There should be only one

In his "notebook" on the Chicago Tribune website, Eric Zorn mentioned that he and his son had read the sequel to "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory". He thought that it was horrible and requested other stories of bad sequels. Today, he used part of an email that I sent him about a bad sequel. My full email:

I'm reminded of the sequel "rules" that were discussed, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, in Scream 3. Mostly, and unfortunately, my mind went to The Highlander sequel(s). The gist of the first Highlander story was that "there can be only one", and the story follows "the one". My main problem with the second of the Highlander movies is that it seemed to reinvent the wheel, while also attempting to extend the story line. A completely new back-story is created, none of which was mentioned in the first. Oh, they're not just immortal, they're aliens living amongst us. It was all very silly, and I finally felt silly for watching it. To make matters worse, they went on to make another sequel with more characters, and then a television series based on another new character. What happened to "there can be only one"? Definitely, there should have been only one.

My sister is a huge Sci-Fi fan, and told me that considering the second movie outside the story line of the first film, the second works just fine. My response was something like: "why would you EVER consider a sequel outside the structure of the original story?" Since Hollywood loves franchises, and Sci-Fi particularly so, I'm sure this story would be altered today to allow for all the sorts of expansions that followed.

You can see Zorn's notebook here.