Sequels that are better than the first ones.

regarding alien/s. well firstly alien3 and resurrection suck ass, so to speak, so sequelitis is definitely evident. but, although i really rate alien, think it breaks new ground, love watching it etc. i can't stop myself from loving aliens more. yes yes, i know it is a gung ho action flick and loses to a certain extent the tension and suspense of its predecessor, but damn it - and this goes doubly for the special edition - it is just soooo entertaining. i think that it has aged slightly better as well, but it has a good head start. i don't only measure the achievments of a film by how much i enjoy it of course, but as for which is the better film....

three colours anyone? do they even count as sequels, as the whole affair was premeditated.

how on earth could i have forgotten the road warrior! blinding film. i love thunderdome to, but i think mm is better. doesn't mean that i don't watch thunderdome more often though, a seriously quotable film.

robert de niro running along rooftops and wrapping guns in towels.

I also prefer 'the empire strikes back' to 'a new hope'.

the new old one looks awful. or. not good. prequels can work. I should think. but.

Firsted: Curse of the Cat People, For A Few Dollars More, Desperado, Toy Story 2
Seconded: Addams Family Values
Thirded: T2, um Gremlins 2

Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster > Godzilla vs. King Kong.

More recently Blade 2 splattered the first one with that super vamp thing Joss Whedon copied.

I agree with this. II is exactly the same as I, except he wins. I like III, when he's taken over Hulk Hogan's knee like a pansy.

And I second the vote for the Bond films.

How about the Benji movies?

And damn, now I'm craving a sushi dinner followed by a viewing of Lethal Weapon II.

They have a different sequence for the TV version.

Toy Story 2 seconded, as is Drunken Master II.

They better hurry up before 1984 ends. Oh.

SUPERMAN II

my man. poster of it in my bathroom.
u hear about the 'green' edition anthony? some hardcore '..2' fans are putting together a version without dick lester's scenes, extra footage they found etc.

heh he probably doesn't even come on this board anynore.

other votes:

'lethal wepaon 2' yes agreed.
'empire strikes back' obviously
'naked gun 2' also.

"Admit you love Superman II, inhabitants of planet Houston, and I will alow you to live."

Here's a graph that shows how much better or worse sequels were as compared to the original:

http://www.saasta.fi/saasta/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/sequel-map-1-4.png

I don't get the idea on this thread that Babe: Pig In The City is superior. Maybe if what you like in a movie is wacky set design and the potential for drinking games based on 'spot the background goth' it is the better movie.

After the Thin Man

I don't get the idea on this thread that Babe: Pig In The City is superior. Maybe if what you like in a movie is wacky set design and the potential for drinking games based on 'spot the background goth' it is the better movie.

― Publicidad de Sexo (Abbbottt), Sunday, April 3, 2011 1:44 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark

otm! this opinion has always bugged me. i mean, it's nice to look at, but it just doesnt have the ~*HeArT*~ of the original

I hear The Substitute 2 is even better than The Substitute!

Saw this thread and came to post Gremlins 2 only to see that was what prompted the thing to begin with. Anyway Gremlins 2 for all time. The Gremlins musical number of NY, NY at the end is a thing of beauty.

one time I was on a road trip and someone in the car spent like an hour summarizing babe: pig in the city

Okay, here's what I got!

Wrath of Khan, and actually, every subsequent film in the franchise, isn't a Star Trek film at all. Only ST: The Motion Picture really captures the sort of sixties era Sci-Fi that the original series offered, and despite its interminable masturbatory drydock sequence, is the only ST with any sense of wonder. Also the best soundtrack, by far.

Generally agree, but including Exorcist 2 is an op of the most chall variety.

I think Kael is a fan too.

Agree ST:II is Moby Dick in space, but Star Trek IV is the Star Trekkiest (and is about saving literal whales rather than hunting metaphorical ones)!

Surprised nobody mentioned Romero's 'Dawn of the Dead'

They are all star treks tho any other position is extremely silly

Alfred, why do you think Temple of Doom is superior to Raiders? I'm genuinely interested why you'd think so.
(I certainly don't think it's a bad film but I would side with the general perception that Raiders & Last Crusade are the better movies.)

Some great superhero sequels:
Captain America: The Winter Soldier; Raimi's Spider-Man 2 and X2 are three of my favourite superhero movies/movies in general.
Third Cap (Civil War) is also up there.
And I'm also quite in awe of the second Avengers (Age of Ultron) & the (more divisive) third Iron Man.

Because it's vulgar and abhorred by the PCSJW crowd?

I like Temple, and it coincides right with Spielberg's Poltergeist/Gremlins mean streak, but the only case I could make for it being better than Raiders is that it's so loud and garish it stands out as a novelty. Musical intro is peak 'Berg, though.

I've never enjoyed Godfather 2 - flashback aside, it doesn't do much more than restate the last fifteen minutes of the first movie, with slightly more depressing totality. And the Lansky analogue is boring.

Iron Man 3 is much more fun the first two, how did it get to be divisive? Is it the Kingsley stuff?

the final sequence of killings in Godfather 2 very deliberately plays on the contrast with the first movie

I mean, how? He kills people who are closer to him, sure. But it feels like Michael changes a lot less over the course of 2 than 1 - in the first movie it's surprising, in the second movie it's predictable.

I don't deny it's a sad, beautiful movie! But I always feel like shrugging at the end.

I think in the first movie the killings are almost necessary or inevitable - we believe Michael believes he is doing this to protect the family, to begin a move towards legitimacy - that he has to kill or be killed. obviously this also marks the beginning of his corruption but there is a brutal nobility about it. by the end of 2 we're in no doubt that the darkness has swallowed him up, and that none of the killings are really justifiable, they're petty, they're acts of tyrannical vengeance.

Alfred, why do you think Temple of Doom is superior to Raiders? I'm genuinely interested why you'd think so.

I don't dislike Raiders. Temple is closer to the spirit of those Saturday afternoon specials that Spielberg loved as a kid.

Also, I may be the only human being who likes Kate Capshaw's idiot, and in some way Spielberg's treatment of her is more honest than Karen Allen's spunk in ROTLA; I mean, he turns Marion into another INDYYYY-yelling willow.

*than how he treated Karen Allen's, etc

So having Kate Capshaw a screaming idiot from the start is an improvement? That's one way to look at it.

in keeping with the times, man

she's a nightclub singer ffs

i suspect Alfred has seen 1.5 Star Trek TV episodes

Khan has a certain submarine-movie resemblance to "Balance of Terror" tho

I've seen 12.5 episodes, all in the last five years.

that's two and a half episodes a year, maths fans

Wrath of Khan, and actually, every subsequent film in the franchise, isn't a Star Trek film at all. Only ST: The Motion Picture really captures the sort of sixties era Sci-Fi that the original series offered, and despite its interminable masturbatory drydock sequence, is the only ST with any sense of wonder. Also the best soundtrack, by far.

This is wrong - as noted IV and VI are *very* much in the spirit of TOS: structure, characterization, themes everything.

even V -- just that it's a bad episode

but really all the films are sequels to the TV show

Well, the most recent ones remake ST as an action series.

even V -- just that it's a bad episode

lol sad but true

'Bad' is a very mild descriptor of V.

Only ST: The Motion Picture really captures the sort of sixties era Sci-Fi that the original series offered, and despite its interminable masturbatory drydock sequence, is the only ST with any sense of wonder.

You vastly overestimate a movie that's the equivalent of being stuck in a Best Buy electronics section staring at TVs for three hours.

Wrath of Khan actually has a good script with crackling dialogue and, uh, performances.

worked better on a big screen xp

also i hate to use "fan service" but ST:TMP engaged in it massively, being the first blockbuster-budget adap of a rinky-dink TV show

TMP is a really weird movie. It has it's charms and I am naturally forgiving of epic abstract space visuals on a big screen, but the pacing and the editing and the lack of story is really strange. I mean, there's the excessively gory transporter accident early on (for no apparent reason), there's all these shots of people looking at screens (just to remind you that the cast still exists, I suppose), the set/costume design is all in drab grays, etc. There were just a lot of bad filmmaking decisions involved.

I've never been able to stay awake through TMP.

Wrath of Khan is a great film and like Empire Strikes Back it being the sequel benefits from not having to do the required storytelling beats a first film must have to introduce the characters and world to an audience. the work can now deconstruct these themes, so we are seeing Obi Wan early in Empire as a ghost, a dead man, and watch the entire crew of the Enterprise die right at the start of Khan, itself a simulation. the filmmaking and formal presentation is expertly well done for both films. shot and pacing recalling classic naval battles, the casting of shadows across these ships. the type of movies made w b roll stock bought from military tests, etc. ie. that tracking shot when they are opening the torpedo bay is balletic. certainly the scenes of them dueling in space w the shit over the eerie backing were great callbacks to the old submarine naval films, updated for psychedelic space age. Spock's sacrifice is one of the most amazing acting scenes in all of pop film, it really brings the waterworks. with Spock they really pull off a space Jesus. then the space funeral with "Amazing Grace" to cap it off was really tasteful and classic-feeling. plus there is the whole horror villain stuff w Khan himself, the film god Riccardo Montalbahn, torturing the captured Trek crewmembers, commandeering his Diamond Dogs-style space pirates. these are the Hyper timelines for both series. both are able to take the original idea, the nuclear kernel of Star Trek/Wars and spin it to be the best pulp representation of the pre-established world ever. Darth Vader doesn't just choke a guy out, he kills him over a video screen. the film is a classic.

Temple OTOH is a piece of shock rock trash, v much in the mold of maybe Pulp Fiction or other grind-house worshipping. the brownface and stereotyping of "savagery" is pretty bad and a little too old school imo. it is the edgy Indiana Jones. i always find Raider more awesome, more confident in itself, more mysterious. that music when they are talking about Abner and the Ark, this occultist, and taking this real-world battle of right and wrong and literalizing it through the use of the Ark as maguffin and the whole OT ending. Temple was an archeology of a non-existent racist trope of what "Occidental" religion is like from back in the 19th century. i don't think this gives it nearly the gravity or sense of reality that Raiders does by using both a real world villain and a real world religious tradition to base it on.

Marion may have been a trope at times but she was also doing things like smacking Indy in the head w a full length mirror. that intro where she runs the bar in Nepal and is drinking a huge barfly under the table is incredible. then there are her scenes conning her way out of the nazi tent, getting French archeologist-turned-collaborator Belloq drunk and pulling a knife on him. not saying hers isn't a problematic role at times but i really like her portrayal and it's a pretty awesome multidimensionally iconic character. Willie felt one-note in comparison, just constantly screaming or whining, and was written that way, she never really has agency in anything she is doing. tbh it takes me out of the movie a bit, it feels like i am watching Scooby Doo. were they trying for a Valley Girl type here, cash in on that 80s trend? i like Marion. she is knocking people out with cookery, she is starting up airplanes, she is more self-actualized. she also isn't forced into reaching her hand into a squirming bug-filled wall. Temple is mean spirited to its characters, it makes it harder to watch.

Marion starts the airplane inadvertently and yells INDY

oh wait i meant Temple is a "Orientalist" trope. the intellectual stages of colonialism and imperialism, a lot of archaeology was done w these biases, there is a tendency to exoticize, to do fake anthopology. there is something to be said for archaeology's dual history with entertainment. in medieval times kings and the wealthy would hired people to go explore, plunder, report back wonderful stories to hear, so embellishing the truth was in vogue.

Marion starts the airplane inadvertently and yells INDY

well yeah this is a b movie after all she is going to spend half the movie doing this.

I think Capshaw finds variants in her one-dimensional character (I like Marion but like I wrote earlier she gets too much credit).

the film god Riccardo Montalbahn, torturing the captured Trek crewmembers, commandeering his Diamond Dogs-style space pirates.

lol @ Diamond Dogs

Indy is plundering his hemisphere's religious past in the 1st and 3rd movies. he's a cultural tourist for the others.

I like Montalban's explanation but he softsoaps Khan by attributing his obsession to the death of his wife. Khan hates Kirk, period, and he loves it, it gives his life meaning and purpose.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxxSzt49cYw

it is crazy that they are never onscreen at the same time, the whole thing is done by them talking over video screens. it really befits their the OTT performances. maybe this adds a layer of menace to it all...?

and Kirk is so unworthy of the hate, in the same way a man or woman we used to love now looks...pathetic.

it should be added that it's also a very, very good idea for a movie. i can't think of a better tie-in to a previous storyline, the way it picks up the thread.

it also reminds how bereft of ideas Star Trek: Into Darkness is.

meaning a storyline that has been seemingly long-discarded and forgotten, it's just such a clever device albeit very simple on the surface.

TOS is littered with those kinds of potential plot threads

so many episodes where they come down and fuck up a planet and then are like "gee, who knows what this place will be like 100 years from now?" or similar

and Kirk is so unworthy of the hate

the cast of TOS might disagree

lol

I think Raiders is the better movie, but in many ways Temple of Doom feels like the movie that Spielberg and Lucas didn't have the nerve to make the first time around. It's a direct homage to the B serials they're sending up, with all of the racism and tastelessness in tact. I mean, Spielberg ends Raiders with a Citizen Kane homage, fer Christ's sakes!

Exorcist 2 fucking sucks the only good thing about it is the Morricone theme and the Snakefinger cover of the Morricone theme. I like the song in Shock Treatment better than Rocky Horror but I'm sure that's been mention itt.

songs*

Boorman seems to think it sucks too but the visual excess in the thing is a wonder to behold, not to mention the Burton excess. I won't defend it as a good movie.

as i pointed out upon re-seeing it in a theater this past summer, Raiders swipes two of its biggest stunts from Stagecoach and doesn't really improve on em.

As for Godfather II, Coppola said his m.o. was "I wanted to punish Michael," so I think it plays better with Catholics.

Raiders swipes two of its biggest stunts from Stagecoach

I assume the dragged-under-the-moving-car one is one, what's the other?

Indy jumps from one vehicle to another in that same chase, I think? or is it horses? anyway it's much like Yakima Canutt (doubling for John Wayne) sequentially leaping horses.

yeah but Nazis

If you're gonna steal, steal from the best, etc.

Did not realize Nazis directed Stagecoach, tbh.

Raiders is alright, but as with several Coen Bros films most impresses people who never saw the antecedents.

Nah, I love Stagecoach and Raiders for other reasons, and besides Spielberg pays tribute to Ford by taking what he learned and putting it in a new context. It's true that the discovery of the Ark and the final Ark-going-apeshit scene have a grandeur missing in the other Indy films. And Belloq's drunk scenes with Marion compensate for his being a rather pallid villain.

I think I'd call Aparajito the best film sequel. Not that it's better than the first or third films, but it stands on its own as a work of art and probably makes perfect sense seen in isolation from the others.

Boxer's Omen is way way way better than Bewitched.

I like Once Upon A Time In China 2 and 3 better than the original.

Exorcist 3 >>>>>>> Exorcist 2 btw

Well, yeah.

I'd have much more time for an 'Exorcist 3 > Exorcist 1' argument than the insane 'Exorcist 2 > Exorcist 1 (or much of anything)' argument Alfred has put forward.

On the horror front, I have basically zero time for any of the Child's Play films with 'Child's Play' in the title but I think all of the subsequent Child's Play films with 'Chucky' in the title are good-to-great.

child’s play 2 is great but otherwise you’re right

I was 13 when Raiders came out, I hadn't seen the antecedents!

well Morbius was 13 when Stagecoach came out, so you can understand why he feels this way

child’s play 2 is great but otherwise you’re right

(& I was like yep that looks like a brad opinion, checks out)

Rocky iii ✓✓✓✓✓✓✓

Wrath Of Khan was my first ever in-cinema experience of looking at my watch at the end credits and being flatly baffled as to where 2 hours had gone. i don't just mean 'oh it flies by!' i mean literally dumbstruck and perplexed that time could even move so fast. i was only a kid but even today it seems to have incredible pacing, i think partly it's because Khan actually takes a time (half an hour maybe?) before he even rocks up. it's a *masterpiece* of structure.

Problem Child 2 probably is the best of the trilogy btw

Iron Man 3 is much more fun the first two, how did it get to be divisive? Is it the Kingsley stuff?

I think a lot of people have issue with that plot twist, yeah - I personally thought it was great, the idea of a 'created enemy' fascinates me and is something I can totally buy if it is done well (which I thought it was here).
In this case, there will always be comic book fans who are disappointed that they didn't get the villain closer to the source material. (For those, there's a must-see one-shot special with Kingsley called All Hail The King, which is included on the Thor 2 Blu-ray.)
But I think a problem for many was that Guy Pearce's Aldritch Killian wasn't an impressive enough main villain.

I've also more than once heard people having problems with the final battle, for being too CGI-heavy and/or because Tony couldn't get access to his armor for so long, his entire house is destroyed and then is suddenly and conveniently able to call on an armor-army from an undamaged storage section in the end. But he needed to re-establish contact beforehand & the storage was pretty much a vault, I personally don't doubt that he couldn't have done so earlier.

I love the movie and I personally even prefer it over the first Iron Man, I've seen acclaim, but I know I've often seen people list it low as well.

Amazon recently recommended me the Home Alone box set. There are five of those films but I was only aware of three.

Problem Child 2 probably is the best of the trilogy btw

take it to the controversial opinions thread buddy

Amazon recently recommended me the Home Alone box set. There are five of those films but I was only aware of three.

https://i.imgur.com/zrnhBiV.png

daniel dild-shoeis to thread

Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey

PB2 is the one where Junior says "Can we go home now? These people are dicks" and so is clearly the best

also I can't remember which one they overkill the "Bad to the Bone" hook in, that's p great

also Gilbert Gottfried's character becomes a maniacal dentist

After the Thin Man

I must protest; the Thin Man franchise is my go-to example of diminishing returns.

The second one is the best iirc

I've never seen any of the Problem Child films (and probably never will), but the episode of Gilbert Gottfried's podcast with the writers of those films (Scott Alexander and
Larry Karaszewski--who would go on to write Ed Wood and The People vs. Larry Flynt) has some great behinds-the-scenes stuff on how the second film in that series, in particular, came to be.

gremlins 2

yes for real even though Gremlins 1 is a classic Gremlins 2 is so good