These Are Some Of The Worst Sequels Of All-Time

With the news of Quentin Tarantino working on a sequel to Once Upon A Time In Hollywood as well as Spaceballs 2 eyeing a release date of 2027, sequels are hot right now.

I regret to inform you that both of these are definitely going to suck.

Oh sure, you get the occasional lightning-in-a-bottle sequel like Top Gun: Maverick or Godfather 2, but by and large, most sequels are just impotent cash grabs that prey on our nostalgia for better days.

I thought with all the sequel talk circulating the internet these past couple of days, it would be fun to remind everyone just how awful the average follow-up can be in a movie franchise.

Let's take a look back at some of the worst sequels Hollywood has served up over the years.

The Godfather Part III

Kicking things off with a classic, it's The Godfather Part III, the tainted swan song in an otherwise perfect trilogy.

I mentioned it above, but The Godfather Part II might be, in many ways, a perfect sequel.

It's bigger and better in every way when compared to its predecessor (it's also Tony Soprano's favorite movie).

By the time Godfather Part III came out, 16 years had passed since the second installment in the franchise, leaving many to wonder why the third movie even needed to be made.

With its meandering and overly complex plot, weak characters, and questionable casting, this is one that probably should've been left on the cutting room floor.

But hey, at least it gave us that all-time Al Pacino GIF you see above.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi

What a steaming turd this one turned out to be.

After the fun and relatively inoffensive Star Wars: The Force Awakens delighted the masses in 2015, fans of the franchise were eager to see how the plot would thicken in the sequel.

The end result was so bad that Force Awakens director J.J. Abrams had to wrestle control back from Last Jedi director Rian Johnson just to (unsuccessfully) salvage the trilogy.

The list of offenses is too numerous to go through in detail, so, for the sake of time, I will give you the cliff notes.

The cool characters from the first movie were nuked and/or shelved for new characters no one cared about, the not-so-subtle hints of feminism and anti-capitalist sentiment made eyes roll so hard they nearly fell onto the sticky floors of the theaters, and, perhaps most egregiously, they turned Luke Skywalker into a grumpy A-hole.

Skywalker was supposed to be this symbol of optimism and heroism, and instead we get a blue milk swigging cynic.

Gross.

American Psycho 2

The original American Psycho is a bitingly hilarious black comedy thinly veiled as a critique on late 1980's American consumerism, featuring a masterful performance from Christian Bale.

The second installment in the franchise is, well, it's not any of that.

American Psycho 2 stars Mila Kunis as a bloodthirsty criminology student who murders her classmates.

That's the whole premise.

The "sequel" - if you can even call it that - is breathtakingly shallow and so far removed from the first American Psycho, that I am convinced they just slapped a number "2" on the end of this one to try and piggyback off its predecessor.

Seriously, this movie was so bad I couldn't even find a GIF from it to use above, though the one I featured from the original accurately sums up my feelings after sitting through that pile of trash.

Also, William Shatner is in this one, so that's cool.

Grown Ups 2

Up to this point, we have been discussing bad sequels following (generally) great movies, but how about a bad movie followed by an even more comedically and intellectually bankrupt sequel?

I have to admit, the first Grown Ups is somewhat of a guilty pleasure of mine.

I saw it in theaters during the summer of my senior year of high school, so there is that all-important nostalgia factor to consider, and while it isn't even a good film by most objective standards, there is enough fun and humor to be had that it keeps the movie afloat.

Grown Ups 2, however, takes all the fart jokes and poop humor and cranks it up to 11, while the plot is virtually non-existent, boiling down to "we need to have a party because it's summer."

The cameos from guys like Stone Cold Steve Austin and Taylor Lautner are all shoehorned in as well, screaming "I did this for a paycheck."

Not the Sandman's finest hour, if you ask me.

Gladiator II

Every guy has seen the first Gladiator; it's practically a rite of passage for a boy to become a man.

The fight scenes are epic, the quotes are memorable, and the performances all kick ass, with Joaquin Phoenix's Commodus providing us one hell of a villain.

It might be as close as humanity gets to a perfect movie.

So why then, nearly a quarter-century later, did we need this bloated carcass of a sequel?

The plot is basically a beat-for-beat rehash of the first movie, the action scenes are cheesy and unrealistic, and the characters have about as much depth as the retention pond in my backyard.

And the worst part: this movie drags on for an ass-numbing two and a half hours!

"Are you not entertained?" No, not really.

Do yourself a favor and skip this sequel. You'd be better off just watching the first Gladiator twice in a row.

Thumbs down indeed.

That's my personal list, but I would love to hear what you all think.

Did I leave out a stinky sequel that you feel needs to be discussed more? Hit my email at austin.perry@outkick.com and tell me how much of an idiot I am for leaving out that direct-to-home-video animated Disney movie no one has heard of.