Sequels I Want Wiped From Our Collective Memory

I grew up hearing that sequels often pale in comparison to their predecessors. Exceptions to the rule exist, like Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) and Addams Family Values (1993). That rare smash-hit success is what sequel-makers aim for, but their attempts typically fall short. Here’s an inexhaustive list of sequels I want wiped from collective memory for letting me down and disgracing their origins. 

The Craft: Legacy (2020)

2020 didn’t loose just one travesty upon the world. I caught the unneeded sequel to the beloved girl-powered mid-nineties horror flick The Craft and barely lived to shit-talk it. 

I’m a millennial who saw The Craft (1996) on VHS with his witchy-goth sister. It’s a treasured classic, a favorite among friends and frequently referenced between us (“I bind you, Nancy!”). The aesthetic woke my inner West Coast enby that shows in my flowy Stevie Nicks sweaters. The movie meant a lot to me, perhaps more than it should’ve (I may or may not have tried my teenage hand at Wicca). When I heard a sequel was in the works, I was apprehensive. 

Call my psychic, but the film was indeed terrible. The Craft: Legacy made me hope the original cast didn’t witness its Gilmore Girls-esque, declawed, defanged treatment of the premise. Also I’ve heard from reliable sources that the Carrie-ripoff period scene is unrealistic. “No one could sit in a pool of their own blood long enough that it soaks through your pants and spills from your chair without you noticing. That’s just insane.” 

Mean Girls 2 (2011)

This sequel is so reviled, fans of the original largely succeeded in getting the world to forget it. It has nothing to do with Tina Fey or the ‘04 cast except Tim Meadows’ character, Principal Duvall. By 2011, Mean Girls was already firmly cemented in popular culture as the high school movie of the 2000s. A second installation to a storyline that definitively ended feels contrived at best. Can you imagine a sequel to The Breakfast Club (1985)? Me neither. What’s there to gain that wasn’t accomplished the first time around?

Here, you try finishing the trailer.

So if someone asks, “Is there a Mean Girls sequel?”, you firmly tell them, “No.” Someone tried to make a sequel happen and… it’s not going to happen.

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003)

Spielberg wanted nothing to do with this and Warner Brothers filmed it anyway. The thinly-veiled cash grab killed off Linda Hamilton’s Sarah Connor, swapped Edward Furlong’s John Connor for Nick Stahl, and banked entirely on Schwarzenegger, still expecting the movie to succeed. That’s like handing me a plate of plain boiled pasta and telling me to eat with my hands. Having the evil terminator played by a woman wasn’t an issue, but outfitting her like one of the X-Men was. 

Snubbing Linda Hamilton was reason enough to avoid watching it until curiosity got the better of me. Nevermind the poorly rendered nuclear explosions, something I take issue with in films that deal with atomic warfare. I nitpick because so few movies effectively capture the ungodly horror a nuclear blast would unleash. Experts still say the bomb scene in Sarah Connor’s nightmare is one of the “most realistic depictions in cinema” of an airburst over a city. But I digress.

Twisters (2024)

Having grown up in Tornado Alley, I was cautiously optimistic about this sequel to the cherished 1996 classic. Then I watched it. 

I’m less concerned with scientific accuracy, which is (sort of) easier to achieve with modern CGI. Let’s ignore the painfully restrained male lead, whose writers seemed afraid to let Glen Powell’s tornado-wraglin’ good guy make mistakes. We’ll bypass the will-they-won’t-they between Powell and Helen Hunt’s reincarnation, plain English crumpet Daisy Edgar-Jones. On behalf of diehard Twister fans like myself, I present my main gripe. 

Twisters is barely connected to the ‘96 original. The only returning castmembers are Dorothy, the beeping aluminum bucket of tornado popcorn, and the state of Oklahoma. This movie felt more like the occasion for a sequel rather than the other way around. It could’ve been its own tornado movie had the writers not felt so intimidated by Twister that they pinned their project to its nostalgic coattails. 

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2008)

I’m sorry but the entire franchise depends on the chemistry between Rachel Weisz and Brendan Fraser. Take out either pillar and the whole Mummy universe comes crashing down. I don’t fault Brendan Fraser for going through with the project. Money is money. But watching it feels like my mom died and dad married an uncanny lookalike. The Simple Life (2003–2007) needs Paris and Nicole. Gay Internet needs Trixie and Katya. Some duos you just don’t split up, because nobody else can recreate their formula. It’s why diehard fans of The Mummy (1999) generally shun this sequel and why you should, too. 

Zoolander 2 (2016)

Zoolander (2001) allowed us one of the first post-9/11 laughs and its quotability lingers, if only in millennial/Gen-X vernacular. While parts of it didn’t age well, the movie’s hilarity is indisputable. I thought the sequel stood a fighting chance with Kristin Wiig and Fred Armisen involved. Sadly, it tanked, earning back only $29 million of its $50 million budget. Notably, the sequel failed despite most of the original cast reprising their roles. Perhaps what crashed Zoolander 2 is that much of the original comedic material also reappeared, offering few new jokes. 

Like Jud Crandall from Pet Sematary (which also had a terrible sequel) said, “Sometimes dead is better.” 

The Ring Two (2005)

The Ring (2002) scared the living shit out of me. It also freaked out my sister of witchy-goth lore, a horror buff who showed me The Shining at six years old. Don’t worry, I got her back. The DVD for The Ring had a surprise in the cursed videotape featurette that disabled your remote while it played. I “tried” to rewind it, and when the remote wouldn’t work for her either, she walked out of own apartment. The Ring is a fantastic horror film, one people still shudder at the mention of.

But The Ring Two fucking sucked. 

With the director of the original Japanese Ringu series at the helm, the American sequel had so much promise. I saw The Ring Two with the girl I saw the first with and was “dating” at the time. I have dating in quotes because you don’t date in high school so much as smash faces together in an effort to discover what you like. Regardless, I was just as disappointed in the sequel (even with icon Sissy Spacek in the mix) as my “girlfriend” was in me for not going all the way. 

Settings aside, The Ring Two lacked the suspense of the original because we already knew how the mechanism worked. Samara had no new tricks up her corpsey, waterlogged sleeve, and her origin story couldn’t bear the weight of audience expectations. While the cursed tape enables its proliferation (and a sequel), director Hideo Nakata’s effort felt too stylistically distanced from The Ring to be a continuation of its storyline. 

Plus it wasn’t even sickly green, which substantially amplified the original in an unexpected way. 

I could probably keep going all night but I’ll end here. I’d love to hear what else should be on this list and why. Spread the hate. Happy holidays!