The Rule of "3" : Why some 3rd Sequels Blow

[Frobisher]

Maybe I'm interpreting things different or being overly pedantic so apologies.

Third sequel should by my take mean the Fourth entry in a franchise. The FIRST sequel is part two.
The thread title "Why some 3rd sequels Blow"

Third Sequels/Fourth Films in a Franchise for example:

• SW: Attack of the Clones
• Superman IV The Quest for Peace (this entry still works for the OP)
• Alien Resurrection
• Friday the 13th The Final Chapter
• Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Master
• Halloween 4 The Return of Michael Myers
• Die Hard With a Vengeance
• Star Trek IV The Voyage Home
• Rocky IV
• Jurassic World
• Batman and Robin
• Fast and Furious (actually saved and revitalized this franchise)
• Indiana Jones Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
• Thor Ragnarok

However I see when really talking about the stated topic it is about the THIRD overall entry into a franchise

While we’re nit-picking, Attack Of The Clones is the 5th Star Wars film, and Die Hard With A Vengeance and Thor Ragnarok are both the third film in their respective series ;-)

[DanMad1977]

I would go for Spider-Man 3 and X-Men The Last Stand and if you want X-Men Apocalypse

[Gaastra]

Die Hard With a Vengeance is part 4. Everyone forgets die hard is a sequel to the detective. Die hard 2 die harder is part 3 despite the title.

[ChrisIII]

Die Hard's kind of weird in that I think they're all based on novels but with John McClane put in.

DHWAV is still pretty good IMO, it also kind of shakes up the formula a bit by giving him more of a partner than a fellow officer not involved in the action scenes (Such as Veljohnson and Franz's characters in the first and second) and a wider arena (He was mostly confined to one location-if a big one-in the first two).

The latter day sequels are kind of the 'bad' ones to me IMO, especially since it's from Willis's more 'disinterested' acting era.

[thwhtGuardian]

Die Hard With a Vengeance is part 4. Everyone forgets die hard is a sequel to the detective. Die hard 2 die harder is part 3 despite the title.

Eh, only on a technical level. It's more of a reboot, not a sequel as it not only has a new lead actor but an entirely different tone and pace than the Detective.

[ChrisIII]

Yeah this isn't a thing.... just to keep in mind

1. Goldfinger
2. The Good the Bad and the Ugly
3. Clear and Present Danger
4. Captain American Civil War
5. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
6. A Nightmare on Elm Streetream Warriors
7. Lord of the Rings: Return of the King
8. Toy Story 3
9. The Exorcist III
10. Escape from the Planet of the Apes

Interesting thing about the Bond films, the third films of the Bonds who run that long are generally considered the classics-GOLDFINGER, SPY WHO LOVED ME, SKYFALL, with the actors really hitting their stride (and the songs being the most memorable helps too).

Both SPWLM and SF also had help from short breaks due to some shake-ups (producer leaving, studio and legal issues) and the last entries not being that well-regarded (Man with the Golden Gun, Quantum of Solace) but with the production confident to get the series back on track.

Brosnan's TWINE seems to be the outlier, with one of the main issues being Denise Richard's performance as Christmas Jones. Interesting this is Michael Apted was probably the most prolific director the Brosnan films had. However his films before were mostly dramas and documentaries which frequently tackled moral dillemas, so he was a bit ill-suited to a Bond film (Some of his action scenes have pretty poor pacing and editing, especially the submarine stuff at the end).

[godisawesome]

I think I need to see a list. ROTJ was not bad at all, maybe not as good as ESB, but that is an all time great sequel. Indiana Jones Last Crusade is the second best Raiders movie. Back to the Future III was fun. Spider-Man No Way Home was great. Thor Ragnarok much better than Dark World. Cap Civil War didn't suck in the least. Avengers 3 is Infinity War. I liked John Wick 3 more than 2. GotG 3 was wonderful.
I think sequels themselves are problematic. They have to make something worthy of a hit film, it doesn't always work. But are threequels really worse than sequels as a whole?

I think that "Part Threes" are most defined by how well the creator did Part Two, and whether they understand what was most important to the audience - making a sort of weird scenario where they can be either screwed up by the previous film, or sort of "dead on arrival" if the creator didn't actually get what worked, or they can "coast" off the obvious strengths and plot hooks of the previous film, or get even better thanks to the creator figuring out more of the formula thanks to the previous film being a testing ground.

Return of the Jedi could "coast" in a great way thanks to Lucas zeroing in on the family arc as being the most important element of the operatic ESB to follow-up on, so that even Gen Xers moaning about it being "bad" (...before growing up to show the creators from their generation wouldn't get why the family story was so important...) still came in droves to watch it and get it more money than ESB. It turns out that nailing Vader and Luke's relationship did 90% of the work.

Revenge of the Sith would be the best of the PT because Lucas clearly used the previous two films to figure out what the PT's strengths were and focus on them, making it the most operatic and emotional of the PT and ending a more debatable Star Wars Trilogy on a high note. That's why that film leans harder on Hayden Christensen's emotive strengths as an actor and his chemistry with McGregor rather than his and Portman's lack of chemistry and his struggles with Lucas's dialogue, and why Williams's score become seven more a focal point.

Rise of Skywalker was screwed before it even entered production because The Last Jedi had screwed up 95% of the story potential for Rey and Finn to put most of the larger Saga's weigh on the doomed and detestable Kylo Ren and an immediately killed off Sad White Guy!Luke, and since Rey and Finn mattered far more to the ST than Kylo Ren fans will ever admit and no one really wanted a pathetic ****-stain to end the Skywalker story, Episode 9 was going to be screwed regardless of any choice it made if it couldn't just retcon almost all of TLJ.

Back to the Future Part III, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and Die Hard With a Vengeance show someone realizing why the first movie worked a bit better than the second, while TMNT3 shows someone having lost much of the track, and Justice League shows where Snyder and WB just failed to realize what had worked in MOS and instead doubled down on the mistakes from both it and BvS.

[Kirby101]

Die Hard With a Vengeance is part 4. Everyone forgets die hard is a sequel to the detective. Die hard 2 die harder is part 3 despite the title.

Die Hard was in no way a sequel to the Detective. Nothing in the Detective had any bearing on Die Hard. Two movies using a character from the same book series does not make it a sequel. Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula was not a sequel to the one with Bela Lugosi.

[Gaastra]

Frank got "sequel" rights money for all the die hard movies as its in his contract that "all sequels" he gets money from even if he isn't in it. He was even asked to come back for it as it's the "sequel" and in his contract to star in another if they make it but passed as he felt he was too old for the role now. Movies that made us even called it a sequel and the ones on it made the movie and now playing and others have it listed as the first die hard movie also.

Vudu at one point had it listed with the die hard movies also.

It is seen as the first movie in the series.

The film was released under the title Die Hard (1988). Because of a clause in Sinatra's contract for "The Detective", which gave him the right to reprise his role in a sequel, he was actually the first person offered the McClane role, even though he was 73 years old at the time. Also, coincidentally, Bruce Willis (who played McClane) made his movie debut in The First Deadly Sin (1980), walking out of a bar as Sinatra walked into it. Additionally, Lloyd Bochner played Dr. Wendell Roberts in this movie. His son, Hart Bochner, played Harry Ellis in Die Hard (1988). Finally, Jacqueline Bisset's then partner, Alexander Godunov, played a villain in Die Hard.

Ok not going to lie. The fact that bruce first showed up in a movie with frank is both ironic and pretty neat.

[Kirby101]

Frank got "sequel" rights money for all the die hard movies as its in his contract that "all sequels" he gets money from even if he isn't in it. He was even asked to come back for it as it's the "sequel" and in his contract to star in another if they make it but passed as he felt he was too old for the role now. Movies that made us even called it a sequel and the ones on it made the movie and now playing and others have it listed as the first die hard movie also.

Vudu at one point had it listed with the die hard movies also.

It is seen as the first movie in the series.

Owning rights does not make it a sequel. In legal terms, sequel is using the same source in future films. Jerry Lewis had all sequel rights to Nutty Professor. The Eddy Murphy movie was not a sequel in any way, but Lewis got paid.

Die Hard does not reference The Detective in any way. Sinatra's name was Joe Leland in The Detective, not John McClain.
It is true that the novel Die Hard was based on is a sequel to The Detective, but the characters in Die Hard are not the characters in The Detective.

[ChrisIII]

I think that "Part Threes" are most defined by how well the creator did Part Two, and whether they understand what was most important to the audience - making a sort of weird scenario where they can be either screwed up by the previous film, or sort of "dead on arrival" if the creator didn't actually get what worked, or they can "coast" off the obvious strengths and plot hooks of the previous film, or get even better thanks to the creator figuring out more of the formula thanks to the previous film being a testing ground.

Return of the Jedi could "coast" in a great way thanks to Lucas zeroing in on the family arc as being the most important element of the operatic ESB to follow-up on, so that even Gen Xers moaning about it being "bad" (...before growing up to show the creators from their generation wouldn't get why the family story was so important...) still came in droves to watch it and get it more money than ESB. It turns out that nailing Vader and Luke's relationship did 90% of the work.

Revenge of the Sith would be the best of the PT because Lucas clearly used the previous two films to figure out what the PT's strengths were and focus on them, making it the most operatic and emotional of the PT and ending a more debatable Star Wars Trilogy on a high note. That's why that film leans harder on Hayden Christensen's emotive strengths as an actor and his chemistry with McGregor rather than his and Portman's lack of chemistry and his struggles with Lucas's dialogue, and why Williams's score become seven more a focal point.

Rise of Skywalker was screwed before it even entered production because The Last Jedi had screwed up 95% of the story potential for Rey and Finn to put most of the larger Saga's weigh on the doomed and detestable Kylo Ren and an immediately killed off Sad White Guy!Luke, and since Rey and Finn mattered far more to the ST than Kylo Ren fans will ever admit and no one really wanted a pathetic ****-stain to end the Skywalker story, Episode 9 was going to be screwed regardless of any choice it made if it couldn't just retcon almost all of TLJ.

Back to the Future Part III, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and Die Hard With a Vengeance show someone realizing why the first movie worked a bit better than the second, while TMNT3 shows someone having lost much of the track, and Justice League shows where Snyder and WB just failed to realize what had worked in MOS and instead doubled down on the mistakes from both it and BvS.

BTTF III was filmed at the same time as II and was mostly "in the can" when BTTF II was released (With a teaser trailer released at the end of II complete with musical score) so I don't think too many edits were made based on the reaction to II, it was pretty much already set to mirror parts of I (Focusing more on one time period, focusing more on the characters, the plot largely dealing with getting the time travel to work in addition to fixing things). The main scene that was cut I think was Marshall Strickland being killed by Buford, as Zemeckis thought it was not only too dark and the character got too light a punishment for such an act. It does explain why Strickland's deputies arrest him and not Strickland himself.

[ChrisIII]

Jurassic Park III is kind of in a weird place because TLW wasn't really regarded as a "good" sequel I think, and III basically pretty much had the plot to TLW (Rescue mission, although in Sarah's case she wanted to be there) minus the "Capture the Dinosaurs for a new park" angle and a smaller cast.

The film just pretty much switched up the returning cast, restored the focus on Raptors and their intelligence that was absent from the second one, and pretty much adapted the leftover scenes from the novels the first film didn't adapt like the Aviary and the lake attack I think.

It also was pretty much "Spielberg lite" which is pretty much Joe Johnston director's niche.

[thwhtGuardian]

Owning rights does not make it a sequel. In legal terms, sequel is using the same source in future films. Jerry Lewis had all sequel rights to Nutty Professor. The Eddy Murphy movie was not a sequel in any way, but Lewis got paid.

Die Hard does not reference The Detective in any way. Sinatra's name was Joe Leland in The Detective, not John McClain.
It is true that the novel Die Hard was based on is a sequel to The Detective, but the characters in Die Hard are not the characters in The Detective.

Yeah, it's pretty cut and dry. That Sinatra and his estate got paid for the Die Hard movies doesn't make them sequels it's just the way his contract was written. And the fact that Vudu listed it with the other films doesn't mean much, it's just the studios trying to make more money off another title in their library.

[Zero Hunter]

Die Hard 1-3 are a great trilogy. In my mind 4 and 5 don't exist because they are just dogshit.

Clerks III to me was a great send off to those characters.

[tjarvis]

If it's a planned trilogy, then the third film is the ending of the story, and endings are usually the trickiest thing to land in a story.

If it's not a planned thing, then the third film is where they have to really start creating new stuff, since the first sequel is usually a logical extension of the first film, and the third one is the need to do something new or different, but since it's usually driven by a schedule and a desire to make more money, the ideas are often half baked.

And put me down as someone who way prefers Halloween Ends to Halloween Kills (which really sucked, imo).