JAWS 3-D (1983)
Has the term “jumping the shark” ever been so well placed? With no Steven Spielberg and none of its original cast, Universal Pictures got desperate (or innovative, depending how you look at it), and had their famed monster Great White shark break the limitations of 2-D, while tearing apart any status of credibility.
MAD MAX: BEYOND THUNDERDOME (1985)
Things began well and then...here comes Tina Turner and a group of grunt kinds. “Mad” Max gets promoted from reluctant hero to saviour. George Miller loses his grip on the series, and turns in a film which had its fans thinking back to the rev-head charged splendour of its previous instalments.
BATMAN FOREVER (1995)
Gone was Tim Burton’s grand gothic vision, only to be replaced by Joel Schumacher and his love for pastels and bat-nipples. Gone too was Michael Keaton, and while replacement Val Kilmer was serviceable in the cape and cow, it just wasn’t the same. The lone saving grace in Batman Forever was Jim Carrey’s OTT turn as The Riddler. Too bad he was paired with a ham fisted Tommy Lee Jones.
THE KARATE KID PART III (1989)
The Karate Kid was a moving tale of an underdog who fights against adversity with the help of a gifted teacher. The Karate Kid Part III featured a spoiled brat warped in his own ego, facing the same ol’ adversities in the previous two films, without having learned a thing or providing a glimmer of class its originator possessed.
SUPERMAN III (1983)
God bless Christopher Reeve. He had to have known that Superman III was bound to be a turkey after Richard Pryor signed on as the comic relief. Yet he stuck with it, even when Gene Hackman and Margot Kidder jumped ship. Good thing too, because this threequel needed more than Superman to save it.
RAMBO III (1985)
Sylvester Stallone’s ego transformed what was a moving story about a Vietnam veteran’s struggle to fit in with society, into a joke of an action series that would go on to become a source of parody for years to come, with Rambo III the worst of the bunch.
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