Since the Hollywood machine is intent on turning every intellectual property into a cash-cow franchise, studios will keep pumping out sequels to their movies until they stop making money. They rarely make the decision to end a franchise for creative reasons, because the filmmakers came up with the perfect ending to the story. If they’re able to stop there, it’s usually because the perfect ending bombed at the box office.
Over the years, there have been a bunch of movies that would’ve made a perfect conclusion to their series, but eventually got undone by yet another sequel. From Terminator 3 to Toy Story 4, these sequels took their franchises one step too far.
10 Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines (2003)
After The Terminator became a sleeper hit, James Cameron could command a much larger budget to turn the sequel into the most expensive all-out action extravaganza in Hollywood history. Terminator 2: Judgment Day raises the scale and the stakes from the first movie, as a second killer cyborg enters the mix and Sarah Connor’s son is in jeopardy.
The ending of T2, in which Sarah destroys Skynet and prevents Judgment Day, ensuring a bright future for herself and John, was the ideal ending for the Terminator saga. But, years later, the series continued without Cameron with Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, which made Sarah’s efforts in T2 useless and killed her off-screen with a terminal illness.
9 Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull (2008)
1989’s Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade couldn’t have been a more definitive and satisfying conclusion to Indy’s adventures. The opening flashback digs into the character’s backstory, the plot sees him reconnecting with his estranged father, and the final scene sees him literally riding off into the sunset.
Nearly 20 years later, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and Harrison Ford reunited for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, a movie riddled with dodgy CGI, ridiculous set pieces like fridge-nuking and monkey-swinging, and aliens, which don’t belong in an Indiana Jones movie at all.
8 Toy Story 4 (2019)
Andy passing on his beloved toys for a new kid to enjoy was the perfect conclusion for the Toy Story series. Fans couldn’t have asked for a more moving final image than Woody and Buzz watching Andy drive off to college as they embrace their uncertain future.
It’s not that Toy Story 4 is a bad movie; it’s actually pretty great. But it feels more like a postscript than a full movie, because it simply explores what happened after Toy Story 3’s bittersweet ending. Toy Story 4’s ending is still moving, but it doesn’t have the emotional impact that Toy Story 3 had.
7 The Fate Of The Furious (2017)
Although The Fast Saga is looking to bow out within the next few years with its 10th and 11th installments, it should’ve ended much earlier with Furious 7. From the offset, the heart of the Fast & Furious franchise was Vin Diesel’s chemistry with Paul Walker in the roles of Dom and Brian.
Walker’s untimely passing in the middle of the Furious 7 shoot enforced a bunch of rewrites on the movie, but James Wan and co. ended up pulling off the perfect send-off for Paul Walker. There’s no way that the ending of Fast 11 will be able to top Dom and Brian’s final race set to “See You Again.”
6 The Godfather Part III (1990)
Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather and The Godfather Part II are two of the greatest movies ever made. The first one tells the story of Vito Corleone trying to keep his wayward son Michael out of the illicit family business, only for Michael to end up becoming the new boss. Part II charted the loss of Michael’s humanity while simultaneously following Vito’s rise in a prequel on the side.
Together, these two movies give a complete portrait of the Corleone family and the corruptibility of human beings in general. Coppola was happy to leave it as a duology, but Paramount was eager to complete the trilogy. According to The New York Times, a dire financial situation forced Coppola to reluctantly take the studio’s offer to make The Godfather Part III. It plays as a sort of epilogue to Michael’s story, which the saga could’ve done without.
5 X-Men: Dark Phoenix (2019)
James Mangold’s Oscar-nominated gem Logan was such a perfect swan song for Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine and Patrick Stewart’s Professor X that it could’ve also been a perfect swansong for Fox’s X-Men series. Wolvie reluctantly springs back into action one last time and sacrifices himself to ensure the survival of the next generation of mutants.
This would’ve made the perfect bittersweet finale for two decades of X-Men movies, but instead, the franchise followed it up with its second disappointing adaptation of the Dark Phoenix saga.
4 The Bourne Legacy (2012)
Third movies are tricky to pull off, but 2007’s The Bourne Ultimatum was the perfect trilogy closer that provided all the answers fans wanted (like the actual Bourne identity). Since Universal wanted to keep raking in cash, the studio cast Jeremy Renner to star as a new character called Aaron Cross in The Bourne Legacy.
Fans were disappointed by the lack of Matt Damon in The Bourne Legacy, so Damon returned with director Paul Greengrass for 2016’s Jason Bourne, which felt equally unnecessary.
3 Alien 3 (1992)
James Cameron’s Aliens is one of the greatest sequels of all time. Instead of contending with one xenomorph, Ellen Ripley has to contend with a hive of dozens and their queen – and this time, she has a surrogate daughter named Newt. At the end of the movie, Ripley vanquishes the queen and leaves the planet with Newt and a pair of other fan-favorites, Hicks and Bishop.
Just as the first movie could’ve stood on its own without a sequel, the first and second movies could’ve stood on their own as a duology. Of course, after Aliens was a huge box office success, Fox got to work on Alien 3. The opening scene of Alien 3 reveals that all the beloved characters from Aliens except Ripley have been killed off-screen.
2 Rambo: Last Blood (2019)
Sylvester Stallone’s first big-screen outing as John Rambo, First Blood, is a taut, tense thriller with interesting subtext about the PTSD suffered by Vietnam veterans. However, the two sequels that followed embraced Reagan-era jingoism and glorified war. 2008’s Rambo brought the character back to his roots, presenting him as a grizzled antihero who’s reluctant to jump into action.
After singlehandedly demolishing the Burmese militia, Rambo is free to give up his life of violence and moves back to his father’s ranch to lead a peaceful life. This would’ve been the perfect end to Rambo’s story. But then, Stallone came out with 2019’s Last Blood, which has little real connection to the Rambo character – it could just be a run-of-the-mill revenge thriller.
1 Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)
For years, George Lucas toyed with the idea of adding Episodes VII, VIII, and IX to the Star Wars saga, but according to The Hollywood Reporter, he ultimately decided against it after the fan backlash to the prequels and, according to the L.A. Times, after realizing Return of the Jedi was the perfect conclusion to the story. The Rebels defeat the Empire, peace is restored in the galaxy, and Darth Vader is redeemed.
If Star Wars is the story of Anakin Skywalker, then Return of the Jedi is its final chapter. But Disney spent billions of dollars to buy Lucasfilm and wanted some bang for their buck, so they rushed out a largely unplanned sequel trilogy that undoes just about every satisfying conclusion from Return of the Jedi, including Vader’s redemption.
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