Has there ever been a sequel so stupid you refused to accept it?

[ljrashkin]

There are no sequels to Rendezvous with Rama. Nope, never happened. Just an ugly rumor.

Completely agree. I can't see how such an amazing book featuring astronauts with the "right stuff" can somehow be followed up with crap caricatures.

Make the movie Freeman!!

Thirded. I threw the third book across the room after the first ten pages and never picked it back up. *shudders*

 

[Orcus]

Turbulence 3: Heavy Metal is the shittest sequel to the shittiest series of films ever. And I blame my brother-in-law for bringing this one home on a drunken night - he thought it looked like a good 'un...!

 

[milo bloom]

Batman and Robin and Batman Forever were onetime watches, and that was onetime too many.

There is only one Men in Black movie.

I can't bring myself to watch either of the new Transformers films.


I jumped into the N-space universe for the first time within this last year, and after plowing through several of the shorter novels and short stories, I did the first Ringworld book which was great, the second was an okay followup, but the third just went totally off the rails. The whole rishathra (sp) concept is an interesting one, I truly do enjoy about reading sexual practices, I could have been a sex therapist if I hadn't grown up in the repressive south, but in a Ringworld book it was completely ridiculous and out of place. I haven't touched a Niven book since.

 

[scnj]

There are no sequels to Rendezvous with Rama. Nope, never happened. Just an ugly rumor.

Completely agree. I can't see how such an amazing book featuring astronauts with the "right stuff" can somehow be followed up with crap caricatures.

Make the movie Freeman!!

Thirded. I threw the third book across the room after the first ten pages and never picked it back up. *shudders*

Wow. Was it really that offensive?

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

One that I absolutely hated that hasn't yet been mentioned here: So Long & Thanks for All the Fish by Douglas Adams. I love The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. I didn't really understand Life, the Universe, & Everything but a lot of it was fun enough that I'll give it a pass. But So Long & Thanks for All the Fish is just a pointless, self-indulgent, smushy love story that has no business being a Hitchhiker's book. Even the author himself admits it halfway through the book, suggesting that any readers who aren't interested in Arthur Dent's love life should skip to the last chapter when Marvin finally shows up. I wish I had taken his advice. Thankfully, Mostly Harmless undid the damage, restoring satirical bite to the series and erasing Arthur's girlfriend from existence in an unprotected transdimensional crossing. (It seems that a lot of people don't like Mostly Harmless. Personally, it's my favorite of the series. Between Random, Arthur the sandwich maker, and Ford Prefect's daring break-in at the Hitchhiker's Guide offices, it's the only book that Douglas Adams ever wrote that has a coherent, engaging plot. Plus, I love the bit with the fortune teller who lives in a cave with a solar powered xerox machine.)

All the Jim Carrey sequels that were made without Jim Carrey.

Ace Ventura Jr.

I never even heard of this one!

I really like Alien 3. And I thought 'Bishop Weyland' was just another Bishop android.

No. When he gets whacked in the head with a wrench, his blood is clearly human red, not synthetic white.

Highlander: The Quickening is a horrific trainwreck though, a disjointed and cheap mess that has a fixation with fans. Spoony One and sfdebris have both torn it several new anal passages.

It is a disjointed trainwreck, sure enough. But it's not cheap. That's actually what I like about it. If you can ignore the numerous continuity violations with the first movie and not be bothered by the 2 wildly unrelated storylines (sword-fighting immortals AND a solar radiation shield) and just focus on the visuals, it's actually a pretty kickass futuristic action movie. Plus, you've got lots of strong acting performances from the always underrated Christopher Lambert, Sean Connery at his most casual badass, Michael Ironside as a gleefully hammy villain, and John C. McGinley with his weasel dial turned up to 11.

I wouldn't scapegoat Alien 3 for killing off two popular characters from Aliens, since Michael Biehn was being a dick (he admitted as much on DVD interviews in recent years) and Carrie Hann was a significantly older teen by the early 1990s.

Maybe I need to watch that documentary again, but I didn't think that Biehn's dickery had anything to do with Hicks getting killed off. Rather, the decision had already been made to kill off Hicks, and Biehn was being a dick about not letting them use his face on the model of Hicks' dead body (which is why, in the final cut of the movie, Hicks took a pillar to the face). Then, Biehn charged them so much to use his image for Hicks' computer file photo, that he claims he made as much money off of that one photo in Alien 3 as he did for his entire performance in Aliens.

I always like to think Alien 3 is just one possible future, and another is they all get home and live happily ever after.

Hicks: "One possible future. From your point of view. I don't know tech stuff."
Ripley: "What?"
Hicks: "Sorry. I was channeling one of my other franchises."

 

[Rett Mikhal]

Glad this thread got such a response. Now, tell me, why is it up to the movie makers that don't understand the films to decide canon? Why can't it be left up to a vote by the fans? What if I don't WANT to accept that the Romulan Council was nullified by a slave uprising that somehow managed to figure out how to build the best ship in the universe using all their digging in the dirt knowledge?

You can argue we don't have to accept it, but we really do because everything that comes out past that references it.

Here's another question: Why do TV shows like Star Trek do a better job at keeping their stories straight and not stepping on their own toes than major motion pictures?

Alien 3 had one purpose and that was to cash in on the Alien saga before people forgot about it. Notice the Kenner Toy line launched at the exact same time... and, in typical Kenner fashion, was better than the movie.

I've heard all the documentaries and read all the finger-pointing interviews. It all comes down to Fox didn't care what it looked like, just get it out the door. This is pretty evident in the fact the trailers all said "Aliens get to Earth in the climactic final chapter!" Well, that didn't happen... but those trailers ran until the day the movie opened! Then vanished. I mean could you have pulled a bigger bait and switch?!

James Cameron should use all his money to make a new Alien film that announces none of that crap happened.

I really don't want to get into how blisteringly stupid the opening plot is, but I'll summarize.

The Queen detached from her egg sac and clearly didn't have any eggs with her. There is no way she could have planted them, especially since we SEE HER THE ENTIRE TIME. There's no moment when the Queen isn't in frame onboard the Sulaco, excluding the 5 second shot of Ripley in the suit.

Plus, think about it. Think if I walked into your house, killed your kids, then set it on fire, and ran away with my child laughing as I did. You run up to me and what's the first thing on your mind?

A) I'm going to kill you. Or
B) I'm going to do the sensible thing and put down a home equity loan so after this fight I'm all set to begin life anew, then we're going fisticuffs.

Sorry but the Queen was pretty intent on only killing Ripley, and she can't make eggs without the incubator, so.. no dice.

I'm not even going to get into the fact the Sulaco is designed to operate by itself for thousands of years (due to time dilation, hence why everyone has to be put to cyrosleep) yet when one tiny thing goes wrong it doesn't, oh, I don't know, vent the oxygen out to starve the fire. No, it ejects the crew... into space.

 

[sojourner]

^If your being subjected to time dilation you don't need cryosleep. Those thousand of years would pass in days.

 

[ljrashkin]

Completely agree. I can't see how such an amazing book featuring astronauts with the "right stuff" can somehow be followed up with crap caricatures.

Make the movie Freeman!!

Thirded. I threw the third book across the room after the first ten pages and never picked it back up. *shudders*

Wow. Was it really that offensive?

I have a really low tolerance for Mary Sues. And even less for Gentry Lee's (Clark's co-author for the sequels) tendency to proselytize.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

Alien 3 had one purpose and that was to cash in on the Alien saga before people forgot about it. Notice the Kenner Toy line launched at the exact same time... and, in typical Kenner fashion, was better than the movie.

In fact, the toy line was so great that it survived into the 24th century! (Captain Picard's Nexus children can be seen playing with the Aliens drop-ship in Star Trek: Generations.)

 

[scnj]

I didn't really understand Life, the Universe, & Everything but a lot of it was fun enough that I'll give it a pass.

To be fair, it was first written as a Doctor Who script called The Krikkitmen that was rejected, so he replaced the Doctor with Slartibartfast, the companions with Arthur and Ford and made slight changes from there.

 

[scnj]

Glad this thread got such a response. Now, tell me, why is it up to the movie makers that don't understand the films to decide canon? Why can't it be left up to a vote by the fans?

Because, with all due respect, the fans aren't filmmakers. Sure, we can look at something in retrospect and suggest an infinite number of changes, but if fans had their way, nothing would ever change or evolve.

For example, if they'd left Aliens up to a fan vote, I guarantee it would have been another claustrophobic horror film as opposed to the massive franchise overhaul that Aliens was.

 

[Icemizer]

Indiana Jones 4, Any Jaws after the original, Any Dirty Dozen after the original, Speed 2, Blues brothers 2000, Caddyshack 2, Grease 2, and the list goes on....

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

I didn't really understand Life, the Universe, & Everything but a lot of it was fun enough that I'll give it a pass.

To be fair, it was first written as a Doctor Who script called The Krikkitmen that was rejected, so he replaced the Doctor with Slartibartfast, the companions with Arthur and Ford and made slight changes from there.

And yet, I usually understand most Doctor Who stories. Still, I seem to have a problem with understanding Douglas Adams Doctor Who scripts that are changed into novels. I absolutely love Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency but the ending leaves me with a head full of "Wait, what?"

 

[Anwar]

Glad this thread got such a response. Now, tell me, why is it up to the movie makers that don't understand the films to decide canon? Why can't it be left up to a vote by the fans?

Because we don't know what we really want, when left up to popular vote. And what we usually want is crappy anyways.

What if I don't WANT to accept that the Romulan Council was nullified by a slave uprising that somehow managed to figure out how to build the best ship in the universe using all their digging in the dirt knowledge?

Boo-Hoo, Wah-Wah. They still got your money and its your own fault.

Alien 3 had one purpose and that was to cash in on the Alien saga before people forgot about it. Notice the Kenner Toy line launched at the exact same time... and, in typical Kenner fashion, was better than the movie.

Sure, if you're into generic gun-running garbage and 1-D stereotypes.

James Cameron should use all his money to make a new Alien film that announces none of that crap happened.

Cameron doesn't know how to do real sequels, all he does is just rehash the original movie over only with more gunz and explosionz.

The Queen detached from her egg sac and clearly didn't have any eggs with her. There is no way she could have planted them, especially since we SEE HER THE ENTIRE TIME. There's no moment when the Queen isn't in frame onboard the Sulaco, excluding the 5 second shot of Ripley in the suit.

She doesn't need the sac to lay eggs, and she had plenty of time to lay it in the dropship gear.

A) I'm going to kill you. Or
B) I'm going to do the sensible thing and put down a home equity loan so after this fight I'm all set to begin life anew, then we're going fisticuffs.

C) I'm going to obey my biological imperative to continue my race by laying an emergency egg that holds a Queen and then kill you when you're out of this metal shell I'm holding onto.

I'm not even going to get into the fact the Sulaco is designed to operate by itself for thousands of years (due to time dilation, hence why everyone has to be put to cyrosleep) yet when one tiny thing goes wrong it doesn't, oh, I don't know, vent the oxygen out to starve the fire. No, it ejects the crew... into space.

The damage woke everyone from cryosleep, there was no way to put them back into cryosleep, and if the ship didn't get them out of there they'd choke on the smoke before they totally woke up. It couldn't vent out the air because then they'd suffocate. Best choice was to eject them, but the damage also damaged the ejection system so it was an uncontrolled ejection.

But I don't want this to become another A3 defense thread .

 

[Captain Pike]

Absolutely no contest. Highlander II wins this one, hands down..

 

[MeanJoePhaser]

Alien 3 had one purpose and that was to cash in on the Alien saga before people forgot about it. Notice the Kenner Toy line launched at the exact same time... and, in typical Kenner fashion, was better than the movie.

Yeah, like those other movies Kenner made toys for: Congo, The Shadow, Water World, Jurassic Park and those crapfest Star Wars movies.

 

[Rett Mikhal]

^If your being subjected to time dilation you don't need cryosleep. Those thousand of years would pass in days.

The Conestoga Class uses a tachyon phase hyperdrive, which converts the ship's mass to accelerate tachyons. In this phase, it goes much faster than the speed of light, but at 'normal' speeds for people on board. The result is very long periods on the ship vs short periods in the 'real' universe. This is according to the USCM Technical Manual, so call it gibberish if you must.

She doesn't need the sac to lay eggs, and she had plenty of time to lay it in the dropship gear.

I've done this song and dance so many times I could do it in another language. I could counter every single thing you could ever say about Alien 3, but this one is the big elephant in the room. If she doesn't NEED it, why does she HAVE it? Why was it clearly shown that eggs were incubating inside the sac? They'd be still born without that, it's quite obvious from a biological standpoint. Look at Termite queens, could they lay eggs without the sac?

But, even if I accept that, the egg in Alien 3 (your movie) is shown placed on a bulkhead, a bulkhead too small for the queen to fit into.

Even if I accept the queen spitballed the magic Egg, why did it hatch? They have been shown in all the films except Alien 3 that they hatch when something is near.

Even if I accept that (and don't say due to age, the eggs in Alien were 100s of years old and hadn't hatched), how did the facehuggers find them? Aliens use pheromone senses to find their prey as shown by several sources. There are no pheromones ejected from the body when you're frozen. Plus, there's two decks between the dropship bay and the crew quarters. Did they really just get lucky?

Even if I accept that, how did they break through the glass?

Even if I accept that, if the acid blood from Ripley's tube caused the malfunction, why wasn't Ripley's face melted off?

Why did this one drop of acid in a 30,000,000+ cubic meter ship cause so much damage?

Why were there no redundant systems?

Why couldn't it suck the oxygen out from the room the fire was in, a DIFFERENT room than the crew quarters? Or have any sort of fire retardant?

So even if I accept ALL THAT... why did they not search the ship with a fine tooth comb after the Alien Queen made it on board? They even show in the first scene that they have biological scanning devices. Plus, if you go by Alien 3, it was in a hallway overlooking the dropship bay! Am I to believe they didn't look to their RIGHT, and instead proceeded directly to go to sleep like everything was OK?

In fact, they probably HAD to scan to make sure there were no hull breeches from Acid blood, especially considering that's how they first noticed the queen in the first place... she was bleeding on the deck.

And even if I believe ALL THAT, there's only one egg but two facehuggers!

GAH!!

KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!!!!!!

OK, I'm back. I think that's pretty air tight that it couldn't have happened.

 

[Anwar]

She has the sac because it looks cool, Cameron is known for non-functional flashiness. The egg creation takes place within the Queen, the sac is just for accelerating the process and making LOTS of eggs. Without it she can still make them. That's why it was so easy to rip the sac off without lots of acid blood coming out.

And I can easily counter anything an A3 hater had to say. Been doing it for years.

The egg had a superfacehugger in it, so the usual rules don't have to apply. And even if they do, this egg is on a working spaceship and not a planet/derelict. It could've hatched from the humming of the machinery/engines.

Facehuggers can sense life with some sensory organ we don't understand, it could've sensed residual heat and just tracked them to the cryochambers. So little is said of how the aliens function that this is not impossible.

It broke through the glass the same way the first facehugger broke through Kane's helmet without melting his face despite melting his helmet.

It wasn't one drop, it bleed into the cryo-chamber floor circuits and caused an electrical fire. That's a vulnerable area of the ship. Water sprinklers and air venting wouldn't stop an electrical fire in such a vital area, especially since the fire awoke the crew out of hypersleep wrong and immobilized them so the smoke would kill them soon unless something was done.

The bio-scanners don't detect the aliens, otherwise the Sulaco would have sensed it when they docked the ship.

It was one Superfacehugger, it carries two eggs (one warrior to burst first and protect the Queen embryo's host).

But seriously, don't make this an A3 thread. It's about other people's taste in various films.

 

[Rii]

Alien 3 is an excellent film, at least in its Special Edition form. Aliens fanbois will just have to deal.

OT:

S. Darko
Battle Royale II: Requiem

On the other side of the coin, Hypercube is underrated.

 

[Greg Cox]

The less said about all the HOWLING sequels the better. (Although THE HOWLING III: THE MARSUPIALS gets points for sheer goofiness.)