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Credit: Joker: Folie à Deux/Warner Bros.
I haven’t seen Joker: Folie à Deux yet (and I may never bother), so I won’t attempt to review it, but it’s clear from the film’s disastrous opening weekend that the follow-up to Todd Philips’ Oscar-nominated billion-dollar blockbuster is destined to generate neither the money, nor the applause of the original—despite the addition of Lady Gaga.
Critical reviews are largely negative, while, uncharacteristically for a comic book movie, audiences hate it even more: It received a “D” CinemaScore, the lowest ever for a superhero movie. Unsurprisingly, the opening box office take was less than half of the original’s, on a much higher budget. Yikes.
Perhaps the mistake was making the movie a musical, or maybe the mistake was then going around insisting that it is not, in fact, a musical. The same might be said for the filmmakers’ obvious discomfort with the idea of making a comic book movie at all. Or maybe it’s just not very good, and any other analysis is just overcomplicating matters.
Is it enough of a misfire to join the ranks of cinema’s most harebrained sequels ever? Time will tell. In the meanwhile, here are 13 other spectacularly ill-conceived movie sequels—some plain bad, some interesting, but all ill-conceived in one way or another.
Jaws: The Revenge (1987)
Each of the Jaws sequels was, in its own way, ill-conceived. None came close to topping, nor even matching, the Stephen Spielberg original, and it grows increasingly hard to be concerned with the fates of a family of characters who can’t be bothered to stay away from the ocean despite constantly getting menaced by sharks. But Jaws 2 and 3 are at least fairly entertaining examples of the genre, and each at least makes some good-faith effort to come up with reasons for the Brodys to be near the water. By the time we get to 4, though, it’s all there in the title: The shark is out for revenge! Because it’s related to the sharks that were killed in the other movies? Or maybe is possessed? Unclear.
Here, the shark somehow follows Ellen Brody (Lorraine Gary, reprising her role from the first two films) from Amity to the Bahamas, where her son Michael is working as a Marine biologist (which, again, and not trying to victim-blame, but…). If it sounds like it could be a goofy good time, it’s also all deeply boring, with much time devoted to a half-baked romance between Ellen and pilot Hoagie, played by Michael Caine, who later said of the film: “I have never seen it, but by all accounts it is terrible. However, I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific!”
Where to stream: Digital rental
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019)
Rise of Skywalker set itself up for a monumental task, with ambitions not just to conclude the most recent Star Wars movie trilogy, but the entirety of the “Skywalker Saga,” nine movies and other assorted media covering pretty much everything that had happened in the galaxy far, far away since 1977. It fails on both counts, first by lazily bringing us back around to the villain of the original movie trilogy (“Somehow, Palpatine returned!”), though he actually didn’t return on screen, but in a promotional cutscene from Fortnite that you were meant to watch prior to buying your ticket. Rise then proceeds to pretend the previous movie, The Last Jedi, never happened, undoing all the most interesting plto and character moments from that admittedly controversial entry.
After the big swings of Episode VIII, this one feels first and foremost like a movie built and rebuilt by committee, with every big swing (Chewbacca dies! C-3PO’s memory is erased!) immediately, clumsily undone so as to ensure that not a single viewer will have anything to be mad or sad about.
Where to stream: Disney+, digital rental
Star Trek: Nemesis (2002)
Star Trek: The Next Generation had an absolutely killer final episode, then immediately segued into a series of movies that mostly didn’t meet that high standard. But while First Contact was great and Generations and Insurrection at least had their moments, this one proved to be a woeful goodbye to the most beloved era of the franchise. With a screenplay from Academy Award-nominated writer John Logan (Gladiator, The Aviator, Skyfall) and solid villain casting in Tom Hardy, the ingredients were there for something special. Instead, it’s a mess, with intersecting plot lines involving a new, and very dumb, sibling of Data; a Romulan civil war; and a clone of Jean-Luc Picard who needs the Enterprise captain’s blood to survive for some reason. A tacked-on, last-act sacrifice is meant to evoke big Wrath of Khan feelings in Trek fans, but ends up just feeling like a final indignity. Luckily, after a few decades Picard came along to give TNG a rather more fitting sendoff.
Where to stream: Prime Video, MGM+
Independence Day: Resurgence (2016)
I suppose this one isn’t particularly ill-conceived: a sequel to the blockbuster Independence Day probably always made sense on paper, even a couple of decades later. This one’s all about the execution: My main impression after seeing it way back in 2016 was that I couldn’t remember what it was about just a day later. Largely it feels like a retread of the original, minus Will Smith—the kind of thing that might have worked back in the 1990s, but that was never going to break through our modern glut of sci-fi blockbusters.
Where to stream: Max, digital rental
Coming 2 America (2021)
It’s fun to see the ol’ gang reunited (the “gang” being Eddie Murphy, Arsenio Hall, James Earl Jones, John Amos, and Louie Anderson, all reprising their roles from the 1988 original), but that’s not enough to hang a movie on. The setup is fine, as these things go, with Prince Akeem returning to America to seek out the son he didn’t know he had—because of a poorly considered flashback during which Akeem is drugged by a woman who wants to have sex with him. Granted, such a twist would not be out of place in an actual ’80s movie, but here it’s played not only for laughs, but treated as good news, for Prince Akeem has the heir he’ll need when he becomes king. I was pretty sure we knew by 2021 what date rape is bad, actually, even if the victim is male, but maybe not. Even putting all that aside, the movie struggles to generate anything other than a few chuckles—jokes and gags are recycled from the original a little too shamelessly even for a nostalgia sequel.
Where to stream: Prime Video
A Good Day to Die Hard (2013)
It shouldn’t be surprising that a Die Hard movie released in 2013 isn’t particularly good, except that 2007’s Live Free of Die Hard, coming more than a decade after the series had apparently already wrapped, was excellent, if not the best since the original. They should have wrapped it up there. Good Day has an appealing hook in Bruce Willis’ iconic John McClane going to Russia to rescue his estranged son, CIA Agent Jack (Jai Courtney). Nevertheless, the result feels cheap and utterly generic. These movies have worked in the past because no matter how over-the-top the action, John McClane’s regular-guy style kept things (relatively) grounded. Here, the action sequences are excessive to the point of diminishing returns. It’s one numbing, explosive sequence after another, and with Willis’ charm inexplicably blunted, the stakes here feel nonexistent.
Where to stream: Hulu, digital rental
Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (1985)
The Friday the 13th series reached its natural climax with the fourth film, The Final Chapter, which was well and truly meant to be the end. Except that it made a ton of money (and, not for nothin’, remains just about the best of the series), so less than a year after the last Jason movie, we got a new Jason movie. Remaining uncharacteristically true to the conclusion of the previous film, the filmmakers decided not to resurrect Jason, but instead to offer up a new mystery killer wearing the hockey mask. That choice was poorly received, and while it racks up the appropriate body count, the violence feels even more mean-spirited than usual, there is almost zero internal logic, and the ending is deeply confusing. Instead, jump ahead to Jason Lives, one of the more inventive entries in the franchise.
Where to stream: Paramount+, Shudder, AMC+, digital rental
Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987)
I’d argue that all of the Christopher Reeve Superman movies are watchable, and not just for the presence of Margot Kidder. They’re generally flawlessly cast, and together possessed of a romantic chemistry unmatched by today’s almost entirely sexless superhero movies. All that having been said, Superman 4 never stood a chance. Alexander and Ilya Salkind, producers of the first three movies, found themselves in financial difficulties and sold the franchise to the Cannon Group, discount purveyors of such popular hits as Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo, The Last American Virgin, and Exterminator 2. Cannon enticed Reeve back with a big paycheck and a promised story credit (he’s the one who came up with the anti-nuclear proliferation angle), but otherwise the finances were meagre. Where the original movie had a budget of $55 million in 1978, this one was originally budgeted at $36, which Cannon dropped to $17 million right before filming, and $6m of that was earmarked for Reeve’s salary. Discount effects teams were brought on, and the film wrapped in a unfinished state. It’s nice to see the original cast back one last time, but this is, at best, a bit of goofy, occasionally charming, fun that entirely lacks the epic scope (and budget) that a Superman movie demands. Yay for nuclear disarmament, though.
Where to stream: Prime Video, Max
Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (2000)
A meta sequel to 1999’s surprise found footage blockbuster, directed by legendary documentary filmmaker Joe Berlinger (Paradise Lost)? Sounds kinda brilliant, honestly. The finished product, though…not so much. A group of Blair Witch Project (the movie) fans head off to Burkittsville, Maryland to geek out at the location of the original’s filming, and also to study mass hysteria using the film as a lens. And then a bunch of weird shit happens, because of reasons. This one earns credit for its ambitious attempt to discuss our increasing inability to distinguish fiction from reality, and I wish more sequels would take such big swings. Unfortunately, it’s an experiment that doesn’t work as a particularly watchable piece of filmmaking.
Where to stream: Peacock, digital rental
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023)
For me, this is the moment that the growing cracks in the Marvel Studios edifice showed through in ways that were no longer possible to deny. If you live by special effects then you die by special effects, and that’s really where Quantumania goes wrong. The plot, about a trip to the teeny tiny quantum realm by our now teeny tiny heroes, is pretty well forgettable, but the movie could’ve still been successful as a Jack Kirby-inspired journey through a wild visual landscape. Instead, the murky special effects look barely finished (apparently technical teams were hard at work on Wakanda Forever at the same time). There’s no consistent visual style, and the actors all look like they’re wandering around in front of a green screen (I know that’s literally what they’re doing, but it shouldn’t look like that’s what they’re doing). Quantumania falls flat as the conclusion of an otherwise entertaining Marvel sideline, while providing a deeply inauspicious introduction to now-scrapped (mostly for other reasons) uber-villain Kang.
Where to stream: Disney+, digital rental
Highlander II: The Quickening (1991)
The first Highlander isn’t in any way a cinematic triumph, but, as an action spectacle with swords, it does exactly what it says on the tin. Starring Christopher Lambert and Sean Connery as a couple of immortal warriors who roam the centuries cutting the heads off of fellow immortals, the 1986 film doesn’t wallow in its own mythology, instead offering up a swords-and-sorcery -style adventure in a modern setting. Everything that movie does right, The Quickening does wrong: It’s set in a polluted, corrupt future of 2024 (OK, it got that bit right), and finds an evil corporation keeping Earth under its thumb (also based) using a shield designed to replace the ozone later. Lambert’s Connor MacLeod has to stop the evil corporate overlords while also battling his own people, who we now learn are sorcerer aliens from the planet Zeist. That might sound like bonkers fun, but it remains murky and dull, with multiple recuts over the years failing to salvage much of anything worthwhile.
Where to stream: Starz, digital rental
Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977)
How to follow up the most visceral and frightening tales of demonic possession ever put to film? What if we just kind of revisit it with the idea that the original exorcism didn’t quite take? That’s a perfectly fine, if lazy way to approach a sequel, but director John Boorman overloads the movie to the point of campiness, with a freaky ultra-modern science lab, time travel, locusts, and lots of flashing lights. It’s all quite ambitious and impressively atmospheric, but adds up to very little. Big points for style, but not much else. The third film, which goes off in entirely different directions, remains sequel to beat.
Where to stream: Digital rental
Curse of the Cat People (1944)
Most of the movies I’ve discussed are ill-conceived, but also mostly bad. Curse of the Cat People is brilliantly ill-conceived: A true sequel to the 1942 psychosexual thriller Cat People that nonetheless spins off in wildly different directions. Like the original, this was overseen by Val Lawton, a producer famous for using the lurid titles and low budgets demanded by the B-movie division of RKO Pictures as cover to create far more interesting films than audiences would have had reason to expect. Cat People followed Irena (Simone Simon, reprising her role here), a woman whose queer repression and family trauma lead her to turn into a vicious black panther when aroused—perhaps literally, perhaps not. Here we follow her husband, several years later, having married his co-worker following the Irena’s death. The two have an introverted but precocious six-year-old daughter who is haunted by Irena and drawn to the company of an elderly woman who lives with her grown daughter, who the woman can no longer recognize as anything but a threatening intruder.
While the original was a thriller, this one is a layered family drama from the perspective of a child, with supernatural elements that play more like fantasy than horror. It’s the first film from Robert Wise, who’d go on to direct movies as diverse West Side Story, The Day the Earth Stood Still, and The Haunting, and the whole thing has an air of melancholy beauty that makes entirely clear the caliber of filmmaker he’d soon become.
Why do I say it was ill-conceived then? Imagine showing up for a sequel to a movie about a sexually stunted panther lady and encountering this reflective childhood fantasia. I imagine that must’ve amused Val Lewton and company, but maybe not audiences.
Where to stream: Digital rental
