J.T. Posted January 31, 2022 Share Posted January 31, 2022 (edited) Drop down: Superman II -> Superman III Jaws -> Jaws 2 The Exorcist - Exorcist 2: The Heretic Highlander -> That thing with the dudes from space or some shit. Significant upgrade: Star Wars -> Empire Strikes Back Evil Dead -> Evil Dead 2 Gremlins -> Gremlins: The New Batch Terminator -> T2: Judgment Day Mad Max -> The Road Warrior Edited January 31, 2022 by J.T. 4 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
odessasteps Posted January 31, 2022 Share Posted January 31, 2022 Would you say “significant” or just upgrade for Dr No -> From Russia with Love? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J.T. Posted January 31, 2022 Share Posted January 31, 2022 24 minutes ago, odessasteps said: Would you say “significant” or just upgrade for Dr No -> From Russia with Love? Probably significant since From Russia might be the second best Connery as Bond film behind Goldfinger. It's a crisp and well told Cold War tale while Dr. No's story is kinda silly when you think about it. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Natural Posted January 31, 2022 Share Posted January 31, 2022 3 hours ago, AxB said: Kick Ass to Kick Ass 2. Huge drop. 2 hours ago, J.T. said: Drop down: Superman II -> Superman III Jaws -> Jaws 2 The Exorcist - Exorcist 2: The Heretic Highlander -> That thing with the dudes from space or some shit. Significant upgrade: Star Wars -> Empire Strikes Back Evil Dead -> Evil Dead 2 Gremlins -> Gremlins: The New Batch Teminator -> T2: Judgment Day Mad Max -> The Road Warrior Cheers fellas. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
odessasteps Posted January 31, 2022 Share Posted January 31, 2022 1 hour ago, J.T. said: Probably significant since From Russia might be the second best Connery as Bond film behind Goldfinger. It's a crisp and well told Cold War tale while Dr. No's story is kinda silly when you think about it. I actually prefer Russia to Goldfinger these days. the other definite upgrade is ST:TMP to Wrath of Khan. 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Craig H Posted January 31, 2022 Share Posted January 31, 2022 Crank to Crank 2, big upgrade. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Curt McGirt Posted January 31, 2022 Share Posted January 31, 2022 The Raid -> Raid 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Technico Support Posted January 31, 2022 Share Posted January 31, 2022 (edited) Just my own opinions, don't @ me :P The Matrix took a massive drop from the first one to the second, then worse still to the third. The latest is worlds better than the third one. So we have something @The Naturaldidn't exactly ask for: a series that fell off but then came back. I enjoyed Paranaormal Activity: The Marked Ones (aka The Mexorcist) far more than any of the sequels that came between it and the original, so there's another series along those lines. Also, the drop from The Last Jedi to The Rise of Skywalker is staggering. Just.....wow. Edited January 31, 2022 by Technico Support 2 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kuetsar Posted January 31, 2022 Share Posted January 31, 2022 I personally never understood the Thor 2 hate, a bigger drop off is Ironman-Ironman 2-Ironman 3. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Log Posted January 31, 2022 Share Posted January 31, 2022 8 hours ago, J.T. said: Gremlins -> Gremlins: The New Batch I've seen this take a few places recently and I was shocked. Now, I haven't seen either movie in a loooong time, but I remembered Gremlins 2 being pretty bad. The sources of this take are people I trust, so I'm going to have to revisit these movies. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kuetsar Posted January 31, 2022 Share Posted January 31, 2022 Gremlins 2 is certainly the more fun of the two. Better? YMMV 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tabe Posted January 31, 2022 Share Posted January 31, 2022 5 hours ago, Craig H said: Crank to Crank 2, big upgrade. Huh, I'll have to check it out. I enjoyed the first one a fair amount. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Contentious C Posted January 31, 2022 Share Posted January 31, 2022 Can't remotely say T2 is actually better than the first. Not even close, except for production values. The first is as perfectly gritty and nihilistic as sci-fi can be, and still one of the best films of the 80s. That it's so raw is in its favor, like you're following some awful secret about the world that the normies and sheeple missed while listening to their Walkmans. Granted, you could say Harlan Ellison did it better, but I'd call it a draw. T2 is great, but it lacks the same punch, being such an obvious re-skin; I'll take Biehn's screaming rant over Hamilton's, all day, every day, and those two scenes are still the cores of each film, if not the entire franchise. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J.H. Posted February 1, 2022 Share Posted February 1, 2022 (edited) 10 hours ago, J.T. said: Drop down: Highlander -> That thing with the dudes from space or some shit. Then they tried to walk it back with HJighlander 3: The Magician but the damage was done and not even.. .what 5 season of the show could salvage that IP. At least Widen went on to make The Prophecy and... Backdraft... WTF? (the less said abut what Russel Mulcahey did after Highlander the better) and the answer of "Worst Drop Off from Original Movie To Sequel" is Chinatown to The 2 Jakes James Edited February 1, 2022 by J.H. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Curt McGirt Posted February 1, 2022 Share Posted February 1, 2022 Gremlins 2 is a postmodern riot that skewers absolutely everything. It's brilliant. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Craig H Posted February 1, 2022 Share Posted February 1, 2022 Obligatory? 2 1 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tbarrie Posted February 1, 2022 Share Posted February 1, 2022 10 hours ago, Kuetsar said: I personally never understood the Thor 2 hate, a bigger drop off is Ironman-Ironman 2-Ironman 3. I don't hate Thor: The Dark World, but I'd describe it as aggressively mediocre. I agree with the previous poster who had Ragnarok as a big jump in quality. And I didn't notice anybody citing Dark World as an example of a massive drop; the original Thor was just pretty good in my opinion. Ironman to Ironman 2 was definitely a big drop-off, but I don't know that I'd call 3 a further drop. 2 and 3 are pretty close in my book. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HumanChessgame Posted February 1, 2022 Share Posted February 1, 2022 16 hours ago, J.T. said: Significant upgrade: Gremlins -> Gremlins: The New Batch I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks this. The original is regarded as a classic but I thought the levels of satire (I mean the main character is a parody of Trump, you've got Christopher Lee playing an unscrupulous geneticist, Hulk Hogan breaking the 4th wall, etc) and comedy in the second are much funnier and still hold up. I look at Terminator and T2 much like Alien and Aliens. The first is much smaller scale and more reliant on atmosphere while the second is far more action-y yet just as good for different reasons. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Contentious C Posted February 1, 2022 Share Posted February 1, 2022 Hey, movies! Those are things we watch! Day 202 (and counting) of more opinions you don't care about, This Old Man Has No Stomach for Violence Anymore Edition... Hot Garbage P.S. - This is a movie based on a book, where some lady's dead high school sweetheart seems to return out of nowhere and breezes into her life. It's too bad they didn't make the book & movie about, oh, I don't know, *anything else*, because the other characters in the movie are far more interesting than Laura Linney and Topher fucking Grace make the leads. I mean, really, name the last thing with him in it that you -had- to see because of him. Know why you can't? Because it's never happened and it's never gonna happen. Meanwhile, this has Gabriel Byrne as a sex addict who hid his creepy affairs with students for years (that's not an interesting storyline at all, nope), and it has maybe - maybe! - four minutes of Paul Rudd being a snarly, distrustful addict who's turned his life around but still can't get a single good word out of his sister (nope, boring!). Paul Rudd is no great actor, but when you cast him and then get 4 minutes of screen time out of him, consider the possibility that you don't know what you're doing. The Art of Racing in the Rain - I tend to shy away from obvious family movies, because at their most fundamental level, they exist for the exact opposite reason that any art exists. Movies like this only reinforce previously-held beliefs, rather than making you examine what you think you know or feel. So, that renders them into Extruded Motion Picture Product, rather than anything genuinely worth discussing. Thankfully, this has Milo Ventimiglia in it, he of perpetually talking out of the side of his mouth, and he's so thoroughly preposterous and awful in everything that you just know where to shelf this within minutes. That said, Amanda Seyfried is decent in it, and I guess if someone has to do Tedious Narration in the voice of a dog, Kevin Costner is a pretty good pick. But man, I'm a little surprised this movie goes as far as it does with the shit jokes, because the one big joke (and I do mean big) is so revolting, it could have earned this a PG-13 rating. Some of the racing stuff is neat, too, I guess. Powder Blue - Oh. My. Fucking. God. It's a good thing David Foster Wallace killed himself in 2008, because if he'd seen this, he would have done it in 2009 anyway. You know everything he said about Magnolia and how it was grad school-ish in the worst way possible? Now imagine someone completely failed to learn from that and made a movie that was only those grad school-ish bits. No insane, angry Tom Cruise role; no weird but oddly relatable William H. Macy; no Aimee Mann soundtrack (or something equally good): just all the intersectional bullshit, an ending lazily pulled from whatever orifice was handy, a kid's death used as a mere plot point, and a pile of performances that would qualify the performers for Most Actor awards rather than Best Actor. There are maybe two scenes in the whole thing that hit you, but if the whole movie had been those two scenes and another 90 minutes of the director lighting the prints on fire, it would have been an improvement. Still not as bad as The Crow: Wicked Prayer or Seventh Son, though. Acceptable Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation - I really only watched this for Rebecca Ferguson. I suppose in that sense, I wasn't disappointed. But, as far as these cheesy, overblown movies go, this isn't anywhere near as good as 3 or 4 were. The plot is boring, and honestly I could do with less Simon Pegg, but some of the stunts were decent, and the whole underwater thing, while ridiculous, at least looked pretty cool. But easily the most forgettable installment since the first one (since # 2 well...is number two in the other way). Oh well, at least now I can get around to watching Henry Cavill chamber a round in his biceps. Eden - And, cue the movies I could barely sit through. This is based on a true story, and Jamie Chung is a victim of a sex trafficking ring. Gauge your willingness to sit through 90 minutes of that kind of stuff accordingly. Having said that, there is nothing about it that's particularly graphic, at least with respect to the women involved, so that's a blessing in a sense. But it does make you want to hurl when you have to stop and think about the level of organization and structure that has to be in place for something like these fucking things to exist, and you quickly realize that one story about someone escaping and getting justice is...completely fucking pathetic and not enough. On the plus side, though, Chung does do a fair job of carrying this, which is frankly more than I would have expected from her back in 2013. A Vigilante - And cue more nominations for Most Actor, this time Olivia Wilde in an almost-as-gross role as Chung's. There's a little less systemic awfulness here (though still present in the form of spousal abuse being at the center of the story) and a lot more pumping up of Wilde as some sort of badass, but it's also clear for the first half or so of the movie that she's someone so broken she barely resembles a person anymore. She makes Batman look like Stuart Smalley. I think one's ability to appreciate this is solely dependent on your willingness to give her credit for going to some dark places to make the character believable, because the rest of the film feels far too spare - samey-looking as I've mentioned many times about indie films, not much in the way of good dialogue, basically no character development to speak of. Probably not worth watching, but not *quite* a steaming pile of crap, either. A Long Way Down - Hey, something that's not sick-making, boring, or badly-done! I mean, it is cheesy, but I think this is the first (maybe only) Pierce Brosnan movie where casting him made the movie better than it would have been with someone else. He's pulling a little bit from Ben Affleck's book here and trading on his past to make a sleazy role work, and it does. But the real beating heart of this is Imogen Poots, who is probably a better Manic Pixie Dream Girl than most. The plot is your totally Average McNormalson "ragtag crew" plot, with all the usual developments and pinches and break-ups, and the same resolution, but getting there is what makes this fun. Not a total waste of your time if you're a sucker for these sorts of comedies. The Misfits - Hooooooo boy, is this a weird movie. Let's face it, I only watched this for two reasons: Marilyn Monroe, and because it's name-checked in the Clash song, "The Right Profile". And is this ever a male-gaze-y fucking film. Yeeeeeeeeeeeeesh. The first half or so of it is not terribly interesting, or particularly well-written (which is disappointing coming from Arthur Miller), but it builds up a nice cache of what we'd call micro-aggressions that transfer over well into the last act of the film. This goes from zero to 100 in no time flat, and, the actual ending aside, the last 15 minutes of this are fucking outstanding. There are some fairly hard-to-watch horse wrangling scenes that really get at the core of who the men in the film are, and then Monroe's character finally tells everyone who'll listen what she really thinks of them, and her mouth is like a sandpaper machine gun, especially towards Eli Wallach's character. I found the whole Clark Gable relationship bit to be creepy and awful, but I think that's a product of how poorly some of those aspects of the film have aged as society has changed. I wouldn't call this a "classic", but you can see why it might have been considered that at one time, and that last act really is something. Awesome Robocop && - I seriously hadn't watched this in at least 25 years, if not longer. I was 7 or maybe 8 when it came out and of course I was blown away by it then, but I hadn't felt like watching it in who knows how long. I'm glad I waited. I'm not going to sit here and pretend this isn't So Fucking Eighties, because it clearly is - He never reloads his gun! The bad guys get huge guns and then can't hit him! The car chase scenes look like B-roll footage from CHIPS! - so I can't really think of this as a "great" movie from a technical perspective. Verhoeven made some pretty big leaps forward with how this looked versus Total Recall, for example. But WOW, my younger self was *completely* unable to appreciate how black the comedy is in this movie. The bits are all-too-brief (usually just the commercials for the news show), but the dragging of corporate greed, the military-industrial complex, and consumerism are just amazing. I guess it's appropriate I watched Videodrome and Repo Man before revisiting this, because it sure seems like the script writers had seen them, too. There are certainly better action movies from the period, and better special effects, but this is quite possibly the one vision of the future from the 80s that feels like it mostly came true in all the worst ways possible, one that simultaneously taps into the crime-fueled paranoia of the decade but also skewers the people doing the fretting, since "law and order" has never been anything but distraction politics anyway. Plus, @HumanChessgame posted while I was writing these up, so, sometimes the universe does align! 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
odessasteps Posted February 1, 2022 Share Posted February 1, 2022 Not sure I’d want an 8 year old watching Robocop, much as ilove it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Fowler Posted February 1, 2022 Share Posted February 1, 2022 Step up Die Another Day to Casino Royale Step down Casino Royale to Quantum of Solace 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Natural Posted February 1, 2022 Share Posted February 1, 2022 To go with the above, Skyfall to Spectre was a step down. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J.H. Posted February 1, 2022 Share Posted February 1, 2022 I mean... OHMSS to Diamonds Are Forever is a HUGE dip in quality James 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Technico Support Posted February 1, 2022 Share Posted February 1, 2022 (edited) 3 hours ago, Brian Fowler said: Step up Die Another Day to Casino Royale Yeah, sure, but these movies are different enough that they shouldn't even be compared. This is like saying The Dark Knight is a huge leap up from Batman 1966. After the Austin Powers and Bourne movies, there was no way Bond could continue with unrealistic, downright silly stuff that had been its hallmark. The Craig Bond movies are more of a series reboot than sequels to what came before them. Edited February 1, 2022 by Technico Support Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mister TV Posted February 1, 2022 Share Posted February 1, 2022 I haven't seen either in years but Lethal Weapon 2 was a step up from Lethal Weapon, less suicidal Riggs, Joe Pesci, and the toilet bomb give it the edge. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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