A month and a half ago, "Scream 4" opened to mixed reviews and flopped at the box office. I myself joined the multitudes of movie-goers that didn't see it.
The fourth "Pirates of the Caribbean" film will be graded on a curb comparatively. It's been less time since the last one - only 4 years compared to the decade between "Scream" flicks - and the Walt Disney produced series has a much broader appeal.
Whether or not it will be a successful sequel remains to be seen, but it has a hard hurdle to jump because history has shown that most of the fourth entries in movie series have usually been let-downs.
Think of "Superman IV", "Jaws: The Revenge", "Alien: Resurrection", "Rocky IV", "Lethal Weapon 4", "Vegas Vacation", "Police Academy 4" (okay, those all really sucked), and "Batman and Robin" to name, well, 8.
And that's not mentioning the scores of hideous 4th installments of horror series.
I kinda liked the fourth Indiana Jones movie, and it was a ginormous hit financially, but the fanboy force thought it was awful, and it's been derided on such TV shows as "South Park" and "Community" so it's hard to think of it as a successful sequel.
When it comes to the "Star Wars" series, one could argue for "Episode IV: A New Hope," but that was really the first one. It's revisionist history to actually consider that the fourth one. The fourth one is really "Episode I: The Phantom Menace," and we all know how that's regarded.
There have been some notable exceptions - the fourth Dirty Harry movie wasn't bad (it even sported the series most memorable line: "Go ahead, make my day"), "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home" was a critical and fan favorite, and the fourth James Bond movie, "Thunderball," is undeniably a classic.
Otherwise the field of fourths is really full of failures.
It's an extremely risky thing to make a #4; if you leave it at 3 films you have a nice trilogy, if you try for a fourth you risk tarnishing the legacy of a beloved franchise.
Don't get me wrong, seems like folks are liking "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides," and kudos to the Pirates powers that be for not naming their entries with numbers - but it's hard not to be aware of the sequel stakes involved.
Because, as Bart Simpson found out, sometimes the only worth of continuing to make sequels is that it teaches kids Roman numerals.
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