A Fistful of One Too Many! (Matt’s Picks)

    Men in Black’s third outing may be great.  It may be a breath of fresh air in a series nobody was excited about.  But I doubt it.  My guess is it’s a dead horse that is getting unfairly abused.  In that spirit, we’re looking at some of the movies that took a franchise one step too far.  Doesn’t mean the franchise wasn’t eventually redeemed with a further film.  But at least for a time, they went too far.

5.  Battle For the Planet of the Apes:  Look, I enjoy the heck out of this movie.  But seriously, it’s a giant step down in quality from the previous films.  And after the fantastic, brutal explosion of revolutionary violence that was Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, this made-for-TV quality whimper was a sad out for the series.

4.  Hellraiser 3:  The first two films are interesting, with lots of potential.  They don’t live up to that potential, but they’re pretty good.  The third film is goofy, with the lamest cenobites of the franchise, and it’s generally boring.  There are some potentially cool bits that don’t get explored.  It’s a total letdown.

3.  Conan the Destroyer:  Conan the Barbarian is one of the best fantasy films ever made, a grand action movie, and just f’in cool.  And while it didn’t get the details right, it managed to capture the spirit of Robert E. Howard’s amazing stories.  And then Destroyer.  Wacky humor, silly villains, Grace Jones, and Arnold plays Conan as though he suffered some kind of debilitating brain injury.  Everything wrong that the general public believes Conan is about is sadly present in this sequel.  It has a couple good scenes, but this ain’t Conan.  Not at all.

2.  Superman 3:  You know what doesn’t help?  Adding Richard Pryor.  I don’t much care for the Christopher Reeve Superman series, but the third film is an exercise in poop-made-film.  It seems fairly clear that they had a script which featured a computer tech character.  Then they cast Richard Pryor in that role, went back, and re-wrote it to feature him MUCH more prominently.  And it’s garbage of the highest order.  Anyone who says Superman 4 is the worst of the original films is probably an idiot.

1.  Lethal Weapon 3:  Good sweet crap, one of the worst danged movies I’ve ever watched 50% of in fast forward.  SOOOOOOO flipping boring.  So unfunny.  So unactiony.  I enjoyed the heck out of the first two films, but this one KILLED it for me.  Never even bothered with the fourth film.

-Matt