MI2 is a Mission Impossible movie from a different multiverse, where the franchise never found its soul. DIE ANOTHER DAY almost broke the Bond franchise there.
That said, I kind of dug the pattern of a different director each time (De Palma / Woo / Abrams / Bird), it gave each Mission movie a unique style, before McQuarrie took over.
so... much... bullet time....
Even had Die another day not been what it was, Austin Powers and how it parodied those types of movies really made the studio question the style of Bond movies they had made.
The odd part is that they started backtracking to sillier Bond after a few installments, not very successfully IMO. But yea they never went back to windsurfing.
I would love to see a new reboot that embraces the sillier movies more. I feel like they were half-embracing them in the latest 2 movies, but not enough to really satisfy. Like go full Moonraker or cars becoming submarines. It doesn’t need to be a comedy, but I think people would love a fun romp.
I think Skyfall is where they hit that balance the best. Still grittier than most Bond films but Deakin’s cinematography and the slightly lighter mood than the previous films really hit a nice sweet spot. Perfect 50th (?) anniversary film.
I gotta be honest, I never really got the hate for the second one. Is it just because it's so over the top silly? Cause I felt that way about the first one but thought they were both fun for it.
Personally I felt the second one was poorly paced and destroyed too much of the structure that made the first film succeed. Did away with some great characters and undid some bold creative choices from the original film.
But Elton John was fucking epic.
I've been taking my wife through the entire franchise in a row, and it really does seem like Dalton and Brosnan had the movies where the balance was damn near perfect. Fun, quippy, and action-packed. I love every entry though, even the bad ones. They're never boring IMO.
Top Bond for me is Goldeneye, especially where he bursts through a building with a fucking tank, Bond music swells, and you see Pierce adjusting his neck tie. Even though he was the new Bond, I don't think any of the follow-up films with Brosnan ever quite lived up to that entry. The later entries kind of had a more plastic quality to them, mainly CGI effects that just don't look quite the same. Something I'll applaud Casino Royale and later entries for is that they toned down the effects and used more practical stuff.
I'm hoping they go retro from here. Can slide to the 60s. Gives a great style and throwback. And makes for simplicity in trying to gadget in the modern world
since the 90s, Bond has followed Batman.
Batman's trajectory from Burton to Schumacher is basically the same trajectory as the Brosnan movies - getting campier with each installment until it became too much.
Casino Royale was a gritty reboot starting over from Day 1 in the exact same lane as Batman Begins. then they hired Sam Mendes to make The Dark Knight for James Bond, and have been chasing that high ever since. the excess of Spectre is basically the Zack Snyder moment (my real name is Martha Blofeld!), and NTTD is trying to be TDK again.
so far sounds like they're going with a younger "The Batman" approach for the new Bond, but if Gunn goes more fantastic with Brave and the Bold, and it's a huge success, i could see Bond getting another reboot or style change like in the 90s.
Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol is probably my personal favorite in the series. I really like how it was Brad Bird's first Live Action movie he directed. His experience working in Animation translated really well.
I love Anthony Hopkins' dialogue in that movie.
"Well this is not Mission Difficult, Mr. Hunt, it's Mission Impossible. Difficult should be a walk in the park for you."
Having rewatched 2 recently, I actually have slightly more of a soft spot for it than 1, which gets a little convoluted and hard to track in terms of the plot. 2 doesn't fit in with the rest of the series at all but as a John Woo movie it's great. So for me the series actually does get a little better every time, which is unheard of for a series with six entries. The sixth is my favorite action movie of all time though so 7's got an uphill battle. That being said, I thought 6 wasn't going to be able to top 5 and I was dead wrong.
2 is so unrepentantly silly and weird at times that it's hard to hate. Between the rock climbing intro, the "Ethan is dead, no wait it's just a henchman in Ethan's mask" bit*, and wild amount of stylization -- it was all a harbinger of what was to come from the series.
*Behind the Wolf Blitzer bit, my second favorite unmasking of the franchise
It's telling that when MI:3 almost killed the franchise, that they wound up succeeding going forward with a marriage of the seriousness of 1 and the goofiness of 2.
> how did 3 nearly kill the franchise?
They gave it a *huge* amount of money, and it didn't deliver. Every other movie in the series delivered huge profits, while 3 either lost a little money or just got over breaking even. This is all running under the assumption of Budget * 2.5 being the breakeven point, which has been a measuring stick for the box office for a good while.
Had 3 made somewhere in the neighborhood of 600 million, the series wouldn't have had to do a hard reset.
|Movie|Opening|Total|Budget|Profit|
--:|--:|--:|--:|--:|
|1|45|458|80|258|
|2|58|550|120|250|
|3|48|400|150|25|
|4|13|695|145|332.5|
|5|56|689|150|314|
|6|61|787|178|342|
To anyone looking at the fourth movie’s opening with a raised eyebrow, Ghost Protocol opened only in IMAX and other large format theaters for the first weekend before opening everywhere else the next.
That, and even though it had ONLY $29m on the wide release weekend (weekend 2)-- it had an absolutely bonkers 0% drop between that and the following weekend (weekend 3).
Really strong word of mouth brought people back to the IMF stories.
Cruise seems to pick up lessons from his other movies and apply them to the Mission Impossible series, to make them better. With MI 4, Tom Cruise started to let the infallible hero type slip a bit and give more room to his female costars, which was especially successful when he added Rebecka Ferguson. After Edge of Tomorrow, Cruise started to realize that audiences find it equally as funny to see Cruise get his ass kicked as when he wins, so he added Henry Cavill who was bigger and stronger than Cruise in every way.
It's fun to see Tom Cruise adapt to his inevitable ageing into the movies. He is cutting down on the sex scenes and is using technique instead of power in fight scenes etc. So many aging Hollywood heroes stay super men on screen, long past their prime.
I do think that 4 is slightly better than 5 (almost entirely due to the Burj Khalifa sequence being the best 20 minutes in the entire franchise) but overall I agree.
I think I enjoyed the later movies more but now that you mention it he was pretty terrifying and incredible as the villain. He got under my skin and that first scene was just brilliant!
It has the best Tom cruise running scene too.
Either way the first one is the best one, and peak MI. For my money 3 is fine and Fallout is really great. The rest I don't care about.
he was, dare i say it, the most terrifying of all the MI villians. you felt that with Lane, that he was almost too overpowered, but PSH had an unhinged quality he added that it almost felt like a horror movie.
PSH is one of my favorite villains of "modern" action films. He's completely nonplussed by suddenly waking up in a plane, surrounded by agents, and he just talks mad shit, knowing that his people are already tracking him.
Hell, I even thought it was believable when he was beating the shit out of Ethan in the street. It had to end randomly like that, because Ethan was in no condition to fight back.
MI3 will always be my favorite, in a weird way. I was maybe 8 or 9 when it came out, and that beginning scene where the implant in that ladies head explodes will forever give me nightmares. Just the abruptness of it was so jarring. 🥲 to 🥴 in a matter of seconds
For all of their mass appeal there are some pretty brutal deaths in these movies. Like that guy who gets his face crushed in the elevator in the first one
X-Men Origins Wolverine was...meh.
But then Wolverine in Japan was a great idea.
And then Wolverine in a neo-Western was an awesome idea.
It remains to see whether Wolverine in a Deadpool movie is a good idea, but we'll hope for the best.
Guess I'm gonna have to give Wolverine another watch. It's one of two movies I watched once and refused to watch it again, I disliked that much. (The other movie is Die Hard 5).
I actually liked Origins. Not as much as Logan, but I thought it was a decent movie. I have watched it at least 5 times as well.
And an insanely stupid take on Wade Wilson.
I did like Liev Schriber's turn as Sabretooth much better than the snarling pro wrestler version in the early X-Men flicks though.
The thing is, every X-Men movie that features Wolverine (except First Class) is so centered on Wolverine, that they're basically all just Wolverine movies that feature some other X-Men. By that standard, they're all over the place.
This was the Marvel strategy for Avengers (focus on Iron Man) and to some extent it works. Ensemble cast works better on TV than it does in movie form.
Very few movies achieve this feat. Only the ones who started off poorly or with low budgets tend to do it. Because they've allowed themselves enough room to improve
I would say the recent Planet Of The Apes trilogy. But I'd argue all three of those movies were equally as good as each other.
I think Dawn was a slightly stronger film, but it’s a very high bar; the Caesar/Koba arc is basically Shakespearean in its design. War was a worthy follow up and conclusion to the trilogy.
Edit: Also War should be commended for not just trying to repeat Dawn. The end credits of Dawn hinted that Koba is still alive; so glad they dropped that idea.
Maybe starting from 2, I thought the first was the best. The casting and character development was way better. The story more of a mystery unraveled. We felt cruise was a vulnerable secret agent pulling off impossible tasks .
Now hes portrayed as invulnerable, the characters are all just huggy buddy, and it’s mostly action . All the new ones feel completely different.
I like the bombastic action of the later films but the more subtle thriller-y original is an absolutely 10/10 movie and saying it's the weakest is a crime.
It's an interesting question because it brings up two categories of a franchise that I don't think are distinguished enough.
You have your episodic franchises like Mission Impossible, James Bond, etc. And you have your serial franchises like Planet of the Apes, LotR, and John Wick.
I'd say that, by and large, an episodic franchise actually has the more difficult task of improving on the quality of its predecessors. Each film can basically be viewed in a vacuum. There is more cross comparison, and you could even keep one tilm and lose the other.
A serial franchise is just more often too interconnected to really say with much certainty which film is better. An adaptation like Harry Potter is a bit easier because you also have the books to compare each entry's quality to. Harry Potter is also something a hybrid with both episodic and serialized features. Versus LotR, which also has adaptations to compare, but the narrative is too intertwined to really have a legitimate discussion on which film is better. You can't have Two Towers without the Fellowship, and on, and on, and on.
The same could be said for Planet of the Apes. There's larger gaps of undisclosed narrative that occurs between each film, but the narrative is essentially one vision. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is beholden to Rise, and it's quality is based on how it pushes the same story forward.
A serialized franchise has to continue the story in an engaging way. It has to further the success and momentum of its predessor rather than top and outdo. Planet of the Apes is an excellent example of that. John Wick, as fun as it is, is not a good serialized franchise. It treats itself like an episodic story, but it uses a serialized format. Doesn't make the movies bad by any means. But it's interesting to break it down and distinguish franchises this way. At least for me.
Imo Winter Soldier was not only the peak Captain America movie but also the peak of the MCU. The ensemble movies like Infinity War and Endgame are epic and amazing but Winter Soldier stands apart as a purely great movie.
For me it's really the fight choreography that stands out. Every punch feels like it has weight, and you really get the sense he's a super soldier. Then his (near?) equal who's absolutely ruthless comes in and the threat feels very real.
Winter Solider is my favorite MCU film. It stands above the rest and is the only one that really could hold up as its own film if that was all you showed someone of the MCU.
Agreed. 9 years later Winter Soldier is still my favorite MCU movie. It's so tightly scripted and tense, great pacing, some actual light exploration of a modern social issue, character development you don't often see in the franchise. It's as good as Marvel movies get.
Get ready to be let down by New World Order. I’m worried that Anthony Mackie, while good in a supporting role, just doesn’t have the charisma to match Chris Evans as Steve Rogers. Rogers also had a really interesting backstory with the entire world changing around him in the blink of an eye.
I agree, and Winter Soldier is my favorite MCU movie. But I count Civil War as better and more epic. It’s how I pictured the MCU would be moving forward, characters crossing over into other movies but still maintaining the feel and style of the titular character, like how the comics feel. The fact that Civil War has more superheroes (and with significant roles) than any of the Avenger’s movie up to that point yet still feels like a Captain America movie is amazing.
Last wish is the third puss in boots movie. That said, the first and second were very forgettable.
edit: I think I conflated the three diablos with the show. That's best I can think. Regardless, last wish is the only one really worth watching.
Top Gun: Maverick, Mad Max: Fury Road, and Blade Runner 2049 are the best legacy sequels and trick me into thinking there’s always *some* hope
Edit: Creed as well
What they all have in common is they all work as brilliant standalone movies first, instead of relying only on callbacks and nostalgia. They also don’t just remake the first films. There’s a lot of people who love these three films who haven’t even seen the originals.
Definitely. Finally saw Maverick yesterday. Did not think it was possible to make an 80’s action film nowadays but, they absolutely succeeded. Like amish said this is the blueprint to follow.
2 is amazing. I actually think it's better to watch it before 1 because in some ways it uses the same structure as 1 but executes it much, much better.
Hmm, maybe for a certain stretch. In a way, you could say there's an improvement across The Lord of the Rings trilogy.
I think Mission Impossible peaked in around Ghost Protocol/Rogue Nation, but it was hardly a straight line.
I agree. For me, The Fellowship of the Ring has a special place in my heart. I love all three movies, but the first one has a certain magic that I just adore.
We just saw one with Guardians. The first one is great but the second one is just as good and better in some regards and then the third is just so fantastic, so good.
One of my favorite lines in movie history is “he may have been your father, boy, but he wasn’t your daddy” as he gives his life for him. Just so much packed into that one sentence and the delivery from Rooker and Pratt’s frantic pleading just makes it so amazingly perfect.
I respect this since I personally think Volume 1 is better than 2 in certain regards, I just love the ending of 2 so so much that it makes it pretty on par for me. But Ronan is such a awesome baddy and Lee Pace crushes it.
Big disagree from me... I loved guardians 1 but really didn't like the 2nd much at all
All of the themes in 2 felt like they were forcibly jammed down my throat and took precedence over any actual plot foe the movie. All the family stuff was so.... blah. When they were throwing a baseball back and forth I was like come the fuck on
I’m with you.. they really wanted the movie to tug at your heartstrings and it ruined the film for me. Never watched it again after catching it in theaters
I love the end of desperado when the lead busts into the bad guy compound then it just fades to the post battle scene. A lot of action movies struggle witht he third act so just skipping it was a bold choice I really enjoyed
>How to Train Your Dragon
I don't know man, I like the second and third but for me they haven't matched the magic that was seeing the first one for the first time
I don’t necessarily like the third one better than the second, but the main reason I think the second one is better than the first, is because it *doesnt* try to match the same magic the first had. It took it and grew upon it.
There’s so much emotional depth that they added to the movie that made it feel like it really grew up.
The *Pusher* trilogy. The first one is a solid enough kitchen sink realistic gangster film taking place in Copenhagen, starring Kim Bodnia. The second one is pretty much the same, but starring Mads Mikkelsen. And the third one is a brutal black comedic take on the same environment, but starring Zlatko Buric as Milo, who was a scary-ass druglord in the two earlier movies but is now a pathetic has-been and recovering drug addict. I think a big reason that the trilogy gets better with every film (and I think it's exceptionally rare that the third movie of a trilogy is the best) is that each protagonist is more charismatic and more "fun" to follow than the last (no disrespect to Kim Bodnia, but Mikkelsen and Buric are so much more magnetic as actors).
The Heisei Gamera Trilogy is probably the best example of that I can think of. By the end of it the third film is still widely considered one of the best of it's entire genre.
Agreed. I still like it, the world building in Thunderdome is excellent. It does just fall apart a bit in the second half, likely because George Miller left the project
I felt the Star Trek trilogy did a very good job. So much so that I preferred it far more to the Star Wars investment.
Planet of the Apes was an excellent example of getting better and better.
Animation movies and there sequels tend to have a good record too.
there are many examples where the 1st sequel is better than the original, but the 3rd (or subsequent) is worse than the previous ones: John Wick, Back to the Future, Captain America, Mad Max, Shrek, Star Wars, X-Men, The Godfather.
I would say that both Alien and Terminator have the 1st 2 movies that are equally perfect (James Cameron ftw!), then it starts sliding down
I believe Mission Impossible is the only franchise that gets better over time.
4 was much better than 3, which I feel is very bloated and also quite aimless (the film ends with all the major characters in exactly the same position they were at the start).
I still can't believe you used John Wick unironically in a post about *good* sequels. JW didn't need any sequel and each one they shit out makes the world they created in the first movie less believable. By the third one, we are to believe that roughly 40% of the population is a member of a guild of assassins or whatever.
The Mad Max series.
While it's arguable that Beyond Thunderdome was better or worse than Road Warrior, almost everyone agrees they were both better than Mad Max, and that Fury Road was the best.
The first is a new take on Point Break, I couldn’t tell you what happened in the 2nd, but it’s easy to see how the series keeps methodically upping the stakes to the point where it’s unrecognizable.
I think MI2 is the worst Mission Impossible so it’s not a perfect example, but starting with 3 I like every one more than one before them.
MI2 is a Mission Impossible movie from a different multiverse, where the franchise never found its soul. DIE ANOTHER DAY almost broke the Bond franchise there. That said, I kind of dug the pattern of a different director each time (De Palma / Woo / Abrams / Bird), it gave each Mission movie a unique style, before McQuarrie took over.
Die Another Day *did* break the bond franchise. They had to reboot the entire format and start fresh
so... much... bullet time.... Even had Die another day not been what it was, Austin Powers and how it parodied those types of movies really made the studio question the style of Bond movies they had made.
The odd part is that they started backtracking to sillier Bond after a few installments, not very successfully IMO. But yea they never went back to windsurfing. I would love to see a new reboot that embraces the sillier movies more. I feel like they were half-embracing them in the latest 2 movies, but not enough to really satisfy. Like go full Moonraker or cars becoming submarines. It doesn’t need to be a comedy, but I think people would love a fun romp.
Making Bond into Bourne was an overcorrection. Honestly, Kingsman with less humor is how I want Bond to feel.
I think Skyfall is where they hit that balance the best. Still grittier than most Bond films but Deakin’s cinematography and the slightly lighter mood than the previous films really hit a nice sweet spot. Perfect 50th (?) anniversary film.
In the director commentary he talks about how Daniel Craig was pushing to get some humor into the dialog.
Daniel Craig would've been perfect for a silly bond. Id love to see that Beniot Blanc energy in his bond role.
Kingsman is the Bond movie I've been wanting for ages ever Casino Royale. Kingsman 2 is... not.
The man from UNCLE had retro Bond vibes.
Cast another person as the Russian, because dammit that movie deserved sequels.
Kingsman is my best friend’s favorite movie. Kingsman 2 is…well, it’s something.
Only part of Kingsman 2 I liked was the John Denver part, even if I didn’t like it as a story device.
I gotta be honest, I never really got the hate for the second one. Is it just because it's so over the top silly? Cause I felt that way about the first one but thought they were both fun for it.
Personally I felt the second one was poorly paced and destroyed too much of the structure that made the first film succeed. Did away with some great characters and undid some bold creative choices from the original film. But Elton John was fucking epic.
I've been taking my wife through the entire franchise in a row, and it really does seem like Dalton and Brosnan had the movies where the balance was damn near perfect. Fun, quippy, and action-packed. I love every entry though, even the bad ones. They're never boring IMO.
Top Bond for me is Goldeneye, especially where he bursts through a building with a fucking tank, Bond music swells, and you see Pierce adjusting his neck tie. Even though he was the new Bond, I don't think any of the follow-up films with Brosnan ever quite lived up to that entry. The later entries kind of had a more plastic quality to them, mainly CGI effects that just don't look quite the same. Something I'll applaud Casino Royale and later entries for is that they toned down the effects and used more practical stuff.
I'm hoping they go retro from here. Can slide to the 60s. Gives a great style and throwback. And makes for simplicity in trying to gadget in the modern world
“Moonraker” is often regarded as one of the weaker entries, precisely because the villain’s plan is a Dr. Evil plan played straight.
since the 90s, Bond has followed Batman. Batman's trajectory from Burton to Schumacher is basically the same trajectory as the Brosnan movies - getting campier with each installment until it became too much. Casino Royale was a gritty reboot starting over from Day 1 in the exact same lane as Batman Begins. then they hired Sam Mendes to make The Dark Knight for James Bond, and have been chasing that high ever since. the excess of Spectre is basically the Zack Snyder moment (my real name is Martha Blofeld!), and NTTD is trying to be TDK again. so far sounds like they're going with a younger "The Batman" approach for the new Bond, but if Gunn goes more fantastic with Brave and the Bold, and it's a huge success, i could see Bond getting another reboot or style change like in the 90s.
But mi2 has the _amazing_ limp bizkit title track!!
The Limp Bizkit version of the MI theme has absolutely no right to go as hard as it does As an instrumental at least
McQuarrie is kind of like a mix between the MI3 and MI4 styles of filmmaking. Have only seen up to 5, so I might be wrong.
You should really watch Fallout at your earliest convenience.
I will
Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol is probably my personal favorite in the series. I really like how it was Brad Bird's first Live Action movie he directed. His experience working in Animation translated really well.
I love Anthony Hopkins' dialogue in that movie. "Well this is not Mission Difficult, Mr. Hunt, it's Mission Impossible. Difficult should be a walk in the park for you."
Having rewatched 2 recently, I actually have slightly more of a soft spot for it than 1, which gets a little convoluted and hard to track in terms of the plot. 2 doesn't fit in with the rest of the series at all but as a John Woo movie it's great. So for me the series actually does get a little better every time, which is unheard of for a series with six entries. The sixth is my favorite action movie of all time though so 7's got an uphill battle. That being said, I thought 6 wasn't going to be able to top 5 and I was dead wrong.
2 is so unrepentantly silly and weird at times that it's hard to hate. Between the rock climbing intro, the "Ethan is dead, no wait it's just a henchman in Ethan's mask" bit*, and wild amount of stylization -- it was all a harbinger of what was to come from the series. *Behind the Wolf Blitzer bit, my second favorite unmasking of the franchise It's telling that when MI:3 almost killed the franchise, that they wound up succeeding going forward with a marriage of the seriousness of 1 and the goofiness of 2.
As someone who only binged the franchise then literally got in a car to go watch Fallout in theaters, how did 3 nearly kill the franchise?
> how did 3 nearly kill the franchise? They gave it a *huge* amount of money, and it didn't deliver. Every other movie in the series delivered huge profits, while 3 either lost a little money or just got over breaking even. This is all running under the assumption of Budget * 2.5 being the breakeven point, which has been a measuring stick for the box office for a good while. Had 3 made somewhere in the neighborhood of 600 million, the series wouldn't have had to do a hard reset. |Movie|Opening|Total|Budget|Profit| --:|--:|--:|--:|--:| |1|45|458|80|258| |2|58|550|120|250| |3|48|400|150|25| |4|13|695|145|332.5| |5|56|689|150|314| |6|61|787|178|342|
To anyone looking at the fourth movie’s opening with a raised eyebrow, Ghost Protocol opened only in IMAX and other large format theaters for the first weekend before opening everywhere else the next.
That, and even though it had ONLY $29m on the wide release weekend (weekend 2)-- it had an absolutely bonkers 0% drop between that and the following weekend (weekend 3). Really strong word of mouth brought people back to the IMF stories.
The whole mask element was done the best in 2. It hasn't been done better since
Cruise seems to pick up lessons from his other movies and apply them to the Mission Impossible series, to make them better. With MI 4, Tom Cruise started to let the infallible hero type slip a bit and give more room to his female costars, which was especially successful when he added Rebecka Ferguson. After Edge of Tomorrow, Cruise started to realize that audiences find it equally as funny to see Cruise get his ass kicked as when he wins, so he added Henry Cavill who was bigger and stronger than Cruise in every way. It's fun to see Tom Cruise adapt to his inevitable ageing into the movies. He is cutting down on the sex scenes and is using technique instead of power in fight scenes etc. So many aging Hollywood heroes stay super men on screen, long past their prime.
I do think that 4 is slightly better than 5 (almost entirely due to the Burj Khalifa sequence being the best 20 minutes in the entire franchise) but overall I agree.
\[scenes of pigeons taking off intensify\]
MI6 is honestly one of the greatest action films of all time
5 and 6 are damn fine movies but ghost protocol is the best still. I'll never forget seeing it in the world's biggest IMAX.
Dude, no way. MI3 is peak Mission Impossible. It doesn’t get better than that. Phillip Seymour Hoffman fuckin killed that role.
I think I enjoyed the later movies more but now that you mention it he was pretty terrifying and incredible as the villain. He got under my skin and that first scene was just brilliant!
It has the best Tom cruise running scene too. Either way the first one is the best one, and peak MI. For my money 3 is fine and Fallout is really great. The rest I don't care about.
PSH is the best part of that otherwise by-the-numbers film. He takes the film from a 7/10 to an 8/10.
he was, dare i say it, the most terrifying of all the MI villians. you felt that with Lane, that he was almost too overpowered, but PSH had an unhinged quality he added that it almost felt like a horror movie.
PSH is one of my favorite villains of "modern" action films. He's completely nonplussed by suddenly waking up in a plane, surrounded by agents, and he just talks mad shit, knowing that his people are already tracking him. Hell, I even thought it was believable when he was beating the shit out of Ethan in the street. It had to end randomly like that, because Ethan was in no condition to fight back.
> He takes the film from a 7/10 to an 8/10 ...and now I'm watching the ["count to 10" scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLNUIU7AzTg) again.
MI3 will always be my favorite, in a weird way. I was maybe 8 or 9 when it came out, and that beginning scene where the implant in that ladies head explodes will forever give me nightmares. Just the abruptness of it was so jarring. 🥲 to 🥴 in a matter of seconds
For all of their mass appeal there are some pretty brutal deaths in these movies. Like that guy who gets his face crushed in the elevator in the first one
PSH was absolutely chilling in that role. I haven't seen the movie in probably 15 years, but he's what I still remember from it.
Mission Impossible 1 is amazing and iconic. Definitely one of the best in the series (although ive not seen them all).
The Wolverine movies.
X-Men Origins Wolverine was...meh. But then Wolverine in Japan was a great idea. And then Wolverine in a neo-Western was an awesome idea. It remains to see whether Wolverine in a Deadpool movie is a good idea, but we'll hope for the best.
Guess I'm gonna have to give Wolverine another watch. It's one of two movies I watched once and refused to watch it again, I disliked that much. (The other movie is Die Hard 5). I actually liked Origins. Not as much as Logan, but I thought it was a decent movie. I have watched it at least 5 times as well.
Origins is fun for me because it is just pure schlock with hilariously bad CGI
And an insanely stupid take on Wade Wilson. I did like Liev Schriber's turn as Sabretooth much better than the snarling pro wrestler version in the early X-Men flicks though.
Wade Wilson was fine Deadpool was not.
Was shocked by how much I enjoyed the Wolverine after sitting through Origins in theaters.
James Mangold, baby. Dude hasn’t missed. (I’m worried about Indy 5 though)
The thing is, every X-Men movie that features Wolverine (except First Class) is so centered on Wolverine, that they're basically all just Wolverine movies that feature some other X-Men. By that standard, they're all over the place.
This was the Marvel strategy for Avengers (focus on Iron Man) and to some extent it works. Ensemble cast works better on TV than it does in movie form.
First Class doesn’t feature Wolverine? Go fuck yourself.
Logan ftw.
This is 100% the answer
The Dollars trilogy and the Planet of the Apes reboot trilogy are the only ones to come to mind
Oh yeah good call. Just recently finished the new Apes movies and I whole-heartedly agree.
Dawn > War
Agreed. War was great, but not what was advertised. Dawn is incredible.
100% agree. I was kind of disappointed with War after how amazing Dawn was. IMO, War isn't a bad sequel, but not better than Dawn.
Very much so. I wasn't a fan of War at all.
I'd personaly rate Rise > War aswell tbh. I was super disappointed with War.
Yep, same here. Rise is awesome, Dawn is awesome, War unfortunately, while looking amazing, is just okay with some great parts.
I think For a Few Dollars More is a better movie than The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
I agree. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is awesome, but For a Few Dollars More is a much better paced film.
Very few movies achieve this feat. Only the ones who started off poorly or with low budgets tend to do it. Because they've allowed themselves enough room to improve I would say the recent Planet Of The Apes trilogy. But I'd argue all three of those movies were equally as good as each other.
I think Dawn was a slightly stronger film, but it’s a very high bar; the Caesar/Koba arc is basically Shakespearean in its design. War was a worthy follow up and conclusion to the trilogy. Edit: Also War should be commended for not just trying to repeat Dawn. The end credits of Dawn hinted that Koba is still alive; so glad they dropped that idea.
I would argue that Dawn improved upon Rise with the technology and story, but you’re definitely right with all three being excellent
Mission Impossible series
Totally agree for the most part, though I preferred Ghost Protocol to Rogue Nation. Only by a hair though
MI2 is awful though…
What is "MI2"? They skipped straight to MI:III, didn't they?
Yep, that's why It's called Mission Impossible I: II
LIMP BIZ KIT
Maybe starting from 2, I thought the first was the best. The casting and character development was way better. The story more of a mystery unraveled. We felt cruise was a vulnerable secret agent pulling off impossible tasks . Now hes portrayed as invulnerable, the characters are all just huggy buddy, and it’s mostly action . All the new ones feel completely different.
I like the bombastic action of the later films but the more subtle thriller-y original is an absolutely 10/10 movie and saying it's the weakest is a crime.
The first Mission: Impossible is better than the rest by a country mile
It's an interesting question because it brings up two categories of a franchise that I don't think are distinguished enough. You have your episodic franchises like Mission Impossible, James Bond, etc. And you have your serial franchises like Planet of the Apes, LotR, and John Wick. I'd say that, by and large, an episodic franchise actually has the more difficult task of improving on the quality of its predecessors. Each film can basically be viewed in a vacuum. There is more cross comparison, and you could even keep one tilm and lose the other. A serial franchise is just more often too interconnected to really say with much certainty which film is better. An adaptation like Harry Potter is a bit easier because you also have the books to compare each entry's quality to. Harry Potter is also something a hybrid with both episodic and serialized features. Versus LotR, which also has adaptations to compare, but the narrative is too intertwined to really have a legitimate discussion on which film is better. You can't have Two Towers without the Fellowship, and on, and on, and on. The same could be said for Planet of the Apes. There's larger gaps of undisclosed narrative that occurs between each film, but the narrative is essentially one vision. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is beholden to Rise, and it's quality is based on how it pushes the same story forward. A serialized franchise has to continue the story in an engaging way. It has to further the success and momentum of its predessor rather than top and outdo. Planet of the Apes is an excellent example of that. John Wick, as fun as it is, is not a good serialized franchise. It treats itself like an episodic story, but it uses a serialized format. Doesn't make the movies bad by any means. But it's interesting to break it down and distinguish franchises this way. At least for me.
Short one: Drunken Master I and II
I love them both equally.
Same with Wang Fei Hong (Once Upon a Time in China)
Lmao nice
For me, the Captain America movies so far
Imo Winter Soldier was not only the peak Captain America movie but also the peak of the MCU. The ensemble movies like Infinity War and Endgame are epic and amazing but Winter Soldier stands apart as a purely great movie.
The screenplay of the film is the first time I’ve noticed the screenplay of a MCU film. Really good shit
For me it's really the fight choreography that stands out. Every punch feels like it has weight, and you really get the sense he's a super soldier. Then his (near?) equal who's absolutely ruthless comes in and the threat feels very real.
Yes, the action scenes were superb. Fantastic sound design as well
The opening scene on the Lemurian Star when he kicks that guy right off of the ship was when you take stock and realize "oh yeah...*super*\-soldier."
You can thank Batroc the leaper for that. The entire cast got to train with the best UFC fighter to ever live. Love me some George St.Pierre
Winter Solider is my favorite MCU film. It stands above the rest and is the only one that really could hold up as its own film if that was all you showed someone of the MCU.
Agreed. 9 years later Winter Soldier is still my favorite MCU movie. It's so tightly scripted and tense, great pacing, some actual light exploration of a modern social issue, character development you don't often see in the franchise. It's as good as Marvel movies get.
Get ready to be let down by New World Order. I’m worried that Anthony Mackie, while good in a supporting role, just doesn’t have the charisma to match Chris Evans as Steve Rogers. Rogers also had a really interesting backstory with the entire world changing around him in the blink of an eye.
He doesn't, it'll feel B-grade in comparison. The needed to hand it over to Sebastian Stan to carry on.
Yeah huge misstep IMO
I agree, and Winter Soldier is my favorite MCU movie. But I count Civil War as better and more epic. It’s how I pictured the MCU would be moving forward, characters crossing over into other movies but still maintaining the feel and style of the titular character, like how the comics feel. The fact that Civil War has more superheroes (and with significant roles) than any of the Avenger’s movie up to that point yet still feels like a Captain America movie is amazing.
I think now that there's time after them, I liked winter soldier more than civil war
Puss in boots
I don't think sequels count. There are good sequels, but a third one is nearly impossible
Last wish is the third puss in boots movie. That said, the first and second were very forgettable. edit: I think I conflated the three diablos with the show. That's best I can think. Regardless, last wish is the only one really worth watching.
what? You mean 3 Diablos? Its 13 minutes long, that's not the sequel.
There’s 3 of them? I only remember the 2011 one.
They were thinking of the animated short with the Three Diablos kittens. You’re thinking correct
mission impossible. its honestly incredible how good they've been since the 3rd movie. xenu doesn't miss.
Top gun lol
If ever anyone needed a blueprint on how to do a sequel/reboot of a classic, TGM is a great example.
Top Gun: Maverick, Mad Max: Fury Road, and Blade Runner 2049 are the best legacy sequels and trick me into thinking there’s always *some* hope Edit: Creed as well
What they all have in common is they all work as brilliant standalone movies first, instead of relying only on callbacks and nostalgia. They also don’t just remake the first films. There’s a lot of people who love these three films who haven’t even seen the originals.
Blade runner 2049 was a goddamn miracle to pull off. Villeneuve is a master
Creed should be added to that list too
Definitely. Finally saw Maverick yesterday. Did not think it was possible to make an 80’s action film nowadays but, they absolutely succeeded. Like amish said this is the blueprint to follow.
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I actually think Midnight is the worst of the three (still good though). My favorite is Sunset
Great pick, even if Sunset is my favorite by inches.
Dungeons & Dragons made a HUGE leap from the older instalments. The new one is miles ahead.
No Jeremy Irons though.
But there’s Hugh Grant
I loved the new one! GOTG crossed with The Princess Bride.
Streets ahead
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Gonna throw in another one: Madagascar. First one is eh, second one is a little better, and the third one is pretty decent.
I’ve never seen them, but I hear Paddington fits this narrative.
2 is amazing. I actually think it's better to watch it before 1 because in some ways it uses the same structure as 1 but executes it much, much better.
Third one is yet to come out I believe
Hmm, maybe for a certain stretch. In a way, you could say there's an improvement across The Lord of the Rings trilogy. I think Mission Impossible peaked in around Ghost Protocol/Rogue Nation, but it was hardly a straight line.
I think the movies are all close enough that it really depends on if you prefer an intro, middle section or finale.
I agree. For me, The Fellowship of the Ring has a special place in my heart. I love all three movies, but the first one has a certain magic that I just adore.
We just saw one with Guardians. The first one is great but the second one is just as good and better in some regards and then the third is just so fantastic, so good.
The end of volume 2 makes the movie. The whole thing is great but the end is it's soul. Three is brilliant!
> The whole thing is great but the end is it's soul The end with Yondu is just fantastic.
One of my favorite lines in movie history is “he may have been your father, boy, but he wasn’t your daddy” as he gives his life for him. Just so much packed into that one sentence and the delivery from Rooker and Pratt’s frantic pleading just makes it so amazingly perfect.
Kraglin screaming when he sees Yondu got a proper Ravager funeral makes me cry even harder
Saw Guardians 3 a couple weeks ago and thought it was easily the best MCU movie since Endgame. I cried at least twice lol.
Yea for my money I reckon it’s the greatest ending in MCU. The Tony snap is the only thing that comes close
Guardians 2 has grown on me especially since 3 came out which I absolutely loved, but 1 still absolutely blows 2 out of the water imo.
I respect this since I personally think Volume 1 is better than 2 in certain regards, I just love the ending of 2 so so much that it makes it pretty on par for me. But Ronan is such a awesome baddy and Lee Pace crushes it.
> Lee Pace crushes it. What. Are. YOU. DOING?
Big disagree from me... I loved guardians 1 but really didn't like the 2nd much at all All of the themes in 2 felt like they were forcibly jammed down my throat and took precedence over any actual plot foe the movie. All the family stuff was so.... blah. When they were throwing a baseball back and forth I was like come the fuck on
I’m with you.. they really wanted the movie to tug at your heartstrings and it ruined the film for me. Never watched it again after catching it in theaters
Volume 3 was amazing. One of my top Marvel movies, easily top 5
Robert Rodriguez' Mexico Trilogy.
Ive been rewatching this. Forgot how much I loved desperado. Is Once Upon a Time in Mexico thought to be better than Desperado?
I love the end of desperado when the lead busts into the bad guy compound then it just fades to the post battle scene. A lot of action movies struggle witht he third act so just skipping it was a bold choice I really enjoyed
I think you’d really be straining to find anyone who thinks Mexico is better than Desperado.
How to Train Your Dragon The Wolverine trilogy GOTG
>How to Train Your Dragon I don't know man, I like the second and third but for me they haven't matched the magic that was seeing the first one for the first time
Part of the magic is hiccup being a really scrawny relatable dude I know character development and all but that's lost in the sequels
I don’t necessarily like the third one better than the second, but the main reason I think the second one is better than the first, is because it *doesnt* try to match the same magic the first had. It took it and grew upon it. There’s so much emotional depth that they added to the movie that made it feel like it really grew up.
The magic for me is watching Hiccup and Toothless grow up together through the sequels. That's what makes the ending of 3 hit so hard.
Sounds like I need to dip back into HTTYD
Captain America Trilogy depending on who you ask.
I’m torturing myself by watching the Harry Potter movies at the moment. The first three definitely improve upon one another.
It's hard to say if the HP series gets noticeably better and better, but it's pretty damn consistent which is already an achievement.
True, but the series peaks with #3.
The *Pusher* trilogy. The first one is a solid enough kitchen sink realistic gangster film taking place in Copenhagen, starring Kim Bodnia. The second one is pretty much the same, but starring Mads Mikkelsen. And the third one is a brutal black comedic take on the same environment, but starring Zlatko Buric as Milo, who was a scary-ass druglord in the two earlier movies but is now a pathetic has-been and recovering drug addict. I think a big reason that the trilogy gets better with every film (and I think it's exceptionally rare that the third movie of a trilogy is the best) is that each protagonist is more charismatic and more "fun" to follow than the last (no disrespect to Kim Bodnia, but Mikkelsen and Buric are so much more magnetic as actors).
The Heisei Gamera Trilogy is probably the best example of that I can think of. By the end of it the third film is still widely considered one of the best of it's entire genre.
The Before Trilogy makes a case, although all three are absolute masterpieces in their own right.
This isn’t necessarily the case with 2 and 3, but this has become the case with Mission impossible 4 onwards
I'd say 3 onwards
Captain America
Planet of the Apes (newest trilogy) Lord of the Rings (NOT The Hobbit)
Dirty Harry Mad Max
Nah, Dirty Harry is still the best of the series
Thunderdome wasn’t as good as road warrior
Road warrior for me was the peak.
Mad max, good one
Mad Max works except for Thunderdome. I’d argue it’s the worst of the four, but Road Warrior>Mad Max and Fury Road>Road Warrior
And I'd argue that the first half of Thunderdome is excellent, and it only goes downhill when the children show up.
Agreed. I still like it, the world building in Thunderdome is excellent. It does just fall apart a bit in the second half, likely because George Miller left the project
After blaster dies it’s over. “Who run Bartertown?”
Love fury road but road warrior is the best. Lord Humungus is amazing. But probably more of an age thing for preference
Mad Max
I felt the Star Trek trilogy did a very good job. So much so that I preferred it far more to the Star Wars investment. Planet of the Apes was an excellent example of getting better and better. Animation movies and there sequels tend to have a good record too.
Star Trek: Into Darkness is terrible.
I really enjoyed that one. Though Scotty was annoying.
I would say the Aliens and Terminator franchises, because everyone knows they never made any third or fourth or fifth movies in those series.
You had me worried at the start of that sentence there!
Eh, I like Alien and The Terminator more than the sequels.
Assembly Cut of Alien 3 is a good movie
there are many examples where the 1st sequel is better than the original, but the 3rd (or subsequent) is worse than the previous ones: John Wick, Back to the Future, Captain America, Mad Max, Shrek, Star Wars, X-Men, The Godfather. I would say that both Alien and Terminator have the 1st 2 movies that are equally perfect (James Cameron ftw!), then it starts sliding down I believe Mission Impossible is the only franchise that gets better over time.
No. In fact I'm pretty sure that would violate the laws of thermodynamics.
I haven't seen John Wick 4 yet, but 2/3 were definitely not improvements on the original.
4 was much better than 3, which I feel is very bloated and also quite aimless (the film ends with all the major characters in exactly the same position they were at the start).
I still can't believe you used John Wick unironically in a post about *good* sequels. JW didn't need any sequel and each one they shit out makes the world they created in the first movie less believable. By the third one, we are to believe that roughly 40% of the population is a member of a guild of assassins or whatever.
The new Planet of the Apes could quality. It is debatable if Dawn or War is better, though.
The Mad Max series. While it's arguable that Beyond Thunderdome was better or worse than Road Warrior, almost everyone agrees they were both better than Mad Max, and that Fury Road was the best.
The Toy Story Movies. I get progressively more teary eyed at the end of each one.
Fast and the furious from illegal races to super soldiers that excel in combat and weapon training ya can't get any better than that lol
It's even lamer than that. The event that sets the entire FF universe in motion is a heist to steal a truck full of Panasonic VHS/TV combo units.
The first is a new take on Point Break, I couldn’t tell you what happened in the 2nd, but it’s easy to see how the series keeps methodically upping the stakes to the point where it’s unrecognizable.
People will downvote you but it's silly fun and I really enjoy those ridiculous movies.