BIG D PITCHAS PRESENTS:
THE TOP TEN FRANCHISE RUINERS OF ALL TIME
by Diego Kontarovsky

I figured it was about time somebody brought to light a very relevant issue in our society today: franchise ruiners.  Franchises are very important in the entertainment industry, but they're even more important to our everyday lives.  As human beings, we take great pride in selecting our favorite movies.  The movies that will bring us joy for the rest of our lives.  And the more excellent sequels that are made to these movies, the better our world is.  That's why it is a crime against humanity to ruin franchises with terrible sequels.  So I have compiled what I think are the top ten worst offenders ever in this category and counted them down according to severity of crime.  In determining the order of this list, I considered the ratio of how bad the movie really was to how good the franchise was before it.  And if you find an obvious candidate for this list curiously omitted, it's either because I didn't see it or I did see it, but I liked it.

Oh, and be forewarned.  I made no effort to conceal spoilers to any of these.  But it shouldn't matter, because the franchises are ruined anyway.  Now enjoy my list:


This is a franchise that started out really strong.  In PREDATOR (1987), a team of the most hardcore roughnecks you could ever imagine (at least two of them future governors) has an all-out brawl against an invisible predator from outer space in the middle of the jungle.  The sneaky bastard almost wipes them all out, but is finally defeated by the alpha male of our planet, Arnold Schwarzenegger.  It's an incredible affirmation of the potential of man.  PREDATOR 2 (1990) is almost the same thing, except instead of a jungle, the predator comes to 1997 Los Angeles.  And instead of a pack of the most badass human beings ever to walk the Earth, he fights Danny Glover.  There's also weird gangs and reporters and a million predators standing around at the end.  This movie is just baffling, and nothing like the original I fell in love with.  Not even the combined presence of Gary Busey and Bill Paxton are enough to save this franchise from complete decimation.

I don't think I even have to explain this one.  There isn't a man, woman, or termite alive that isn't aware of how badly this movie desecrated one of the coolest superheroes ever.  Tim Burton made the first two Batman films, and though they weren't exactly super faithful to the comics, they still largely did the character justice.  In 1995, the franchise was given to Joel Schumacher, who made everything gay.

That's not a joke.  He gave us "origins" for Two-Face and The Riddler, two extremely important characters from the comics reduced to little more than manic villain cliches forced to share limited screen time.  They dress up in costume jewelry and parade around a neon Gotham where Batman wears molded nipples and Robin wears an earring.  And it's a shame, because it's a very talented cast they decided to waste here (Val Kilmer, Jim Carrey, Tommy Lee Jones, Chris O'Donnell, Nicole Kidman).  And the script, at times, touches on a minor subplot about Bruce Wayne's need to be Batman that is most definitely worthy of exploration.  This is what kept it from ruining the franchise completely.  That, and the fact that 1997's BATMAN & ROBIN did everything 500,000 times worse.

Where BATMAN FOREVER only flirted with the side of Batman that I will refer to as "campy gay," BATMAN & ROBIN raped the shit out of it.  BATMAN & ROBIN makes BATMAN FOREVER look like SCHINDLER'S LIST.  It pains me to recall how villains that were given new life as fully-formed tragic figures on BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES were reimagined as gimmicky over-the-top pun factories for the sake of what Warner Brothers must have perceived as entertainment at the time (and don't give me any shit about it being an homage to the 1960's Adam West series-- that was satire).  This time, they ruin Mr. Freeze and Poison Ivy, and as an added bonus, they also throw in Bane-- a villain so formidable he actually broke Batman's back in the comics-- as Ivy's dumbass henchman.  And for an extra special bonus, they also manage the screentime to introduce and ruin Batgirl by giving her a stupid origin and casting the inexplicable Alicia Silverstone.

I don't think she was on anybody's wish list.

It's not really Joel Schumacher's fault.  It's Warner Brothers who hired him and let him take a Bedazzler to the franchise.  And it was so bad, it created the need for the brilliant BATMAN BEGINS (2005) reboot.  Which I suppose does score it major points.


1997 had long been prophesized as something of a catastrophic time for the human race.  Danny Glover had a date with an army of predators on the streets of Los Angeles, and I believe JUDGMENT DAY was on August 29th.  But hey, that's just movie dates.  In the real world, the events that transpired were far worse than a mere alien invasion and computer-instigated genocide.  The summer of 1997 in particular was a very busy time for movie executives who wanted to ruin our lives.  Not only did it mark the time of death for Batman, it also gave us the long-awaited sequel to SPEED (1994), one of the greatest action movies in the history of time.

And SPEED 2: CRUISE CONTROL (1997) took a lot of balls to make.  See, SPEED revolved around a guy named Jack Traven, played by Keanu Reeves.  But Keanu Reeves turned down the sequel.  And whoever was in charge actually thought it would be okay if the sequel to SPEED didn't contain Keanu Reeves, as long as it did contain Sandra Bullock.  The problem with this is that Keanu Reeves' character was a superhuman cop and Sandra Bullock's character was a woman who made panicky quips.  So already, the movie's justification for existing was in significant trouble.  How did the execs deal with this?

They recast Keanu's role with Jason Patric and made his character identical to Jack Traven in every way.  Then they scoured the first movie for more characters they could bring back, but turns out all the other cool guys died in the first one.  So they gave cameos to Jack's old cop boss and the guy whose car was commandeered by Jack in the first one.

And Tim Conway.

Then, instead of a runaway bus, they set it on a runaway cruise ship.  And when the ship is about to hit an oil tanker, Jason Patric saves the day by turning a small wheel that steers the ship 90 degrees.  But then when the ship is about to hit a city built on a dock, Jason Patric just kinda stands around and the ship destroys the city, but it's okay because every single person survives, then Jason Patric catches up to the bad guy who had a half hour head start and rescues his girlfriend and coincidentally happens upon the stolen diamonds, and then the bad guy accidentally kills himself.

The following year, there was a sequel to THE FUGITIVE (1993) called U.S. MARSHALLS (1998).  It was arguably even more pointless than SPEED 2 because it was the exact same movie as THE FUGITIVE, except with Wesley Snipes instead of Harrison Ford, and a shitty script instead of a good one.  Now, I don't know if these two franchise spin-offs had anything to do with each other, but it was a long time before the people of Earth would ever have a good night's sleep again.

For the purposes of this article, I will only be considering theatrical releases.  Prequels made for TV or direct-to-video are not real movies.  They are, in fact, nothing.

The main problem with prequels is that they rarely serve a purpose.  By definition, we already know how they're going to turn out, and the knowledge they provide us never justifies the movie's existence. 

The prequel was invented when a movie executive was looking for a way to make a sequel, but with an excuse to not pay for any of the original talent.  For example, take THE FLINTSTONES IN VIVA ROCK VEGAS (2000).  Does anyone really want to see a Flintstones movie without the magic of John Goodman?  And what about DUMB & DUMBERER: WHEN HARRY MET LLOYD (2003)?  This movie is basically DUMB & DUMBER (1993), but without the brilliant cast and writer/directors. 

Now personally, I would consider the Star Wars prequels something of an exception.  The first one's kinda boring, but I find them all very enjoyable, and I suspect most Star Wars fans love them.  However, we mustn't forget the subculture of fanatics who see something terrible and evil when they see these prequels.  So I try to think, "If I was a hardcore Star Wars fan, and I really cared about the universe within the movie, how would I feel about these prequels?"  Probably the same way I felt in TERMINATOR 3: RISE OF THE MACHINES (2004) when the T-800 put on those Elton John sunglasses.  Like someone had punched me in the fucking face (T3, incidentally, was mostly good).

There simply never has been a perfect prequel.  And before you start sending me bombs in the mail, let me just clarify that RED DRAGON (2002) was not a prequel.  It wasn't even a remake.  It was a re-adaptation of a book.  If you want me to talk about RED DRAGON, you're going to have to wait until I make a list called THE TOP TEN AWESOME MOVIES WHERE A GUY EATS A PAINTING.


Some people falsely accuse THE LOST WORLD: JURASSIC PARK (1997) of having ruined the franchise.  This is inaccurate.  THE LOST WORLD may not have been as good as JURASSIC PARK (1993), but it most certainly did not ruin the franchise.  JURASSIC PARK III (2001) did.  JURASSIC PARK III had two morons recruiting Dr. Alan Grant to come to Isla Sorna (the island from part 2) to help save their kid, who is stranded there.  Just so everyone understands, this is a human child who is put on an island full of carnivorous dinosaurs by himself and, weeks later, continues to breathe.  It also turns out that the two morons are divorced, and, while trying to get off the island, fall in love with each other all over again.  Which is a story that needed to be told within this franchise about as much as Fred Flintstone's honeymoon.

In this movie, there were a couple parts that killed the dinosaur-loving child within me.  First of all, the new Spinosaurus kicks the Tyrannosaurus Rex's ass and there are no repercussions.  He does not come back to save the day.  And then, the raptors talk.  They do not actually talk, but they communicate like benevolent creatures and rationally spare Dr. Grant's life when he gives them back their eggs, instead of ripping him to shreds for even existing.  And earlier in the movie, Dr. Grant has a dream where he sees a raptor in the plane on the way to the island, and the raptor actually does talk, in English, and it turns out to be Grant's friend waking him up.  Amazing that, in his dream, Grant already knows what the redesigned feathered raptors look like.  I try not to watch this movie too much, because it fills my soul with death and pain.


Let me start out by saying that SCREAM (1996) and SCREAM 2 (1997) are both incredible films.  They pay great homage to the teen slasher genre while at the same time mocking it with razor sharp dialogue and excellent plot twists.  They were both written by Kevin Williamson, who intended from the very beginning to make it the definitive Star Wars trilogy of horror.  This is why I've done exhaustive online research to try to figure out why in the hell Williamson didn't write SCREAM 3 (2001).  Evidently, he was just really busy working on a TV show called WASTELAND that nobody watched, so script duties were given to some asshead named Ehren Kruger, who SUPPOSEDLY based the screenplay on Williamson's treatment, though it is unclear exactly how much of it, if any, survived the transition intact.

It is painfully obvious, even to people who can't read opening credits, that the final chapter in what would have been the greatest horror-related tribute trilogy of all time was not written by the right man.  In the first two Screams, the killers are haphazard and imperfect and leave lots of little accidental clues behind for the viewer.  In part 3, the killer is superhuman and leaves behind intentional clues (in the form of photographs) that only exist so that the lazy writer can give his insipid characters something to investigate, even though it doesn't matter because they don't find anything out that undercuts the killer's long exposition at the end.  The killer also has a voice changer that can perfectly imitate the voice of anyone in the world, as well as clones of all the main characters' cell phones.  Part of what made the first two Screams so scary was that they could actually happen.  The killers weren't invincible assholes.  They were just psychos with a vendetta.

In the end, the only cool thing about SCREAM 3 is the staggering revelation that the killer makes at the end (that and Randy's message from beyond the grave).  But the execution of this movie is heartbreakingly awful.  The characters are nonexistent.  The killings are moronic.  The twists are uninspiring.

Jay and Silent Bob have a cameo.  As Jay and Silent Bob.

And where the first two Screams only get more interesting with repeat viewings that reveal new layers of details, SCREAM 3 only gets suckier.

I cannot describe how good MEN IN BLACK (1997) really is.  We all have a casual knowledge of this franchise, which went from a simple comic book to movies, cartoons, and an amusement park ride.  So possibly some of you forgot, but this is one of the cleverest movies ever made, written by the great Ed Solomon (of Bill & Ted fame).  MEN IN BLACK II (2002) is a piece of shit.  Obviously, it was not written by Ed Solomon.  Writing duties were passed off to 100 monkeys chained to typewriters.

This movie is just embarrassing.  WILD WILD WEST-level embarrassing.  Rather than inventing new ideas, they took every original moment and character from the first one and turned them all into stale running gags.  It wasn't funny or even reasonable.  Why does Zed have impossible physical powers?  Why are federal agents treated like superstars in their own headquarters?  Even small, meaningless changes, such as the little red neuralizer light now being blue, are infuriating because of their inexplicability.  Shall I speak of the nonexistent logic behind the deneuralizer machine?  THAT THEY FIND ON EBAY?  Kay deneuralizes himself to remember clues to a hiding place that he neuralized out of his head.  THINK ABOUT THAT.  By the end of this movie, no one wanted to see another Men in Black movie for the rest of their lives.

So there you have it.  Ten examples of ruined greatness.  What is the cause?  It seems to me that the running theme here is people in charge of something great killing it because they don't understand what made it great in the first place.  Like a guy overwatering a plant.  Or the idiot from GREMLINS who fed his Mogwai after midnight.  GREMLINS 2: THE NEW BATCH, incidentally, was an awesome sequel.


Because you have been a good reader, I'm giving you a bonus entry.  This movie actually came out after I had already finalized the list, but it was too worthy a contender not to include, so it gets a special entry as the TOP FRANCHISE RUINER OF 2006.  And I feel comfortable saying that even with Basic Instincts and Tokyo Drifts flying past our heads.

This is a perfect example of something that isn't good because priority one was hitting a release date and priority one million was doing the source material justice.  It also shows how actors can unfairly influence a mythology that is bigger than they are if they can snag their talons just deep enough.  For example, James Marsden is probably the kind of guy who gets his script and plays his part without too much complaining.  As a result, Cyclops (who is supposed to be the leader of the X-Men) runs off crying in the first five minutes and dies off screen.  Halle Berry makes a big deal about how her character always sucks, so now we have STORM: THE MOVIE, featuring the X-Men.  Too bad the only reason Storm always sucks is because Halle Berry always plays her.

We also get to enjoy scenes like this one between Storm and Beast, who is supposed to be a super genius:

BEAST: "We have to close the school.  It's the only way."
STORM: "No.  We're going to keep the school open."
BEAST: "My god!  You're right!"

This script is one scene after another of awkwardly-staged cliche contests where all the characters win and the audience loses.  Then, half the characters lose their powers, the other half die, and Halle Berry rolls around on their graves.  Congratulations, X-MEN: THE LAST STAND.  You sucked so much, you achieved the disgrace of being named the TOP FRANCHISE RUINER OF 2006 before the year was even half over.  Now go die in a Walmart bin.

-- Diego Kontarovsky

Back to Writings.