Film series that should have been left alone.

_Lee_

Sr Member
RPF PREMIUM MEMBER
So after watching Terminator and T2 again I started thinking that maybe they should have left it alone right after the ending in T2 which IMO would have been the right thing to do. The terminator movies after I just feel are no comparison to the first 2 but again that's my own opinion.

I feel that maybe Rambo 1-3 should have been left in the 80s as should Rocky 1-5. Star Wars 1-3 I actually like, but 7-9 don't exist to me. Godfather 3 missed a trick aswell.

Do you have any other film series that should have been left alone and suffer from poor attempts at continuity, rehasing or follow ups?
 
I think the more recent Rocky movies have been better than the earlier ones. 6 and the Creed Trilogy are vastly better movies than 3-5 IMO.

Robocop and Starship Troopers both spawning franchises that miss the point of the original movies is pretty funny! Wonder how Verhoeven feels about those.

Evil Dead is an interesting franchise to study; the first one is attempting to be a serious movie but the technical limitations made it unintentionally funny, but then the sequels embraced the silliness. When they rebooted it a decade ago they remade the first one as straight and serious it was always intended to be and no one liked it, so now they've pivoted back to a silly tone in more recent entries.
 
Well, don't hate me, but I can make arguments for:

1) Jaws
2) Star Wars (yes, we would have never "had" TESB or the Emperor/Vader/Luke interaction of ROTJ... but was it worth it, for everything else film-wise that we DID eventually get?)
3) Mission: Impossible
4) Raiders of the Lost Ark.. as good as Last Crusade was, ROTLA ended PERFECTLY.
5) The Fast and the Furious
6) Avatar
7) Top Gun
8) Batman (1989)
 
Die Hard. I like 1 and 3, but not 2, 4, and 5. Would have been content with only getting the first one. And since I have the opportunity to present this, the next one should combine all of the titles into:

A Good Day to Live Free or Die Harder with a Vengeance: Part 6
 
1. Superman: The Movie (it was all diminishing product after that)
2. The Matrix
3. Gladiator
4. A Quiet Place
5. Ghostbusters
6. Star Wars after the Original Trilogy
7. Star Trek after Enterprise
 
Basically everything that was good in this world... :lol:

There are really no redeeming examples where the classic 1,2 or even third movie were improved upon by 4,5,6 etc in the series.

At best they just re-hash some of the good stuff from the first two films or at worst take a giant dump on them to the point of embarrassment.
 
Even a good story well told works for books most of the time. Movie hits franchises are at high risk after the first two. Good points made by all of you.
 
There is an interesting take, out there, that Classic Star Trek should have stopped after Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, with everything that followed being based upon being the first franchise to follow the trope of “No one’s ever REALLY gone…

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Some good commentary on the topic of “character resurrections”:

 
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There is an interesting take, out there, that Classic Star Trek should have stopped after Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, with everything that followed being based upon being the first franchise to follow the trope of “No one’s ever REALLY gone…

I'm going to offer the controversial opinion here, and that is Star Trek II should not have been made the way it was. Nick Meyer departed Gene Roddenberry's vision by militarizing things far more and turning them into more of an action element and less about exploration. Roddenberry was not happy with the direction Meyer took things, but was powerless to stop it.

Its success now means that Star Trek almost always requires a "villain" character. This moves it into the comic book realm, when it used to be a peer of films like 2001.
 
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I'm going to offer the controversial opinion here, and that is Star Trek 2 should not have been made the way it was. Nick Meyer departed Gene Roddenberry's vision by militarizing things far more and turning them into more of an action element and less about exploration. Roddenberry was not happy with Meyer's direction.

Star Trek has almost always required a "villain" character since then.

Well, the success of WOK DID give the franchise “The Khan Problem” where the producers of every subsequent film requested “a Khan character” (with the notable exception being Star Trek IV)…
 
Yeah.

Wrath of Khan was too Star Trek having an original series character played by an original series actor as the center of the conflict. Too much fan service.

The Matrix trilogy is like the Lord of the Rings trilogy which should have stopped at the first film.

The Godfather didn't need to go into all that topical historic stuff with 3. History is boring. We don't need historical events in biographically based stories.

Really, why do we need a complete story? We just need 15 seconds of a story like our attention spans.

Hollywood ALWAYS knows best!
 
IMO Star Wars had the potential to deliver 6 truly top-grade movies (PT & OT) if the execution had been better.
 
2001
Star Wars
Alien
Blade Runner
Back to the Future
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Ghostbusters
RoboCop
Caddyshack
Superman/II (one story/ramp up of the stakes etc, but effing with Donner and production makes II muddy)
 
There is an interesting take, out there, that Classic Star Trek should have stopped after Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, with everything that followed being based upon being the first franchise to follow the trope of “No one’s ever REALLY gone…

View attachment 1891184

Some good commentary on the topic of “character resurrections”:


Why has no one mentioned Twilight?
 

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Star Wars
Alien
Blade Runner
Back to the Future
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Ghostbusters
RoboCop
Caddyshack
Superman/II (one story/ramp up of the stakes etc, but effing with Donner and production makes II muddy)

I'm fine with 'Raiders' as a trilogy. Each of the three had its own strengths.
 
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