Worst Fourth Film In A Series

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.

Crystal Skull, for example, is not really good but it's more of a misfire than complete incompetence, i mean at least it had the same spirit as the original trilogy.

Live Free or Die Hard is trash, never let hackers be villains

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides - better than the 4th indiana jones flick

o wait, shit, was thinking of at world's end. never saw on stranger tides. love the tim powers novel, though.

Alien: Resurrection: sucked.
Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip: dunno
Barbershop: The Next Cut: didn't know it existed
Batman & Robin: pretty bad.
The Bourne Legacy: Even Renner forgot this existed.
Bride of Chucky: funny!
The Concorde ... Airport '79: dunno
Conquest of the Planet of the Apes: is this the one set on current earth, with time traveling apes?
Death Wish 4: The Crackdown: OTT bad/good.
Ernest Scared Stupid: dunno
Exorcist: The Beginning: mostly bad, with moments?
Fast & Furious: prolly OK.
The Final Destination: ridiculous
Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter: I like this one!
Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers: I don't like this one, but read the novelization
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: s'ok.
Hellraiser: Bloodline: bad
Highlander: Endgame: dunno, didn't know there were 4
Ice Age: Continental Drift: kid stuff
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: OK at the time, worse/bad on memory
Jaws: the Revenge: awful
Jurassic World: solid but stupid
Land of the Dead: bad on review but OK at the time
Lethal Weapon 4: drag
Live Free or Die Hard: bad
Meatballs 4: ? really?
Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol: great
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor: didn't know it existed
The Next Karate Kid: didn't see
A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master: solid, liked this
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides: overblown
Police Academy 4: Citizens On Patrol: used to watch it for Bones Brigade and Bobcat
Rambo: solid
Resident Evil: Afterlife: dunno
Rocky IV: cheese
Saw IV: depressing
Scary Movie 4: prolly terrible
Scream 4: think I walked out during the bad guy's "I did it because ... !" speech. Was the media the bad guy?
Shrek Forever After: huh, didn't know this existed.
Spy Kids: All The Time In The World: s'ok kid stuff
Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace: epically bad
Step Up: Revolution: wow, there were 4?
Sudden Impact: OK, famous for the "go ahead, make my day!' quote, which like Jason's mask people forget came later
Superman IV: The Quest For Peace: saw this in theaters, terrible
Terminator Salvation: With Bale? I thought it was 30% OK.
Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation: dunno
Transformers: Age of Extinction: "like listening to a pile of rocks in a dryer." - Roger Ebert.
Underworld: Awakening: dunno
Vegas Vacation: can't be good.

Ernest Scared Stupid is an okay kid's movie, as I recall.

I'm holding my fire until the next Linklater Before movie.

It should be called "After B4"

Scream 4: think I walked out during the bad guy's "I did it because ... !" speech. Was the media the bad guy?

no emma roberts was the bad guy

she throws herself through a glass table, it's raw as hell

Critters 4 (1992) has several covers but this one got me hoping they'd beaten Wayne's World to the Bohemian Rhapsody performance pip.

http://i.yai.bz/Assets/91/282/l_p1005028291.jpg

funny how easy it is to pick out the lone good film on this list (Bride of Chucky)

"Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip" is surprisingly enjoyable given what it is (a terrible Alvin and the Chipmunks movie)

put that on the poster

'surprisingly enjoyable' raves ilx poster djp

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lpNS3Jd37k

pesci was robbed of the best supporting actor oscar

I haven't seen some of these but it's hard to imagine any being worse than Jaws: the Revenge

Terminator Salvation is one of the worst movies I have ever seen in a movie theater.

The tolerable to actually good:

Bride of Chucky
The Concorde ... Airport '79
The Final Destination
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Land of the Dead
Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol
A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master
Step Up: Revolution

I suspect Crystal Skull will win this one, and already smh.

xp
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0auwpvAU2YA
Christian Bale revealing what a loathsome tool he is on set was entertaining though.

oh and re: Batman & Robin's much-discussed rubber fetish shots: those are kinda among the better shots in the movie tbh. Most of the film alternates between lifeless talky scenes and flailing 'comic' action vomited up by the glow-in-the-dark action playset, which probably does play okay to eight-year-olds. It's at least more consistent in its ''the 60s show, but for the hyperactive 90s kid!'' vision than Batman Forever. Also I would rather watch Arnold hamming up dumb puns than Carrey sweating hard for a laugh that never comes. The internet obsessing over the crotch and butt shots feels idk kinda like teen nerd homophobery but I'll concede that it does certainly mark a huge difference from the Burton treatment so maybe that's why people are lingering on it.

Harry Potter I only left in here because it feels like it'd be glaringly missing from a list of major multi-multi-film series of the last while. I think it's a step down from Cuarón's work on the third, but it's also an accurate adaptation of the fourth book, which is structurally episodic and poorly-edited. So the movies stop trying to tell the whole story and count on the audience to fill in key stuff; I don't think of 'em come close to real badness, which is amazing since they could have been complete shit from day one and still made a fortune. IV is the one with Brendan Gleeson, David Tennant, and first Fiennes-as-Voldemort. The idea of sitting through the "three trials" stuff again is a little daunting but yeah this doesn't REALLY belong alongside Meatballs 4, etc.

I liked these (note: I don't think all of them are "good" per se, but I enjoyed watching them):

Alien: Resurrection
Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip
The Bourne Legacy
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Ice Age: Continental Drift
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull <-- not even Shia Leboeuf swings with monkeys could ruin this for me*
Lethal Weapon 4
Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol
Resident Evil: Afterlife
Shrek Forever After
Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
Underworld: Awakening

* I was going to reword this but, no

no wait, shit, was thinking of at world's end. never saw on stranger tides. love the tim powers novel, though.

yeah on stranger tides automatically cannot be the worst because at least it represented a big payday for powers.

leaving out ones where i truly have no idea, or enough sense of the series to know whether i'd be pissed or indifferent if the fourth one suddenly started sucking:

ESSENTIALLY COMPETENT MOVIEMAKING, NO DISGRACE TO THE SERIES:

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - see above

OKAY AFTERNOON VIEWING ON CABLE, JUST DISAPPOINTINGLY INESSENTIAL AND ORDINARY:

Alien: Resurrection - see above
Jurassic World - see above
Rocky IV - tbh i've never watched the whole thing but i think it'd be down

JUST SHORT OF PASSABLE AFTERNOON VIEWING ON CABLE - LAME, DISGRACEFUL, AND SO DISTRACTINGLY LOUD, STUPID OR TONE-DEAF AS TO IMPEDE IDLE ENJOYMENT WITH A HANGOVER:

Batman & Robin - see above
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - just painfully ordinary and without personality, weight or momentum (except the p. good early Indy/Shia scenes where Spielberg clearly came in and took over for a while), but easier to forget than Star Wars and doesn't ruin Indy in the same way.

TRULY DIRE SLOGS:

Superman IV: The Quest For Peace - see above
Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace - see nearly 3,000 posts in the crimes of george lucas thread

NO IDEA, BUT COULD IMAGINE THEM BEING HALF DECENT?

Barbershop: The Next Cut - no idea
The Bourne Legacy - zzz but probably at least competently made?
Bride of Chucky - sure
Conquest of the Planet of the Apes - always been weirdly curious about the very oddball-sounding premises of the later PotA movies.
Fast & Furious - i can't really tell the films in this series apart but people i respect say they actually start getting better as it goes on. dunno if it's 4 or 5 where that's supposed to happen though.
Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol - everyone says this is great
A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master - my sense is the sequels in this series are generally kinda consistent, it's just basically an anthology of weird dream horror sequences strung together by freddy right?
The Next Karate Kid - female karate kid is a nice idea and prob. inspired some kids idk
Rambo - actually probably awful
Spy Kids: All The Time In The World - loved the first and feel there are too few kids movies of this kind
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor - actually probably awful

HAVEN'T SEEN BUT MUST ASSUME THEY ARE LIKELY MORE PAINFUL TO WATCH THAN PHANTOM MENACE:

Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip - can you imagine watching four movies of this shit
Death Wish 4: The Crackdown - Cannon Group rule
Ernest Scared Stupid - tho tbh I doubt it is much different from the previous couple. "Camp" is the only classic.
The Final Destination - should have called it "final final destination"
Hellraiser: Bloodline, Highlander: Endgame - should have been combined into one movie
Ice Age: Continental Drift - these are so fucking UGLY
Jaws: the Revenge - go-to symbol of old-school sequelitis
Lethal Weapon 4 - never watched any, but seems like the first is not my style and they all get worse. isn't this the one with the racism?
Live Free or Die Hard - i am 100% the target market of this film and i took one look at the trailer and went "nnnnope."
Meatballs 4 - first had a mild charm when not creepy/rapey, but why watch any sans Murray? here, corey feldman saves the camp in a water-skiing championship.
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides - already wrecked by the second two dumb 'trilogy' pieces. imagining an even more broken ratio of depp's mugging to everything else... yikes.
Police Academy 4: Citizens On Patrol - i guess i've heard it's better than 5-7?
Saw IV - horrible series, suspect this is the least pleasant viewing experience of anything here
Scary Movie 4 - somehow worries me more than Scream 4
Shrek Forever After - hate this unfunny genre-wrecking shit, kids deserve better and i'm offended on their behalf
Terminator Salvation - third one already nailed the 'afternoon cable whatever' category, this just looked bleak and tiring
Transformers: Age of Extinction - what can you even say?
Vegas Vacation - even the first one, fourteen years earlier, was more cringey than funny for most of the time.

Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip - can you imagine watching four movies of this shit

... what has happened to me and my life

the essential gayness of batman & robin rescues it for me in a way that i think the essential gayness of nightmare on elm street 2 rescues that movie for others

iirc the final destination is the worst final destination sequel but i get them all mixed up in my head

final destination 5 however i remember in its full integrity and it's fucking awesome

re: Batman & Robin's much-discussed rubber fetish shots

I was at the exact age to overvalue those latex butt and cup shots, and I *still* fell asleep during the movie, one of the only times that's happened to me in a theater.

tbh i can't really hold anything against a film that has led to something as reliably cheering as youtube supercuts of arnold's lines and of course Lines uttered by Arnold Scwarzenegger (as Mr Freeze) in "Batman & Robin"

What film series holds the record for the most entries following a sequel which purports to be the "final" one? Probably Friday the 13th, right?

Lethal weapon, Bourne and MI all good rest trash

Lethal weapon, Bourne and MI all good rest trash

Chucky is the aberrant movie series that strangely hits its stride by the fourth entry (I think the first three are all different shades of mediocre), mostly by fully embracing the fundamental absurdity of the concept. The fifth is completely bugshit and my favorite by a country mile, and the sixth is a pretty decent straight horror film (and probably the first in the series that actually tries for scares). I never would've expected to find myself saying as much, but I'm looking forward to the upcoming seventh installment of the Child's Play series.

Yeah, Chucky is by far the most transformative (for the better) series refresh on this entire list.

6 was good? huh

Surprisingly. I don't really understand why it was released direct-to-video, but I think they're planning to go theatrical again with the next one.

I'll check it out - I liked 4 and 5, and yeah the latter is v enjoyable in its over-the-topness

6 plays it pretty straight and almost feels like a reboot until the end ties it back in to the absurdity of the previous two.

(Just realized that Citizen Toxie is missing from this list.)

Ghost Protocol is not just great but potentially (based on how great Rogue Nation is) films 4-6 of the MI trilogy could all be better than 1-3. i like the first MI, but i think it's a shade below 4&5. (MI2 is not terrible but not good, MI3 is fine but basically an extended episode of Alias, JJ Abrams isn't that good tbh.)

Where will Avatar 4 fall?

Flat on its dumb face, if there's any justice in the world.

You mean "3-D on its dumb face."

The Concorde... Airport '79 is my favourite title out of these

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor has everything in the title plus a Yeti. It exceeded my low expectations.

I voted for jurassic world because of the scene where the nanny is punishment killed for talking on a cellphone, and the punishment is to be picked up by pterodactyl, dropped, picked up, dropped, etc, then swallowed along with pterodactyl by mosasaurus. Wrong sort of thing to happen in the sort of movie this is supposed to be.

is NOES 4 good?

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