If you like this thread, 100% of the credit for it goes to Winston Bongo (if you don’t like the thread, well, I guess I am to blame)
In the thread currently working on why folks don’t like Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Strikes Again - the sequel to the amazing, wonderful, one-of-the-best-comics-ever The Dark Knight Returns, Winston Bongo states:
I love the thought of that - saying “LA LA LA LA LA LA - You don’t exist if I don’t want you to!!”
So what would you put highest on your list of Sequels that Don’t Exist? For me:
The Matrix was a great standalone movie, wasn’t it?
Dune - after Children of Dune (although I find the prequels by his son to be serviceable space opera, so they are allowed to exist, but on a different quality level)
Ender’s Game - the original 3 sequels (Speaker…, Xenocide and Children of the Mind) - but I like Ender’s Shadow and do allow that to exist.
The Killer Angels - haven’t acknowledged that Shaara’s son wrote anything - that book is so perfect, I don’t want to know about the other stuff…
and as an honorable mention - Greedo NEVER shot first, right?
I hear they were thinking of making a sequel to Highlander, but it got bogged down in pre-production, since they couldn’t find a script that had anything to do with the original storyline (apart from having some of the same characters).
I logged into this thread expecting a rant about George R.R. Martin and the Song Of Ice And Fire series…
I’m with Dante. Highlander was a great film. A sequel might have been good, but it’s probably for the best that they just left it alone.
I wonder if they ever considered making a Police Academy sequel? That was a pretty funny film, and it seemed like a perfect opportunity for a franchise.
And one of these days, David Eddings should write another series with the characters he created in the Belgariad. Only if he has an interesting story, of course. It would be terrible if he just re-hashed the same plot!
I hear at one point there was a Terminator 3 in the works. Luckily, when Linda Hamilton wouldn’t commit, they abandoned the whole project.
Wasn’t it noble of Buffy to sacrifice herself to save her sister in the last episode? Man, what a show that was for five seasons. And no more. Ever. Actually, If I recall correctly, Sarah Michelle Gellar retired after that, and took her talentless husband with her, never to make any movies starrting a creepy CGI character or Matthew Lillard.
Jurassic Park sure was fun. I hear that Crichton guy wrote a sequel, but it sucked, and nobody was interested in making it into a sucky movie.
While I’m bashing Julianne Moore and her tendency to make sequels to movies she wasn’t in, Silence of the Lambs was a great movie. I’m glad they never cheapened any of the characters by making a sequel.
And as we all know, George Lucas quietly retired from the movie business in 1990.
I heard that piers Anthony was considering making a series to go with On a Pale Horse. Thankfully, his editor talked him out of it. (This was the same editor that talked him out of writing more than three Xanth novels.)
Star Trek: The Animated Series. Thankfully, even Gene Roddenberry agreed and it’s considered non-canon.
The SW prequels. I’m not that big a fan of the franchise but Episodes I and II are horrible and I have no hope that III will be any better. Lucas should have left well enough alone.
I really like that show CSI - interesting forensic science, and just enough of a glimpse into the characters’ lives. I heard that they were going to franchise that series, but that Jerry Bruckheimer wanted to stick with his roots in small, independent, story-focused high-quality movies and he felt that franchising might taint the original series, so he didn’t do it. And thank gosh, too, because when a series franchises they often vary the basic premise. You know like with Law & Order: Criminal Intent, where instead of a set of characters we know a little about, they have that one guy, Danny who is an over-the-top all-eyes-on-me kind of character. I would hate it if CSI tried to have that kind of character in a franchise of their show. I mean - who would they get to play that role?
I am still patiently waiting for Book 5 of the Earthchildren series by Jean Auel. I want to know what gender baby Ayla and Jondalar have, and how they deal with his ex-girlfriend, Marona, and how his people will accept Ayla once they realize she gave birth to an “abomination.”
I had heard that someone had been given permission to continue Roger Zelazny’s Amber series–a prequel about Oberon and the beginnings of Amber. I can’t imagine anyone other that Zelazny getting the right tone, so I’m glad this never happened.
Well, I’m glad William Goldman never wrote a sequel to his book, Marathon Man. Because he would have had to resurrect Scylla, and that would be stupid.
And I’m glad that Larry Niven never wrote any sequels to Ringworld, because he’d be tempted to retcon Pak Protectors into the plot, along with a bunch of other irrelevancies from Known Space. Not to mention his distressing tendency to include gratuitous sex scenes even though he can’t write them. And all his recent books read like he jotted down notes concerning interesting engineering ideas and then incoherently tied them together with minimal editing, characterization and plotting. So I’m really pleased that that never happened.