Five Worst Sci-Fi Sequels

Let’s face it. Sequels tend to suck. The first movie already covered all the fun stuff; sequels tend to just be retreads of the same themes and issues that the first one tackled. Now, most of the time, this just makes sequels dull. Unfortunately, some sequels commit a far worse sin: they use the material established in the first movie so horrendously that, rather then just be a lousy sequel, they bring shame and dishonor on their franchise and their parent movie like a dishonored samurai. Here’s what I consider  to be the five worst sequels sci-fi franchises have to offer.

5. X-Men: The Last Stand

I love X-Men. As a lifetime comic book geek, X-Men was pretty much my favorite comic book growing up. I enjoyed the first two X-Men movies, for all that they were less X-Men movies and more Wolverine movies. The third one, however… while it was nice to see some more mutants show up like Juggernaut, Multiple Man, Beast and Angel, they were not handled well. I was also quite excited about seeing Jean go Phoenix, except it was quickly apparent the writers had no clue what the Phoenix actually was. Jean survives the end of the last movie and returns for no discernible reason, and then proceeds to go crazy and kill everyone, again for no reason. Cyclops dies – no reason; a cure for mutation is found – no reason; Magneto disowns a de-powered Mystique – paper-thin reason; Wolverine kills Jean – just about the only thing in the movie that did have a reason, considering she’d gone insane. So, yeah, it’s kind of a slap in the face of all comic book fans who’d come to appreciate the movie franchise.

4. The Star Wars Prequels

Okay, technically two movies, and technically they’re prequels, not sequels. However I liked Episode One, and consider the problems to be rooted in Two and Three, so I’ll call them bad sequels to One. Now, lets get the obvious out of the way. Jar Jar is annoying as hell, the actor for Anakin can’t actually act, he and Padme have a forced romance even though there’s no chemistry between them at all, the plot is dumb and kind of confusing, and far too much attention is paid to special effects rather then writing or acting. There are cool moments, such as Yoda’s big fight scene and that cool chase scene near the beginning of Two, and just about anytime Dooku is on-screen, but other then that it falls very flat. Now, this is all stuff from Two, because even thinking about Three makes me nauseous. Mace Windu, the most badass Jedi ever, dies from a cheap shot. Anakin continues to be awful, only now it’s not only his actor but his character as well; his casual murder and wussy “NO!” at the end just make him awful. And… ugh, I can’t even go on. This movie sucks, okay? Next please.

3. Alien: Resurrection

Alien and Aliens were great films, but they were never exactly nice. Death was violent and ugly; monsters were scary, gross, and vaguely phallic; and the heroes were largely helpless and scared. However, they never relied on cheap scare tactics like drenching the set with gore, or cheap crowd-draws like blatant sex-appeal and and fanservice to draw in viewers. In fact, the point of these movies was that horror movies did not require these things. Then Resurrection came along and threw this all in the garbage. It revived Ripley as an Alien hybrid (wtf?) giving her superpowers and completely raping her personality and character. It was, in all respects, a rehash of every bad horror movie ever that just happened to share a universe with Alien. There was blatant sex appeal (including Ripley suddenly seeming to be a lesbian for some reason) and buckets of blood and gore. There’s a reason it’s so bad, though: Joss Whedon, script-writing genius and my personal idol, wrote Resurrection to be a campy parody. Unfortunately, directer Jean Pierre Jeunet wanted it to be a horror movie on par with the first two movies, and for some reason kept Whedon’s script. The resulting mash-up of these two visions comes across as what it is – a malformed Frakenstien of a movie that hobbles along for a painful hour and a half before just giving up and dying.

2. The Matrix Reloaded and Revolutions

I shouldn’t even have to tell you how awesome the Matrix was. It was brilliant, gorgeous, tightly-written, had great fight scenes and a great, interesting story. It even left itself a bit open-ended for sequels, though nobody really expected one because Neo was too powerful for it to be interesting now, right? Eh… no. Reloaded and Revolutions were meandering, pointless, and very confusing. They were also terribly boring, with long scenes that went nowhere (the rave scene in Zion, for example), lots of pointless philosophy, some good ideas that went nowhere, and most frustrating of all, less and less great fight scenes as the movies went on. At least Reloaded had a few fight scenes, like the Burly Brawl and that scene on the freeway. Revolutions had next to no fight scenes, except for the mecha fight that was honestly less then it could have been, and the end fight with Smith which had an unsatisfying and downright dumb conclusion. Worst of all, however, was that the directors claim they had always planned to write the sequels and that their plots were always a part of canon. This is pure crap, as those plots are confusing and pointless, in contrast with the first movie’s clear and concise plot, and they really don’t fit very well with the first at all. In the end, most fans prefer to remember the Matrix as a stand-alone movie, and pretend the sequels never happened.

1. Batman and Robin

It counts as sci-fi, there’s a freeze-gun! Anyway, if you follow comic book movies at all you’ll know why this movie’s a stinker. After the relatively dark Batman movies that came before this, this movie was just pure, unadulterated camp. It felt very much like the old, dumb Adam West Batman, and not very much at all like the same Batman from the movies preceding this one. They have Arnold Shwarzenegger as Mr. Freeze for some reason, and every other line out of his mouth is an ice-related pun, and his co-villain, Poison Ivy, isn’t much better: she’s basically just a collection of villain cliches and some bad plant-related puns. The plot is full of holes and contrived coincidences, the characters are boring and uninteresting (Robin especially; he mostly just whines), and worst of all… Batman has a BAT CREDIT CARD. Guuuuuh….. I’m not even going to start on this. The movie had exactly one cool moment – when Freeze and Ivy meet in jail, Freeze gives Ivy a pretty chilling threat about winter coming.

Oh… Oh god. A chilling threat. Now even I’m doing it! I… I need to lie down…

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