How many sequels are enough?

"How many sequels are enough?"

ZERO

Breaking up a pre-determined story (such as The Lord of the Rings) into three parts is fine, unnecessarily extending a finished work by bolting on extra bits (like The Matrix 'trilogy', anything Part 2) should be punishable by death.

And those people who come out of great movies and immediately go "I hope they make a sequel" - NO! The first one was great because it was original and the sequel will *never* be as good.
 
I often like first sequels and dislike second sequels.

I like Hellraiser 2, because it explore the mythology more; we learn more about what Cenobites are and where they come from. HR3 is formulaic but still interesting, and HR4 is dreadful. HR5 was nothing special, but after that the pressure is off and the series becomes interesting again. I think it could continue indefinitely provided they come up with a string of interesting characters to find the puzzle box. For example, HR2 is different and interesting to HR1 because Dr Chanard is different to Frank and reacted in different ways.

I also like The Matrix 2. It is a film that needed to be made because so much of M1 is left out. M1 is a very simple story, good guys (humans) versus bad guys (machines). M2 opens it up into a 3-way battle, and with a lot more ambiguous or neutral characters. It has some bad moments, but it's a richer story.

The franchise which most fascinates me is Alien. The first sequel worked because it was so different. Then, as so often, what was common to the first two films became the formula for all that followed. Adding Predators into the mix destroyed any real interest in the Aliens as characters. It seemed to me that the Queen in A2 was offering Ripley a deal in the egg chamber, to let Ripley escape if she left the eggs alone. If there's to be another AvP I'd hope the Aliens are developed so that they can ally with humans against Predators. There is more to explore in this universe, but I think they need to treat it as SF rather than Horror.
 
Terminator 2
Aliens
Legend of Drunken Master
Some people say Godfather Part II
Shrek 2


With the exception, in my opinion, although I haven't seen GFII for a long time, there is a tiny list where the sequel is as good, if not better than the original.

Ice Age 2 is ridiculously bad.
 
I doubt we'll see any more DTV Hellraiser releases,as Dimension films have their heart set on a remake/reimagination and you can understand it from a business perspective.H4 runined the original franchise for me completely so I'm not really down on a remake,but it all depenRAB on whom helms the project.
If was looking good until Maury/Bustillo got dismissed.
 
Just seemed like more of the same to me. If you liked the first you've no reason to dislike the second. And if you didn't like the first why'd you expect the second one to be any better?

RegarRAB

Mark
 
You could have easily gone from the end of the first Matrix film to the start of the third one without any troubles, making the second Matrix film nothing but a special effects extravaganza.

On the Alien topic, the franchise was spoiled for me with Alien 3. Also, the suggestion of Aliens teaming up with humans to take on the Predators doesn't sound right. I mean, the Aliens are just a huge virus of acid-blooded walking sharks, surely, whereas the Predators are more like humans in that they create their own technology and hunt for pleasure, rather than instinct. That's how I perceived it, anyway.
 
If you mean it's fairly self-contained, then yes. That misses out a lot:
  • The Merovingian and his wife, who are among my favourite characters.
  • The KeyMaker subplot.
  • That the Oracle is a program.
  • Neo as The One.
  • The rise of Agent Smith.
And much dialogue about prediction and cause and effect, from the Oracle, the Architect and the Merovingian. The philosophy in the first film won't be new to anyone who has read, eg, Alice Through The Looking Glass. That of the second film is more interesting. I suspect some people fast-forward past the dialogue and then complain there is nothing but action.

That said, the SFX in the second film are superior to the first.

That was always open to question. Eg in the second film they cut power to the lights. Was that by random accident, or some instinct for technology, or rational planning? It's left open. Later we see the Queen studying the lifts before using one to follow Ripley. She seems to be thinking, figuring it out, at a level above any terrestrial animals. Some of this is continued into the later films, eg in the 4th the aliens are very quick to understand the significance of the torture button.

As I recall, it's AvP which really reduces them to animals. It also introduced this long-standing relationship between humans and Predators, which makes the ending a foregone conclusion.

(Another of the problems of the AvP films is that they are set in more or less the present day, which given the state of affairs at the start of A1 in the future, drastically limits the possible out-comes.)
 
I thought the first one was brilliant - really funny and really sad in some scenes. They got the mix right.

The second one was terrible, by comparison. I was really disappointed.



I've not seen Dawn of the Dead, but I'll agree with you on the others.

A contention I've always had with Bad Boys was how they're supposed to be inseparable best mates, yet the way they talk to each other is so disrespectful. Plus, Jerry Bruckheimer is a murderer of cinema (and history).
 
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