12 Movie Sequels That Prove You Should Never Go Back

What It Billed As

John McClane is back and he's balder, more cynical and just generally more McClane than ever, taking on terrorists again with a gaggle of new sidekicks and a nefarious villain to take down. Basically, all you'd want from a Die Hard movie.

What It Actually Was

Not a Die Hard movie. This is just a generic angry bald man fighting bad guys movie: it could (and probably should) have had Jason Statham in the lead, because the mangled version of John McClane is nothing like he used to be.

It wasn't to the reductive level of Die Hard 5 quite yet (which fatally repositions him as a supporting character in his own bloody franchise), but it so badly fudges the spirit of McClane that it's impossible not to see it as a dressed up generic actioner with a big name brand slapped on it. Production line quality tells all the way through it.

So instead of having one of the greatest well-rounded trilogies of all time (which poetically ended after the first villain's brother sought revenge), we end up with a bloated franchise that realised it could get away with dilution and nobody would care. Shameful.