Our week of birthday celebrations (we’re 4 now, you know) are going well. No hookers have died, we’ve drank ourselves sober and birthday cake is being found in places where birthday cake shouldn’t be found!!! Here’s another feature that we’re calling The Good, The Bad and The Fourth Film. We take a look at franchises that have more than a sequel, whether or not the fourth movie in the franchise is good or bad we aim to find out. So read on, lovely reader!
Star Trek 4: The Voyage Home
The final part of it's own separate trilogy within the franchise, staring with The Wrath of Khan and continued in The Search for Spock, The Voyage Home is probably Star Trek at it's most Star Trek-iest. With the insane plot, the crew of The Enterprise must travel back in time (by sling shot-ing around the sun) and bring hunchback whales to the future to communicate with an ancient probe that is close to destroying Earth, laid out on the table, the stage is set for probably the most fun Star Trek film ever, playing the 'fish out of water' aspect for the highest comedic value possible.
Memorable scene: Scotty coming to grips with a computer from the 1980's.
Batman and Robin
Sure, picking Batman and Robin seems like the easy option, but hey, I'm not one above shooting fish in a barrel. This completes the downward slide Joel Schumacher began with Batman Forever, completely replacing the dark tone and gothic astethic Tim Burton strived for with flashy neon and something approaching Adam West's Batman on the big screen. It put an end to Batman movies for 8 years until Batman Begins was able to erase the bad taste of it from cinema goers mouths.
Memorable scene: Anything with Arnie's Mr Feeze and his wide selection of ice puns.
Star Wars: A New Hope
Now depending on how you view your Star Wars, this could really be the first movie as opposed to being the fourth. But technically (and we can just about count here) it’s the fourth movie in the franchise. I guess we all know the story by now, but in case you’ve just come out of a very long hibernation, the story is about a young chap who’s the son of a dude that was full of midi keyboards (or something midi anyway). He doesn’t know it (yet) and goes off with an Old man, a scoundrel and an angry, hairy, bad chess playing bear. He also wants to bang his sister pretty bad, except they don’t know they’re related. Regardless, they don’t get down with some incest until the fifth movie. On a serious note, Star Wars defined generations! Hundreds of thousands of people (including myself) class it as one of their favourite films of all time, and it really is an awesome fourth movie!
Memorable scene: Han Solo returns to save Luke’s ass! Then they blow the thing and go home! Epic!
Lethal Weapon 4
6 Years after the third one, Richard Donner, Mel Gibson and Danny Glover decided to get the band back together one more time and this time with some extra Joe Pesci and added Jet Li for good measure. The original 2 were superb and the third outing wasn’t bad either, but with a clunky script, pacing and too much rain the fourth movie in the franchise was a bit of washout. While still watchable and mildly entertaining, Lethal Weapon 4 just couldn’t rekindle the magic of the earlier movies!
Memorable scene: Murtaugh and his red underpants!
