10 Dreariest Film Sequels Released In 2016 (So Far)

From the director of Step Up 2: The Streets and GI Joe: Retaliation comes another sequel that depending upon your taste is either lightweight escapism or a load of immediately forgettable tosh. Given the plot involves the main characters being dispatched to Macau where they battle Daniel Radcliffe’s villain over a microchip, you’ll probably come down on the side of the latter.

The trouble with illusion is that the magician can only explain so many of his tricks before he starts sounding like a Scooby Doo villain, explaining how he used a hologram to chase visitors away from his gold mine. That’s how it goes in the movie, with a sequence where Jesse Eisenberg appears to cause the rain to stop in mid-downpour, which is then explained away with a rain machine and strobe lights.

If the rain didn’t look like a digital effect in the first place, that might’ve been a nifty trick. An alternative title might’ve been They Didn’t Believe It And You Won’t Too.