The best of the series...
Submitted by jenhowel on Tue, 02/20/2001 - 09:14
Tags:
- Star Wars Trilogy - The Empire Strikes Back (and yes I agree w. Dante in "Clerks")
- Godfather Trilogy - Godfather II (you've gotta love Deniro's young Vito. The rooftop sequence and stuff in Italy alone!)
- Back to the Future series - Back to the Future II (I remember people applauding in the theatre twice during this exciting installment)
- Indiana Jones trilogy - Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Connery and Ford are brilliant together. Although Temple of Doom is my heart's favorite.)
- Nightmare on Elm Street series - Nightmare on Elm Street III: Dream Warriors (The concept of dream powers, the return of Nancy, Patricia Arquette and Laurence Fishburne, revelations about Freddy's parentage... it's all there)
- Sleepaway Camp - Sleepaway Camp 2 (the first one isn't scary enough the third one gets too silly. The second one is just silly enough. And it has the magic stick {you'll see})
- Phantasm series - Phantasm (It's all downhill after the first one. Good thing the hill's really tall.
- Terminator movies - Terminator II: Judgment Day (For Linda Hamilton's turn as a bad-ass alone this movie gains way more points. Also Edward Furlong is terrific, the effects are amazing, and the blow-up factor is way higher. But mainly it's all about Linda going bad-ass. Who wants a wimpy heroine?)
- Scream series - Scream II hands down. It's funnier. It's scarier and you know the characters well enough to give a shit. Also for no apparent reason the "Broken Arrow" music starts playing every time Dewey shows up.
- Jaws - Jaws the original is the best, but let me put in a plea for 2 and 3 being good themselves, and for 4 being, at least, very silly!
- Friday the 13th - I believe the one I want is part IV. In any case the one in which Corey Feldman appears. After watching ALL of them this summer, this one stood out as the scariest, funniest and most delightfully cheesy.
- Candyman - This is a no-brainer, but the original is way superior to its sequels, which actually sort of tarnish the original in its gorgeous gothic beauty. "Candyman" deserves a rank among the finest horror movies ever, and if sequels were necessary more effort should have been lavished upon them.
- Highlander Series - In the words of my ex-boyfriend, Joe, "There can be only one... Highlander worth watching." The first one, that is.
How about the ALIEN series, or is that 'no contest'? I know people who prefer the first, and there are many who prefer T1 over T2.
I think it's hard to pick a winner between Alien and Aliens - the former is a terrific horror movie, while the latter is a terrific action movie. I'd pick Aliens for rewatchability and enjoyable characters, but Alien is more suspenseful (and original, of course).
As far as the first two, I do prefer Aliens, but anal person that I am, I need to see the latter two before I comment on the series as a whole.
Most people professed to be disappointed by ALIEN 3, but the great thing about this series is that each of the three sequels is a definite sequel and yet the four movies are so very different in directorial style. ALIEN RESURRECTION is the most horrific of the series and features Sigourney Weaver's most interesting performance as 'Ripley'. And in defence of A3, it has the strongest genius loci (pardon my Latin, it means 'the spirit of the place') of the series.
While disappointed by 3 and 4, my negative opinion of 4 was probably worsened because my wife was quite pregnant when we saw it . . . NOT a good choice, in hindsight!
Good list idea! I haven't seen most of the horror movies, but with the others, there are a few I disagree with (of course, it's just a matter of personal opinion).
With the Terminator movies, I actually thought it was a toss up. For Indiana Jones, I have to go with Raiders, followed by the Last Crusade. Raiders had a great plot, humor, action...everything. Plus Harrison Ford was just H O T at that age. ;)
Great list! bitterms beat me to the punch (T1 and T2 tied, w/ Raiders barely edging out Last Crusade). I also think that the Scream/Scream 2 matchup could go either way. I'd probably personally give the edge to the original, mostly for originality.
And does a series only have to be two or more (I assume because of the inclusion of the Terminator movies)? If so, this list could be a lot longer. :-) There have been Oh-so-many sequels.
Here are some 3-or-more series off the top of my head:
Rocky, Rambo, James Bond, The Thin Man, Die Hard, The Prophecy, Exorcist, Friday the 13th, Halloween, King Kong/Godzilla, Highlander, Star Trek . . . My goodness . . . What an impressive pile of mostly blood and testosterone.
The reason most of the ones you mentioned aren't on the list is that I haven't seen ALL of them. This includes the Alien series. Though I can guess that the latter ones aren't the best ones esp. in that series, I don't know for myself. Whereas such series as Nightmare I've actually seen ALL of them. Can you believe it? Man. So, I guess the list will only be added to once I get busy watching movie series. Whoooo... James Bond is going to take a while.
a series does only have to be two or more in my rules, but I'm trying mainly to only include movie series where all the sequels are of comparable quality. Therefore I have not included Planet of the Apes and should not have included Jaws, probably. That is also why innumerable sequels such as "The Jewel of the Nile" are not eligible. But feel free to suggest 2 series that seem comparable. I have a poor memory.
I'm glad someone mentione the Thin Man series which featured perhaps the greatest film chmistry of all time, Powell and Loy. Also, foreign film series should not be overlooked: Kyslovski's Trois Colores: Blue, Red, White; Kyslovski's 10 Decalogues; and Segio Leone's spaghetti westerns: Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.
bufdet
I agree with a lot of your choices (especially Elm Street 3-the scene where Freddie uses the kids own skin for puppet strings will remain imbedded in my mind forever), but I'm going to have to put in my plug for Return of the Jedi as the best Star Wars movie.
Most people totally dismiss Jedi because of the Ewoks. I agree that they were pretty darn stupid, but the rest of the movie more than makes up for it. The Jabba desert execution sequence is one of the most exciting in any of the four movies. I also think Jedi had the best lightsaber sequences of the original three. I have always thought that Empire had some really slow parts which detract from my overall enjoyment of the movie.
My final argument: Leia in a bikini vs. Luke in a diaper -- no contest!
The Ewoks are actually not my issue with Return. In fact, I think the two movies are very closely matched, and that Jedi does have some killer sequences. What puts Empire over the top for me, though, is the amount of character development. Empire's the movie where everyone's in transition. Unlike the other two it's not just a straightforward mission, so ends up being less of a straightforward actioner. It's Empire, I think, that really paves the way for the excitement and tension in Return. Cause I can't get too excited about what happens to characters I don't care about. For me, Empire is what makes me really know and love the characters. Also, as in Clerks, the ending on a down-note. How ballsy is that? You don't often see a movie end on a down-note, let alone be so beloved. Sure the down-note lended to excitement for the sequel, but it also gives the series that needed touch of reality.