When you love a movie so much it becomes part of your soul, your heart may plummet upon learning it’s getting a sequel. Why? Well, because a lot of sequels just plain aren’t very good. Some are great, sure! But when it comes to movies like the ones on this list, at best they’re a cheap cash-grab, and at worst they ruin the original beyond repair.
Here’s a list of fifteen of the most infamous sequels of all time, ranked from least awful to absolute worst. If you’re a Hollywood producer reading this, now you know what not to do.
15. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
You either love or hate Jurassic World, the first in the Jurassic Park sequel series. Its sequel Fallen Kingdom on the other hand … you’d be hard pressed to find many people who loved it. All the most moving moments (not that there are many) belong to the dinosaurs while the human characters fall by the wayside, and gone is the sense of wonder that the original Jurassic Park ushered in. It got absolutely slaughtered, Velociraptor-style, by critics when it came out, and if anything it’s even more poorly regarded now.
14. The Amazing Spider-Man 2
Poor, poor Andrew Garfield. He was so good in the role of Peter Parker, but his franchise didn’t get past two movies before bad writing dragged it down. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is everything you don’t want a superhero movie to be: overstuffed, depressing, and somehow both unfaithful and too faithful to some crucial parts of the source material. Who on earth thought it would be a good idea to kill the female lead off during the second movie? Still, at least Garfield got to come back for No Way Home and everyone was able to remember how good he was.
13. The Hunchback of Notre Dame II
In the ’00s Disney decided to do direct-to-video “sequels” for some of their most popular movies of the era. This turned out to be an absolutely terrible idea, and arguably no movie suffered worse from this greed-based decision than The Hunchback of Notre Dame. All the beauty and majesty of the original has gone from the sequel. The animation is awful, the plot is pointless, the characters have regressed, and although many members of the original cast returned they were probably kicking themselves that they did so. Victor Hugo would be spinning in his grave.
12. Jaws: The Revenge
It was a mistake making a sequel to Jaws in the first place, let alone three of the damn things. Jaws: The Revenge (sometimes known as “Jaws 4”) is about a killer great white shark taking revenge on the Brody family — yes, really. It’s complete with terrible dialogue, people having flashbacks to Jaws scenes they weren’t present for, and a shark that explodes for no reason! A masterpiece of terrible movies. It did however spawn this witty quote from Michael Caine, who played Hoagie in the film: “I haven’t seen [the movie]… but I did see the house it bought my mother, and it’s marvelous.”
11. Mean Girls 2
Bet you didn’t know there was a Mean Girls 2, did you? Well, inexplicably there was, and I’m here to inform you it was not very fetch. Tina Fey wasn’t involved, so it has absolutely none of the wit, charm, or zest of the original and almost none of the original cast either. Tim Meadows is the only person to return, reprising his role as Principal Ron Duvall, but even he can’t remotely salvage this pointless sequel. As hollow and plastic as, well, a Plastic. At least the upcoming Mean Girls movie musical looks good?
10. Speed 2: Cruise Control
Keanu Reeves is a man who makes good decisions, and one of his best ones was opting not to appear in this sequel to Speed. Sandra Bullock came back for it, though, and she hates that she did. She said in a 2022 interview that she was “still embarrassed” to have starred in it, and quipped that the plot, “makes no sense: slow boat, slowly going towards an island.” Fair enough. However, Daniel Radcliffe, who was being interviewed at the same time, did point out that the movie has a “quiet” cult following. If you’re a member of that following … maybe never mention that to Sandra Bullock.
9. Grease 2
The first Grease isn’t the best film ever made or anything, but it’s definitely better than Grease 2, a movie so bad that only Michelle Pfeiffer survived it. And even then she almost didn’t! Apparently, Brian De Palma had to be convinced by a producer to hire her for the role of Elvira Hancock in Scarface, such was the state of her career after this terrible sequel. Still, at least everything worked out for her from there. Every actor’s done a movie they’d rather forget.
8. Independence Day: Resurgence
Hey, guess what, those pesky aliens didn’t leave Earth alone after all! That is the plot of the Will Smith-less sequel to Independence Day, which dropped twenty years after the original. Smith’s absence from the film is explained away as his character having died in a training accident, which is kind of a bummer. Then some forgettable things happen involving Liam Hemsworth, Jeff Goldblum is there, important characters are treated like afterthoughts, and the aliens are defeated again. As everyone knew they would be. Yeah … Smith was right to sit this one out.
7. Space Jam: A New Legacy
Was Space Jam really a movie that needed a sequel? Really? Well, someone at Warner Bros. thought so and the result is this bizarre brightly-colored fever dream. It’s not really a movie so much as a series of adverts for WB properties—Game of Thrones, Rick and Morty, and even frickin’ A Clockwork Orange are all in there—and it was rightly slaughtered by critics for being so. The original Space Jam isn’t exactly Shakespeare but at least it had charm. The sequel has absolutely none.
6. Star Trek: Into Darkness
The first J.J. Abrams Star Trek movie was good! And then its inevitable sequel came along and … well. The first thing they did was whitewash the character of Khan, and the second thing they did was a gratuitous underwear scene involving Carol Marcus. So not great, guys. It did a lot better critically and financially than some of the other films on this list, but Abrams himself said in 2015, “I feel like it didn’t work as well as it could have had I made some better decisions before we started shooting.”
5. Pacific Rim: Uprising
Hopes were so high for Uprising before it actually came out. It sounded so good! Some of the most beloved members of the original cast were returning, although admittedly not all, and John Boyega was the new main character! What could possibly go wrong? Well … just about everything, as it turned out. Uprising managed to take away almost everything people loved about the first film, including Mako Mori, and then left audiences hanging with the promise of a third movie that never happened in the end.
4. Highlander II: The Quickening
Roger Ebert said it best: “Highlander 2: The Quickening is the most hilariously incomprehensible movie I’ve seen in many a long day—a movie almost awesome in its badness. Wherever science fiction fans gather, in decades and generations to come, this film will be remembered in hushed tones as one of the immortal low points of the genre.” And he was absolutely correct! Not only did The Quickening ruin the first movie, it remains to this day a stain on the entire franchise. Still … guess we’ll see what happens with the planned Henry Cavill-starring reboot?
3. Wonder Woman 1984
How to do a second Wonder Woman movie? Well, how about making the main character obsessed with a man she knew for a short time decades ago and have all her character development revolve around him? For bonus points, why not give Kristen Wiig a thankless role as a CGI cat lady? And don’t forget the sexual assault plot. Just, a total mess of a movie that will make you baffled as to how the first one turned out so good. The only bright spot in the whole thing was the internet’s boyfriend Pedro Pascal doing what he does best and playing a dad.
2. American Psycho 2: All American Girl
Okay, raise your hand if you didn’t know there was an American Psycho sequel at all, let alone one starring Mila Kunis? But there was, and it’s notoriously bad. So bad, in fact, it holds a 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Kunis herself said in 2005 that the film was originally meant to be a different project, and it was re-edited (badly) to be an American Psycho sequel. She also begged audiences to never allow an American Psycho 3.
1. Son of the Mask
Not just one of the worst sequels of all time but one of the worst movies of all time, period. It has been almost twenty years since it came out and I have never, ever heard anyone say a positive word about it. Alan Cumming, Bob Hoskins, what possessed you to sign onto this?! But even they couldn’t save it. Anyway, if you want a movie featuring the god of mischief Loki there are so many better options, and none of them include vomit jokes or a baby fighting a dog.
(featured image: Warner Bros.)
