Geriatric and other distant sequels

Some upcoming and recently released sequels which are released a long time after the previous movie in the series, some real and some imagined:

Sylvester Stallone returns as the 50-something year-old title character in Rocky Balboa to fight the heavyweight champion of the world.

Police Academy 8: To the Moon. Steve Gutenberg leads a merry band of recruits and Bubba Smith to the moon to form the first extraterrestrial police force. Hijinks ensue. Special appearance by Henry Winkler, who jumps a shark on waterskis in the Sea of Tranquility.

ET 2. Henry Thomas needs the work.

Star Trek 12. William Shatner, Ricardo Montalban, and a wormhole. Enough said.

Sir Sean Connery as James Bond in Goldfinger 2. Turns out Oddjob wasn’t really dead. He and Bond battle it out after tempers flare and hats are thrown at a Florida condo board meeting. Pussy makes crabcakes for dinner.

Jaws 5. I think the shark talks this time.

Rambo IV: Pearl of the Cobra. Stallone has run out of material.

Marty travels forward in time to bring embryonic stem cells back to the present in Back to the Future Part IV.

Harrison Ford is set to star in Indiana Jones 4, slated to be released almost 20 years after the last installment of the film. Ford will be 65 years old at the time of the filming. Not sure how many swashes he’ll be buckling in the this one.

Star Wars: Episode 7. Han, Leia, and their high school-aged kids are ensconced in a Tatooine suburb (Chewy lives in the garage, R2 & 3PO in a little love-nest down the street) while Luke scours the galaxy for little kids with high midichlorian counts. Seventy-year-old Billy Dee Williams will appear as Lando Calrissian.

Clerks 2. Randal and Dante work through a midlife crisis for minimum wage while Jay and Silent Bob kick their habit.

Sharon Stone is still sexy and irritating at 47 in Basic Instinct 2.

Beverly Hills Cop IV. Axel does paperwork at his desk all day. Eddie Murphy does double duty by playing a elderly, sassy, obese black woman.

Karate Kid IV. Sadly, Pat Morita is unable to reprise his role as Mr. Miyagi and a 45-yo Ralph Macchio unconvincingly plays college sophomore Daniel LaRusso. Academy Award nominee William Zabka directs.

Bill & Ted’s Straightforward Trip to Home Depot. Station!

Breakin’ 3: Electric Boogaloo 2.

Disco is Dead. John Travolta runs a wrecking company that is contracted to tear down the very Brooklyn discotheque he danced in as a youth. Intense self-examination of his current path in life follows.

Ei8ht. Gwyneth’s character having been dispatched in the first film, Pitt is free to bring Angelina into this one as wife #2. This time, murders are committed where the first names of the victims match those of the children on the Eight Is Enough television program. I don’t want to ruin it for you, but Dick Van Patten’s head might end up in a box.

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