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The Fast And The Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006)
The Original: A meatheaded but enjoyable slice of car porn, featuring burly blokes, scantily clad babes and a job-lot of souped-up muscle cars. Woof!
The Sequel: Out goes Vin Diesel and the tension of divided loyalties, in comes a load of hokum about “drifting”. When your whole plot is based around a style of driving, you know you’re running on empty.
Possible Fan-Edit: Diesel and Paul Walker’s bromantic back and forth gave the original some kind of narrative thrust. This is basically an extended episode of Top Gear .
S. Darko (2009)
The Original: Mind-bending time-travel fable Donnie Darko was a brilliant fusion of high-school teen movie and creepily complex sci-fi, with a labyrinthine plot that required no little concentration from the audience. Funnily enough, we never thought it needed a sequel…
The Sequel: The film focuses on Donnie’s little sister Samantha, but beyond that, attempting to make head or tail of the plot really is a fool’s errand. There’s another apocalypse on the way, a meteor is involved, and time travel is even more bafflingly possible than before. John Hawkes is in it, which is the only reason you might conceivably give it a look…
Possible Fan-Edit: The introduction of some logic would be nice. The first film was confusing, but worked in accordance with its own set of carefully devised rules. This is just gibberish!
Howling 2: Your Sister Is A Werewolf (1985)
The Original: Joe Dante turns his hand to werewolves in this daft but fun horror flick. Little did he know what he'd started...
The Sequel: Despite boasting one of the best bad titles in movie history, and Christopher Lee in a starring role, this histrionic sequel set its sights way too high, crowbarring in a trip to Transyllvania to pit the hero against a vicious werewolf queen.
Possible Fan-Edit: Ditch all the excess paraphernalia (the dwarves in particular) and attempt to recapture the tension of the original. And on a serious note, change that title. Yikes.
Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde (2003)
The Original: A perky teen comedy with a winning central performance from Reese Witherspoon. Fluff then, but enjoyable fluff.
The Sequel: Filmmakers! When approaching a sequel, make sure you have at least some semblance of storyline to justify your actions. Having your lead character search for a chihuahua's birth mother does not qualify.
Possible Fan-Edit: Bring back some of the original's quick wit! Daubing everything in pink is not a substitute for humour.
Grease 2 (1982)
The Original: John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John sing and dance their way through the original high school musical. A sing-along classic.
The Sequel: Whilst the original had a stage musical full of well-loved songs to work with, this camp cash-in was forced to come up with a nonsensical plot about pretend bikers, nuclear bunkers and talent contests. A cult favourite, but only for the “I can’t believe they actually made this” factor.
Possible Fan-Edit: Could we re-dub Michelle Pfeiffer’s vocals with Olivia Newton-John’s? There’s a reason Pfeiffer isn’t known for her singing voice…
Lost Boys: The Tribe (2008)
The Original: A camp ’80s gem in which the two Coreys go vampire hunting, with Kiefer Sutherland on bad guy duty as chief bloodsucker, David.
The Sequel: Corey Feldman’s back, but nobody else is. Why? Because the original was made some 21 years previously. Time to move on, guys.
Possible Fan-Edit: If they couldn’t get Sutherland to return, they should have cast somebody completely different. Opting for his half-brother Angus is just insulting!
Dumb & Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd (2003)
The Original: The Farrelly brothers unleash a tidal wave of crudity in this gross-out comedy starring Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels. In anyone else's hands it would have been plain annoying, but the two lead performances are winning enough to save the day.
The Sequel: Take away Daniels and Carrey however, and the whole thing falls flat. The idea that a Dumb And Dumber prequel would ever work seems utterly ludicrous, let alone one with such a fist-gnawingly awful title. A concept that should have been smothered at birth.
Possible Fan-Edit: They should have gone down the animated route, allowing Carrey and Daniels to supply the voices.
Alien Resurrection (1997)
The Original: An incredibly tense exercise in science-fiction scares, presided over by one of cinema’s most badass heroines. Marvelous entertainment that spawned one very decent sequel, and a couple of duds...
The Sequel: Resurrecting Ripley as a clone was bad enough (to say nothing of her rather drastic personality overhaul), but Alien Resurrection ’s biggest misstep is the notion that we should feel sorry for the aliens, given that they can now bear children. We want unambiguous slaughter, dammit!
Possible Fan-Edit: Here’s an idea – leave Ripley in the grave, cast a new hero and come up with a serviceable action film, in which the aliens remain firmly tarred as villains.
Evil Dead 2 (1987)
The Original: One of the most controversial “video nasties” of the ‘80s, Sam Raimi’s original chiller is a genuinely frightening affair, as a group of cabin-bound teens accidentally unleash a plague of restless demons…
The Sequel: Don’t get us wrong, we absolutely adore Evil Dead 2 , but on the face of it, you’d have to conclude the concept is a little weird. Essentially a remake of the original, but conducted in a drastically different tone, it basically covers exactly the same ground whilst playing it broadly for laughs. If you were expecting a fully-fledged sequel, you would have left the cinema profoundly baffled. That said, it really is awesome!
Possible Fan-Edit: You’d go a long way to find a genuine fan who’d want to change it one little bit!
RoboCop 3 (1993)
The Original: A dystopian nightmare as seen through the gore-spattered lens of serial satirist Paul Verhoeven. Not too silly, not too serious, it’s an ’80s action masterpiece.
The Sequel: Where’s Peter Weller? Why has RoboCop got a jetpack? Why is he facing off against a posse of robot ninjas? Why?
Possible Fan-Edit: Bring back Weller, pitch him against a credible villain, ditch all the naff accessories. He’s not a bloody Action-Man!
