Earlier this year, I had the privilege of enjoying the latest installment in the possibly immortal (though it’s hard to imagine it without Tony Todd) Final Destination franchise, and enjoy it I did. Despite being significantly longer than every other 90-minute-or-less entry in the series, Final Destination: Bloodlines is a more than worthy sequel that never disappoints, and fits comfortably in the top tier of the franchise. Here’s the thing, though: Bloodlines is the sixth entry, and the fourth one was called The Final Destination.
The Final Destination. As in, the last one. There have been two more since then.
Nothing unusual there, really; Friday the 13th did the same thing with their fourth entry, the so-called Final Chapter, and there were no less than six more sequels after that, plus Freddy vs. Jason and the 2009 reboot. Where Final Destination fucked up, though, is that 2009’s The Final Destination, the fourth entry in the series, was the first of two sequels to be released in 3-D. I repeat, the fourth and fifth movies were the ones released in 3-D. Say what you will about the Friday the 13th franchise, at least they got that part right, with 1982’s Part III being the only one released in 3-D.
Hell, even the third Jaws movie got it right, and that is the only time in your life you will ever read that sentence. Seriously, I want to meet the guy who thinks Jaws 3-D is the pinnacle of that particular franchise.
This is not a phenomenon that only afflicts schlocky horror franchises, either, and it has only gotten worse in recent times. For example, the third Bad Boys movie is called Bad Boys for Life. Bad Boys 4 Life, if you will, and they surely would have if it had been the fourth entry in the series, as the good lord intended. Did they think they weren’t going to make a fourth one? That the Bad Boys series was so prestigious that it should end after the thoroughly dignified trilogy had wrapped, rather than pursuing the more lucrative but mercenary trappings of an ongoing series. Well, guess what? They did make a fourth movie, and do you know what it’s called? You don’t, and neither do I, because no one saw it, because they had already wasted the perfect title!
Ok, so it was called Bad Boys: Ride or Die and I just discovered it made $405 million worldwide. Its lack of significant cultural impact beyond that surprising box office figure probably has more to do with Will Smith’s slap-happy shenanigans at the Oscars, but I contend the poor decision-making involved in those titles contributed to the problem.
Which brings us to the most egregious example of all: Now You See Me. Remember that magician movie from a dozen years ago, with Jesse Eisenberg, Lizzy Caplan, Woody Harrelson, Morgan Freeman, and Mark Ruffalo, among others? If not, don’t worry, it did well enough at the box office to get a sequel in 2016 even without your help. And that sequel was, of course, called… say it with me, the sequel to the movie called Now You See Me was obviously called Now You…
See Me 2! I kid you not, the fucking thing is called Now You See Me 2!
I feel like this is the last terrible thing Weinstein did before we found out about all that other stuff. Like, he was probably just jerking off into a potted plant, forcing his assistant to maintain eye contact with him, and she tried to say something reasonable like, “Well, sir, the first film was called Now You See Me, and most of the original cast is returning, so I think the audience would be able to follow along if we called it Now You—”
“See Me 2!” Weinstein shouted here, whilst manipulating himself obscenely. “That way they’ll know it’s a sequel!” At this point, he dribbled cum into the soil of the dieffenbachia or whatever and then took a little nap.
And, sure, Now You See Me was not actually a Weinstein production, but my version just feels true. It has also come to my attention that there is a third Now You See Me movie being released next month with the cumbersome, overlong title Now You See Me: Now You Don’t, which is simultaneously too little too late, and doing entirely too much. I plan to boycott it on principle (and because the first one wasn’t that good and I never saw the second).
Jaws 3-D got it right.
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