The first Taken made 200 million dollars despite getting a lukewarm reaction from the critical community, which is exactly what you expect from an entertaining action movie. Action flicks aren’t usually made to be enjoyed by career critics or theater goers who only enjoy movies with tons of artistic merit instead of arterial blood spray.
I’m as pretentious as I am blood thirsty, so I enjoy ennui as much as explosions but can entirely acknowledge that Taken was 90 minutes of awesome even if it only had a few ounces of brains spread across that duration. This is a natural?occurrence.
Taken 2: Electric Boogaloo, however, somehow figured out a way to be almost indistinguishable from its predecessor, but without any of the interesting or engaging parts that made it such a sleeper hit. Even as tepid-to-vehement as the reaction has been to Taken 2, there are still plenty of other action movie follow ups that were way bigger duds. Most of these didn’t even make 200 million dollars even though they were poorly developed cash grabs. Taken 2 has that distinction all to itself.