Worst Fourth Film In A Series

it's weird that a trilogy seems like something grand to aim for, but a tetralogy just seems soooo pathetic

Not the "worst" in absolute terms, but Alien 4 and Bourne 4 were the biggest let-downs from previously quality series. Terminator Salvation and Jurassic World were horrific in absolute terms. Not seen Transformers 4, but it surely would be the absolute depths of shit.

Also, anyone who uses the word 'quadrilogy' instead of 'tetralogy' needs a kick upside the head.

best movie on here by a mile is Ghost Protocol. it's going to be tough to pick the worst.

on a totally unrelated note, yesterday i mentioned to my wife that i really wanted to play final fantasy XV, and then i burst out laughing at the idea of final fantasy XV

I'm one of those people that kinda likes Alien: Resurrection, even if it's the exact moment when everything that's gone wrong goes wrong... it ruins the xenomorph through overexposure and not rising to their level of nightmarishness save for the one scene with the clones in formaldehyde. If it weren't an Alien movie I'd probably like it better.... colorful popcorn movie, paced for the commercial breaks, in which a blah but okay adventure with an overstuffed cast plays out in a series of individually nifty but collectively disposable scenes. Could be worse. I've more than once walked into a room, discovered this was on, and ended up sitting and watching it for a good while so I guess Jeunet is doing something right.

Jurassic World had long stretches of being kinda watchable IIRC. It blows all the big scenes and has no sense of suspense or what might be interesting in a given situation, also there are some enormous and distracting plot holes. But I got through the whole thing and only wanted to throw things at the TV maybe 60 or 70 percent of the time.

https://38.media.tumblr.com/d8b57926ce6e2dc23ff3e66d989b54bd/tumblr_n1uddilXaH1qedb29o1_500.gif

Lethal Weapon 4 was the very first one that popped in my head upon reading the thread title so that's what I'm voting for

best movie on here by a mile is Ghost Protocol.

― nomar, Thursday, March 16, 2017 10:48 PM (thirty-nine minutes ago)

Agreed, but Thunderball (not listed) is better. Wonder why the Bond films weren't included?

TS exorcist: the beginning vs psycho iv: the beginning

Thunderball was the weakest of the Bond movies to date at the time but it'd be hard to think of all those movies as Bond 1-20whatever anyway, there's not too much continuity between them

there's plenty on this list where the first movie in the sequence was pointless shit so really there's no way of finding a nadir

That Spy Kids 4 was the aromascape one where the audience were issued scratch and sniff cards and it featured a robot dog voiced by Gervais ... need I say any more?

sign me up!

obv a 5 star Bradshaw jobbie!

bar Gervais, obv, it's probly more imaginative and fun than something like Kate Beckinsale in a trenchcoat punching CGI monsters in the dark vol. 4

the entire Ice Age run is just a McDonald's Happy Meal promotion that got above itself

Sorry nv but for me the real spy kids 4 will always be the adventures of shark boy and lava girl in 3d

no i think that's fair. also better than emo vampires vs emo werewolves.

disappointed none of the Hooligan Pornos seem to have made it to number 4

here's just the ones i've seen, which isn't a ton -- i usually give up on series before #4. I'll group them into nathan rabin's flop categories.

failures: conquest of the apes, indy 4, scream 4, land of the dead, terminator 4, lethal weapon 4, vegas vacation
fiascos: jaws 4, phantom menace, batman and robin, cannon films superman, die hard: it's an e-bomb
successes: ghost protocol, the mummy 4, pirates of the caribbean 4, jurassic world

think i'll vote for the phantom menace.

oh and I've seen Ernest Scared Stupid. I don't remember any of it.

Out of what I've seen it's one of the lucases

Anyone who has seen too many of these needs a word tho

It's surprising how many of these are actually pretty good.

where's Ghost of Frankenstein?

I have seen:

Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Jurassic World
Live Free or Die Hard
Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol
A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master
Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
Vegas Vacation

Ghost Protocol is indeed the best thing here, and while quite a few of these are wheezy and exhausted (I tried to remember even one good line or gag Vegas Vacation, but nothing comes to mind), The Phantom Menace is still the biggest out and out suckfest.

Fuck, I got my Bonds scrambled - I'd have tried to make space for Thunderball. It doesn't really belong amongst the swill here, but it's easily the least watchable until the late Moore films at least. But idk, even in a bad movie it's good to see Connery as Bond, counts for sth against all... that.. swimming.

I struggled with Frankenstein and Dracula and Godzilla, who each have a few "series" - felt like it was a case of, include em all or include none. Tbh Morbs I'd've figured you for an Abbott and Costello Meet The Mummy voter.

Most of the Universal Monster sequels I've seen are just baaaaarely sequels in any meaningful sense, so I wouldn't sweat that too much.

* Batman & Robin

even joel schumacher regrets this movie

"If there's anybody watching this, that... let's say, loved Batman Forever, and went into Batman & Robin with great anticipation, if I've disappointed them in any way, then I really want to apologize. Because it wasn't my intention. My intention was just to entertain them."

Conquest of the Planet of the Apes rules.

I've only seen five of these, of which the worst is Phantom Menace. But I can't imagine Scary Movie 4 not being the worst shit ever.

Alien: Resurrection - I think I remember this being okay and at least nice to look at.
The Bourne Legacy - This wasn't as bad as it could've been (and was maybe better than Jason Bourne) but I don't remember a thing about it.
Bride of Chucky - Better than its three precedents but not as good as the immediate follow-up.
Exorcist: The Beginning - I think this was the Renny Harlin version? I saw the Schrader version, which was passable and at least better than The Heretic.
Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers - Probably the worst on this list but I'm not sure I particularly like any of the series except 3.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - Roughly as good as the rest. A surprisingly decent series.
Hellraiser: Bloodline - Ugh.
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - I only saw part of this on TV at Thanksgiving one year but it looked pretty bad.
Jaws: the Revenge - The shark swims hundreds of miles to get revenge. It jumps out of the water and roars like a tiger. What's not to love.
Jurassic World - Just entertaining enough to offset how bad and stupid it was.
Land of the Dead - Good on its own, though it obviously pales in comparison to its forebears.
Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol - I don't know what the hell Woo was trying to achieve with the second one but this series is otherwise pretty damn solid.
A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master - My favorite of the series.
Police Academy 4: Citizens On Patrol - I started rewatching these a couple years ago for unknown reasons and was surprised to realize that the first two were (while dumb as hell) actually pretty funny. The third one was like if someone was transcribing jokes from the first two while they were half awake so they still had the air of a joke but were divorced from context so they basically just became catchphrases that no one was asking for. Never bothered to rewatch the fourth after that.
Scream 4 - It happened, guess it was okay, barely remember.
Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace - I think this was just more boring than anything. Trade disagreements and kids going 'yipeeee!' is not what I look for in a SW movie.
Superman IV: The Quest For Peace - Haven't seen it in years, but I'm sure it's fantastic.

pirates of the caribbean 4 might have the back story which reads most likely a lazy satire of creatively bankrupt hollywood thinking: a movie based on a theme park ride which was then spun into an entirely unnecessary trilogy and then had a fourth installment retrofitted from an unrelated novel

Superman IV: The Quest For Peace - Haven't seen it in years, but I'm sure it's fantastic.

― Milkwalker's World (Old Lunch), Saturday, 18 March 2017 00:52 (nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://i3.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/575/386/c0d.gif

Thank you for the confirmation! That ridiculousness might top ornery, drunken Superman from the third movie.

Superman IV is reeeeal tough to take. I kinda like how lame and OTT the Nuclear Man is but generally the effects are cheap and obvious (there's a long flying sequence with AWFUL rear projections, looks twenty years out of date) and wayyyyy too much of the movie is cheap-to-shoot, nails-on-a-chalkboard love triangle/they're-taking-over-the-newspaper stuff. OTOH it's nice seeing Mariel Hemingway, and while Jon Cryer is annoying as Lex's teenaged nephew or whatever, it's not measurably more irritating than Ned Beatty was as his dimwitted henchman.

Weren't all of the Die Hard sequels originally totally different scripts/adaptations that shoehorned McClane into the story?

love love love Superman IV so much. It is so awesomely horrible!

i love scream 4 with all of my heart

I think Die Hard With A Vengeance is actually *two different* scripts/adaptations that shoehorned John McClane into the story! Or someone's spare list of possible Die Hard sequel treatments, combined with someone's spec script for a Dirty Harry ripoff called 'Simon Says.'

actual good films in this list:

fast and furious
bride of chucky
friday the 13th the final chapter
ghost protocol
nightmare 4: the dream master
rocky iv
scream 4
step up: revolution (they do heavily choreographed flash mobs with a live dj to save the community center/neighborhood, a legit masterpiece)

probably gonna vote for halloween 4 but also extremely inclined to vote for terminator salvation

oh and i like alien resurrection a lot except for the human baby alien design

best thing in superman iv is superman rolling up to the united nations building in new york to deliver his message of nuclear disarmament

except it was actually filmed in front of a grey concrete hotel in a damp and cold-looking milton keynes and clearly the crew had neither the budget nor the expertise to hide it

it's like superman has turned up to his local council offices to ask about the planning permissions he'll need for his kitchen extension

against all the odds tho christopher reeves is still really good in it

probably gonna vote for halloween 4 but also extremely inclined to vote for terminator salvation

for real, terminator salvation is an abomination

haven't seen many of these...

Alien: Resurrection - agreeably, colorfully & ambitiously bad, disappointing only in light of what came before
Bride of Chucky - entertaining horror comedy, only film in the series i really like
Conquest of the Planet of the Apes - weird, bad & interesting (like all the apes sequels)
Exorcist: The Beginning - complete garbage, one of the worst movies i've ever seen (applies to both versions)
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - good movie, though a big step down from the prisoner of azkaban
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - mediocre crap, not actively offensive
Land of the Dead - ordinary, everyday bad
A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master - terrible but fun, lots of zany, MTV-era nightmare sequences
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides - better than the 4th indiana jones flick
Rocky IV - all data lost
Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace - horrid and too boring to care about
Superman IV: The Quest For Peace - like rocky iv, i'm sure i saw it, but...
Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation - objectively terrible and yet fascinating, has moments

Rocky IV - all data lost

wtf this is the batshit one where rocky beats seven bells out of the ussr in the form of a heavily-oiled dolph lundgren

unforgettable surely

I tried to vote in the sense that I enjoyed the previous 3 movies, so I picked Superman IV.

voted for Phantom Menace due to the considerable drop in anything resembling entertainment value, interesting characters, humor, and a lack of understanding of what made Star Wars work in the first place, all from the guy who originally created it.

Can't agree with RAG about what constitutes a series

Mission Impossible 5 is good

best fourth film in a series, btw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9FGgwCQ22w

Oh, yes, MI5 was good. And probably Harry Potter 5, as well. They all blur into one movie in my memory, tbh.

o yeah HP 5 was excellent

Darraghmac- what you mean? I only disputed a Monty Python live film.

I'm in the obvious minority in thinking that Jason Goes to Hell is the best in the series by far. I mean, it's not good, but it's completely batshit and at least has the bravery to barely be a Friday the 13th movie.

― Fresh Toast (Old Lunch), Thursday, November 9, 2017 8:49 AM (nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

we should start a club

XP maybe a discussion in itself, tbh!?

Frankenstein/Dracula, for instance.....are these coherent 'series' or are they lots of movies with recurring characters, kind of thing....is there a Sherlock Holmes 'series' or just Sherlock Holmes movies...jack the ripper, etc etc

They're sort of coherent. There's a universal series and a Hammer series each of Dracula and Frankenstein and they generally stick to a poorly plotted story.

I'm pretty sure there are Sherlock and Tarzan films that work as a series.

I want it asterisked if allowed

I'd imagine that maintaining some pretense of continuity from installment to installment is a relatively recent feature in the evolution of the film series, and even now only employed sparingly.

Forgot to mention the Whispering Corridors series. I liked one of those.

Let me know if any of you have watched all the Guinea Pig films. I'm sure you all love them and do a marathon every Christmas.

Fast 5 is where the series really turns around, I understand.

The secret was more fury.

18 Abashiri Prison films. 9 Super Giants films.

fast five is the best of the series

Probably doesn't need pointing out that some of these 'bests' are similar to favoring the best piece of moldering detritus in one's compost heap.

Um, it's detrius.

looking fwd to the Jason Goes to Hell auteur showing up in the Greatest Directors poll

I have to say, having just looked over his filmography, it's much more varied and intersting than I would've assumed.

Worst Fifth Film In A Series

Asked my household this question and the 12 year old was quick to get 1 and 2 of the results here right on the money. lol.

I haven't seen a lot of these, from the ones I know I probably would have gone with Batman & Robin. B&R appears to be a 'so bad it's good' thing, over-the-top camp like the Adam West TV series, but somehow it still manages to want to take itself seriously and becomes pretty unbearable as a result.

I've only seen Crystal Skull once but I actually liked it a lot when I did. No, it's not half as amazing as Raiders or Crusade, but I certainly enjoyed it and loved seeing the return of Marian & that happy end.

I wouldn't say I love it but don't hate Phantom Menace all that much - there's nice design in it and I liked some introductions such as C3PO.
That one theory about Jar Jar actually being a dark Jedi master actually makes a lot of sense, if they'd establish that as canon I'm convinced that it would give that movie an enormous quality boost.

Of those fourth films I've seen, the one I liked best is actually Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. I'm not a Potter fan but when some Potterfan-friends made me see all of the movies I thought this was the best one by far. I really liked the first and the seventh film too & thought they wrapped things up nicely with the last. Didn't care much for the other half of the series. Many seem to favour the third but I thought that one was really boring.

Me and my mate went to see B&R stoned off our heads aged 18 and thought it was fucking hilarious, so I'm very affectionate towards it. I have never watched and will never watch it again.

and I liked some introductions such as C3PO.

Urgh that was one of the worst bits.

That one theory about Jar Jar actually being a dark Jedi master actually makes a lot of sense

I thought it was more or less confirmed that that was Lucas' original intention, but he chickened out after seeing the public's reaction to Jar-Jar, which was pretty spineless of him if true.

it's nonsense or at least not seeded in any way in the first film - jar jar's accidental work towards the plot progressing is presented exactly the same as anakin's.

i was thinking recently of polling the worst, most nonsensical and least necessary attempts by the prequels to set up or fanservice stuff from the original films. but then i couldn't decide whether to include rogue one and the forthcoming han solo nonsense.

i would happily vote in that poll fwiw, there's a lot to choose from!

haha okay maybe i'll go through my notes and make that one happen too

the one fanservice omission that's really inexplicable in the prequels is that there's no cameo from the millennium falcon

strong possibility lucas forgot it existed

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jN8HTKLsKkU

I'm not sure that poll will be kind to your views of the two latest, Doctor C.

star wars prequels: most embarrassing and hacky attempt at fan-service and plot resolution

i listened to the How Did This Get Made? for Batman & Robin today. so many lolz, this movie is so terrible. perhaps the apex of the degradation in this film is the moment where Batman slides down the back of a dinosaur, literally like he is Fred Flintstone at the start of an episode of the Flintstones. holy shit, this is a thing that happened in this movie.

then i found this. lol, perfect:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fc2Pc2gbXDQ

Meatballs 4 actually has a post-credit scene where Corey Feldman gets dumped by a girl and complains "I was in Goonies!"

And yes I did watch this poo

worthy of remembrance:

the entire Ice Age run is just a McDonald's Happy Meal promotion that got above itself

― Pengest & Corsa (Noodle Vague)

i still hold that view but the series did give us Nicki Minaj saying "she's a mammoth, of course" so it isn't completely worthless

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jRu_fv2_6A

is NOES 4 good?

Texas Chainsaw Massacre 4 might be one of the worst movies I've ever seen. I think if more people had seen it, they would agree. I watched it on late night cable while insanely baked with a friend of mine in 1999.

Matthew McCoughnahey!

is NOES 4 good?

― Gardyloominati (Neanderthal), Monday, October 25, 2021 3:04 PM (seventeen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

some people love it, and it has some of the most adventurous dream sequences of the series

i kinda hate it and like it

It was screened and shelved before McConaughey and Renee Zellweger were huge stars, then re-cut and re-released with a different name once they became famous.

It is...abysmal.

my brother is the person in this video getting disemboweled: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tTnm2hDVJU

the video gets shown throughout the park which is cool.

but because of his 30 seconds of fame here, he watched all of the TCM movies in the entire franchise in like a week. (dude isn't even a horror buff). he said he saw some "shit", and mentioned 4 as the nadir

he is the good actor in the family, I on the other hand am the "utility infielder of theatre"

i'm actually going to watch tcm 3 during my halloween marathon. hyped. viggo!

turner classic massacres

is NOES 4 good?

is there a newer lunch willing to back up what this lunch has said