15 Laziest Movie Sequels Of All Time

7. Taken 2 (2012)

20th Century Fox

Pierre Morel's Taken became a surprise worldwide hit in early 2009, earning over $225m against a $25m budget and establishing Liam Neeson as cinema's newest action star just shy of his 60th birthday. With the awesomely-named yet creatively limited Olivier Megaton taking over behind the camera, the sequel rehashed the premise of the original to disappointing effect.

In what surely caused plenty of high-fives around the table when they came up with the idea, Taken 2 sees Neeson's Bryan Mills and his ex-wife kidnapped this time, with his daughter now the one having to use her particular set of skills to rescue her parents. After establishing a tenuous connection to the first movie via the prologue's funeral for the nameless Albanian gangsters, the sequel sets out to capitalise on the popularity of that film by following an almost beat-for-beat story, except it is nowhere near as enjoyable.

People went to see Taken 2 for the sole purpose of watching Liam Neeson be a bad-ass, not to see him tied up in a basement getting his daughter to throw grenades around Istanbul. Nonetheless, based on the goodwill towards the first movie Taken 2 earned over $375m at the box office, despite being an inferior and over-familiar follow-up.

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