It has been 13 years since the death of the then only 25 year old Tupac "2Pac" Shakur. Now when people hear the name 2Pac, they immediately associate it with Hip-Hop, which is very logical of course. 2Pac was one of the faces of the Gangster Rap that emerged in the late 80's and early 90's, but 2Pac was also one of the first rappers who starred in motion pictures. At the same time 2Pac started starring in movies the only other big names in rap starting out in movies were Ice-T and Ice Cube. Those three paved the way for people like DMX, Ja Rule, Snoop Dog, Ludacris, Eminem and in a way even Will Smith although he was doing just fine in his own sitcom at the time.

When Die Hard was released in 1988 it changed the way action movies were made. Normally the star of the movie was either a muscled guy (Arnie, Sly), skilled in Martial Arts (Seagal, Norris) or both (Van Damme, Lundgren). Then Bruce Willis came, fresh of the TV-show Moonlighting in a movie depicting an everyday cop who gets caught in a terrorist takeover of an office building. He alone must try to stop the terrorists and save his wife. The result was a blockbuster movie that redefined the face of action. No longer action films would require guys who have been working out 24/7, killing tons of 1-dimensional villains played by b-actors, while spouting one liners and not getting a scratch themselves. No, now every Joe the Plumber out there could stand up against mercenaries and save the day. This movie was called Die Hard and nowadays it's an action classic.

When a movie makes a lot of money it's an easy call to order a sequel. The work has almost been done for you as the groundwork is already there. When the sequel is also successful you might have a possible franchise on your hand; the option to make a string of sequels each cashing in on their predecessors success. Just take a look at the Saw-franchise for a good example. Unfortunately, not every sequel is as good as the original and in some cases can even destroy a franchise. Most franchises have at least one installment that is generally conceived as the worst movie of them all. In a lot of cases it's because the sequel tries to stray too far from the source material or the sequel generates a hype it can't live up to. These movies are the black sheep of a franchise. Let's take a look at some notorious movies hated by critics, fans and the general audience.

Have you ever wandered through your local videostore, searching for that one title until you found it? You pick it from the shelve only to realise that it's a totally different film, only the cover looks exactly the same as the cover of the movie you came for. It happens more than you think because it's one of those marketing-tricks. Whenever a movie comes out which is a remake, they rerelease the original with a new coverdesign that is based upon the artwork of the remake. If a movie is popular, there will be without a doubt a low budget clone with a similar cover in a couple of months. A production company like Asylum lives off this strategy with titles like Transmorphers, 100 Million BC, Allan Quatermain and the Temple of Skulls and Snakes on a Train. For a complete list and a guaranteed chuckle look here. There's also the category "spoofs", which I won't handle here as their posters are meant to be mockingly similar towards other filmposters.

And you have the fourth version; pure laziness. Why go to all the trouble of trying to reinvent the wheel as decades of moviepostermaking have given us practically instant templates for us to use? And because of that laziness the shamelessly ripping off isn't only done by small companies on low budget B-movies, it's sometimes done on movies that have multimillion dollar marketingmachines behind them. Let's take a look at some really, really lazy work by posterdesigners: