Lord of the Rings knew when to stop, but these franchises — with further additions either on the way or rumored to be in the works — have outstayed their welcome …
10. Pirates of the Caribbean/The Bourne Identity
Why They Didn’t Suck: Jason Bourne out-Bonded James Bond; Captain Jack Sparrow owns the seas like Keith Richards owns the stage.
But Another One? Just Junk: The bloody and bruised Bourne trilogy changed the way we thought spy games should be played and indirectly led to a Bond franchise reboot, complete with a backstreet brawler of an 007. Thanks to Johnny Depp cheekily channeling the death-defying Rolling Stones guitar slinger, Pirates of the Caribbean overcame the stigma of being inspired by a Disney theme-park ride of all things. Both trilogies tied up loose ends as best as possible, so any additions would quite frankly be redundant. Besides, after the two Pirates sequels buckled under the weight of their overly loaded interconnected plots, Sparrow should be imprisoned in Davy Jones’ Locker for the rest of eternity before they make a fourth Pirates. And what is there for Bourne to do? He’s already gone to hell and back while on the run as an assassin suffering from amnesia. He’s regained his memories, and the world now thinks he’s dead. Enough already. Let Bourne live out the rest of his days in peace as David Webb.
KEEP READING: Saw VI? Hell to the no![PAGEBREAK]
9. Saw
Why It Didn’t Suck: No one concocts deadlier cat-and-mouse games than Jigsaw.
But Another One? Just Junk: Isn’t Jigsaw dead? Didn’t he croak in Saw III? Or was that Saw IV? Sorry for the confusion, but with all the flashbacks he appears in, it’s hard to keep track of his comings and goings. Now there are many flashbacks in each new Saw as there are traps. Not that it’s easy to distinguish one trap from the next. With the first few Saws, Jigsaw’s murderous rampage made sense in a demented way. Here was a serial killer who dared his seemingly innocent victims to act upon the invaluable lessons they learned from their prior moral lapses to save themselves. Now it’s all about the traps. Too bad Detective Mark Hoffman doesn’t build a better trap than his mentor did. Or Jigsaw’s first apprentice, the late Amanda Young, who reportedly will appear in what should be another flashback-heavy Saw VI. Yawn. Time for this franchise to join Jigsaw in death.
KEEP READING: Faster & Furiously? Hell to the no![PAGEBREAK]
Why It Didn’t Suck: Hot cars, hotter bodies.
But Another One? Just Junk: Fast & Furious is the sequel we wanted in 2003. Not 2 Fast 2 Furious. Not Tokyo Drift. And it’s all Vin Diesel’s fault we suffered through two superfluous sequels. He mistakenly thought he was bigger than Fast and the Furious and xXx. So he bailed on them. Now, having hit rock bottom with Babylon A.D. and Find Me Guilty, Diesel’s crawling back to both franchises. Assembling Diesel, Paul Walker, Michelle Rodriguez and Jordana Brewster for this sequel set after 2 Fast 2 Furious presents an opportunity to address all previously unresolved issues. Instead, it leaves the driver’s door open for more street racing. Wrong move. All Fast and Furious had to do was explain what happened to Diesel’s street racer, have him patch things up with Walker’s disgraced FBI agent, and then both could zoom off into the sunset. That would have allowed the franchise to go out with a nitrous-oxide-injected blast. Now the franchise will stick around like a wrecked muscle car that’s only good for the scrapheap.
KEEP READING: Transporter 4? Hell to the no![PAGEBREAK]
Why It Didn’t Suck: Jason Statham handles the road better than Dale Earnhardt Jr.
But Another One? Just Junk: As the ask-no-questions BMW man Frank Martin, Statham clocks more miles and delivers more packages than FedEx does every year. Throw in Death Race and The Italian Job and Statham’s riding on tires balder than his bullet-shaped head. The British brawler’s hands are lethal weapons — even more so than that other fast-and-furious speed demon, Vin Diesel — so why keep them glued to the wheel of a luxury sedan when he can use them to beat some mass of hired muscle to a bloody pulp? Besides, Frank’s pissed off so many of his clients that surely his reputation’s taken a major hit. Are there really any bad guys left who are stupid enough to hire a wheelman who’s more likely to deliver you to the cops than your package to its intended destination?
KEEP READING: Sex and the City 2? Hell to the no![PAGEBREAK]
Why It Didn’t Suck: We missed going shoe-shopping with Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda.
But Another One? Just Junk: You couldn’t ask for better fairy tale endings for our four Manhattan manhunters when Sex and the City went off the air in 2004. Carrie finally bagged Mr. Big. Samantha landed a boy toy worth keeping. Charlotte’s hard work to adopt paid off. Miranda came to terms with moving her family to Brooklyn. Last year’s movie existed to put each (seemingly) content fashionista through the emotional wringer and ruin the warm and fuzzy feeling left by the series finale. The moment Mr. Big left Carrie standing at the altar, the film discarded the series’ naughty-but-nice commitment to fun like a once-worn pair of Manolo Blahnik high heels. Did anyone want to see Carrie, Samantha and Miranda crying into their Cosmos? Charlotte got off easy, but at the cost of being squeezed out of proceedings. Sure, things worked out for the ladies in the end. Unfortunately, next year’s sequel will undoubtedly prove that their happiness is fleeting.
KEEP READING: Alien vs. Predator 18? Hell to the no![PAGEBREAK]
Why It Didn’t Suck: We got what we wanted after 20 years of waiting: a monster mash between two alien species of killing machines.
But Another One? Just Junk: We knew the moment we saw an alien’s skull displayed as a trophy in Predator 2 that there would be a day of reckoning between these extraterrestrial foes. It’s a cool idea that a young predator’s rite of passage involves turning aliens into sushi. If only AvP knew what to do with these heavyweights once they began duking it out in an underground pyramid in the Antarctic, or what role our human heroes would play. While the rematch, Requiem, was a no-holds-barred slugfest, it took too many liberties with the mythology established by the Alien films. Both bouts, though, showed that if you’ve seen one fight between aliens and predator, you’ve seen them all. Not that we want these vicious ETs to head off to the deepest, darkest recesses of space for good. Ellen Ripley needs to kick alien butt one last time. And how about having predators hunt humans on their home planet? Anything would be better than this no-decision of a monster mash-up.
KEEP READING: Indy 5? Mummy 4? Hell to the no![PAGEBREAK]
Why They Didn’t Suck: No one makes archaeology more like an adventure than a history than Indiana Jones and Rick O’Connell.
But Another One? Just Junk: Like father, like son? No way. Indiana Jones and Rick O’Connell’s last globetrotting quests to save humanity closed with the promise of further escapades by not just our favorite adventurers but also their sons. Unfortunately, the underwhelming contributions in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and Tomb of Dragon Emperor by Henry “Mutt” Williams Jones and Alex O’Connell reveal they don’t possess what it takes to guard the world from threats beyond the stars or the grave. Yes, they risk all to be the hero, but each lacks their father’s rugged charm and whiplash smarts. Jones and O’Connell make saving the day look fun and easy; their boys make it look like hard work. Both franchises are getting creaky and desperate, and Harrison Ford will be older than the Ark of the Covenant when he next picks up his bullwhip. So it’s better to retire the franchises at the same time Jones and O’Connell hang up their hats rather than have their sons to ruin their good names.
KEEP READING: Underworld 4? Hell to the no![PAGEBREAK]
3. Underworld
Why It Didn’t Suck: In one corner, vampires. In the other, werewolves. Then let’s not forget Kate Beckinsale in a shiny black cat suit. Meow.
But Another One? Just Junk: We scalped front-row seats the first time the bourgeois bloodsuckers tried to domesticate the rough and unruly Lycans. The rematch didn’t live up to expectations. The third bout was nothing more than a money grab. With Underworld, director Len Wiseman introduced a strange new world in which vampires protected the humans they once stalked from the savage beasts they formerly kept as slaves. He created a mythology that served the series well until it came to its natural end with Beckinsale’s Death Dealer and Scott Speedman’s Lycan/Vampire hybrid literally and figuratively walking into the sunset in Underworld: Evolution. But Rise of the Lycans was an unnecessary prequel that didn’t need to be told — after all, the flashbacks in Underworld did a fine job of chronicling the bad history between master and slave. Besides, Beckinsale could takeout Rise of the Lycans’ Rhona Mitra with both hands tied behind her back with head vampire Lucian’s trusty slave master’s whip.
KEEP READING: Halloween 2010? Hell to the no![PAGEBREAK]
Why They Didn’t Suck: The remakes made these unstoppable serial killers bleed again.
But Another One? Just Junk: The original Friday the 13th and Halloween series deserved to die even more painful deaths than Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers’ victims. Both killers went from being flesh-and-blood masked maniacs to indestructible personifications of evil pure. The rebooted franchises take these murderers back to their roots — but without any attempts to make them vaguely more interesting or expand upon their mythologies. The latest Friday the 13th seemed content to squeeze the original first three films into a single scream fest without offering one scary moment. Rob Zombie deserves credit for showing some ambition with his Halloween redux by presenting a psychological profile of the brooding Myers. Then he happily let Myers go out and slice and dice his way through Haddonfield. Boring. Do we really still need to punish sexually active teens for being promiscuous? Sadly, the new incarnations of Jason and Michael will long continue to carve up young hot things and cheat death in the silliest of way — at least until we get bored again with their killing sprees.
KEEP READING: Bev Hills Cop IV? Hell to the no![PAGEBREAK]
Why It Didn’t Suck: Eddie! Eddie! Eddie!
But Another One? Just Junk: Question: How many times can a Detroit cop work a case in Beverly Hills? Answer: Whenever Eddie Murphy gets the itch to prove he’s still the street-smart, motor-mouthed bad boy we fell in love with during the Reagan administration. Unfortunately, Murphy lost his edge long before he went all Nutty Professor on us. The more comfortable Murphy grew with his fame, the more mainstream he became. He went through the motions in Beverly Hills Cop II. Beverly Hills Cop III was the desperate act of a superstar on the decline. Beverly Hills Cop IV’s an obvious attempt to exploit his Dreamgirls’ Oscar nomination. It might work had a comedy maverick like Superbad’s Greg Mottola been hired to make Axel Foley hip and relevant again. But Rush Hour director Brett Ratner will play it safe. Still, Beverly Hill Cops IV is a waste of time. Murphy should be capitalizing on his Dreamgirls success by pursuing challenging roles. Not reliving past glories.
READ MORE: Wait, What’s the Age Diff?
