By David Caballero
Thread 19
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Any writer can testify that sticking the landing is probably the most difficult part of writing a story. Indeed, a bad ending can ruin a perfectly good or even great story simply because it's the last thing audiences will remember: if the ending is bad, then the whole experience will be lacking, no matter how great the start and middle are.
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Sadly, many movie franchises have gone down with a fizzle rather than with a bang, thanks to underwhelming final entries that have ruined their entire legacies. Whether because of bad writing, dodgy VFX, or a genuine lack of planning on the creator's part, these franchises ended on a terrible note, leaving nothing but a bitter aftertaste in the mouths of the loyal fans who stuck with them for years.
10 The Lethal Weapon Franchise
Last Movie: 'Lethal Weapon 4' (1998)
The Lethal Weapon movies are staples of the '90s, a successful reinvention of the classic buddy cop formula that ensured Mel Gibson and Danny Glover's places as icons of the decade. The series follows police partners Martin Briggs (Gibson) and Roger Murtaugh (Glover), who begin their mismatched partnership with trouble but eventually form a genuine bond that spans four movies.
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A large reason why the first Lethal Weapon movies work so well is the chemistry between Gibson and Glover, which remained consistent throughout. However, the series' essence, which began as an inspired combination of action, comedy, and genuine gravitas, slowly degenerated into a generic buddy cop comedy, especially considering Briggs and Murtaugh's relationship had very little room to grow. To be fair, Lethal Weapon 4 is far from horrible, but it's also the most mediocre and forgettable of the series' four installments and an underwhelming way to end the story.
Lethal Weapon 4
R
Action
Adventure
Comedy
Crime
Thriller
- Release Date
- July 10, 1998
- Director
- Richard Donner
- Cast
- Mel Gibson , Danny Glover , Joe Pesci , Rene Russo , Chris Rock , Jet Li
- Runtime
- 127 minutes
- Writers
- Shane Black , Jonathan Lemkin , Alfred Gough , Miles Millar , Channing Gibson
9 The Die Hard Franchise
Last Movie: 'A Good Day to Die Hard' (2013)
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Gew action franchises had such a successful run as Bruce Willis' Die Hard. Starting in 1988 with the seminal first entry, the series continued well into the 2000s, mostly maintaining its consistency despite some bumps in the road. However, all the good efforts of Willis and company would go out the window with the disappointing last entry, 2013's A Good Day to Die Hard.
The film is tiresome and frustrating, rehashing old concepts and setpieces and delivering the most by-the-numbers story possible. Willis' chemistry with on-screen son Jai Courtney is decent but not enough to make up for all the characterization he lost in between movies. A forgettable villain and undeveloped side characters further contribute to making A Good Day to Die Harda lazy and frankly damaging ending to a once-storied action franchise, more an excuse for a Die Hard movie than an actual, competently made movie.
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A Good Day to Die Hard
8 The Ice Age Franchise
Last Movie: 'The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild' (2022)
In all honesty, it's not like the Ice Age movies have ever been the pinnacle of animation. In fact, they have always been seen as funny and safe, if not necessarily memorable, efforts aimed at entertaining through the most basic storylines and jokes. The formula worked wonderfully, with the original movie spawning five sequels and a spin-off, each slightly worse than the one before.
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Ice Age's last film (so far, anyway) is the spin-off The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild, centered around a supporting character that clearly should've stayed on the sidelines. The jokes are more basic than usual, the animation is underwhelming, and the whole schtick runs tiresome before the film even reaches its halfway point. The Ice Age movies were always too successful not to spawn a massive multimedia franchise, but it's undeniable that the quality lowered with each new installment, ultimately reaching a new low with its final entry.
The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild
- Release Date
- January 28, 2022
- Director
- John C. Donkin
- Cast
- Simon Pegg , Utkarsh Ambudkar , Justina Machado , Vincent Tong , Aaron Harris , Dominique Jennings , Jake Green
- Runtime
- 82 minutes
- Writers
- Jim Hecht , William Schifrin , Ray DeLaurentis
7 The Scary Movie Franchise
Last Movie: 'Scary Movie 5' (2015)
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Similarly to the Ice Age franchise, the Scary Movie series was always an acquired taste. Dipped in 2000s humor and political incorrectness, the series is a parody of classic horror movies, openly mocking plot elements, characters, and specific scenes and pointing out to inconsistencies in their plots. Anna Faris and Regina Hall headlined the first four installments but didn't return to the fifth movie, and their absence is noticeable.
Scary Movie 5 is among the few movies that can outright be called terrible. It has no redeeming qualities, instead offering an eye-rolling, mind-numbingly stupid plot that's not even interesting enough to be offensive. Game actors like Ashley Tisdale and Simon Rex are wasted in a nothing story that attempts to mock movies like Paranormal Activity with less creativity and energy than a "knock-knock" joke. Faris and Hall were always key to the series' success, and their absence from the fifth entry meant a slow and embarrassing end to the saga.
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6 The Halloween Franchise
Last Movie: 'Halloween Ends' (2022)
The long-running Halloween series has been stitched together more times than Frankenstein's monster. It has tried everything under the sun, from a traditional slasher approach to more supernatural elements, with decidedly uneven results. In 2018, a quasi-reboot from David Gordon Green featuring the return of original scream queen Jamie Lee Curtis promised a more grounded and visceral take on Michael Myers — it delivered, at least for one movie.
Halloween Ends is such a disappointing and anti-climactic ending for a trilogy that sold itself as a bold reinvention of a classic.
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2018's Halloween was a solid, grittier return to form for a series that had very much lost its identity. However, its two sequels went back to displaying the franchise's flaws, mainly a lack of direction and a basic misunderstanding of what makes it appealing. 2022's Halloween Ends ended the story with a confused entry that sidelined Michael Myers and Laurie Strode in favor of a polarizing new character. Halloween Ends is more frustrating than outright terrible, but no one can deny it's such a disappointing and anti-climactic ending for a trilogy that sold itself as a bold reinvention of a classic. There have been no announcements for a new Halloween movie, so if this was indeed the end, then it's such a lame one.
5 The Fifty Shades Trilogy
Last Movie: 'Fifty Shades Freed' (2018)
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The Fifty Shades trilogy will forever live in infamy as one of the most exploitative efforts of the 2010s. Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan star as a couple who enjoy getting hot and heavy — at least within the accepted parameters of the R-rating. Although the trilogy starts as an erotic drama, it evolves into more of a domestic romance in the last two movies, with conflict coming from heightened, telenovela-like situations.
The last entry in the trilogy, 2018's Fifty Shades Freed, sees the pair in full domestic bliss before a dark figure of their past comes back to haunt them. Reaching Lifetime-levels of over-the-top drama, Fifty Shades Freed is questionable, occasionally laugh-out-loud silly, and as hot as a glass of ice-cold tea on a summer's day. Whatever chemistry Dornan and Johnson once shared has all but evaporated, with the pair looking desperate to get out of there and never look back. They have indeed gone on to bigger and better things, and at least there's no hint of a new movie in this misguided franchise, so there's that.
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Fifty Shades Freed
4 The Kingsman Franchise
Last Movie: 'The King's Man' (2021)
Kingsman: The Secret Service was a true breath of fresh air when it came out in 2014. It offered a hectic, hyper-violent, highly stylized take on action that introduced the world to the wonderful talents of Taron Egerton. Its sequel was less successful but still worked based on Egerton's chemistry with an always-game Colin Firth and key supporting performances from Pedro Pascal and Julianne Moore.
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However, the 2021 prequel, The King's Man, undid all the goodwill its two predecessors received. The film itself is far from horrible; in fact, it's a perfectly decent, run-of-the-mill action thriller. However, its now-infamous ending, which sets up a young Adolf Hitler (David Kross) as a future villain in a post-credits scene, Avengers-style, wrapped up the whole thing in a laughable and mind-numbingly bizarre note. Sadly, the Kingsman franchise won't return anytime soon, meaning the series ended on an absurd scene that has already been mocked to hell and back.
3 The Hobbit Trilogy
Last Movie: 'The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies' (2014)
The behind-the-scenes story of The Hobbit trilogy is more interesting than the movies themselves. After Oscar winner Guillermo del Toro left the project, Peter Jackson returned to direct a new Middle-earth trilogy, heavily relying on CGI and expanding the story to fit three movies. While the first two movies are mostly successful and can get away with these choices, the third one, The Battle of the Five Armies, suffers heavily from them.
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Major characters are sidelined, and the franchise's once-mighty action sequences are reduced to confused, blurry, and barely distinguishable CGI-heavy messes that overwhelm and confuse rather than enthrall. The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies sees the trilogy limping to the finish line, trying to do too much with a bare-bones premise that really didn't warrant a solo movie. Compared to Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Hobbit is a disjointed jumble, and the third film fails to provide a satisfying conclusion.
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
PG-13
Adventure
Fantasy
- Release Date
- December 17, 2014
- Director
- Peter Jackson
- Cast
- Martin Freeman , Ian McKellen , Richard Armitage , Evangeline Lilly , Luke Evans , Lee Pace , Benedict Cumberbatch , Cate Blanchett , Orlando Bloom , Hugo Weaving
- Runtime
- 144 minutes
- Writers
- Fran Walsh , Philippa Boyens , Peter Jackson , Guillermo del Toro
2 The Pirates of the Caribbean Franchise
Last Movie: 'Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales' (2017)
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Few movie trilogies are as beloved today as Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean. The first three movies are widely considered triumphs of the adventure genre, revitalizing the swashbuckling genre (if only for a minute) and cementing Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley as millennial icons. Pretty much every aspect of the trilogy has aged like fine wine, from the humor to the performances to the impressive VFX, especially with the now-iconic Davy Jones (Bill Nighy).
However, the subsequent two movies are far worse, with the last one, Dead Men Tell No Tales, considered a trainwreck. By that point, the comedy had grown stale, and Johnny Depp's performance once refreshing and witty performance had become more tiresome than a Bond villain. The last movie lost sight of what made the franchise special, replacing all the heart and pathos with cheap escapism and bombastic sequences that didn't even match the heights set by the first three movies. Pirates of the Caribbean stands as an example of burning a great IP to the ground, and while a new movie is supposedly in the works, there have been few developments on that front.
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Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales
1 The Divergent Series
Last Movie: 'The Divergent Series: Allegiant' (2016)
The Divergent Series has become an infamous cautionary tale about the dangers of doing too much with a series that was always more of an acquired taste. Shamelessly trying to take the slot left by Jennifer Lawrence's Hunger Games franchise, Divergent adapted Veronica Roth's trilogy of books, with Shailene Woodley and Theo James starring.
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Unfortunately, Divergent was no Hunger Games, and Tris Pryor was no Katniss Everdeen. The trilogy received a mediocre audience and critical reception from the beginning, and the numerous changes made to the already average books only alienated the core fanbase. By the time the third movie came around, literally no one cared. Allegiantis aimless and confusing, going against the series' previously established mythos for the sake of spectacle. A potential fourth movie was scrapped, and so were plans for a spin-off series to end the story, leaving this misguided YA exercise unfinished.
The Divergent Series: Allegiant
PG-13
Sci-Fi
Action
Adventure
Mystery
Romance
- Release Date
- March 18, 2016
- Director
- Robert Schwentke
- Cast
- Maggie Q , Theo James , Jonny Weston , Keiynan Lonsdale , Naomi Watts , Shailene Woodley , Bill Skarsgard , Miles Teller , Jeff Daniels , Ansel Elgort , Zoe Kravitz
- Runtime
- 120minutes
- Writers
- Stephen Chbosky , Noah Oppenheim , Adam Cooper , Bill Collage
NEXT: The 10 Worst Dystopian Movies, Ranked
- Allegiant
- The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
- Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales
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