Top 10 Sequels That Aren’t As Bad As Everyone Says
Thursday, July 1st, 2010
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More Horror Trivia!
This time we look at a new trivia book entitled “The Amazing Colossal Book of Horror Trivia”. The categories include, Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Nosferatu, Dracula (1931), Horror of Dracula, From Dusk Till Dawn, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein and Ghostbusters. That’s it for Trivia Tuesday. Maybe we’ll do more [...]
A Talk With Bert I. Gordon
At Monster Bash, we caught up with Bert I. Gordon, director of many monster movies such as Earth Vs. the Spider (1958) and The Amazing Colossal Man (1957), just to name a couple examples. His autobiography has just been finished and can be purchased (autographed) from his website BertIGordon.com.
Godzilla Trivia
Trivia Tuesday! Who can resist Godzilla trivia?
Top 10 Shitty Shatner Movies
William Shatner has been known to lift the presence of some bad movies. Here’s Cinemassacre’s Top 10 picks of movies that we wouldn’t give a damn about, had it not been for the Shat!
A Talk With the Living Dead Dudes
Interviews with the cast from Night of the Living Dead. Bill Hinzman (cemetery zombie), John Russo (screenwriter, tire iron zombie) and George Kosana (The Sheriff himself!)
Werewolf Trivia
It’s Trivia Tuesday! This time we look at the Werewolf chapter of the trivia book.
Mike Nelson Interview
Mike Nelson was the head writer and host of Mystery Science Theater 3000. He is now part of the online hilarious movie mocking site Rifftrax. The people at Rifftrax were very nice reaching out to me and setting up this phone interview with the man himself. Also, special thanks to Matt Conant for helping me figure [...]
Mummy Trivia
After finishing the Frankenstein chapter, we move to the Mummy trivia.
I double-checked: The Mummy’s Curse (1944) takes place in 1997, according to IMDB.
Crystal Skull- Aliens in Indiana is as acceptable to me as Beastmaster: through the portal of time. All fantasy but pretty far off its roots. And as far fetched as the first movies were nothing nothing needed CGI to make it happen so even if it was impossible it looked like it could. CGI really brought the movie down a few notches itself in my opinion. If they could have found a way to use real ants in the end scenes it would have been alot more believable. And yes the refrigerator scene was just out of place and way over the top. Even as I watched it i thought to myself “WTF??” which nothing in the first movies ever made me think. Maybe because surviving the center of a nuclear blast is so much more overboard then simply falling out of a plane with an inflatable boat and landing in snow. So when i get the WTF feeling too many times in a movie it really ruins the big picture for me.
Rocky V- I pretty much agree there. Definately the black sheep of the series but I still enjoyed it. I pretty much watch the Rocky series from 1-4 once every year or two but part 5 i’ll throw in on its own here and there. But i will say this, sometimes violence is the only answer.
Terminator 3- Im suprised no one realised the Terminator from T2 lost his hand in that giant gear and they didnt melt it so they could have spawned part 3 from there although if they did i suppose it woulda felt TOO much like T2. Yes T2 had its humor but they held back at least a little, in fact they took some humorous parts out of the original, like where he’s trying to smile, probably because it was just too much for the type of movie it is. But T3 just didnt hold back on the humor and even went as far as making fun of the bad ass parts of the first 2 movies, completely ruining its chances of rekindling that feeling of “Dont ‘F’ with my bad-ass invinsable self”. And a hot chick terminator babe who can adjust her breast size at will just didnt cause any fear like the original Schwartzenegger terminator or even Robert Patrick was pretty scary.
Ghostbusters 2- I dont really have much to say about this one. I guess I can agree for the most part but I guess i feel that if you cant come a little closer to the level of ‘charm and delicate humor’ the second time around then the movie probably just aint worth making. Seen it a few times just to watch ghost busters doing something different but it just does not have a lasting impression on me at all.
Gremlins 2- Only reason i watch the first one anymore is because its a classic to me. Second one just seemed to be trying too hard to make a buck off of something that was good on its own so it never because a classic.
Psycho 2- haha no comment, never seen any of them.
Back to the Future 3- I can take it as part of trilogy pretty easy. I guess I liked it because it was basically the same story all over again but in such a different setting it seemed brand new. And I enjoy watching the character interaction between Marty, Doc and even Biff, there’s great chemistry between them all. And you feel like you know each character so well because youve seen their history and future. But yeah Claire was annoying LOL.
Spiderman 3- Enjoyable one time movie that i didnt expect much too begin with. I go into Marvel comic movies with that kind of attitude because I was never a fan of any of the superhero comics and none of the movies are good enough to make it to my home collection. Just big budget shallow eye candy to me.
Halloween 3- I remember catching scenes of this movie when i was a kid and it scared the living shit out of me, especially the scene with snakes coming out of the pumpkin mask. Didnt realize til much MUCH later that it was part of the Halloween series. I watched it when i was older to see if what i remembered was actually that scary and I had a hard time making myself finish it because it seemed so corney.
I just wanna say that at the end, when James says “This is cinemassacre saying, think for yourself!” Is Funny, Because Almost every single comment On this page is Agreeing with your thought on The movie. I mean, I for 1, Did not completly agree. I Didnt see the Point of the Alien. I mean YES he did belong In it, The facts add up and everything, But i mean, It just didnt look or feal good. But Come on, If you all Agree With James, Your Honestly Being Ironic. For god sakes people Think for yourself. No disrespect to anyone who agreed with james, i saw his point. No offence met to be shown to ANYONE.
Good Top10, James!
I´ve never seen PSYCHO 2 and HALLOWEEN 3, but I´ll do it some day.
My favourite is Spider-Man 3 becaue it I liked it more than the first movie which I liked more than the second movie.
The best sequel at this time is IRON MAN 2. Downey Jr. rocks!!!
I’ll have to disagree with your points on Indy and T3 (and be a bit surprised Alien3 didn’t make this list… people hate it for being nihilistic, but considering what the characters had gone through and what sort of a world they live in, could there really have been any other sort of resolution?).
The reasons I so greatly dislike The Crystal Skull mostly boil down to it being so very poorly made compared to the previous entries. The other Indy movies had a sense of scale. They felt grand, epic adventures largely due to on-location filming or grandious mat paintings. The adventures were tangible. With the Crystal Skull, everything feels very twee. The same sense of claustrophobia that shadowed the Star Wars prequels (and some of the horrible writing) clouds any sense of enjoyment I might have had over how momentous it is that Indy meets actual extraterrestrials. There’s no sense of danger and no sense of adventure. The CG just kills all of it. Which is puzzling since as Pixar has shown us, you can do CG and do it engagingly and realistically enough that people wouldn’t be pointing at the screen screaming “FAKE!” every time they see a monkey or an ant or an alien. Had the plasticy feel of the backgrounds, sets and CG characters been removed, I might have overlooked the Shia leBeouf character, Indy being very very old and the dummo writing that defies logic. I don’t mind a movie being illogical as compared to real life, but it should at least be consistent with its own internal logic.
As far as T3 goes… the movie’s saving grace is the final few minutes where they really start the end of the world. Everything up until that point is purely padding and as someone who didn’t go see this in the movies, the action scenes feel very tired and worn. We’ve done this before. We’ve done this a whole decade’s worth before in the 80s. Sure there are a lot of explosions, but again, we’ve seen explosions before and they pretty much always look the same. I have a hard time remembering anything about the movie up until those final few minutes. This is generally not a good thing. Big trucks and a few good actors wont save a movie if everything else in it is made of hot air. And that’s exactly what T3 is: it’s a short film about the end of the world inflated with hot air to fill 2 hours. They could’ve done it as a short film (15-20min.) to run before Salvation and nothing would’ve been lost.
I didn’t really know people hated Gremlins 2 though. I always preferred it over the first one because it’s tonally pure comedy. Maybe that’s why people don’t really appreciate it? There’s nothing even remotely horrific about it.
Now the way I see Indy 4: The old indiana jones movies played in the 30’s, and these movies payed tribute to the movies that where popular in the 30’s; the adventure films. Part 4 is set 20 years later (they had no choice there) and also it pays tribute to the movies popular in the 50’s, which where the alien invasion movies. So to me it totally makes sense for indy 4 to be about aliens. Where i think they might have gone wrong is the way they disguised the alien thing the entire movie as a religious artefact, making it seem like they didn’t want to let us know it where aliens. Also i hated the south park episode for the way they portrayed spielberg. But James’ point of them making fun of the audience as well is interesting. For the rest of the movies, havent seen most of them, but Gremlins 2 is a movie i loved when i sa it, never knew people hated it!
top 2 comments= 2 long.
Excellent job James! You really know your stuff. I haven’t seen Gremlins 2 in 20 years and you have me wanting to go back and watch it again. I don’t believe I have ever watched Halloween III and you have me wanting to check it out without the baggage of it being a non-Michael Myers film.
Thank you!
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The Lost World: I absolutely loved this movie it was so fun to watch, I liked it more than the first, but that’s just my opinion.
Ghostbusters 2: It wasn’t as good as the first but it was fun to watch the Ghostbusters down and out trying to rise to the top again it was good.
T3: I loved the action, the story really sucked to me though. I can’t help but stack this up next to T2, in that aspect it sucks. In its own merit though the movie was a thrill ride.
Gremlins 2, Psycho 2, Back to the Future 3, Rocky V, and Halloween 3: I have never seen these.
Spider-man 3: A great spectacle, all characters were good and in depth, except for venom. The fight scenes were awesome, and Spideys struggle with himself is a good idea. I just didn’t like venom.
Indy 4: I loved this movie it brought me back to when I was little and my dad showed me those movies. The aliens were a good idea. It’s not nearly good as 1 or 3 but it’s better than Temple of Doom. Mutt is better than an annoying Asian boy and a really bitchy woman. Overall it was fun to watch and I personally loved it.
These are all just my opinions, so don’t get angry.
Indy 4 is, and will always be, The Fate of Atlantis.
If anything, Crystal Skull is number 5. Fate of Atlantis even feels more like an Indy title. The story is better and chronologically it’s also number 4.
I’m still a bit disappointed that they didn’t make the Fate of Atlantis movie, although I do agree that it’s not as bad as everyone claims.
I still haven’t seen a number 5 of any movie series that I thought was really good though… When movie series get up to that amount of movies they sort of stop being about the quality.
T3 didn’t feel like a Terminator film and they turned John into a right wimp in that movie. Falls of his bike and gets captured by a female vet for christ sake. He’s supposed to be the saviour of mankind!
Spider-man 3 what’s quite horrible too, I mean, Topher Grace as Venom? Worst miscasting since George Clooney as Batman or Denise Richards as a scientist. Seeing Spider-man still crying over MJ was very, very, very fucking annoying too.
Glad Halloween 3 was on the list though, I liked the film and it freaked me out when the ad (without that scary music) came on and snakes came out of the eye-holes of the boys mask; that scared the shit out of me.
Should have had Predator 2 on the list though; everyone hates it but I think it’s excellent. Ok, it can’t touch the first one, but I really liked it. Besides, Bill Paxton and Gary Busey are excellent in it.
i saw spider man 3 and thought it was awsome it wasnt utill i got on cinemassacre that i found out people hated it well i guees it becuse of my short entonton span
Funny how you say “think for yourself” at the end, when I couldn’t agree more with you (about all the movies that I know of in this top 10), but rest assured, you didn’t make my opinion, that’s already the one that I had, more or less.
As a matter of fact, I liked Rocky V more than you, even if compared to the other films it’s not as good, I found the story quite interresting, and wasn’t that disappointed.
trust me ollstufffan halloween III will make u wanna cry your eyes out i know i expierienced it before i didn’t watch tv for a whole month and yet halloween III still haunts me till this very day even when i’m asleep its like being in a nightmare having to watch that movie in my dreams every night and day and even my coffe breaks (even though i’m to young to drink coffe) it still feels like its watching me instead of me watching it anyway don’t watch halloween III cause *gulp* if u watch it it will scar u for life cause of how terrible it is but i still hope ROB ZOMBIE remakes HALLOWEEN III by the way i like his last name *ZOMBIE* now thats a name that puts a smile on my face (literally)
I personally feel that Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull suffered the same fate as the Star Wars prequels. It was a over-hyped film that didn’t live up to the public’s unreachable expectation only difference is that Indiana Jones 4 was watchable while the Star Wars prequels weren’t