Mongo Nation

Rare instances in which number 2 is number 1

By Jeremy Azevedo

Everyone knows that nine times out of ten, movie sequels suck so bad that they make you want to bash your head in with a petrified movie theater hot dog. Painful and unnecessary, they represent the unchecked greed that is destroying our entertainment industry, and the stupidity of the people that they are marketed to.

Except for these sequels listed here, which were all freakin’ sweet! Each and every one of the following films were even better than the originals, most (but not all) of which were pretty great to begin with. Please note that planned trilogies were considered for the list, as the second movie in any trilogy (except the Matrix) is always the best in the series and therefore unfair to include. So if you’re looking for Empire, the The Two Towers or Godfather 2, go look up some hack-job AFI list instead.

The Dark Knight

While Batman Begins was a far sight better than the couple of lame-o Batman movies that preceded it, there were still one or two problems with it. It had too much painfully redundant origin stuff, and lacked a truly memorable villain. Plus, Katie Holmes was intolerably out of place (bad actress, way too young to be the D.A. of Gotham, not even that hot to make up for it, etc.). The Dark Knight corrected all of these problems, nixing Holmes, adding The Joker and Two Face to the mix, dispensing with all the lame origin bullshit and getting right into the action. Everything about The Dark Knight was better in every way, and has the box office numbers to back it up. I still say it was about an hour too long though. Read the rest of this entry →