10 Most Hated Movie Sequels of All Time (And Why Fans Dislike Them)

Hollywood has long sought to retain the interest of moviegoers in its biggest franchises, from action movies like Die Hard to creature features like Jaws. However, as the film industry has gone on, studios and directors have learned the hard way that there’s an art to delivering a good sequel — and that a bad one can tank a property. While the typical movie sequel is generally a decent experience, some have missed the mark so badly that audience opinion turned from disappointment to anger.

Hollywood’s relationship with fans has always been a tenuous one, particularly as studios often prioritize profit over story, which has led to some of the industry’s most hated movies. When combined with the fact that fans are notoriously hard to please, the odds are often against sequels from the start. A sequel being hated doesn’t inherently make it a bad film, but it’s worth remembering why some movies caused so much division in the first place.

10 Independence Day: Resurgence Was A Decade Too Late

In 1996, Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin’s Independence Day instantly became the face of the alien invasion genre. Centered around a diverse cast of Americans in the aftermath of a cataclysmic alien attack on major cities around the world, the film wore patriotism on its sleeve as it built up to the final battle, with humanity triumphing. Leaving audiences with a tale of unity and victory, the film was near-perfect for what it set out to do, becoming the definitive blockbuster hit of the year. As great as it was as a standalone project, it wasn’t long before people started questioning if there would ever be a sequel.

After twenty years, calls for a sequel were answered with Independence Day: Resurgence, which follows a new generation of heroes repelling a fresh invasion. Unfortunately, the film was almost doomed from the jump following the news that Will Smith wouldn’t be returning. The movie itself almost had a vendetta against its original cast, killing off Jasmine Hiller near the start and doing the same to a now-retired President Whitmore, whose sacrifice is ultimately in vain.

9 Jay and Silent Bob Reboot Is the Worst In Its Franchise

Kevin Smith’s View Askewniverse has, since 1994, told the stories of a variety of New Jersey natives, with Jay and Silent Bob emerging as its most famous pairing. After an adventure to Hollywood that saw Jay find love with Justice, the pair returned to their movie almost twenty years later in Jay and Silent Bob Reboot. Beginning with the revelation that Jay has a daughter and Justice has moved on, the sequel follows the duo on a road trip with the teenage girl and her friends on their way to Comic-Con.

Jay and Silent Bob Reboot was made as a fun criticism of Hollywood cash grabs, but in doing so it played into some of the worst trappings of a bad reboot. It was made all the more disappointing by the fact that Smith showed he was still capable of producing a great film in 2022’s Clerks III, which ranks among the franchise’s best movies. While he did try and appeal to the same stoner fan base that made the 2003 movie so fun, the film felt more like a montage of modern-day pop culture references than a fully realized story. That may have been the point behind the movie, but it just fell flat with fans — and the handling of Jay’s relationship with Justice didn’t help either.

8 Men In Black International Lost Its Charm

In 1997, Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones teamed up to star as Agent K and J in Men In Black, a film centered around a secret agency responsible for policing alien life on Earth and defending the planet from attack. Initially hunting for an alien bug intent on destroying humanity, they returned for two sequels, where they again saved the world and J traveled back to the 1960s. After the original trilogy, the studio returned to the world with Men In Black International, which explores a new pairing of agents, H and M, as they hunt for a mole in the agency.

Men In Black International had huge shoes to fill in following Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, so the fact it disappointed fans wasn’t a surprise. Unfortunately, the film failed to match the humor of the original, leaning too heavily on MCU-style comedy and too little on developing chemistry between its stars, or giving them a compelling plot. Moving on from the original heroes meant the sequel was practically destined to be hated, but its missteps certainly didn’t help either.

7 Jurassic World Dominion Was A Simple Cash Grab

Based on Michael Chrichton’s novel of the same name, the original Jurassic Park movie follows a group of scientists exploring John Hammond’s park, populated by biologically-engineered dinosaurs. When the park’s electrical systems are disabled, the dinosaurs break free and begin terrorizing the humans. After two decent sequels, the franchise was revisited in 2015, which took the first film’s concept to a greater scale in having the park full of tourists — and throwing in a brand-new dinosaur for good measure. In 2022, however, Universal jumped the gun with the franchise.

Jurassic World Dominion wore its desire for cash on its sleeve, paying to bring back the stars of the first movie alongside Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard. The film diminished the role and importance of dinosaurs, featured arguably the worst script of the franchise, and focused far too much on callbacks and nostalgia. Rather than tell a coherent plot, the movie feels more interested in walking audiences through the range of dinosaurs and delivering repetitive action sequences. It does have some good moments and can feel like fan service to dinosaur buffs, but it lost all the meaning and magic of Spielberg’s original film.

6 Speed 2 Is Famously Bad

The first Speed movie follows an LAPD bomb squad officer, Jack Traven, as he and his partner take on a terrorist, who tries to hold the city to ransom. After believing him dead, Traven is forced to board a bus with a bomb set to detonate if it drops below fifty miles an hour. While in the vehicle, he meets and forms an attachment to Annie, a commuter who helps him save the day. When plans for a sequel were announced, people naturally expected Keanu Reeves to reprise his role as Traven — but instead found themselves following the story of Annie.

If any movie represents the Hollywood trend of continuing a franchise in name only, Speed 2 is it. As one of the few action franchises that continued without its main star, it invited derision as the movie that had been known for its fast pacing tried to replicate the idea aboard a cruise ship. If the plot and campy acting of its stars, particularly Willem DeFoe, weren’t enough to annoy fans, the movie’s absurd subtitle, Speed Control, sealed the deal. What should have been a standalone ’90s action hit was drawn out into a dull sequel that had all the charm of a straight-to-video knock-off.

5 Halloween 2 (2009) Is A Grief-Obsessed Slog

In 2007, Rob Zombie took control of the Halloween franchise to remake the original film after two decades of increasingly disappointing sequels. The first film reimagined the story of Michael Myers as a bullied but dangerous young boy who, after murdering his sister and stepfather, is incarcerated in a mental health facility under the care of Samuel Loomis. As in the original film, he breaks out of the hospital and makes his way to Haddonfield, where he targets Laurie Strode and murders her friends.

Where the first Halloween film received a lukewarm reception, the sequel alienated even some of Zombie’s biggest fans. This was partially due to the decision to send Laurie down a path of self-destruction in the director’s effort to explore the effects of post-traumatic stress on an individual. The franchise always had a darker tone than the campy slashers, but the 2009 movie felt like an endlessly depressing slog through Laurie’s broken life. The film does have its fans, particularly those who respected the decision to highlight PTSD, but was completely alienating for the average horror buff.

4 Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi Divided Fans

Following their 2012 acquisition of the franchise, Disney released their first Star Wars movie in 2015 The Force Awakens. Introducing the world to a new generation of heroes, Rey, Finn, and Poe, the story is centered around the rise of the First Order under Kylo Ren and the search for Luke Skywalker. The second film, The Last Jedi, picks up immediately where the first movie left off, with Rey standing before Luke seeking guidance and training. However, when the Jedi Master dismisses her, she tries to convince him to help. At the same time, Poe tries to take command of his Resistance ship, while Finn heads out on a mission to find a codebreaker.

The Last Jedi almost immediately became the poster child for divided fandoms, thanks to how director Rian Johnson made a point of subverting audience expectations. From his handling of Luke Skywalker and the decision to kill him off to the underwhelming handling of Snoke, the film derailed much of the momentum of the previous film in favor of a new direction. Although some fans praised Johnson for taking a risk with the story and praised the film’s visuals, others felt it went too hard on the “let the past die” message. While the finale, The Rise of Skywalker, was a much weaker film, many fans still contend that The Last Jedi’s abandonment of JJ Abrams’ original story forced the mess of the third entry and derailed a good trilogy.

3 The Godfather Part III Wasn’t Even Wanted By Its Director

The Godfather films tells the story of Michael Corleone, a World War II hero who, after returning home for his sister’s wedding, gets roped into his family’s mafia activities after a plot against his father, Don Vito Corleone. As he ascends to the head of the Corleone crime family, Michael’s moral character disintegrates, culminating in ordering the murder of his brother and taking custody of his children away from his wife.

Widely deemed the most unnecessary sequel ever made, The Godfather Part III follows Michael in his old age as he tries to find a successor. A film even director Francis Ford Coppola didn’t see the need for, it was widely derided for its uninteresting plot, disappointing character arcs, and bad acting from stars like Sofia Coppola. Audiences did find some things to enjoy about the movie, such as Andy Garcia’s performances, but it turned a perfect duology into a needlessly flawed trilogy.

2 Rocky V Abandoned the Franchise’s Tone

In 1976, Sylvester Stallone made Hollywood history through his masterpiece, Rocky. A classic underdog story, the movie follows amateur Philadelphia boxer Rocky Balboa as he’s given a shot at the heavyweight title by reigning champion, Apollo Creed. Initially losing the first fight but going the distance, Rocky finally won in the sequel, narrowly defeating Apollo in their rematch. What followed in Rocky III and IV were two of the cheesiest sports movies of the ’80s, practically casting the boxer as an action hero who channeled the American spirit.

The missteps made by Rocky V are too many to count. The first and most glaring issue is the film’s radical tonal shift from the fourth movie, taking it from a story dripping with patriotism and hope to one defined by Rocky’s brain damage diagnosis. To add insult to injury, fans had to watch Balboa push away his family for a budding relationship with a young fighter, Tommy “the Machine” Gunn. Rather than giving Rocky the inspirational passing of the torch he got in Creed, the film is a tale of neglect, heartbreak, trauma, and seeing the fighter fall back into the state of poverty he started in.

1 Halloween Ends Derailed An Otherwise Good Trilogy

A decade after the much-hated Rob Zombie remakes, Peacock revisited the Halloween franchise with a “requel,” — a full erasure of all sequels to the original film to allow a direct sequel. Set forty years after the events of the first film, it follows the escape of Michael Myers and his return to Haddonfield, where he’s met with a heavily-armed Laurie Strode, though not before murdering a group of teens. The second film, Halloween Kills, was much the same as 2018, continuing Michael’s night of bloodshed. The third film, Halloween Ends, derailed the story in the eyes of most fans.

Halloween Ends takes place four years after the events of the other two films and focuses on a traumatized Allison as she connects with Corey Cunningham, a young man who accidentally killed a boy that Halloween night. With both now outcasts in the town, they bond over shared experiences. However, unknown to Allison, her new friend finds — and bizarrely teams up with — Michael Myers. The film didn’t simply diminish Michael Myers, it sidelined just about every character as Corey took over, and learned all the wrong lessons from Zombie’s 2009 sequel in the process.