When it comes to some movie prequels, the best thing is to never look back.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
The X-Men movies have always been an uneven franchise at best. The first movie was all right, the second movie was great, and the third movie would have been much better had the script and direction been crowdsourced by toddlers. So the studio decided to get back on track by focusing on the origin story of the series’ biggest character (played by its breakout star). Unfortunately, the result was a movie featuring a whole slew of secondary characters that seemed to exist solely to ensure they could never get their own movies and a story line that looked like it was trying to figure out its own plot while being projected on the screen. By the time the film was finished all one could think was that maybe the senator from the first movie had the right idea all the long and at least all the X-men movies should be quarantined.
Hannibal Rising
“The Silence of the Lambs” was a masterpiece, a movie that came out when Anthony Hopkins could still play roles other than “Anthony Hopkins” and the idea of a brilliant serial killer hadn’t been played out to such a degree it’s a shock it hasn’t been used yet in “Elmo’s World.” But by the time “Hannibal Rising” came out, audiences had already been bored to death by the killer thanks to the dull gorefest “Hannibal.” Of course, matters weren’t helped by a plot that tried to humanize a monster by saying the reason Hannibal eats people is because of World War II and some misunderstood advice he got from a family cook about fish. In the end after too many movies, books, and even an upcoming TV show, one of the scariest characters ever had become as menacing as a supervillain from the original “Batman” show. All he needs now is some henchmen in matching T-shirts, an elaborate plan to kill Batman involving a giant-sized Babycakes Cake Pop machine, and a catchphrase like “Nice to eat you” or “Chew on this!”
Terminator Salvation
When is a movie both a prequel and a sequel? When it features a younger version of a character in the future who will play a major, older role in the original movie that takes place in the past, as well as when it shows the first movie’s main villain being created years after it had already…and let the headaches begin. Of course, all those temporal movie-marketing anomalies wouldn’t have mattered had “Terminator Salvation” been a good or at least enjoyable film. But the result was a literally lead-footed action movie from a guy who inexplicably still gets work after “Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle.” It also proved that although he may not be a good actor—and he’s certainly a horrible husband—some things are actually better with Arnold Schwarzenegger in them.
Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd
How do you ruin an original movie that was never really good in the first place but is fondly remembered because you saw it as a kid, saw it while suffering from a high fever, or saw it while still waiting for them to remove that railroad spike through the center of your brain? First, you replace your main actors (one who was once the biggest star in Hollywood) with unknowns who, alas, will remain unknowns. Then you create an origin story for characters that never needed a back-story in the first place, unless it was to show how eating lead paint chips as a kid leads to severely decreased intelligence. Then you write a script that so embraces its title it might as well have just been 90 minutes of someone being utterly confounded by the cooking instructions for Cup O’ Noodle.
Exorcist: The Beginning
The genuinely horrifying “The Exorcist” had already been peed on once, by the genuinely horrible sequel “The Exorcist II: The Heretic” (featuring a cast of 2500 locusts that then proceeded to drop dead during filming at the rate of 100 a day). But 27 years later a prequel was born, focusing on what the studio felt people loved so much from the original film’s focus on Satan and a frighteningly possessed girl—the priesthood. The fact that the movie was an utter disaster surprised no one. But what is surprising is that the movie was actually shot twice at the same time—by two competing directors—resulting in the “Exorcist: The Beginning” and “Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist,” coming out only a year apart but both landing with the same resounding thud at the box office.
Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, Episode II: Attack of the Clones, Episode II: Revenge of the Sith
Lucas had already let the dark side start to consume him with the unnecessary “Special Edition” movies, which filled every empty space on the original prints with something flying, shooting, or maybe just making a phone call. (Not to mention having Greedo shoot first in the hopes of transforming Han Solo from “badass space pirate” to “cuddly smuggler.”) But then came “The Phantom Menace,” featuring a child actor so wooden he couldn’t stand near an open flame and a plot seemingly inspired by the dead air moments on C-SPAN. This was followed by the amazingly even worse “Attack of the Clones,” which proved that everything Lucas learned about romance he got from watching middle school productions of “Beauty and the Beast” and that his casting decisions for Anakin were based entirely on who managed to run through his office door first. By the time “Revenge of the Sith” came out, we all tried to tell ourselves it wasn’t so bad, that it could have been worse. But that was just the desperate hopes, the self-delusional ramblings, of a generation of fans who couldn’t believe that suddenly the Ewoks didn’t seem so bad and that the “Star Wars” saga had indeed been ruined for good.
What other prequels blow? Let me know in the comments!
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