What is it about movie sequels that just turns studios into blithering idiots? Aside from the fact that the vast majority of sequels are movies nobody really needs or wants, they often also end up with laughably awful titles, as evidenced no better than with the announcement this past week that the upcoming fifth Terminator film is to be named Terminator: Genisys. As cynical movie studios increasingly rely more on sequels to rake in the cash, it's no surprise that we're hearing more and more terrible sequel titles coming down the pike, and that's before we even get to talking about the movies themselves, which not-so-coincidentally also happen to be pretty terrible for the most part. Unsurprisingly, a healthy chunk of our selections for this list came from the horror genre, because it simply has a disproportionate number of sequels, and the usually cheap, redundant nature of these movies means that the studios aren't really fussed about coming up with a title that doesn't make us laugh hysterically: they're probably going to make money regardless, right? Still, they could have put just a little more thought into these 13 awful movie sequel titles, which for the most part sound like they were randomly generated by a computer rather than actually concocted by someone with a fully functioning brain stem. Did we miss any infamously awful movie sequel titles? Let us know in the comments!
Honourable Mention: 5nal Destination
Before we get onto those horrible titles that actually made it to cinemas, let's begin with one that was smartly scrapped because the studio actually realised how mind-bogglingly terrible it was. Around a year before the release of Final Destination 5, it was announced that the title had been renamed to "5nal Destination", in a head-smackingly terrible effort to make it seem more "hip" and less like a perfunctory sequel. The Internet abuse quickly fed out, with many noting that the word "5nal" looked too similar to the word "anal", which eventually caused Warner to quietly bin the title and simply return to the unimaginative yet less-ridiculous Final Destination 5. Thankfully for them, the title changed occurred early enough that most casual audiences never heard about it, and if nothing else, this is a testament to the beauty of both sounding off an idea early, and doing it over social media.