4. Kick-Ass 2: Balls To The Wall (2013)
The success of Kick-Ass was helped in part by the state of the market it was released into - it was one of the first and most successful post-super hero movies, which deconstructed the genre to a certain extent, with a self-conscious tongue-in-cheek approach to certain elements, such as Nic Cage's exceptional showing as Big Daddy. In order for Kick-Ass to work, its audience had to be at least partially sick of the genre, and willing to pick it apart enough to make room for a new vision of that world, but unfortunately for the sequel, the recent successes of The Avengers, The Dark Knight Rises, X-Men: First Class and The Amazing Spider-Man have made sure everyone is firmly in love with the genre again. That doesn't necessarily mean no-one will go and see the sequel, it's just more likely that the comedy side of it won't work as well, and the new director will have to ramp everything up a notch, leaving the film in distinct danger of being over-egged. That suspicion isn't exactly extinguished by the inclusion of Jim Carrey in the role that is clearly designed to fill the gap left by Big Daddy's exit in the first film. Not only that it's directed by Jeff Wadlow, whose major achievement so far has been the awful Never Back Down back in 2008, which was panned for good reason on its release. To me, it seems a baffling decision to replace a director of the calibre of Matthew Vaughn with a relatively untried option for a film that is bound to attract controversy from the outset, thanks to the original, and which has a steep incline to face to recapture the success of the first film.