Let’s be honest, you don't really need to watch every movie in every popular franchise,
do you?
For one reason or another, some movies just aren’t worth the trouble.
These are the popcorn flicks which franchise fans are better off skipping.
The Lost World: Jurassic Park isn’t exactly a bad movie, but it is a little too long and
tends to feel like a band rehashing their biggest hit.
Aside from a few stellar action sequences, the movie doesn't really move the Jurassic
Park saga forward, and the ostensible "payoff" of a T-Rex running roughshod over San Diego
only occupies the final 20 or 30 minutes of the film.
And yes, a case could be made for Jurassic Park III being inessential viewing, too.
But at 90 minutes, that instalment is a simple, dopey monster movie that doesn't ever wear
out its welcome.
And as the Jurassic films continue to stripmine the tired "man must not tinker with nature"
trope, it's worth remembering that, in the end, they're all dopey monster movies at heart.
It's kind of a shame that X-Men: The Last Stand is so very mediocre and skippable, because
the end of X2 suggested a powerful transition to Marvel's classic "Dark Phoenix" storyline,
with its own homage to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
Instead, the third film in the original X-Men trilogy waters down Jean Grey's story by crowding
the movie with an endless array of unnecessary villains, including a vast collection of old
and new bad guys from the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.
"Don’t you know who I am?
I’m the Juggernaut, bitch!"
With 2011's X-Men: First Class, screenwriters Matt Vaughn and Jane Goldman managed the tricky
feat of creating a film that was both a prequel and reboot of the X-Men franchise.
Its sequel, X-Men: Days of Future Past, adapted a classic Marvel comics storyline which unceremoniously
retconned the events of The Last Stand out of existence.
Miss this movie, and you won’t miss much at all.
The Alien movies are renowned for their ability to purvey an overwhelming, inevitable and
deeply uncomfortable sense of dread.
Whether it's just Ripley and that single xenomorph in the original film or the most recent cast
of colonial characters introduced in 2017's Alien: Covenant, it’s usually a certainty
that there will be plenty of jump scares, grisly chestbursters galore, and lots and
lots of death.
Prometheus fails on a number of levels, but it's that lack of any real dread that really
makes it the most skippable of Alien movies.
Modern franchises may love to fill their universes with obscure and often unnecessary origin
stories, and that may work for running up box office numbers, but it doesn't make the
movies themselves any more interesting.
Filled with backstory yet unable to strike that sense of fear which makes Alien movies
so great, Prometheus just ends up feeling bloated.
If you're a Star Wars fan, you’re likely familiar with the "Machete Order," a viewing
plan devised by fan Rod Hilton in which the prequels slot into the original trilogy, right
after The Empire Strikes Back.
Instead of a tacked-on afterthought, the prequels suddenly become a long flashback sequence
with far greater emotional resonance than they originally had.
Notably, the Machete Order omits The Phantom Menace.
The movie doesn't really contain any critical story points relevant to the rise and fall
of Anakin Skywalker, or his eventual redemption, so out it goes.
Whatever order you do watch these films in, it's very easy to omit the first Star Wars
prequel without missing any important story at all.
Of course, it doesn’t help that The Phantom Menace is also a completely horrible movie.
Chances are, it’s not only as bad as you remember it, it’s actually worse.
Just skip it.
Terminator: Genisys was envisioned as a fresh start for the Terminator franchise, arriving
six years after 2009's Terminator Salvation, which is today probably best remembered more
for Christian Bale's on-set rants than for the movie itself.
Thor: The Dark World’s Alan Taylor stepped up to direct, joined by Game of Thrones star
Emilia Clarke alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger himself.
After the project registered a disappointing box office return, mostly because it opened
in competition with Jurassic World, sequel plans were put on hold and work started on
yet another "soft reboot," which picks up the plot after 1991's Terminator 2: Judgment
Day.
As it stands, Genisys might as well have never happened.
"I’ll be back."
"What?"
2008’s The Incredible Hulk isn’t a terrible movie, it’s just that this early attempt
at franchise-building came along before Marvel Studios had figured out the formula for making
their movies truly great.
Coming mere months after the Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk wasn't able to take on any
of Jon Favreau's tonal cues and suffered from the need to escape the long shadow of Ang
Lee's disappointing 2003 Hulk movie.
Incredible Hulk does have some interesting franchise-wide backstory involving the super-soldier
program that gave birth to Captain America, as well as a fun final scene involving Tony
Stark hinting at the creation of the Avengers.
But considering that Mark Ruffalo would ably take on the mantle of the Green Goliath from
Avengers onward, and considering the current Marvel franchise marathon clocks in at well
over 36 hours, you shouldn’t feel too bad for wanting to give this one a miss.
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