Sequel insanity: The same old story

“Halloween III” makes a sharp turn away from movies one and two, centering instead on a demented Irish toy manufacturer in small-town California. The “Halloween” franchise has produced sequels at a steady clip over the years, but film three sent it underground for six years.

“Jaws: The Revenge” (1987)

The fourth and final Jaws movie is one of a select club of films to have a zero percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. After Roy Schneider’s Martin Brody dies of a heart attack, Jaws wreaks a very specific revenge on his family, hunting the Brody clan from New England all the way to the Bahamas.

“Predator 2” (1990)

Among the many crimes of “Predator 2” is that it forces the audience to suppose that Danny Glover is Arnold Schwarzenegger’s equal in taking on the deadly alien Predator. Movie two takes the Predator out of the Colombian jungle and puts it into the middle of a Los Angeles gang war, with little continuity from the original (Schwarzenegger dropped out because of a salary dispute).

“Weekend at Bernie’s II” (1993)

The central conceit of the first “Weekend at Bernie’s” — two slackers trying to convince the world that the corpse of their boss was actually a living person — was thin enough that it barely lasted through one film. To stretch the joke into a sequel was Hollywood overreaching so foul that it is still a punch line 20 years later.

“Speed 2: Cruise Control” (1997)

Original “Speed” star Keanu Reeves signed out, but love interest Sandra Bullock stayed on, combining with new law enforcement love interest (Jason Patric) to fight a maniacal former cruise ship engineer (Willem Dafoe) who has hijacked the ship they’re on and set its autopilot system on a direct course for a fuel tanker. It was still memorable, but in a much different way.

“I Still Know What You Did Last Summer” (1999)

After Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr. survive a deranged fisherman’s revenge (they were part of a group of four that had left him to die in a hit-and-run) in film one, the-back-from-the-supposed-dead fisherman tricks Hewitt’s character and her new friends into a trip to the Caribbean. Rest assured, they don’t have a very good holiday.

“Analyze That” (2002)

“Analyze This” was a hit in 1999, with Robert De Niro poking fun at his tough guy image as a mob boss with feelings, seeking out therapy from a neurotic Billy Crystal. The sequel dialed up the absurdity by featuring De Niro singing show tunes to feign insanity in prison. Audiences stayed away.

“Ocean’s Twelve” (2004)

The ending of “Ocean’s Twelve” sees Julia Roberts’ Tess Ocean imitating the actual Julia Roberts as part of a con and running into Bruce Willis (playing himself), only for it to be revealed that the climactic heist had already long ago taken place, offscreen. The New York Observer called it “a new low in condescending facetiousness.”

“Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous” (2005)

The only thing more unlikely than an uptight FBI agent going undercover as a beauty pageant contestant is it happening twice. Critics hated it. Richard Roeper called it the “classic example of a sequel that was just made because the first one made money.” Bullock seems to have learned her lesson. “I’ve made two sequels. They were horrible,” the actress told press in 2013 when asked if she’d ever consider a second installment of “The Heat.”

“Hangover 2” (2011)

The first “Hangover” film’s box office gross gave filmmakers 467 million reasons to overlook the sheer implausibility of the first movie. Doubling down on the silliness, it rejigs the first movie beat-for-beat (missing person needs to be found, gangster on the trail, accidental theft of a novelty animal), only bothering to switch up Las Vegas for Thailand for a setting.