Third films that ruin a movie franchise

i for one would have liked to see zanuck/browns's original vision for jaws 3(as national lampoon's jaws 3 people 0)which would have probably been a hell of a lot better that this steaming pile of donkey poo
 
Of the LOTR Trilogy, I would say The Two Towers is the weakest, largely because as one poster on here has alluded to, Jackson cut out the largely dramatic, 'cliffhanger' endings to Books III and IV and instead tacked them onto the beginning The Return of the King.

This did help ROTK start with a bang, but made TTT a lengthy, drawn-out affair which didn't seem to progress very well. In particular I found the repetitive shots of the characters walking across the plains of Rohan incredibly tedious. Could have done with being a bit shorter, or at least cutting some bits in order to fit Shelob, etc, into the second film.

ROTK is a very good film but the ending does spoil it. Of course, the source material does have a very long, winding-down ending to it, but I am convinced that, if Peter Jackson had the imagination to transfer LOTR onto the big screen in a very successful way (and he did), he definitely had the imagination to make the ending a bit more snappy.

The Fellowship of the Ring is still the best film in the trilogy, I think. ROTK comes second, spoiled only by its ending, whilst I must admit feeling a little disappointed in TTT. Let's face it, though - the trilogy is an excellent piece of film-making taken as a whole.
 
I have decided that most film franchises I watch often have a very dissappointing third entry to the series.
X-Men: The Last Stand was somewhat dissappointing and nowhere near as entertaining as I thought X2 was.
Terminator 3 was by far the worst Terminator film with a lack of main characters/ original cast returning as well as the short, rushed plot.
Alien 3 was a more back to basic approach for the Alien films and seemingly low budget compared to its predescessor and Alien: Resurrection.

I suppose I'm asking for other people's opinions of third films that ruin a franchise or atleast make it suffer, or even if there are some third films that are the best e.g. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban maybe.
 
Terminator 3
Austin Powers 3
Batman Forever, although Batman Begins has saved the series
Jurassic Park 3

Return of the Jedi is a briiliant film but becomes to kiddy with the Ewoks, which is a shame as the Luke/Darth/Sidious piece is one of the best bits of the Star Wars films.
 
Some of the complaints I've heard recently revolve around the apparent original plan to have the final battle of Return of the Jedi take place on the Wookie homeworld (Kashyyk?) instead of Endor. The eventual decision to use Endor was supposed to be because the Ewoks had much more potential for merchandising. I don't know how true it is, because a lot of the people who say it are the proper Star Wars purists who hate the revamped editions of IV, V and VI and view George Lucas as something of a sell-out.
 
Lucas claims (on the ROTJ DVD commentary) it was changed as he wanted the final battle to be between the feral and the technological. He had established with Chewbacca that wookiees were technological, so he couldn't use Kashyykk, so he used a retooled version of wookiees - the ewoks. He may, of course, have been talking through his hat, as GL does like to re-write his own history as much as he does those of his worryingly incestuous characters.
 
I have to admit my favourite ever trilogy is the Scream trilogy but Scream 3 was very different.
I notice the horror genre in particular use many sequels and the third movies in horror franchises are often good examples of how not to do a film. Examples include Halloween III: Season of the Witch and Final Destination 3.
 
Although Scream 1/2 were perhaps superior to the third, I can't say I feel that Scream 3 ruined the trilogy.

Alien 3 was definitely the worst of the original Alien trilogy, but even that looks amazing when compared to the disaster that was Alien Resurrection.
 
Well I've never seen any of the "Scream" films, but I really like "Halloween III" as it does something different and is actually very well done and really rather scary. The first is still the best by far though.
 
The friday trilogy was good, though Friday After Next was an ok movie for passing a few hours.
Taxi 3..........worse film ever, Taxi 1 & 2 were pushing its french version Police Academy style humour rapidly down hill
Beverly Hills Cop 3.... why? Just hope this fourth version doesnt go down the cheap gags and over the top stunts and goes back to the Eddie Murphy of old.....
 
Gimpygoo said:
I've said before that my favourite trilogy of all time is Scream because the first film reinvented the horror genre for the 1990s whilst all films like 'I Know What You Did Last Summer' did was copy the formula, surprisingly that too was penned by Kevin Williamson. :o
Scream 2 was a good sequel, I see it as equal because we saw how the characters form the previous film had developed and there was a lot of interestign symbolism, for example Mrs Loomis was reoresentative of Mrs Vorhees of Friday the 13th Part one.
I still like Scream 3, I just struggle to liek it as much as the other 2 because of the franticness of it and the typical "no.3 feel".

Exactly . they are my favorute trilogy 2! However like you, scream 3 is my least favorite of them all!

2 is my favorite!
 
Halloween II was never actually that bad. The setting of the hospital was pretty creepy. They tried to do something different with Halloween III and people weren't ready for it which is why they bought Michael back for Halloween 4.
 
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