I swear... the fourth one came out of the fact that Sorcerer's Apprentice sucked on every level. I mean, really... basing an entire movie off of a segment in Fantasia with Mickey Mouse (I'm sure the story predates that, but that's the reason it was done) was a bad idea in the first place... but putting Nick Cage in that? I mean, if you're gonna put Nick Cage in a movie, take all the money that the film cost to make, in fact, ask the studio for double, throw it all in a shallow pit and set fire to it. If nothing else, you'll get a spectacular fire. That's how bad his movies do. Any slight connection to him makes the movie flop.
But the movie was fine with 3... hearing that the 4th one had budget problems a while back made me very weary of it... I only planned on seeing it for the Muppet trailer, but the Pandaman provided and I saw it with another film. All I had to do was wait a week.
Still, fourth movie? other than the money, there was no real call for it. I mean, POTC NEEDED to be a cartoon, and there were talks no doubt... but it all came down to having to make cheap little TV/EI shows so they could cheaply reuse them on Saturday Mornings on ABC for their FCC lipservice (same stuff I'm always complaining about). And we got Emperor's New School and Replacements... they were decent shows, not really groundbreaking and they didn't get a huge audience... and ABC only aired half the first season for almost 5 years now. They didn't even make money buzz or merchandise... so, basically to cheap out and reuse something for TV E/I purposes, they dissed an action cartoon that could have been a smarter investment.
Oh Well, at least Phineas and Ferb is amazingly amazing.