A-List:
Inexplicably Popular Sequels
By David Mumpower
June 8, 2011
BoxOfficeProphets.com
In determining the five inclusions, I’ve defined a couple of somewhat arbitrary parameters. They are as follows. My opinion is not the one that matters here. I am selecting movies that are critically reviled and have a score of less than 7 on IMDb, which is basically the equivalent of their “It’s Better Than a Punch to the Face” grade. I am also ignoring any title whose domestic box office is not well beyond its reported production budget. In other words, box office losses and draws are out; wins are the only titles that matter. This rules out Weekend at Bernie’s II, which makes me sad. I also had to exclude The Godfather III, but I will toss you a bit of box office trivia. Without factoring in box office inflation, the critically reviled third outing has earned more than The Godfather Part II. I think you will agree that this is sick and wrong, even worse than the creators of Weekend at Bernie’s pretentiously using II instead of 2 in the title of their sequel.
If a film has a low enough IMDb score, Rotten Tomatoes score and was a box office hit anyway, it made the list. The Rotten Tomatoes portion absolves the Star Wars prequels (and the one with the Ewoks) of consideration in that critics had a shameful blind spot for each one of those monstrosities. Keeping all this in mind, when I started thinking about the Hangover-ish sequels that did well for reasons passing understand in hindsight, here are the titles that pop into my head first.
Legally Blonde 2 - Red, White & Blonde
The first Legally Blonde outing is among the most pleasant surprises of the 2000s. A comedy that looks generic bordering on obnoxious on paper proved to be a joyous celebration of kind hearts and laser focus. Wronged by a cheating man, Elle Woods enrolls in law school like any good stalker would. Over the course of her higher education, she comes to realize she could do a lot better and she even convinces another woman of the same. Legally Blonde was a hit with critics (68% fresh at Rotten Tomatoes) and a box office force, with $96.5 million earned against a paltry $18 million budget.
Legally Blonde 2: Red, White and Blonde is the blueprint example of a cash-in project just as is the case with The Hangover II. There is absolutely no creativity demonstrated beyond the title in combination with its July 4th weekend release date. That’s it. If you don’t like studio crafted jingoism, all that is left from the sequel that is even marginally memorable is a seduction sequence involving gay dogs. That’s not a joke, by the way. A congressional bill’s fate hangs in the balance as a stodgy Representative attempts to make peace with the fact that his dog is homosexual. You probably had a better idea for a movie during your shower this morning (God, I hope you showered this morning) than anyone involved with this project managed during the entire shoot.
In spite of the lack of, well, effort by the production team, Legally Blonde 2 earned $90.6 million, only a few million less than its predecessor. This is in spite of reviews that border on being angry enough to try to invade Poland. Only 38% of critics gave the movie thumbs up and its IMDb score of 4.3 is low enough to qualify as a Nicolas Cage movie. And this brings us to…
National Treasure: Book of Secrets
I want to acknowledge immediately that the first film is no great shakes in and of itself. This Da Vinci craze we have witnessed over the past few years is almost as much of a head scratcher as Twilight…but at least it focuses on history rather than goofy dudes with bad hair and nice abs. National Treasure managed to beat The Da Vinci Code into theaters by a couple of years, riding its wave of popularity to the tune of $173 million domestically and roughly double that worldwide.
The film is some convoluted story involving Diane Kruger before she started double crossing Nazis (you go, girl!) and Nic Cage’s impossibly receded hairline. There was also some stuff about Ben Franklin and the Declaration of Independence but who can remember details? What’s important here is that Taylor Lautner must work out a lot. And that neither Twilight sequel made this list.
Anyway, the sequel to National Treasure is the rare follow-up to an already popular property that proves to be even more triumphant at the box office. This is in spite of any reasonable explanation of its success. National Treasure: Book of Secrets is only 33% at Rotten Tomatoes as opposed to 44% for the first title. And it is also liked less on IMDb as well. Somehow, the movie earned almost $50 million more domestically and a full $110 million more worldwide. And it sucks. This film is like The Secret as a tentpole blockbuster. Do you know what the book of secrets truly is? Apparently, it’s an explanation about how to trick gullible consumers out of $457 million. Nic Cage gotta eat. And buy houses he’ll forget to pay for.
2 Fast 2 Furious
Nobody remembers this now but upon its 2001 release, The Fast and the Furious was a relatively well reviewed movie. Even to this day, it is 64% fresh with Top Critics. Everyone knew it was a Point Break rip-off but as we re-learned with Avatar, people don’t mind a clone if it’s done well. The first film in what would become a wildly lucrative franchise opened to a then-impressive $40.1 million on its way to $144.5 million domestically, as well as $206.5 million worldwide.
Here is what is sickening. 2 Fast 2 Furious, which only 39% of Top Critics find passable, somehow managed to drop the best part of the original, Vin Diesel, yet earn more globally. The second Furious film opened huge in North America with $50.5 million, briefly convincing studio execs that Paul Walker may be a draw. It then demonstrated remarkably poor legs for the era by limping to a final box office total of $127.1 million in North America. Nowadays, that would be a weak demonstration of legs; for 2003, it was a nightmarish one.
Once word got out about the quality of 2 Fast 2 Furious, consumers stopped going. Still, the global appeal of cars is obvious throughout the history of this franchise, which explains the Tokyo Drift concept for the third title. While The Fast and the Furious earned “only” $62 million internationally, its sequel made a whopping (for the time) $109 million, giving it a global tally of $236.2 million. That’s a full $30 million more than the better film with a more bankable lead.
Made with a large production budget by 2003 standards of $76 million, 2 Fast 2 Furious financially justified every decision made. This is emphatically demonstrated by the fact that the better received, better remembered potential tentpole film Diesel chose to make instead, xXx, had a higher negative cost of $120 million yet didn’t perform much stronger domestically or worldwide. It wound up earning $141.9 million domestically and $267 million globally. Diesel eventually recognized that the grass wasn’t always greener and his return to the Furious franchise has been mega-lucrative for all involved. Meanwhile, the potential xXx franchise died on the vine with Ice Cube as the lead.
Ocean’s Twelve
Ocean’s Eleven is one of the wittiest movies of our lifetime. Its crackling dialog sparkles from start to finish and it even contains throwaway bits funnier than most films (like The Hangover II) manage at any point. For instance, Rusty is never seen without food in the entire movie. I am not sure there is any reason for this; it’s just funny to have a ripped dude like Brad Pitt pig out the entire time. And the sequence when George Clooney and Brad Pitt walk out into the street of adoring fans and they get knocked out of the way in favor of Topher Grace will never stop being funny.
Sadly, Topher Grace is the only entertaining part of Ocean’s Twelve. I mean this. In a woe begotten series of unlikely events featuring a remarkably athletic Frenchman and a Julia Roberts impersonator played by Julia Roberts, the only highlight in the entire movie is a Topher Grace cameo. He shows up, he makes fun of an excellent but already forgotten movie he did called In Good Company (a precursor of sorts to Clooney’s more celebrated Up in the Air), and he’s gone. For those few moments, Ocean’s Twelve reminds us of the composed genius of its predecessor. After he’s gone, the movie careens into a series of equally implausible subplots, none of which offers any satisfaction.
I would point out that to their credit, the Ocean’s franchise production team gets their house in order with Ocean’s Thirteen, a solid title that even provides closure for a subplot from Ocean’s Twelve. Still, the mere existence of this movie pains me as a superfan of Ocean’s Eleven. It’s a great example of a film that hurt the brand even though the box office doesn’t indicate it. Ocean’s Twelve earned $125 million domestically and a solid $363 million worldwide against a production budget of only $85 million. It’s a blockbuster in every sense of the word except for quality.
Alas, the lingering bad taste of Ocean’s Twelve negatively impacted the better received Ocean’s Thirteen. The third film managed only $117.1 million domestically and $312 million worldwide. These are both lows for the franchise to date. This is hard to explain given that it is better reviewed (70% to 55% at Rotten Tomatoes) and better remembered (6.9 to 6.1 on IMDb) than the second film. These two titles exemplify the precarious nature of franchise building in Hollywood. A single monstrosity can negatively impact a franchise indefinitely. And this leads us to the final film up for discussion…
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
This is the granddaddy of them all. A legitimate cinematic abomination, the second Transformers film has the lowest Top Critics score ever recorded for a $300 million blockbuster. And a $400 million blockbuster. Yes, the venomous adjectives and action verbs directed at this title by critics fell on deaf ears. Adult men who were once teen boys didn’t care about what those stuffy eggheads had to say about Hasbro’s centerpiece product.
No, they were too busy focusing upon those hysterical motorcycles whose jive talk wasn’t the least bit racist, no sirree. And the mom with the pot brownies! How funny was that? She like cooked some brownies and didn’t even know she was smoking up then she got all stoned and stuff. It was HI-larious. And don’t even get me started on the dog who humped that person’s leg. Or the robot who humped that person’s leg! Where does Michael Bay get these original ideas? It’s like he remembers every detail of his life as a 14-year-old!
The worst part of this insipid piece of dreck is that people saw it in droves. The first Transformers earned a solid $319 million, which is 24th all-time at the time of publication of this column. Transformers: Revenge of the Hack Director and His Humpy Humpy Creatures spiked to $402 million, which was ninth (!) all-time prior to the releases of Avatar and Toy Story 3. This happened despite the fact that only 15% of top critics at Rotten Tomatoes liked the movie. That’s roughly one out of every seven, folks. Karma owes Michael Bay an epic beating. I mean one like Harry Zimm absorbs in Get Shorty. Or Apollo Creed gets in Rocky IV.