# What is the WORST immediate sequel to a great film? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** movies\ **Created:** [May 11, 2025, 7:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-immediate-sequel-to-a-great-film/1018246 "2025-05-11T07:15:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2025, 2:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-immediate-sequel-to-a-great-film/1018246/21 "2025-05-11T14:19:31Z")
> [@Tamerlane](#): > > Highlander (1986) to Highlander II (1991). Never has a franchise crashed so hard or burnt so bright. This raises the question as to how we are defining the terms of the question. Is it just the dropoff in quality from movie to sequel? Or do we give extra credit if the first movie is truly GREAT, per the title of this thread? Highlander is a really good movie but it’s not as great as Jaws, which is a legitimately great, great movie. Jaws 2 is bad, but it’s not as bad as Highlander 2, which is about as bad as a professionally made movie can be. According to Rotten Tomatoes, Jaws is rated a 97, which seems unfairly low if anything; Jaws 2 is 58, which is bad but not abysmal. That’s a 39 point drop. Highlander is rated 69, which is lower than it deserves, Highlander 2 is a zero - - a rare accomplishment - which is a bigger drop but is Highlander really a GREAT movie? My standard for great is higher. Robocop is a great movie; I think it’s over the “great” line, and Highlander is below it, albeit a good movie. The drop there is 92-28 for a 64 point drop, which seems right to me. > [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > Not sure if Robocop 2 is worse than Highlander 2. Robocop 2 is a BILLION times better than Highlander 2. It’s not remotely a close comparison. If you think Highlander is a GREAT movie I think that sequel “wins.” It really is about as bad as a movie can possibly be without being a literal amateur production. If you don’t think it’s great, I guess you have to go with something else. I would nominate as a possible candidate Blue Brothers 2000. The Blue Brothers is a great movie, one of the ten funniest comedies of all time, IMHO. Blue Brothers 2000 was just so, so boring. It felt like it was eight or nine hours long. ---
**Author:** ![Knowed\_Out](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/knowed_out/32/7380_2.png) [@Knowed\_Out](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knowed_Out)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2025, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-immediate-sequel-to-a-great-film/1018246/22 "2025-05-11T14:23:25Z")
_Star Trek V_, the Shatner Vanity, wins the thread. ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2025, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-immediate-sequel-to-a-great-film/1018246/23 "2025-05-11T14:26:19Z")
_Quantum of Solace_ isn’t a sequel as we define them. It’s part of a series. Same as Star Trek. And it is nowhere as bad as _Skyfall._ _Jaws 2_ et al are sequels. I enjoyed _Wayne’s World 2_, and _Airplane 2_. ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2025, 2:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-immediate-sequel-to-a-great-film/1018246/24 "2025-05-11T14:27:00Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > I would nominate as a possible candidate Blue Brothers 2000. The Blue Brothers is a great movie, one of the ten funniest comedies of all time, IMHO. Blue Brothers 2000 was just so, so boring. It felt like it was eight or nine hours long. I agree completely but the OP specified 5-6 years between the two movies and those two are 18 years apart. So far apart I am amazed anyone had the gall to make that movie. ETA: If ever there was a movie they had to know would fail it would be that one. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2025, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-immediate-sequel-to-a-great-film/1018246/25 "2025-05-11T14:34:15Z")
It has to be _The Sting II_. It is like a made for television sequel with no access to the director, producer or actors of the original, with names being changed (the makers claimed that the names were changed because the two leads were playing entirely different characters with names that were just “kind of” like those in the original move, but the sequel made references to things that happened in the original that put that silly idea to rest), and the substitutes? Having Mac Davis take over the Robert Redford role was just stupid, but having the role originated by Paul Newman taken (stolen? badly imitated?) by the totally different in size, structure, pacing, attitude and over-all look comedian Jackie Gleason was just a slap in the face. The apology Gleason made for the tv show _You’re In The Picture_ was nothing compared to the apology he should have made for this picture. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2025, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-immediate-sequel-to-a-great-film/1018246/26 "2025-05-11T14:39:34Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > _Quantum of Solace_ isn’t a sequel as we define them. It’s part of a series. Same as Star Trek. And it is nowhere as bad as _Skyfall._ Unlike most films in the Bond franchise which have very tenuous continuity with each other, _Quantum of Solace_ is a direct sequel to _Casino Royale_ (which itself was a ‘soft reboot’ that established Bond as a newly minted 00 agent); it begins moments after the end of _Casino Royale_, references characters and events from that film, and its plot, such as it is, follows on from events in the previous movie. Personally, I didn’t think _Quantum of Solace_ was as bad a film as everyone made it out to be although it suffered from a weak villain, Olga Kurylenko’s poor acting (still not the worst Bond girl, though…Jill St. John wins that by a mile), a director who really wasn’t very interested in making a Bond film, and an unfortunate writers’ strike that occurred just before the beginning of principal photography, leaving production with an incomplete script and no way to fix things up during filming. _Skyfall_ wasn’t so much terrible as just a self-parody. If you rotoscoped it and had the cast of _Archer_ loop the dialogue, it would just be an overly long episode of that show with a downer ending. _Spectre_, on the other hand, was absolutely awful in every conceivable way except for the cinematography. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2025, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-immediate-sequel-to-a-great-film/1018246/27 "2025-05-11T14:40:12Z")
Both original Matrix sequels are definitely in consideration. They probably don’t reach Jaws 2 levels of suck in isolation, but in terms of continuing an awesome well made storyline and driving it off a cliff they take some beating. For that they are unmatched outside the Star Wars prequels. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2025, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-immediate-sequel-to-a-great-film/1018246/28 "2025-05-11T15:12:51Z")
> [@Quimby](#): > > Terminator 3 was a huge step down from 2. I’m sure that I’m not the only person on the planet who thought Terminator 2 was just stupid, and T3 was the movie that T2 should have been. There have to be at least, what, two or three of us. > [@griffin1977](#): > > Both original Matrix sequels are definitely in consideration. They probably don’t reach Jaws 2 levels of suck in isolation, but in terms of continuing an awesome well made storyline and driving it off a cliff they take some beating. I dunno about that. Everyone always raves about the Deep Philosophy in the first one, but by that standard, the first one sucked, too. It wasn’t a philosophy movie; it was a movie about kung-fu gunfights, slow-motion explosions, and Carrie-Anne Moss in a catsuit. By that standard, it was perfectly fine, but then, by the same standard, the sequels weren’t all that bad, either. All three were decent brainless action movies (the first maybe a bit better than 2 and 3, but all of them decent), and all of them were terrible if you thought about them too much. ---
**Author:** ![pkbites](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pkbites/32/204_2.png) [@pkbites](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pkbites)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2025, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-immediate-sequel-to-a-great-film/1018246/29 "2025-05-11T15:28:23Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > It has to be _The Sting II_. Amen. On it’s own it was a terrible movie. But as a sequel to one of the greatest films ever made it’s a criminal act. Someone should have been punished for it. ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2025, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-immediate-sequel-to-a-great-film/1018246/30 "2025-05-11T15:29:23Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > Oooh…so right about this. Not sure if Robocop 2 is worse than Highlander 2. Close call. Both are awful. While Robocob 2 isn’t a good movie, it didn’t utterly destroy the premise of the original like Highlander 2. Highlander 2 isn’t just a bad movie, it’s premise is predicated on crapping all over the first movie, slapping fans right in the face. Spider-Man 2 with Toby Maguire is one of my favorite superhero movies and it’s sequel Spider-Man 3 was a profound disappointment. The plot of this movie made the assumption we didn’t see the first movies and it was suddenly Flint Marko who killed Uncle Ben rather than the other dude. And then we had Harry (Green Goblin’s son) who had a hatred for Spider-Man until his butler, a dude we never saw in previous movies, suddenly decided it was time to tell him the truth about how his father died. Really? It was just a bad movie all around. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2025, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-immediate-sequel-to-a-great-film/1018246/31 "2025-05-11T15:45:52Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Everyone always raves about the Deep Philosophy in the first one, but by that standard, the first one sucked, too. It wasn’t a philosophy movie I never said it was. It’s a really well made sci-fi action movie, that tells an interesting story that touches on some interesting ideas about the nature of reality. But it’s no more about deep philosophy than an episode of star trek. The sequels were none of those things they really drove the story off a cliff. That’s what makes them a contender for worst sequel IMO. Jaws 2 might be worse in isolation, and even in comparison to the original, but Jaws was not obviously made as the first part of a longer story. ---
**Author:** ![EllisDee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ellisdee/32/4531_2.png) [@EllisDee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EllisDee)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2025, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-immediate-sequel-to-a-great-film/1018246/32 "2025-05-11T16:13:20Z")
Honorable mention to Blade: Trinity. It’s probably not fair to include straight-to-video sequels, but Cruel Intentions 2 and 30 Days of Night: Dark Days both spring to mind. EDIT: I don’t think these qualify for “the original must be extremely good,” but I do love 30 Days of Night. “God? No God.” ---
**Author:** ![TheTyrant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thetyrant/32/19111_2.png) [@TheTyrant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheTyrant)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2025, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-immediate-sequel-to-a-great-film/1018246/33 "2025-05-11T16:18:35Z")
I think there was a significant dropoff between Jurassic Park and The Lost World: Jurassic Park… but frankly I’m not sure if Jurassic Park was legitimately _great_ or if we were just dazzled by things we’d never seen before. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2025, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-immediate-sequel-to-a-great-film/1018246/34 "2025-05-11T16:26:36Z")
I concur with other posters on Highlander 2 being the biggest dropoff from an enjoyable first film, to an incomprehensible trainwreck of a sequel, which intentionally destroyed the canon of the first movie within the first five minutes. I’ll also submit the second (and third) Pirates of the Caribbean films. I don’t know that the first PotC film was “great,” but it was very enjoyable, while the sequels were overblown effects-laden set pieces, which lost the thread on what made Jack Sparrow an interesting character in the first place. ---
**Author:** ![Snarky\_Kong](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a183cd/32.png) [@Snarky\_Kong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snarky_Kong)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2025, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-immediate-sequel-to-a-great-film/1018246/35 "2025-05-11T16:27:23Z")
I don’t think it is at all in the running, but honorable mention for Temple of Doom which is probably worse than you remember and follows one of the best action/adventure movies of all time. ---
**Author:** ![iamatractorboy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iamatractorboy/32/21261_2.png) [@iamatractorboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamatractorboy)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2025, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-immediate-sequel-to-a-great-film/1018246/36 "2025-05-11T16:29:18Z")
The first Pirates film was very enjoyable as you say, but I thought the second was decent too. The third was where it really went off a cliff. ---
**Author:** ![EllisDee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ellisdee/32/4531_2.png) [@EllisDee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EllisDee)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2025, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-immediate-sequel-to-a-great-film/1018246/37 "2025-05-11T16:31:14Z")
The Ring Two was a precipitous drop off, though of course nothing compared to Highlander 2. I actually saw both of those sequels in the theater. I angrily hung in there for all of The Ring Two, but actually walked out of Highlander 2. I believe that’s the only time I ever walked out of the theater. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2025, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-immediate-sequel-to-a-great-film/1018246/38 "2025-05-11T17:10:48Z")
> [@kenobi\_65](#): > > I’ll also submit the second (and third) Pirates of the Caribbean films Yeah my thoughts on this is the original had no right to be a good movie, it’s a movie based on a Disney theme park ride FFS! By some fluke, the stars aligned and it ended up being good, they should have cashed out and walked away. Obviously trying to do it again was pushing their luck and gonna produce a lemon ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2025, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-immediate-sequel-to-a-great-film/1018246/39 "2025-05-11T17:11:47Z")
Personally I don’t think _Jaws 2_ is terrible. It’s terrible in comparison to _Jaws_ but on its own it’s a perfectly serviceable dumb people get eaten by sharks movie. _Highlander 2_ is the winner by not only being a horrible movie on its own but also retroactively destroying everything in the first movie. ---
**Author:** ![Quimby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/22d042/32.png) [@Quimby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quimby)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2025, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-immediate-sequel-to-a-great-film/1018246/40 "2025-05-11T17:22:39Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > > [@Quimby](#): > > > > Terminator 3 was a huge step down from 2. > > I’m sure that I’m not the only person on the planet who thought Terminator 2 was just stupid, and T3 was the movie that T2 should have been. There have to be at least, what, two or three of us. I do feel your pain. I am probably the only person in the world who thinks Predator 2 is way better than the original (the inverse of this thread). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-immediate-sequel-to-a-great-film/1018246.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-immediate-sequel-to-a-great-film/1018246.md?page=3)