Haven't seen Last Stand and not planning to. From everything I've heard I'm better off that way.
Like a lot of the early
X-Men movies,
The Last Stand is pretty stiff & unimpressive by today's standards. And it does pretty badly botch the Phoenix storyline by shoving it into the background of what is already tied with the original
X-Men as the shortest movie of the franchise. But I appreciate the fact that, rather than treading water waiting for the next sequel, it had the guts to try to end everything by killing & de-powering a lot of characters. It's also got a lot of nice moments, like the stuff with Rogue, the bit where Bobby & Kitty go ice skating, and the truly epic deaths of Professor Xavier & Jean Grey.
Worldwide Box Office figures for The Lion, the witch and the Wardrobe US$745m, Goblet of Fire US$897m
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=narnia.htm
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=harrypotter4.htm
Harry Potter took over US$150m more than Narnia.
Ah. I was looking at strictly the domestic box office. Still, considering how quickly the
Narnia franchise fell off after the 1st installment, it makes the early success of
The Lion, the Witch, & the Wardrobe all the more surprising. Personally, I'm not a fan of the
Narnia trilogy. I actually kinda hated
The Lion, the Witch, & the Wardrobe, mostly because it focuses on the aspects of Christian theology that I find most confusing. ("You did something bad and deserve to die. But instead we're going to torture & kill this really noble guy who volunteered to take your place, so now it's all good." I'm being overly flippant but I don't understand that central part of the Christ story at all!)
Prince Caspian was a marginal improvement since it seemed less overtly religious. I never got around to seeing
Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
Ah, I wasn't aware of that.
I would definitely recommend that you try reading the
On Stranger Tides book. It's vastly superior to the movie, with Blackbeard coming across as a lot scarier and the other characters being very well developed. Also, if you know a little bit about the historical Blackbeard as well as some of his associates like Stede Bonnett & Israel Hands, the novel actually does a good job of not just including them in the story and accurately depicting their known history but also coming up with clever explanations for some of the stuff in the history books that otherwise makes no sense. If only all historical fantasy could be so clever.
And while I like the last couple
Pirates of the Caribbean movies to varying degrees, I agree that the initial trilogy of
The Curse of the Black Pearl, Dead Man's Chest, &
At World's End is one of the most underrated trilogies ever. Yes,
At World's End is kinda convoluted & overly long. But the movie works really hard to develop all the characters and justify its massive runtime. And the tragedy of Will & Elizabeth being separated at the end is the sort of thing that you don't see in too many mainstream action blockbusters these days.
Similarly, while the franchise sort of fizzled out in the sequels, I appreciate the fact that Sam Raimi's
Spider-Man trilogy gives us the Peter/Mary Jane romance as a solid anchor to revolve the rest of the films around. After all, it's hard to build too much suspense in a superhero movie because we always know that good will triumph in the end; but if Peter & Mary Jane don't get together, it's like the end of the world anyway. So while I think some of the subsequent
Spider-Man movies may be better made, they all lack the weight of the Raimi trilogy.
