# What film was most diminished by it's sequels? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 14, 2018, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-film-was-most-diminished-by-its-sequels/816109 "2018-06-14T20:41:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Cardigan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cardigan/32/187_2.png) [@Cardigan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cardigan)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2018, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-film-was-most-diminished-by-its-sequels/816109/41 "2018-06-15T13:54:35Z")
> [@Gretchion](#): > > I’d also like to toss in Pirates of the Caribbean. The first one was a surprisingly fun movie, the rest were unnecessary. Agreed. The sequels were entirely unnecessary and serve to tarnish the original which was a rollicking good sea story. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2018, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-film-was-most-diminished-by-its-sequels/816109/42 "2018-06-15T14:00:45Z")
If there is an alternate reality where the movie “Son of Rosemary” exists, it will win this thread. And I do not want to go there. ---
**Author:** ![Shoeless](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shoeless/32/7099_2.png) [@Shoeless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shoeless)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2018, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-film-was-most-diminished-by-its-sequels/816109/43 "2018-06-15T14:24:29Z")
Does anyone remember that there was a sequel to **Psycho** made 23 years later? Can a sequel diminish the original if nobody remembers that there _was_ a sequel? ---
**Author:** ![Jasmine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jasmine/32/2964_2.png) [@Jasmine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jasmine)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2018, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-film-was-most-diminished-by-its-sequels/816109/44 "2018-06-15T14:32:20Z")
In comparison to “Jaws” and the obsession with sharks that ensued because of it, the sequels were dismal. The one about the decedent of the original shark that somehow was able to track and follow them around looking for revenge was the most ridiculous sequel of them all. Plus, the shark starting looking more and more fake as time went on. You’d think the ongoing evolution of special effects would make it look better, but not so. ---
**Author:** ![Typo\_Negative](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/typo_negative/32/484_2.png) [@Typo\_Negative](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Typo_Negative)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2018, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-film-was-most-diminished-by-its-sequels/816109/45 "2018-06-15T14:41:09Z")
> [@Shoeless](#): > > Does anyone remember that there was a sequel to **Psycho** made 23 years later? Can a sequel diminish the original if nobody remembers that there _was_ a sequel? There were _three_ sequels that no one remembers. > [@](#): > > Three sequels were produced: Psycho II (1983), Psycho III (1986), and Psycho IV: The Beginning (1990), the last being a part-prequel television movie written by the original screenplay author, Joseph Stefano. Anthony Perkins returned to his role of Norman Bates in all three sequels, and also directed the third film. ---
**Author:** ![Jim\_s\_Son](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19adc/32.png) [@Jim\_s\_Son](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jim_s_Son)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2018, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-film-was-most-diminished-by-its-sequels/816109/46 "2018-06-15T14:45:53Z")
The 1968 version of “Panet of the Apes”. Although I do have a soft spot for the bad 1970 ”Beneath” because Charlton Heston nukes the planet of those damn, dirty apes. ---
**Author:** ![Cardigan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cardigan/32/187_2.png) [@Cardigan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cardigan)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2018, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-film-was-most-diminished-by-its-sequels/816109/47 "2018-06-15T14:45:54Z")
I feel the Sharknado sequels stole away some of the quiet dignity found in the original. People hardly take the film seriously anymore. ---
**Author:** ![burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/burpo_the_wonder_mutt/32/365_2.png) [@burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/burpo_the_wonder_mutt)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2018, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-film-was-most-diminished-by-its-sequels/816109/48 "2018-06-15T15:03:02Z")
> [@Jasmine](#): > > In comparison to “Jaws” and the obsession with sharks that ensued because of it, the sequels were dismal. The one about the decedent of the original shark that somehow was able to track and follow them around looking for revenge was the most ridiculous sequel of them all. Plus, the shark starting looking more and more fake as time went on. You’d think the ongoing evolution of special effects would make it look better, but not so. Plus, the shark _roared_ like Spot on, “The Munsters.” ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2018, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-film-was-most-diminished-by-its-sequels/816109/49 "2018-06-15T15:39:40Z")
Return of the Jedi. The Force Awakens just pisses all over the original trilogy. The heroes of the first trilogy fight against all odds to be an evil empire, but it doesn’t matter because the First Order arises and is even worse. The love story between Han and Leia is ruined as they are divorced and their kid is evil. Luke learning to use the force is pointless because he trains Kylo Ren who turns out to be evil and kills Han. Plus Luke didn’t actually need any training because someone can hold their own with a Sith lord the first time they touch a lightsaber. Literally everything good about the first trilogy is ruined by the Force Awakens, its like the director had a checklist. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2018, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-film-was-most-diminished-by-its-sequels/816109/50 "2018-06-15T15:41:47Z")
The prequels. RotJ certainly had its flaws, but Luke’s actions at the end show what being a Jedi was supposed to be all about. But in ANH Obi-wan speaks of the Jedi as noble. What we see of them in the prequels are a bunch of boobs who get hoodwinked by this clown until the last minute. Why respect them? Sure they are good in fighting, but to be emulated? Not hardly. ---
**Author:** ![Quimby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/22d042/32.png) [@Quimby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quimby)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2018, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-film-was-most-diminished-by-its-sequels/816109/51 "2018-06-15T15:53:52Z")
I will second Police Academy. I haven’t seen it in probably a decade and suspect it hasn’t aged well bu at the time was a funny and well made comedy followed by shit sequels that got worse and worse. I will say Jurassic Park. The first movie has issues but is a good movie. The Lost World was not terrible but bad. Three was completely forgettable (other than Pterodactyls I literally remember nothing about it). Jurassic World was complete garbage. It was like four scripts and a pile of turds were put in a blender. ---
**Author:** ![TreacherousCretin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/treacherouscretin/32/476_2.png) [@TreacherousCretin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TreacherousCretin)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2018, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-film-was-most-diminished-by-its-sequels/816109/52 "2018-06-15T15:59:28Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > _Terminator_. > even though I LOVED _Terminator 2_, and it was a great flick, the original by itself had a purity of vision and beauty of execution that elevated it to a high rank in SF films. Chief among these was the way the Terminator – in the best tradition of literary SF\* – was simply a killing machine that, as Reece says in a pivotal speech, can’t be reasoned with and wouldn’t stop until Sarah Connor was dead. > > And then, of course, in the sequel, the second edition of the Arnold Terminator CAN be reasoned with, can make jokes, and practically gets emotional at the end. It’s fun filmmaking, and his giving the “thumbs up” as her goes down into the molten metal can bring a tear to your eye, but its not the image the first film projected so cleanly and wonderfully\*\* > > the less said about the subsequent sequels, the better. > > - like Kate Wilhelm’s _The Killer Thing_, or Philip K. Dick’s _Second Variety_ (which, it’s been argued, was an influence on the first film. > > \*\* I know that they have a scene – cut from the released version, but fortunately preserved in the Director’s Cut – where they show them reprogramming the T2, but it still doesn’t account for the overall change. The original Terminator, like Robby in _Forbidden Planet_, was a real robot, and the dark humor came when his reactions – like Robby’s – could be interpreted as resembling human reactions, even though they were the results of logical machine reactions to stimuli and their programming. In the second movie, the T2 was acting more like as metal person – like R2D2 and C3PO do – than a Real Robot. 100% agree with this. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2018, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-film-was-most-diminished-by-its-sequels/816109/53 "2018-06-15T16:00:28Z")
> [@Robot\_Arm](#): > > Robot Arm’s Law of the Emasculated Sci-Fi Badass: Science fiction franchises excel at creating cool, popular villains, but attempts to explain and humanize them only serve to diminish the popularity and coolness. This is so true… they should leave the bad guys BAD. Think about the Terminator- he was so awesome because he was, as Reese put it, > [@](#): > > It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead. Kind of like a force of nature, but more malevolent because it’s technological. And what do they do? They make him care and one of the good guys in the sequels. Same thing in the new Battlestar Galactica; the best episodes were early on when the Cylons were unstoppable, unknown and terrible. The further in you got, the less terrifying they became, and the show devolved into a soap opera. Darth Vader was much the same way after about the halfway point of ROTJ. It’s what made the end scenes in Rogue One so entertaining; THAT’s what you wanted to see Vader do all along. Hell, even The Walking Dead fell prey to this particular law. In the first season or so, the walkers were a real and present threat. But by the time they found the prison, they were… manageable. And in the Star Wars prequels, they never even established the Sith as being _that_ scary or ominous. ---
**Author:** ![Dropo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ce7236/32.png) [@Dropo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dropo)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2018, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-film-was-most-diminished-by-its-sequels/816109/54 "2018-06-15T16:10:11Z")
_High Noon, Part II: The Return of Will Kane (1980)_ > **[High Noon, Part II: The Return of Will Kane (TV Movie 1980) ⭐ 5.2 | Drama,...](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080870/?ref_=nv_sr_1)** > > 1h 36m | TV-14 I haven’t actually seen this and I am not really that fond of the original (though it does have some undeniable virtues), but given the general esteem which the original is held, I can’t imagine this made-for-TV sequel does anything but taint it. _King Kong_ (1933) is of course a classic. _The Son of Kong_ (1934) is not as good, but still very enjoyable for me. However, there can be no defense for _King Kong vs. Godzilla_ (1962) or\* King Kong Escapes\* (1967) as doing anything but devaluing the earlier flicks. I am inclined to include _King Kong Lives_ (1986), but I haven’t seen it and I think it would be challenging to argue it “diminished” _King Kong_ (1976) given how bad that film is (other than Rick Baker’s make-up and Jessica Lange). Indiana Jones movies – The second one is bad, but _…Crystal Skull_ plays like an awful parody. What a waste of film stock. Memories of _Chinatown_ (1974) are ill-served by _The Two Jakes_ (1990), though whether it actually “diminishes” the earlier film is open to debate. No loathing for _2010_ (1984)? > [@CalMeacham](#): > > Did we really need… > > **The Return of the Fly** – the sequel to the original movie _The Fly_. Or its second sequel **The Curse of the Fly** _The Fly_ (1958) is camp horror. I don’t even remember \*The Return of the Fly _(1959). \* Curse of the Fly_ (1965), however, is something else; a sequel going off in an entirely different direction. It has an awesome opening (girl in her underwear fleeing the loony bin), creepy mutations evoking Lovecraft and a cool ending, and is neither camp nor derivative of other horror films (or at least none I can think of offhand). Not without flaws, to be sure, but superior imo to any other “fly” film. ---
**Author:** ![Tread](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/53a042/32.png) [@Tread](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tread)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2018, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-film-was-most-diminished-by-its-sequels/816109/55 "2018-06-15T16:16:28Z")
> [@gaffa](#): > > The best line in the original _Rocky_ was Apollo Creed saying “…ain’t gonna be no rematch” and the whole point of the film wasn’t Rocky being triumphant, but simply lasting to the very end. Second best line, but it set up the best line, when Rocky replied " Don’t want one" ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2018, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-film-was-most-diminished-by-its-sequels/816109/56 "2018-06-15T16:39:52Z")
> [@Tread](#): > > Second best line, but it set up the best line, when Rocky replied " Don’t want one" This. By going fifteen rounds with the champ, Rocky’s proved everything about himself that one man could need to prove. Also, he and Creed have fought their war to a draw (with tie going to the defending champ, of course), and neither one wants to have to fight the other a second time. All that, conveyed perfectly in that handful of words: “Ain’t gonna be no rematch.” “Don’t want one.” ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2018, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-film-was-most-diminished-by-its-sequels/816109/57 "2018-06-15T16:49:48Z")
I’m going to disagree about _Pirates of the Caribbean_. The sequels may not be as good as the original, but they’re still pretty enjoyable, IMHO. I hardly think they’re anywhere near the sort of drop-off that the _Rocky_ or _Jaws_ sequels are, or that the prequels/sequels to the original _Star Wars_ trilogy are. ---
**Author:** ![NDP](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ndp/32/55_2.png) [@NDP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NDP)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2018, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-film-was-most-diminished-by-its-sequels/816109/58 "2018-06-15T16:59:42Z")
> [@Dropo](#): > > - Curse of the Fly\* (1965), however, is something else; a sequel going off in an entirely different direction. It has an awesome opening (girl in her underwear fleeing the loony bin), creepy mutations evoking Lovecraft and a cool ending, and is neither camp nor derivative of other horror films (or at least none I can think of offhand). Not without flaws, to be sure, but superior imo to any other “fly” film. I’ve seen **The Curse of the Fly** and it’s pretty much a SINO (sequel-in-name-only). It seemed like it out with a screenplay for a separate movie but the studio shoehorned into the series. Also, one of film’s storylines straight out of “Jane Eyre”. ---
**Author:** ![GargoyleWB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gargoylewb/32/199_2.png) [@GargoyleWB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GargoyleWB)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2018, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-film-was-most-diminished-by-its-sequels/816109/59 "2018-06-15T17:04:58Z")
> [@RTFirefly](#): > > This. By going fifteen rounds with the champ, Rocky’s proved everything about himself that one man could need to prove. > > Also, he and Creed have fought their war to a draw (with tie going to the defending champ, of course), and neither one wants to have to fight the other a second time. > > All that, conveyed perfectly in that handful of words: “Ain’t gonna be no rematch.” “Don’t want one.” I disagree with all of the Rocky sequel dislike. I think Rocky 2 plausibly showed the rationale for Creed and Rocky’s setup for a rematch, with Creed playing the perfect narcissist role trying to save his legacy and Rocky set up well as the reluctant goadee. Rocky 3 and 4 are pure shiny-pec-man-awesome like the Predator movies. ---
**Author:** ![dorvann](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/df705f/32.png) [@dorvann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dorvann)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2018, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-film-was-most-diminished-by-its-sequels/816109/60 "2018-06-15T17:21:51Z")
Ok, here’s kind of an odd choice: _The Land Before Time_(1988). They made **thirteen** direct to video sequels; the last one being released in 2016. For that matter, _The Secret of NIMH_ has a direct to video sequel. It has none of charm and mystery of the first and is just an all-around horrible film. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-film-was-most-diminished-by-its-sequels/816109.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-film-was-most-diminished-by-its-sequels/816109.md?page=4)