Schindler’s List.
Apollo 13. (Especially not Apollo 13 3: The Search For Lovell.)
I teach a class that’s known to be full of tangents (“Design Fundamentals, and Making ADHD Work For You!”).
One day the students got talking about movies that should never be remade or have a sequel. They asked me for an example, I realized what I was wearing and I said “I gotcher example right HERE!” And ripped my shirt open to reveal my Goonies t-shirt.
When Aliens vs Predator came out, it sounded so stupid to me. The only reason I watched it was because my room mate at the time rented it. I actually wound up liking that movie.
Star Wars.
The original was a fun little romp, it revitalized the science-fiction genre, helped launch the “used future” trope, and stood very nicely as a complete story all on its own.
None of the sequels has matched it, and a few of them rank among the worst major Hollywood features ever made. Most either attempt to rehash the themes of the original, or just pile explosions and pointless effects shots on top of ludicrous plots.
None of them have any real heart, and all were made (to say nothing of the shit-tons of merch) simply to extract cash from the fans who had been entranced by the magic of the original.
The Matrix
Casablanca has avoided the sequel/remake curse so far.*
Ditto The Graduate. Spoofed in a bit in The Player. The original novel’s writer wrote a sequel that took a while to get published but no apparent interest in more.
The final shot on the bus where It All Starts to Sink In on the faces of Elaine and Benjamin has to be the end of it all.
- OTOH we do need a sequel to The Caine Mutiny: Caine’s Revenge. Turns out he’s a master at throwing those ball bearings and starts taking out all the people who ate his strawberries.
A Jennifer Aniston movie from 2005 called Rumor Has It was sort-of a sequel or follow-on to The Graduate. It wasn’t great or even good.
Donnie Darko.
Citizen Kane.
Sequel: Son of Kane, ghost of Rosebud.
And Buck Henry was the one who did the pitch for The Graduate sequel in The Player.
Rumor Has It… is a meta sequel.
Got me by minutes.
No such luck.
2 remakes: Caboblanco, starring Charles Bronson, and Havana, starring Robert Redford.
1 sequel novel: As Time Goes By, by Michael Walsh.
Whaaaaa? See, this is what I love about media. They can make bad stuff, I can ignore it, and* poof!* it never existed.
Star Trek 5, Highlander 2, the prequels (except the Darth Maul duel), that sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird, David Lee Roth’s bluegrass phase… nope, in my brain, they don’t exist.
Most of those are on my list, too, as well as:
- The only “sequel” to The Matrix that ever got made was the Ani-Matrix
- There’s only one Pirates of the Caribbean movie
- The Hobbit movies? Never happened
David Lee Roth had a bluegrass phase??? I pray to God it isn’t so.:eek:
That would be “Queeg’s Revenge” wouldn’t it? Caine was the name of the ship.
I can see it now: Jose Ferrer’s character is murdered, and eventually Fred McMurray’s character is arrested. Big courtroom scene, and now District Attorney Queeg is prosecuting. The twist is that McMurray’s character is innocent, it’s actually the judge that did it, and the courtroom descends into chaos as the judge takes off his robe and starts dancing across the bench with his maracas showing.
And don’t forget Barb Wire, which borrows the plot wholly from Casablanca, and Overdrawn at the Memory Bank, which sort of borrows the plot (for no reason, as the source short story had no such Casablanca theme).
They aren’t good remakes, but they are remakes.
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension
…oh, wait…
No, this one stars David Carradine, using left over footage from Kung Fu.