Any good examples of movies which spawn a sequel that makes the whole first movie effectively pointless? For example, say movie 1 was about a group of British agents who discover that terrorists are smuggling nuclear weapons. After a lot of investigation they link it to a ship, which they board and sink. That’s where the first film ends. In a sequel they discover the Americans already had a bomb on the ship, which would have gone off within a few hours anyway, and they may as well just have stayed at home for all th good they really did.
Alien3. They spend all of **Aliens ** fighting to get off of that planet, and then die in the sequel - most of them by the end of the opening credits. Seriously, they might as well have spent the entire movie sitting around playing Go Fish and waiting for the reactor to explode.
The spare Death Star count?
IIRC, there’s a couple years time in-between. Methinks a galaxy-spanning Empire with no qualms about slave-labor could boot-strap a new! improved! Death Star into 2/3 completion during that time frame. Especially since they aren’t trying to keep the thing itself a secret this time, just where it’s being made.
But then, that’s just me.
As to the OP, I’m surprised Highlander 3 hasn’t been mentioned. Completely writes Highlander 2 out of cannon, AFAIK. Course, maybe that’s not quite what your looking for?
Not just the movies, but the series for Highlander also, I would say, to add to with the above post.
There’s a 2 and a 3?
I thought there could be only one.
That’s the one I came in to mention. They destroy any reason for caring about what happens in the preceding movie, and don’t even have the excuse of making a watchable movie themselves.
Out of curiosity, how so? I’ve only seen the series in bits and pieces.
Well, it might be too strong to say that **Road Warrior ** makes **Mad Max ** irrelevant. But certainly you can watch RW as a stand-alone movie, as I suspect the majority of RW viewers have. There is hardly any connection between the two.
To me, it seemed like the time covered in the first movie happened about the same time that the series was taking place. So while Duncan McC was making himself The One in New York City, his cousin is running around Europe uncovering scads and scads of other immortals. Kinda of like how there’s always more Daleks around, no matter how often The Doctor kills off the last one.
And then in one of the final seasons, Duncan’s cousin makes his Boy Wonder sidekick into an immortal. If that was possible, don’t you think Duncan & Sean Connery would have done it for Duncan medieval Scottish wife?
I’d have to disagree. Sure, both movies can be watched as standalones, but they’re certainly connected. The first movie shows Max’s fall, not into sin but into inhumanity and coldness. The second movie shows his redemption and rise, the reclamation of his humanity.
Spoiler (that’s perhaps somewhat necessary)…
At the end of ROTS we see the Emperor, Darth Vader and Grand Moff Tarkin looking upon two Death Stars in various stages of construction, one more complete than the other
Matrix. So…he’s not really all-powerful, then? It was all part of the plan?
Are you sure about that? I didn’t recall there being two.
And being the former EU nerd that I am, I should point out that even if there were two*, one might just be the prototype Death Star that pops up in one of the books. It was essentially just a skeletal frame with a lesser version of the laser. Essentially defenseless against any attacks, it was mostly to test the feasability (sp?) of the superstructure and the cannon before incurring the expense of building the real deal, then squirreled away (possibly at the Maw, but I might be wrong on that point).
*which you’re probably right, I mean I saw it (Ep 3) twice in theaters (I actually really liked it), but because of a lengthy situation involving my family having to house a rescued dog that was hostile to any and all men, I haven’t been able to watch many DVD’s for the past year or so. Long story short, the dog ended up becoming too volatile, and on the advisement of several different veterinarians was put down.
Sam Raimi reshot nearly the entire storyline of Evil Dead in Evil Dead 2 Dead by Dawn.
Desperado was the sequel to El Mariachi ** yet since no one ever saw the nonAntonio Banderas origional they redo much of the plot making El Mariachi ** irrelevant.
Before The Silence of the Lambs there was Man Hunter, the sequel completely blew the origional out of the water in every respect making it moot.
I don’t remember that at all. I saw one.
Came in here to say Alien 3. But then I thought about it. It doesn’t make the plot of Aliens 1 & 2 irrelevant (they still needed Riply and the alien to continue with the franchise) it just made it. . . useless.
To recap: Alien = very good. Aliens = fantastic. Alienses = WTfingF?
Youtube shows only one.
I keep wanting to come into this thread and post about the continuity changes between Jaws 3D and Jaws: The Revenge, but then I remember that both movies were already completely irrelevant even as they were being made.