"Is there a story that’s going to keep me emotionally invested for the couple of years that it will take to make another one? That's the overriding question," Nolan said, alluding to the dilemma involved in making a viable second movie, let alone a third installment.
Nolan is dead-on in his assertion, at least in regard to sequels to successful comic book movie adaptations that become redundant and linger on with seemingly nowhere to go. The following five movies show how superhero movie franchises became stale after a while, but for varying reasons other than them reaching the limits of their appeal.
"Spider-Man 3" seemed to be horrible by deliberate negligence on the part of its director, Sam Raimi, in what was perhaps an attempt to end what Sony Picture's wanted to be an even bigger franchise that would have spanned three more movies.
Not only are Spider-man's challenges too numerous, but central characters such as Mary Jane and Harry Osborn are portrayed as erratic contrasts from the personalities established in the past movies and poorly utilized, respectively. Not to mention that Flint Marko/Sandman, a far-from-mainstream villain that Spider-man forgives and lets get away, was more central to the movie's redundant plot than was the ever popular Eddie Brock/Venom, who is killed off. READ RELATED POST!
"X-Men 3: The Last Stand" was the unfortunate result of the director of its first two predecessors, Bryan Singer, opting to instead helm "Superman Returns."
Director Brett Ratner attempted to pick up the slack, but instead he kills off central characters such as Cyclops and Professor Charles Xavier, grounds the origin of The Dark Phoenix to a split personality of Gene Gray instead of as a result of a dramatic jump in evolution, forces Kitty Pride in-between Iceman and Rogue's romantic relationship, and introduces mostly bizarre new mutants in a misfired, solely action-packed sequel for characters that have more range than just being subjected to fighting one another to a bitter end.
"Superman Returns" was Singer's not-so-action-packed serenade to and retelling of the first movie in the franchise, the plot details of which were only slightly different.
To sum it up quickly, Superman saves Lois from a plane, not a helicopter this time; again romantically flies with her through the air and he foils another real estate-related plot for riches concocted by Lex Luthor.
Aside from that, the only original aspects of the movie are that Superman disappeared from Earth for five years to sift through the aftermath of Krypton's explosion for no reason and comes back without Supergirl, Lois married her editor's son during that time and gave birth to The Big Blue Boy Scout's asthmatic son.
"Blade Trinity" changed the tone of its predecessors movies in that the central character went from kicking the collective asses of vampires, but not bothering to take their names on his own to him going after Dracula and his new age undead comrades with the help of a wise-cracking Scooby Doo-like gang of rookie slayers.
Wesley Snipes' increasing frustration with portraying Blade was likely why the dark, brooding half-human-half-vampire allowed the mouthy Hannibal King and sexy Abigail Whistler to steal the show.
"Hellboy II: The Golden Army" is not a bad movie, but it offers a redundant hero-thrown-into-royal-feud plot that allows new and established central characters to do what they do best, which is to fight monsters and keep butting heads with one another because of their individual idiosyncrasies.
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