THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Police Academy vs. Police Academy 2.

The second is far more heady and intellectual.

The same could be said of Bill & Ted’s Excellent adventure, as well as Speed and Speed 2 (because everyone knows buses are worse than boats).

Kill Bill Vol 2

and I do love all 3 Lord of Rings

FISTFUL OF DOLLARS was excellent, though many consider A FEW DOLLARS MORE the better film, and, clearly, the third in the series, THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE UGLY is the superlative entry in the series.

EVIL DEAD 2.  Funnier, more violent, creepier. 

TOY STORY 2.  Not as groundbreaking as the first, but it has all the things that were lovable about the original, but moreso. 

BLADE II was better than BLADE, though neither are any great shakes. 

A SHOT IN THE DARK.  The Pink Panther was supposed to be the start of a movie series about the jewel thief, not Peter Sellers bumbling inspector, until his performance got everyone’s attentions.  The result, though, is that the original Pink Panther doesn’t prominently feature Clouseau, and is overly long.

DRUNKEN MASTER II.  More fun, I say.

I have to disagree about KILL BILL, though.  Dug the first volume a lot more than the second.  The second lagged a bit for my tastes.

Star Trek 2 (so much better)
Superman 2
X-Men 2 (only because the first was terrible)

I don’t think Indiana Jones & Temple of Doom from any standpoint is better than the original, but you could definitely make a Last Crusade argument.

Depending on where you set the bar for the originals

Dr. No -> From Russia With Love
Dirty Harry -> Magnum Force
Ipcress File -> Funeral in Berlin (I don’t understand the IMDB ratings at all).

The Bourne Whatever, depending on how you order them.

Probably a number of films from the silent screen, if you adjust properly for era (Zorro, Sherlock Holmes....)

Karate Kid II.  I enjoyed part I, but the sequel was actually really really well done.  Part III, on the other hand was a crime.

Do the Star Treks count as sequels?  Among the “Next Gen” movies, First Contact was better than Generations (both were excellent), but Insurrection was a total get me over fastball (how’s that for bringing the metaphor back...) Nemesis was gratuitous.

Among the Old School movies, 2 was better than 1.  The Search for Spock was replacement level.  Voyage Home was good, 5 was horrifying, and 6 was pointless.
‘
Wow, I’m a nerd.

I thought Spider-Man was OK, but part 2 I really loved. Part 3...well, let’s just say the writers and makers should be absolutely ashamed of themselves.

Shrek 2 was better than Shrek.

No, it wasn’t.

+1s to:
- The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
- Dirty Harry
- Dark Knight
- later entries to the Bond and Panther series

+2 to:
- Evil Dead 2

My entries:
- Godfather 2: so good, it bears repeating
- Ski School 2.  It is a very bad sequel to an even worse film, but unlike substantially any other third-tier film of its ilk, it contains a single, glorious moment.  See it on cable at 2AM.  You can thank me later.
- Chronicles of Riddick.  Not because it’s good, but because for a while it was on all the time and I could torment my wife by watching it.  Plus, Dame Judy Dench sighting.
- This Night I Will Possess Your Corpse.  ‘Nuff sed.

I think Before Sunset is a significantly better movie than Before Sunrise.

This is vaguely related in that it’s movies, but a friend and I once sat around thinking about movie genres that couldn’t possibly have good movies made. One we came up with was Talking Baby movies. But even in this genre, sequels are usually worse than originals, such as Baby Geniuses and Baby Geniuses 2, even if both are terrible.

I would like to put in a vote for Predator 2 beeing much better than Predator.

The original is a pretty dull run of the mill action movie only salvaged by Arnolds precence.

In comparison the sequel has much more depth and story and still keeps the action at full blast. Plus in total, the cast is much stronger.

---"Dark Knight was much better.”

I expected it to be, based on the hype. But I found it to be much worse than Batman Begins. To me, the DK was just OK. If you look past the technical aspects which were well done, there’s simply not a lot there. I just don’t get excited watching explosions anymore.

Shrek is loads better than Shrek 2 (or 3) in my opinion.

Ditto for Karate Kid, the first is easily the best.

But in terms of sequels, I agree both of these #2’s are good movies, just not as good as their predecessors.

Terminator 2 is, in my experience, the only movie that’s universally (like, >90%) enjoyed more than its original.

Godfather 2, Dark Knight, Back to the Future 2, etc… you’ll find many people willing to argue that they’re better, and many people that say the originals were better.  But with Terminator, I have yet to hear someone say the first was better than the second (I’m sure someone is out there, but I haven’t met them yet).

Well, I much prefer Terminator to Terminator 2! Terminator 2 was very good, and obviously had much better special effects, but I don’t think it comes close to matching the intensity and focus of the first film.  I do acknowledge that I am in the pretty small minority on this.

Michael Biehn is supercool, or at least acted it.  Cameron also had him in Aliens, so you know he was taken with him.(*)

(*) Interesting how you have these director/actor pairs.  Scorcese had DeNiro, then went with DiCaprio.  Pollack and Redford.  Burton and Depp.  Spike and Denzel.

Biehn had great intensity for T1, and T1 was all about that intensity.  T2 was really about Arnold and special effects.

Really, I see alot of parallels with Alien/Aliens and T1/T2.  They had to trade the originality, the novelty and intensity of the first one, for the better paced of the second one.

Die Hard is an example that was made so well the first time, that the second one had nothing to improve upon it.

David, that’s how I see Dark Knight.  The pacing is better in the second than the first, though the intensity of the first (at least in the origin scenes) is stronger.  But, Ledger’s Joker is abolutely riveting, and so, whatever intensity Bale no longer showed in Dark Knight, it was more than supplanted by Ledger.  Plus, the Harvey Dent character, especially if you are a Batman fan at all you already knew what would happen just you didn’t know how it would happen, provides the arc that you want in any character-based movie.  I find Dark Knight has it all, and if anything, was a 3-4 hour movie crammed into 2.5 hours.

I’m not a movie reviewer, so seek professional counsel.

----"David, that’s how I see Dark Knight.” Sure, but I see it very differently, to wit…

“The pacing is better in the second.” Well, if you’re 14 yrs old and you need endless climax, maybe so. But if you want a more traditional structure of buildup to climax, then #1 is your preference.

“But, Ledger’s performance is absolutely riveting.” Yes, in the sense that he took an underwritten part and made it noteable, due to his technical acting ability and hard work and creativity. But, in the end, the Joker was a hollow villain because we were not permitted access into his soul or his story. He is just another empty suit.

“Plus, the Harvey Dent character...”. Don’t get me started on Harv. His transformation from good guy to bad crazy guy is as poorly done as I’ve ever seen.

Any more?

The Harvey character would have an analogy to Anakin/Vader.  Except in Anakin’s case it does go through the whole movie.

It is not as well-done here.  Except, I see alot of Dark Knight as being not literal.  Alot of the “treachery/turncoats” occurs as hard to believe in terms of the timing.  Too often, the timing of the events had to occur perfectly for the thing to be carried out, but it doesn’t look like he had enough time to carry it all out.  But, because of the relentless pace, and the overall meaning of the movie in a poetic sense, I go with it, and leave some of the implausibility behind.

As an example, after Joker visits Wayne, and Batman does his Superman thing and saves the girl… what happened to Joker?  Did he just leave?  I chalk it up that it wasn’t needed to tie that loose end.

Getting the three black guys to fight to the death to be part of his team.  But then we never see those guys.  Pointless?  Or, a window into his ruthlessness?  Did they carry it out?  Or not?

Going back to Two Face: I’m not sure how you could do it better, given the whole setup.  Maybe they could have shown him strain a bit as the D.A., to show that he’s carrying a heavy burden, that he’s teetering on the edge.  But, we knew that he’d become Two Face, and they did try to give him a bit of some bad stuff by saying that when he was in Internal Affairs that he was a two-face.

If you take Dark Knight a little less literal and a bit more poetic, you might see it a more positive light.

I have (a lot) more to say on this topic, but Ski School 2 reminded me of a film sequel not to be missed:

Troll 2

Nothing to do with the original Troll, but some of the best worst footage ever put to film. A true original of sequels if there ever was.

---"If you take Dark Knight a little less literal and a bit more poetic, you might see it in a more positive light.”

That’s what they (the director, writers, many reviewers) want us to do, to make us think the movie is better than it really is. The same thing is true of the ending of No Country.... Lots of controversy with many people saying it was great art, when IMO the author simply ran out of ideas.

David: I figure you might appreciate this
http://space.canoe.ca/IgnatiusReilly/blog/view/248012