[QUOTE=Snarky_Kong]
There are 4 Alien movies. Shrek 3 was awful.
[/QUOTE]
There are three Alien movies: Alien, Aliens and Alien: Resurrection. Admittedly, the third movie is not as good as the first two, but can you imagine how crappy it would be if it wasn’t set 200 years in the future and they just killed off Newt and Hicks for kicks?
[QUOTE=Marley23]
He’s talking about Shock Treatment, which has a few of the same cast members and centers around Brad and Janet (played by new actors) and a weirdo reality TV premise. I’d like to see it for curiosity’s sake.
[/QUOTE]
The movie was awful, but the soundtrack was kinda catchy.
Hannibal, the third Hannibal Lecter movie, was pretty disappointing. The next two were actually worse, though.
[QUOTE=Illuminatiprimus]
Stands out of the way as every SW fan ever surges past and tears cormac262 to shreds
[/QUOTE]
How little you know of real SW fans. They’re actually collectively using The Force to..uhhh…uuuurrrk…aaaaaaarrrkk… . . . . . .
Well Cube Zero was heck of a lot better than Hypercube. And since the order goes original, sequal, prequel it might qualify on both criteria.
[QUOTE=Intravenus De Milo]
And, is there a part 3 that actually managed to buck the trend and equal or exceed its predecessors in quality?
[/QUOTE]
From Dusk 'Til Dawn 3: The Hangman’s Daughter was my favorite out of the three. It had excellent characters, a great plot, great dialogue and enough splatter to keep everyone happy. I thought it was better than the first one, which was OK. The second one kind of blew.
[/QUOTE]
The Godfather Part II was not planned from the beginning. It is a true sequel (prequel, too).
[QUOTE=Ludovic]
– No Scouring
– No Scouring
– No Scouring
[/QUOTE]
I came out of Return of the King saying “thank God they eliminated that stupid scouring of the shire ending!” I always felt that JRRT tacked that on at the end to make the books equal in length so they’d look good on the bookshelf.
[QUOTE=Two and a Half Inches of Fun]
3. Planned first and second. Both were of comparable quality. 3rd was an afterthought to cash in, and sucked accordingly:
[/QUOTE]
The Godfather Part II was not planned from the beginning. It is a true sequel (prequel, too).
[/QUOTE]
I remember hearing that Coppola originally filmed most of what became I and II, but was told it would be too long. I stand corrected. Thanks.
[QUOTE=robby]
I don’t think the Alien movies should be discounted. The first one was great, and the second one was even better. The third was unwatchable (i.e. remember that little girl that we spent the whole previous movie trying to rescue, the sole survivor of a colony of settlers? Well, she’s dead. Moving right along…)
So as far as I’m concerned, the series stayed a trilogy, because I never watched any after that.
ETA: OK, I guess they were all sequels. Oh, well.
[/QUOTE]
Too bad Carrie Henn decided to give up on acting (the ostensible reason for Newt’s absence).
I’ll second Ludovic’s allusion to the breakneck pace of the last two LOTR movies, where only the Beacons scene allows Middle Earth to take center stage. There were so many plotlines to keep track of in TTT and ROTK that the deliberate pacing of the novels (and the 1st movie, somewhat) was completely lost. I dream that PJ will one day release a final* Director’s Cut of all 3, with 1-2 extra hours of bonus footage each.
[*Yes I am wary of the Lucasian syndrome of repeatedly editing one’s movies over and over…]
As long as Peter Jackson doesn’t go back to the Grey Havens scene in ROTK and replace Ian Holm with Hayden Christiansen as Bilbo, I’ll be fine.
Oh, and Legolas shot first 
[QUOTE=Euphonious Polemic]
I came out of Return of the King saying “thank God they eliminated that stupid scouring of the shire ending!” I always felt that JRRT tacked that on at the end to make the books equal in length so they’d look good on the bookshelf.
[/QUOTE]
I agree, cinematically putting the Scouring in would not have worked but I disagree that JRR tacked it on in the book. It was an important part of his theme about war changes everything, even where its touch is not directly felt. The hobbits are cheerfully riding home after the Big Wedding, “Well that was scary but we didn’t get hurt and now we get to go home again and everything will be back the way it was . . . oops.”
And what with the appendices and all, the third book would have already been thickest even if the Scouring had been left out.
You can add my vote to the Matrix trilogy. Unlike SW3, I waited for it to hit the cheap theater so I could at least finish the story without feeling ripped off so much.