10 Great Characters Ruined By Terrible Sequels

A Nightmare on Elm Street helmer Wes Craven reinvigorated the flagging slasher subgenre in the mid-nineties with his clever, meta Scream series, the first horror flicks to discuss their own genre within the film itself (well, there’s always Rolfe Kanesky’s debut There’s Nothing Out There, but that’s a debate for another day). The films combined horror and self-referential comedy with verve and panache, and outside of offing poor Randy the second in the series was almost as well-loved as the first.

However cracks began to appear when screenwriter Kevin Williamson departed the third film in order to focus on other projects and Ehren Kruger was drafted in as a replacement—you know, Ehren Kruger of The Ring 2 fame?

As expected, the third film was a disaster, and this was never more obvious than in its woeful mistreatment of the Cotton Weary character.

A stoic, soft-spoken figure ably portrayed by Leiv Schreiber, Cotton goes from suspect to unlikely anti-hero in Scream 2. However, by the opening scene of the third instalment he’s an insufferable, philandering talk show host capitalising on his fame, a move which is clearly designed to make his demise less tragic but instead makes the character retroactively seem sleazy and means said death carries no emotional weight.