Six Sequels Unrelated to the Original Films

We all can agree that sequels aren't that good. In fact, there are only a handful of circumstances where a sequel is considered as good as the original and even less examples of when a sequel could possibly be considered better than the original. Sequels are generally made because the original film made a bunch of money and the studio wants to see if they can make a little more - and movies solely created for the sake of making money are never that good.

Sequels generally consist of rehashed references, second-tier characters and a similar plot to the original. But what about those films that completely disregard these sequel guidelines? What about the sequels that have nothing to do with the original? They deserve a special sort of shout-out because they don't even seem like they're trying at times. Whether it's because they couldn't get the original actors, the characters all died in the first film or the producers just felt the audience needed a change of pace, the following six films all threw the original idea out the window and started with something fresh. . .ish. 

Halloween 3

Original: The original Halloween is one of the forefathers of the modern slasher movie. It tells the story of a very large and disturbed individual named Michael Myers who stalks and kills a variety of individuals while wearing a William Shatner mask.The second Halloween movie actually begins right where the first one ended -- which is a pretty bold and impressive route for a sequel to take -- and tells us a little more about Michael and his murderous rage.

This Sequel: Halloween III is probably the most notorious sequel because it has nothing to do with the original. No Michael Myers, no Jaime Lee Curtis, no Dr. Loomis - just a crazy scientist making non-Shatner masks that can kill (but you have to be watching TV while wearing the mask in order for it to work). There is actually a moment when the original movie plays on a television in a bar, but that's about the only connection between the first two movies and this "sequel."


Open Water 2

Original: The original Open Water is about a husband and wife trapped in the middle of the ocean all alone, fending off sharks. It is loosely based on the real-life story of Tom and Eileen Lonergan, who disappeared from a Scuba diving group in 1998. Some people hated this movie, others were absolutely terrified by the bleak realism.

This Sequel:  None of the characters from the first movie were featured in Open Water 2 (for obvious reasons) and instead of being stranded alone in the middle of the ocean, this movie was about a group of six friends unable to get back on their yacht. In reality, there's a reason why this movie is so unrelated to the first movie - it was written beforehand. The screenplay was an adaptation of a short story named "Adrift," and it was written before Open Water ever hit the theaters. However, after the success of the first movie, producers thought it would be best to capitalize on the success of the original.


Home Alone 3

Original: Home Alone and Home Alone 2 are about Kevin McCallister being abandoned by his family and defending himself against the Wet/Sticky bandits. Many people criticized the second movie for being almost a shot-for-shot remake of the first, but the first movie was a huge success, so who can blame the studio for wanting to keep a formula that works?

This Sequel: However, when Macaulay Culkin refused to do a third movie, the producers decided to go a different direction - cloning. It wasn't the McCallister's house, but it kind of looked like the McCallister's house. They hired a red-headed woman who kind of looked like Catherine O' Hara to play Kevin's. . .I mean Alex's mom. And instead of having a pair of robbers trying to break into the house, they had a quartet of terrorists trying to get back their missile-cloaking microchip for the North Koreans. Ok, so that last one isn't cloning, it's more like a horrible mutation.



The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift  

Original: The Fast and the Furious is Point Break for the car racing world. Paul Walker plays an undercover cop trying to infiltrate a group of hijackers. In 2 Fast 2 Furious (see what they did there? Clever!) Paul Walker plays an ex-cop who goes undercover for the FBI to help bring down another crime ring. These movies were pretty much an excuse to show hot cars driving around with pretty lights, but that appeals to some people.

This Sequel: The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift is about a regular guy (who isn't a cop or on a mission for the FBI) learning how to drift in Japan. Yes, there is a very brief cameo by Vin Diesel to try and connect this one to the others, but that is about as effective as the guy in the bar watching a clip of the original Halloween in Halloween 3. I guess when you can't get Paul Walker, you just do something completely different.



White Noise 2

Original: White Noise is about a man trying to find his wife in the midst of electronic voice phenomena, or EVP. The previews for this movie were actually scarier than the actual movie, but Michael Keaton gave a good performance and there were a few creepy moments that made it worth watching.


This Sequel: Not even Nathan Fillion himself could save White Noise 2. This "sequel" presented the idea that a person could become a white noise receiver themselves, and then completely threw that idea out the window and focused on demonic possession instead. Tria Mera, as they called it, asked the question, "If Christ resurrected on the third day, what did the devil do?" which is an interesting question, until you realize it doesn't make sense.




Troll 2


Original: Believe it or not, there are two characters named Harry Potter in this 1986 horror film (JK was a big fan, I guess). It tells the story of a troll king who possesses a little girl and wreaks havoc on a San Francisco apartment complex. Troll was actually a straightforward horror film and did pretty well at the box office.

This Sequel: One of the most interesting things about Troll 2 is that there are no trolls in the movie. None. The movie is all about a group of vegetarian goblins who live in an isolated town and attract new prey through house swapping. The film was directed by Drake Floyd (aka Claudio Fragasso) who felt they could piggyback on the success of the first movie by using the name, even though there was absolutely no association between the two films. This is probably the most unrelated sequel out there today and it's possibly one of the worst films of all time.



So now it's time, faithful readers, for you to decide which is worse: to create a sequel that uses the same characters, the same jokes and a similar plot line or to make a sequel that is completely off the beaten path of the original.

Pick your poison!

The Curse of the Number 3

I've been wanting to do this post for a while now, and I've discussed this theory with my friends and anyone who would listen for years now. My theory is that the number "3" is bad for movies - that the number three is cursed.

"What do you mean?" you may ask, and thank you for asking. Well, I personally believe that if a movie has the number "3" in the title, and it's the third installment of a film franchise, then it's going to be a bad movie. Sequels are usually bad enough (I'm looking at you, Teen Wolf, Too), but it seems by the time the writers and actors get to the third film, they've run out of creative ideas, hence they put a "3" or "III" in the title because they can't think of anything better. This does NOT apply to such films as Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, The Bourne Supremacy or Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, because they do not have the number three in the title. It also does not apply to films like Three Amigos or 3:10 to Yuma, which DO have the number three in the title, but it's not the third movie. I'm talking about films like these ones:


Back to the Future: Part III



Back to the Future? Classic! Back to the Future: Part II? Hoverboards! Back to the Future III? A sappy romance between Doc Brown and Clara Clayton. By the time we got to this sequel the reoccurring jokes are getting old (how many times can Marty run into a relative of Biff Tannen??) and you can tell the filmmakers just wanted to get it over with, that's why they put "The End" in the closing credits instead of "To Be Continued..." Now, I know that the second installment of this franchise can't stand on it's own, since it leaves us with a cliffhanger, but you can't deny that Back to the Future III is inferior to its predecessors.


Rocky III



The first Rocky film is an academy-award winning drama. Rocky II was a well-thought out follow-up to that story with a satisfying ending. In Rocky III, we get a hyped-up, pseudo-dramatic story with no real substance. Yes, we get the timeless work-out song "Eye of the Tiger" from this film, yes we do (SPOILER ALERT) get the drama of Mickey dying (END OF SPOILER), but that doesn't make up for the shameless cameos by Hulk Hogan and Mr. T, nor does it make up for the tube socks, nor does it make up for Apollo and Rocky as they sweatily run in slow-motion along the beach for an hour. This, in my opinion, is the weakest film of the Rocky franchise (not including Rocky V, because no one really counts Rocky V as an actual "Rocky" movie). Thank heavens the next Rocky movie was so cool.


Jaws 3-D



Do I really need to spell this one out for you? The first Jaws movie is one of the best horror films ever made. I also believe that every single sequel should have changed its name because they don't deserve to have the name of Jaws. However, at least the second one still had Roy Scheider in it, and at least it still dealt with Amity island and somewhat related to the first movie. By the time we got to number III, we've moved to an amusement park in Florida. I think the writers knew that this one was going to be a stinker, so they made it 3-D to seem cooler than it actually was. They'd obviously run out of other ideas.


High School Musical 3



I haven't actually seen this one, but my nieces tell me that this isn't as good as the first two and I trust them.


Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines



The first Terminator movie was a spectacular horror film. Terminator 2 was an awesome action film. The only thing that Terminator 3 had going for it was a hot female lead (no, I'm not talking about Claire Danes, I'm never talking about Claire Danes). This movie was so bad that the new Terminator movie completely ignored that the third one had ever been made. They even named it Terminator Salvation because it was trying to save the franchise from the damage done by T3.


Spider-Man 3



I still don't know how it's possible to make a movie with Venom as the villain and have it be horrible. In fact, the whole Peter Parker vs. Eddie Brock storyline in this film was actually watchable. But when I saw "Dark Peter" emerge and quickly turn this superhero movie into a musical, I knew the filmmakers were out of ideas. Bad move, Spider-Man franchise, bad move. Superheroes should NOT sing and dance. . .ever.


Superman III



The Superman films, though cheesy, were a delight to watch. The first one introduced us to Christopher Reeve as the Man of Steel. Superman II gave us General Zod and the Phantom Zone (plus, it made me scared to death of Niagara Falls, as a kid). In Superman III I guess they felt that they needed some comic relief to balance out Kal-El's seriousness (what? Jimmy Olsen wasn't enough?) so they brought in Richard Pryor, who. . .didn't do much in this film. Yes, this film gave us synthetic kryptonite and the cool fight between Clark Kent and Superman. Yes, this film also gave us a terrifying robot lady (she still scares me to this day). However, when the bad guy in your film is using a weather satellite to CONTROL the weather, you know it's time to hang up the tights.


Shrek the Third



Yes, this "3" title counts. I wasn't too impressed with the first Shrek movie, but at least it was original. Shrek 2, I feel, was funnier and more clever and I would even consider owning that member of the franchise. But I fell asleep mid-way through this third one, so it can't be that good.


Scream 3



The first Scream film was a clever satire on the horror film industry. The second one, though not as good, was mocking horror sequels in general. By the time they got to the third movie, however, the franchise had become the very kind of film they'd been making fun of. You can also tell that the actors who reappeared in this film didn't really want to be there, even the dead ones.


The Godfather: Part III



Everyone knows that The Godfather is one of the most critically acclaimed films of all time. The Godfather II is sometimes said to be better than the original. In fact, this is one of the FEW times when you CAN actually argue that a sequel is better than first movie. But you may also notice that no one seems to include The Godfather III in this argument. This red-headed stepchild of the Corleone family failed at the box office and failed to win over critics. Many people have their theories as to why this film didn't work, but me? I blame Sofia Coppolla.


Home Alone 3



The first two movies are practically the same movie, and we, as an audience, were okay with that. We accepted the fact that Macaulay Culkin could outsmart Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern both in Chicago AND in New York. But another kid that is wise in the ways of booby traps? Psssh! Surely you jest. Here's another angle to ponder: in the first movie the villains were simple house burglars, in the second movie, the same burglars were out for revenge, in the third movie it's a matter of national security when a group of thieves steal a "valuable missile cloaking computer chip for a North Korean terrorist group." Baby steps, filmmakers. Baby steps.


Alien 3



I guess this one should be called "Alien Cubed," technically, since the three is small in the title. Alien = horrifying. I mean, who can forget that iconic popping-out-of-the-chest scene. Aliens is equally as scary, especially since they throw a little kid into the mix. And while Alien Cubed made a pretty cool Sega Genesis Game, it did not work as a movie. I will always be scared of those face-huggers, but I am even more terrified of the crappy writing of this horrible movie.


Rush Hour 3



The "gimmick" of this movie got old in the second Rush Hour installment. This one was just overkill.


Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III



Ok, none of these TMNT films are award-winning, but, as a kid, they were pretty fun to watch. It was cool to see our heroes in live-action. The second movie even gave us Vanilla Ice doing the Ninja Rap and you know you can't resist dancing along with that catchy tune. But while we were able to suspend our disbelief that these turtles (and the rat) mutated into crime-fighters, the concept of them traveling through time in the third movie was a bit much, even for me.


Jurassic Park III



I actually had a friend remind me of this one since I had, apparently, blocked it from memory. The first film of this franchise changed CGI as we know it. Those dinosaurs still look good, even today. The second film wasn't that good, but at least it brought the dinosaurs to a new setting. In Jurassic Park III, however (even though it includes parts from the first Jurassic Park book), features a terrible story. I mean, we're supposed to believe that a spunky little kid survived on his own on an island full of killer dinosaurs? And, I'm sorry, but I will NEVER forgive them for showing us a talking raptor, even if it was only a dream.



Other bad "threequels" could include Nightmare on Elm Street III, Rambo III, Friday the 13th: Part III, and Spy Kids 3-D. All inferior to their counterparts, most not worth talking about.

"But, The Former 786," you may say, "There are good '3' movies out there like Mission: Impossible III!" Well, I do acknowledge that there are some (but very few) exceptions to this theory. This also explains why sometimes a sequel doesn't have to say "3" and it will still stink (Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, anyone?? BLAH!). That is why this is only a theory - a word of caution, if you will.

So now, faithful readers, you may know that when the movie makers put a "3" in the title of the movie sequel you're going to see, you can, at least, have lowered expectations and may not be as disappointed.