As this week's cinema release, Puss In Boots, proves, movie spin-offs can sometimes be even better than the original (well, Shrek The Third at least). Most of the time though, they’re total rubbish. Here's a selection of the very best and the very worst…
BEST
Get Him To The Greek
By far the very best thing about Forgetting Sarah Marshall (apart perhaps from Dracula’s Lament) was Russell Brand’s addled rocker Aldous Snow. In fact, he proved to be such a popular creation that he swiftly popped in an adventure all of his own as a lowly record exec (Jonah Hill) tries to get him from London to L.A’s famed Greek Theatre for a sell-out comeback gig. While Snow is little more than an extension of Russell’s own patented, well, brand of swagger and silliness, as spin-offs go they don’t get much better than this.
Machete
Teaching bad guys everywhere that he’s the wrong Mexican to f*** with, Machete (Danny Trejo) is a Hispanic hitman who made his first appearance in a made-up trailer sandwiched between Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’s ill-fated Grindhouse flicks Death Proof and Planet Terror. Making the move from fake flick to reel deal, this star-packed action-fest sees the likes of Robert De Niro, Lindsay Lohan, Michelle Rodriguez, Steven Seagal and Trejo (in a well-deserved leading-man role) delivering a marvellously over-the-top homage to Mex-ploitation movies. Following the success of Machete, another Grindhouse trailer, Hobo With A Shotgun, was made into a full-length film with Rutger Hauer in the lead. Hopefully, this will also pave the way for Rob Zombie’s Werewolf Women Of The SS and Edgar Wright’s Don’t.
The Chronicles Of Riddick
Bit of a controversial entry this one. Some may say this Pitch Black spin-off is a shadow of it inspiration (and we would agree) and that it is by no stretch of the imagination a decent film (here, we disagree). Sure, the storyline involving Vin Diesel's super-gruff anti-hero taking on an invading empire which plans to wipe out all human life in the universe was a bit bobbins and the tension and invention that made Pitch Black such a breakout success was notably absent, but, as bombastic guilty pleasures go, we stand behind Chronicles all the way. We know we can’t be wrong with this assessment as a follow-up to the Riddick saga is currently in the pre-production stage.
A Shot In The Dark
While Inspector Jacques Clouseau (Peter Sellers) will forever be synonymous with The Pink Panther, it wasn’t until director Blake Edwards came up with this murder-mystery spoof that the funny-accented Gallic detective got his moment in the sun. While the David Niven-led Pink Panther was the film to introduce the inept French crime fighter to an unsuspecting world, it was the swiftly released follow-up that gave us all the hilarious tropes (Herbert Lom’s gammey-eyed Commissioner Dreyfus and Burt Kwouk’s karate-chopping Kato among them) that made Clouseau into a cinematic legend.
WORST
Evan Almighty
When your leading man (in this case, Jim Carrey) decides he doesn’t want to return for a sequel, who do you turn to? How about the bloke who made a mildly amusing but very brief cameo appearance in the first film? Well that’s what the makers of Evan Almighty did and the shoddy results are there for all to see. Steve Carell takes the leading man reins as a fella who is told by God (Morgan Freeman) to build a modern-day ark like Noah’s. Cue lots of bad beard jokes, a few comedy monkeys and some very embarrassed-looking actors. At the time of filming, it was the most expensive comedy every made – someone should have got biblical on whoever thought it was a good idea to greenlight this disaster.
Catwoman
Tim Burton’s Batman Returns did a brilliant job of bringing Selina Kyle (AKA Catwoman) to life, so hopes were high that the eventual spin-off would be just as good. Unfortunately, the signs pointed to a cock-up of apocalyptic proportions very early on. First of all there was the miscast lead (Halle Berry), then there was the rubbish villain (Sharon Stone), followed by a guffy plot about an evil cosmetic company and topped off with some truly abominable special effects – needless to say, Anne Hathaway doesn’t have very big shoes to fill when she resurrects Catwoman in the upcoming The Dark Knight Rises. As a rule, female superheroes tend not to fend too well on the big screen, see also (or better still don’t) Elektra and Supergirl for further examples of how crime-fighting chicks and flicks don’t mix.
Caravan Of Courage: An Ewok Adventure
Down the back of a sofa in a galaxy far, far away lives this shocking addition to the Star Wars canon. Brought to you by the creative geniuses from Industrial Light And Magic (more likely their work experience placements), this tale of two kids separated from their parents, lost on the forest moon of Endor and befriended by the Ewoks (only marginally better than Jar-Jar Binks on the Star Wars Annoying Character Scale), this shocking spin-off is so cheap and cheerless that even the most hardcore George Lucas fan would have a hard time defending it. One for the Sarlaac pit we think, and you can take the sequel, Ewoks: The Battle For Endor, with it.
Alien Vs Predator
If you’re looking for something to blame for this preposterous mess, look no further than Predator 2 and a scene in a spaceship’s trophy room that proudly displays the skeleton of an acid-for-blood xenomorph. With that throwaway gag, fans spent years getting excited about the idea of an Alien/Predator face-off. Unfortunately, when that dream became a reality the result was more of a nightmare. Director Paul W.S. Anderson made the first of many career missteps with this hideously watered-down death match in which nothing or nobody truly won, especially the audience. Still, it wasn’t as bad the utterly lamentable sequel, Alien Vs Predator: Requiem.
Puss In Boots trailer:
Comments
Add a comment