There are two kinds of straight-to-DVD sequels in existence. Either they appear off the back of a fairly successful first film and want to cash in on its predecessor's success, such as the Aladdin sequel Aladdin 2: Return of Jafar (which we can thank for starting this revolution, as now no Disney film is safe). Alternately they are sequels to already pretty poor films and are just digging a deeper hole. The Pokemon films ruined my childhood and I'm sure plenty others. The benefits of releasing a film directly into the DVD market are attractive: lower distribution costs, smaller budgets, usually a lower talent budget and most importantly, it only needs to shift a decent volume of DVDs to break even. Especially when sequels reach the double figures (The Land Before Time, the original produced by Spielberg and Lucas, is now onto 13), the dollar signs take over from artistic credit. I've often heard people say 'Well that's gonna be a load of **** because none of the people from the first film are in it'. Well, even those that do hold onto original cast members aren't safe. Whilst the Die Hard series kept its momentum and Aliens equalled the original in its thrills, Ocean's Thirteen will always be a massive disappointment. The system involves these steps (recommend taking notes): 1) Find the 'thing' that made the first film successful. This could be ANYTHING. No matter how important it is to the original, you can use it. No one will care. 2) Exploit it until there's nothing left. A hollow shell of a film. A dark abyss which sucks the soul out of everyone watching it Done Here are the films that followed these two steps, adding little artistic content along the way...