Welcome to the SWO Drafts, everyone! Where we–and some of the finest independent creative forces out there–fight to the death to see who can make the best line-up from a pop culture category.

It’s been several weeks since our last draft, the Best Movie Sequels of All Time, and we had a lot of fun with that one! It was the first category chosen from the draft list, so how do you follow that up?

Why, by running in the exact opposite direction, of course!

And thus, it was determined that our second draft would be: The Worst Movie Sequels Of All-Time. What flicks came out and just completely tarnished the legacy of what came before them?

This was, admittedly, a hard category! With so many movies going the Franchise route over the last several decades, stinkers are unavoidable. Some franchises are just always going to fall upon hard times, no matter how strong the earlier movies were.

But which ones fell on the HARDEST times? That’s what we raced to figure out.

The rules are, of course, the same as for the Best Sequels draft. Only one movie per franchise is allowed (so, for example, if Police Academy 4 is picked, no one can draft any other Police Academy movies). And it’s a snake draft, so the draft order reverses every round.

Joining me this week, are our guests:

The Take A Knee For Marvel Vs DC podcast!

And a two-for one: Chris and Stewart from It’s Our House!

Be sure to check out their content in those links, and these guys are all great, and we had a tremendous draft talking about the worst of the best! I really enjoy them as folks and their shows.

With the four of us ready to go and the rules established, all that was left was to determined the order. Thanks to the Random Number Generator, the randomized draft order came out like this:

Chris Deez had the first overall pick, and his picks are shown in red.

Stewart Lawson had the second pick, and is represented by green.

I was third, and I’m in basic black.

Take A Knee was fourth, and is denoted in blue.

Now… let’s get into the draft!

---

Right I’ll start with Police Academy 4 (not just because it was mentioned earlier!) Agonizingly hard to watch, just unfunny from start to finish. The same retired, phoned in jokes and toilet humour that slapped hard in the very first film but crumbled more and more with each movie.

I thought you were making fun of my randomly name-checking that!

I’d like to add to mine that the problem with PA4 is that the vast majority of the cast weren’t present anymore, and David Spade was brought into the mix despite never knowingly being funny.

Airplane II: The Sequel. This movie has clearly been made to make some easy money. Airplane I is a hilarious classic and way before it’s time when the sequel is amusing at best. It’s clear that the original writers did not have any input into this follow on. Many gags have been re-used from the first movie. Sometimes a stand alone movie is sufficient as it is clearly untouchable, Airplane II is a clear example of that.

God I’ve got so many, this might need to go more than 4 choices.

Really? I’m having a much harder time on my end.

But as for the 3rd pick of the 1st round, I feel I have NO CHOICE but to take Batman & Robin off the table. I really WANT to like this flick. It has its heart in the right place by being a bit silly and harmless, but the it does stuff like the Bat-Iceskates and the Batstercard or whatever Bruce uses to pay for things. It’s just… not good. Even with everyone hamming it up, it’s still more “bad” than “fun”.

Batman and Robin was definitely in my lineup.

I’ll go with Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie. The first power rangers movie was a lot of fun and brought the charm or the series while adding some big money to it. I was pumped for the sequel. What we got was a bad power rangers movie even by tv standards. They brought classic characters back and still blew it. Just a really bad follow up and movie in general.

My next pick will be Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows. This movie has to be one of the worst and least scary horror movies of all time. They had a great foundation to build upon from the first and tried to get to cute and ended up making one of, in my opinion, the worst movies of all time.

I am going back to the mainstream well for my second pick: X-Men 3: The Last Stand. It’s still amazing to me how badly they screwed this one up. I was AMPED for this from the second X2 ended! But then it turned out to be a mess of ludicrous reverse aging CGI, too many plots, and awful melodrama. What a huge disappointment!

I actually liked Last Stand.

Haha you are allowed to like Last Stand, but… it’s pretty rough!

I’m going with Hangover Part III – first one was a masterclass & arguably the best comedy movie for a long time. Part II reused a lot of the themes & gags but passed due to being in a new venue. Part III is not so lucky. While it’s starts off very well with the giraffe & funeral. Past those scenes you can tell the gags are very forced, story plot very thin, and just not enough done that could make Part III close to the 2nd, let alone the original.

Speed 2 Cruise Control. For crying out loud the poster for it said “two things up”… moving away from Keanu Reeves was as bad a decision as they could possibly make. The first movie was a classic, one of my go to action films even to this day but the sequel was fill of laughably bad dialogue, the same tired old plot devices, paint by numbers action sequences. It failed to live up to the lofty expectations of the first movie being SO good and even for a cheesy action movie it’s filled with far too many plot holes. They focused too much on how the villain achieved his goals rather than filling the movie with memorable moments. There’s a reason Speed 2 has 3% on Rotten Tomatoes!

Jaws 2. At one stage you can see the camera crew shadows and their equipment, so you know you’re in for a shitshow. Man lives on an island but doesn’t know how to drive a boat, amongst many other plotholes. Changed directors one month into filming, Spielberg didn’t want to touch it, Robert Shaw died of a heart attack… doomed from the start. The director literally didn’t want to do it but was forces to by the studio and you could tell her phoned it in the whole way. It suffered a similar fate to Speed 2 and was a victim of the original movies success. Hammy acting, a carbon copy plot for the original but in a new setting… eugh.

You want to know what is really weird? I have not seen literally one of any of your picks so far. Any of you! I guess I have good “Don’t Watch This” radar.

Ok so my 3rd pick is Godfather Part III. Now if this was a stand alone film it would be passable however this is the 3rd instalment to 2 of the greatest movies ever made. Firstly this was not required to be made except for money purpose. Leaving the movie 16 years since the second film & 18 years from the original is the first problem. While Francis Ford Coppola nailed casting in the first & second movie, casting his own daughter as the daughter of Michael Corleone was a massive mistake. The story was very ‘meh’ very basic & also extremely obvious when looking back at its older movies the story is night & day. Again as stated if this movie was a stand alone it would be an ok movie but as a sequel to Godfather & Godfather part II it’s very poor.

Curses! That was going to be my next pick! Now my draft board is in tatters. Tatters!

For my third round pick, I am going more out of left field than I did with B&R and X3. I will take Halloween: Resurrection off the board. It’s by far the worst of all of the Halloween movies, and that is a franchise that has some… not great other entries. But it says a lot that I would rather watch the Rob Zombie movies or Curse of Michael Myers than Resurrection. It complete lost the plot of the series, unceremoniously killed Laurie Strode five minutes in, and just feels SO SO DATED with its teen reality show story and Busta Rhymes whooping Michael.

For my 3rd pick I will go with Mortal Kombat Annihilation the sequel to Mortal Kombat. I’ve always thought Mortal Kombat is the best movie adaption of a video game. It’s over the top in all the right ways yet still having a sense of realism to it. This movie goes even more into the video game aspect and has some of the worst cgi ever put to screen. They kill off a main character in the first 5 minutes for shock value and everything is downhill from there.

I keep meaning to watch MK but always forget to, damn it. I will get on that. But skip the sequel.

For my next pick I’ll go Lion King 2 Simbas Pride. They made a movie showing an entire pride for scar that was no where to be found in the first. Simbas solo outing is a real disappointment after one of the best movies of all time.

For my fourth selection, I am going to grab Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension. The PA movies had been on a steady stream downward for a WHILE at this point–the first three were each okay, but steadily getting worse, while everything from #4 onward was trash–but this (so far) last entry in the series was the worst yet. ENTIRELY forgettable, predictable, overdone, and worst of all: BORING. Hopefully this franchise is finally dead and gone for good.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. This is the first example of Harrison Ford’s bank balance running low. Why add a fourth movie to a very successful trilogy is the first question that needs answered, why after 19 years is the second question and why such a poor story is the 3rd. To think this was done by the same director that did the original 3 is mind boggling. And the acting felt forced and wooden compared to the original 3. The fact that there is talk of making another sequel both confuses me and scares me at the same tine.

You swine that was my next one!

Haha sorry I’ve got a belter for my next one.

My pick is Human Centipede 2/3, really rough to pick out of the 2 but I think they’re equally garbage so it should be fine.

The original was completely unnecessary but at least it was something kind of different. That was it’s only saving grace though. As a big fan of the Saw franchise I enjoy a generous helping of blood and guts but this was just vile, gross and depraved for the sake of it. The first film was uneasy to watch but you sort of couldn’t look away, 2 and 3 were just the exact same movie but with a different psycho pervert running the experiments. The only “story” was that this guy was a fan of what happened in the first 2 movie so he decided to sew together 500 people. That’s it, that’s literally it. It’s just TOO in your face, some of the scenarios served up in the name of “entertainment” include castration, waterboarding with boiling water and rape. Despite all that the main reason this movie is unwatchable is the shouty, screaming, hammy overacting from Dieter Laser as the main character. Terrifying for all the wrong reasons.

Also Stew, did you know Ford is back for the next Indiana movie? It’s gonna be brutal to watch. I want to know who the hell decides the pyramid in Crystal Skull needed aliens underneath it.

I actually never watched Crystal Skull, haha!

I’m rounding off my picks with the movie that would top my own personal worst sequel list – Spiderman 3.

By the time the third film of the Sam Raimi era came out you could see the burnout from the director and also from his two lead actors. Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst both phoned it in after decent performances in the first two movies. The movie didn’t have the same life as the previous two and Venom couldn’t even grab my attention. Three awful performances from those three, couple with some of the worst dialogue and secondary villains we’ve ever seen make this one of the very very few duds in the marvel timeline. The story was limp and soppy, the dialogue was corny even by superhero standards but if I had to sum it up in 2 words I’d simply say – Emo Spiderman.

Awww, I think SM3 is underrated. It’s objectively not good, but it’s fun!

Oh don’t bet me wrong, I won’t turn it off if it’s on but it’s very much the same as driving past a car wreck and having to stop to see what happened!

Haha. Can I be honest? I like part 3 more than part 1. Part 2 is the best, obviously.

Definitely agreed on part 2 but honestly I pretty much dislike the whole trilogy. Just not a Toby fan at all, he was too much of a sap whether he was Peter or Spidey. I thought Garfield was better, if a little too cool and I think Holland is perfect.

Final pick goes to one of the biggest disappointments ever – James Bond, Die Another Day. Pierce Bronson gets some unfair slack for being a poor Bond, which I disagree with as I feel Goldeneye is one of the best Bonds made while Tomorrow Never Dies & The World Is Not Enough are very solid, excellent Bond Movies done very well. Then we have Bronson’s final encounter as 007 and I feel those negative reviews are based on this movie alone rather than the previous 3. Firstly the story wasn’t a real bond story IMO. The invisible Aston Martin is ridiculous even for Bond standards. This is the first Bond movie without Desmond Llewelyn as Q & is now (fully) replaced with John Cleese as R. As Desmond is an excellent Q with very amusing lines in previous Bonds, R is very forced comedy which does not come across well. The CGI’s also are terrible, weather is Halle Berry diving into water, or the Ice Dome collapsing or even Bond himself ‘surfing’ on broken icebergs the CGI is laughable & just adds more examples as to why this should go down as one of, if the the, worst Bonds ever.

Back to me then for my 5th pick? I think I will wrap up with the HIGHLY disappointing Taken 2. Taken 2 was the reason I didn’t see John Wick 2 or 3 until recently! I was worried that they would be as big of a letdown as Liam Neeson’s action vehicle turned series. After a dramatic and intsense first movie, Taken 2 almost fell into self-parody.

I’m not gonna lie y’all have taken a few of my picks.

Hahaha, yeah we are pretty conniving!

For my last pick I’ll go with D3 Mighty Ducks 3. After a great mighty ducks 2 where they take on the world they come home to lose to a big time variety team. Full of bad cliches and terrible character motivations that really make you not care at the end of the movie. It was an uphill battle to make us feel bad for freshman losing to senior varsity players. If anything I feel bad for that variety team that loses to a group of freshman.

---

If you need a refresher, in easy-to-absorb picture format:

CHRIS DEEZ

STEWART LAWSON

STEW

TAKE A KNEE

---

As for the results of the anonymous online vote:

---

So congrats to Chris! I was hot on his tail, but I was never able to make up that early deficit. Ah well, maybe next time!

We’ll be back shortly with our next draft, so stay on the lookout for that. As usual, we will have a blind draft on Twitter preceding the article.

Until next time… take care!