The first Jurassic Park movie is all time one of the greatest films ever made with the special effects still holding up to this day. The 2nd film was still very enjoyable in my opinion but it was just a cookie cutter sequel not bad, not good. The 3rd film wasn’t great at all. But compared to the rest of the series the 3rd film is basically the godfather.
As another personal pick the 1st blade movie is a hood classic good. The other 2 not so much.
Is there any what gets better? There are good sequels, but once it becomes movie franchise, it all turns to shit. Sometimes faster, sometimes slower.
Dark Knight
It being filmed together is it being a 6+ hour movie in 3 chapters. I think it’s a single project not successive films. Just how I frame it, I concede to technicalities if you must
Franchises where the second film is more broadly acclaimed than the first: Star Wars, The Godfather, The Dark Knight, arguably Alien, Terminator, Star Trek, Paddington, Rocky, James Bond, The Pink Panther, Mad Max. Ones where the third film is the most acclaimed: arguably Indiana Jones, maybe Toy Story, LOTR (kind of all a merged movie so doesn’t count), The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Star Wars prequels
Hahaha. Now do a set where the second movie was better than the first but the third movie was absolutely awful.
The Sergio Leone trilogy with Clint Eastwood arguably gets better. The first one was almost a shot-for-shot remake of Yojimbo - good but derivative. The third movie stood up well against the early ones and the music was maybe the best.
Die Hard 3 is arguably the best of the 3.
I’d argue the original Evil Dead trilogy get progressively better with each movie.
James Bond. Because each bond had it’s fans.
Ouija 2 Origin of Evil by Mike Flannigan is the rare exception where the sequel trounced the OG in every way.
The Librarian also all three movies are good, with the third being arguably the best.
Toy Story 3 and 4. Far superior to 1 and 2 if you put aside the groundbreaking CG of the first.
Sister Act 2
Tron, if you care about the music. Going from peak (Wendy Carlos) to peak (Daft Punk) to peak (Nine Inch Nails) even if the movies are bad.
Top gun I guess. Second one was better than first one.
Taken 3 makes Taken 2 look like Taken 1.
I felt bad for Lost World, because Crighton went out of his way to write a novel that was a sequel to the first movie, not the first book, and then Spielberg just basically ignored it like it never happened.
I wanted to not see the chameleon dinosaurs, damn it!
There is only one Matrix film.
I feel like the matrix 2 is similar to jurassic park 2. Very clearly inferior, but enjoyable enough to not be a complete waste of time.
I’m saying that, I’ll say that JP 2 is better than matrix 2. I’ll happily watch JP 2 again, probably with my kids at some point, but if not then on my own… But I would be happy whether I see matrix 2 again or not.
Didn’t they recently make or announce a new one?
I think I’ve already seen people giving a bad review to the new one a few years ago.
cant believe im scrolling 1/2 way down and couldnt find
The power of familyFast and Furious Franchise
I’ve always thought that the series should’ve ended at the 5th movie.
Star wars
Just let characters die.
Nah, Blade 2 still fucks.
Blade Trinity is just as rough now as it was when it first released.
Home Alone
Home Alone: In New York
Home Alone: No Macauly
Home Alone: There’s a fourth one?
Home Alone 5.
Home Sweet Home Alone: Exclusive to Disney+
Ghostbusters. Some late 80’s exec in tv and film was obsessed with putting babies in everything and the second movie got shanked in a dark alley by them.
Meanwhile, in 2016…
2016 was great. Unpopular opinion, but true.
Best GB since the original. Blows #2 or any of the other modern ones out of the water by a long shot.
I am an unabashed fan of Ghostbusters 2016. The scene with Holtzmann and the pistols gives me tingles. Kevin is just a gem.
I don’t know, I see it as a missed opportunity.
A cast I genuinely adore let down by some poor directing choices and a fairly limp script.
Everyone deserved a better film than that.
Absolutely not. There were one or two moments that made me laugh (notably the very end when Chris Hemsworth gets the burrito smacked out of his hand and some rando off-screen tosses it back to him), and the only other thing I can think of is Leslie Jones feeling like she actually tried and gave a shit. I actually liked her character the best because she wasn’t some dumb eccentric ghost-genius.
I would argue that Blade II is the better movie. Guillermo del Toro is a much more interesting director, and the Reapers are basically a dry run for his take on Vampires in The Strain.
I was gonna say, how is this entire thread skipping over the take that Blade 2 is a step down from the first? It’s not the craziest movie take I’ve read on here, but it definitely flies in the face of what I understood to be popular opinion.
It’s got motherfuckin I Against I by Mos Def in it.
Yeah, I thought that was the general consensus too, but I couldn’t be sure that wasn’t just an echo chamber I’d created with my friend group.
In OP’s defense, I checked out both movies’ Letterboxd ratings, and Blade 1 is rated at 3.5 out of 5, and Blade 2 is sitting at 3.3, so maybe it is just an echo chamber thing. That being said, I really believe this was not the case 10, 15 years ago.
Having sat with it for awhile now, I’m kind of coming around on the notion. I’d have to do a back to back viewing to confirm, but my current hypothesis is that Blade 1 is an excellent urban action-horror picture. It does everything you’d expect it to do pretty well. Blade 2, being a product of Guillermo’s interests, has this weird, quasi-Shakespearian family drama between Nomac, lady vampire, and the patriarch serving as the emotional spine of the picture. It’s fine, but I remember a lot more about their dynamics than I remember about Blade’s arc, which is maybe not what you want from a Blade movie. Plus, all the extra vampire lore and whatnot makes the picture feel less like urban action-horror and more like a fantasy film, which just so happens to have guns and the occasional unwitting human. Not bad, but it does feel like a dry run for ideas Guillermo would do better in other movies.
Honestly, I remember similar vamp lore dragging down the first one. There some interesting stuff with Frost being lower class because he was turned Vamp instead of born Vamp, but the third-act vampire-god thing was kinda meh, ending with some horribly dated CGI.
Also, while the world building was cool, it’s not as though Blade is a super interesting character. He’s a super cool bad-ass, but I find myself checking out when they get into his emotional backstory. Whistler id mich more of the emotional core of fhat movie, which is probably why they had to bring him back in the second (which ie something in fhe second movie that I thought was a cheap cop-out).
JP went from a Dinosaur Movie to a very generic monster movie with the exact same plot every time.
Greedy evildoer wants SuperDino for nefarious purposes and must be defeated. Repeat.
Serenity.
Highlander. The first is cheesy but fairly enjoyable, and all the sequels go downhill in fascinatingly bad ways. Unfortunately, I’d like to find the theatrical version of Highlander 2: The Quickening, because I like bad movies and the renegade cut cuts some of the bad
I pray the Spaceballs sequel will be good and i’m not even religious
They already fucked up the name so we’ll see
Any of the classic Disney animated movies. First movie is a ripoff of classic fairy tales so most of the heavy lifting writing wise was done for them, the instant Disney has to write the whole thing is when it goes to shit. If it’s “Disney presents [insert fairy tale here] 2” you know it’ll suck.
Cinderella 3 is amazing though /s. It’s great for a laugh on Halloween.
