Super-Franchise MeLists that rank the best and worst film series, sequels, prequels, threequels, and other ways movie studios chew up and regurgitate good ideas to squeeze out every last dignity-free penny.
Vote up the movies that ended on a perfect note (that didn't last).
Sometimes, Hollywood really nails an emotional ending. Return of the Jedi sees Vader turn, the Emperor die, and the Rebels win the day in a truly joyous manner. Toy Story 3 sees Andy's toys learn to move on while staying together as they are donated to Bonnie in a poignant fashion. Terminator 2: Judgment Day sees Arnold's T-800 sacrifice himself to save the entire planet from a harrowing future.
In all these cases, the ending served as a succinct and uplifting finale to the story the filmmakers were telling... only for the next film in the franchise to throw all that away. The Force Awakens, Toy Story 4, and Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines all did their part to walk all over the emotional closure of the films that came before them. When there is money to be made, you can bet film franchises will find a way to carry on no matter what.
Terminator 2: Judgment Day is just about as perfect as a big-budget film sequel can get. It brought back both the director and the principal cast from the original. It builds on the interesting Terminator lore in exciting ways. It has groundbreaking special effects and some of the most memorable action scenes ever put to celluloid. In addition to all of that, Judgment Day also provides a resolute, if not final, ending for the franchise. An alternate ending would've provided an even happier finale for Sarah and John Connor, as well.
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines doesn't undo the ending of Terminator 2: Judgment Day as much as it wipes out the finality of it. Hollywood studios will always chase the assumed box-office success sequels offer, and that certainly has been the case for the Terminator franchise. None of the subsequent sequels - Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Terminator Salvation, Terminator Genisys, or Terminator: Dark Fate - have reached the monetary or critical heights of Judgment Day. Perhaps the rights-holders should've left well enough alone?
When Toy Story 3 hit theaters in 2010, it wrapped up the trilogy that put Pixar on the map with a big, beautiful bow. The film proved to be universally beloved upon release, destroyed at the box office, and gave a fitting ending to a cherished cast of characters in what was a near-perfect ending. Woody, Buzz, and the rest of the gang, phased out of usefulness thanks to human aging, find a new owner in Bonnie as Andy goes off to college. Young adults everywhere were reduced to tears, and that was that.
And then Toy Story 4 happened. Now, it's not like Toy Story 4 isn't a fantastic film. It is. That being said, its mere existence muddles the emotional resonance of Toy Story 3's ending more than a bit. As Woody leaves the rest of Bonnie's toys to be with Bo Peep at the end of Toy Story 4, it turns out our favorite toys won't stick around together forever. Ultimately, audiences knew that deep in their hearts, but it is an entirely different thing to be confronted with it.
It is hard to overstate how big Star Wars was in the late '70s/early '80s. George Lucas's masterpiece changed everything in the pop-culture sphere and became a genuine phenomenon that continues to this day. There was nothing like it before and there really hasn't been anything like it since. When the original trilogy came to an end with Return of the Jedi, Lucas and company gave the rabid fandom a happy ending to cap things off after the dire plot machinations of The Empire Strikes Back. The Rebels win the day, the Emperor is slain by Darth Vader, and everyone celebrates with a massive Ewok forest party.
When the sequel trilogy - something fans had been waiting decades for - finally came to pass, beginning with 2015's The Force Awakens, the Empire was replaced with the First Order, and everything seemed pretty much unchanged as far as the state of the galaxy was concerned. Sure, the Emperor and Darth Vader were dead (at least, until The Rise of Skywalker hit multiplexes in the case of Palpatine), but the First Order had Snoke and Kylo Ren to replace them. The First Order was even using a large, circular weapon to destroy planets. Everything that's old is new again, apparently.
Sam Neill's Dr. Alan Grant begins Jurassic Park as a somewhat curmudgeonly paleontologist who really doesn't like kids. What does Grant think of children? Well, he claims "they're noisy, they're messy, they're expensive" and that "they smell." And while that may all be pretty accurate, it doesn't take away from how magical raising kids can be. This is something Grant's partner and love interest, Dr. Ellie Sattler, makes very clear. By the end of the film - after all the running and screaming and surviving - Grant shoots Ellie a knowing look as John Hammond's grandkids fall asleep on him. Ellie and Grant are gonna have kids!
Oh, wait. No... no, they're not. When Jurassic Park III was released in 2001, Ellie and Grant had split up entirely. Ellie was married to a US State Department stooge named Mark and had two kids with that guy instead. What a bummer. Though it was hardly the worst thing about Jurassic Park III, was it?
Ellen Ripley could just never catch a break. She managed to defeat the Xenomorph in Alien and put herself into stasis for a return trip to Earth, only to find herself in the midst of a Xenomorph infestation on LV-426 57 years later in Aliens. After that awful experience, Ripley crash-lands on a penal colony with the embryo of a Xenomorph Queen inside of her in Alien 3. Ever the hero, Ripley sacrifices herself at the end of Alien 3 to kill the Queen embryo and save what surely would've been a considerable amount of lives.
But that wasn't the end for dear old Ripley, oh no. Alien Resurrection sees Ripley cloned back to life 200 years later to retrieve the Queen embryo from her body (don't ask). For whatever reason, even though the Alien franchise took place in the endless expanse of space, the various production teams always felt the story must center around Sigourney Weaver's Ripley, no matter how convoluted it ended up being. It would take more than 30 years for the Alien film series to leave Ripley behind for Prometheus.
Wonder Woman actually does something interesting with Diana's love interest, Steve Trevor, at the end of the film. Before the lackluster CGI battle between Diana and Ares gets completely out of hand, Chris Pine's Trevor ends up sacrificing himself to safely destroy a new form of mustard gas before an untold number of humans are killed by its lethal power. It's rare to see a comic book movie commit to doing away with a love interest played by an A-list star like this.
So, when it was announced Chris Pine would be coming back for the sequel, Wonder Woman 1984, fans began to wonder how that was even possible. Shockingly, it ended up involving some classic comic bookery in the form of the Dreamstone. Diana wishes for his return, and his soul returns to Earth in the body of another man. It gives Diana a chance to finally work through her grief decades after Trevor's demise, but it somewhat belittles the man's sacrifice at the end of the 2017 original.
