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Box-Office Disasters

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Movie-making is a risky and expensive business.  There’s a lot that goes into movie-making than most people realize.  It’s more than just hiring actors, directors and producers.  There’s a lot more than that.  You have to rent equipment, hire costume designers, location scouts, catering, music, and sound design among other many small details.  These smaller details can actually add up to a lot of overhead, sometimes causing a movie to lose money, despite how much it may earn at the box-office.  That’s part of what I’m here to discuss.  I’m here to discuss some of the biggest box-office flops of all time and I’ll explain why.  Just to let you know, I will be talking about big-budget movies with some of the biggest names in the industry.  I will prove to you that despite having a massive budget and big names, your movie can still bomb at the box office.  Just so you are aware, not all of these movies are necessarily bad, some of them are actually rather good movies that just failed for a number of reasons.  In order for a movie to be considered successful, it has to make back more than twice its budget.  That being said, these are the biggest box-office disasters.  Side-note: currency devalues over time, so one has to adjust for inflation.  Also: These are going to be ones that I’ve seen.

Krull

Let’s start with something relatively small here:  Krull.  Krull is a fantasy film that takes place on another planet that’s being conquered by a mysterious being known as The Beast.  Initial budget was about $27 million at the time.  Kind of mid-range fare if you ask me.  However, the domestic gross of the film was approximately $16.5 million dollars.  I grew up watching this one, so I have a fondness for the film.  It’s not actually a horrible movie.  It’s mediocre at best, but was not the worst film that year.  So….why did the film bomb?  One reason and one reason only:  Bad timing.  See, the movie was released during the summer, in which the big blockbusters where coming out.  So, the film was going to have trouble finding an audience anyway, but there was one movie that the makers of Krull failed to take into account:  Star Wars.  The third and final entry in the Star Wars trilogy ended up being one of the highest-grossing movies of 1983.  THAT was the movie that people wanted to see, not Krull.

Cowboys & Aliens

This one kinda hurts.  I really enjoyed the hell out of this one.  It combined two of my favorite genres:  Westerns and Science Fiction.  It was an interesting combination, that while it had its issues, was a thoroughly entertaining romp.  Alas, the critics and the audiences didn’t really see it that way.  Despite having an ensemble cast that included Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, Olivia Wilde, and Clancy Brown, the film brought in a paltry $175 million on a $163 million budget.  Despite strong acting from nearly everybody on the cast, the film failed to resonate with audiences and critics world-wide.  Personally, I loved the film, but a lot of people didn’t and it’s a shame.

The Chronicles of Riddick

Oh, here’s another painful entry.  This is another of my favorites.  I loved David Twohy’s Pitch Black which featured the series main character, Riddick, played by Vin Diesel.  While the first movie was a low-budget film that was set on planet of perpetual darkness surrounded by flesh-eating beasts, the follow-up film expanded Riddick’s universe exponentially.  We traveled to more worlds and faced a massive enemy force known as the Necromongers.  With a budget between $105-210 million, Chronicles of Riddick brought in a grand total of nearly $116 million.  What went wrong?  For one, the tone of the film was completely different from that of Pitch Black.  Instead of a close-quarters claustrophobic struggle for survival, Chronicles opts for a more space operatic along the lines of Star Wars.  It’s not a bad idea, and the execution was mostly okay.  The problem is that David Twohy didn’t have the experience necessary to craft a story on that level.  I loved what I saw, but I could definitely see why people didn’t like it.

Cutthroat Island

How many movies do you know of that have actually sent the production company into bankruptcy?  There aren’t a whole lot.  There was another movie that was notorious for shuttering United Artists: Heaven’s Gate but I haven’t seen that one, so I’ll go with the next most notorious film:  Cutthroat Island.  Renny Harlin’s pirate epic was released in 1995 to mostly negative reviews.  The film was made on a $98 million dollar budget and failed to recoup even $20 million.  While it was known that the production company, Carolco Pictures was in a state of ruin already, Cutthroat Island was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.  Carolco filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and was shuttered shortly thereafter.  What contributed to the film’s failing was a number of reasons.  One: Geena Davis was NOT a convincing pirate captain and the chemistry between her and Matthew Modine was completely absent.  Two: There were a lot of problems during production, before the movie even started shooting.  The situation was really, really bad.  Renny Harlin did the best he could with what he had, but it wasn’t enough to save the movie or the movie studio.  Personally, I had fun with it, despite its problems.

Jupiter Ascending

Is there anybody out there who thinks that the Wachowskis are anything more than a one-trick pony?  They really aren’t.  While I don’t necessarily think they’re bad directors, they are terrible writers.  The only thing significantly good that they have ever done was The Matrix, and only the first one, really.  Why?  Each of their movies has a kind of Wizard of OZ kind of vibe to it that gets old.  Jupiter Ascending had the potential to be something truly great. It had a great visual style with some really amazing set-pieces and action sequences.  There’s a problem:  The movie is boring.  There’s too much space between action scenes.  There’s WAY too much exposition for a movie that’s barely over 2 hours long.  The audiences and critics responded accordingly.  The film’s production was an estimated $175 million, and only brought in $184 million.  It has some good things going for it, one of them with Sean Bean not dying at all, which must be a first in his career.  Visually, this is a stunning film, with some really outstanding visual effects and CGI shots.  But THAT’S where the budget seems to go, instead of character and story development.

John Carter

Now we’re really getting into the big bruisers here.  John Carter was released in 2012 to mixed reviews across the board.  I didn’t really think too much of the film after I saw it, but a number of people seemed to like it.  My dad loves the hell out of it, so there must be some value to it.  However, this film demonstrates how bad of an idea it is to push a movie based on a book that not many people have read or heard about.  The movie was based on A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burrows.  There’s no getting around it:  John Carter failed and failed HARD.  With a massively bloated budget of $263.7 million, the film needed to break the $600 million mark just to break even, and it only got back $284 million.  Let’s forget the fact that the film is based on a book that few people have read nowadays.  The massive budget was due to the fact that the director had to do massive re-shoots.  In fact, Andrew Stanton nearly re-shot the entire film, which is unheard of.  Re-shoots are just a part of the film-making process, but not to this degree.  When word got out that these re-shoots were happening, people stayed away fearing that the movie had some massive problems.  It did.  The film lost nearly $125 million.  It also caused the then-CEO of Disney, Rich Ross, to resign.

The Lone Ranger

One major flop wasn’t apparently enough for Disney, so they ended up with two in a row.  First was John Carter, and now, The Lone Ranger.  The movie was based on the television series from the late 40s and 50s.  It had Johnny Depp in the film and Gore Verbinski directing, you know, the guy who directed Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean.  The film was released to mostly negative reviews.  I’m not entirely sure what movie THEY saw, but the movie that I saw was a very entertaining Western that had the right amount of camp, humor and excitement thrown into the mix.  I thought it was fun.  I think people targeted the movie because it ended up getting shut down at one point, because it went over-budget.  Speaking of which, the budget fell between $225 and $250 million.  But you could tell where the money went, to try and make the action as believable as possible without using CGI.  In that regard, it succeeded.  The final train sequence was brilliant.  Unfortunately, audiences and critics were less than forgiving.  The film’s final take-home was about $260.5 million, give or take.

Nobody sets out to make a bad movie.  Not even Ed Wood set out to make a bad movie, he just wasn’t any good at it.  But sometimes the film-makers end up biting off more than they can chew, and the final result is a movie that tanks both critically and financially.  As I said before, not all of these movies are bad, it’s just that the circumstances are really unfortunate.  Now, Disney being as big as they are could weather two massive flops, whereas most film studios would probably collapse.  Thankfully, Disney’s acquisition of Lucasfilm and Marvel Studios has put them in a position where they can really do some amazing things.  Not a lot of movie studios have that kind of leeway.

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Close Encounters of The Third Kind

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Released: December 1977

Director: Steven Spielberg

Run Time: 135 Minutes

Rated PG

Composer: John Williams

Distributor: Columbia Pictures

Cast:
Richard Dreyfuss: Roy Neary
Francois Truffaut: Claude Lacombe
Terri Garr: Ronnie Neary
Melinda Dillon: Jillian Guiler
Bob Balaban: David Laughlin

Interest in extra-terrestrial life has been around for decades.  In 1947, a mysterious object crash landed outside the city of Roswell, New Mexico.  While it was later determined that the object was used to monitor nuclear testing, that didn’t stop people from speculating that the object came from outer space.  In fact, when the military said that it was a “weather balloon,” a lot of people and conspiracy theorists got downright suspicious.  The idea that life could exist somewhere other than Earth invaded the imaginations of the United States and eventually, the world.  People really wanted to know if there really was extra-terrestrial life out there somewhere.  A lot of the movies that were released the following decade reflected that mentality and idea, the most famous of which was The Day The Earth Stood Still.  Alien invasion also started entering the picture and the whole science fiction genre took off.  It hasn’t slowed down one bit.  In 1977, a little known director named George Lucas released a small film that changed the way movies were made:  Star Wars.  Later that year, Steven Spielberg would release his own little sci-fi movie: Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Close Encounters opens in the middle of the Mexican desert, when a number of US government officials discover that World War II planes had appeared right out of nowhere in the middle of the night.  Meanwhile, in Indiana, an electrical worker by the name of Roy Neary is on his way to help fix a problem at a certain junction when he sees mysterious lights in above his truck.  His truck begins to shake and rattle, and then it all stops and the lights move on down the road.  Stunned and curious by what he has seen, he tries to follow the lights.  He then realizes that he’s not the only one who has seen this phenomenon and attempts to try and discover what it all means and why it happened.  The story in Close Encounters is really good.  This is not your typical science fiction film.  It’s kind of slow, but it’s more focused on the characters and how they are affected by certain events.  What makes this movie so interesting to me, is that there’s no villain.  There really isn’t.  The closest you’ve got is the US government, but here they are trying keep people away to prevent panic.  That makes sense.  At the same time, they are trying to find a way to communicate with the visitors instead of just blasting them out of the sky.  That’s what separates this movie from a lot of other science fiction pictures.  You see the same thing from different sides, and Spielberg manages to bring it together almost flawlessly.

Part of what really drives this film are the performances.  Richard Dreyfuss’ character of Roy Neary starts out as a regular guy who likes to do sculptures in his free time.  After his first encounter with the visitors, we see his mental state crumble because he becomes obsessed with finding the truth.  This obsession has such a clear and terrifying effect on his family that they leave him.  Richard Dreyfuss is a phenomenal actor and he puts everything that he’s got into this role.  Terri Garr plays Roy’s wife, who becomes scared of her husband’s manic behavior.  The late Francois Truffaut is fantastic as Lacombe.  His character’s a scientist, but he also comes across as very sympathetic as he understands why the people that had close encounters want to see what happens next.  There’s a lot of stellar performances here, even a brief bit from Lance Henriksen who would go on to play the android Bishop in Aliens.  Overall, the acting’s pretty solid across the board.

Now, I said earlier that the performances help drive the movie forward, but what really sells the whole thing are the visuals.  I’m telling you, for a movie that’s nearly 40 years old, the visual effects are astounding.  Why?  It’s all done without CG.  This was 1977, CGI really wasn’t a thing back then.  This is a very colorful movie.  The lights and ships are all very distinct and different from each other.  One of the coolest effects I’ve ever seen was when a young boy was getting abducted by the visitors.  The visitors arrived in this very ominous cloud and there were lights flashing in it.  It was spectacular.  They save the best sequence for last, when they finally make contact.  All the alien ships show up and fly around being totally cool.  Then the mother ship arrives, and holy smokes is that thing huge.  The special effects by Douglas Trumbull are second-to-none.  The scale is absolutely insane.  This is all set against the Devil’s Tower in Wyoming.

The music plays a very important part in this film.  Not just because of the background score by John Williams, which is absolutely fantastic, but it plays a huge part in trying to communicate with the aliens.  You have to listen to it to understand:

The last time I saw Close Encounters of the Third Kind was when I was about 6 or 7.  That’s quite a long time.  What I did remember was the ending of the film with that huge ship and the conversations the people and the visitors using tones and music.  I remember it being very captivating.  Having seen it again about 27 years later, it’s still one of the most spectacular movies I have ever seen.  It’s not an action movie, but it is exciting.  There’s a level joyfulness and optimism in the movie that we really haven’t seen since.  Yeah, Star Trek featured an optimistic future, but Close Enounters asks what would happen if we were visited NOW.  I think the movie is just as important today as it was during the late 70s.  This is an astounding film in every aspect.  It’s one that you can watch with your family and your kids, even though you may want to plug their ears as there is some language in the movie, but it is SO visually distinctive that no one has made a movie quite like this before or since.  I can’t recommend this movie enough.  It has to be seen to be believed.  If you haven’t seen it yet, what are you waiting for?  Get out there and rent or better yet, BUY it.  This is one of the rare movies that I don’t give a score for.  Why should I?  It’s so imaginative, fun, exciting and unique.  It gets it all right.  It’s a classic in every sense of the word.

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The Best: Star Trek

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“These are continuing voyages of the starship Enterprise.  Her ongoing mission:  To explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life forms and new civilizations; to boldly go where no man has gone before.”

60 years ago, a man named Gene Roddenberry created a neat little science fiction show called Star Trek.  Taking place over 200 years into the future, Star Trek featured a universe in which mankind was united in exploring the galaxy in a government known as the United Federation of Planets.  In 1966, William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy,  James Doohan, Walter Koenig, Nichelle Nichols, and DeForest Kelley starred as the main crew of the USS Enterprise.  The original series lasted only 3 years, but it left an amazing impression on the world.  It was very well received by fans from all walks of life.  Why was it so popular?  Why was it influential?  One of the most obvious answers, is that the show featured an extremely diverse cast of characters.  You had Uhura, who was African-American.  Povel Chekhov was Russian and Sulu was Asian-American.  The show came out in a time when people were not only fighting for civil rights, but we were taking on a global threat that was Communism, which included the Russians.  It was extraordinary to see such an ethnically diverse group of people unite on a ship like the Enterprise.  Not only that, but Star Trek would also feature some technology that wouldn’t come into existence until the mid to late 90s.  Cell phones, anybody?  Gene Roddenberry was ahead of his time.  He envisioned a future in which everybody came together for common cause, and such optimism was unusual in a syndicated television show.

While the cultural significance of Star Trek is very important, that’s not just what the show and subsequent franchise was about.  It was about exploration.  Not just the galaxy, but of ideas and philosophies; some of which are still significant.  The franchise took us beyond the stars and explored what could be.  After the original show ended in 1969, a decade would pass before we would see another Star Trek story.  When Star Wars was released in 1977, Paramount Studios used this an opportunity to craft their own epic space saga in a full feature-length film.  In 1979, Star Trek: The Motion Picture was released to audiences world-wide to an understandably mixed reaction.  While people had issues with the film, it was still an important piece of Star Trek history.  The game changed when Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan was released in 1982.  This was the film that fans were hoping for and it was a smash hit.  Star Trek has recently celebrated its 50th birthday with the release of the new Star Trek Beyond film.  While I would make a post specifically for why I love Star Trek, I believe it would easier for me to give you examples of why I love this franchise.  Don’t get me wrong, I grew up on Star Wars, but I also grew up on Star Trek as well, so I have feet planted firmly in both camps.  For this episode of The Best, I will be including not just the movies, but also some of the television series as well, since the franchise spans both TV and movies.  I will be featuring specific episodes from the original series and The Next Generation on the TV side of things.  This is The Best of Star Trek.

Star Trek: The Original Series:

Balance of Terror:

This is the first episode of Star Trek that featured Romulans, the off-shoot of Vulcans like Mr. Spock.  While they wouldn’t get a look at the actual Romulans until about half-way through the episode, the reveal was nothing less than shocking.  Featuring Mark Lenard as the captain of the Romulan warship, the episode high-lighted several concepts including bigotry in the 23rd century.  When the Romulans were revealed, one of the Enterprise’s crew members accused Spock of being one of the enemy, due to the physical similarities that the Vulcans and Romulans shared.  It was also a very intense episode.  It was by far, one of the best episodes of Star Trek.

Space Seed

This particular episode is special to many, many fans, because it features a villain unlike any other:  Khan Noonien Singh.  Khan was a genetically engineered super-soldier from the 1990s(Star Trek universe, of course)lost in space.  He was incredibly intelligent, fast and strong.  He was also believe that he was genetically superior to the rest of humanity.  Not only does Khan give Kirk a run for his money, he becomes a personal villain to Captain Kirk.  Ricardo Montalban was incredible as Khan.  The name of the episode is strangely prophetic as Khan would return in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.  That was the first Star Trek film to be directly linked to an episode of the original series.  Khan has become one of the greatest villains in cinematic history.

Star Trek: The Next Generation

After the cancellation of the original series in 1969, and the release of 5 Star Trek films, production began on a new Star Trek series that takes place a hundred years after the original series.  The new show debuted in 1987 with a new cast of characters.  Captain Jean-Luc Picard, Commander Riker, Worf, Deanna Troi, Doctor Beverly Crusher and the android, Data would take the lead in the new series which lasted 7 seasons.  With better visual effects, sleeker ships and a larger budget, Star Trek: The Next Generation would prove to be just as significant and amazing as the original show.  While the first season was a little rough around the edges, it was still pretty good.  Season 2 is where things really picked up.

Q-Who?

When a show introduces a new villain, you would expect that villain to be memorable, hopefully.  In Q-Who?, the crew of the Enterprise-D is introduced to one of the Federation’s most devastating enemies:  The Borg.  The Borg come into play when the god-like Q flings the Enterprise 7,000 light years away from their current position and encounter a force that is pretty much unstoppable.  This episode is important for a number of reasons.  The Federation finally comes up against a foe that they’re not entirely certain they can defeat and one that conquers and assimilates entire civilizations.  This encounter impacts the series as a whole, and it has an effect upcoming episodes.

The Best of Both Worlds Parts I and II

These episodes are by far the most significant in the entire Next Generation series.  Why?  Because this story arc did things that few people have seen before in television.  The main hero of the series is captured and turned into one of the enemy, which was shocking for a lot of people, but The Best of Both Worlds Part I ended Season 3 on a cliff-hanger.  Nobody had ever done anything like that before in television history.  It was a huge risk, leaving people hanging for the conclusion, which wouldn’t happen for another few months.  People had speculated and had theories on what would happen.  When Season 4 opened with the conclusion of the story, it blew people away.  It was important for a number of reasons.  For one, it changed Captain Picard on a personal level.  He was essentially violated and stripped of his humanity, and that has a lasting effect throughout the rest of the series.  He HATES the Borg because of what they have done.  The feature film, Star Trek: First Contact essentially brings his relationship to the Borg to a head and to a satisfying conclusion.  When it comes The Next Generation, these are the two episodes that I like to watch over and over again.  They’re that good, and represent some of the best of what Star Trek has to offer.

While I’m sure some of you might be disappointed that I didn’t feature any episodes from Deep Space Nine, Voyager, or Enterprise, these are the most significant Star Trek episodes for me.  These are the ones that I found to be the best in the television side of the franchise.  Deep Space Nine, I think, will get its own post, because their is way too much going on in that series for a single post.  There will be more posts about Star Trek in the near future, so stay tuned.  The adventure is just beginning.

 

 

 

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Substandard Sequels

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You would think with my recent posts about sequels, that I would be obsessed with sequels.  To a certain extent, that is entirely true.  I love movies, which includes sequels and remakes.  For this particular list, I’m going to be leaving off remakes entirely, as that is a different list for a different day.  One of my previous posts was about unnecessary sequels, which you can check out by hitting the Opinions and Such button at the top of the page here.  While I didn’t feel that those movies were absolutely awful, they just felt completely out of place and didn’t really need to be made.  For this particular post, I’ll be focusing on those sequels that should have been good, but weren’t.  This is my personal opinion, so if you get offended, oh well.  Some of these sequels aren’t necessarily bad movies, per se, but as sequels they just get it completely wrong.  Let’s begin, shall we?

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny

This is a sequel that failed on so many levels.  Yeah, it’s beautifully shot with some decent acting and fight scenes, but the movie really misses the point of the original movie.  The first Crouching Tiger was more of a drama than an action film that focused more on the characters and story.  Sword of Destiny does the opposite and focuses on the spectacle and fight scenes rather than the characterization.  The story is supposed to drive the action, not vice versa.  The film is competently made, but the whole is done in English, rather than Mandarin or Cantonese, which hurts the film considerably.  Objectively, this is just not a good movie and an even worse sequel.

Highlander II

Oh, boy.  Where do I begin with this one?  I’ll be truthful with you:  After the stellar first movie, it was highly unlikely that any sequel would be as good, but Highlander II was an absolute train-wreck.  The Immortals came from the planet Zeist?!  What genius came up with that?  That was REALLY stupid.  The movie does have some interesting ideas, but it’s all so poorly put together, that it doesn’t matter.  Bad fight choreography, forced humor and the original release had this really irritating red aura throughout the whole thing which gave people headaches.  This one could have and SHOULD have been better than it was.

Spider-Man 3

 

This was the last Spider-Man film to be released before they rebooted the franchise.  Spider-Man 3 was definitely a result of studio interference.  Sam Raimi, the director, wanted to have one particular villain, but Sony insisted on throwing not two but three additional villains into the mix.  Having Sandman and the New Green Goblin would have pushed it a bit, but it still could’ve worked.  Nope, Sony HAD to have Venom in there somewhere.  Too many villains, too many subplots and some really awful Emo Peter Parker crippled what could have been an epic Spider-Man film.  This is a movie that NEEDED to be good, but Sony botched it completely.  That’s not to say that Raimi doesn’t share some of the blame, he does, but the whole thing was a mess.  Also, Topher Grace as Eddie Brock/Venom?!  Seriously?  Talk about piss-poor casting.

X-Men: The Last Stand

Another comic book movie on the list, X-Men: The Last Stand suffers from the director not understanding the previous movies.  The first two movies had a point to be made about being different in a world that doesn’t necessarily accept that.  The Last Stand is a straight-up action movie that eschews any form of good storytelling in favor of explosions.  That doesn’t necessarily mean that I didn’t enjoy it, I did, but as an X-Men film, this sucker just fell flat on its face.  Again, this could have been epic in so many ways, but Brett Ratner just didn’t know how to handle it.  A bad script along with some really poor writing just brought this movie to its knees.

Tom Yum Goong 2 a.k.a The Protector 2

This was supposed to be Tony Jaa’s comeback film after the disastrous release of Ong-Bak 3.  There’s a problem:  It’s not that good.  Why? There are a lot of reasons.  Let’s start with the horrendous visual effects and 3D.  The green-screen effects were blatantly obvious.  Another is the fact that Tony Jaa used wires in this movie.  The whole reason why people started watching movies like the original Ong-Bak and The Protector was that Tony Jaa didn’t need wires to be able to all those wild acrobatics.  The action in the film is pretty watered-down compared to Jaa’s previous efforts, although there are some pretty decent highlights, like his fights with Marrese Crump.  Those were actually pretty damn good.  Even with those, this was NOT the movie that was going to get Tony Jaa back on top.

007: Quantum of Solace

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kasyk4rtQ2U

This is the first James Bond movie that was direct sequel.  Casino Royale was a reboot of the entire franchise and was a great James Bond movie with Daniel Craig in the title role.  It focused on Bond being a newly-minted 00 Agent, and as such, he ended up making mistakes.  The character was far more human than a lot of the other movies.  The idea of having a direct sequel to a James Bond is a good one, but Quantum of Solace was a disaster.  Terrible editing, lousy villain and a host of other problems really brought the movie down.  At 106 minutes, Quantum of Solace was one of the shortest James Bond movies ever.  They also tried to introduce a new criminal organization called Quantum.  The recent Bond movie, Spectre actually addresses this issue, but back in 2008, Quantum just felt like a cheap version of SPECTRE.  Quantum of Solace just wasn’t a good movie.  It should have been, but it wasn’t.

The Bourne Legacy

This was the first Bourne film without Matt Damon.  When you have a Bourne movie WITHOUT Jason Bourne, you’re in for an uphill battle that you can’t win.  I understand why Matt Damon and director Paul Greengrass didn’t return for this entry.  The script was bad.  It was not up to the standards of the first three movies.  So, when Matt Damon decided not to return, the film makers had to scramble to find somebody who could play NOT-Jason Bourne.  This one was doomed right from the beginning.  Don’t get me wrong, Jeremy Renner does a great job with what he’s got, but what he’s got isn’t very good.  The whole film feels like a cheap Bourne movie knock-off with the name attached to it.  Don’t get me started on the film’s non-ending.  This movie pissed off a lot of people.

These were the sequels that really had potential, but completely missed the mark.