We all have our favourite films, and then we all have our favourite films that have been ruined, or at the very least tarnished, by the spate of inferior sequels that have followed. While it’s easy to just try and ignore the influx of studio-inspired greed that creeps around great films, one can’t help but think that the general perception of the original film is somewhat coloured by the lesser quality of what comes after, even subconsciously.
So observe our angry rundown of 10 classic films that were irrevocably ruined by the greedy tripe that followed in the wake of their success.
10. Police Academy
Alright, I know what you’re thinking – since when was Police Academy thought of as a good movie? And that’s exactly my point; the answer is, well, not at least since 1994, when Warner Bros. released their seventh and, to date, final entry, which was well and truly the final nail in the coffin for the beleaguered franchise. The first film, however, is a giddy guilty pleasure, an extremely crude and crass farce that scored huge with audiences – even if it didn’t fare so well with critics – netting $81m against a $4m budget.
However, not a single sequel reached this same success, and each one, in fact, grossed less than the ones before it. Sure, there are a few classic moments throughout – namely in Police Academy 5: Assignment Miami Beach, when Tackleberry points his gun at a shark, causing it to promptly swim off in fear – but generally speaking, the sequels were horrid, misjudged efforts that somehow made it to number seven despite each outdoing the previous film’s badness, both critically and commercially.
Number 7 is a film so unimaginably awful that instead of talking about how Christopher Lee and Ron Perlman thoroughly embarrassed themselves, I’ll just include a montage of the film’s few good moments, all coming at the hands of, unsurprisingly, Michael Winslow.
And of course, if you talk to most people nowadays, they’ll just groan at how “the Police Academy films sucked”, and on the law of averages, they’re not wrong. But that first film really deserves more respect than that. Still, it’s their own fault in the end…
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11 Comments
Best use of its New York setting? Um its Philadelphia
Standard knowledge! Someone must’ve changed Wikipedia.
Right. And the potentially worst sequel is yet to come – if Ridley Scott will indeed realize another “Blade Runner” movie. Horrifying thought!
PS “2010″ was also a pretty bad sequel imho. Well, there are so many
The Hangover 2 must be considered one of the most painful sequels of all, it completely spoilt what was a genuinely funny and stand out comedy. Another case of cashing in on success resulting in souring the memory of a great film.
The Rambo sequels are great. You have to understand them as taking a different direction, as more conventional 80s action flicks. The first is more a survival thriller.
the Nightmare on Elm Street series I blame on on person: Robert Shaye!! if you know the back story of the whole Nightmare franchise, you’ll know that this series was the cash cow and help build New Line Cinema into a production company. Nevertheless, Shaye could’ve prevented this series from becoming a more sarcastic,dark humored film if he picked a director for the sequel that actually respected Craven’s idea and direction of Krueger. Jack Sholder, the director of Nightmare on Elm Street 2, stated that he wasn’t a big fan of the first movie, so I take that as he was going to destroy the series by making the second the worst sequel ever.
Saw is a movie that I”ll never acknowledge cause my sister and I were so upset by the ending of the first movie, the rest were dead to me. Also, to me the movie is nothing more than a tale of a bitter old man that’s dying, who feels that people who don’t appreciate life, deserve to be punished so grotesquely.
What about Highlander!!
Fantastic first film, ruined by several pointless sequels and a TV series that ignored what happened in the film.
Now we have talk of a ‘reboot’
I will stick to the 80′s Cheese cult classic that is the Original.
There can be only one.
Good call with Highlander.
I would also add to the list Robocop
what about superman? superman 4 is a terrible mess, direct to video 1984 style somehow landing in movie theaters. and eddie murphy with two franchises: beverly hills cop and even worse another 48 hrs. the list is endless…
A film may have bad and/or inferior sequels, but it still doesn’t ruin how great or how enjoyable the original film remains. The original ‘Star Wars’ trilogy (theatrical versions) is still utterly brilliant popcorn entertainment three decades on, ‘The Matrix’ is still one of the most thrilling and intelligent and original sci-fi action movies of all time (the sequels could obviously have been better but can’t simply be dismissed as mere cash-ins), and both ‘Rocky’ and ‘Rocky II’ form a truly touching and genuinely rousing saga to this day… it’s not whether a film gets a sequel or not, it’s whether those sequels have anything new or substantial to add to the story.
where are the jaws sequels those horrid kiddie movies that were Batman Forever and Batman & Robin