Hey, do you have a franchise that blew its wad on the first one or two movies and you need a way to perform some CPR on the dying heartbeat of audience interest? Better yet, are you a new franchise that's so certain you're going to be terrible that you need to cram everything into your kick-off movie for fear you'll never even get to the sequel phase?
The solution is quick, easy, and comfortably cliche: Have something "rise."
Having something rise gives your movie the sense of an upward trajectory—even though that boldly flies in the face of the downward trajectory your franchise is clearly caught in.
Exhibits "B" (for Boring as Shit) through "H" (for Hackneyed)
Underworld: Rise of the Lycans
The newest entry in the field. This upcoming third—that's right, third—installment in the Underworld series is performing the double-whammy of sequel suckage: Pretending that people even give a shit about Lycans whether they're rising or not and making a "prequel" to cover up the fact they couldn't get Kate Beckinsale to return. She was clearly too busy doing anything else.
Transformers: Rise of the Fallen
This is the title of the Michael Bay sequel, according to internet consensus. Fanboys claim The Fallen refers to some sort of weird sect of Transformer that's not an Autobot and not a Decepticon but something much, much…differenter. It had better be, because "Rise of the Fallen" sounds like "Brake of the Speeding" or "Eating of the Hungry." Let's hope the movie has more original ideas in store.
Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
The Fantastic Four movie clearly shit the bed the first time out, so coming up with a sequel idea must have been murder. Then the "creative" minds behind the scenes struck silver: "Hey, we know no one gives a shit about the FF because we cast them with an US magazine taped to a dartboard, so let's push them aside and focus the entire movie on a cooler character." Great. We can't wait for Daredevil: Rise of Deadpool or Ghost Rider: Rise of The Inhumans.
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
This one fails because it's the most unnecessary sequel appendage ever. What's wrong with T3? It's not like people were going to confuse it with the short-lived tech magazine of the same name. And haven't machines been rising for, like, two movies already? Why not call it T3: This Time It Has Tits? That works for us.
Van Wilder 2: Rise of Taj
Wow, this one does the Fantastic Four one, um, worser? Whatever. Unable to get Ryan Reynolds to reprise THE TITLE ROLE, the National Lampoon short bus (their motto: "Irrelevant Since Belushi Croaked") shat out a sequel in the hopes that someone would actually pay to see Kal Penn reprise his Apu impression—which was relegated to third-tier sidekick status the first time—for an entire movie. Luckily, no one was.
Carlito's Way: Rise to Power
Also known as Straight to Video Scarface. Guess what, ese? We already know Carlito rose to power, because if he hadn't, there would never have been a movie called Carlito's Way. Actually, this one can also go out to the George Lucas' and Steven Spielberg's and J.J. Abrams' out there: We don't need to see every fucking character in the world as a baby. Can't we all just assume that characters had parents, were born, learned life lessons, and eventually became the characters we actually care about? No need to make a movie about this over and over.
G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra
Really? This is the title you're going with for your first entry? If you're not confident that you can sell this movie as just G.I. Joe, why the hell are you bothering to make it? Christopher Nolan made a billion dollars on a Batman movie that didn't even have Batman in the friggin' title! Besides, who the hell else is G.I. Joe going to fight, if not their ONLY ENEMY? Now, if it were going to be G.I. Joe: Rise of Al Queda, we'd be suitably shocked and intrigued. But this is terrible. How about: G.I. Joe vs. Cobra: No Shit.