I’m surprised no one has mentioned the Rambo series yet, either as one of the best or the worst.
I personally quite like all four movies, so far as ultraviolent invincible-hero-facing-impossible-odds war flicks go, and Stallone is truly in his element. But then, I also liked watching four guys driving around the desert in jeeps every week and regularly blowing up German convoys.
Re: the third Riddick movie : au contraire. It’s better than the second one. A topnotch B movie in the SF adventure vein. Nothing wrong with it.
I like how the 2nd one went all Highlander.
I just didn’t like the necroms and the poorly created “underverse.” I got some underverse in my underwear for the second in the series.
That’s why I pointed out the Twilight movies had pretensions. Consider movies like Friday the 13th or Nightmare of Elm Street or Halloween. They were intended as cheap drive-in slasher movies. Movies for which you have low expectations. But these movies managed to rise above the limits of their genre (which is why they became franchises while crap like Drive-In Massacre and Tourist Trap and Don’t Go in the Woods has been forgotten).
The Twilight movies on the other hand started out as a mainstream series. They were based on best-selling books (although admittedly not critically acclaimed ones) and they had big budgets. While it may have been unlikely they would be great, they should have at least been competently made. But they weren’t so they represent squandered potential.
I stand by my post.
I don’t think twilight could be voted the worst because nobody expected it to be good anyway. That’s why catwoman rarely makes it on the “worst ever” lists. Anyone who’s read the book and liked it/hated it got exactly what they expected from the movie.
How do you explain the Dench-M-continuity from the Brosnan era, then?
In addition to ones already mentioned, I think the Indiana Jones movies still rank high. Yes, 2 is problematic and 4 is not great, but they 1st and 3rd make up for it in spades, I think.
Like I said, greatness was unlikely (although not impossible - look at The Godfather for an example of a great movie made out of pretty weak source material). But Twilight could have at least been as good as The Hunger Games.
Why on earth would you expect that? There’s virtually nothing in the twilight franchise that could be compared to hunger games, first and foremost, grammar and a thesaurus.
They weren’t? Admittedly, I’ve only watched the first two, but I thought them quite well directed for such a retarded plot. I was particularly impressed with the first one in a scene where the sulking girl is lost in a bad neighbourhood and goes all scared and dizzy that actually managed to convey the sense of imminent danger, and a well paced climax.
Bad source material, but competent anywhere else. Even the actors were, at the very least, adequately cast to play their role.
The crime of Riddick 3 is that it commits that worst of sequel crimes: it’s a remake of one of its own series (Pitch Black). Despite the drastically different styles and stories, I’ve contentedly re-watched the first two movies. I’ll never see the third again. Not saying I wouldn’t watch another in the series if they make it - I still catch the new Die Hards and I’ll never sit thru DH2 again.
Well, with Brosnan she’s the new M who dismisses him as a Cold War relic who’s been a Double-Oh for years (as per that before-the-fall-of-the-USSR scene with 006). But with Craig it’s a reboot: he’s not even a Double-Oh when it starts, sure as he’s apparently neither met Felix Leiter for the first time nor ordered a vodka martini in what’ll someday be his signature style; he thus spends much of the film realizing he hasn’t yet learned how to be a cold-hearted manipulator of women.
And in the Craig reboot, Dench is already there as M: missing the Cold War, and otherwise doing we’re-not-really-doing-continuity stuff, in Skyfall.
I’ll just mention a few new ones:
Best:
Underworld
Worst:
Saw (loved the original, though… have only seen 2 of the others but they were craptastic)
Some I’m surprised haven’t been mentioned:
Spiderman with Tobey Maguire (I hated the 3rd)
Paranormal Activity (1st and 3rd are good)
National Lampoon’s Vacation (original and Christmas are great, Euro and Vegas lousy)
Chucky (didn’t see it, looks too stupid)
Leprechaun (ditto)
Poltergeist (1st one is decent, rest are terrible)
The Exorcist
I think the problem with the “bad” franchises is few people want to invest the time to watch an entire series of movies and then declare them one of the worst collectively. I will agree with Transformers (although I enjoyed the 1st one) and the Star Wars prequels.
I disagree. And you aren’t the only one that agrees that it was the best, so I’m ok with that.
When i was writing the OP, i was thinking of a series of movies, or a franchise, that I could sit down and watch, back to back to back etc. i can’t do that with the Godfather. Thers is no argument from me regarding the quality of the first two, but I find the third one so unwatchable. Maybe it is cursed for having two of the greatest movies of all time as it’s lead in, but I have yet to see the movie from start to end. And I’ve tried.
BttF, on the other hand, provides me with exactly what I expect. There is no groundbreaking movie making, but they are fun movies that I can watch very easily and not look for something else to distract me. And I disagree that they havent healf up well. Agsin, that’s just my opinion, but in many ways I think II is better than I.
Of course these two franchises don’t measure up if you are judging them by Oscar-quality. That’s not what I was considering, however.
I’m fond of the Friday series, especially Next Friday for no particular reason. I love how they’ve been on the Oxygen channel on weekend nights for the past couple years now. It seems so out of place there.
I think the Scary Movie franchise gets a bad rap. The movies written by the Wayans brothers are still quite good, but they drop off in quality around the fourth one.
I grew up on Toy Story so I will go completely homer and say it is the best franchise ever. It is only rivaled by HP since those books made me literate and I saw every single movie in theaters.
A bad franchise would be High School Musical, but I can forgive it because Zac Efron’s abs (and his eyes! /melts) are a national treasure.
Best: Jackass
Worst: Texas Chainsaw Massacre (the first one hit it out of the park, but the others were a pile of nothing)
I was a Rat Patrol fan, too.
Best:
LOTR
The two Alien movies
The Evil Dead Trilogy
Worst:
Twilight “One girl’s choice between necrophilia and bestiality”
I don’t see Terminator anywhere.
It’s ironic because the two of you seem to be arguing opposing points in counter to what I wrote.
That’s because you didn’t read page 1. Do a search, and you’ll find 2 mentions of it. And would you be calling it the best or worst?
I like the choice of Jackass. Didn’t even cross my mind, but it definitely delivers what it is supposed to, and if you like that genre, they are all pretty good.
With that in mind, I’ll nominate as one of the best
the Naked Gun series. All were excellent, Frank Drebin was a classic character that Leslie Neislon pulled off, and if you like slapstick and pun driven humor, they all were fun.
I’m going to have to think of a franchise that is more than just fun. The Godfather, for example, would be the perfect choice for me if it wasn’t for the third installment. I know many people disagree and that is fine. But for me, it was so bad compared to the first two, I personally can’t include it. Consistency is the key for me, which is why ironically Jackass gets on my list, but the Godfather doesn’t. I can sit and watch the Jackass movies back to back to back. They aren’t great movies, but they make me laugh, which is always good, and they are pretty consistent from one to the next with the stunts and gags.
I’ll get back to you all with a more serious, better quality series of movies if I can think of one. or if someone mentions one I can ditto, that will work too.