocted for a
comic sidekick in the history of movies. Whereas the first two films in the
first superhero franchise began with credits flying through space, set to one
of the most majestic film scores ever, Superman 3 face-plants
immediately with a Rube Goldberg setup of slapstick comedy that makes us wonder
just how much of Superman 2 was Richard Lester’s doing.
To explain, Superman
Richard Donner was fired for going over budget, and was replaced during Superman
2 with Richard Lester. With that being said, we can all agree that Superman
2 is just as good as the original. This film, however, was solely under the
supervision of Lester, and feels low-rent from frame one. Alas, this was not as
low as the series would sink; Superman 4: The Quest for Peace became the
high watermark of suck for comic book films of the era, nearly erasing the pain
of this abominable failure from our memory… but not quite.
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines:
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| "Beware the boobies of doom." |
Far from being
the worst film on this list, taken on its own merits, Terminator 3 is
kind of a blast. Arnold Schwarzenegger brings a poignancy and terrific comic
timing to the role that made him a household name, the action sequences are
loud, energetic and fun, and despite being as intimidating as an onion,
Kristanna Loken is very easy on the eyes. Sigh. Now with that on the table, the
script for Terminator 3 is an abysmal piece of slap-chop laziness that
makes no sense when taken in context of the first two game-changers. Terminator
2: Judgment Day is a candidate for the best sequel of all time in the
action-sci-fi genre, and its ending felt as complete as any film can be. So how
do you make a sequel to it?
Writers John Brancato and Michael Ferris decided
the only way to proceed was to perform the ultimate kick-to-the-spine,
spit-in-your-face betrayal of the singular theme that permeated James Cameron’s
original vision: There is no fate but what we make. Just throw that out, make
it all meaningless, and you have a sequel in which Judgment Day is inevitable.
It’s actually insulting, which is one of the worst offenses you can commit as a
filmmaker. So while the last 11 years have given us all some space to remove
ourselves from the first visceral reaction we had to this threequel, its
disregard for the series’ core principles remains high on our list of
screenwriting douchebaggery. But hey, at least George Lucas didn’t direct it.
-Andrew Kotwicki
-JG Barnes
-Patrick McDonald
-Michelle Kisner
-Blake O. Kleiner
-Chris George