10 Movies Released Way Too Late To Make Sense

In 2008, veteran auteur Francis Ford Coppola admitted that he'd never intended to make the first sequel to his 1972 classic The Godfather, let alone a third movie, claiming he'd been 'seduced' by Paramount into making The Godfather Part II.

Having struck yet more critical and commercial gold with Part II in 1974, Coppola adamantly refused to work on a sequel to the sequel throughout the remaining 1970s and most of the 1980s. As far as he was concerned, there was no more to say. The story of Michael Corleone was complete.

When Coppola finally relented, it wasn't for artistic reasons: his Zoetrope Studios was bankrupt. He was in deep trouble, and hadn’t had a hit in nearly a decade.

The result, released 16 years after Part II, is brilliant in patches, because even mediocre Coppola is still Coppola. It’s also wordy, histrionic and rushed (Coppola was obligated to deliver the film for release by Christmas 1990 and it showed: when Winona Ryder was forced to pull out, he cast his inexperienced daughter Sofia in her place largely because it would save time).

Worse, it simply didn’t make sense to make it in the first place. After 16 years of trying, it wasn’t the movie Paramount had wanted (a new chapter in their operatic gangster saga), and had Coppola not been in such financial peril he wouldn’t have touched it with a barge pole.

The belated threequel, made purely for the money by all parties involved, is still considered one of the worst conceived sequels of all time by many critics. After all that time, Coppola still couldn’t find a decent story left to tell about Michael Corleone.