Let's be honest for a moment: Sequels are all about money. Sure, they can be artistically satisfying at times, but for the most part it's the studios realizing that you really liked a flick, and that you'd probably be willing to pay to see something similar. As a result, sequels usually get the greenlight as soon as the studios are relatively sure that the original is a blockbuster, at which point they're rushed into production before you forget that the franchise exists.
Every now and then, though, a sequel gets made long after the original. Such is the case with Men in Black III, arriving a solid fifteen years after Men in Black made us love the humorous exploits of the Agents J and K... And 10 years after Men in Black II made us question whether we were too quick to judge. All of the following movies came at least a decade after their predecessor. We decided to weigh in on which ones were worth the wait (hint: not many) and which were blatant cash grabs that should've been left in the past.
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Previous Entry: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)
The original Indiana Jones trilogy remains one of the best, if not the best, action series ever put to celluloid. While all three movie have their proponents — yes, even Temple of Doom — Last Crusade may be the series' crowning jewel. It also ended things in a spectacular way. While no one was disappointed seeing Indy back in the saddle, this time he split his swashbuckling duties with his obnoxious son, played by the notorious "actor" Shia LaBeouf.
Worth the Wait: No, but close call. Despite what its detractors have said, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull recaptures the tone of the original Indy, but CGi, LaBeouf, and what George Lucas thinks passes for storytelling overpowered Steven Spielberg's nimble direction and Harrison Ford's typically iconic performance. For every great Indy quip, there's always a CGI vine still in the way.
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Previous Entry: Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi (1983)
While George Lucas added the episode IV appellation to the original Star Wars when it was first re-released, no one seriously thought we'd see the first three parts of the series after more than a decade of it lying dormant. But following George Lucas' failure in producing movies not directed by his pal Spielberg, he returned to the only thing he was ever good at. Only now, 20 years since he was last directing a movie, he decided to run it again himself. What could go wrong?
Worth the Wait: Oh dear god, no. From the blatant racism to ruining what was previously one of the best characters ever made, the Star Wars prequels (and Phantom Menace in particular) did it all. And by did, we of course mean wrecked. Horribly, horribly wrecked.
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Previous Entry: Tron (1982)
The original Tron was a cult hit, featuring not only the first CGI most people ever saw incorporated into a movie, but also Jeff Bridges' prototype for The Dude. It was a campy, strange affair that in no way left room for a sequel, which is probably why it took so long for one to get made. Tron: Legacy was also filled to the brim with CGI, but then what action movie wasn't in 2010? Unfortunately, what it gained in budget, it lost in goofiness. While the original Tron was one part visionary and one part Ed Wood, the sequel, was pure Hollywood.
Worth the Wait: Eh, enough. The original Tron wasn't such a classic that giving it an unnecessary sequel that felt nothing like the original was a terrible idea. Plus, it had music by Daft Punk — who doesn't love that?
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Previous Entry: Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995)
The purest action series ever made, Die Hard at one point seemed like it could go on forever. But after finishing up Die Hard with a Vengeance, Bruce Willis wanted to take on other roles, so the series stopped for a while. Then, when presumably Bruce Willis wanted a new yacht or house or extravagant desert island, he agreed to return for a fourth installment, only older and without much of an explanation for what John McClane was supposed to be up to during all those missing years.
Worth the Wait: Unfortunately, while they got Willis to come back, the same couldn't be said about John McTiernan, who directed the first and third installments of the series. So Live Free or Die Hard lacks a certain something that the better of the originals had, and relies on CGI whereas the old ones feature some of the best classical stunt work ever done. But it's still a Die Hard movie, and so long as Bruce Willis stays awake during filming (admittedly, an increasingly difficult task as he gets older), it's hard to completely screw up that formula. We give this one a pass.
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Previous Entry: The Godfather Part II (1974)
The first two Godfather flicks were classics, beloved by both critics and audiences, and probably the closest movies have ever come to creating the great American novel. Both of the original installments are impeccably acted, meticulously directed, and thematically tight. In fact, we challenge you not to like them. Then, after more than a decade of failures, Coppola decided to return to what he knew how to make... And instead came up with a poorly acted, convoluted story that's filled with characters hardly recognizable from its predecessors.
Worth the Wait: Pretty much the poster boy for why a long interim between sequels is a bad idea. Not only was the magic long gone for The Godfather Part III, by this point the magic had changed its name and ordered a restraining order to be kept 100 ft. from the picture. 170 bloated minutes of failure and disappointment, its only redeeming facet is that Sofia Coppola's acting is almost so awkward it's entertaining. Almost.
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Previous Entry: X-Files (1998)
The original X-Files managed to distill the essence of the TV show into two hours that managed to be exciting for fans yet easily understandable for casual audiences. Afterwards, the TV show continued until 2001, and that was the last time anyone heard from it for a long time, presuming that like most TV shows, once it's off the air it's done. Oddly enough, the second feature adaptation was a perfect distillation of the show's later years...
Worth the Wait: ...meaning that it was consistently disappointing, particularly to anyone hoping for some sort of sensible conclusion. While it brought back agents Mulder and Scully as protagonists, that's pretty much the only good thing that can be said about it.
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Previous Entry: Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
The Terminator series has a long tradition of lengthy gaps between entries, but none have been longer than that between the second and third entries in the series. But while the first two entries were written and directed by future King of the World James Cameron, he said after the second one that he felt that he'd already told the Terminator story he wanted to. The studio disagreed and dragged it back into action with an aging Arnold Schwarzenegger and, uhh, no one else from the first two movies.
Worth the Wait: Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines in no way feels necessary, but at least it still has the original lead and a plot that kinda-sorta makes sense if you don't think too long about it. While it's undoubtedly stupider than the originals, for the most part it's a worthy heir to the series. Or at least a worthier heir than 2009's Terminator Salvation, which features writing that makes its predecessor seem like it was written by Charlie Kaufman.
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Previous Entry: The Mask (1994)
Remember that movie where Jim Carrey plays as a normal schmuck who, after putting on a...umm...mask, gains the superpower of an infinite CGI budget? Well, you may, and if so probably not too fondly. But in any case, while the original made boatloads of money, Carrey wasn't interested in doing a sequel — maybe he caught a screening or something. Well, it looked for a while like the franchise had to be left for dead without its signature star, but when has that ever stopped a studio from making a franchise? Sure, it took them a while to figure out how to pull it off, but an eventual sequel was almost inevitable.
Worth the Wait: Jim Carrey was the only (arguably) good thing about the original, so imagine what happens when you excise him from the sequel and give the script more than a decade's worth of rewrites from every hack writer in Hollywood. That's right, you get a movie that's a special kind of bad usually reserved for Uwe Boll and Jason Friedberg/Aaron Seltzer flicks.
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Previous Entry: Dirty Dancing (1987)
The original Dirty Dancing helped introduce the world to Patrick Swayze and somehow made being hit on by a dance instructor not seem creepy. It also pretty much defined radio's soft rock playlist for the next 20 years. As usual it didn't leave much room for a sequel. However, the success of the first movie, especially on home video, meant that Hollywood never stopped eyeing it for one, even as its stars Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey grew old and irrelevant.
Worth the Wait: Working from the "same plot, different character names" school of screenwriting, admittedly Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights delivers on the promise of having slightly risqué dancing — it's just everything else that's missing. Yes, Patrick Swayze was persuaded to stop by for it, but only in a tiny, unnamed part as "dance instructor." The producers forgot that other than the dance numbers, the chemistry between Swayze and Grey was pretty much the entirety of the movie, and by missing out on that aspect the sequel became just a string of dances interspersed with painfully acted dialogue and exoticization.
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Previous Entry: Toy Story 2 (1999)
The entire Pixar empire rests on the success of John Lasseter's original pair of Toy Story masterpieces, which focuses on the secret lives of toys, which it turns out spend more time bickering than your family during Thanksgiving. The series has always been interested in the way the passage of time affects all of us, so it was a natural choice to have it return when the children who loved the originals have grown up. And really, any excuse to watch the misadventures of a cowboy, an astronaut, and a dinosaur is a good one to us.
Worth the Wait: The exception that proves the rule, every Toy Story movie to date has been better than the prior ones, even if the same thing can't be said about Randy Newman's songs. We even like Toy Story 3 so much that we're willing to overlook the obnoxiousness of Cars 2. Well actually no, not quite that much.
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